Whether you’re curious about the furry community or already decided to participate, allow me to extend you a warm welcome to the furry fandom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ItIjq8W-DY
Since you’re probably new, here’s a quick primer on the landscape of our community–good, bad, and indifferent. This is the sort of information I and many of my friends wish we had when we first joined the fandom.
The Furry Fandom
Furry is a decentralized, participatory community that is largely online and deeply rooted in Internet history.
You can estimate about 10% of the human population to be LGBTQIA+, but that number is closer to 80% for furries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0QaTW3kEY
As a consequence, our community is largely sex-positive (but not necessarily sexual), queer-friendly, and openly tolerant to people with diverse backgrounds.
Our community is vibrant, art-centric, and generally able to laugh at ourselves.
https://twitter.com/BadFurry/status/1296559345208102912
However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows all the time, so let’s address the elephant in the room and talk about the bad parts of the furry fandom.
The Bad Parts of Furry
Remember when I said, “Furry is a decentralized, participatory community” earlier? This is both a strength and a weakness: It’s challenging to effectively expel terrible people. Consequently, while most of the furries you run into will be reasonably cool, there are undoubtedly some bad eggs.
It would take me years to comprehensively list all of the badness within any community–let alone one as large as ours–so I’m going to make a few broad strokes for the sake of brevity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3ttlgg3k3w
Right-Wing Furries
Furries that describe themselves as “Conservative” are almost exclusively the sort of right-wingers that were okay with (if not participating in) the insurrection of January 6, 2021.
Right-wingers range from the milquetoast pseudo-centrists like PeaceWolf to open insurrectionists like Diezel Raccoon to the guy who made a fursona named Foxler (Fox + Hitler) complete with a red armband.
https://twitter.com/2ManyStripes/status/1331637014639230976
https://twitter.com/TheSteelStag/status/1347226337677881346
Even if you like to think of yourself as a tolerant and open-minded person, there is nothing positive to be gained by associating or interacting with right-wing furries. They aren’t your log cabin conservatives.
Think of the sheer cognitive dissonance it requires to be openly right-wing and/or evangelical in a community that’s 80% LGBTQIA+ (which is almost always a target of right-wingers and evangelicals, at least in America). And then realize these assholes possess it in spades.
Furry Valley (formerly Furry Menagerie)
Dogpatch has a very long Twitter thread explaining the myriad reasons why you almost certainly want to avoid the group calling itself Furry Valley.
https://twitter.com/DogpatchPress/status/1066817848985640960
Furry Valley is a cult of personality that tries to welcome new members with “love-bombing” and then hold them hostage with doxing. A lot of the groups in the Furry Telegram list have FV’s tendrils in them, which serves as an unfortunate recruitment funnel for unsuspecting furries.
https://twitter.com/FENNERGY/status/1215018746760368129
My recommendation here is: Look before you leap.
If the group description mentions Furry Valley, avoid it. If the rules (pinned message, usually) mention Furry Valley, leave it. If you report a pro-FV message to the mods and they allow it, block them and leave it without further incident.
The Fuckboi/Party Scene
There is a contingent of furries that go to furry conventions to do a lot of drugs, have a lot of sex, and go to a lot of private room parties–and not actually participate in the community at large. This is the same contingent that causes a lot of the “30 is gay death” talking points to resurface in the furry fandom.
Predictably, this churns out a lot of unsavory personalities running virtually unchecked by our larger community. After many years, this has become toxic beyond the point of being salvageable, best demonstrated by the organization and attendance of an illegal and unofficial furry convention during the COVID-19 pandemic:
https://twitter.com/RamuneTiger/status/1334940338096656390
They’re selfishness turned up to 11. Avoid like the plague–especially since most of them are more than willing to infect you to have their own fun.
Genuinely Terrible People
There are a lot of people that don’t fit one of the above categories, yet are still awful, so here’s a small sample of furries that should be avoided.
https://twitter.com/McBittypaws/status/1275513048015331334
The Twitter thread has receipts, should you wish to know more about them.
The Good Parts of Furry
Much has already been written about the good parts of the furry fandom. Furries improve everything. Even at an individual level, the furry fandom fosters friendships. I highly recommend reading these other blog posts for a complete picture of the good side of the fandom.
Easily 95% of the people I’ve met in the furry fandom have been genuinely kind, caring, conscientious, and generous. There’s probably some sampling bias and self-selection at play here, admittedly.
How to Get Started?
Don’t bother with local furries, at least out of the gate. Regional groups tend to be catch-all for people who have little in common beyond geographical location, and a lot of local groups are very bad at moderation.
https://twitter.com/SoatokDhole/status/1300911840000708608
First, find a group with common ground beyond just “we’re both furries”.
- If you like tabletop games, find a Telegram or Discord group about furry tabletop games.
