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Paladinus
Jan 11, 2014

heyHEYYYY!!!
I looks like you're still friends with some people in the community. Do they ever try to pull you back?

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Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Paladinus posted:

I looks like you're still friends with some people in the community. Do they ever try to pull you back?

My inner circle as it were all pretty much share my disillusionment and largely disengaged with me. I do have less close friends still in the community who have tried to talk me into coming along to various events, but I've made myself pretty clear on the topic and to give them credit, they've largely respected my wishes. I'm still very happy to meet with friends who are also furries, however I don't want to do it in a furry context. If that makes sense?

Vic
Nov 26, 2009

malae fidei cum XI_XXVI_MMIX

Camrath posted:

But over the course of several years of therapy I've analysed over and over the things I've experienced, seen, been involved in and now many once happy memories instead cause a deep upwelling of sadness and anger inside me. Because I now know the harm that my involvement was inflicting on me as a person. And frankly, the amount of poo poo I let slide because 'hey, we're all furries! We shouldn't judge anyone!'.

The part about not judging anyone sounds like something many people would stand behind. I imagine that after the years of therapy there should be acceptance of the fact, instead of sadness and anger.

Do you feel like there's something wrong currently? Or that you're involuntarily losing something?

Obdicut
May 15, 2012

"What election?"

Vic posted:

The part about not judging anyone sounds like something many people would stand behind. I imagine that after the years of therapy there should be acceptance of the fact, instead of sadness and anger.

Do you feel like there's something wrong currently? Or that you're involuntarily losing something?

Instead of this series of passive-aggressive posts, why not just ask directly what you want?

Sadness and anger are perfectly appropriate emotions to have in response to things to come out of therapy. Therapy isn't Zen.

Vic
Nov 26, 2009

malae fidei cum XI_XXVI_MMIX

Obdicut posted:

Instead of this series of passive-aggressive posts, why not just ask directly what you want?

Sadness and anger are perfectly appropriate emotions to have in response to things to come out of therapy. Therapy isn't Zen.

I'm not sure if this is passive-aggressive, I'm curious about the emotional impact something like this had on him particularly.

What do you think I want to 'really' ask him?

pulp rag
Feb 25, 2013

AGDQ 2018 Awful Block Survivor
Popping in from the AUG thread that spawned this thread to once again give congrats on getting out of that whole mess. You sound like you're much better off now than you say you used to be.

You said you know about some furry artists. If you know, did the majority of the talented ones fall into doing it because of the fandom throwing money at anyone talented catering to their thing, or did most of them do furry art because they just wanted to do furry art and got good at it? I mainly ask this because the Making Comics thread (or the Weird Fanart thread, I can't remember) had a small discussion on this, and it'd be cool to get an insider word on the situation.

Paladinus
Jan 11, 2014

heyHEYYYY!!!
Vic, do you personally think it was a mistake for OP to leave the community? It appears like you keep rephrasing the same question trying to get a particular response.

Obdicut
May 15, 2012

"What election?"

Vic posted:

I'm not sure if this is passive-aggressive, I'm curious about the emotional impact something like this had on him particularly.

What do you think I want to 'really' ask him?


I have no idea. You keep sniping at him. Just cut it out and be direct. When he said the bit about not judging people, and you responded with

quote:

The part about not judging anyone sounds like something many people would stand behind. I imagine that after the years of therapy there should be acceptance of the fact, instead of sadness and anger.

You first castigated him for leaving this place of 'not judging'--and of course judging is good. Nazi horsefuckers are bad, and should be judged. So should those people who grope others. Etc--and then imply that he's failed at therapy because he's angry.

Vic
Nov 26, 2009

malae fidei cum XI_XXVI_MMIX

Paladinus posted:

Vic, do you personally think it was a mistake for OP to leave the community? It appears like you keep rephrasing the same question trying to get a particular response.

No of course not. The questions aim towards the negative feelings he still experiences after leaving the fandom.

Obdicut posted:

Nazi horsefuckers are bad, and should be judged. So should those people who grope others. Etc--and then imply that he's failed at therapy because he's angry.

We should totally keep judging people no worries we're still there. Nobody implied he failed the therapy, I was asking about his state of mind years after into therapy.

Let's keep this space for the guy and shut up.

Vic fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jun 11, 2015

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Sorry for going quiet- stepped away for dinner and am now phone posting, so will be a bit brief.

