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Peter Masters |
Peter Masters |
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BDSM online communities
BDSM has been "online" since before the advent of what we know as the modern Internet (i.e., early 90s). Even before the high-speed connections to which we are now accustomed, email and user-created discussion articles on BDSM rippled around the world from computer to computer sometimes taking days to reach the farthest systems. In those days much intercontinental traffic (and even local traffic) traveled from machine to machine via dial-up telephone connections using modems which converted the computer signals into tones and back again.
Early uses of this network included email, which was simply user-to-user, and the above-mentioned user-generated discussion articles which spread to servers all over the world where they were stored for local users to log in and read. This network of servers was Usenet, a world-wide discussions system consisting of newsgroups to which you could subscribe to read and post. Of particular interest to us here is the newsgroup SSBB, also known as soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm. It was one of the first widespread forums for public discussions about BDSM. SSBB still exists and is still used, though other more interactive and immediate social networking tools are now far more popular.
Some ISPs run servers which spool and disseminate many of the newsgroups. The network protocol to read and post to these newsgroups is called NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) and is supported by programs like Lotus Notes and Thunderbird. Google now conveniently makes SSBB available through Google Groups and you can find it at:
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm/
While the "broadcast" nature of Usenet was an important means for users around the world to develop a sense of community, many BBS (Bulletin Board System) operators, who ran their non-Internet dial-up computer systems for geographically-local users, also provided avenues for the kinky to exchange messages.
At the time some commercial entities such as CompuServe provided non-Internet dial-up message-posting systems with an international reach.
The arrival of web browsing around 1993 and cheap Internet access meant that anyone and their dog could set up web-based and email-based discussion boards. CompuServe itself moved to provide its groups both via dial-up connections and through the Internet.
More recent businesses to address the group market include Yahoo!, Google, FetLife, and a constantly changing cast of others.
Many online discussion systems these days provide the opportunity to post to groups either via email or via a web interface. Similarly, users can receive posts by going online and viewing them via a web interface, or can receive them via email or in email "digests" (daily summaries).
Many users and participants in these groups benefit from the anonymous nature of the Internet, being able to present themselves and their BDSM interests openly without fear of being recognised by friends, family and co-workers.
Less common, but still a part of online BDSM, are online real-time "chats", where two or more people can converse with each other directly either via a text interface, or via video/audio (such as Skype). Text chatting was usually done via the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) system which allowed real-time groups of people all over the world to converse via typed text messages.
