/fur/ - Furry★

>community organizers: its a deep, rich, community full of talented artists!

>anyone whose been on the internet for 5 minutes knows otherwise

The fandom earned it's negative reputation, much of which is true. It's mostly a mish-mash of random unrelated fan circles connected because of "anthro" characters. Much of it is focused on porn art. There are a lot of furries strongly into pedophilia which has been making the news a lot due to pedophile arrests being connected to the fandom. It's only a matter of time(why it hasn't happened yet is beyond me) before Zaush is talked about outside the fandom, making the whole thing look even worse.

Furries are so hated that the chlorine gas attack was laughed at by media coverage and the police did jack shit to investigate it.

>>67858 (OP)

The economics of furry favour porn. People are more willing to pay for porn then for non-porn material, which encourages artists to produce more porn.

Furthermore since furry fandom tends to be centred on furry content creators, there's no way to distinguish between the sfw and nsfw elements of fandom in the way there is a distinction between anime fandom and hentai fans, for example.

Furry is a bizarre Pygmy community.

the furry fandom is pizzagate but worse

>>67873

>Farmspeak for "don't judge a book by its cover"

Okay so to use another example, Jews occupy something like 4% of the population yet have a disproportionate representation in positions of power and decision making, anywhere between 25%-40%, and engage in activities such as blackmail and nepotism to ensure they stay in power.

So you're saying that just because a few Jews game the system and help eachother out, that every Jew isn't a contemptible parasite?

>>67890

"don't judge a book by its cover" doesn't really work when it comes to furry anyway.

if furry was a book, the cover would be of two antho characters having sex. now you think "don't judge a book by its cover", so you open the first page - sure enough, there's no sex. just animals talking. so you skip to page 10, and they're fucking. so you skip to page 100, and they're fucking, so you skip to the back of the book and there's commission details and a patreon username. flicking through the book, about 60-70% of all the content in the book is pornography.

then you ask the people who by the book what they see in it, and they talk about the community around the book, and they use that as evidence it's not a pornographic book. but the thing is, even if that's true and 95% of the time people invest in the thing is talking to other people (sometimes about the book, sometimes interpersonal drama), the most important takeaway is that you know everyone involved has masturbated to the book, even the people who insist they skip the porn pages and just read the story. so sure, there is a story without sex - if you judge just by the cover you would think it's just a porn collection, but no, the cover is only broadly representative - there's some non-porn stuff in the book after all, and a community. nonetheless everyone surrounding the book, even the author of the book, even the writer of this post, has masturbated to the book, and when they talk about the sfw battle scene that took place on page 172 all you're thinking is "this person has masturbated to this book."

and if you don't believe me, you can just look at anyone's furaffinity favourites.

>>67863

>There are a lot of furries strongly into pedophilia which has been making the news

What news? Petty twitter drama that no one outside of FA drama mobs knows/cares about?

The fandom doesn't get bad press because of people into cub, only moral grandstanding faggots within the fandom itself flip a tit over that. It gets bad press because you got people in technicolor animal outfits parading up and down streets acting like autistic children waving at strangers and acting like animals.

The "it's all about sex" angle comes from that CSI episode (That show was stupid popular around that time, so it's influence is a lot stronger than most assume) and just the general truth of a majority of the community.

>>67908

>Porn is niche

>When it accounts for like 80% of the total fandom revenue

>>67937

>along with the overwhelming vast majority of suiters wanting absolutely nothing to do with murrsuiting or anything nsfw with their suits

Now look in their favourites gallery.

Oh look, it's their fursona having his intestines perforated by a horsecock!

>>67940

Like I said,

>There's obviously going to be some overlap of interests per each individual

Some people having fursuits of their fursonas that also have nsfw art =/= all fursuiters have nsfw art of the character their suit is, or even associate the suit's character as a fursona to begin with.

>>67941

The thing is, this eventually just slides into a semantic debate about the meaning of the word "all".