If you don't mind I won't really touch the more in-depth stuff till I'm at a proper keyboard and not half-watching telly, except to say that yes, there's a lot of negativity that I am still addressing in the course of my therapy (it's an ongoing process rather than one which has been completed). Beyond that, I'll talk more later on this topic.


pulp rag posted:

Popping in from the AUG thread that spawned this thread to once again give congrats on getting out of that whole mess. You sound like you're much better off now than you say you used to be.

You said you know about some furry artists. If you know, did the majority of the talented ones fall into doing it because of the fandom throwing money at anyone talented catering to their thing, or did most of them do furry art because they just wanted to do furry art and got good at it? I mainly ask this because the Making Comics thread (or the Weird Fanart thread, I can't remember) had a small discussion on this, and it'd be cool to get an insider word on the situation.

Thanks for the kind words (and to everyone else who has offered them). With regards the art and artists, it's a tricky one. I do think a lot of them started drawing or what have you out of a desire to do furry art and improves, but there are also quite a few who are traditionally/formally educated in technique. Oddly, I never really got to know any particularly amazing artists that closely, though I've had a long acquaintance with several people from both sides of the spectrum you suggested.

Jyrraeth
Aug 1, 2008

I love this dino
SOOOO MUCH

I found with the furries I knew (lots of overlap with anime/video game nerds) that they all had really bad volume control on their voices. Was that ever a thing for you? Sometimes I'd have to go take a break from them and rest my ears because they'd switch from real quiet to loud so often.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Okay, back now.

Vic, I'm afraid I honestly don't understand what you're trying to ask or what sort of response you're trying to get from me. I don't think that you're trolling me or anything, and I'm not offended- I'm just not sure what your question exactly is or how to answer it.

Jyrraeth posted:

I found with the furries I knew (lots of overlap with anime/video game nerds) that they all had really bad volume control on their voices. Was that ever a thing for you? Sometimes I'd have to go take a break from them and rest my ears because they'd switch from real quiet to loud so often.

Very, very true. Hell, I'm guilty of this myself- my voice carries exceptionally well, and I'm also somewhat deaf due to too much shooting without adequate ear-pro.

The noise of a pub full of furries is absolutely loving deafening though, even through the constant buzz of tinnitus.

Vic
Nov 26, 2009

malae fidei cum XI_XXVI_MMIX

Camrath posted:

Vic, I'm afraid I honestly don't understand what you're trying to ask or what sort of response you're trying to get from me. I don't think that you're trolling me or anything, and I'm not offended- I'm just not sure what your question exactly is or how to answer it.

No that's alright I know I'm asking really personal questions. You're really honest about the whole thing so I'm digging. No offense.

It relates to your comment about how close these communities overlap. Every single thing you so far said could apply to any aspect of what IŽd consider a "nerd" in a slightly pejorative sense. People obsessing about toys, shows, games meant for much younger people.
It's completely okay to pretend you're a wolf if you're a kid, but starts to get weird when you should get kinda tired of those and seek more interesting stuff. That's why people frown on manchildren in general.

And according to your take on furries, there are actual horsefuckers but otherwise it's manchildren pretending they're lions or wolves or whatever.

So how's this different enough from being an ex cosplayer, or anime nerd, or other stuff that you'd generally kinda leave behind in your 30s as "being active member of"? Why the pain and anger? Unless that's unrelated.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Vic posted:

No that's alright I know I'm asking really personal questions. You're really honest about the whole thing so I'm digging. No offense.

It relates to your comment about how close these communities overlap. Every single thing you so far said could apply to any aspect of what IŽd consider a "nerd" in a slightly pejorative sense. People obsessing about toys, shows, games meant for much younger people.
It's completely okay to pretend you're a wolf if you're a kid, but starts to get weird when you should get kinda tired of those and seek more interesting stuff. That's why people frown on manchildren in general.

And according to your take on furries, there are actual horsefuckers but otherwise it's manchildren pretending they're lions or wolves or whatever.

So how's this different enough from being an ex cosplayer, or anime nerd, or other stuff that you'd generally kinda leave behind in your 30s as "being active member of"? Why the pain and anger? Unless that's unrelated.

Okay, I think I understand a little better what you're getting at now.

I think where the mutual misunderstanding is coming from is that you're viewing the fandom very much as 'just a hobby', like the other obsessions you mention in your first paragraph. And to be fair, I'm sure it is just that for some people, and nothing that you've said isn't also true. In my own circumstances though, it was very nearly my only social outlet for literally my entire adult life. From naive teenager to frankly cynical thirty something, it's where probably 95% of my face to face socialising took place. Something that previously I very much built my identity around.

