Just how rare are we? Maybe less than I thought.

Status
Not open for further replies.

RMS401

Est. Contributor
Messages
596
Role
  1. Diaper Lover
We've all wondered. Are people like us one in a thousand? One in a million? 10 million? We'll never know for sure. But every once in a while, we get a clue.

Imgur is one of my favorite sites, and I spend far too much time on it. One recent post is the Confession Bear meme that hints at an "odd and, to some people, gross" kink. The thing that really interested me was how many people jumped right to diapers. At least at the time I saw the comments, diapers were the prevailing guess.

So, with no real information, if that many people jumped right to diapers, I'd say maybe we're not as rare as we thought. At the very least, I'd say we're less in the shadows than I thought.

-RMS
 
I have always wondered how many of us there are. It often seems like there are a lot more than I think as there are so many AB/DL companies and websites. There are also so many different AB/DL communities with tons of active members. I also imagine like many of us that there are a lot of AB/DL's that don't realize there are others out there. I can remember for years I thought I was alone in the AB/DL world until I discovered there are thousands of active AB/DL's all over the world.
 
In the comments, the OP says yes it is diapers/ABDL


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I wonder how many men are both bowel and bladder incont. but self manage like i do.
 
I have no idea.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I'm going to guess 1 in a thousand either are AB, DL, both or have the desires but are trying not to give in to it. I had at least two friends that I knew were into it when I was a teenager. Of course, the internet and several reality TV shows have spotlighted us, so many more people are aware of us than they would have been years ago.
 
I think it's rare-ish but not THAT rare. What really (re)ignited my interest in abdl was just happening across people talking about it while googling for something completely different. I had DL tendencies as a teenager - I used to swipe nappies off my nephew and young cousins and was fixated on maxi pads but I was taught that it was taboo and a weird (or worse a creepy) thing so my DL side went into remission for most of my 20's. Then the internet happened to reignite that interest in my late 20's/30's. If it were a super rare fetish, I think I'd have had to have intentionally seeked it out to find it.
 
I'll go with dogboy's one-in-a-thousand. It seems neither way too high nor way too low, anyway. :)

Beyond this, I've wondered about the incidence of ABDL in specific populations. Some have proposed a correlation with LGBT. Fully half of the ABDLs I've met in person have been other engineers, or people I would otherwise call "nerds". A couple of those have proposed correlations with nerddom. I tend to look at these correlations a bit differently. For example: People who are ABDL might be, as a result, disposed to a more secretive or secluded existence because of their, e.g., diaper habits, and so might also be disposed to hobbies and career paths that cater more to the isolationist types (at least historically).

And on the LGBT thing: It's pretty obvious that there are a lot of LGBT people on ADISC, at least among the active membership. I've always found that really interesting. I don't know if I believe there's a strong correlation between LGBT and ABDL, but it's easy to wonder whether those who've confronted (and perhaps overcome) the more well-known differences of sexuality might be less averse to coming out about other differences, whereas those who are "only" ABDL might be more apt to toil in secrecy forever. Hard to say, but it's a fascinating thing.

And then there's the seeming enormous disparity between the numbers of male and female ABDLs. I think we can confidently declare at this point that ABDL is predominantly male, perhaps by as much as a 9:1 ratio. But why?

Sorry. Drifting off topic...
 
Hard to say. It seems rare enough to be isolating, but not so rare that nobody has any idea that ABDLs exist. ABDL does tend to be brought up when the topic of weird and crazy fetishes comes up. Not to mention, ABDL definitely seems more well known now than it was 10 years ago. I'm not sure exactly what the stats would be. 1 in 1000 seems a little high, but not inconceivable.
 
I also think it's pretty rare, but I also don't think it's as rare as we may think it is. The reason I suggest this is simply because how well the diaper business has been doing and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If I remember correctly there was some math done on this quite a bit ago, sadly I don't remember where I read about it. But they calculated that they are selling far more than the amount they would expect simply from the incontinence community. So exactly where are all these other sales from? Well, obviously we would have to factor in AB/DL, pranksters or experimenters, or even those who just happen to have gotten sick or have some other issue that causes them to need to wear protection.

Then you have to consider how in the past few years AB/DL diaper businesses are booming. If I remember correctly, Rearz did not start off as a company making products for AB/DL, but when they did get into it, their sales where far greater than they ever had been. Then you also have to consider how some people find diapers in thrift stores. Not just plain store bought diapers, but ABU diapers sometimes too.

