Noder's note: This is the FAQ as grabbed from the groups.google.com archives except for the following modifications:

  • It has been HTML-formatted and lightly soft-linked.
  • In addition, both the "boring" Appendix and the list of links plus all references to them have been removed.

A FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) On The alt.sex.cthulhu USENET Newsgroup

revised 14/6/2001

What is this Group for?

The description of, and discussion about sex, love, and lust with beings of the Cthulhu Mythos, and other dimensional over-achievers. The Cthulhu Mythos was first described to the general human population of Earth by H.P. Lovecraft, though many others have contributed to the Mythos.

Sex with an elder being is unlikely to leave participant's sanity intact, and is carried out at considerable risk to life and limb, and limb, and limb, and limb, and limb, and limb, and .... You have been warned!

See HISTORY section below for further reasons.

Are You Serious?

What do you think?

How do You Pronounce Cthulhu?

  1. However he(?) wants you to.
  2. Don't pronounce it at all, it only attracts their attention, unless you want that attention...
  3. "...and heard the ominous syllables which can be rendered only as Cthulhu" - H.P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu.

Should I Practise Safe Sex with Extra-Dimensional Beings?

You should be so lucky as to last for the incubation period of any earthly disease if you have sex with Cthulhu!

Which Elder Being Makes the Best Sex Partner?

There are many opinions, but shoggoths come well recommended for sheer versatility. Thus:

  • Found posted by: Nyar@blibble.demon.co.uk, November 1994
  • Retyped in by: Kevin@fairbruk.demon.co.uk(so typos are all my fault)

10 Reasons why a shoggoth is the perfect lover

  1. It can form any pseudopod, and thus can form the perfect extrusion or cavity to suit your needs.
  2. It will sleep on the wet patch, or on the floor, or even in the garage.
  3. It can keep going as long as you want it to.
  4. Since it has a different biological basis, it cannot give you any form of STD, and thus barrier methods are not required. Please remember to wash your shoggoth in an antiseptic if sharing between partners.
  5. It cannot get you pregnant
  6. It can give you a back massage, answer the phone, open a beer, have sex with multiple people, change the CD _and_ take dictation all at the same time. (They also make good secretaries.) They do have a slight problem with Microsoft Word for Windows though, no-one is quite sure why.
  7. It can hold the door shut so no-one can burst in on you.
  8. It never suffers from impotence or headaches.
  9. It will respect you in the morning and will not leave you for someone else (unless they happen to know 'bind shoggoth' as well. At this point your shoggoth will get very confused, split into two shoggoths, and bits of both will keep commuting between the two masses. Great for parties.)
  10. It won't insist on you meeting it's parents. (If you do meet its parents, lose 1d6/0 SAN.)

Nyar - now all I have to do is learn to summon one...

Advanced readers might be able to find the post: "The Complete Guide to Shoggoth Sex" by kayven@aol.com for further enlightenment.

Does this Newsgroup have any Rules of Good Taste?

No.
Surprising as it may seem, with the title of alt.sex.cthulhu, many parents probably would not want their children to read some of the articles posted. Posters may warn of particularly gruesome or extreme articles, but there is no newsgroup convention demanding this. You read at your own peril. If eldritch pornography offends you, please flee to the peace and safety of a different newsgroup.

Are Adverts Welcome?

Adverts for products or services exclusively concerned with the subject of the newsgroup are welcome. This includes personnels from elder beings or willing sacrifices, adverts for sources of mythos smut and cthuloid sex lines and sex toys for shoggoths.

ALL OTHER ADVERTS, INCLUDING THOSE FOR OTHER SEX PRODUCTS AND SERVICES, ARE OFF-TOPIC AND NOT TO BE POSTED IN THIS NEWSGROUP.

Are there any Cthulhoid Sex Lines?

Any elder being worth the summoning can travel along phone wires, so the illusion of safety given by using the phone is false. Mobile phones are not a problem, direct manifestation through the ether is a common mode of transport. Thus the demand for cthuloid sex Lines is limited.

Are Off-Topic Postings Cancelled?