Let me put it another way (which is going to be incredibly hyperbolic, but work with me here). Say you grew up in Germany in the 1930s. You take part in all the proper youth activities, join the Nazi party, defend your 'crowd' in word and deed, try and refute all those horrible rumours that the outsiders are spreading about racism and murder and all the rest. Because as far as you're concerned you don't see it, it's not part of your experience and it's not something you're involved in. A combination of ignorance and I guess wilful blindness. And then suddenly you come to a realisation that actually, in many ways it IS as bad as the outsiders have been saying. That horrible poo poo /has/ been done and supported by people who are all members of the same group as you, that profess to share the same values as you and that consider you one of their own. The scales fall from your eyes, and all that's left from something that was central to your identity, that you've spent your entire life participating from, that you've suffered for, worked for, fought for.. all of a sudden you realise you were wrong all along. That you managed to delude yourself into not seeing the bad, only the good. Now change racism and murder for animal molestation and bullying, for elitism and debasement.

Imagine how angry you'd feel- at yourself, for being so deluded, so unaware. At the other people in the group, people who you liked, trusted, had social relations with, for at best acquiescing with and at worst actively encouraging and participating in the worst excesses of it all. And how much it would hurt, realising that something you HAD built your entire adult self around was finally revealed to you to be toxic, shameful, a repulsive lie in a smiling mask. And that in order to help yourself you'd have to sever ties with what for the most part IS your entire social world. That's where the pain and anger comes from.

Again, I apologise for the hugely melodramatic way of describing it, and the :godwin:, but it's the best analogy I can think of at 2 in the morning on a thursday.

The Door Frame
Dec 5, 2011

I don't know man everytime I go to the gym here there are like two huge dudes with raging high and tights snorting Nitro-tech off of each other's rock hard abs.

Vic posted:

No that's alright I know I'm asking really personal questions. You're really honest about the whole thing so I'm digging. No offense.

It relates to your comment about how close these communities overlap. Every single thing you so far said could apply to any aspect of what I´d consider a "nerd" in a slightly pejorative sense. People obsessing about toys, shows, games meant for much younger people.
It's completely okay to pretend you're a wolf if you're a kid, but starts to get weird when you should get kinda tired of those and seek more interesting stuff. That's why people frown on manchildren in general.

And according to your take on furries, there are actual horsefuckers but otherwise it's manchildren pretending they're lions or wolves or whatever.

So how's this different enough from being an ex cosplayer, or anime nerd, or other stuff that you'd generally kinda leave behind in your 30s as "being active member of"? Why the pain and anger? Unless that's unrelated.

I don't want to put words in Cam's mouth, but it seems like the bad feelings really came from how bad the bad people were, how well he treated their badness because of their shared interests, and his role facilitating their behavior in organizing events. Or at least that's how I read it
I think a good majority of people here have an analogous experience to delving too deep into a fandom and seeing the darker side of the people that you are associating yourself with, but I doubt that many people have had leadership roles in those fandoms and or have spent more than a decade in them.

What are you going to do with your furry stuff now? Also, what is the overlap between furry and LARP communities? In America at least, the LARP people seem to the worst of the MMORPG crowd mixed with Renfaire and D&D washouts, how did you get into that scene?

E: I should probably refresh before posting

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


The Door Frame posted:

I don't want to put words in Cam's mouth, but it seems like the bad feelings really came from how bad the bad people were, how well he treated their badness because of their shared interests, and his role facilitating their behavior in organizing events. Or at least that's how I read it
I think a good majority of people here have an analogous experience to delving too deep into a fandom and seeing the darker side of the people that you are associating yourself with, but I doubt that many people have had leadership roles in those fandoms and or have spent more than a decade in them.

What are you going to do with your furry stuff now? Also, what is the overlap between furry and LARP communities? In America at least, the LARP people seem to the worst of the MMORPG crowd mixed with Renfaire and D&D washouts, how did you get into that scene?

Dude, you can put words in my mouth any time. Because you just said in two lines what took me multiple loving paragraphs and a godwin to try and get across.

With regards my furry stuff, how do you mean? Aside from the hyena suit, which lives in J's office together with her suits and stuff, I don't really have that much costume gear except for a few ratty old tails, an airbrush and a load of bodypaints. Most of those have been repurposed for LARP costume at one time or another.

