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Good lord you've had some awful luck, but it almost kinda seems like it came with the cliques/time you got into the community. I was officially guilty by 2004 (High School, West Coast US) but despite some close calls my friends are at large socially capable, intelligent and are some of the best dressed people I know. They're also fuctionally hipsters. Though it may help that I've been "in" and "out" of being an "active furry" many times since then, each cycle filtered out people or groups I wouldn't mesh with. I love my weird fandoms, this just being one of them, but nowadays I have zero tolerance for offensively awful (or legitimately harmful) strange. I feel that somewhere around the mid 2000s new entrants were from the livejournal/online galleries side of things and it became less directed, every con I got to the scene is less overwhelmingly gay, younger, smarter and hipper than their older peers. Though this is a "community" defined largely by hundreds on hundreds of cliques, many of which mesh poorly together (sometimes because they are flat-out awful) so it's hard to say from the high defensive walls against randos that make for my social networks in furry. The Muck/Magazine/VCL era pre-Deviantart/Furaffinity/livejournal/twitter seemed to be so much more closeted, almost by design. The people that were exposed to furry seemed to be shut ins mostly and seemed to be introduced to it in ways that necessitated certain ways of behavior. Now with the way the internet is people are taking way broader interpretations, and the whole community seems to be getting less closeted than it used to be (BUT IT WILL ALWAYS BE SIGNIFICANTLY CLOSETED) -> Ok questions The friends that you still hang out with now: what are they like, what particular qualities kept them close to you? People that you were close to before but stopped communicating with entirely: what was missing in them that caused you to drift away? Bonus: Did you ever meet Korrok and have you heard of her? If so, is she still batshit insane/do you have any stories? (I've hung with UK furs while visiting the Isles, mostly Scottish ones. It was chiefly unpleasant.) ... also still tripping on the whole bodypaint thing being at large in the UK. That's such a rare and minuscule clique in the US I never realized it was so significant in other places. The "closest" thing to it is the vinyl crowd I guess but I can't handle that poo poo.
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Jun 11, 2015 03:40
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 18:28 |
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Camrath posted:You raise some interesting points here about furry demographics- and how different they seem to be on the west coast rather than our rain sodden island here. When I first joined the fandom and for several years after it was overwhelmingly, indeed almost entirely formed of goths, metalheads and punks- you can tell from the early pictures in my OP. I really can't think of any hipster-ish furries that were on my radar, but I've always been fascinated by social demographics in general. Would love to chat more about this off-forum or in PM. I'd be totally down to talk about it! The fandom's evolving very quickly after what seemed like decades of stagnation. Camrath posted:I don't know Korrok myself, though J has a conbadge that she drew. I actually lived in scotland for about five years for university, in Aberdeen- but the only furries I really knew there were a collection of awesome goths who lived down the road from me and a few people on the periphery of the fandom. The scotland crowd I was exposed to were very goth or very high end creative or very sexually repressed. A couple of them I miss from the time I spent in Glasgow (I spent a month living at Korrok's house, THAT is an epic weave) but for the most part I recall being very "eh" about the crowd. But I was never much of a goth, was more of a band nerd. Camrath posted:As for the bodypaint thing- we painters really were a minority; I'm not active in the fandom anymore, so I can't speak for the present day but certainly there haven't been more than about 5 or so active bodypainters in the UK for at least a decade. There is an american dude who paints- and who I had a friendly rivalry with (We both had lion fursonas, we both were very into fitness and training but he was a full-on bodybuilder and blew me out of the water, both physically and in terms of his painting talents) but beyond that I really don't know. You're talking about Kiowa. That dude is not only a HUGELY BUFF guy, but a vegetarian and former super shut in nerd. He doesn't do the bodypaint poo poo super often anymore, but he's one of the few people that can rep it because he's actually super buff. I used to hang with him with some frequency, he lives in Utah and used to visit people in the house I lived in when I was going to college in Boulder, Colorado. He