I need everyone to understand something: This doesn’t matter.
Dhole Moments is not the official outlet of anything that will affect you or your daily life. It carries no financial weight or political power. It doesn’t represent any company, organization, or government agency.
To be a little more blunt: It’s overwhelmingly likely that nothing I write here will ever directly be on the final exam for any course you study. Your academic, career, romantic, and life success will not depend on my musings in any significant way.
Even if one of my blog posts should become popular, it will be (at best) a blip on most people’s radar for a fleeting moment, and then promptly forgotten about, because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter.
The same can be said about its author, of course!
Let me emphasize: That’s not a depressing statement, it’s simply reality.
I don’t matter.
The world was here for billions of years before me, and it will continue for a heck of a long time after I die.
There are billions of people on Earth and an utterly unknowable number of life-supporting planets in our universe. (With any luck, it’s a large number!)
Even among the people alive here and now, I consistently fail to muster any significance or impact on the world. If I had never been born, the world be largely indistinguishable from how it appears today.
Profound Disagreement
Sometimes I encounter people that behave as though I do matter (usually not for good reasons).
In some instances, they believe I hold any significant status to the technology or furry communities, and hope to influence matters by changing my mind on something.
Nevermind the furries with hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and YouTube that go to several big conventions every year, let’s bother some guy with a WordPress blog that talks about cryptography!How misguided fools make decisions
Some malicious people even seem to think successfully attacking me will somehow hurt furries as a whole. Not so!
If I were so influential or important, I’d have put an end to the endless cycle of furry discourse years ago.
(While I’m at it, I’d also make proper hygiene and deodorant use mandatory for furry conventions, and put a stop to the jerks that use Bluetooth speakers to annoy everyone else. None of those things have happened, so at least you can know I’m utterly powerless here.)
“Well, nothing matters then, right?”
No, that’s not what I’m getting at.
Like, sure, from a purely objective perspective, you could argue that nothing truly matters. But this sort of nihilism creates a vacuum from which you are free to decide what matters to you, since “mattering” isn’t pre-determined before you make that choice.
You may decide that humanity matters to you. You may decide that equality matters to you. You can also decide that sex, money, and popularity are important to you. But it’s your choice to make, and it’s your life to live.
But to be clear, when I say ,”I don’t matter,” I’m not being depressed or a nihilist.
It’s nothing so extreme.
I just don’t have the unwarranted self-importance that people sometimes project onto each other online.
Parasocial relationships are endemic to Furry.
When I wrote, Furries Are Losing the Battle Against Scale, I was tempted to analyze how the growing pains of the furry fandom (as exhibited by the explosive exponential growth of furry convention attendance) would exacerbate the risk of parasocial relationships.
But let’s be real: The problem has already manifested years ago, and too many furries seem unwilling to confront it before it hurts people.
Here’s two YouTubers talking about extreme examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7Viqpg1Jo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99iG3XLKeUw
Humans are a social species. It’s natural to want to want to bond with people that like the same things you do. It’s inevitable that people will generally be drawn towards “popular” accounts, due to the sheer orientation of the social graphs that we exist on.
But some people utterly fail to keep things in context.
As I mentioned previously, I occasionally receive communications from someone I don’t know that expect me to wield some imagined, profound influence over others.
This comes in many forms, from “since you helped stop a bigoted mayor from killing a library over LGBTQ+ books, I need you to push my crowdfund for something wholly unrelated” to “you should write about [topic] because it’s important to [specific community]” to, most recently, over 100 queries about the security of esoteric messaging apps that virtually nobody uses (I wish I was exaggerating).
Individually, these range from harmless to mildly annoying. In aggregate, they’re exhausting because they’re predicated on a false premise that I have some sort of power or influence anywhere, which implies on some level that I must matter at all.
This is demonstrably false.
My blog regularly discusses cryptography topics, so if that sentiment had any truth to it, you’d expect me to come up in any cryptography papers, ever.
Yet, if you try to search for “Soatok” on the IACR website, you will not find any results.
It’s not just that I don’t have any papers written, it’s that nobody has cited anything I’ve written in an IACR paper, either.
Though my blog provides mild entertainment to some cryptographers, it doesn’t actually matter to the cryptography community one bit.
“But what about papers published under your legal name?”
There are none, but it’s difficult for anyone to verify without me disclosing my legal name–which is a bit of information that certainly doesn’t matter.
Nobody with half a brain would give a shit if they knew it anyway.
Over the years, I’ve had several people try to dox me, because they project some imagined importance onto me that simply doesn’t exist.