Furry/LARP overlap? It exists, but not to the extant that you'd imagine. Over here LARPers tend towards being somewhat older than furries- I know multiple second-generation LARPers. Also, it's far more of a hobby rather than an alternative lifestyle; most though by no means all LARPers I know are heterosexual, live pretty normal if somewhat geeky lives, are just regular guys who like to get together in a field four or more times a year, drink mead, talk in silly accents and beat each other up with rubber weapons. LARP is something you /do/, rather than something you /are/, in other words. I got into it initially through simple curiousity. I played a lot of D&D at university and several of my friends were active in the Lorien Trust, the biggest and (I believe) longest running system over here. My housemate (who at the time lived in Belgium) was also involved in running systems out there and his stories really got me intrigued. So once I finally got my driving licence, we ended up checking out the LT back in 2006, had an amazing time and have stuck around there since.

LARP isn't perfect. There are still weirdos, creeps and idiots. However the percentages are much lower, closer to normal life. And there's the added bonus that if someone is being a twat, you can hit them with a sword until they go away.

The Door Frame
Dec 5, 2011

I don't know man everytime I go to the gym here there are like two huge dudes with raging high and tights snorting Nitro-tech off of each other's rock hard abs.

Camrath posted:

Dude, you can put words in my mouth any time. Because you just said in two lines what took me multiple loving paragraphs and a godwin to try and get across.

With regards my furry stuff, how do you mean? Aside from the hyena suit, which lives in J's office together with her suits and stuff, I don't really have that much costume gear except for a few ratty old tails, an airbrush and a load of bodypaints. Most of those have been repurposed for LARP costume at one time or another.

Furry/LARP overlap? It exists, but not to the extant that you'd imagine. Over here LARPers tend towards being somewhat older than furries- I know multiple second-generation LARPers. Also, it's far more of a hobby rather than an alternative lifestyle; most though by no means all LARPers I know are heterosexual, live pretty normal if somewhat geeky lives, are just regular guys who like to get together in a field four or more times a year, drink mead, talk in silly accents and beat each other up with rubber weapons. LARP is something you /do/, rather than something you /are/, in other words. I got into it initially through simple curiousity. I played a lot of D&D at university and several of my friends were active in the Lorien Trust, the biggest and (I believe) longest running system over here. My housemate (who at the time lived in Belgium) was also involved in running systems out there and his stories really got me intrigued. So once I finally got my driving licence, we ended up checking out the LT back in 2006, had an amazing time and have stuck around there since.

LARP isn't perfect. There are still weirdos, creeps and idiots. However the percentages are much lower, closer to normal life. And there's the added bonus that if someone is being a twat, you can hit them with a sword until they go away.

Oh, it's cool that you found the chill nerds, and a way to hit the bad ones haha. My school's LARP club was made of such obnoxious nerds that it killed my interest, but I may look at what's going on in my college's group, since I have been looking for a less expensive nerd scene than MTG and a more social one than LoL.

As far as the furry stuff goes, my friends who do cons, meets, and tourneys all have a bunch of momentos from each one, be it gencon dice from each year they visited or a nazgul wine holder or whatever little things caught their eye at the time. Or were you not as big on that stuff?

DeliciousPatriotism
May 26, 2008
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.

Morshu
Sep 30, 2009

Attack monkey! Monkey attack!
OP, would you say your experiences were more relative to the groups you were with, or the fandom as a whole? I'm not gunna lie, I know a bunch of furries and most of them (just most, not all :v:) just seem like nerds with a weird but harmless hobby. I'm sure there are plenty of nazi horsefucker types out there but I'd at least hope that around most of em that poo poo would get you crucified.

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin
This thread is fascinating.

I know dozens of furries and none of them are the con-going, fursuit-wearing kind. Just regular people who like the art/porn, and generally watch too many cartoons. When you divorce it from the ridiculous "community" poo poo it's no worse than most other fetishes.

Camrath posted:

Yeah. The director of 'MI:3', the furry security agency (god, typing those words made me flinch) is an out-and-proud horsefucker.

I seriously thought you were saying JJ Abrams is a horsefucker for a second.

Tracula
Mar 26, 2010

PLEASE LEAVE

Hedrigall posted:

I know dozens of furries and none of them are the con-going, fursuit-wearing kind. Just regular people who like the art/porn, and generally watch too many cartoons. When you divorce it from the ridiculous "community" poo poo it's no worse than most other fetishes.

I know quite a few furries as well and even some that do go to cons. They're mostly fine people and if I ever do have arguments or disagreemnts with them the whole furry thing is pretty well never a factor except one time when one of them tried to tell me fursecution was real but whatever. With furries it's like any subculture/hobby/etc where the loudest and most assholish people end up representing them unfortunately.

iGestalt
Mar 4, 2013

Very interesting thread - thank you for posting it.

