How did this all start?

[Capnmad]

As I look at another thread begun along the lines of, "How did your fetish start?", I've got to wonder about something less talked about -- How the Forum started, How our communities grew... Now, I've heard names bandied about like "Psycho" and whatnot... Talks of newsgroups and such before there was an official Forum like we know today... But not much else.

I think it may benefit us to have and promote a sense of history with regard to this... To not overlook the pioneers that got us to this point, to recognize the sentinels that keep things going to the best of their ability, and to acknowledge whatever hurdles there were and are in maintaining this place and growing as a community online and off.

Perhaps with a greater understanding of the history, the challenges, the work that's been put in over years, there will be a greater appreciation of what we have here and a greater effort put forth by all to make sure it is kept safe, and where possible, improved.

I mean, I've been around for a couple of years, but only have the most tenuous and vague grasp on the history of the tickling community. If there's a comprehensive thread that covers this, feel free to guide me there -- but if not, let's make this one, and share what you know.

I look forward to your responses.

 

[Bugman]

Great thread Cap! I would love to hear some stories from the old days myself.😀

 

[Snail Shell]

Far back as I've heard, there were those doing gatherings around the NE and MidWest via snail mail and bulletins on cork boards around the city.

Snail Shell

 

[StarWolffe]

Holy Can Of Worms........ Batman

The edited version:

HOM's magazine 'Latent Image' had some of the first tickling photo ads (late '60s - early '70s) ....
Afterwards Harmony and several alternative life-style publishers jumped on the wagon ....
Good tickling material was scarce. Usually only one photoset per magazine and was published quarterly or semi-annually ....
Soon fetish/swinger tabloids had pages and pages of "contact information" Any kind of kink you could think of ....
Most were private citizens with their interpretations of "good tickling stuff" All of these involved snail-mail, faxes and telephone calls ...... Some had material to trade or swap others to purchase ... Photos, audio cassettes of tickling sessions, fantasy or real life stories and photocopies of artwork were offered up ..... Once in a great while someone was bold enough to attempt meeting another person or couple.... For a bondage tickling session ...
Publishing companies picked up on this and began to produce their own artwork, cartoons, 8mm celluloid reels from the magazines photo shoots and a new technology of video cassette tape recording ( Beta/VHS ) ....
Again HOM/CALSTAR stepped up to the plate and produced the first commercial all tickling video (VHS) .....
"Tied and Tickled" with the now famous Michelle Bauer (aka Pia Sands)- Retail $79.95 for a 30 minute tape !!!!!
Evenually 'all tickling' magazines surfaced by many of the fetish publishers .... Followed by bondage and tickling videos ...
Prodigy, Compuserve, WEBTV and of course AOL started the early internet applications. Along with the electronic BBS and first generation "chat rooms" came the newsgroups - no regulation, no mods, basically no cotrols ..... SPAM CITY soon found them, they were flooded with porno advertisements and off topic content.....
Worst of all THE FLAME WARS
As attitudes changed and social behavior adjusted to the electronic communication age .... Face to face gatherings started .... The original starting points ????? .... Depends on who wrote the history book you've been reading ....
Finally technology progressed to the WWW and a few tech savy folks got together with some folks with financial resources .....
Here we are today....

Hopefully some of the other "Village Elders" will jump in and supplement this .... Or at least fill in some of the gaps from their vantage point ....

 

[LeeAllure]

There is someone researching and writing

our history (tickling lovers, that is) down, and also
taking down oral testimony in the form of video
interviews. I'll let him tell more about it, or ask more
questions, but folks who are going to NEST and have
information they'd like to share will get a chance to
have their 15 minutes of fame at the event.

Lee

 

[skelyrata]

as far as I can remember

Well, as far as I can remember my first contact with tickling on the internet what on Yaqui's World and soon after came Tickling Real Woman.

Before that, i know that I bought a couple of tickling magazines at an adult shop once, but I never found Tickling videos. I am talking here, 1998. I remember that Bondage Video were very limited and very light.

There was a studio called ZFX, or something like that, that produced the best bondage and torture video I ever saw at that point, but nothing about tickling.

 

[drew70]

Before the TMF there was....(drum roll)....alt.multimedia.tk...(a moment of silence please)......

AMT was without a doubt the best ever tickling forum...bar none! One reason was that it was not a webpage and therefore not restricted to a single server. It was carried by hundreds if not thousands of NNTP servers around the world. Clips of any size could be distributed by splitting the clip up into several parts which could later be re-integrated into the original. Combine and decode, baby. Man, I miss those days!