The existence of a few squeaky clean members doesn't offset the fact the fandom is sexually charged, and that as a result anyone who assumes you're into the sexual side of things because you admitted to identifying with the fandom is right to make that assumption.

It's not that furry is simply a porn fandom, but identifying with the term "furry" is a highly reliable indicator that you're into furry porn as well. Similarly, your country of origin is a highly reliable indicator of your own country of origin. Even if it's possible you're one of the minority who immigrated, it's still usually a reasonable assumption that you didn't, and that most people in a country were born there. The difference between furry and other fandoms is that there's been no effort to retain plausible deniability. People post porn on the same furaffinity, discord and sometimes even Twitter accounts that they use to talk about what they had for breakfast and what games they're playing.

I mean ultimately nearly all human beings are sexual. The thing is, most people keep it in the bedroom and in their headroom. Furries by and large do not.

>>67947

>Furries by and large do not

By and large, furries are bi and large.

>>67947

People who make rash generalizations about individuals based on the wider behaviors of others who make use of parallel monikers are absolutely the shittiest type of people, and typically are the ones to make things a issue based on those assumptions and absolute baselessness.

As a example, even if it's far less of a choice than being a furry is, does someone being black in america mean they're culturally african american? Some of the time, yes, and unfortunately, warranted or not, that can have negative connotation, which frequently overshadow any possibilities for positives that may have. Does that mean that every black person in america is culturally african american? Absolutely not, the race a person happens to be has absolutely nothing to do with upbringing and personality traits, along with general interests or literally anything that makes up a human as a person. The race can have a marginal/absolutely no effect to a major effect depending on outside influences certainly, but this is not a absolute by any means. And unfortunately, it's historically evident that many issues dealing with the subject matter come about exactly because of baseless assumptions revolving around the race someone happens to be.

Are there furries that wouldn't know the meaning of the word prude even if you shoved a dictionary in their face? Yes, are they all like this? Absolutely not. So defining furries around the porn only gets you some of the surface level obvious stuff, which completely drowns any possibility for acknowledgement for the wide array of strictly PG stuff, and the many people who call themselves a furry strictly being around that stuff.

So to try and answer part of the OP question, for normie knowledge of "furries", at least the ones that aren't tainted by the preconceived notion of many both in and out of fandom that it's strictly only porn, it's a bunch of people being cute / odd in costumes that make art sometimes, because most likely they've only experienced them through fursuiters dressing up at either conventions or at more public meets at bowling alleys or organized at parks. And animals are cute, so that automatically makes them ok.

>>67949

>People who make rash generalizations about individuals based on the wider behaviors of others who make use of parallel monikers are absolutely the shittiest type of people

That depends both on the identifier and the assumption. Even you couldn't hold that there's anything hostile about assuming a registered member of one political party is likely to vote for that party at an upcoming election.

I mean, personally I'm always willing to be outfoxed. Have a nsfw account and fursona with no links to the profile you use for sfw posting, and wow! you'll look like the only squeaky clean furry on earth. (Until furaffinity's shit code leaks that both accounts shared passwords and IP addresses, anyway...) The thing is, nobody bothers because nobody in the community itself cares if you post porn on main. Who cares what outsiders think?

The element of choice is important. Being a furry, and in particular identifying as a furry is a choice. You can by all means enjoy furry pornography and anthropomorphic animals but still say "Ah, but I do not consider myself a furry. I have nothing to do with the furry community, so it's unreasonable for me to identify with it." - and those people are then excluded from the analysis. Plausible deniability is maintained, and we can imagine that they're not masturbating to foxes every night.

>are they all like this? Absolutely not

Are the vast majority of self-identified furries more likely to make references to sexual behaviour, or explicitly post sexual content than the general public? Yes. Definitely. Are they more likely to use the same username on both nsfw and sfw accounts? Yes, definitely.

>and the many people who call themselves a furry strictly being around that stuff

Here's the thing: Most of them are - though not liars except in the sense of a white lie - unable to retain plausible deniability.

I'm reminded again of Majira, who claimed that the pornographic side of furry was some minor thing that hardly anyone does. The problem? Everyone knew that was bullshit, so within 5 minutes someone had found all the porn he'd commissioned of himself.