I have a feeling there is a lot more of us than meets the eye, they just are not involved with the community socially.

How much? Well, I think dogboys number seems reasonable ... but I don't know if we will ever have an actual accurate number on this. If we look at that one map with locations maybe we can calculate an estimate based on population. Essentially you first calculate how many people actually marked down their location and I assume there has to be a percentage of some kind with how likely people share this information. According to a study 71% of teens in 2012 share their location. I am going to assume adults percentage wouldn't be too signifcantly lower, so maybe a good percentage would be around the 60% mark. So if an area has 100 locations listed, we maybe able to add 40% to that to offset those who do not share their location. So 140. Then 13 percent of americans do not use the internet. So adding that in we are now up to about 149.

Well .. I mean basically you get the idea. If you can use other already verified numbers on population factor in as much as you can, you might be able to come to a at least somewhat ballpark number.

Edit: Could even use the diaper stats from comapnies as well to calculate and refine the number for better accuracy.
 
The number of people past the age of potty training who wear diapers for non-medical reasons is much higher than most would assume. It simply has to be. I say that for many reasons.

First, look at all the ABDL diaper companies. Yes, great for us as we've got so many interesting choices. But they are first and foremost for profit companies. They wouldn't be popping up if there wasn't a market.

Second, in the last few years several medical supply stores have started carrying said ABDL diapers. Again, nice for us. But again, they are doing so as a business decision. The diapers are profitable. They've realized there is a market, and they are meeting demand.

Third, look at references in the media. Sure, most paint us in a less than favorable light. But it wouldn't be getting brought up if it didn't contribute to ratings, sight visits, and such... again, profits.

I've said it here a few times before and I'll stick to my numbers. One in one thousand people being ABDL to some extent seems very likely. Even more could be possible. And think about this, even if 1 in 1000 is way off and the actual number is more like 1 in 25,000 that would mean a city and surrounding area of a million people would have 40 ABDLs in it. There are 10 US cities over one million people. That doesn't take into account other urban centers where the actual city might not have a million, but including the surrounding areas would as well.

My point, if I have one I suppose, is just about anywhere in any type of population is that you're not alone. Odds are quite high someone else in your area enjoys diapers just as much as you do.
 
Interesting topic. A little Google searching and I have found that in 2016 more than 19 Million Americans were identified as incontinent with a majority of them women. Another report stated that the Adult Diaper market is growing fast and will surpass the baby diaper market again especially for women. Sales have exceeded $7 Billion in 2015 and expected to surge past $9 Billion soon. While the size of the incontinence product market is not a corollary with the ABDL community, it may be part of the equation. I like Dogboy's number as well but I don't think there is any data to support this, at least now at this time. There seems to be a more open discussion in more main stream settings in the past years regarding ABDL usages.
 
This is really hard to say. Im going to have to say its much more higher than 1 in 1000. There was an episode on freaking MTV that had ABDLs so its not THAT in the dark. OTOH, out of all the things you could be into, the chances that your average joe likes wearing diapers draws a very narrow field of people. Then again, there are people that subconsciously have these compulsions or they just abstain from it out of feelings of shame, embarrassment etc If you search "diaper lover fetish" in google you get 2,340,000 results. Foot fetish: 58,100,000. latex fetish: 18,900,000. adult baby: 32,000,000. Cross dressing: 15,800,000. Amputee fetish: 2,980,000. Fire fetish: 29,500,000. Tree fetish: 21,700,000. Candle fetish: 8,930,000. Not that these numbers mean anything, just putting it out there.
 
Last edited:
A little rarer than pee-related kinks (like peeing on another person's mouth) but I would say more common than croprophilia or furry.
For example I know a DL/AB person living around my house. There is a public garbage can in a park nearby. One day I spotted a bag of used diaper in there. I didn't think too much by it but every time I pass it there are new bags in there. I don't know if an incontinent person or a professional caretaker would just regularly throw away diapers in a little trash can. If I had to change as an incontinent person I would throw it away nearby, especially if it has some poop in it. I think it's a person living or working around there who can't safely dispose of them at home.

edit: media attention shouldn't be your standard. judging from media 1 out of 10 persons must be either: rapist, terrorist, murderer or pedophile. Media will report about loud and nteresting stuff, not necessarily important or relevant stuff. They will always feed people's craving for sensation. "Oh look, how disgusting, how odd, eww, how gross and sick!"