Though I may be biased here, I can’t help but feel like their time and energy would be better spent trying to unmask the people who are actively causing harm to others, rather than an unimportant tech blogger.
After all, their reward for success would be a resounding “meh” from anyone that has even heard of Soatok before.
I’m nothing special.
Most of the people reading this right now could, with a few years of focused study, get to the point that you can run circles around me in my own field.
And that’s to say nothing about the fields you might find your talents more naturally align with than mine.
Nothing I do requires being a genius or uniquely talented in any way.
I am not someone that anyone should look up to. It’s a level playing field. The only difference between us is that I’ve put in the time to be near the peak of my career, and many of you are just starting out.
With enough time and focus, you can cross that distance too. And if you do, rather than look up to me at all, you can gaze laterally to see just another peer in the industry.
This is true of everything I do, not just tech stuff! There are a lot of furry bloggers worth tuning into. I highly recommend perusing that list, and seeing some of the writing from other furry bloggers. Many of them are friends of mine.
And that’s not to mention all the things I’m bad at. You can throw a stone at any random sampling of furries and hit at least one artist that completely obliterates me in any contest of talent or skill.
If you think about that for long enough, it becomes comical. The Furry Fandom wouldn’t exist without artists, yet there are people that think my untalented ass matters?
Art: CMYKat
Look inwards.
Over the years, I’ve expressed this sentiment of not mattering to a few people, and eventually they concluded that not mattering doesn’t actually matter because they still think I have some admirable qualities that they enjoy.
And that’s valid, but consider this: Any admirable trait you think I have is something you could easily cultivate in yourself.
Furthermore, anything admirable that anyone thinks they’re seeing in me is really just them identifying what they value–whether in themselves or in others.
At that point, why not cut out the middleman and just work to develop those traits in yourself?
You certainly don’t need me for that.
Why write about all this?
There were a few unrelated incidents recently that prompted me to think about these topics.
As mentioned above, I’ve received a lot of queries from complete strangers that made varying levels of demands to me. Some of these unsolicited pokes, I would later discover, were from the Matrix developer community. They also weren’t very respectful of boundaries.
Presumably because I wouldn’t tolerate being harassed by strangers like this, someone suggested that I was a narcissist.
Art: CMYKat
On an issue totally unrelated to messaging apps, I was also recently accused of being a “clout-chaser” by someone whose last interaction with me was over half a decade ago and involved demanding I deal with a user saying dumb and hurtful things in Furry Technologists group.
This last contact came during a time that everyone on my team was working 17-hour days to resolve a security issue at work ahead of a 90 day disclosure deadline. This security incident led to a coworker I deeply respect to burn out of the tech industry, and is just now starting to recover from it (from the best I can tell, anyway).
When I told this person I was busy (a bit of an understatement) and suggested they should talk to a different admin, they left the group, concluded that I endorsed those dumb and hurtful things, and insisted that I’m “comfortable with racists and transphobes” to anyone that would listen to them.
So, obviously, it’s tempting for me to discard their words as the ignorant ramblings of a hater, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least consider the possibility that I come across as egotistical.
There’s a bit of a pattern here, but it’s not all in the same vein.
Some of my friends fall vaguely into the “content creator” bucket, and they’ve been talking about parasocial relationships a lot lately. One of them expressed a wish that more people talk about it.
But, y’know, it’s hard for a somewhat-famous person to talk about parasocial relationships, since, if you boil the entire idea of “fame” down, parasocial relationships are its fundamental component.
How do you even respond to that?
Full disclosure: I’m not really sure what the venerable “normal” person would do when confronted with the notion that they’re arrogant.
I’ve seen a lot of people pull the ostrich defense, usually under the guise of “touching grass and disengaging” (and never again confronting the issue).
I’ve seen others beat their chest to “disprove” the accusations (which never goes how they want it to), presumably out of some sort of desire to protect their reputation.
My reaction was to laugh, because of how strange the idea is to me. I’ve long since come to the understanding that I don’t matter.
Consequently, I took some time to reflect about what it would look like if I were totally egocentric, and then contrast that with my own recent behavior to see if there was any overlap.
One thing I discovered is that I’ve held my own insignificance too close to the chest, out of fear of miscommunicating and leading people into assuming I’m depressed. So, this post strives to correct that error.
And it isn’t just that I don’t matter, it’s that I shouldn’t matter to most people.
Limits
I’ve mentioned Dunbar’s number before, back when I wrote on Medium. The linked article also discusses the word “popufur” a lot.
