Which decade has had the best ASFR content?

[Spaz]

Just curious, in your opinion, which decade had the best ASFR content. I made the first poll option Pre 60s, since there wasn't as much before then.

[Aaack]

hi, what's ASFR? (excuse me for my ignorance)

[jolshefsky]

I think the 1990s really "dialed in" the robot content for me. Cyborg 2 was a favorite as the characters were human-like but they knew they were robots, they were made of metal, electronics, and soft plastic bodies, and there was damage and disassembly scenes. Nemesis was also of that decade with a similar impact.

Of course, fembots on the Bionic Woman, Westworld, Futureworld, and the various highlights from Star Trek gave great examples from prior decades as well.

For some reason there has been a push to make "bio robots". In the 2010s Westworld, they've gone with biological skin over computers which is just a recipe for gross infections IMHO—at least terminators were designed to just fool people, not for them to have safe sex with them. Also there's this laziness of writers to run to the "robots as slaves" narrative, and biological "robots" are the perfect vehicle for that because, well duh, a human grown not-from-humankind that is designed to serve is is exactly what people thought of slavery in the early 1800s. (Ranting here ... the reality, and more interesting angle, is that AI robots, like "descendents" of RealDoll's Harmony, will fool people into thinking they are real when they're just mimicking us accurately—how will that affect society?)

Of course, effects have gotten really good and Ex Machina is mostly quite gorgeous whereas the repair areas in Futureworld always seemed barely better than mannequin parts with wires sticking out.

[rickdrat]

I came into all this as a kid in the 70's. First impressions being the longest lasting and all that, it fairly well cemented in my psyche what I consider to be "canon". Looking back from today, much of it is dated and hokey, but that's my happy place.

[rickdrat]

hi, what's ASFR? (excuse me for my ignorance)

Ummmm,....check out the title in the masthead up above. It's an acronym from the group's Usenet beginnings.

[--NightBattery--]

A.S.F.R

Means alternate sexual fetish robots.

I always found fetish a funny word. But now I think it is a nice acronym even if others use it for monster girls, Hypno stuff and statues.

some don't even know the R stands for robot.

Also on my perspective, the best decade is always the current since all others are available for content scrutiny. - w -

[Aaack]

A.S.F.R

Means alternate sexual fetish robots.

Thank you very much!
I was so extremely confused by the whole thread, now everything's got sense.

[jolshefsky]

hi, what's ASFR? (excuse me for my ignorance)

Ummmm,....check out the title in the masthead up above. It's an acronym from the group's Usenet beginnings.

To give a little more history, before the Internet was dominated by websites, there was (still is, somewhat) a service called Usenet which served as a way to communicate with others around the world. It was kind of a hybrid of e-mail and web forums as we know things today in which you could search and download messages from others. It was set up in a hierarchy the reverse of domain names, so for instance there was "rec" for recreation and entertainment, then "rec.movies" for movies and "rec.music" for music, then perhaps "rec.music.dylan" for messages about Bob Dylan and his music, etc.

An un-moderated top-level was "alt" for kind of everything else including eternally-popular sex—"alt.sex". From there various fetishes, "alt.sex.fetish", and our little corner of the Internet, "alt.sex.fetish.robots". People could post stories or reports or even pictures in an encoded format. Of course in the early days one might have a 2400 baud modem which could download at 2.4 kilobits per second or, in modern parlance, about 0.000024 (Edit: was 0.00000024 by mistake) megabytes per second. As such, getting pictures was quite the nuisance!(

[--NightBattery--]

hi, what's ASFR? (excuse me for my ignorance)

Ummmm,....check out the title in the masthead up above. It's an acronym from the group's Usenet beginnings.

To give a little more history, before the Internet was dominated by websites, there was (still is, somewhat) a service called Usenet which served as a way to communicate with others around the world. It was kind of a hybrid of e-mail and web forums as we know things today in which you could search and download messages from others. It was set up in a hierarchy the reverse of domain names, so for instance there was "rec" for recreation and entertainment, then "rec.movies" for movies and "rec.music" for music, then perhaps "rec.music.dylan" for messages about Bob Dylan and his music, etc.

