ASFR.net is a community for people interested in robots, androids, artificial people and the many ideas that have grown around them.
The name ASFR originally came from the Usenet newsgroup alt.sex.fetish.robots. Over the years, those four letters became a convenient name for a much wider community.
There isn’t really one single definition that covers everybody.
For some people, ASFR is about human-looking androids. For others it might be transformation, robotic behaviour, programming, malfunction, artificial intelligence, exposed electronics or the simple idea of a machine that looks and acts like a person.
Some people are interested in the fantasy side of it. Others enjoy the artwork, stories, films, television and science fiction surrounding artificial people. And with real-world robotics and AI developing so quickly, there is now also an increasing overlap with technology that once belonged entirely to fiction.
Built and Transformation
Two terms you will see quite often in the ASFR community are Built and Transformation.
Built generally means an android or robot that was artificial from the beginning. It may look completely human, obviously mechanical, or somewhere between the two.
Transformation, often shortened to TF, involves a person becoming artificial.
Those are useful labels, but they don’t divide the community neatly into two camps. Plenty of people enjoy both, and there are many interests that don’t fit perfectly into either category.
That’s one of the things about ASFR: everybody seems to have their own version of it.
More Than One Kind of Interest
ASFR can include a huge range of themes.
Someone may be interested in realistic humanoid androids, while somebody else prefers obviously mechanical robots.
One person might particularly enjoy activation and shutdown scenes. Another might like robotic speech, programming, repetitive behaviour, damaged machines, exposed circuitry or malfunction.
For some people the attraction is sexual. For others it may be mainly creative, aesthetic or connected to science fiction and technology.
There is no requirement to be interested in every part of ASFR, and there isn’t a “correct” version of it.
If robots and artificial people are what brought you here, you’re probably in the right place.
What ASFR.net Is For
ASFR.net exists to give the community another place to call home.
The site is being built around discussion, creativity, discovery and preservation.
That means giving people somewhere to talk about their interests, share artwork and stories, discuss robots in films and television, identify obscure media appearances and preserve pieces of ASFR history that might otherwise disappear.
The aim isn’t to replace the communities that are already out there.
ASFR has always been spread across different websites, forums, galleries and groups. ASFR.net is intended to become another part of that wider community.
Over time, we hope the site will include much more than a discussion forum, including a gallery, ASFR-related resources, media information and an archive of material connected with the community.
Keeping ASFR History Alive
ASFR has been an online community for more than thirty years.
A lot has happened during that time, from the original Usenet group and early personal websites through to forums, galleries, wikis and the communities that exist today.
Unfortunately, quite a lot has also disappeared.
Old websites close. Domains expire. Images vanish. Forum databases are lost. Material that once seemed permanently available can suddenly be gone.
One of the aims of ASFR.net is therefore to help record and preserve some of that history.
Rather than repeat it all here, we’ve created a separate History of ASFR page covering the development of the community and some of the sites and people that helped shape it.
A Community Site
Ultimately, ASFR.net should be shaped by the people using it.
If you’ve created artwork, written stories, discovered an obscure robot scene, remember an old ASFR website, or simply want somewhere to talk with people who share the interest, that’s what the site is here for.
New ideas for the site are welcome too.
ASFR has survived because people kept creating things, talking to each other and building new places whenever old ones disappeared.
Hopefully ASFR.net can become one of those places.
Whether you’ve been part of the community for years or have only just discovered what ASFR means:
Welcome to ASFR.net.