General

Hey! I realize I've been able to indulge quite a few fantasies and fetishes (burping in my face, having my stomach pinched, food, role-playing with voracious appetites, wearing clothes that are too small, stomach caresses) thanks to the internet, which allowed me to meet people who share these fantasies. I was wondering if, born a few decades earlier, I would have been able to indulge these same fantasies without the internet and sites like Grommr. Frankly, I consider myself lucky to have been born in our time, and I wonder how people in the past managed to meet others with the same fantasies, without the internet and these specialized dating sites.

Do you have any idea how they did it?

I’m only 22 so take what I’m saying with a pinch of salt but I have this feeling that like attracts like. It’s like gaydar in a sense but spread to everything. You can just tell, the attraction, that lure, its innate. One just knows who their kind is. I’m a very peculiar person in many ways and yet I have met people in real life with similar interests to me. It’s like it’s fate, you’re just drawn to each other. Also being in certain spaces like alternative clubs or in the music world, in the art world ect you’re a lot more likely to meet people who are generally open minded.

Yes, I understand exactly what you mean and write, because it's something I've also noticed in my life. It seems almost unreal, as if it couldn't be a coincidence that we meet people with so much similarity and affinity. And it's in circles that have absolutely nothing to do with our preferences. But finding people with the same fetishes as us is still more complicated than finding people with the same hobbies, passions, ideologies, etc., because of the taboo surrounding our fetishes, which we keep secret, I imagine.

It would have been a very dark time. In short, likely through sheer dumb luck and overcoming abject fear. But for the most part, I think that maybe they just didn't?

I don't know if I'm fully qualified to answer, since I was a kid during the rise of the World Wide Web, which is about the time when "the Internet" really reached mainstream status.

In the 80s and early 90s, Usenet groups existed that operated over the Internet. There also would have been BBSes (bulletin board systems) that relied entirely on dial-up.

However, there would have been a rather substantial technical learning curve, so the average person would not have used it. Keep in mind, this was also when the average household didn't even have a computer, and the cost to obtain one would have been substantial - it would have been a tough sell to a lot of people.

Usenet would have had worldwide reach, but the userbase would have been small in relative terms. However, I'm sure there would have been a lot of "adult oriented" groups on it.

Most BBSes were accessed via dial-up. A lot, perhaps most of them were just run by some local who left one of his computers running 24/7 and he signed up for multiple phone lines. The phone number to the BBS was likely posted on a physical, literal bulletin board at the local library, community center, or coffee shop. Because of long distance charges, the vast majority of BBSes would have consisted of local users, which meant people you might run into the grocery store or see in person.

This is perhaps too much background information, but it was probably not likely many such connections were formed.

But what about methods that didn't require fancy electronics?

Before there was Dimensions Magazine, there was apparently something called BUF magazine. It was largely pornographic, available only in adult boutique shops. I've never read it, but some of the covers suggested there were articles that might have covered certain relevant topics. There might have also been some other such magazines. But I think BUF ceased publication sometime in the early 90s?

I can't know for sure, but it's conceivable they could have run a dating service through the magazine, similar to the way newspapers in larger cities did. It would not have been cheap, and it would have been slow. You'd mail letters in, and the service would then forward it to the other person.

There's also the question of how many female readers they might have had; probably not many due to the nature of the material.

If you lived in a small town, this was likely your only option, short of incredible luck.

How about in person? Was that possible?

Maybe if you lived in a large city, went to just the right night club, and then got really, really lucky with meeting the right person?

The NAAFA was founded in '69, and would have had conventions. Perhaps it was occasionally possible for connections to form that way.

There are still occasionally "BBW bash" events but I have no information on how they would have been organized prior to the Web, or even how frequent they might have been.

But in short, I think it was maybe, more often than not, just through sheer dumb luck.

You might still think it's a big challenge now, and it is. It often feels like everyone is too far away, even in the largest cities. But it's a hell of a lot better now than it would have been back then.

It probably also helps a lot that people in general are much heavier now than they were in the 80s or before.

Wow, this is really very interesting and informative, I didn't even know all these things from that era.

Another thing from the BBS era is that email could go worldwide. A BBS with a Fidonet or UUCP feed would do. Also if you had the money for services like Compuserve...

Zines. In the early 90's people would put out little self published zines. A good number of them were about kinks and fetishes. That was how I figured out that i wasn't alone with having different sexul fantasies. There were others out there that had them too.
I met my first feedee through a indie paper. She had put an add in the "kink" section and i answered.
Anyway that's how got met others.

That’s cool. 😄

What is uucp or fidonet?

Sorry i'm not American.

Network protocols, basically. They weren't exclusive to America, either.