>at least the ones that aren't tainted by the preconceived notion of many both in and out of fandom that it's strictly only porn

tbh hardly anyone thinks it's only porn. most people at least also confuse it with therians or being "trans-species."

though the assumption of a huge range of normies who've never heard of furries at all is one of those weird things people do on the internet - like the assumption that people who like superhero movies are nerds, and not just the general population. my greying father knows what furries are. (thanks, documentary with that guy who is on all levels except physical a wolf!) it's not obscure.

It's funny how people get hostile, though. Pointing out the community is sexually open (it is, this is even occasionally touted as a good thing.) is immediately taken as an attack. If I wanted to diminish furrydom, porn would be the stupidest way to attack it in the internet age. The problem with furrydom insofar as there is one isn't porn itself, it's a chronic lack of creativity (or at least, reward structures for creativity) and a high degree of financialisation that make meaningful involvement a function of wallet capacity, either personal or parental.

And that, bobby, is why making YCHs is more popular than webcomics!

>>67960

There's plenty of reasons a (non-sheeple) registered voter of a particular political party might not vote that party, and assuming they'll vote to their political party purely because of that is pretty shitty. There's a important difference between making a inference based on known information but knowing full well that you don't have enough information to enact on it, or think that inference is remotely viable, and making rash assumptions about people based on known information and enacting on it regardless of the amount of actually known information.

I mean, being a furry at its most basic is enjoying content centered around anthropomorphic animals, so really anything that someone enjoyed that fits that would be a furry to a certain extent, regardless of if they'd use it to describe themselves or not. And I can guarantee the wider populous that fits that doesn't care for the porn.

Don't get me wrong though, I'd never imply that porn is a major factor to furry-dom, mainly fore the type to use the term on themselves, but the majority, if it even is a majority, isn't there for anthro bunnies banging each other. They're far too normie for that.

I have met people (normies) who did genuinely believed that furry = furry porn, and that's kinda sad. If you like porn, furry or not, than all the best to you, but that's not the end all be all, and trying to explain this to them didn't get very far.

Frankly I'm glad furries on the whole are far less prudish than most anything else on average, even if I don't care for any of the porn for being porn, but the "It's (almost) completely only about the NSFW stuff" gets grating after a while. If I seemed like I was being hostile, that was not quite my intent, just wanted to establish that there's a side of it all that tends to get drowned out by the porn and that's aggravating, especially being that I enjoy that far more than not.

>It's a chronic lack of creativity (or at least, reward structures for creativity) and a high degree of financialisation that make meaningful involvement a function of wallet capacity, either personal or parental.

This though, 100%. It really sucks, whether it's warranted ($1500 handmade fursuits of excellent quality construction) or not ($1500 ych of some sparkle dog sucking someone off). It's not as though good stuff doesn't exist around that, it's just a issue of having to dig for it instead of it being inherent, and that's sad.

I don't go around telling every soul I meet that I'm a furry, but if someone I'm having a conversation with brings up the subject I'll come right out and tell them about myself. I live in an extremely conservative area of the US and cultural diversity here is very limited since most families have lived here for generations.

Folks are usually surprised that I'm so candid about it. Most of the time they're ideas of the fandom are just the sensationalized fetishes they've seen on TV. I never deny that fetishism is a part of the fandom, but I always explain that most furries don't engage in the fetishes and that it's not fair to define the fandom as a fetish.

After that, most folks ask me about my fursuit and why I and other furries do it. If I'm familiar with the person and comfortable talking about certain aspects of the fetishes, I will. But on the whole, most conversations end with people being surprised that some normal everyday folk are furry and are happy to know it's not just a giant fuck-pile of animal costumes.

However, I no longer fursuit in public here. Every other place I've been and suited people are either unfazed or enamored. This place, on the other hand, has a few people who can't see beyond the costume and I've been accosted in character on more than one occasion... : (

>>67858 (OP)

>Are furries generally known for anything besides sexual deviancy, fetishes, or porn?

