[aaron695]

> if you were a big celebrity, you could get an "unlisted" number

Or like a teacher? There was nothing uncommon about being unlisted.

The phonebook was your only one way searchable link to the outside world. It was LinkedIn and Facebook all in that one line in a physical book. So most people had it.

There was no way with a phonebook to reverse search using an address to know what the phone number and persons name was.

Data could not flow. It was the dark ages.

So people had to talk to people. It was an awful place pre-internet, just like early internet and mid internet society, but it'd be nice to get some of the good parts back.

As for this "doxxing" (Which the article uses jokingly), there was no way for this info to spread anymore than Douglas Adams friends telling you his address. You couldn't even rewatch the program unless you got lucky and recorded it.

[lozf]

> You couldn't even rewatch the program unless you got lucky and recorded it.

And even then, the "pause" function on the majority of domestic VCRs would invariably obscure the interesting parts of the frame with "noise bars".