what did you do before internet?

[ticklehound]

Such a long time ago . . . I was a senior in high school about to head off to college when the internet came around. Before that . . .

I looked through the TV guide every week to look for show I knew had tickling in it (there were few & I knew them all). Tape 'em with the old trusty VCR if need be

I used my knowledge of the Dewey decimal system to scan the card catalog for tickling-related read. Often it was a psychology magazine or text. If that failed, I would look up 'tickle' in the dictionary again.

I drew a lot of very primitive cartoons of feet & tickling (it took a while to draw a foot/sole in satisfy the perfectionist in me).

Before the age of 11 or 12, I played "Doctor" a LOT with any girl. The exam never got much beyond the feet.

After that age, whenever I would flirt with a girl, I'd try to find a way to get playfully punched or slapped, I'd get "angry" and wrestle her shoes off (typically Phys Ed class or Study Hall), and then kindly request to put them on myself so I could touch & tickle her feet.

If I was at her house for some stupid after-school activity or just studying, I'd sneak a tickle as often as I could, and if she got annoyed by my persistence, I'd make a deal of 5 minutes un-interrupted foot tickling, promising to leave 'em alone after that (for a while).

*Hmm, I guess its fitting that the internet came around right at the time I was getting too old for these tickle shenanigans.* I've said it before & I'll say it again: when I typed in "tickling" into the !Yahoo search bar; and I saw the results . . . my life changed forever.

 

[luc]

I looked through the TV
I played with any girl...

The difference between yesterday and today, is the speed of information, as in all things...

 

[stockytickler]

Oh, emily, you knew we were all staring at your feet before that post 😉

 

[Sunriseticklee]

I didn't start searching for tickling on the Internet until freshman year of college. I started college in 1997, and the only access to the Internet I had prior to college was on the public computers at my high school. Even when I was alone in the computer lab in high school I was terrified to look for anything tickling-related, lest it register on my account and create problems for me down the line. I didn't really understand search histories and things like that yet. My parents didn't get a computer for the house until I had already gone to college. I tried to convince them to purchase one while I was in high school, but my grandmother talked them out of it. I think she was afraid that her poor innocent grandchildren were going to be corrupted by Internet porn or gay men in chat rooms or something. Probably good that they didn't get one because I would've absolutely been outed given my naivete about search histories at the time.

Anyway, how did I quench my thirst for tickling during those years?

-Finding and "taping" TV episodes with F/M tickling. My favorite one was the Mork and Mindy episode where three hot female "aliens" tickle Mork.
-Stopping to watch any and all tickling that took place in my high school. There was a ton of it, and most of it was F/M.
-Fantasizing about all of these tickling scenes over and over again.
-Looking up tickling-related words in the dictionary.

Man we have a lot in common! LOL

 

[OmahaTickler]

OK, look, this comes up from time to time, so it should be nailed down: Yeah, the Internet existed before the 90s, in the Defense Department and among university types. However, the Internet was effectively commercialized around 1993/94, insofar as it was accessible to the masses easily. It started with newsgroups/listservs, then browsers like Mosaic and Netscape provided the web with audio-visual power. So basically, that's the general dividing line of pre-Internet and post-Internet. For me, AOL was the place to be in the mid- to late-90s, in the TICKLING and Foot Fetish rooms. When AOL chased us off, TMF became THE Place around 2001. Tickling media online was pretty ubiquitous by around 2002. Before that, porn stores had (usually lame) tickling and foot fetish vids from Harmony, Student Fetish and the like. I was in college from 1987 to 1993, and those early years were rough. I went to a Southern university with barefoot women aplenty, but no one "into it" foot play, as it were. I'd go to the university library and look at the women's magazines, e.g. Glamour, Mademouselle (sic), etc., because it was a quick fix for bare feet. I'd pore over the card catalog for tickling/foot books, and eventually came across William Rossi's "Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe," which was like a Holy Grail at the time. It spoke to about 90 percent of my fetishes, and someone had checked it out for nearly an entire semester. I never considered myself a thief, but when it returned to the shelves, I decided to liberate it, and GD it, I'd do it again. I snuck it into the men's room, removed the security strip and stole it. I didn't have the money at the time for my own copy or porn-shop paraphernalia (which really didn't cater to feet/tickling until the early 90s, at least where I was in Houston). I wouldn't say I was desperate, as I had friends and a decent social life, but yes, before the web, there was a void that yearned to be filled.

 

[tomchs1989]

...aaaaaaand i'm never going to yoga again now.

yes you will! 😛

 

[JoePTickle]

I'd been thinking about that myself lately, did a blog post here about some of the more memorable (to me, at least) pre-internet T.V. scenes:

Pre-Internet Tickling Classics

I also match saratk's list exactly.

Thanks for asking!

 

[paracarl44]

I was out of town and stopped into an Adult Store where they had a newspaper like magazine called 'Fetish Times'.

I purchased this newspaper because of an article on the front page titled 'She Tickles Men's Feet'.

When I was younger I would sneak a look at Playboy Magazines that featured the soles of women's feet.

 

[Danny_ler_NY]

Internet was just starting to get good and I didn't have my own connection to it yet. I would go to the library or internet cafes (remember those?) on my lunch hour and download as many tickle-related stories and cartoons as I could. I also set up an alternative mailing address so I could send away for tickling magazines without fear of my parents finding out.