There was a Furry that I knew online via common interest (Raiding in an MMORPG) that had some very interesting behaviour - he tended to wear his sexuality and fetishes as badges of honour, wanting to talk to anyone about it. Is this a common thing within the fandom? I have seen similar behaviour by other people who identified themselves as Furries, but I didn't really interact with them as much as him.

I assume this is coming from social inability/inexperience and disinhibited behaivour due to social reinforcements of it being acceptable (by a minority) in the community?

iGestalt fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Jun 11, 2015

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


The Door Frame posted:

Oh, it's cool that you found the chill nerds, and a way to hit the bad ones haha. My school's LARP club was made of such obnoxious nerds that it killed my interest, but I may look at what's going on in my college's group, since I have been looking for a less expensive nerd scene than MTG and a more social one than LoL.

As far as the furry stuff goes, my friends who do cons, meets, and tourneys all have a bunch of momentos from each one, be it gencon dice from each year they visited or a nazgul wine holder or whatever little things caught their eye at the time. Or were you not as big on that stuff?

I'll admit to never having investigated the US LARP scene- or indeed the club LARP scene in general; most of my experience is either with fest-LARPs (several thousand participants over a long weekend) or small-medium high roleplay events (up to about 30-40 players), But hey, give it a go- there's nothing to lose other than time. :)

I've never been one to collect random baubles. I bought a stack of art and porn at my first Anthrocon back in 2001, but aside from that I tended to be restrained at cons. Most of my money went on booze, to be honest. ;p

DeliciousPatriotism posted:

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.

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. :)

Anyway, for your questions- The friends I'm still close to are people who I became socially involved with outside of the furry context for various reasons. My closest buddy (we've been on multiple holidays together, driven across america twice, see each other multiple times a week, played in a band and recorded a record together, etc etc) I met at a furmeet back in 2003 and we ended up bonding over a cheeky Nandos and our mutual love of old Dr Who. :p The ones I don't talk to anymore I don't simply because they never made the effort to pursue social contact after I left the scene. Which is sad, but then again I only ever saw them at meets, so it's to be expected.

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.

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.

Morshu posted:

OP, would you say your experiences were more relative to the groups you were with, or the fandom as a whole? I'm not gunna lie, I know a bunch of furries and most of them (just most, not all :v:) just seem like nerds with a weird but harmless hobby. I'm sure there are plenty of nazi horsefucker types out there but I'd at least hope that around most of em that poo poo would get you crucified.

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.


Hedrigall posted:

This thread is fascinating.

I know dozens of furries and none of them are the con-going, fursuit-wearing kind. Just regular people who like the art/porn, and generally watch too many cartoons. When you divorce it from the ridiculous "community" poo poo it's no worse than most other fetishes.


I seriously thought you were saying JJ Abrams is a horsefucker for a second.

As I said earlier, I'd theorize that there are maybe 5 or so people like you describe for every person involved in the scene IRL.

And yeah, I saw that myself. ;p If it's any help, it's pronounced 'MI Catface'. I'll post more about that whole shitshow in a little bit, actually.


Tracula posted:

I know quite a few furries as well and even some that do go to cons. They're mostly fine people and if I ever do have arguments or disagreemnts with them the whole furry thing is pretty well never a factor except one time when one of them tried to tell me fursecution was real but whatever. With furries it's like any subculture/hobby/etc where the loudest and most assholish people end up representing them unfortunately.

Truth.


iGestalt posted:

Very interesting thread - thank you for posting it.

There was a Furry that I knew online via common interest (Raiding in an MMORPG) that had some very interesting behaviour - he tended to wear his sexuality and fetishes as badges of honour, wanting to talk to anyone about it. Is this a common thing within the fandom? I have seen similar behaviour by other people who identified themselves as Furries, but I didn't really interact with them as much as him.

I assume this is coming from social inability/inexperience and disinhibited behaivour due to social reinforcements of it being acceptable (by a minority) in the community?

Yeah, this is very much a thing- it's one of the furry behaviours that pisses me off the most tbh. I mean, I'm a tolerant guy. I don't care what you get up to in private, so long as no person or animal gets hurt and everything is consensual. But I do NOT want to know that you get off on making GBS threads yourself in fursuit, or being pissed on, or that you jerk off about the idea of eating and digesting other furries or whatever. I don't want you to loving tell me about it, I don't want to see conbadges or artwork worn openly depicting it, and if you're wearing diapers without a medical reason then I don't want your skanky rear end within ten feet of me. If you gently caress in fursuit, then at least make sure to properly wash and groom it so nobody could tell- and ideally, have one bodysuit for public and one for private. As I said before, I've had to yell at people for wearing matted sex-suits in public, for wearing conbadges depicting baby characters with filled diapers, for so much other poo poo that just revolts me.