does the casual sex circuit but it seems less and less these days, I get the impression he has his self confidence now and has nothing to prove lol. Camrath posted:I think it was more a result of my position within the scene as a community organiser/leader. The vast majority of furries may be annoying, unwashed or unsightly or whatever, but are generally just harmless nerds. However when you're in a position of responsibility you end up seeing behind the curtain. Every grudge, every bit of drama, every idiotic bit of behaviour in the London scene ended up crossing my metaphorical desk. And given my somewhat higher profile I also came in for a lot of flak from all sorts of angles as I was by far the most visible and active member of the leadership during my tenure. Added to that the fact that I don't suffer fools gladly and am not shy about making my opinions known, and you can start to perhaps get a picture of where all the frustration and anger came from. Certainly, it's only after I ended up on the London committee that things truly went sour for me. Holy poo poo organizers for cons and events. I can't imagine dealing with everyone and I figure that the reason most con organizers suck and throw really unpleasant lifestyler events (though, that's changing stateside) is because you have to be ONE OF THEM to be willing to deal with it. There's a big shift in the US where newer cons are becoming all about parties and less about the marketplace, fursuit parade and being gross in public. Biggest Little Fur Con (Reno,) Elliotts Gathering (Florida and Las Vegas,) Rainfurrest (Seattle,) Midwest Furfest (Chicago) and the almighty Further Confusion (San Jose) all have serious reputations as party cons and have formed this... rift between people who con to party and the people who con to be as weird as they can get away with. And stuck in the middle are the dealers there to make money, split between the two camps.
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Jun 11, 2015 17:53
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Vic posted:This is not about furries meeting publicly. I'm talking specifically about the act of adults in fursuitsplaying with kids. On the surface this might be innocuous, but kids might be thus susceptible to trusting a big fuzzy wolfdog not triggering the stranger danger alarm. I've got a lot of fursuiter/fursuit maker friends that are on the well adjusted side of things and they generally love seeing little kids light up when they see them. Most of them are cute artsy girls and genuinely kind gay dudes, so in most cases its alright. poo poo I even know a few people that gently caress in suit, but they don't hug children in those. But we ALL cringe when we see a matted fur, gross as gently caress looking likely SPH (strategically placed holes) possessing suit touch a child. It aint every worn out suit, a lot just are poorly cared for or didn't age well, but the risk factor is high enough that everyone squirms. Also fursuiters (people for whom that's most of the fandom) are like... a whole world of factions in their own.
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Jun 11, 2015 19:57
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Rollofthedice posted:Ages ago a Psychology thread here in Ask/Tell had a short detour into furry talk, and someone linked some surveys done at furry conventions. I think this is the site. Adjective Species ( http://adjectivespecies.com/ ) is the only good furry demographics blog I know of, run by an actual student in statistics and human data out in Colorado. She's also trans, if that matters to people. They post a lot of hard data, collect attendance figures from cons, have sometimes genuinely interesting articles by guest writers. It's worth taking a peek if this thread interests you. With regards to the whole "how sexualized is furry for you" question, that's something you're always going to get evasive answers on and isn't exactly straightforward. I'd argue that up to three quarters of "active" furs respond positively to pornography, though on various degrees. People are always saying "oh well it's not about the sex" which in a general sense is true. But over time being involved animal themed poo poo sneaks into your discourse when describing things funny, cute, or even attractive. It's not like saying "crazy like a fox" or "hung like a horse" etc isn't exclusive to this community, it's all adjectives and adverbs (though some are way more literal than others.) If you're in a relationship, a happy one at least, you're inevitably going to find cute pet names to exchange with your significant other. Being a part of the community makes that kinda more fun, and there are plenty of ways you can interpret your chosen critter(s) into positive or affectionate behaviors. Everyone takes inspiration from the world of alter egos they build, and because pretty much everyone fucks it's going to motivate that in diverse ways.
