There’s a saying that goes “How did (event) happen? Slowly at first, then all at once.” That’s how falling into a fandom happens a lot of the time. You stumble into a thing that looks interesting, then one day you’re wearing all the merch at a convention. I’ve always been on the outer rings of furry fandom. Mostly art, no fursona. I don’t identify particularly with animal traits. Unless my spirit animal is just a human. Maybe my fursona is just me but better looking. Regardless, until about 7 years ago I always found the “furry community” very inviting. Over time that has become less and less true as social media divided everyone up more and more. Unfortunately in recent years I’ve found furries in general to be just as awful as everyone else now. In reality no community is a monolith, and it will evolve over time, but it’s sad since, in spite of the relentless shit they got as one of the last groups it was okay to hate, they generally remained open and inviting. It might also be that the founding beings of the fandom are beginning to die off. I’ve had several friends pass away in the last decade who were well know community members. The voids they left were filled by beings of less open mindedness.
At this point I’ve become accustomed to not being welcomed anywhere, so it’s no great adjustment. Another door is closing and time moves on, as do I. Doing what I want to do and letting people join up with me if they decide they like it works out better in the long run it seems like. I have no desire to do anything but exactly what I want and if that’s a problem for an observer I don’t have a solution for them other than to simply move along. My personal freedom is something I value very highly and I am loathe to give up any of it. I would much rather die than be forced to live any way than exactly how I choose to. I’m not a happy person by nature, but living like that has gotten me as close to being happy as I’m capable for the longest time. If you’ve got the guts to put everything on the line to live that way I say go for it. As long as what you want infringes on the rights of no one else then why shouldn’t you be able to live how you want, or die in the attempt?
Why even multinational brands like Nike encourage you to “just do it”. My guess is what they want you do ‘just do’ is buy their products and anything else they care little about, but they sort of encourage a bold lifestyle, I guess… Live bold, live loud, do the dew, realistically just words to get you to consider buying stuff, but you can choose to actually do the dew, and interpret doing said dew as living by your own personal code. I dunno. It’s whatever. Give it a shot. Let me know how it goes.
My results have been mixed, but still probably better than if I had just lived like your average schmuck. Which is not to say that if you’re an average schmuck enjoying the average schmuck lifestyle that it’s wrong. If the average schmuck life chose you then you are more than free to answer that call. Live the schmuck life the best way you can. Death is coming regardless of what you do so you might as well do whatever suits you best.

I certainly hope that at least one aspect of what suits you best is supporting my work via the links above. It’s a big part of why I can live my weird goblin life in relative lack of extreme misery. Which I certainly appreciate. To those of you who already keep the lights on I must, as always, extend my heartfelt thanks. In any case it’s 16 minutes past my preferred posting time so I will end my ridiculous rambling, and wish you a pleasant life until such time as we can meet again.

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“Slowly at first, then all at once” is a line from The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway. It’s often misattributed to Twain or Fitzgerald. The line refers to the experience of going bankrupt, but it’s equally applicable to all kinds of unexpected and unfortunate events.

GranGran was right
Furries. Not even once.

I don’t subscribe to thoughts like “I’m not a particularly happy person”. So far as I can tell Einstein didn’t say it, but it seems to be rather apt nonetheless; insanity is doing the same things over and over and over again, and expecting different results. If I’m not a happy person, than I need to change. Most likely my mindset needs to change. It suffices to say then that I am still changing my mindset. There are happy people out there, I WILL be one of them.

You’re welcome to subscribe to whatever you like. One way of life rarely suits every person.

I never understood why furries were a group it was “OK to hate.” Why anyone would bother to hate a small quirky group.

Now I think I understand. A small quirky group is defenseless. So first the haters publicize them until everyone knows they exist. Then the haters organize hate against them with propaganda and groupthink and whatever was the precursor to 4chan. And the haters attract others who want to hate, with the promise that they can freely hate this group that’s too weak to do anything about it.

Eventually it’s time to hate a bigger group, like trans people or women who game, once enough haters are mobilized and organized, so that the bigger group is also relatively defenseless. The success of this gathers even more haters – especially since now they can target groups that are socially relevant.

And so it grows, until so many people are trained and hardened haters that elected people receive credible death threats, businesses are forced to hide products to protect their employees, and people start getting shot for displaying rainbow flags.

I’m making this sound planned and deliberate because I think it was. It would have been nice if the internet had collectively decided, a couple decades ago when it was just furries getting hate, that hate wasn’t cool. But those were more innocent times and we didn’t realize where it would lead.

The way I saw it happen was that furries were always hated to some degree, but as other groups became off limits, furries remained a target that largely no one cared about. Also foot fetishists. Probably more than furries. At least that’s what I saw from my position on the field.