No. Furry is a fetish that's been made into a lifestyle by degenerates. Anyone that likes anthro stuff but isn't in it for the porn, they aren't going to call themselves furries.

>>67968

>most furries don't engage in the fetishes

but that's a lie, unless you adopt a meaning of "furry" so broad as to be both meaningless and misleading

>>67858 (OP)

>Why is the public image of furries so bad considering animal mascots, characters, etc, are common by modern standards?

>>67972

>but that's a lie, unless you adopt a meaning of "furry" so broad as to be both meaningless and misleading

I think you've just answered OPs question. Perhaps the next question is why you feel you need to lump the rest of us into your narrow view of the fandom?

>>67974

>Perhaps the next question is why you feel you need to lump the rest of us into your narrow view of the fandom?

Because the fandom is a specific group or collection of groups. It's bizarre, petty and childish to go "ah, they think we're all weird internet nerds - but actually if you include everyone who's ever liked a cartoon animal, you'll find in reality your average furry is illiterate, innumerate, incontinent, and in the educationally crucial 3-5 age range." It's linguistically useless and intentionally confusing.

There are people who've seen Star Trek, there are Star Trek fans, and then there is The Star Trek Fandom. I don't see them going around desperately seeking approval by trying to define everyone who saw one of the most popular and influential TV series of all time passingly referenced in a Futurama episode as members of their fandom.

>>67979

definition of fandom, meaningful rather than general:

>the fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc. regarded collectively as a community or subculture.

if you aren't part of that community, even if you enjoy the material, you are outwith the fandom.

now you're going to come back with "b-but the other definition is the state or condition of being a fan of someone or something and that's what i'm thinking of", but that's a lesser usage that crops up in less common contexts than using fandom to refer to a community. After all, we have a term for "the state or condition of being a fan of someone or something", it's called being a fan.

>Who would honestly make the supposition that everyone who likes to watch Tom and Jerry is a furry?

It's a common theme of "let's pretend furry is clean, well organised and safe for work" schlock turned out for cheap television voyeurism, newspaper filler pieces and "why are you even bothering?" wiki articles.

>So again, why do you feel you need to lump the rest of us into your narrow view of the Furry Fandom?

Because I have a pathological irritation at how your definition fucks up edge cases, such as a hypothetical individual who likes furry content, but is ignored in furry communities for being the kind of boring tedious wanksocket who defines "fandom" at buggery o'clock in the morning while desperately needing a piss, and therefore considers themselves outwith the fandom as a community while getting mildly irritated at declarations it's a welcoming place (oh boy the semantic argument we could have on that one) and outright dismissive over jumped up Americans who do fit in thinking they've got the right to lecture anyone else about what they are and bloody well aren't. Wanna fight about it?

Just to preface this, I hate furfags, esspecially the ones that denie that the whole "culture" is anything more than a homogenized glob of fetishistic degeneracy.

So, I came up with a simple hypothetical test to see what a fandoms about. It's easy, just take something out of the fandom and see if it still stands. Lets take another awful group, say FNAFfags. Obviously if you take away the game, the fandom ceases to exist. But, if you take away the lore faggotry, the fandom is effectivly halved or more.

What Im getting at is if you take away the sex and lust and pure hedonism from the furfag community, it won't cumble.

IT'LL FUCKING IMPLODE

Nigga what is the point then? If you're not talking about fucking cartoon animals then what are you talking about?

Let's talk about Alien. Great fucking movie, established a massive media franchise. There is, no doubt, an Alien fanbase. Now there are plenty of people who want to fuck the xenomorph, and a lot who autisticly delve into the world building and how the universe presented works. But the primary interest of the fanbase is how fucking cool this monster is. That's what Alien fans are known for, statues, weird theoretical biology, and sick H.R.Geiger art.

Fanbases are defined by their primary interest. How can you even consider putting Robin Hood fans and Pokémon fans in the same group? They need a common point of interest, and your options are either wanting to fuck cartoon animals or an interest in late 20th century animation. Guess which one gamers more discussion.

