Hello and welcome to the tulpa census 2015. Thanks to 456 participants for providing all the amazing responses! We'll discuss the results in this writeup and will provide you some curious, overwhelming and funny statistics.
Before we dive into the graphs I'd like to thank everyone involved into making this writeup possible. Thanks to reddit; tulpa.im and tulpa.info mods for publicity; Meten; Annalise; Chaotic; Takarias; Reguile; t7cb and Kronkleberry for the input and my hostey for dedicating enough time to get through this. You all did great job and made this report possible.
Let's get to some numbers. We have 391 active tulpamancers and 65 persons with no tulpae providing us with the data. I will include some graphs; followed up with some explanations as I see fit.
Reasons for tulpamancing
In the context of these graphs; existing tulpamancers are people that did have a tulpa at the time of filling in the census.
As you can see above; the interests stay pretty much the same throughout the tulpamancing experience. Companionship (friends) leading and seeing 4% increase as tulpae develop for quite obvious reasons. Overall 83% tulpamancers are interested in friendship. Curiosity follows close but significantly drops with time. Self-improvement is one more raising interest; increasing by 6% over time; as tulpae develop they provide more opportunities to improve host's life. Lovers seeing steady growth at 7%; still being one of the least important reasons to have a tulpa; only 25% tulpamancers are interested in tulpae as lovers.
For new tulpamancers the overall priorities are mostly the same; major difference being the leading curiosity and fascination with tulpamancy. Summing them would actually give a distinct winner.
Communities
There are a few tulpamancy communities; /r/tulpas and tulpa.info being amongst the most well-known ones. it's interesting that they actually drive in a low number of tulpamancers.
The clear winner here is 4chan. Cross-reddit traffic takes the second place; amongst others the reddits /r/luciddreaming; /r/occult; /r/askreddit; /r/HPMOR; /r/casualiama; /r/waifuism are mentioned.
Third place; curiously; is taken by friends and word of the mouth. Obviously; if one has a friend that claims to have a tulpa and overall looks sane — that could be a strong driving point
Surely there are enough creepy stories about tulpae; given that it's not that hard to see how things can go horribly wrong; so creepypasta follows up.
/r/tulpas and tulpa.info have a relatively low score; bringing in 8% and 3% of tulpamancers. Obviously; those resources are more suited for determined tulpamancers.
There are also a few way less popular options; including TV; books and videogames.
The majority of existing tulpamancers are aware of the concept for at least a year now. The original article about tulpae in wikipedia being dated 2006. Back then tulpae were focused mostly on paranormal; being popular on esoteric forums throughout 2006-2008. Interestingly; yeti and the Loch Ness monster were considered tulpae and the best definition of tulpa back then was a thoughtform manifesting into the objective reality. Things changed dramatically since then.
Affiliated communities is a bit of a tricky question. Most of people do read reddit and tulpa.info; being two most popular web destinations with discussions about tulpae. IRC (Rizon and tulpa.im) follow next with 12%. it's interesting that tulpa.io; being a relatively new player on the scene is taking the fifth place with 6%.
As reddit mods pointed out; the visibility of census link on the reddit was higher; thus reddit attacting more traffic. This percentage might not be absolutely represenative of the appropriate websites activity.
Psychological approach is the leading idea in the community; but as people start tulpamancing their beliefs tend to drift slightly towards metaphysical. The amount of people thinking that tulpamancy is purely metaphysical is still negligible though.
Tulpamancy starts as a daily exercise; a routine; to grow into something bigger. As with religion; most people aren't perfectly sure about the nature of themselves and as tulpae develop; they see the possibilities of some external influences in the phenomena.
As I mentioned earlier; this is rather different from the original description of the word tulpa; yet it is a curious finding. People tend to get into tulpamancy with more pragmatic point of view; having very specific desires. In a way that follows the trend for socialisation.
Everybody who responded Both or Neither were asked to elaborate on their viewpoint. While the answers are varied and lengthy; a lot of people agree that even if they identify their own phenomenon as psychological; others can have the same degree of success with the metaphysical approach. Likewise; many others believe that tulpas are a mix of both things; because they can't explain all of their experiences from a singular viewpoint.
Tulpamancers
The average tulpamancer's age is 17 to 21 years; curiously enough that is about when human bodies complete puberty growth. About the same trend can be seen for prospective tulpamancers; although they tend to be younger.
Most tulpamancers identify themselves as male; the females count is about three times smaller. For new tulpamancers the ratio is worse; but it's hard to name the exact reason.
Over half of the questioned identified themselves as heterosexual. Interestingly; there are more bisexuals and asexuals between existing tulpamancers; possibly reflected by the difference between host gender and tulpa gender (as we will see later; majority of male tulpamancers have female tulpae). The physical body starts to be attracted to either genders or loses sexual interest
30% of questioned don't have any mental disorders they are aware about; anxiety and depression are the top named.
This is the end of part one of tulpa census overview. In the second part we'll take a look into tulpae; wonderlands and distribution of tulpamancy skills and the third part will bring you some curious observations on the whole data set.
Expect the raw data to be released alongside with part three and thanks for dropping by!