ASCII porn predates the Internet but it's still everywhere (2019)

I actuallly prefer this over the stuff they have now. It’s part art, part sleaze

Then you would have loved the HyperCard Smut Stack, the first commercial HyperCard stack ever released!

I've begged Chuck to dig around to see if he has an old copy of the floppy lying around and upload it, but so far I don't know of a copy online you can run. Its bold pioneering balance of art and slease deserves preservation, and the story behind it is hilarious.

Edit: OMG I've just found the Geraldo episode with Chuck online, auspiciously titled "Geraldo: Sex in the 90's. From Computer Porn to Fax Foxes", which shows an example of Smut Stack:

https://visual-icon.com/lionsgate/detail/?id=67563&t=ts

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22285675

DonHopkins on Feb 10, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: HyperCard: What Could Have Been (2002)

Do you have the first commercial HyperCard stack ever released: the HyperCard SmutStack? Or SmutStack II, the Carnal Knowledge Navigator, both by Chuck Farnham? SmutStack was the first commercial HyperCard product available at rollout, released two weeks before HyperCard went public at a MacWorld Expo, cost $15, and made a lot of money (according to Chuck). SmutStack 2, the Carnal Knowledge Navigator, had every type of sexual adventure you could imagine in it, including information about gays, lesbians, transgendered, HIV, safer sex, etc. Chuck was also the marketing guy for Mac Playmate, which got him on Geraldo, and sued by Playboy.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/could-the-ios-app-be-the-21st-...

>Smut Stack. One of the first commercial stacks available at the launch of HyperCard was Smut Stack, a hilarious collection (if you were in sixth grade) of somewhat naughty images that would make joke, present a popup image, or a fart sound when the viewer clicked on them. The author was Chuck Farnham of Chuck's Weird World fame.

>How did he do it? After all, HyperCard was a major secret down at Cupertino, even at that time before the wall of silence went up around Apple.

>It seems that Farnham was walking around the San Jose flea market in the spring of 1987 and spotted a couple of used Macs for sale. He was told that they were broken. Carting them home, he got them running and discovered several early builds of HyperCard as well as its programming environment. Fooling around with the program, he was able to build the Smut Stack, which sold out at the Boston Macworld Expo, being one of the only commercial stacks available at the show.

https://archive.org/stream/MacWorld_9008_August_1990/MacWorl...

Page 69 of https://archive.org/stream/MacWorld_9008_August_1990

>Famham's Choice

>This staunch defender was none other than Chuck Farnham, whom readers of this column will remember as the self-appointed gadfly known for rooting around in Apple’s trash cans. One of Farnham ’s myriad enterprises is Digital Deviations, whose products include the infamous SmutStack, the Carnal Knowledge Navigator, and the multiple-disk set Sounds of Susan. The last comes in two versions: a $15 disk of generic sex noises and, for $10 more, a personalized version in which the talented Susan moans and groans using your name. I am not making this up.

>Farnham is frank about his participation in the Macintosh smut trade. “The problem with porno is generic,” he says, sounding for the briefest moment like Oliver Wendell Holmes. “When you do it, you have to make a commitment ... say you did it and say it’s yours. Most people would not stand up in front of God and country and say, ‘It’s mine.’ I don’t mind being called Mr. Scum Bag.”

>On the other hand, he admits cheerily, “There’s a huge market for sex stuff.” This despite the lack of true eroticism. “It’s a novelty,” says Farnham. Sort of the software equivalent of those ballpoint pens with the picture of a woman with a disappearing bikini.

https://archive.org/stream/NewComputerExpress110/NewComputer...

Page 18 of https://archive.org/stream/NewComputerExpress110

>“Chuck developed the first commercial stack, the Smutstack, which was released two weeks before HyperCard went public at a MacWorld Expo. He’s embarrassed how much money a silly collection of sounds, cartoons, and scans of naked women brought in. His later version, the Carnal Knowledge Navigator, was also a hit.

Predates the internet, just like me. My mom was a high school math teacher, and was taking a COBOL class for her Masters at Hofstra University in 1977. I’m certain it was ‘77 because the Commodore PET had just released and she had one on home-loan that summer. One of my earliest memories is visiting the mainframe room, probably age 6-7, where the bearded sysadmin used a teletypewriter to print me a giant ascii art picture of Snoopy, standing in profile, on a green and white striped, tractor-fed paper. I’m sure the sysadmin had other interesting ascii art that was not appropriate to share with 7 year old.

Old man story over, but holy F, Hofstra is still teaching COBOL, wow?

https://www.hofstra.edu/academics/ce/professionaldevelopment...

found new banners for my servers

> "People seem to assume any ASCII art is up for grabs, for free. But it is art, like any other image photographed, painted, etc."

...and my personal take is the opposite - it's the other types of art that should be as distributable as ASCII

artists should be payed for creation, not for access to the works - that's how commissions work, and that's why AI pictures prospered

and problem of "reselling of someone else's art" isn't in "re", but in "selling" as a whole