An un-moderated top-level was "alt" for kind of everything else including eternally-popular sex—"alt.sex". From there various fetishes, "alt.sex.fetish", and our little corner of the Internet, "alt.sex.fetish.robots". People could post stories or reports or even pictures in an encoded format. Of course in the early days one might have a 2400 baud modem which could download at 2.4 kilobits per second or, in modern parlance, about 0.00000024 megabytes per second. As such, getting pictures was quite the nuisance!

oh, would you mind share more information about it?

the wiki article describing the whole thing is pretty much a stub.
And since a.s.f.r is not the predominant robot term it used to be, a lot of information regarding those times are bound to be forgotten.

[Aaack]

To give a little more history

I almost missed usenet completely, to me access internet in '94 I had to pay 200 usd for two hours of connection... per month.
The ISP was IBM, and yeah, I used a US Robotics of 33600 bauds that I continued to use as an answering machine long after it stopped being used as modem proper heh.

Internet in that time was nothing more than a curiosity for me, also I almost didn't know any websites, instead I used something called Gopher (some sort of FTP on steroids) to explore around this new... internet. But for communications in general I used Fidonet that survived in my country a surprising long time overlapping some years with Internet (in fact you could send a message to a specific address that would be forwarded as email to internet, it was fun).

By the time I was aware of "newsgroups" the party was almost over so Usenet went over my head. By that moment I was taken by IRC and got completely hooked on that, pretty similar to the kiddies today with their nose glued to the cellphone.

To return on topic of the thread... to be perfectly honest I never had a fetish on robots! Quite the opposite I was scared deeply by fembots and the culprit? The Six Million Dollar Man (I think the bionic woman had some episodes of fembots too?). Thing is when they inevitably took off the mask and you could see the face with mechanisms, circuits and such ... man, that thing gave me literal nightmares! I was 7 or 8 at that time and for the longest time I dream about wondering on a semi flooded underground system of tunnels (orange walls, well lit) and floating on the water that covered the carpet of the floor there were fembots heads without the face mask.

It's silly but I had that nightmare several times for a period of a year or so. Eventually I got over it and it started to interest me at a scientific level sort of speaking, in the same way I'm interested in everything electro-mechanic.

Don't get me wrong though, I would gladly have a sex robot, but not because it's a robot, more because it can be whatever I fancy. If anything what I feel when a malfunction is concern and the urge to fix it. I started to see robots as beings with Isaac Asimov I think, with his robot series, so I'm attracted to them not sexually necessarily but more for what they could be. I think I fell in love with robots with D. B. Story's tales.

I think I won't vote in the poll, I don't want to introduce noise in it.

[Corey Fantoccini]

I came into all this as a kid in the 70's. First impressions being the longest lasting and all that, it fairly well cemented in my psyche what I consider to be "canon". Looking back from today, much of it is dated and hokey, but that's my happy place.

Fellow '70s kid here, and I definitely have to agree; most of the manifestations of the artificial woman that imprinted on me came out of this period - the Fembots from "BIONIC WOMAN," THE STEPFORD WIVES, TOURIST TRAP, and earliest of all, this Timex commercial:https://youtu.be/kVnrGBxfcJ8

But beyond that, just the way fashion was at the time kind of helped perpetuate it - the way women wore foundation, rouge, and eye shadow; the use of spandex, Qiana, other polyesters in clothing; pantyhose and impractical high heels, etc. Like, look at an ordinary Sears or JC Penney catalog, or layout in a women's magazine, or scenes in something like EYES OF LAURA MARS or THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT, and there's definitely a heightened theatricality, and thus a fakeness, to their appearance that indirectly feeds the fetish.

Frankly, I would love to see more of the great women who make videos for our niche go for this sort of retro look - use feathered wigs and jumpsuits and '70s set design. Like recently, the fine comedian Sara Benincasa posted this completely ordinary photo on Twitter of her being made up for a photoshoot, and the thread was full of people saying she looked like a deactivated fembot. Thankfully, she had a sense of humor about it:

https://twitter.com/SaraJBenincasa/stat ... 9945361408

[Kano]

Fellow '70s kid here, and I definitely have to agree; most of the manifestations of the artificial woman that imprinted on me came out of this period - the Fembots from "BIONIC WOMAN," THE STEPFORD WIVES

Corey Fantoccini- you just gave me an idea....