But the best thing about AMT was that it was completely UNCENSORED. If you thought Joe Blow was a raging asshole, you could tell him so without fear of somebody coming along behind you and editing your words.

The founder of AMT was a brilliant man by the name of Bob Hare. Bob was the most internet-savvy guy I've ever had the pleasure to know. He used to work with AOL engineers on ways to make NNTP work with AOL's fucked-up proprietary internet service. He also worked tirelessly to keep AMT spam free. Bob was a legend.

Still, as great as AMT was, people still found reasons to bitch about it. Too much M/M, too many "trolls," yadda yadda. So then this guy calling himself Psycho decides to start a "flame-free" moderated forum on Easyboards. MTP Jeff partnered with him. They called it the Tickling Media Forum. Later, he got ahold of some VBulletin software and his own server.

That would have been fine, but Psycho didn't stop there. Instead of focusing his efforts on the development of the TMF, he launched a campaign at AMT to get people to leave and come to his TMF. His major selling points were that the TMF had no flames, and that only */F material would be permitted. Yeah, lots of people forgot about that little detail.

Psycho's campaign for a mass exodus started getting nasty as time went on. He had difficulty hiding his frustration that many of us actually preferred a free and unrestricted posting environment. I seem to remember comments like, "What the fuck are you assholes still DOING here?! Do you really love trolls and flames that much?!!"

These comments sparked some defense from those of us that weren't ready to abandon AMT, and the lines were drawn. If anybody is interested, you can search the TMF archives here, or you can go to Google Groups and search the AMT archives there.

Ultimately I too forsook AMT, I'm sorry to say. Bob's health declined, and he became unable to maintain the spam-free environment at AMT. People left in droves and flocked here to the TMF or to Tickle Theater.

 

[tulipangel]

WOW this is a good thread! Nice to know how it ALL began on the net!

 

[toyou444]

...bows head in memory of AMT...








Now then:

AMT also spread a good bit of disinformation about the TMF to be fair too. A few people got REALLY hacked off at what they perceived to be their being censored. To that end they started posting all kinds of bad stuff about Jeff especially and trying to make his MTP clips available for free in an attempt to shut him down.

I'm agreeing with Drew that the wonderful/horrible thing about AMT was you could say whatever you wanted and some of the threads got really nasty...eventually I found myself coming here more and more, and then my local server stopped allowing me to see any of the newsgroups. Of course you can now through google gorups, but its just not the same.

Of course there were plenty of early websites too:

Ticklegal
Tom's Tickling Page (What the heck was the name of that thing?!?!)
Solefully Yours

And so many more that I can't even remember anymore.

The TMF actually grew out of Psycho's "Tickling Universe" which had grown out of his "Tickling Galaxy" Wich was spawned by his "Tickling World" LOL you get the point.

The when Psycho decided to leave a group of fine folks took over the TMF. Jeff, Myriads, Scooby (where are you?!?!), myself and many more had a live chat to discuss its future. This would have been back in early 2001.

I had no money to help, and turned down a moderator position due to personal circumstances at the time, but the people who DID step up have done a pretty good job!

So now we find a site with 70,000+ members that has an amazing collection of mainstream and otherwise tickling material! Of course there are always people who will have different opinions, but we are very lucky to have this place in my opinion. I think it fills the void left with the demise of AMT.

And Drew, I had no idea Bob had gotten sick. Very sorry to hear that! He was a hell of a fighter!


~ toyou

 

[Deleted member 66627]

WOW.. I never knew any of that.. Thank you Drew, and toyou for all the history!! 😀

 

[Capnmad]

Excellent response from all so far, ladies and gents. 🙂

Thanks! I look forward to hearing more.

 

[RobAce]

I first got the "online" bug back in the days where the internet was barely alive. I would contact people with a 2400 baud modem and we would discuss all matters including fetish material, which aside from a few store that sold Tied and Tickled magazines and all the old HOM and Calstar tied and tickled series.
That was back in 1991 or 92. I attended a fetish festival which included tickling in Denver back in 1992, 1993 and 1994 as I recall. Met a few people whom I do not see around anymore and perhaps one or 2 that I do hear from.


