I'm sure that you will get lots of varied responses to your post, but here's my two bad pennies worth:

There's something in social science called the observer effect, and I heard about it being applied to D&S and electronic communications. The way I heard it described was that sometimes people who have been straight all their lives will happen across an electronic conversation pit like asb, and they'll look around and read some messages out of curiousity, like some of the things being said, like some of the people saying them, and so they come back the next day and read some more. Pretty soon they find themselves getting really really interested in this B&D stuff, stuff that they would never have considered before, had they not bumped into this big conversation on the topic where all these people were discussing it.

I personally think that the observer effect only occurs in people who are already predisposed to D&S, but who have simply never had an opportunity in regular life to discover their interests before now. People who have no predisposition toward D&S sexuality bump into places like asb, read a few messages, and then get disgusted or bored: it just isn't their thing. Only once have I met a non-S&M person who hung out in an electronic meeting place for perverts because he liked the witty and intelligent company, not because he enjoyed the subject matter. And even he, eventually, got interested in trying out some things himself.

And yeah, it's normal to be scared of new desires, especially new sub desires. When I first became fully conscious of my interests I was certain that the first dom I came across was going to be PSYCHO DOM and that I would end up chopped to bits and hanging from various trees. At the very least, I expected to be hurt too bad to be able to limp home or kept prisoner or some such thing. Is this the kind of fear that you have, or are you saying you are more frightened for your sanity?