- If you like video games, find a furry Twitch streamer and hang out in their community and get to know the folks there.
- If you’re interested in science and technology, consider joining the Furry Technologists group on Telegram.
- If you’re interested in art, consider joining art websites like FurryLife or FurAffinity.
And then… talk to people. The ball’s in your court on that one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aQLDR5iSW4
https://soatok.blog/2021/01/14/welcome-to-the-furry-fandom/
My recent post about the alleged source code leaks affecting Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive made the rounds on Twitter and made someone very mad, so I got hate DMs.No more Angry Whoppers for you, mister!
…Look, I only said I got hate DMs, not that I got interesting or particularly effective hate DMs! Weak troll is weak, I know.A lot of people online claim they “hate furries”, but almost none of them quite understand how prolific our community is, let alone how important we are to the Internet. As Stormi the Folf puts it…
I guarantee you the internet would collapse in a most horrific manner if all the furries in the world got Thano's snapped.They *run* the internet in more ways than most people realize
— 🦊Stormi the Folf🐺 🔜FWA (@StormiFolf) April 23, 2020
Stormi is the Potato of Knowledge and Floof
What Stormi’s alluding to is true, and that’s a tale best told by an outsider to our community.Telecommunications as a whole, which also encompasses The Internet, is in a constant state of failure and just in time fixes and functionally all modern communication would collapse if about 50 people, most of which are furries, decided to turn their pager off for a day. https://t.co/k1UqOv5kpd— Ẑ͚͔͍̻̤̟ä̶̼̗̟͔́̿̾̓n̬͙̫̿͑͊̈̚d̡̰̭̞͖̟̖̟ͬ̚ê̺͖̂ͩ̀̉ͣrͪ̓ (@mmsword) November 28, 2019
Their follow-up tweet that elaborates on furry involvement is here.
So I’d like take the time to explain why nobody should ever underestimate the ingenuity or positivity of the furry community.The Furry Fandom Has Saved Lives
https://www.youtube.com/embed/3h9sO17CV9A?feature=oembed
This is just one of many anecdotes. You can find many more here.
Although the furry fandom is widely misunderstood, it’s difficult to overstate how many lives have been saved and enriched by our community.I wanted to share this touching moment. @Reo_Grayfox was telling me his story, and said those lines while staring straight into his fursuit's eyes. Hearing personal stories like this makes you appreciate the vastly diverse reasons why the furry fandom is essential to so many. pic.twitter.com/fD09Wmv6mf— Joaquín Baldwin (@joabaldwin) January 22, 2018
Furries Provide Much-Needed Comfort to Others
In 2016, refugees from the civil war in Syria ended up in a hotel in Canada. This would have been an utterly remarkable fact if it wasn’t the same hotel and weekend as the local furry convention, Vancoufur.The kids loved it.
This isn’t an isolated incident either. Our community is well-known for kindness and generosity in spades.https://charcoalthings.tumblr.com/post/132996328881/i-will-defend-furries-to-my-grave
https://wakor.tumblr.com/post/126072529744/ok-you-know-what
What’s there to hate?
The Furry Fandom is Collectively Pretty Bad-Ass
Art by RueMaw.
No, not like that.The fandom is bad-ass in as many ways as the fandom is incredibly diverse.
Image source and backstory of this meme: Dogpatch Press
90s furries built the Internet pic.twitter.com/Gicxme2HkT— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) April 30, 2019
SwiftOnSecurity knows the truth about more than just corn.So one of my friends said furries pretty much run the US nuclear response communication networks. Just in case you're worried about Trump.— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) November 12, 2016
Seriously.Some of the Most Talented People You’ll Ever Meet Are Furries
eSports Champions:https://www.youtube.com/embed/TWhrECl6zOY?feature=oembed
Musicians:
https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/4NlXsjKmcWegIfQEI0JzHK?utm_source=oembed
Artists and costume makers: I could literally link to hundreds of artists here. Follow me on Twitter; I retweet a lot of cute stuff.
Pretty much everything you could aspire to be that isn’t also terrible, if you look hard enough, you’ll find furries in the leaderboards having a fun time with it all.
The only reason to hate furries is thinly-veiled homophobia, because only about 25% of furries are heterosexual.
Why So Curious?
If I’ve made you curious about our community, and now you want to learn more about us, I’ve got you.https://www.youtube.com/embed/K2XeOxWW2oY?feature=oembed
Psychology Today: What’s the Deal with Furries?
Furry Fandom Documentary When?
https://www.youtube.com/embed/cF9DQQsUcs0?feature=oembedAsh Coyote is releasing a documentary about our subculture soon, titled The Fandom. You can find out more about it on her YouTube channel.
https://soatok.blog/2020/04/23/never-underestimate-the-furry-fandom/
#furries #furry #FurryFandom #hateMail #positivity #Society