I have many close friends, and virtually none of them read this blog; not because they aren’t supportive of me, my hobbies, etc. but because they get the same information and experience in person, so it’d be sort of redundant. (Also, most of them aren’t furries! They respect my hobby as something that’s not their cup of tea, and that hasn’t been a problem.)
As a flawed, mortal being, I cannot maintain hundreds of close friendships. Sorry, it’s far beyond my capabilities.
Look at the people in your own life that matter to you. Your families (chosen or hereditary), friends, romantic partners, neighbors, people you work with, etc.
I don’t belong in that picture.
Neither do most “popufurs”, “influencers”, or other synonyms for “minor celebrity”. And a lot of those people actually have credentials or accomplishments that society values.
TL;DR
This blog doesn’t matter. Its author doesn’t matter. Pretending otherwise is a regrettable error. It’s also okay to not matter.
The header image combines furry stickers made by CMYKat and AJ.
https://soatok.blog/2024/09/09/doesnt-matter/
Many of the most annoying and pervasive problems with the furry fandom–from the cyclical nature of Twitter discourse to the increasingly frustrating issue of furry convention main hotel registrations selling out immediately after opening–are entirely predictable if you know even a little bit of mathematics.And it’s going to get worse. If you don’t believe me, read on.
“But Soatok, my whole thing is being a dumb animal online. Why would I know any mathematics?”
This video from Colorado professor Albert Bartlett is a must-watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4
Gimme the Numbers
WikiFur has historical data on furry convention attendance. Let’s start with the list of furry conventions with the highest attendance in their most recent year.
Convention Year Location Attendance Midwest FurFest 2023 Rosemont, Illinois 15,547 Furry Weekend Atlanta 2024 Atlanta, Georgia 15,021 Anthrocon 2023 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 13,644 Furry Fiesta 2024 Dallas, Texas 8,001 Further Confusion 2024 San Jose, California 5,826 Megaplex 2023 Orlando, Florida 5,189 Anthro New England 2024 Boston, Massachusetts 4,482 A sample of the top attended furry conventions.
Note: We can make a similar analysis for most furry conventions that have historical data available.For ease, I’m going to focus on the more popular events.
Additionally, I’m going to take the average of percentages just to smooth out the variability Year-over-Year and make simpler statements.
Using averages like this is normally a risky move, especially if a statistician might one day read your work and get cross with you. I’ve provided more granular data in a Google Sheet.
- Anthrocon saw an average of 14.2% growth year-over-year since 2000. If you only focus on the past decade (which includes a dip during the pandemic), their growth rate was 12.6%.
- Midwest FurFest grew by an average of 17.9% since 2000 and 17.8% since 2014 (omitting the cancelled year).
- Furry Weekend Atlanta grew by an average of 26.3%, or 25.9% if you only look at 2015-2024.
- Texas Furry Fiesta saw an overall growth rate of 31.8% since its first year (2009), and a growth rate of 17.4% over the past decade.
- Megaplex was grew 24.6% each convention, with a 25.2% growth since 2014.
Okay, if you haven’t watched the video and aren’t good a math, that maybe sounds like sustainable, healthy growth for a community, right?
Well, let’s use the past 10 year average growth rate to make some predictions.
- AnthroCon attendance grows by 12.6%, which corresponds to an attendance doubling in 5.5 years.
- Midwest FurFest? Doubles in 3.9 years.
- Furry Weekend Atlanta? 2.7 years!
- Texas Furry Fiesta? 4 years.
- Megaplex? 2.7 years!
If the growth rate keeps up, for example, we can expect Furry Weekend Atlanta to have approximately 60,000 attendees by 2035 (11 conventions in the future).
If you think the FWA elevator wait times were long this year, just let the current growth rate keep up. Especially if their staff are short-sighted enough to sign a multi-year contract with the current convention hotel.
What About Furries That Don’t Go to Conventions?
We see exponential growth in the furry fandom outside of convention attendance, too.https://twitter.com/Dragoneer/status/1766121415156146610
I’m sure there are many other data sources we can consider, but the conclusion is likely to be the same elsewhere.
What Do The Numbers Mean?
Simply put: The furry community is growing at a break-neck exponential speed.
Art: AJ_LovesDinos
We are seeing year-over-year growth rates exceeding 10% (a benchmark which represents a doubling time of 7 years, as that video up above was fond of pointing out).
Given that the world population is growing at 0.8%, it may be tempting to assume that, in a few short decades, the entire world will be furry. That is not the case.
