I used to be a boy and in most ways pretty average. But no one ever mentioned auto-erotic hanging as a way to get a sexual thrill. And I never read about it, not a word.
So how did word spread?
They read Naked Lunch?
Reading mostly. Most of the skin mags delt with it at some time or another. Also a number of sex books have or did, plus regular books (such as police proceduals and novels) delt with the subject.
The very first time I or anyone I knew heard about it (I’m a girl, if that matters) was when a boy that had graduated the year earlier from our highschool died from it in his dorm room.
This was the mid 80s. We waited until college for more stuff then and kind of assumed he learned about it from someone there.
Um… mostly they didn’t. Mostly.
I heard about it when I was about 17 or 18. It was on the radio…I think in the 80s it was reported a lot. Seemed really racy to be on the radio back then.
I never have had nor do I have now a desire to try it.
Now I’m picturing the most horrific “birds and the bees talk from Dad” in the history of the human race.
I had a relatively sheltered childhood and adolescence, but even I heard rumors of various sexual practices that were supposed to be the ultimate thrill in one way or another. I hadn’t heard of auto-erotic hanging, but I heard of plenty of other strange practices.
When I was in grade school, somewhere between kindergarten and third grade, I remember the principal talking on the loudspeaker about the dangerous practice that some kids were engaging in of squeezing each other until one passed out. This was in GRADE SCHOOL, mind you.
The answer to this question is the same as the answer to all similar questions.
They talked about it. Just not to you. 
This.
I was a teenager in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We talked about it, even if most (all?) of us knew little or nothing about sex. However, I didn’t hear about auto-erotic hanging until much later. Mine must have been a sheltered life.
Believe it or not, I read about it in an insurance industry journal with regards to whether or not AEA counted as an accidental death for the ADD benefit.*
This was in the mid to late 1970s
*Accidental death no, accidental means maybe was the answer IIRC
The answer may be that to a large extent, it didn’t. It seems to have passed you by, as indeed it did me, until the death of Stephen Milligan, although by then I was in my 30s.
Aerosmith?
“Livin’, lovin’, gettin’ loose
Masturbatin’ with a noose
Now someone’s kickin’ out the chair”
When I was in elementary school (in the 80s), it was my impression that all Boy Scouts did was trade dirty magazines and start fires in ever-more-dangerous ways. I don’t know for certain that auto-erotic hangings came up around their white gas bonfires, but just about everything else apparently did.
Before the internet, some adults read about it in alternative publications. Isadora Alman wrote of it, as did Cecil Adams in 1988.
You see son, when a rock star and an aging groupie are bored with eachother very very much…
I have no citation for this, it’s just a story I’d heard, but …
In Victorian England, there were men’s clubs where a man could go, to experience this, and, watch as well. They had a guy on backup, ready with an axe, to cut the rope instantly if you got in trouble, a prostitute to “fluff” the practitioner, and presumably, since all I know about Victorian England, or the English at all for that matter, is British comedies on PBS, a group of men in top hats, tails, monocles, sipping port and going “Good show” “Oh yes, quite good.”
If that story I’d heard was true, then just like everyone else said, people were talking about it, for hundreds of years. Just not to you. Sorry, you may not have been freaky enough, or had freaky enough friends. Or maybe people thought you’d try it, and avoided telling you about it.
Now that I think about it, I may have read the story in the 1950’s book, Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask. If so, then that’s where people heard about it. IIRC, that source said that the sort of people who like erotic asphyxiation like to be without air at other times, say, swimming underwater for long distances, which I do like. That said, I’m not cutting off my air supply for a better orgasm, either with a true love, helpful friend, nor support team with axe – and certainly not alone. Mayb your friends cut you out of the info for that reason.
I heard about it in the mid-80s as a teen from my mom. I was in the garage building a model when she opened the door and said, “Do you know what scarfing is?” I said with all honesty, “What? You mean like wolfing down your food?” She just closed the door after giving me a look. Intrigued, I went inside where mom and sis were watching a talk show. The guest was the mother of a kid who accidently hung himself while tugging his own rope. After I learned the story, I told my mom that if she ever found me dead in a noose, naked, with my dick in my hand that IT WAS SUICIDE. She agreed with the sentiment.
I first heard about it in the mid-80’s, regarding the death of cartoonist Vaughn Bodé who seemingly died of AEA in '75.
Oddly enough, this was pretty much the opening scene in a move I watched yesterday: the 1972 film The Ruling Class begins with the 13th Earl donning a tutu and and cocked hat in order to indulge in a bit of self-abuse with a noose. (He kicks over the ladder and kills himself, opening the way for the 14th earl [Peter O’Toole], a schizophrenic who thinks he’s Jesus Christ, to take over the estate.)