When you first discovered the "community"....

[PiperGK1]

I haven't really thought about this in a while, but I've always been a person who keeps my cards close to the vest, particularly when it comes to my tickling fetish. I'm 42, so I grew up before the whole era of cell phones and the internet (I first got on the internet when I was about 25). I went through my young years, puberty, and teens not knowing that there was ANYONE else in the world who had such a maddening, deep desire for tickling that it almost consumed them. I can safely use the words, "I suffered" through high school while trying to keep my fetish to myself, hidden from others, and yet letting the demon out occasionally on an unsuspecting girlfriend. Even then, I had to keep the true nature of it in check - I couldn't go all out and tickle-attack someone mercilessly, lest my secret passion be revealed.

I have been a member of Ticklingforum for some years now, and it's always a pleasure to come back here and read about others' experiences, to know I'm not alone and that, really, my secret desire does not make me an outcast, a pariah, a leper....

If anyone else wants to share about what it was like to discover that you are not alone in this world, I'd love to hear it!

 

[toyou444]

Back on the alt. groups. I first got "on line" at the end of 1996 and I remember being on the groups in '98.

Then the web pages (geocities!) and eventually the evolution of the TMF.

It was like watching mankind move from roving bands of nomads to civilization! LOL!

~ toyou

 

[C.A.B.]

Back in the 70's, I stumbled onto a reader's letters collumn in a sleazy skin rag where some dude asked the perfect tickling questions of the bimbo that answered the letters. His note was detailed and long and her response was detailed and long... and I realized... this is no accident, this isnt something cute on TV or a movie... there are others serious with this "weird thing" I was born with.

I also remember a dusty old book in the library called "The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe" were the author documents those items as they appear in human sexuality throughout history... tickling included, particularity the supposed penchant Catherine the Great had for it. But I never really got to read it, so shy was I that someone would think I was "a freak"... which also ruled out checking out the book.

When the rudimentary internet came about, almost as soon as someone had figured out how to post to UseNet, someone started an alt.sex.tickling board... but it was hard to download crappy gifs with a shitty phone-line modem that made a hell of a lot of racket and took an hour to download a single pic... with no preview... the one you didn't want. The nights were long in those days.

 

[C.A.B.]

Then the web pages (geocities!) and eventually the evolution of the TMF.It was like watching mankind move from roving bands of nomads to civilization! LOL!~ toyou

Good analogy... Think of the TMF as civilized ROME in a world of dark ages.

 

[voided9]

I discovered the forum itself while in an abusive relationship, living in a place where I literally didn't see anyone all day except my then-boyfriend. He despised my love for tickling - to the point where he didn't even want to see it on tv when I was around -it made me feel like such a freak. Then Zac [my now husband] visited us on New Year's, and while drunk, he and I tickled each other for hours that night and my then-boyfriend didn't really give a shit [he figured, "better him than me".] When Zac left back to TN, it left me with this feeling like, I'm not the only one who loves tickling and I deserve to be happy. So I found the forum and was so relieved that I had so many people to talk with, about my love for tickling. People who understood my feelings entirely. Eventually I got out of the horrible relationship and pursued my love of tickling, and ended up with Zac, who loves tickling as much as I do.

This place was an outlet for me, and I'm so grateful I found it. I've met some incredible people here and made very close friends. I was born with my passion for tickling, and I always knew I was different, but I was never ashamed of it until that one asshole. All my previous boyfriends had indulged me, even if they didn't understand it.

 

[paracarl44]

Before I found this forum..........................

there were paper magazines that I would indulge in.

 

[PiedPiper]

By the late 70's, a handful of us were corresponding in the postal mail,... exchanging 50th generation photocopies, cartoons, stories, even audio tapes. It was an exciting time,... the internet made it all so easy.

 

[Sandrock74]

I think I was just the right age for all this. I was already over 18 (maybe 20?) when this whole internet thing began catching on and I was immediately able to use it for looking up tickling related stuff and things. Before I knew it, the pre-TMF forum was up and running. Then that ended up transforming into the current TMF and I've been along for the entire journey so far!

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

I was 13 years old when I first discovered what those "funny feelings" meant. I was born in '87 and my folks purchased their first PC around 96. One day, while researching for a school paper online, I decided on a whim to plug in "tickle" into AOL's search engine (I don't even know if Google was around then). I'll never forget one of the first results: it was a picture from FMConcepts of a blonde woman locked in the stocks, arms overhead, wearing a fishnet blouse with no bra. Her toes were crunched tight, trying to limit the amount of ticklish surface area to attack, and she was squirming in her seat with a look of exquisite torture on her face. Needless to say, I was floored.