>>67986

holy reddit spacing batman

>>67987

Maybe as you see it, but there would still be a fandom, it'd just purely revolve around animal people as a concept instead of that on top of the incessant wanking that tends to overtake everything else in peoples minds, which is unfortunately not unfounded if that's all you seek to find. There are many areas of the fandom that don't revolve around that, it's just you're too shortsighted to acknowledge that.

>>68000

Furries are fairly unique in that they don't have a preconceived ip to latch on to as a whole, but almost operate as though it does, that doesn't stop them from being a fandom because of this. The common point of interest is anthropomorphic animals (for the most part, with outliers in anthropomorphism in general, but it's typically animals), which again, exists purely outside of preconceived ip like a lot of fandoms are. In that regard it's more akin to being into model railroading or a fan of hard sci-fi. It's also not like fandoms are wholly separate things, there can be and is overlap when it's relevant, as in with your Robin Hood and Pokémon examples. That doesn't necessarily make them furries to the maximum extent, but yet again, frequent overlap in both directions. It's actually quite nice to have such a creative bunch not tied to the whims of media conglomerates and the incessant infighting that occurs because of changes you'll never be able to do anything about. That tends to get blind sighted by the obscene amounts of porn though, as with the person whom posted above you.

>>68007

>There are many areas of the fandom that don't revolve around that

There are many areas of an airport that don't revolve around getting you on a plane, that doesn't make the duty free store representative.

>It's actually quite nice to have such a creative bunch

pfft. this is a community where you can pay to not have to imagine the pose you want your character drawn in or outright buy a character. furry is so commercialised they've outsourced the simplest of tasks.

and really, that's the thing with furry. maybe not even the majority of the people in it, but certainly the underlying cultural thread. It's vapid consumerism. It's superflous bugmen with too much disposable income and nothing by the way of identity trying to make something of themselves, it's smalltalk as an artform, it's getting mad because people unfollowed you since the symbol of their interest is more important than retaining their attention. it's the condition of postmodernity. You can take porn seriously, but the apparent depth of furry will always be significantly deeper than the actual depth.

>>68007

>it'd just purely revolve around animal people as a concept

You are talking out of your ass, but let's pretend you are right. Okay. What then is a fursuit in this new fanbase? A representation of one's imagined self? a glorigied and removable tattoo? A simple work of art? Further then that, what do these theoretical fans of anthropomorphic animals talk about? Fantasy clothing design? It ain't worldbuilding because there's a million different franchises with furry characters and they all follow their own logic.

>that doesn't stop them from being a fandom because of this

That's what I said. The uniting factor is "anthropomorphic animals" which, due to the cross-media nature of the subject, is conductive to fan fiction and self-insertion in made up kitchen-sink worlds.

>model railroads and hard sci-fi

Except those have strict rules. Hard sci-fi less so as different media deals with different concepts, but it all follows the blueprint of "real-world application of theoretical discovery." This naturally leads to worldbuilding and that is what fuels discussion and allows the fanbase to continue. Model trains are equal parts art form and collectors items. The "fun" in them comes from creation and discussion of historical locomotives.

Creative freedom with a shared general interest is a great thing, I'll give you that. But it all winds up focused on new ways to fuck or be fucked. Or as >>68009 mentioned, having whatever artist is hot drawing your fursona getting fucked by their OC

>>68009

Restaurants inside of airports if I'm not mistaken are still zoned as restaurants regardless of them being in a airport or not, and no one's stopping you from going to just the restaurant in the airport and having nothing to do with any of the rest of it. If that restaurant for some reason is regarded as the best restaurant ever in that region, of course there's going to be acknowledgement of the fact it's in a airport, but that doesn't stop the restaurant from doing whatever it's doing.

