50 shades of grey terminology

[OnlyWantsOne]

In an email from the head teacher of school, discussing business terms about a project and he's used the terms 'hard limit' and 'soft limit' .... AIBU but all I can't think is that he has recently read 50 shades? Made me smirk. Or is it a term used normally and I'm being alert to it? because I've just read them

Not unreasonable, funny.

Just googled the term 'hard/soft limit' and all of the responses are BDSM related other than a few computer terms. Awk.

Hahahahaha - this is utterly hilarious. You learn something new every day.

Not necessarily 50 shades, the BDSM scene did exist before that book you know!

Have also googled (well, yahoo'd) - and the majority of responses are computer stuff - but with the occasional BDSM explanation provided. But maybe that's because I'm at work and safe search is on?

Don't you just love management speak?!

well ive re read some communication from him and i, now I feel less funny and more reeling.

It arrives in computing by 1982, at the absolute latest, probably a few years earlier.

www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/FFS.pdf

web.mit.edu/daveg/Info/Links/doc/unix.manual.sysmgr/04.quotas/quotas.PS

It arrives in audio and recording before then, but I can't quite find when: certainly it was in use by 1981:

www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-DB-Magazine/80s/DB-1981-04.pdf

I can't see any trace of it in the BDSM scene much before 2010, which is roughly around the time 50 shades was first appearing as Twilight slash fiction. So my guess is that it crossed from either music production or Unix internals into the BDSM scene, all three of which are over-represented in the Bay Area.

I can't see any trace of it in the BDSM scene much before 2010

Then I suggest politely that's because you are looking in the wrong places?

The terminology may have gone mainstream in 2010, but within BDSM circles limit terminology has definitely been in use since 70/80's and maybe earlier.

I don't have any older books, but hard/soft limits are mentioned in "Different Loving" published 1993, and "Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns" published 1995, for example, so way before 50 Shades.

I have no idea what everyone is talking about.

50 shades of grey - that's the choice of car colours these days.

From articles I've read on 50 shades, the author is pretty hazy on the concept of hard and soft limits. If I heard someone using that terminology at work I might give them a knowing smile.