For days it was the only thing my young brain could focus on, and with great gusto I combed the internet, discovering troves of tickle material. Finally, an answer! I stumbled upon the TMF in its infancy, when it was a Geocite ran by Psycho. I was actually a member prior to 01, but that's when the TMF switched over to VBulletin and all prior posts lost. Anyone remember Noeye's tickling site? Or when Kathy ran Realtickling and not T.I.B? I remember Maggic Touch or Realtickling would produce a video ONCE a month (when they were producing hour long VHS'), and it would take a half hour to download the two minute preview clip on my old 56K.

Ah, memories.

 

[wolfman40]

Late 96, early 97

I was around 20

The first website's I recall were ticklegal's & Josie's.

The fabulous Solefully yours in terms of media & of course, Magic Touch, with the really pretty girl in the purple dress! (name escapes me)

 

[milagros317]

In my 20's I would prowl in adult bookstores looking for anything tickle- or foot-fetish related and usually not finding anything. Then the House of Milan came out with a few tickling related magazines and I realized I was not alone in the world with these interests.

The internet didn't exist until I was in my 40's. As mentioned above, I first found alt.sex.tickling and eventually that led me to the TMF.

 

[firegod86]

I was but a wee lad of 14 when i first got the internet. Curiosity got me to search. And i found the TMF in it's infancy. I downloaded my first clip. Some girl in tennis garb. It was a whopping ten seconds long but i was amazed. I didn't post or register since i didn't really have a clue how to or what it even was precisely. But i read so many stories. Saw so many pictures. Staying up till 8am sometimes just roaming the net to see what marvels awaited me.

 

[PiedPiper]

In my 20's I would prowl in adult bookstores looking for anything tickle- or foot-fetish related and usually not finding anything. Then the House of Milan came out with a few tickling related magazines and I realized I was not alone in the world with these interests.

The internet didn't exist until I was in my 40's. As mentioned above, I first found alt.sex.tickling and eventually that led me to the TMF.

_________________

About the same for me, Mils,.... but here's a slightly earlier glimmer you might find interesting. Remember the pulp men's magazines,... True Man's Adventure,... stuff like that? Their covers always depicting scantily-clad women, usually in some bondage,.. and being imperiled by various bad guys (frequently members of the SS, etc)

Well I couldn't have been more than 15,... so like 1965,... I was paging through one of these magazines in the rack at the corner jukebox joint. The cover art showed a woman with her feet in some contraption seemingly intended for bastinado,... so I peered further. Turns out that halfway through the cover story's copy, the torture included being tickled with goose quills. It was the first formal reference to fetish tickling I ever encountered.

 

[JoePTickle]

It took a while for me to take full advantage of TMF. For most of the early years I was mainly a video clip browser. Then I graduated to video clip buyer. Then a playmate. Tickling's always been on my mind, but TMF's made it part of my daily routine, and added some great like-minded friends.

 

[PiperGK1]

I love the comments! Here's one from my pre-internet past that you can appreciate: the very first time I went to an adult video store I was in my early twenties. I walked in, looked around (I was alone, except for the guy at the counter), and couldn't find anything but regular porn. I walked up to the counter and quietly asked the guy if there was anything tickle-related. He pointed out a couple videos, and there were really only about 3 in this GIANT place. I bought one, and went outside to my car, which WOULD NOT START!!!! The battery had died, so I had to call a tow truck for my car in the middle of the night, at a XXX video store, where I had just bought my first tickling video. I thought I was going to die.

 

[Mane'o]

I'm of the group of the age that began to search for tickle related stuff when it was only in print in XXX stores. There was a mail order guy ( or place ) by name of Tobias Hackner (apologies to any youngsters with that name) who advertised tickle material in obscure fetish publications.

Then came the Penthouse publications of Forum and Variations with the random tickling letter or article.

And there were the glossy publications found in adult stores dedicated to tickling but those were few in number.

Films and videos also were available either through mail order or in adult stores and sometimes in pay-per-view booths in those establishments.

But nothing that resembled a coherent community. Tobias was the closest glue for that and that was still no group sharing. We all paddled alone in our devotion to tickling.

BDSM groups met in larger urban areas and sometimes tickle fans got some exposure but it was second class citizenship.

Then came the .alt groups on the fledgling Internet followed by irc chat channels and various story and photo shared sites ( before there was the web there was gopher for sharing on the network) and finally the World Wide Web and sites like TMF.

With each new avenue of distribution a new sense of community arrived. We were not alone.

Now there are organized events, online sites with long histories and new generations for whom the "community" has always existed.

 

[Roy]

Mane'o, that is exactly how I remember all of it.

