When did you first find out?

[PsychoKirby]

First of all, I apologize if there's a topic like this already (or if this is the wrong board. Please move it if it is). I did a search and didn't find anything, but I'm still kind of new. I also apologize if this question is too personal for some people, but you obviously don't have to answer if you don't want to. Anyways, when did you first realize you were an ASFRian?

I suppose it was a gradual process for me, but it all goes back to when I was a little kid. My mother would always take me to the mall when I went shopping with her, leaving me to look at the store's mannequins. I was an impressionable kid, and I was always fascinated by how something could look so human and still not be. I would later watch numerous movies and TV shows with robots. My previous mannequin fascination was compounded with the idea of a person creating an object with full intelligence of its own. (I'm still fascinated by this, even though I've since learned real artificial intelligence has a long way to go before it's like that.) As you can probably tell, I'm part of the "Built" camp.

I think what really did it for me, though, was the household I grew up in. My parents fought a lot, and my father was particularly abusive to the rest of the family. I was an impressionable child, and the fact that somebody could be so violent towards their spouse and children, the people they were supposed to love, imprinted a sense of misanthropy in me that has still never left. I also realized that if I were to ever end up in a relationship, I would probably end up like my father. (When I later learned that my grandfather abused my father, and that my great-grandfather in turn abused him, that didn't help matters.) I sort of just...swore off human attraction, and decided that robots were safer. That they're a cleaner, better breed than we are, as Susan Calvin (and my signature) says. I know that may sound kind of...weird, but I thought it warranted sharing.

Your story?

[Borias]

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[AK]

[POST REMOVED]

[petey]

Can't really say when I first realized it. But I can say it took me less than 2 days after my family got internet access for me to google "android transformation"

[RancidInsanity]

It probably started when I saw "Godzilla: Terror of MechaGodzilla" There was a female japanease cyborg which controlled MechaGodzilla from afar. In part of the movie she was dressed in a sparklely silver jump-suit. Only in one scene actually had her under the operating table with wires and welding tools out, working on her. It REALLY stuck with me. I was very young and impressionable then.

Then when I was a pre-teen I watched DragonBall Z, which introduced me to the idea of gynoids with the character, Android 18, a powerful blonde cyborgnetic woman.

I then had fantasies of controlling women, having them obey, "just like a robot I thought."

Then I saw Austin Powers, that influenced me too. So I finally typed in "fembot" on google and expected it.

[Outsider]

I grew up weak and sick. My parents and brothers were wonderfully kind, but my fellow-students and even some of my teachers would bully me. I was always the shortest girl in my class. I was always left out, except when I was picked on. My best friends have been loners. Some have been Aspies. I can understand Aspies; I can't understand most other people.

I had transformation fantasies from very early. I imagined sustaining human brains in robot bodies at eight or nine. I imagined other transformations at the same time, to cope with my birth defect and other health problems. In my adolescence, these grew more sexual. I had sexual fantasies involving cyborgs, involving submission, more rarely involving dominance, and even involving the transformation of my best friend into another girl. [I didn't tell her. She is transsexual and it weirded me out when she told me...] I was ashamed of my sexuality and my desires. I admitted I had an odd fascination with cybernetics and transhumanism. I concocted fantasy scenarios, mostly from science-fiction stories, where I would be reborn complete and healthy.

Someone sarcastically mentioned this site. I decided to look at it. I started reading the stories. I compared my desires with other people's desires. I actually felt like more of an outsider, even when starting my first stories. But anyway, I got treatment for my endocrine problems, and BAM my sex drive started working properly, and ... well, I'm more interested in where I'm transforming that what method I'm using ...

P.S. I suspect transformation interests will, on average, show earlier than built interests.

[Stephaniebot]

I had transformation fantasies from about the age of 6, a fact I entirely blame Star Trek and Dr Who for, in both cases the original ones, thats showing my age!
So seeing Cybermen, and Mudd doing his work and the like, and yes, you get the drift.
Though how much in all honesty I can blame them I really dont know? Its a bit like blaming Carry On Spying for my brainwashing fantasy lol!

I was bullied as a kid as well, so when I got into the concept of these controlled beings, no emotions, no pain, of course I was hooked.

And then of course in time along came the Radio Ga Ga video, and through it Metropolis. Well by then...and the desire to become a robot hasnt gone away more than 30 years later!

I cant deny the idea of a pretty, young, feminine fembot body doesnt have major attractions for me, even more so nowadays, but the desire was there when I was a small child, and back then my body wasnt my first priority. Being brainwashed and robotised was!

[KingJeremy]

P.S. I suspect transformation interests will, on average, show earlier than built interests.

You may well be right. I, however, enjoy built I suppose. I've probably told this one before but I remember being 4 and going to the mall with my babysitter and seeing a set of 3 women doing robotic mannequin modeling there. I don't know if it was sexual at 4 but I was certainly fascinated. I asked the babysitter if she could do what the ladies at the mall were doing when we got home (she did!).

As I've said in another thread recently, actual robots don't do anything for me so I think that probably goes hand in hand with why I don't find much appeal in transformation fantasies. I like the idea of a woman acting the part for some reason. I don't think it has anything to do with control, although I have tried for a long time to break down what it is about our fetish that appeals to me. Movement is probably the biggest turn on for me (pretty sure I'm in the minority there) and I'm sure that stems from that initial encounter as a youngster but I enjoy a good disassembly too, so who knows.

I do appreciate reading other people's stories about when they knew or what got them into our fetish, so thank you other folks for sharing.

[PsychoKirby]

It's interesting hearing everyone's stories. Thanks for sharing!

[Teknophile]

Looking back, I can trace my love of robots - including, eventually, my attraction to female robots - back to a very early age.

