Vintage bondage and vintage fetish. Sean Harper. Part II. Usenet groups

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In the 90’s the most interesting images could be found in NNTP (News or USENET) groups (alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.bondage, alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pantyhose, etc.) You did not need a web-server, just “uuencode” an image, split the result by 30KB, and post the pieces by mail with subjects like “bondage-life-latex-234.jpg [1/5]”, “bondage-life-latex-234.jpg [2/5]”, etc. I wrote a shell script to do that automatically.

To download an image you needed a news-reader (I used “tin” – ASCII mode only, no frills). You would download all the pieces (remember, there were no previews, so you had to rely on the descriptions, for example, “bound and gagged girl dresses in latex – Bondage Life magazine scan”). Then strip the headers and concatenate all parts together in the proper sequence, then “uudecode” to get the original binary file. Some files were corrupted, what meant lost time, lost hope and anticipation transformed into disappointment and frustration.


Later, some nice programs appeared (e.g. “aub”) that could download all news articles, and based on the subject (and the configuration file) restore binary sources.

The good thing about “aub” program (aub – Assemble Usenet Binaries, written in 1992 by Mark Stantz) is that it does not require any operator assistance. You just start it and go home. On the next day (remember, I had Internet access only on the office!) I had a couple of hundred new photos in secret directories on the company server ready to be looked at, sorted, printed out and taken home. I had a very good incentive to get up in the morning and rush to the office.

Oh, those good times of slow Internet and erotic dreams…

BTW, I still have aub-2.1.3 on my home server! It’s written in PERL and can be used on any operating system.

One thought on “Vintage bondage and vintage fetish. Sean Harper. Part II. Usenet groups”

  1. Ahh, fond memories and early adulthood fetish triggers!
    20 years ago = instant erection and need for ‘private time’ 🙂
    10 years ago = mild arousal
    5 years ago = seen it all before!
    Today = oh look, how quaint!

    How much my tastes and triggers have changed over time – I feel the need for a forum posting about my steady drift downwards (upwards?) into perversity 🙂

    MJ

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