Camrath fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Jun 11, 2015

iGestalt
Mar 4, 2013

Camrath posted:

As I said before, I've had to yell at people for wearing matted sex-suits in public.

Wow. So much.. lack of common sense and self-awareness, I suppose? I'd be really interested to see how they came to the conclusion that it'd be a good idea to do that.

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Camrath posted:

Yeah, this is very much a thing- it's one of the furry behaviours that pisses me off the most tbh. I mean, I'm a tolerant guy. I don't care what you get up to in private, so long as no person or animal gets hurt and everything is consensual. But I do NOT want to know that you get off on making GBS threads yourself in fursuit, or being pissed on, or that you jerk off about the idea of eating and digesting other furries or whatever. I don't want you to loving tell me about it, I don't want to see conbadges or artwork worn openly depicting it, and if you're wearing diapers without a medical reason then I don't want your skanky rear end within ten feet of me. If you gently caress in fursuit, then at least make sure to properly wash and groom it so nobody could tell- and ideally, have one bodysuit for public and one for private. As I said before, I've had to yell at people for wearing matted sex-suits in public, for wearing conbadges depicting baby characters with filled diapers, for so much other poo poo that just revolts me.

Is there much crossover between furries and fetishes like that? I can't imagine every single person is into crazy stuff and the like, but it seems that there's more visibility of furries who are also into vile stuff rather than uh, non-furries who are into vile stuff?

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


iGestalt posted:

Wow. So much.. lack of common sense and self-awareness, I suppose? I'd be really interested to see how they came to the conclusion that it'd be a good idea to do that.

Yup. Throw in an element of the autistic spectrum too. I honestly can't get into that headspace to be honest.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Serperoth posted:

Is there much crossover between furries and fetishes like that? I can't imagine every single person is into crazy stuff and the like, but it seems that there's more visibility of furries who are also into vile stuff rather than uh, non-furries who are into vile stuff?

That's an interesting question, and I don't have a solid answer. I think in part it's that within the furry fandom people are a /lot/ more open (too loving open IMO) about what they're into kinkwise, due to the whole 'judgement free' thing that I railed against earlier. After all, I'm sure the majority of people are more kinky than they let on publicly. But at the same point the fandom does seem to attract people with extreme fetishes too- again because of the perceived lack of judgement for them.

Vic
Nov 26, 2009

malae fidei cum XI_XXVI_MMIX

Camrath posted:

Say you grew up in Germany in the 1930s. You take part in all the proper youth activities, join the Nazi party, defend your 'crowd' in word and deed

:godwinning:

            :psyduck:


I mean yeah, godwinning all over the place freund, but assuming that was supposed to illustrate your emotional state, let me rehash same thing for the 88th time:

That's way too much selfhatin' for something that stemmed from things out of your direct control. Everyone needs to belong somewhere and if you had to dance with the wolves, welp thats just how it was. My point is that you're doing yourself no favors being bitter and takes you away from being just a normal dude. Relax, you clawed yourself out of that hole. And no you weren't participating in a genocide shut up. You probably realize all that but w/e. The armchair therapy's over, sry 'bout that.

Back to questions: Are you two on the same level when it comes to it as a hobby?

TunaSpleen
Jan 27, 2007

How do I say, "You're the grossest thing ever" without offending you?
Grimey Drawer

Serperoth posted:

Is there much crossover between furries and fetishes like that? I can't imagine every single person is into crazy stuff and the like, but it seems that there's more visibility of furries who are also into vile stuff rather than uh, non-furries who are into vile stuff?

You still get the non-furry equivalents, such as paraphilic infantilism which of loving course has a full Wikipedia page. Those people typically show up in programming on TLC or Discovery Channel. I wonder if the lack of public display comes down to the lack of anonymity that a fursuit provides?

Paladinus
Jan 11, 2014

heyHEYYYY!!!
OP, how young were the youngest furries in your time? I assume minors are not allowed at conventions without an adult , but you mentioned underage drinking at meetups. Did people try to be mindful of literal children who came with their parents to look at cute animal mascots? Did this ever even happen when people wandered into a furry convention by mistake?

