Before the Digital Age
I want to start by saying I am not that old. However, I do remember a time of jerking off before the internet. It wasn’t a long time, but it is long enough ago to make me not young either. However, I noticed that many of our readers are younger than the internet. And I am sure they can’t even fathom what it was like to jerk off before Naughty America, Reality Kings, or any of the free sex tubes. Some of you must picture those times in a caveman key.
Well, let me tell you it was not that bad. Surely, we didn’t have 4K sex videos. And there was no way in which you could interact with your favorite pornstars as you can now through platforms like OnlyFans. But jerking off before the internet had its charm. In the following paragraphs, I want to talk more about the ways through which we would satisfy our naughty needs before online video streaming. Some of you will reminiscence to those times, and others will find answers to your curiosities.
Porn Pic Magazines
One thing everyone had were pornpics magazines. And I’m telling you, there was at least one magazine in every single home where a man lived. You could find them at any corner shop. I still remember when I was young, on a trip in Europe, and I used to see boobs and pussies on the cover of magazines that were on display at every corner store. Back in the USA, the naughty magazines were in the back room of the stores.
But you could still find them everywhere. Some were softcore, but you could find lots of hardcore ones, including BDSM-themed. We even used to exchange pornpic magazines with our friends. It was crazy.
VHS Tapes
What young men don’t know is that before Netflix, there was Blockbuster, a physical shop where you’d go to rent out physical VHS tapes (and DVDs later). But Blockbuster wasn’t the only movie rental place. There were lots of non-chain independent stores. And that’s where you’d find a lot of porn. I remember that the most wanted tapes were those coming from Germany. They were putting out a lot of extra hardcore content with sex parties, gangbangs, bukkake, and BDSM. But some men preferred the Italian porn movies, as they came with both interesting plotlines (with good acting) and hardcore sex too (including anal, cum swallowing, and cum swapping FFM threesomes).
Night Time Adult Entertainment On TV
There was porn on TV back then. In the USA, you needed to unlock the channels with porn movies. And most of the content was softcore. But in Europe, there were both porn channels that you could unlock, and adult movies after midnight on mainstream channels. The difference was that the movies on the mainstream channels were softcore, while the unlockable channels had some hardcore content.
Erotica Literature
While there were no pornographic magazines for women, the ladies had some content that they could enjoy too. Most of the erotica literature was targeted at women. And if you think that 50 Shades of Grey was successful, you should have seen the amount of smut ladies were reading back then. I tried reading some of their erotica novels. Although they were a bit softcore, there were some that featured extra wild sex scenes. I can't tell you about those extra dirty books, because Google would penalize this article. However, let's say it was in the CNC zone, but more hardcore.
The Imagination
Believe it or not, even though we had some options for content, about half of the time when we were jerking off in the 90s was with the help of our imagination. I don't think 1% of the jerkoff sessions of today are imagination-based. But it's true that we were hornier back then, and we didn't jerk off that often. So, it was easier to beat it to our dreams.
The Bottom Line
Jerking off before the internet was a completely different experience. It required effort, patience, and often a bit of creativity. From trading magazines with friends to taping late-night TV, men found ways to satisfy their urges with whatever tools were available. Looking back, it was actually a more intimate relationship with porn — each piece of content felt special because it was hard to come by. Today, with unlimited free content at your fingertips, that feeling is long gone. But there is something to be said for the simplicity and imagination of the pre-internet era.