Back also before AMT there was ASFT (Alt.sex.fetish.tickling) newsgroup, (If my memory holds true AMT was created because of the SPAM and the crap *********** was doing on ASFT) which became beset with flames, porn spam and the infamous ***********. Many a huge hubbub was made over that episode within the community. You all can do a google search on *********** to read that history. But in the beginning ASFT was a great place to meet people, post stories (my first 4 stories in fact were posted on ASFT, then carried over to AMT and now are this site and a few others around the web) and share pictures. Videos at that time were not shared and really not done online.
I also remember solefully yours having a telephone service where you could call and listen to a sample of the video before you bought it.
Eventually everything became more and more accessible and more and more websites popped up. At first nothing was pay service. I remember the day when I logged on to a website and it stated that this was the last month for free viewing, next month it would be a pay service....and many other sites followed suit.
I have fond memories of going to the tickling chatroom in AOL as well as on IRC. I met quite a few people off of IRC, and unfortunately lost contact with most of them.
I even recall exchanging letters with a few of the tickling models, in fact my pride and joy is an autographed picture of Ashley Renee circa 1995.

As Englebert Humperdink sang...."Those were the days my friends, we thought they'd never end...."

Rob

EDIT: The ************'s are there because of a name that is not allowed to be posted on the TMF. I really forgot about that, my apologies. Just replace the *********** with the word someone.

 

[Y2ka0k]

Myself, I think I stumbled opon Camp Tickle when looking for bondage stuff on Web Crawlers, then toms page. Then the proverbeal snow ball effect and here we are!

 

[Adalon]

Oh, wow, yes, thank you for the history - there's a lot there! It seems as if our community has a long tradition.

 

[drew70]

Touyou mentioned some great old pre-TMF websites. The very first tickling web site I found was when we got Internet access to our desktop computers back in 1996. It was called ntcweb.com. They had a forum and a chatroom. The chatroom was great because A) You didn't necessarily have to use the same name every time like you do here, and B) There was no list of people in the room. Nobody would know you were there unless you actually said something. Some of the folks I met at ntcweb ultimately found their way here to the TMF. Besides myself, there was JPie, Evilwoman, and Speedoman.

 

[toyou444]

ntcweb and camp tickle...two great sites!

I know Ann was trying to comile a list of ancient sites, but I don't know how it is coming along (and I'm really to lazy today to go look it up...lol)

Now pre-internet (for me) when I was in college I found my first Tied & Tickled magazine. Also Knotty was good for a tickle pic or two.

Then the how HOM line and Harmony lines.

I remember RENTING a tickling video when I had to put 20 bucks down and then get the video back in two days to get my money back (that was on top of the rental fee)!

Most of the tickling vids I remember from back then has women with really big hair being tickled very lightly with giant red feathers...not so effective, but it was all I had!

The concept of mainstream tickling had always fascinated me (as it does a lot of us I now know) and my senior year of college I started making a video tape of anything I could catch on televsion plus the tickling bits from the bondage videos I could find. Sadly I through that out during a purge in the early 90's...sigh.

However I would to pat myself on the back for starting my own little page back around 1998/99 just for mainstream pics and clips.

Back then I could load as many videos as I wanted and let people donwload them for free on sites like geocities and tripod!

Of course there was ANA's videos...also with a phonenumber to call and talk to them!

Platinum did some early videos too, and EZ Ryder has some nice tickling in his videos if you knew which ones to watch.

There was also a line of "student videos" (I can't remember who made them and again, too lazy to look it up right now) that had some nice tickling.

I'll write more when my feeble mind can recall it!

~ toyou

 

[toyou444]

Well that was easy!

I just went to the TMF links page and saw some more great ones!

Tickletown! How could I forget that?!?!

Funnybone Story box! Another great site that was (one of) the first to collect tickling stories from around the net!

Josie the ticklish Pussycat! She has somewonderful vids and stories and pictures!

Rockauthor! He was putting out high quality clips back in the day!

~ toyou

 

[daddy]

Don't forget about "Hoteltickle!" We were around from 1997-2000 and it was a blast.

peace out,
daddy

 

[toyou444]

Daddy I was just reading one of Ann's stickys about the history project and your site was mentioned!

Good times!

~ toyou

 

[toyou444]

You bastards! I have work to do and now I'm out looking up ancient links just for your amusement!!! 😉


Copied from Ticklegal's site and dated 12/26/1997!

Tickling (general):

Ticklish Question -- Interesting snippet from a radio show with resources to find out more about the "evolutionary advantages of tickling."

Tricks of the Trade: Tickling -- Instruction on the gentler type of tickling.

