NEW YORK - For just $45 per month, operators manning AT&T's new Virtual Talk Bud service call the cellphones of its teenage subscribers every three minutes and engage them in mindless conversation with the goal of creating the illusion that the subscribers have innumerable friends who never stop calling. Seventeen year-old Felix Frankfurter explained the need the new service fills: "It's like, the worst feeling in the world, dude, when you're, like, on a date and nobody calls you." Sixteen year-old Ashley Rooney agrees. She dumped her boyfriend, 18-year old Lucius Q.C. Lamar, last month after a dinner at Pizza Hut during which no one called Lucius. Ashley explained: "Like, I couldn't stop thinking, 'what's wrong with him?'"
The Virtual Talk Bud operators are located in India, but they have been taught to converse in the inane lingo of American teenagers, with phrases such as, "What's up, dude?" And, "Hey, dude, want to check out my new video game later?"
Felix Frankfurter put the new service in perspective: "Ever since I signed on [with Virtual Talk Bud], dude, I'm no longer, like, some loser with nobody to talk to on my cell while I'm hanging with my buds at the mall."