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Vic posted:


I mean yeah, godwinning all over the place freund, but assuming that was supposed to illustrate your emotional state, let me rehash same thing for the 88th time:


I see what you did there. :p

quote:

That's way too much selfhatin' for something that stemmed from things out of your direct control. Everyone needs to belong somewhere and if you had to dance with the wolves, welp thats just how it was. My point is that you're doing yourself no favors being bitter and takes you away from being just a normal dude. Relax, you clawed yourself out of that hole. And no you weren't participating in a genocide shut up. You probably realize all that but w/e. The armchair therapy's over, sry 'bout that.

Back to questions: Are you two on the same level when it comes to it as a hobby?

I get what you're saying, but at the same point I've struggled enough with the therapeutic process with a very well qualified guy I've seen three times a week for several years and have built up a massively trustful relationship with. I'm afraid that 'random dude on the internet' just doesn't work for that manner of thinking and self-reflection for me. And yes, I realise all that- I was using a hyperbolic analogy to try and get my point across. Anyway, let's draw a line under all that.

With regards your question, if you mean myself and J then she started to check out mentally and emotionally before I did. She was only involved in the scene for three or four years, and the drama got to her before it got to me (partially just general furry poo poo, partially down to a particularly hosed up ex of hers who couldn't handle her moving on from him and turned almost all her friends against her). I stuck around longer partly out of a sense of duty and loyalty, partly because I wasn't so affected by that particular dramatic bullshit and partly because it was all I really knew at that point. Nowadays she's more.. I guess over it than I am? In that she doesn't feel /anything/ about the whole fandom, whereas I'm still obviously carrying a lot of negative emotion about it.

We both enjoy laughing at the latest furry bullshit now that we're not affected by it, but that's about it really.

Tracula
Mar 26, 2010

PLEASE LEAVE

Camrath posted:

That's an interesting question, and I don't have a solid answer. I think in part it's that within the furry fandom people are a /lot/ more open (too loving open IMO) about what they're into kinkwise, due to the whole 'judgement free' thing that I railed against earlier. After all, I'm sure the majority of people are more kinky than they let on publicly. But at the same point the fandom does seem to attract people with extreme fetishes too- again because of the perceived lack of judgement for them.

One thing I've noticed from some of my friends is what I'd call 'fetish creep'. Initially animal people screwin' is enough but then that gets boring so they have to move on to vore, inflation, etc. Then that gets tiresome and eventually you end up at hyper centaur bondage transformation porn and go figure a fair amount of them too are disinterested in RL sex since they basically screwed themselves up so bad that nothing real can live up to this fantasy they've managed to concoct in their head. I also used to know a fur who's main fetish was making GBS threads himself and he literally thought it was a way of life and got angry any time he was questioned but eh, could do a A/T thread on that guy alone :v:

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Paladinus posted:

OP, how young were the youngest furries in your time? I assume minors are not allowed at conventions without an adult , but you mentioned underage drinking at meetups. Did people try to be mindful of literal children who came with their parents to look at cute animal mascots? Did this ever even happen when people wandered into a furry convention by mistake?

Bah, should have refreshed before replying.

When I first started in the fandom it was much smaller and more ad-hoc; it really was just 'group of people meeting in this pub at this time' with no structure or organisation needed. Back then, the limiting factor was 'can you get into a pub without being turned away at the door'. I think there was a 15 year old at my very first meet, but I'm not certain. Once things got more organised with the LFM committee etc a hard lower limit of 16 was bought in, raised to 18 for the big parties (16 is the age of consent over here, 18 the age to get served in pubs). We did occasionally get people trying to sneak in underage, but they were normally caught and banned for it. Cons in Europe almost universally are 18+ for a huge laundry list of reasons.

The londonfur meets have a private venue in the centre of London, well away from the main tourist track (it's in the business district, hence why we were able to hash out a good deal for exclusive use at weekends), so we didn't really get random kids or families coming up to the meet proper. On the fursuit walk, the code of conduct explicitly stated that you were representing the fandom, that you had to behave decently. And while I've heard of problems with furries either interacting with kids inappropriately or at least being perceived to do so at the smaller regional meets, I don't remember it ever being an issue that I was aware of in London.

Convention hotels are generally either fully booked out or have large areas of the hotel that are closed to the public so it's not something that really comes up.

