Would you have become a DL if there were no internet?

[olympus]

I had interest in diapers as well. It manifested itself strongly as I went through my teen years. However the presence of the internet likely reinforced me being a diaper lover.

[ValentinesStuff]

Since I was wearing diapers, drinking from bottles, and doing other AB stuff well before the commercial internet was around or I had access then the answer is yes. All the internet did was let me communicate with the rest of you.

[Young1]

I think alot of people would say yes out personal curiosity as a kid for those who snuck diapers away from siblings, and obviously those with incontinence would continue to be in diapers. 

[oznl]

You may not have known you were a "DL" (and the term may not have existed) but as many have said, this was a thing long before the internet.

I can recall reading accounts of the Duke of Windsor liking to be dressed in nappies by his femme fatale Wallis Simpson in the 1930s.  I've seen a grainy "fetish photo" of a women in a cloth nappy that appears be from the 1920s and it's a fair assumption it was around before that, yea even unto the middle ages.

The internet allowed collectivisation, accessibility and thusly scale for a commercial market.

Oh hale to the internet but it didn't invent DLs.  It just enabled them.

[zzyzx]

20 hours ago, Dyson said:

I sometimes wonder whether I would have acted on my diaper desires if I had never been exposed to the internet. Yes, I have been interested in diapers since early childhood, and yes I did once or twice experiment with makeshift diapers while growing up. But it was only after I stumbled across a reference to diaper fetishes on the internet and realised that it is “a thing” that I decided to wear some real diapers. I think I needed the validation that I wasn’t the only person in the world who liked them before I could truly act on the interest. I also suspect I would have repressed any diaper thoughts had I not known there were others out there. And without the internet, I think the chances I would have ever discovered this are zero. Interested in other people’s perspectives. 

@Dyson I'll be contrary to most here.

I grew up before the internet.  My first computer account that included an e-mail address was at college and would have required you to have a network map of how the machines connected (via dial-up) and used bang paths to tell the computers how to route mail to my account on one of the machines in the comp sci department that was participating in the UUCP (unix to unix copy, over dial-up connection) based mail connections.  This was pre DNS, etc.

I have a few instances in my youth that overlap with DL tendencies, but I don't consider myself a DL until after, as an adult, I put myself back in diapers at night due to adult onset of secondary nocturnal enuresis....  I did find that putting myself back in diapers at night for need woke up the "little boy" in me, and I'd say the little boy was just waiting for me to do that....  I need the diapers (incontinence issues), but I can tell a piece of me likes them / is a DL....  And further experimentation since then adds to this conclusion.  Due to medical issues / how my body was built / genetics, I think I would have eventually found this out no matter what.  It was just a matter of time and not acted on till the medical need hit.

I know from what I did act on in my youth that I lacked the knowledge that someone growing up with the internet would have found via the internet.  As such, never "triggered" in my youth despite some instances that explicitly exposed me to the subject...  I think if I had the internet, I probably would have done a search that would have opened the door in my youth that didn't get opened with what I did have access to and exposed to.  (Apologies to one AB/DL that was hopeful when I stared at a picture he had on the outside of his dorm room door, wondering why he would put an image of himself at a younger age standing, in just a diaper and t-shirt on that door....  Obviously in hind site something was there, but didn't trigger then.  That's just one of a handful of items in my youth.)

So, yes, I believe there are folks out their that would have more likely triggered in their youth if the internet had been around in their youth.

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

19 hours ago, Dyson said:

That’s not what I was saying. I am sure there were DLs before the internet. Indeed my own interest in diapers predates the internet. But I doubt I personally would have *acted* on that interest had I not discovered, via the internet, that were others like me. I am just interested in hearing other people’s perspectives on this. People who want to make snarky comments could perhaps find another thread. 

