ASCII porn

ASCII porn, sometimes typographically euphemized as "ASCII pr0n",[1] is the depiction of pornographic images using the medium of ASCII art. ASCII porn was the world's first Internet pornography,[2] and was popular (among the then fewer computer users) before the invention of the World-Wide Web. ASCII porn was 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 sneakernet and on the early Internet using pre-WWW services such as email, telnet, and usenet.[3]

A contributing factor to the relative popularity of ASCII porn in its time was high compatibility: the standard ASCII character set could be displayed on most computer monitors, even on early desktops/terminals incapable of displaying digital images,[4] and could be printed on most printers.[5] Additionally, ASCII porn could be composed by hand using nothing more than a text editor, without the need for a model or camera. As computers developed, it became possible to transmit digital images on the World-Wide Web, and thus ASCII porn slipped into obscurity.

Artists in the late 1990s returned to the form, for instance in the work Deep ASCII, a rendering of the movie Deep Throat, created by Vuk Ćosić of the ASCII Art Ensemble.[1] Concrete poet Florian Cramer also produced ASCII work based on sexually explicit images.[6]