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Jun 11, 2015 20:20
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PurePerfection posted:I'm not a man, but I have a culturally-influenced understanding of what masculinity is because I live and work and interact with men, and because men and women have many shared experiences and traits as human beings. By comparing and contrasting their identity with my own, I can conclusively say I am not male. I could never conclusively say that I identify or do not identify with the experience of a wolf, because I'm not a wolf and I don't live with wolves and I don't know how wolves think or feel. People who say they identify with wolves must be projecting most of what they consider a wolf fursona and filling in the blanks with their own ideals. Actually, about this. I've always found it really interesting the way that people interpret various creatures to act as totems or inspiration or party-sona or whatever. I feel like it breaks down to how the society at large views whatever creature, or at least the views of most valued social networks of that individual. For example, wolves aren't particularly independent, hardy or strong compared to other predators, but the way they're viewed in the US are as rugged rogues of the wild, the predatory royalty of the American west (unless you're a cattle rancher.) Add on masculinity's obsession with the hilariously false "canine alpha" mythology and you get lots of insecure people saying they're badass lone alpha wolves because that sounds like it would be nice to be, a fictional being of masculinity and independence. But all that really matters is that they're dogs, and most people have a lot of experience with dogs so the idea of "rugged buff wild dog" seems appealing. Social attitudes on various animals, matched with an individuals understanding of an actual animal divided by what they dislike about themselves make most fursonas. For myself I'm primarily a wolverine. I've never met a wolverine. I've read a lot about them, watched a lot of videos. I've owned ferrets for years so that's where I project a lot of my understanding of mustelids from. Selective, clumsy, independent, temperamental, restless and playful. Also wolverines are adorable and fat. Plus my family is anglo-scandinavian and I live in North America, Wolverines have deep cultural interpretations in the history of each. I love snow and get warm really easily, wolverines depend on permafrost for healthy habitats. I'm a big dude, muscular but not totally cut; wolverines strike me as buff ferrets. Now I know that a lot of people don't put as much though into figuring out what creature fits them best, a lot of it is just power fantasy (DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON DRAGONS) but that's how I've rationalized it. It's a combination of my (imperfect and distant) understanding of the largest Mustelid and a cultural platform/historical interpretation of its reputation that is quite unscientific but is a small part of my desperate attempt as an American to have a culture that's something besides western status quo.
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Jun 11, 2015 20:42
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Obdicut posted:One of the weirder things to me is that you must know you're anthropomorphizing the animals. Wolverines are not clumsy, independent, temperamental, restless and playful-- those are adjectives that we use to compare human beings to other human beings. If you're using them to talk about animals vs. human beings, than wolverines are definitely not clumsy, 'independent' just doesn't make sense because that's far too human an attribute to assign to an animal, they're not temperamental, restless again is far too human a feeling, and playful is directly opposed to 'independent'. So it's not just a distant and imperfect interpretation, it's a knowingly false interpretation, an interpretation of the animal not from an actual understanding of the animal and how it fits into nature and the ecosystem and its real attributes, but only as repurposed and repackaged as some sort of projection of yourself. I firmly disagree with a lot of those points, in particular the idea that an independent entity can't be playful, but I totally get what you're at here. Also if you've ever owned ferrets you would know that restlessness can apply to animals as well: they're either getting their fill of exploration, attention and fun for the day or they start developing depression and behavior problems. Repurposed and repackaged is fine, there's no primary IP that people wrap themselves around. I don't really give a poo poo how accurate people's interpretations of their creatures are: it's not a wolf it's a wolflike thing that emotes and looks like people. Also for the all the energy I've put into developing this alter ego, it really doesn't mean a thing to me and is a drop in the bucket over the 11 years I've been guilty. I don't own a fursuit, I've never piled money into commissions and I don't obsess over some kind of manufactured spirituality (that was high school.) My experience is a lot of weird and wonderful friends, a yearly schedule that includes cons where I go to get hammer drunk with people like from all over the country and animals as a funny/ironic/aesthetic thing in a lot of what I do. Everything is effectively an imagined projection despite exposure or truthful knowledge, and honest people will admit this. Obdicut posted:I think this is actually important for the understanding of furries--it's not actually about the animals, except on the most surface, fetishistic level. It's not a bunch of people who all independently got interested in animals and felt this kinship and found each other, it is entirely a human social thing and furries get into it mostly by meeting and being exposed to other furries. Yeah, this. There's no high church of furry dictating the rules, though some (awful) people will say that. It's human social cliques, the animal part is a fun theme ranging from sexless creative outlet to oversexed and unsocialized catastrophe.