I knew exactly what you were "saying" and its implications.  Lookingat your age, I could tell that you were"born in front of a screen with a mouse in your hand". So you really had no perspective on a world without the internet. and what you did know was told to you.. For me and some of the others, the use of the web was an upgrade. I climbed on board in '99, an unusual specimen of someone  of age 53 but I had been dealing with computers since '78 kirectly and was self-educated  in FORTRAN IV a decade earlier and wanted in on this "westward expansion". By the time you  were born, I had 3 websites to my name. For me, the web was a new playground. I was working on  what I called "web 2.0; interactivity, participation" and extrusion into the real world. using the host provided email to create a network for "members" of the site. Creating useable items. In my SF site, I took a soft calculator and added some joavascript apps I found to beef it up into a monster and did the same to create a "Math and Science Console" that expanded into a general purpose "Personal assistant" that you could use for other things as well. In my ABLG site I designed stationery and other things for interaction and things you could use. including an LG version of the calculator and linked to girls' games, you can fid some of these in the "Playroom" and "Goodies" section of my siggy

Here is a link to what it was like. You will  see that we actually had a thriving ABDL  subculture with quite a few entry points, all  kinds of goodies and all kinds of reading materials

Even people 45 have no odea since they reached  18 in 1996 or so. The real upsurge in ABDL was in the mid '80's when DPF reached full stride. showing that there could be a sizable market for such things gathered in one place. Many ABDL's created busiensses providing Li'l Wrangler was started by a highly regarded DPF member. Carolyn Dee branched out from a crossesdressing busienss and added AB company: Carolyn's Kids Comco, a company that was basically home care but whose rubber panties attrated many ABDL, jumped on the bandwagon. Jack Kowels created JK Perfedct Personal Products and we saw the terms "AB aware" and "ABDL friendly". Many such companies often used "Medical", either as apublic face or because they were medical supply companies and jumped in the ABDL market

[Spanky]

Yes. I started buying,  wearing and using Attends and Depends before there was an internet. I kinda thought that I was the only person who liked diapers. 

[oliver d]

DL long before the internet,just thought that I was the only one doing it.

[FretaBWet]

I was a DL by around 1958. I probably should have been kept in diapers but my mother wasn't having 2 of us in diapers at the same time. I clearly remember my mother catching me in my sister's room pulling on a pair of rubber pants (vinyl) and when asked why I told her I was teaching my sister how to get dressed. The internet most likely makes it easier to become a DL but not having it sure didn't prevent it for many of us.

Hugs,

Freta

[sleepy_baby]

I waented to wear diapers ever since i can remember.  Even before the internet 

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

11 hours ago, FretaBWet said:

I was a DL by around 1958. I probably should have been kept in diapers but my mother wasn't having 2 of us in diapers at the same time. I clearly remember my mother catching me in my sister's room pulling on a pair of rubber pants (vinyl) and when asked why I told her I was teaching my sister how to get dressed. The internet most likely makes it easier to become a DL but not having it sure didn't prevent it for many of us.

Hugs,

Freta

Hare you sure you are not a "ruber panty baby" since that was what you were putting on

Actually, before the mid'80's DL did not exist It was all put under AB since diapers and rubber panties were mostly associated with babies with a distant second being old people. Most "rubberists" of the International Rubberists Association stated that thier affinity for the material dated back to being about 3 to 5 years old, as is the case with many DL's and many DL's here have a single digit 'Play Age". "DL" and "ABDL"  either started with, or was popularized by DPF about 5 years before the internet became practical and a decade before it became a "thing". Most of the knowledge of ABDL came through underground and sex-related and out right porn printed material

[StrumaticMist]

On 1/31/2023 at 10:31 AM, Dyson said:

I sometimes wonder whether I would have acted on my diaper desires if I had never been exposed to the internet. Yes, I have been interested in diapers since early childhood, and yes I did once or twice experiment with makeshift diapers while growing up. But it was only after I stumbled across a reference to diaper fetishes on the internet and realised that it is “a thing” that I decided to wear some real diapers. I think I needed the validation that I wasn’t the only person in the world who liked them before I could truly act on the interest. I also suspect I would have repressed any diaper thoughts had I not known there were others out there. And without the internet, I think the chances I would have ever discovered this are zero. Interested in other people’s perspectives. 

!00% the same for me, I could have written the same post.  I have always felt like this, but assumed it was just me until I saw a joky reference to Wetset in a magazine in the late 90s.  I looked at their website and realised it wasn't just me.  Even though adult nappies exisitied pre-internet, I would never buy them in person, so again, I need the internet to facilitate my fetish.

