alt.sex.bondage was a Usenet newsgroup that was originally created as part of the alt.sex hierarchy, and rapidly became the centre of an online BDSM community. The group was created in 1989, after Paul Traina attempted to start a flamewar by crossposting provocative material to several newsgroups. The flamewar never materialized, but the sincere responses Paul received showed that there was a real need for the newsgroup. Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ... A newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users at different locations. ... The creation (c. ... A collar is a common symbol in BDSM. BDSM is any of a number of related patterns of human sexual behavior. ...

The emergence of sex-related spam on Usenet made the group progressively more unusable, and the community moved in 1997 to the soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm newsgroup. Newsgroup spam is a type of spamming where the targets are Usenet newsgroups. ... 1997 (MCMXCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The word "squick" is believed to have originated in alt.sex.bondage, and YKINOK also probably originated or was popularized there. YKINOK is an acronym for Your Kink Is Not OK (current on Usenet since at least 1993), and is generally used in the BDSM sub-culture to deprecate those who condemn any sexual preferences other than those actual practices (not mere fantasies) which violate the principles of Safe, Sane and...

See also

• alt.sex.wizards