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Jun 11, 2015 21:59
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Rollofthedice posted:Why do women stay in the fandom if they're treated so badly? How do they deal with all that poo poo? For a long time the majority of women/girls in the fandom were artists. The further back you go, at least since the mucks/internet was rolling, the more that dichotomy was present. Still I'd argue that a disproportionate percentage of ladies, attractive ones especially, are artists in some capacity (a clear majority of fursuit makers are women.) Though as the community has been getting straight-er I've been seeing more and more women and girls getting into it, making the community a lot more polite/aware/not awful because it's getting a little less rainbow explosion homosexual every day. In most cases I've seen ladies deal with it by forming their own defensive friend groups and being super wary of randos, at least at cons. I've lived in a few all-fur households (with varying degrees of success) and usually the anti-woman hostility and gross sexism just comes out of full-on militant-gently caress-breeders-homosexuality and sheltered dudes too gross and inexperienced to understand what's decent (and lacking peers to tell them that kind of behavior is wrong.) Some ladies are all into being grossly objectified and about that casual sex but I wouldn't say the ratio on that front is meaningfully different between men and women.
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Jun 11, 2015 22:18
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Obdicut posted:No, you're still not getting what I'm saying. "Restless" isn't a natural attribute of the animal, it's what happens to the animal if it's natural state is interrupted. Ferrets in the wild aren't 'restless', they just go about their ferret stuff all day long. It'd be true to say that ferrets have a high energy level or something, but 'restless' is a human emotional state, not applicable to an animal except when you gently caress up that animal's natural state, and then what you're seeing isn't 'restlessness', really, it's just "I'm being prevented from doing what comes naturally to me". Well if you've ever seen a ferret in a cage, it's restless, but I actually do get what you're saying. Domestication by design is loving up an animal's natural state and shifting it into something else. You could argue being human in this human world is being perpetually in an unnatural state. But talking structured behavior and Foucault is for another thread. Obdicut posted:Even when you say a 'wolflike thing', it's not. The only part about it that is 'wolflike' is the way it looks, and even then it's a caricature. I'd say, in a way, that furries are into cartoon versions of animals--in both senses of the word--not real versions of them. Though, perhaps the zoophiles are different--i'd like to think the actual animal-fuckers are different than the sad awkward nerd types. <noun>-like can be any kind of parody, re-appropriation, or accurate attempt at a truthful expression so I'd say that even a caricature can apply there. I think you're being a bit over-literal when you're talking about something being specifically, naturally wolf-like in your example because short of involved scientific texts about <animal A> or direct observation of <animal A> . It seems like you'd consider anything trying to relate to <animal A> at all is just caricature, which is a fair point to raise (one that a lot of people in the community should consider it more) but as thinking, sentient mammals I think it's much easier (and at times accurate) for us to empathize or relate in functionally general ways with other thinking mammals. Loneliness, happiness, confusion and others are some of those universal feelings we know a lot of living beings share. But given that we can't read their minds, it'll be never "true" mimickry and it's all about how we interpret what we see. Over-yapping on this but I find the subject fascinating. When it comes to legit zoophiles in my 11 years I've only met one for sure in passing and another one I've had suspicions about. In both cases it was all about dogs and both were attractive but unpleasantly manipulative people. The latter was particularly dedicated to mimicking the behavior of dogs sexually and is deep into the BDSM pup-play scene, which despite appearances doesn't seem to be "truly" furry. But that overlap. Obdicut posted:I think this speaks to why it was, in retrospect, damaging and harmful for the OP, or at least limiting and time-wasting. It's a clique, going by clique rules, and the 'social' skills you learn in the clique don't really transfer over. It's got it's in-group socialization and it's explicitly not about learning to get along in the way non-cliquey social groups do. I've seen the community both help and harm people in a lot of different ways, his tale