ASCII porn

The term ASCII porn describes pornographic images consisting of ASCII art. ASCII porn was popular (among the then few computer users) before the invention of the World-Wide Web, and often found on BBSes and other text mode terminal-based systems that could be reached via direct modem dial-up. It was also exchanged via Fidonet and sneakernet and on the early Internet using pre-WWW services such as email, telnet, usenet and gopher.

Raison d'être

A contributing factor to the relative popularity of ASCII porn was the high compatibility of the ASCII art that ASCII porn consisted of: The standard ASCII character set could be displayed on most computer monitors, as opposed to image files that might have required specific graphics adapters and more expensive (color and/or graphics) monitors and image viewer programs for the user to look at them. ASCII art was also much more compatible with most printers of the day: Some printers, such as teletype or daisy wheel printers, could only print text characters, and before graphical user environments became ubiquituous and more feature-rich, common printer driver platforms were rare, so every program that wanted to support a printer's graphical printing mode had to explicitly support that manufacturer's line of printers (or even the specific printer type) with its own drivers. Printer makers often supplied drivers for commonly used programs, but this was hardly a comprehensive solution, and in the absence of bespoke drivers, users were often unable to print in any other mode except text mode, which was fairly standardised across the board. Thus, ASCII porn could often be more reliably printed out than pornographic image files. Also, ASCII porn could be composed by hand using nothing more than a text editor and a nerd with a vivid imagination, whereas the production of pornographic images required access to a pornographic model, a film camera (digital cameras were largely nonexistent), a place to get the pictures developed without excessive social stigma, a suitable scanner, or even more expensive Video Toaster equipment, and a computer capable of displaying graphics. With the advent of the World-Wide Web and more modern Internet pornography, ASCII porn has largely slipped into obscurity.

Cultural references

ASCII porn was referenced in the 26 August 2006 episode of User Friendly. [ [http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20060826 UserFriendly Strip Comments ] ]

ee also

* ASCII art

References

External links

* [http://asciipr0n.com/ asciipr0n.com] - a website featuring a large ASCII porn archive
* The textfiles.com [http://artscene.textfiles.com/asciiart/ ASCII art archive] also contains a significant amount of ASCII porn (including a mirror of asciipr0n.com).
* [http://www.asciiporn.us/ asciiporn.us] - a blog-style website dedicated to ASCII porn