QAQ08 — WHYABDL.ORG

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Q8: For the older generation, please tell us more about what it was like being ABDL before social networking?

The internet came about during my college years, so in some ways I was lucky - I was able to begin reaching out to members of our community about the same time that I had enough independence to actually meet people from our community.

Unfortunately I was also unlucky in some respects - our community's presence online was brand new, and it was filled with more ghosting - see question 7 - than you could ever believe.

My first experiences meeting others were on DPF.com - the premiere ABDL website of the day. (And, before it was a website, a newsletter by mail).

If you've read the presentation on 'The History of ABDL and the Internet' that Baby Spencey and I gave at CAPCON 2017, you've seen the screenshots: a very rudimentary site by today's standards, where members selected letters that represented their ABDL interests - picture 'C' for cloth, 'D' for disposable, 'S' for spanking, and you get the idea. Our 'social networking' consisted of a list of names, ages, cities and states, and letters - no pictures, no bio's to speak of. If you were interested in talking to someone you didn't click a link to their profile - there were no profiles. Instead, you copied their email address and sent off a message.

And, if you were lucky, the message didn't simply bounce back. Between people who included fake email addresses and people who literally deleted their email accounts during some 'purge' phase, so many of the email messages came back undeliverable. I'd be in the middle of conversations with people I thought I was finally making a connection with and then - boom - 'Your Message Could Not Be Delivered.'

Through the years the list became dominated by the multiple accounts frequent email account deleters made to come back to the site. You'd see Chad - Ithaca - 22 three times and have to send messages to all three to figure out which one wouldn't bounce back.

In other words, making connections in our community was tough.

Read on for the stories of others...

- CWIS

DO A Q&A: EMAIL CWIS! 18+

BabyIan001

48, London, United Kingdom | September 10, 2018

Before the internet there were a few adverts in magazines and also their was an abdl monthly subscription that I use to buy with adverts to meet like minded people. Of course it was nothing like the access today with the internet, but I did meet some cool dudes. [READ MORE]

Diaperfur

Somewhere In Canada | June 7, 2013

I have a big presense in the Diaperfur and Babyfur community in the furry fandom. I found this community too just after getting online back in 1995. Before i found the internet i never realised there were so many others like me :) It was a joy to find others on the net. First found the old school DPF site and newsgroups. Eventually other social sites started to pop up. [READ MORE]

Fawsie11

53 Ottawa Ontario Canada | January 17, 2016

Yikes, I guess this means me! :P I discovered this when I was 7. You feel ashamed of this reaction your body has to an object or a situation that you have no explanation for. You feel alone and trapped. Unable to “express” yourself to friends or family. I always wanted my mom to catch me and force me into a diaper but i could never bring myself to letting her find out. I can also remember when I was 12 or 13 telling a close friend in hopes that he may be into this or something like this. The friendship continued but it was never spoken of again. When I was 23, I got my first computer and modem. 1200bps LOL. The first thing I did was explore the internet for like minded people and found Bill from then Bytemine!

You cannot imagine the joy i found in seeing and reading about others with my interests online. Imagine living in a world where the only thing you can see is the printed word. Now, try to find out about this stuff. Libraries did not have information on “sexuality” back then. Mainstream porn had nothing or very little about it and when you did “find” something you were told by people that the stories were “made up”! Then you find others online, in a community or a BBS that share those interests and you wanna either burst out and tell them or pose and wait. Most of us did the pose part, at first I suspect. I know I did. I was in AWE of what I found... [READ MORE]

Kita Sparkles

June 5, 2018

Well, when you did meet another AB, like you were lucky enough to have found a party or something, you all had similar stories about how you grew up thinking you were the only one. We all knew about DPF (Diaper Pail Fraternity). Carolyn's Kids and Amber E and Tales From The Crib were big sellers. We had to go to adult bookstores to find anything and even then it was pretty unlikely you actually would. I did end up with a copy of something called "Big Baby Jayne" once which was ... interesting. It went out with one of the purges. [READ MORE]

Littleguyau

35 Melbourne, Victoria Australia | November 4, 2018

I was fortunate enough to have dial-up just as I hit puberty. Downloading one VanGoo pic took about 30 minutes. The newsgroups (alt.sex.fetish.diapers) were letting me know I wasn't alone. I didn't engage with looking for others until I was 18. I later found out that a guy a year or two above me in high school, from my smallish hometown, was into diapers. We never really met though. [READ MORE]

Min

33 Colorado Springs CO USA | November 15, 2016

I remember feeling like I was very alone, wondering why I liked diapers so much and if I would just spend the rest of my life alone. When I went online and first found out about AB/DL's I couldn't believe what I was seeing, I felt happy, relief that I wasn't alone and the possibility of having friends who shared my interest. I don't think I slept at all that night, staying online and reading/looking things up. [READ MORE]

Dprderic

30 Dallas TX USA | August 25, 2012

I have not reached this milestone yet, still have about another ten years. Personally, I think I came into this lifestyle at the right time. Had I not had access to the Internet, I'm not sure I would have adjusted as well as I have to being an having a diaper fetish.

Bravo to those who had to deal with all of this before the Internet! [READ MORE]

Galvatron149

34 Dorset UK | November 4, 2015

Whilst I am not one of those older people, I do have a perspective of sorts... Just as I started to get into Abdl is pretty much when the Internet and social side of started to begin, with sites like dpf.com and aby.com being some of the first sites I viewed. It has been an interesting ride watching sites come and go, and hearing the perspectives of the older abdls!

I first discovered sites at 16, initially just sites that required no membership, and it was instantly great to know that there were people like me out there! It was interesting looking at pictures of all the ages from 18-80... Made me love the fact that Abdl really is a fetish enjoyed by all types of people! [READ MORE]

JayLew

38 Cincinatti OH USA | February 7, 2019

I remember finding Diaper Pail Friends and Wetset in the mid 90s and thinking, "There are others?!" I don't remember the names of any other sites I visited back then. [READ MORE]