I was one of those kids who grew up during the first years of the Transformers franchise, and our next-door neighbors had a son with a huge collection of them. I would go over and hang out with him and his sister, and we would all try to turn these shiny metal-and-plastic vehicles into shiny metal-and-plastic people. From then on, robots have always fascinated me.

From there, I think my story follows the same general pattern as a lot of other people's. I'm naturally an introvert, and it's only been since starting college in another state (where nobody remembers my geeky teenage years) that I've managed to come out of my shell more, build confidence, etc. As a kid, I spent most of my free time watching cartoons, reading science fiction or playing with toys, as did most of my friends. One of my father's favorite authors was Isaac Asimov, so of course that just fed my love of robots.

Some specific influences I can recall included one incident at a shopping mall, where I encountered a group of mannequins on display, including two or three beautiful females and a male. Occasionally, they would even blink, and I remember wondering what they were thinking.

I also remember the episode of Batman: The Animated Series entitled Heart of Steel, featuring a very attractive, intelligent (and, alas, evil) female android named Miranda. I think she was the first fembot I recognized being attracted to.

Scary, huh?

The second robot girl I had a crush on would be the much less diabolical and much cuter Roll from the old Megaman cartoon. I specifically recall being impressed at the way she could produce a variety of tools from her left arm.

From there, my course was pretty much set, until, at twenty-four, I have an entire folder in My Pictures set aside for robot girls, cyborgs, gynoids, etc.

Hence my screen name: Teknophile.

[PsychoKirby]

One of my father's favorite authors was Isaac Asimov, so of course that just fed my love of robots.

Hey! It's good to see another fan of The Good Doctor here! (As my signature implies.)

Of course, robots led me to Asimov, not the other way around.

[jolshefsky]

[POST REMOVED]

[Deep Blue]

From the dramas on TV.

[Lithorien]

Fairly broken asperger's kid. I was one of the first people ever diagnosed with asperger's syndrome, actually - back when they didn't know what sort of treatments helped and what didn't. So I spent a lot of my childhood either being abused by my parents or poked and prodded at by psycologists. I ended up turning to computers to escape reality, and started learning to code. Eventually, that built up the idea of an artificial personality in a human body, which lead me to 'female robot' which lead me to 'fembot', and that opened up an entire new world for me. Beings that could be programmed to love me and accept me for how broken and strange and, well, wrong I am without complaint, annoyance, anger, sadness, or regret. That, and I wouldn't need to fake having a 'deep connection' with them - I could be honest and tell them exactly how I felt and not have to pretend that I am capable of having powerful emotional connections.

Strange path to get here, but there you go.

[droidlvr]

I appreciate your contribution to the thread Lithorien.

[PsychoKirby]

I'm sorry to hear about all that, lithorien. I hope things are better for you now.

[Windblade]

I love robots (especially Transformers) and hi-tech in general since my childhood.

When I was a kid, I liked robots because they are cool and powerful. In September 2005 I saw some screenshots and watched some videoclips from Transformers Beast Wars and Beast Machines, and I absolutely fell in love with female robots from these TV series. Then I rewatched Transformers G1 and became interested in more humanoid-looking robots - like Arcee, Elita-1, Chromia, etc. At first I was a bit ashamed of this because of...well...some misunderstandings between me and some Russian fans of TFs (yeah, I'm talking about sexism).

In September 2006 I saw one particular scene from Quake 4 - a scene where the protagonist is being transformed into a cyborg. Enemies in this game (and also in Quake 2 and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars) are called Stroggs, and this process is called "stroggification". This scene was very brutal and bloody, but I've became interested in the conception of cyborgization (and robotization). Then in April 2007 one of my friends wrote a fanfic for me - a fanfic about one of my original characters being stroggified. She (I mean, my friend, not my OC ) was a big fan of Stroggs (and also she had a transformation fetish, but I didn't know about this term back then ).

In the middle of May 2009 I was browsing Wikipedia, and I found an article about robot fetishism / ASFR. And suddenly everything clicked into place

P.S. Sorry, English is not my native language.

[BebesIsPerfect]

I think I was 8 or 9 when I discovered that you could take the covers out of CD cases without breaking anything. With this revolutionary discovery, I began to realize that CDs had liner notes, not that I had the patience to read CD liner notes or understand their significance. But in-between all the boring words were more pictures that came with these CDs than what was on the front and back. The one album that was pertinent to this topic was (of all albums) "Astro Lounge" by Smash Mouth. In the middle of the fold-out booklet was this gray-skinned waitress with orange hair, dark red lips, and a blue-sequin unitard. I interpreted this creature to be a retro-futuristic robot waitress. Judging from Steve Harwell's expression, she was supposed to be unbelievably attractive. I was inclined to agree, but I wasn't sure why. I just kept staring, fascinated at this (apparently) attractive robot woman.

Some months later, just out of the blue, I remembered the thought of a robot woman again. I don't remember any visual stimulation this time, it was just a thought. This time though, I explored it a little while it lingered. I remember imagining a tall, emotionless robot woman standing straight, holding me in her arms. She belonged to me. She belonged to me, belonged in my closet, and was programmed to take care of me. I just sat there, and kept thinking about this sexy, silver-skinned babe over and over. I remember loving the thought of be held by this robot, and loving this robot who was programmed to love me too. I loved the thought of resting my head on her shoulders or bosom, while she comforted and softly caressed me. Programmed to love and care for me. I was entranced by this, and I felt like I became programmed to love and care for her too. Together, we would be two robots, programmed to love each other, forever.

Then, I discovered real girls and having various schoolkid crushes, and then I remember seeing "My Life As A Teenage Robot" and having a crush on Jenny, and then life went on from there...