 

[tommyneedsdiapers90]

I didn't discover ABDL/TBDL websites until i was 13ish. I started stealing my cousins diapers and pull ups around 6. So no. No internet needed to make me a big baby lol Certainly made me less lonely tho

[Little Cub Pants]

1 hour ago, tommyneedsdiapers90 said:

I didn't discover ABDL/TBDL websites until i was 13ish. I started stealing my cousins diapers and pull ups around 6. So no. No internet needed to make me a big baby lol Certainly made me less lonely tho

Yeah, same for me to Big Brother! But the day I became a big baby sure felt great!♥️??? Big hugs!?♥️

[LittleFenny]

To repeat what the others who grew up before public internet or even non public internet, I suspect there's a good chance you would have discovered much more than you think you would have.

As for my story, the first time I can remember trying to get back into diapers was in daycare/preschool. On Sundays the place was a church nursery and the area where they would keep the babies was used as a play area the rest of the week. One day I noticed a stack of diapers behind a cabinet door that had been left slightly open. A friend and I looked at the stack, each grabbed one, and headed for the nearby bathroom to put them on. I have no idea what might have happened if we had succeeded, but just as we reached the door one of the adults noticed two young boys heading for the bathroom without needing to be asked if they needed to go who asked what we were doing and spotted the diapers we were trying to hide. We didn't get in trouble, just had them taken away and were told to go back and play with the others. I have no idea of anything was said but I don't recall my parents ever bringing it up. Diaper ads would always catch my attention and I would at times go through the ads in the newspaper. In late elementary school a friend who lived nearby had a young cousin his parents would often watch and they kept one of those giant cardboard 1980s cases of pampers in his closet for when his cousin was over. During a game of Truth or Dare I dared him to try one of them on, so he took one into the bathroom then came back and said it was too small to get the tapes all the way around to meet the front. I was a little bigger than him so I never tried to get one of those. I do wonder occasionally whether he also had an interest both because he didn't try to get out of the dare and about a year later (and shortly before his family moved) during an ad break while watching cartoons a diaper ad came on and he asked, "If you still wore diapers which ones would you want?" Which ended up with a brief discussion of whether Huggies, Luvs, or Pampers was best up until the combination of his older brother saying we were weird and GI Joe coming back on the TV.

Then, I actually got my hands on some diapers before I was on the internet. In high school I took my bike there and back instead of the bus like I had for junior high. One day while riding home I noticed a white rectangle beside the sidewalk and discovered someone lost a diaper out of either their diaper bag or stroller. A few more minutes and the sprinklers for the section of golf course near the sidewalk would have turned on and soaked it. Instead I looked around and seeing no one nearby I slipped it into the book bag and it became the first one in my first collection. I soon realized I could swing by a pharmacy on my way and tried first buying the largest of the early Huggies Pull-Ups, as Goodnites wouldn't come out for a few more years, but even my skinny legs were too big to get them all the way up without splitting the sides. After that I eventually worked up the courage to get a package of Depends and sneak it inside and into hiding under my bed. (As an aside, it's a sad statement on quality that the current Walgreens store brand "Brief with tabs" fits and feels worse than a late 80s Depend.) When a neighbor family moved I first learned about the brands that weren't in the local pharmacies because they'd left behind a few boxes that they hadn't ended up using to pack things, one of which was the cardboard case for either some Abena or Molicare adult diapers. I don't remember the brand for sure, just that later with the internet I discovered they were one of the better medical diapers that you'd need to either go to a medical supply store or order from a catalog at that time. Not long after that I discovered a book on incontinence at the local library that discussed a large variety of products, some of which I'd never heard of before (Apparently pads held in place by mesh pants are far more popular in Europe than over here in the US? I'd never heard of such a thing before this book.) and which included a short section in the back roughly to the effect of, "some people with incontinence don't merely handle it but find ways to try and gain some enjoyment from what they need to do to handle the issues and as unbelievable as it may seem there are some people who wear diapers and plastic pants not because they need to but because they want to," which included a mention of the DPF. This is the time period when I also first heard of specialty delivery services, running across an ad for HDIS in a magazine (I recall it had a photo of a scene in which you have a teenager in a wheelchair, their mother, and a pharmacy employee who is looking at them and laughing. The text of the ad saying that HDIS would provide better selection than your corner pharmacy and had staff that would never mock you or a family member's needs) and not long after that spotted an HDIS product listing at a relative's place. Beyond the brief and careful mention of DPF in that library book I first ran across diaper fetish photos on a local computer Bulletin Board. Many of you are likely too young to have used them but, (let me pause to put on my long white beard and grab a cane) back in the day we didn't have smartphones and high speed always on internet. If you wanted your computer to communicate with other computers you plugged in a device called a modem which connected to your actual copper phone line. Some were boxes not too unlike a modern cable or DSL modem, and some of the oldest didn't plug directly into your phone line but had two padded cups that you would nestle your old telephone headset into. Then the modem would scream white noise over the phone to another computer to transmit text and sometimes files back and forth. If you think your current internet service is slow, just this single page would probably have taken over a half hour to load on a late 80s-early 90s computer. The last generation of phone line modems were 56k, which is essentially 56 kilobits per second of transfer. Not gigabytes or megabytes or even bytes, kilobits per second. But I'm pretty sure back in the BBS days I found some artwork of anime and cartoon characters in diapers (and not Tom's baby nephew from Tom and Jerry, but characters that weren't normally in diapers) and a bare handful of photos on a few local bulletin board systems that had file sections that were, "Over 18 only, talk to the sysop to get access."