 

[jujimbo]

I think that was about 12 or 11 years ago. I clicked on a link on Jeff's Magic Touch Production's website and stumbled upon this forum. It were the glory days of Paradise Vision (still my favourite production today) and Realtickling. It was a great discovery that there also existed a forum of people with like-minded quirks. A great revolution at that too. Past generations had to make do with erotic magazines and VHS tapes circulated more underground.

However, also before (still no cheap cable internet in Belgium) that I saw an episode of an erotic programme (I'm not sure which one, but I believe it was Sex Bytes, but I might be wrong since it's out of my memory) where they discussed the tickling fetish. I believe it showed behind the scenes footage of California Star and Stacy Burke got tickled (in a video I never re-discovered on the net). She presented herself as "Stacy from Ohio" in that very video.
I already knew about my passion for tickling, but since I was still a teen and a minor I still had to make that discovery that it might be something sexual too. Was also a great turning point to me.

The first tickling website I discovered was Sergio's SW tickle. Sadly it's offline and cannot be recovered from the archives. About those archives, I'm glad Sirbeartotickle's website is still visible as of today. Great memories and a gold mine of its time (while it might seem like 'little' today in our times of luxury and abundance). Another great mention goes to Aragorn's Feet Links, it was a great reference guide to me in the early 2000s.

 

[ChosenofMystra]

I'm an 80's kid...and like a lot of 80's kids with a tickling fetish, I think I can trace mine back to all those Saturday morning cartoons that featured someone getting tickle tortured. I remember back as early as five or six years old being REALLY interested in the tickling scenes....to the point I would pester my mom to record the shows for me on a blank VHS tape if I knew in advance the episode was going to be one featuring tickling.

As I grew older, I began indulging my tickling fantasies by writing stories of my own design. True that they were no prize winners and were nothing more than shameless masturbatory aids. But when you know of NO ONE else that has this "bizarre" fetish like yourself, you make do with what you have.

I first discovered the TMF around the time I was 20. I registered, made friends here and found plenty of others who are like myself.

Since then, I left the TMF for personal reasons for a very long time, but I find myself slowly coming back and embracing all my old friends and the community with the same gusto I had as a young 20 year old making his first post here 🙂

 

[ticklehound]

These are great stories everyone!

If & when I ever write about the story of my life, that first internet moment definitely MUST be included. I was about 15-16, right in the prime of puberty. I type in "tickling" in !Yahoo & my life changed! That sweat on my palms, that lump in my throat, the butterflies in my belly, the leaning tower of manhood making my pants uncomfortably tight!

Now, look at us now!

 

[VitaminJ]

It was the late 80s for me...didn't even consider such a thing would exist until one day when I got a copy of Leg Show magazine (as I did every month), hoping, usually in vain, for a tickling pictorial or even just a mention of tickling, that I saw an ad for tickling magazines. Couldn't get my check in the mail (when was the last time you sent a check in the mail) fast enough. I got Tickling magazine and also Ticklish magazine and the catalog that came with it which had videos (!) of girls tickling girls...bought my first one (referenced in a different thread) and lasted maybe a minute into it. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Later, I got on the Net, and between this site and Tickle Theater's archive, you could literally sit there for days watching clips.

 

[BrightEyes1082]

I was 13 and discovered the AOL tickling chatroom on my friend's computer. When
we finally got a computer, we didn't have AOL, my mom would only let me have
Juno with free dial-up. I figured out how to circumvent the ads and stay online, and
found alt.tk, and then other websites. To this day I am close friends with some of the
first people I started chatting with, back when I was a young teen (now I'm 30!). I've
met many of them in person and some of them are my very best friends. Amazing!

 

[chicago]

First got a computer in December 2001. I never had that "I'm the only one" feeling so when we got internet the same month, I thought "Let me find where the freaks like me hang out." Searched "tickling" on Yahoo. TMF was the 2nd search result. I lurked til April 2003. I had to download Netzero or Netscape which gave you 10 free hours of dial up a month because my mom had parental conrols on my AOL account. I would go through all 10 hours in like a day and a half. The rest is history.

 

[PhilipRJ_UK]

Some years ago, I discovered a neat little website called 'The Laugher', and not long after that, I found a rather good video website called 'The Last Laugh' and one of its preview clips called 'Eta'. I watched it, and I liked it.

My next step was discovering the TMF, which I did as a result of a Google search. I began to visit regularly before de-lurking last February.

😀

 

[TMJ Productions]

In 1998 got my first computer and did the search for "Tickle"
I like that others remember the old media, Ticklegal, Josies, awesome sites! Also TJ Productions and Tickle Alaska. I think it was Solefully yours and also TJ productions that had a tickle hotline. You could call and hear a message of the laugh of the day, audio of their tickle vids. My roommates would ask me who I knew in New Jersey, Hawaii, and Cali and why I called them every few days.