would piss off any rational person and I'm glad he jumped ship. It's a roll of the dice when you first join and what rules you're going to end up taking to heart when trying to belong. Kinda considering doing my own ask thread about being still involved shamelessly after 11 years and being a grown-rear end employed college-educated dude (I could write multiple books on the horrors and joy I've witnessed.) When I was first getting into it I was a part of some really loving gross circles, it's a wonder I didn't turn out some hosed up, unsocialized yiffy mess trying to keep my new "accepting" friends. As I said earlier, I've dropped in and out a couple times for reasons not unlike his. To this day I still have issues with the "limiting and time-wasting" part, I recently did Califur in Irvine and it was the biggest waste of time/money I've had in my entire life. For days I've been in a tailspin wondering why I was so willing to waste a weekend on that, I've felt guilty and gross. Every time I've been less involved with the community I've been more into my own thing, traveled more, spent more money on myself than hosting people, etc. and often felt happier for it. It can suck you in and leave you obligated, with the wrong crowd and at the wrong times you will quite be literally wasting your life doing things that don't do anything positive for you. Going to 5 cons a year to see my 100 friends I've known for up to 10 years is a great thing at times but it's not worth shelving my dream adventure-vacation traveling from Bosnia to Istanbul to Turkish Kurdistan with my best friends, for example.
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Jun 11, 2015 23:29
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Obdicut posted:I think that when you stray away from the most basic of emotions, like the above, into stuff like 'restless' and 'playful', you're anthropomorphizing. That's the point! Also it's fun. Like I said, some people are a little more aware than others. It usually starts with "do you like animals" and goes one of many ways from there. Obdicut posted:A wolf being lonely because there aren't other wolves around is not the same as the nerdy kid being lonely because he doesn't have any friends. They both might share a basic discomfort that they lack a social group, but humans can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, we can be happy and sad at the same time, etc. Given the immense difference in brain structure and other stuff, saying that there are universal 'feelings' doesn't ring at all true to me. I don't think we experience them in the same way animals do, and I don't think animals experience them in the same way as other animals; I think we project that onto them. We've got different types of socialzation wiring, and projection is the point. But if you've had a lot of experience with ceratain animals you can at least understand them, and I think that's enough. As I said earlier it's dogs dogs dogs in the fandom and I think a lot of that comes from the fact that dogs are so ubiquitous and familiar to humans. Obdicut posted:As to the both helping and harming thing: I think compared to zero socialization, a clique is better, but that's compared to nothing. It is definitely not better than non-clique friendships where you don't have some artificial, exterior thing that bonds you together but actually just like each other despite being different and not having some common ground to cling onto. To me, there is a huge difference between socialization inside a medium--be it being a furry, or being on a sports team, or a magic group, or trainspotters--and socialization where it's just people liking each other with nothing acting to draw them together. Well in the case of my crowds it's often a) you like creative animal themed stuff b) you like to party or c) both. I often see people that are there for the easy sex, the strict anthropomorphic sexualiuzation, or just that it's a thing they're into where they can meet other people in a place separate from their familiar environment. Getting away from familiar circles, family, school, etc. is a common motivation and was mine when I was early into it and that theme of "THIS IS A SPECIAL PLACE WHERE NORMAL RULES DONT APPLY" sorta self-deception is common. Obdicut posted:One of the harms of cliques is that they necessarily include people who, if you didn't have that common thing, you'd prefer to not socialize with, or even would vociferously reject. Yep, but the fandom's so big now (and still growing and bizarro speeds) that it's so much less about a macro clique than micro cliques. If you're a sensible person there's a lot of different places you can fall into and be happy there because they're people you would be friends with otherwise. I've got more acquaintances literally world-wide than I ever thought I'd have, but I still produce really-close friends at a faster rate than I'd ever have