Tracula posted:

One thing I've noticed from some of my friends is what I'd call 'fetish creep'. Initially animal people screwin' is enough but then that gets boring so they have to move on to vore, inflation, etc. Then that gets tiresome and eventually you end up at hyper centaur bondage transformation porn and go figure a fair amount of them too are disinterested in RL sex since they basically screwed themselves up so bad that nothing real can live up to this fantasy they've managed to concoct in their head. I also used to know a fur who's main fetish was making GBS threads himself and he literally thought it was a way of life and got angry any time he was questioned but eh, could do a A/T thread on that guy alone :v:


I think there's a lot of truth to that. And yeah, people with the most disgusting fetishes can get hilariously defensive about them when pressed.

Frankly I'm amazed after so long in the scene that I never really picked up any twisted kinks. Then again I never investigated the sexual side of things, as being both heterosexual and also /extremely/ shy around women in the earlier days it really just wasn't something on my radar.

Camrath fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Jun 11, 2015

Vic
Nov 26, 2009

malae fidei cum XI_XXVI_MMIX
Do you feel like people in fursuits shouldn't be running out in the open or promoting this in a kid friendly way?

I'm getting really uncomfortable when I see those pics of furries letting kids pet them etc, because even though the person in the suit might not be a pedo, the kids might think this is a-okay and actual pedos might take advantage of this.

Is there a sense of responsibility or recognition of this in that community?

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Vic posted:

Do you feel like people in fursuits shouldn't be running out in the open or promoting this in a kid friendly way?

I'm getting really uncomfortable when I see those pics of furries letting kids pet them etc, because even though the person in the suit might not be a pedo, the kids might think this is a-okay and actual pedos might take advantage of this.

Is there a sense of responsibility or recognition of this in that community?

No, I don't feel that way at all.

I can totally understand where the concern originates, but at the same time I think it's a grotesque overreaction. There have been several people sent down for paedophilia from the UK community (including one guy who was quite a good friend of mine), though none for anything actually related to furry. And nobody at all knew until the news broke.

The sad fact is that there will always be people out there who will want to do children harm, and there always have been, but I'm far less concerned about someone in a giant plush dog suit or whatever (which let's face it, stands out) in a public area with many people around interacting with a kid than a teacher, police officer, judge, politician, celebrity or other figure of authority having access to children in private. Anyone who was found out to be a paedophile or other sex-offender was automatically lifetime banned from the London meets, and there is a certain element of intelligence sharing that goes on between the fandom's various organisers (which in itself is something I'll touch on later) resulting in bans being echoed across the conventions and major organised meets. We've also never been shy to get the police involved when needed- several sexually predatory types have been removed by the cops, and there was a rape scandal shortly before I joined the committee (which turned out to be entirely false). The dude involved was taken from a meet in handcuffs.

I'll admit that I wish the fandom in general also took such a hard line on animal rapists too, but as I mentioned earlier in europe at least the higher echeclons are loving lousy with people who molest pets and livestock, so you can imagine the lack of interest there.

Morshu
Sep 30, 2009

Attack monkey! Monkey attack!

Camrath posted:

I've always been fascinated by social demographics in general. Would love to chat more about this off-forum or in PM. :)

Are you comfortable sharing any offsite contact info? I wouldn't mind talking to you about some of this poo poo and sharing some stuff I've seen, but I'm cheap and don't have plat for PMs :v:

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Morshu posted:

Are you comfortable sharing any offsite contact info? I wouldn't mind talking to you about some of this poo poo and sharing some stuff I've seen, but I'm cheap and don't have plat for PMs :v:

Skype is Camrath.Kizuka. I generally prefer facebook to communicate over, but I'm sure you'll understand why I'm not going to share that here. Failing that, camrath at gmail dot com also works.

blarzgh
Apr 14, 2009

SNITCHIN' RANDY
Grimey Drawer

Here is the impression I get from your(Camrath's) descriptions: Something that makes any hobby or group bad is when it efforts to isolate its members from the rest of society, to arrest them mentally, developmentally, socially and emotionally, in order to protect its ranks from their own shortcomings and predilections.

And it just so happens that the Furry Fandom has built much of its foundation on this sort of Compound Mentality.

Is that accurate?

physeter
Jan 24, 2006

high five, more dead than alive
At this point do you wish a non-furry had just started kinkshaming the hell out of you to snap you out of it? Or would that have been a complete waste of time?

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Vic
Nov 26, 2009

malae fidei cum XI_XXVI_MMIX

quote:

Fursolation

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.

It's different from other "fandoms" because you're incognito in a suit that is a magnet for the kids. A giant plush toy. If this is common enough and openly accepted it's a perfect tool for an aspiring pedo.

No fingerprints and the identikit depicts a yellow lab.

e: not saying furries=pedos

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