My generation was taught to pick a career. We were led to believe that our adult lives were committed to having one job until retirement. By the time we finished high school we had to decide between either college or a lifelong association with the fast-food industry. No second chances. No time to figure it out. Move or die.

Our fathers kept the same job. Our mothers didn't work so they weren't factored into the equation. Public schools prepared us for the work force but not for life. If we failed elementary education, we were branded as a lost cause. We were doomed to work forever bagging groceries or digging ditches. No wonder the youth revolted. What a load of crap.

In the seventies we all quit trying. We did what felt good and authority figures became the enemy. Teachers stopped teaching and helped to produce an illiterate generation. We danced. We drugged. We fucked. We destroyed the repressive elements of our elders, but we also killed the concepts of stability and responsibility. We were punished for our transgressions. We now refer to that penalty as the eighties.

"In cyberspace, there are no generations, genders or kink too weird to make a buck from."

I prefer not to think about the eighties and my hope is if I pretend hard enough, those ten years will disappear from memory. The eighties encompassed my twenties. The twenties always suck.

I'd rather skip to the nineties, more willingly to the mid-nineties when the Internet caught on. In the summer of 1995, I got my first computer. It was 286 IBM. It had a 9800-baud modem and I jumped on the web as soon as I figured out how. I sat in wonder as my Prodigy connection slowly loaded pages through my Netscape Navigator. I was thrilled to buy a new Packard Bell with a 100 MHz Intel chip and a 14.4K external modem. I sadly replaced my Windows 3.x with 95 but got over it. I cracked open that PackBell a million times. I cleaned it, upgraded the hardware, installed an overdrive, formatted it when I fucked up and memorized DOS commands that I can't recall anymore. In truth I held onto that old baby until June of 2000.

All during the time from the first moment I dialed up the web until I joined the board at Porncity, I knew I wanted to make a living with my computer. I had in my home a revolution in a box. I owned the tool that would change my life. I saw my future and it was porn.

What was most phenomenal was the fact I was making life-altering decisions in my thirties. That would have never happened with my parent's generation. In their thirties their lives were set in stone. Nobody changed careers in mid stream. Adults who were raised in the depression era believed a good-paying job was the answer to all life's problems. They would never look at a computer as anything more than an entertainment device.

Are you thinking about joining the ranks of adult webmasters? Are you afraid you're too old to learn new tricks? Are you worried that the younger generation is too far technically advanced for you to catch up? Are you thinking yourself a fool for entertaining such nonsense?

Relax.

There's room on the net porn bandwagon for all makes of humankind. In cyberspace there are no generations, genders or kink too weird to make a buck from. Even if you've just come home from the Best Buy with your very first computer, you're not too old or too far behind to catch up.

The young pups might be totally indoctrinated in the ways of the web but you've got something they don't. You have years of experience that have taught you lessons they've yet to learn. You know those hard facts like when to shut up and when to play your hand. You've worked long enough to understand how to keep your mitts off the product. You've learned the ways of bullshitters and can smell them through your monitor. You know to see past empty promises and search for responsible action. You are a fully formed adult and therefore you rule.

On top of all the admirable qualities that come with age, you’ve got pages and pages and pages of tutorials, lessons and tips on how to make a go selling Internet smut. You can learn at your leisure and still keep your day job. You don't have to leap until you're ready. And because you're a grown-up, you know when you're ready.

If your age is what's stopping you, think again. There's nothing stopping you. Pushing Internet porn is a trick any dog can learn. Even the old ones!