tl;dr: I didn't need the internet to find out that there were others who had similar desires, it merely made it far easier to discover others who had similar desires and I first bought and wore diapers years before I had internet. And now I'm feeling old. Who's letting you babies who were born after I graduated onto the internet unsupervised? I refuse to believe it's actually been that many years.

Sorry for the wall o'text.

[rusty pins]

The internet has little to do with it.  It's a fetish, lifestyle or whatever you want to call it that makes us want to wear diapers, live an AB lifestyle or whatever.  Think!  The only reason most people would see AB/DL on the internet is because they specifically go searching for it, and that means they already have an interest in diapers!

[Diapered Dave]

I've been interested in wearing diapers and plastic panties since I was a kid, in the 1960's.... Long before Al Gore invented the internet.  ???

[steviet]

It was 1954.  I didn't know what an AB was or a DL was or what a fetish was...I just knew that i liked diapers and rubber pants.  I was 5 year old.

[drynot]

Yep.  I had these desires well before the internet was around.  Once I got online and found the abdl community it was life changing.  It was tough going through life thinking you're the only one out there into diapers.

[2sail2]

On 2/2/2023 at 3:18 PM, LittleFenny said:

As for my story, the first time I can remember trying to get back into diapers was in daycare/preschool. On Sundays the place was a church nursery and the area where they would keep the babies was used as a play area the rest of the week.

The mention of church triggered a memory.  The infant room (did they call it that?) often had some white diaper (Pampers?).   That also triggered and added to (urges)  it (DL) for me.  I don't remember the smell, but I think it was there once in a great while when baby was there.

[feralfreak]

1 hour ago, 2sail2 said:

The mention of church triggered a memory.  The infant room (did they call it that?) often had some white diaper (Pampers?).   That also triggered and added to (urges)  it (DL) for me.  I don't remember the smell, but I think it was there once in a great while when baby was there.

probably called it the nursery, a number churches i went to did

[wetbedmo]

I already was a dl before the internet, I wanted back in cloth diapers and plastic pants since I was 5.

[vvp39]

I was already a plastic lover, had been for years, but it really took off when I first got online and found out how easy it was to order stuff online, and found websites like dd...so of course the internet has changed my life...I spend a lot of time online.

[Three Rivers]

Yes, well before the internet days and DPF. I have always had a desire for diapers.

[Pampertimmy]

I have been a little baby for as long as I remember. I was taking my cousin’s diapers and making make shift diapers in the 70s. When I was first able to buy my own diapers was in the 80s. There was no internet back then. This makes me feel old! Good thing I have lots of diapers and baby things to keep me feeling young.