expected. I make good friends from work and school and hobbies, but the sheer volume of people I've been exposed to has resulted in me meeting people I've really struck a mutual chord with and retained for years. I work in airsoft, graduated in political geography, study conflict on the side and fanboy over Brown Moses wherever I go and ended up with a bunch of friends I talk conflict, exchange bad aloha-snackbar memes, throw politically themed parties that most folks don't really get, dick around in online games, go to punk concerts together, etc. If you're making it about finding your own kind of fun, you're doing it right. None of my political flavor friends have fursuits, but we all have an array of costumes from UN troops to communists to Rhodesians to WW1 bedouins to Saddam Hussein and so on. Further Confusion in San Jose has a communist party, a pirate party, a capitalist party and a klingon party as regular staples. All are run by furries but if you saw the people actually throwing the parties you wouldn't see any tails or ears. It's a far cry from how I was in 2006 when I went to my first con, pushing past a armies of trench coats, tragic anime weeaboos, a trope of grievously overweight goth kids with tails, creepy almost-certainly-pedophiles and all other kinds of strange and wondered why I would consider myself part of this community (while still determined to associate with it, lacking satisfying social networks in high school.) In a desperate bid to find friends somewhere, anywhere, I let myself be awful.
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Jun 13, 2015 07:28
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 18:28 |
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Domus posted:What's with the furry parade thing you're talking about? It seems really weird. Is the purpose to entertain non-furry people? Let people know about furries? Or just to garner attention? I super don't get it if you didn't make the fursuit or whatever yourself. What are you showing off, then? I've attended quite a few gaming cons, and even the art centered ones never really had anything like a parade, just a costume contest. And that con happens on or right before Halloween. Whoops back to back posts. I've been loving actually getting to talk about this community to goons, but as my first swing at being active it's stressing me out lol. Thanks to Carmath for letting me contribute to this thread, hearing his stories of the UK scene is fascinating. Parades are a common fixture at cons, it's basically the one big gently caress-you-huge fursuit meet of any given convention. It's a pretty big spectacle for people participating or not, but I usually don't attend because the legions of drooly mouthed people that line up along whatever selected route with their tripods and monopods and cameras and phones kinda weirds me out. It's also often utilized as the fursuit census, which is a point of pride for most conventions, but it's not always accurate because a lot of fursuiters don't regularly attend the parades. I think it's just participation? My boyfriend made his own suit head, I know a lot of fursuit makers who are just crafty people and love 3D art, but also a number of people that bought suits. In the latter case it's just kind of a fun thing to have, albeit admittedly weird and niche. I've borrowed half suits at cons before (hands/tail/head only) usually because I'm drunk out of my mind and it sounds fun. For me it's fun as poo poo being anonymous, or being some weird cute critter, and posing for pictures. Also being a dick. You can be physically rude to anyone but if you can act cute at the same time (easy vs. furries when in suit) you can get away with anything. Alcohol and fursuits mesh well. The tech is neat, people are always innovating. I've seen velcro eyebrows for adjustable emotions, holographic eyes, built in fans for AC, programmed \ motorized faces that emote and blink eyes, quadraped suits (that I still don't really get how they work,) glow in the dark fur, and other kinds of neat stuff. Though the most sought after work is getting that balance between a good looking face and visibility: some of the more detailed/realistic heads are like looking through two view ports angled at 45 degrees and tilted up. Some close friends of mine from Oregon (a couple that's half aspiring cinematic effects artist and half programmer) spent a whole year designing a ram cyborg and it's loving super awesome, with animated eyes, face and flaring nostrils on a programmable system.  They unveiled it at FC 2015 in January and immediately got offers from three people requesting suits from $5k to $20k (!!!) in value. They just finished putting their workshop together and are finally producing commissioned projects. http://kaiborgstudios.tumblr.com/
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Jun 13, 2015 07:48
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