Exponential growth cannot continue forever. You will always run headfirst into some sort of carrying capacity or limiting factor that impedes growth. Every exponential curve eventually becomes an S-curve.
Where Are We Headed?
Based on the numbers presented above, let’s think about what risks the furry community could be aimlessly blundering into right now.I must stress that this is not a realistic threat model of the future, but an examination at what could go wrong.
Awareness of the risks could be sufficient to actually mitigate them before they manifest.
Or perhaps these words will fall upon deaf ears, and things could go more-or-less exactly as I will describe in this section.
Or maybe I’m entirely too optimistic and things will get much, much worse than I can imagine.
This is all to say: The future isn’t written yet, so who the fuck knows?
But we can make a somewhat educated guess on the trajectory we’re on. So let’s do that.
Know Your Limits
What limiting factors could the furry fandom’s explosive growth encounter in the near future?That’s a broad question to ponder, but one possibility that comes to mind is that while there is an exponential growth in furry participation (i.e., convention attendance), there is not an accompanying exponential growth in the quantity of conventions themselves.
(Nor of convention staff, for that matter!)
The demand for convention attendance is a bull market, but the supply is more-or-less static.
THIS IS NOT SUSTAINABLE.
If things continue at the same pace they’re currently marching, conventions will become increasingly overcrowded. But the problems will not stop with just that.
Rooms at the main convention hotel will become accessible only for the wealthier and/or more technically savvy, rather than for all furries.
Convention registration costs will rise, to little benefit for attendees. Some of that money will be spent on big, non-fandom performances from celebrity headliners, which will drive some non-furries to attend as well, further exacerbating the crowds.
All kinds of systemic, structural issues in society at large will become more pronounced within our community.
Registration, elevators, the dealers den and artist alley, and even the fucking stairwells will have unreasonable lines of people waiting to use them.
When confronted with this stress, people will take out their anger–which is caused by a complex mess of factors stemming from this relatively simple mathematical observation–on comparatively simpler targets. Slightly more literal than usual scape goats, if you will.
A lot of ageist, classist, ableist discourse will emerge from the fault lines of our ever-expanding community.
There will be calls for more gatekeeping, rooted in nostalgia for simpler times when there were fewer of us to try to accommodate.
Convention staff will eventually buckle under an exponentially rising amount of pressure. People will burn out. It won’t be pretty.
Meanwhile, Drama YouTubers (or whatever platform or vestige they adopt in the future) will be collectively increasing Orville Redenbacher’s quarterly sales with the content they can farm from this discontent.
“That sounds bad; surely other furries are aware of this explosive growth?”
Of course, but they mostly think it’s a good thing. For example:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JumV2UQf43A
What Can We Do About It?
I don’t know.I agonized for a long time about how to write this section, and I don’t have any good answers.
I mean, sure, I have some ideas that might help in some way. A couple of them are:
- Embrace Virtual Reality. It’s much easier to scale up VR servers on the fly than it is to just accommodate thousands more furries. No reg line to deal with, either.
- Focus On Smaller, Local Events. While it’s kind of cool that tens of thousands of furries will descend on the same city for a weekend to attend the same convention, it would also be cool if there were more local events. Not just weekly or monthly meet-ups, either. I’m thinking of picnics, barbecues, etc. “Think global, act local,” as it were.
However, neither idea does anything to alleviate the fear of missing out that can accompany large conventions.
Additionally, artists may depend on large conventions as a way to network and grow their audience, which is necessary to make their commission income sustainable. These ideas wouldn’t really help them at all.
Solving this problem is outside my wheelhouse. I’m not a social scientist, by any means, and this feels like the sort of problem they would be more successful at tackling than a computer security and math nerd.
Who knows? Maybe to an expert in another field, the solution is more obvious and known to be effective.
Or maybe nobody really knows, and we’ll have to make something up as we go.
Internet meme; source unknown
Regardless, being aware of the problem is the first step towards solving it. So if I can do nothing else, I hope to ensure that the folks that enjoy my blog are made aware.Beyond that. my plan is to let people more qualified think about what (if anything) to actually do about this potential mess.
Until next time.
More Coverage of This Topic
Woofles, cited above, wants to help solve some of these problems:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKW0qdJJbTA
Beta Eta Delota read the original version of this blog post and added his commentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu2xQQBp_Lo
Finn the Panther has ideas (some specific to Midwest FurFest):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eI_2lDrGq4&t=476s
https://soatok.blog/2024/05/30/furries-are-losing-the-battle-against-scale/
#doublingTime #exponentialEquations #furry #FurryFandom #Mathematics #population #Society