I would say you are correct, and the other fellow has it backwards; I’m not sure why he thinks it’s MORE socially acceptable to hate gay people now than it was a quarter-century ago, but I can’t see any sign of that anywhere, especially on the vast majority of the internet. If anything, the internet HAS decided that “hate isn’t cool”…to the point of hating anyone they think is guilty of hate.

I’ve been so used to not being accepted that I truly and honestly hadn’t thought about it in years until you before it up in the post, it had been just been that long. Rather sad, really, now that you mention it; I’ve identified as and been bullied in as many groups you can think of. I even stopped talking about it because talking about it got be bullied and labeled as a “complainer” so I stopped doing that. Thus, I do not go out much at all, or talk to many people. I think maybe just 7, which seems like a lot really; however I’m counting parents and parents of boyfriend, and really my face to face time I keep extremely brief. I kind of prefer it this way, because of the aforementioned disillusion with groups. A very self-propelled cycle I’m afraid. Ah well.

I will say I’m a furry, and my boyfriend also is one; he even knows how to make fur suits, and he has made his own. But we don’t go to cons or many places. We both find that people can be very unaccepting as a whole, and finding individual people is hard. At some point, we’ll probably go out and try to find friends, but right now we don’t really feel like it. We’re both rather discouraged with the whole populace, and in my case at least I’m harboring a deep psychological issue that makes living any semblance of a “normal life” a great mental feat/undertaking; I understand that I’m “a lot”.

I suppose that’s probably why I’m replying at the moment; it’s all a practice to saying things more. Normally I don’t because I fear someone coming across my words and being made uncomfortable in some way, but I’m becoming desensitized to how much people put on the Internet with no thought whatsoever to who may come across it (and the people love it! It’s the craziest thing!), so, I suppose, here we are.

I saw what you and the others were writing. I’ve seen the memes, and I think you’re right about the current social climate on foot fetishists.

You really should check out one of the Cons. I always related to animals more than people, and wasnt till covid I found the VR furry community and realized I was a furry. Now I have my own fursona, multi custom avatars and started my own content creation with my little blue cat. This summer I went to Anthrocon, the largest US furry con and I was shocked by that even with thousands of people it felt like a really tight community. Most of the hate is just a meme at this point and we just laugh it off, there was deff no hate at the con by the city because all the businesses loved us for the money we brought to the area.

I guess from my standpoint, which is fairly impersonal, I haven’t seen so much hate as just being relegated to perpetually being the butt of the joke. I don’t hear people say ‘Man, I sure hate [furries, foot fetishists, whatever]’, I hear them say ‘I may be bad/weird/crazy but at least I’m not as bad/weird/crazy as those [furries]!’. Of course that constant rush of superiority is also extremely unhealthy, arguably moreso than simple hate. Just my two cents.

I hear that. I don’t think too many people honestly HATE furries. We have gotten to a point where we call everything “hate.” Sometimes about other people’s actions, but also sometimes about our own, like “I HATE the new flavor of pringles” which is just silly compared to ACTUAL hatred, the kind that drives people to do insane things. I’m not sure that most of the people who make fun of furries really have opinions that are all that strong; if they met a furry in real life, one-on-one, they would probably be fine with it, at most slightly off-put.

It really do be like that, a sad facet of being online all the time being that you see so much vitriol that it begins to feel normal so you aren’t even phased when you begin spewing it yourself, and from that point on it just gets easier and easier to see anything that doesn’t line up with your feelings, nostalgia, desires, sensibilities, etc as basically being the enemy. Only a higher-than-average level of self-awareness can shield you from this effect, but unfortunately it feels like the average level keeps lowering and lowering, requiring ever more exceptional levels of the stuff to not just be enraged at everything.

My spirit animal is a Hedgehog. Prickly on the outside, but squishy inside.

But my fursona is a bear, because how could it not. I’m 6′ 3″ and my kids always called me the Tea Bear when they were little, because I was always a little growly and love tea.
I’ll never make or wear a fursuit, and I don’t act like i think my fursona is actually me, or who I was meant to be, or whatever.

More or less, Churchill (my bear self) is just the best version of me, in a perfect world. And he’d probably be the same even f he were precisely human.

Though I find it kind of sad that YOU can’t be the best version of you.

The idea that your fursona is yourself but more handsome is such a delightfully hilarious self depreciative comment. Got a small chuckle out of me. Your work and posts always bring cheer to my day.

We don’t find niches, fetishes or kinks. They find us. We always had it in us we just needed to see it reflected back by the world.

2586 I Am Cringe, But I Am Free.

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