Juggler's Download Site -- A place to download .mpegs, rotated periodically.

Cat in Hat's Tickling Images -- Hot M/M bondage/tickle pics and cartoons.

Ferral's Hentai Images -- Includes tickling cartoon section.

ALeSyS Spanish Tickling Page -- Tickling page in Spanish. Pictures, chat and uh...lots of Spanish words and stuff...yeah, that's it...

La Risa -- Another Spanish page. I have no idea what this page says but it seems to have to do with tickling.

Alaska Tickles Homepage -- Pics, stories, and links.

Tickle Tukano's Page -- Pictures, cartoons, stories and links.

My tickling scene -- True FFF/M gang-tickle story from Mistress Kitten's Fantasy Page.

TickleBoss's Home Page -- A couple M/M foot tickle pics and a big 'ol personal ad.

Tickle Torture and Teri's Ticklish Friend -- Tickling stories from a page called Breast Play Stories.

Tickle Kitzel -- Pics and links. I love the pic on the opening page.

DMoore1736's Homepage -- Original artwork and some links.

Bruce's Ticklish Web -- Message board, tickling start-up logos, guestbook and links.

Camp Tickle -- Cartoons, pictures, stories and links. This used to be UfoGirl and UfoDude's Homepage.

Aurii's Tickle World -- Hear .wav's of Aurii getting tickled and get a good look at her feet.

Donnafreak's Homepage -- Stories, pics, and .wav files. Strictly heterosexual focus.

Kusuguri no Yakata (House of Tickling) -- This page has tons of cartoons and info about the tickling scene in Japan. Japanese version also available!

KitELcat's Tickling Page -- Great M/M stories and cartoons. Meow!

Blithwulf's House of Tickling -- Another M/M page, lots of pictures and stories. Blithwulf is also working on setting up a Ring of Tickling.

TickleTown -- Steve ([email protected]) and Oblesklk ([email protected]) have teamed up to create this great site. This is now the new home of the Tickling Mainstream Lists. (Stop moving it already, people!) Links, chat logs, library, image collection, Simon's Ticklephiles newsletter, personals, and more...

Vamp221's Home Page -- Tickling pix and links.

Funny Bone Storybox -- An awesome collection of tickling stories!

Tickling "Accidents" and Other Laughing Matters -- A man recalls tickling sessions in which involuntary urination occurs.

Darkwater's Fiction -- Original stories by a longtime ASFT member.

Tom's Adult Tickling Page -- Pictures, links, and guestbook for announcements & personals.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

How could I forget Juggler!!!! The original mainstream clip artist!

~ toyou

 

[WheresThe Clip?]

Well video wise I bought a poor second hand copy of Harmony's first video called simply 'TICKLISH' starring Whitney Prescott and Asley Renee, from a Soho porn shop in London back in 1991. A couple of years later I managed to find California Star's 'Tied and Tickled 15' from the same shop.

 

[WheresThe Clip?]

Don't forget about "Hoteltickle!" We were around from 1997-2000 and it was a blast.

peace out,
daddy

I bought a computer in 2000, and this was the first site I found, and outside of the TMF itself is still the best one I found.

 

[daddy]

I bought a computer in 2000, and this was the first site I found, and outside of the TMF itself is still the best one I found.

Thank you! Every once in a while it is nice to know that the website did some good for the community and that people enjoyed it. We were featured on a British TV show called "Hanky Panky" one time. I have had the VHS copy all these years and have never made it into a clip yet, so maybe I will do that and share it with you all?

peace out,
daddy

 

[toyou444]

We were featured on a British TV show called "Hanky Panky" one time. I have had the VHS copy all these years and have never made it into a clip yet, so maybe I will do that and share it with you all?

peace out,
daddy

Nah, why would you want to do that?



Must...have...all...things...mainstream....!

~ toyou

 

[Capnmad]

Thanks for everyone who's contributed so far. 🙂

our history (tickling lovers, that is) down, and also
taking down oral testimony in the form of video
interviews. I'll let him tell more about it, or ask more
questions, but folks who are going to NEST and have
information they'd like to share will get a chance to
have their 15 minutes of fame at the event.

Lee

Very cool. Glad someone else had the same idea... Sounds like great minds think alike! 🙂

Well, for those of us who can't make it to NEST to testify, or would otherwise like to offer their personal histories of the early days here as well, for everyone's perusal, I welcome anyone else's recollections...

I'm sure there are other raconteurs among the old-timers, no? 🙂