To reduce spam, this group requires that proper obeisance be made to the Old Ones. Thus alt.sex.cthulhu is now keyword retromoderated by the Great Cthulhubot (called by unbelievers the ascbot) and if this obeisance is not performed properly, the malformed posts will be fed to Shub-Internet!

Well, that's the theory. Alas, the ascbot seems to be lying dreaming, but with strange aeons even death may die, and it might be back.

A proper obeisance may be made in either or both of two forms:

  1. One of the following *Names* may be invoked in the body of the message: Azathoth, Byakhee, Cthulhu, Hastur, Lovecraft, Nightgaunt, Nyarlathotep, R'lyeh, Shoggoth, Shub-Niggurath, or Yog-Sothoth;
  2. the six character string " POD: " may be inserted in the Subject field of the post. The leading space is not necessary at the start of a subject line.

The latter is also recommended irrespective of keywords; see Finding the Needle in the Haystack.

During the transitional period, these keywords may also be effective in certain other headers. This behaviour of the Cthulhubot is not guaranteed, so don't depend on it.

Postings that do not make proper obeisance will be cancelled by the "ascbot", with the exception of properly formatted FAQs and administrative postings. Well, they might be, anyway.

These cancels follow the "<cancel.", "cyberspam!" "retromod!" "ascbot!", and "X-Canceled-By: " conventions. News administrators may block these cancel messages specifically by aliasing out "ascbot", or generally by aliasing out "retromod" or "cyberspam".

Reports of these cancels will be posted to alt.sex.cthulhu, alt.retromod, and news.lists.filters. They will also be e-mailed to each "From:" and "Reply-To: " header in the canceled posts.

Please direct private feedback about this policy to sexbot@cthulhu.org, and private feedback about the 'bot itself to ascbot@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us.

All hail, Dick Depew, beloved of Cthulhu, for his fine work in organising this.

The posters of off-topic postings are also assumed to be inviting mockery, abuse, e-mailed complaints, visits from irate elder beings, and anything else that appeals to the denizens of the newsgroup.

How about Spam Cancellation?

This newsgroup also welcomes the cancellation of messages meeting the generally accepted criteria of being SPAM, Excessive Multiple Postings, and so forth, so long as the proper cancellation procedures are followed. See news.admin.net-abuse.misc for details of these criteria and procedures.

Other than the ascbot and cancels based on the above USENET-wide criteria, further cancels are not welcome.

A Note on RetroModeration

Note that the ascbot form of retromoderation, even by a respected member of USENET, and even though it is keyword based, is still controversial.

There are people who object to this approach on principle, for understandable reasons. Retromoderation was agreed on without dissent amongst the active posters to the group at the time, and was actively discussed in the proper forums. Other mechanisms, such as a moderated group, were discussed, but were rejected for various reasons.

If the AscBot Exists, How Come there's Still so Much Spam?

There are at least three possible reasons:

  1. The ascbot is lying dreaming.
  2. Retromoderation sends cancels for already posted messages. Thus the cancel message may not arrive at your Internet Service Provider before you download the offending message.
  3. You may use a service provider that doesn't accept some, or perhaps any cancels. Some big providers take this attitude. AOL and AT&T* are known to be Elder Sign protected, and there are certainly others who do not accept the workings of the Cthulhubot.

Note: * based on W Allen Montgomery's mention in 'Hold onto the POD' thread

Some History

From: pali151@netcom.com (Vidushaka)

Hi, it's me again, the guy who newgrouped this newsgroup. I figured it's about time to reveal the hidden agenda of a.s.c., as the recent FAQ I saw posted kinda missed this point (Who? Me? Ed.).

Two things became very apparent to me awhile back:

First, that people who know what Cthulhu is are relatively intelligent. At least, intelligent enough to have actually read a few books!

Second, that USENET was getting eaten alive by 1-900-JACK-OFF phone numbers, and that system admins and the like weren't going to do a damned thing about it - after all, they make money by letting this activity go on, and why should they cut off their nose to spite their face?