The best measurement we could have would be internal information from google. people search for "diaper tumblr" or something or "ABU cushies". There are some definite key words that would allow the conclusion that some AB/DL person searched for this term.
 
I remember Casey, the owner of ABU saying that the number of people that are into this kink runs into tens of thousands if not more, and it's people from all walks of life, even people that are quite high up in society.
 
Maybe it's just the wide availability of the internet now but it seems the numbers are increasing. In my teens when I fully accepted my incontinence and explored AB play the community felt small and at the time the real only resource was DPF. It does seem like more an more are coming out but again with every ease of access and multiple resources now this probably isn't uncommon. To answer how many? I would say millions of us are in diapers, probably 5 to 10 percent of that with AB related interests. There used to be a group called five million friends that based that number off the sales trends of diaper companies specifically related to bed wetting products. I would think that number has since grown again just because of ease of access.

In terms of demographic, those with AB interests or DL interests tend to be majority male, with a huge percentage of that being gay/bi sexual. (I don't think there is any disagreement there) I also tend to think that with the younger crowd diapers are not their only interest are may not be a "primary" fetish for them making the numbers even harder to try to estimate. This is just my opinion though. I think making the numbers even harder to estimate is the general embarrassment or unwillingness to come out as an AB or DL. In 2017 its okay to be gay/bi/straight/trans/apache attack helicopter or whatever but being a baby or diaper lover is to taboo and the world isn't ready for it. Which is sad IMHO. This of course begins to cross the fine line of un-intentionally forcing your world onto other peoples world when they havn't invited you to do so. (Topic for another day)

Thats my long two cents.

It almost begs to wonder if somebody started a global census that would provide regional data and interests without revealing personal information would people participate. But of course you wouldn't be able to calculate the number of people who don't participate or provide false/multiple records.
 
Last edited:
From the reddit AMA Casey did:

"I estimate roughly .5-1% of Americans don't know they want to, or know they want to wear diapers. That's 3m people in the USA alone.
I come to that estimate by looking at traffic patterns online, looking at history, and seeing how many people I know that are in the closet and don't participate at all."

Now 1%, or even .5% seem really high, but if anyone would have an idea of just how many people are buying ABDL diapers, he's someone what would know.
 
BabyCorry said:
From the reddit AMA Casey did:

"I estimate roughly .5-1% of Americans don't know they want to, or know they want to wear diapers. That's 3m people in the USA alone.
I come to that estimate by looking at traffic patterns online, looking at history, and seeing how many people I know that are in the closet and don't participate at all."

Now 1%, or even .5% seem really high, but if anyone would have an idea of just how many people are buying ABDL diapers, he's someone what would know.

I remember seeeing that and it gave me cause to think the number was higher than I had believed. I still think the number of us that are so serious about it that we spend a lot of time and money connected to it is pretty small but still probably larger than I initially thought. Between Casey's observations and that, I'd guess maybe 1:250 has some vague or very occasional interest and they might not even act on it without appropriate inducements. The serious ABDLs are rarer but still out there. In Seattle, it seems like you can't swing a diaper bag without bumping into one, which I like just fine.
 
You have to look out of the box.
ABDLs may be 1 in 1000.
But there are many that don't fit themselves into the ABDL box.
i believe there are many more that wear for convenience part time like traveling, going to concerts, ect ect ect
They like diapers for the freedom of not having to hunt down a restroom or finding dirty restrooms or long lines.

Back years ago i even wore diapers while working as a EMT.
As a EMT you are not allowed to leave a to take a leak when you are caring for a patient and you never know when you will have a call out and how long it will take.
I have had it last hours.

I believe its about 1 in 250 that wear diapers but don't need them.
 
I think that many have the desire and that it also seems to fit a young social behavior parallel. It has, again I think, also been fueled by Iconic celebrity admissions and fairly flagrant exposure to the point of being, maybe, quite trendy, fashionable and risk'e... and that iz "In" these days.. Especially with the the financially fortunate, or "elite". Also with "Ravers"...D n D ers, Comiconers, Animae and so on..And let's not forget the Medias', real, legitimate or not, burning desire for a risk'e story..I can honestly say that these were never my motivations to become an Abdl however..I don't ever recall feeling like I "chose" this. Certainly not be trendy or gain friends, that;s for sure...:)

- - - Updated - - -

The More the Merry..I would hope and assume..:)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top