Wouldn't for a second deny that rampant consumerism isn't a major factor to furries, and again, surface level yea there's a lot of that, but that doesn't stop people from making their own art or making their own costumes or the rest of it, and having a community of creative people exchanging ideas and collaborating around that creativity. Commercialization is of course there, and whether to the best morally or not, is a big factor in the continuation of the entirety of it, both commercially and not. Such as with head blanks for suits, or people commissioning lineart to colour in themselves, or all of the assistance both in the form of direct communication or tutorials and the like to make all kinds of stuff. Certain subsets are just going to commission absurd amounts of art of their OC certainly, but there's also loads of people wanting to get better at the whole art thing as well both in relation to and running parallel to the furry fandom, and they can be a fantastic bunch for that if you find the right people.

People getting butt hurt about the social aspect I can't comment on, because I find all of that to be rather moronic in all forms, in relation to and having absolutely nothing to do with furries.

>>68013

What's there that would imply I'm talking out of my ass? At it's core, anthro animals is literally what furry is, it's just a chunk of that's porn of said anthro animals.

To what a fursuit is,

>A simple work of art?

is what you're looking for (the other options can play into it, but not as a absolute to any extent), both art in it's construction and/or performance in said suit, most aren't into the latter but it's there. As for what they talk about, it varies depending on people/groups you're referring to, it's so open ended (for better or worse) that there really is no set "This is what a furry world is" or "This is how a furry should be" outside of very broad strokes as long as there's furries in there, so it leaves room for whatever world building or imagination anyone wants to commit to. It's not as though anyone absolutely needs to build on pre-existing things. The looseness of that aspect of furries is probably part of the reason why when literally any kind of media with a furry in it, the fandom, in part, latches onto it and makes artwork and cosplay and all the rest of it. The only hard rule I've seen is no monstergirls (human with cat ears and tail, or more specifically when the torso and head are unchanged human but everything else is fair game).

I get I'm probably spinning in circles a bit with the last chunk about the looseness, but that's bound to happen when the thing you're trying to describe isn't as well defined as most other fandoms are, which might actually be the reason why some think it's exclusively a porn thing. There's no obvious single thing to latch onto, but everyone understands porn even in its most obscure, and there is lots of that with furries, so they just go "Oh, it's all just a fetish thing, right?" because they don't try to answer why beyond that. With that openness also certainly leads in part to that rampant consumerism, although I tend to chalk that up more to the relative age of the average furry along with having zero sense of money management combined with how close artists and art consumers tend to be in relation to how close the creators and their fandoms tend to be, which results in a lot of emotional attachment that can and does get manipulated.

People will be people. doesn’t have to be with furries, could be anything. they’ll take one thing that’s easy to attack, something that’s none of their business in the first place, and be the ones screaming and complaining that said subject is nothing but ‘this’ (sexual, “fetishy,” simplistic, silly etc) literally nothing but strawman arguments

seriously, being the hypocrites they are, literally contradicting themselves, they’ll see something attractive, complain about it being attractive and bring shit up about people admiring such attractions and LITERALLY pointing at things they find attractive, then back peddle saying it’s not. the whole thing is so retarded anyone with a lack of bias can see they’re primitive mindset from a mile away.

the word ‘fetish’ isn’t even used consistently, it’s so subjective, what does it even mean nowadays?

>shitty "animation" that's only two frames of fox stick figures fucking each other in the ass gets 100k views

>sfw art of any kind gets 20

that's it. that's all there is that needs to be said. anyone who says it's not all about porn is dead wrong and this is the only evidence you need.

>>68037

Tell that to the 20 people who went to see the sfw art.

>>68037

[citation needed]

>>68039

:(

>>67968

>However, I no longer fursuit in public here. Every other place I've been and suited people are either unfazed or enamored. This place, on the other hand, has a few people who can't see beyond the costume and I've been accosted in character on more than one occasion... :

good, you deserve it you turboautist

>>68039

statistically insignificant tbh.

>>67986

>So far I reckon, based on the post >>67971, that you're not a furry and you assume we are all degenerates? That's what all of this is about?

I'm the person you're basing the assumption that you're all degenerates on, not the guy you're responded too. Looks like you're also a nitwit as well as a(n easily triggered) degenerate.