So I newgrouped this not only to discuss the possibilities of screwing around with hideous, evil creatures from beyond space and time, but also to encourage back-spamming. That is, the 1-900 and similar articles are usually posted indiscriminately to all alt.sex.* hierarchy newsgroups; thus, they'd often land *here* as well. This, in turn, would encourage the people on this newsgroup to reply in a way that would make the original posts the subject of as much ridicule as possible. After all, anyone who's reading alt.sex.cthulhu has *got* to have something of a sense of humor! By making intelligent fun of the spamming 1-900 fools, it might, in turn, discourage people from using the phone services. A downturn in results from such spams would (theoretically) reduce their number.

Has it worked? Probably not in the way it was intended, and it probably never will. Still, it's a good way to pass a few idle minutes in constructive thought (if not constructive action).

In any case, I just thought that this point might be added to the existent FAQ (your obedient servant, Ed.), since it's a big part of the reason this newsgroup was created in the first place. This is NOT meant to discourage people from doing other things with it (such as the general posts, the stories, etc., that have appeared here); it's merely intended to encourage more people to ALSO use it to have a good laugh while the alt.* hierarchy descends into smarmy oblivion.

Thanks, and remember:
CTHULHU LOATHES YOU!

Are Pictures (GIFs, etc.) Welcome?

This is not a newsgroup in the alt.binaries hierarchy, and so, strictly, no. However, readers of the newsgroup are happy to see a small number of mythos-related pictures. An ideal is perhaps that no more than an average of 1 GIF per day should be posted, from any source. Furthermore, posting "Does any one wish to see GIFs of ..." messages before actually submitting the pictures is to be encouraged.

However, some Internet providers are strongly against such postings by their users. You may want to find an appropriate binaries group and post a pointer in this news group.

Are there any Archives?

From: Justin Martin Campbell
Newsgroups: alt.sex.cthulhu
Subject: POD: A.S.C Archive

The alt.sex.cthulhu archive is now up. You can check it out at http://www.cthulhu.org/smut/.

I've got a few more stories to add, but it has a number right now, as well as pictures, and articles. Enjoy, and if you've got anything to submit please send it to: stories@cthulhu.org. Thanks,

Justin Campbell

Finding the Needle in the Haystack

With the quantity of spam in the newsgroup it can be hard(!) to find on-topic posts. Some posters has taken to prefixing their subject lines with "POD:", from the Miskatonic U. slogan "Go, 'pods, go!". Given that this also is one of the proper obesiances to the Elder Ones the approach is doubly recommended. Furthermore, some readers of the newsgroup, your humble author included, killfile any message not so prefixed, unless it comes from particular sources.

What Related Newsgroups are there?

Not that they would admit it, but:

alt.horror.cthulhu
addresses the more literary aspects of the Cthulhu Mythos. Not a good place to send tales of wild eldritch sex, just reminders of where to find it. Also quite a bit on the Call of Cthulhu Role-playing game.
alt.horror.shub-internet
addresses those elder beings who dwell within the Internet. Be kind to this group, Shub-Internet has so long gorged here that on topic posts are very rare. If someone doesn't feed Shub-Internet soon she may break forth and roam wild and free - if you thought spam was bad, think rogue canceller on psychedelics. Various people are cross-posting all their alt.sex.cthulhu posts there for others who are having newsfeed problems, or are choking on the spam in a.s.c. No objections by Shub-Internet have yet been seen, but I'd keep looking.
alt.necronomicon
I've never looked, I don't know, shame on me.
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.anime (more populous)
alt.binaries.pictures.erotic.anime - erotic anime art, but some of the art is girls and monsters, so ...
These are the obvious places to post japanese-sourced pictures of Cthulhu porn, and then pointers in alt.sex.cthulhu.
alt.sex.hello-kitty
Hello Kitty, and perhaps more importantly Evil Goodbye Kitty, sometimes manifest in forms very reminiscent of our own eldritch fan-favourites. Sometimes they even stalk our own "happy" hunting grounds.
alt.coven.cthulhu
Not a clue what this is for, but it generally preserves an eerie silence. Oh, and H. West, uber-troll.