Furries | Down the Rabbit Hole

[Music] in recent years the term furry has come to be associated with a group whose identity and affiliations remain mostly vague while many people seem to readily accept the moniker of furry used as both a noun and adjective there appears to be little to no unifying body nor statement of ideals that defines them still the artwork that pervades this group is of a definitively cartoonish style often using anime and manga Disney cartoons and animated movies and television shows from the 80s and 90s for influences while considered their own group they are frequently found in other fandoms adapting their furry interests to whatever other fandom or activity in which they are involved furry avatars are especially common on forums and social media sites so what are furries by the 1940s Walt Disney Productions Limited had not only become incredibly profitable but also ubiquitous in American culture throughout the 1930s their movies and animated shorts had reached national popularity and after America entered World War two they were commissioned extensively to produce widely viewed propaganda films and training animations for the military they were best known for their anthropomorphised animals directed towards a family audience and their cartoonish rounded style and target demographic became a standard for artists working on these sorts of characters this style was based off of similarly cartoonish humanoid depictions of animals starting in the latter half of the 1800s which would come to be known as the funny animal style but as this was occurring post-war counter cultural movements were taking notice of the trend one of these was the underground comics scene stylized with an X which often utilized a similar style to Disney's family-friendly cartoons in order to parody it by putting original characters into various adult situations almost always involving violence drugs sex or a combination of the three these would be printed and distributed by independent publishers allowing them to avoid the content guidelines of traditional publications the funny animals were not exempt from this treatment and they would occasionally make appearances one of these independent works however would reach a popularity beyond that of its contemporaries a comic strip called Fritz the cat which began printing in 1965 it depicted the eponymous anthropomorphic character a disillusioned and depressed philanderer in a city populated by other human-like animals this character proved so popular that an 80 minute long animated movie was created based on the intellectual property independently produced and rated X making a large return on investment inspired in part by Fritz the Cat an independent project called vooodi was proposed by a pair of professional cartoonists they explained their logic and plans in a proposal which they printed on February 29th 1976 quote Ken Fletcher and I read Walker have been talking about this for a long time and we feel that comics today both over and underground are entirely too serious so booty is being created as a showplace for irresponsible silliness and since mass audiences aren't as tolerant of silliness as artists themselves tend to be we decided to make it an amateur Press Association rather than a magazine do you have or could you create for us a page or two of irresponsibly silly stuff which nobody else would have the patience to look at preferably without human characters you see the whole point of funny animal fandom incorporating funny vegetables funny minerals and funny machines fandoms is that humans in general are too serious they get puffed up and self-important and full of this insatiable desire for impact and significance human characters are self-righteous know all the answers and are ready to enforce them on everyone else we don't want all that seriousness here there's already enough everywhere else well anyways we'd like to get funny animals back to the status they deserve at least among fellow cartoonists if you're like us you owe funny animals quite a lot for the part they probably played in your development as an artist he also explains their distribution structure in an APA the individual members send in identical copies of their publication to the official editor sometimes called a central mailer or something similar who shuffles the copies out into mailings that contain a copy of each contributors publication APA zine the mailings are then distributed one copy to each member they detail their vision for the APA we'd like vooodi to be a bimonthly eight-and-a-half by 11 volume dominated by cartoon art of all kinds with some personal news and mailing comments from the members a place where you can just wig out without having to think about the usual market considerations no censorship mixed media offset mimeo ditto silkscreen block print silly putty whatever you can think of no requirements except that you keep those serious people as much out of it as possible humans are ok but only when they're funny animals to sex and violence is ok as long as it's not human sex and violence unquote the artistic demands for booty would be high requesting work only from people whom they termed at skilled cartoonists the first issue would be sent to contribute in April of 1976 though utilizing an APA distribution structure for a visual medium hadn't been practiced before advancements in photocopying technology meant that artists could make copies of their work both easier and cheaper than ever before it proved a remarkable success among those admitted but the exclusivity meant that many were unable to receive their own copies but vooodi gave an outlet to some of those artists who had a greater interest in funny animals and soon that enthusiasm would spread in the early 1970s a man named Mark Merlino had begun a tradition of collecting and showing bootlegged television shows at science fiction conventions in his hotel room one night at the first lost con convention in Los Angeles in 1975 he performed a screening which included a number of Japanese animated shows aired on a local television station in Hawaii the giant robot shows proved especially popular and the interest was so great that he founded a monthly Club devoted to screening Japanese animation which was named the cartoon slash fantasy organization or CFO at first they only had access to bootlegs but soon they created connections with people in Japan who had a special interest in old American shows and the CFO would begin trading with them to receive high-quality videotapes of the newest Japanese animated shows many of these enthusiasts who were attracted to Japanese animation had overlapping interests in the funny animal fandom perhaps in part because of the frequency of characters with animal like visual traits this was likely encouraged by Merlino who was a funny animal fan himself and would even design a funny animal character to serve as the group's mascot some members would create stop motion animation featuring her to serve as bumpers at CFO meetings they also had an interest in spreading Japanese animation to the rest of America and increasing its popularity domestically to do this they created other smaller clubs in cities around the country though the two major ones would be the original in Los Angeles and another in New York City with both animation and funny animal fans as the CFO was growing small funny animal focused independent magazines or scenes were entering production they would feature both visual art and writing but the former proved much more popular and would soon come to dominate them especially as photocopying grew to be cheaper more accessible and of higher quality unlike a pas these scenes were available to the public not only the contributing artists and they helped strengthen interest in the fandom as they grew more prolific at the outset of the 80s the quality of the art would vary greatly with works submitted by both professionals and amateurs of all skill levels though almost all drew in a definitively cartoonish style here the overlap between the anime and funny animal fandoms will become apparent with much of the visual art featuring style choices and design clearly influenced by Japanese animation while no metrics have been gathered it's likely that a majority of these scenes include pornography of funny animal characters and some Z's consisted primarily of this sort of content though the ratio of pornographic to non-pornographic artwork varied widely between each zine some of these scenes would grow even more specific in their targeted content focusing on niche groups within an already small fandom recognizing their reach the CFO would soon begin advertising in these scenes offering discounts for members at science-fiction convention booths if they showed their membership card but the CFO was not the only group forming around funny animals in 1980 an artist named Steve Gallucci attended the world science fiction convention held in Boston that year where he submitted artwork of his anthropomorphic character Irma Velma a number of the attendees enjoyed his artwork and began speaking with him forming a small group around him and discussing funny animals he would continue to print artwork of MFL nough and selfies at conventions quickly gathering people around him each time these interested parties would later meet at other conventions in what came to be known informally as galaxy groups where they would share their interests with each other and form friendships for sometime a sentiment had been growing in the funny animal fandom that there was a lack of funny animal media done in a more serious manner and to meet this demand Galati created albedo anthropomorphic s' a comic anthology devoted to a more serious treatment to funny animals in 1983 perhaps most notably in issue 2 albedo would publish the first appearance of a saga Yojimbo a now internationally recognised intellectual property around this time bulletin board systems or BBS's were beginning to grow in popularity acting as an early version of the Internet these message boards allowed users to share files and information as well as participate in text chat over a phone line with the correct programs and hardware though the price of computers and the technical knowledge required to use them stymied their proliferation they would see widespread usage among the funny animal fandom which already shared many members with geek culture one board in particular the Tigers den would quickly find that a majority of its user base consisted of funny animal fans and so mark Merlino would take ownership of the Tigers den and move the servers to his house this BBS and others like it would help funny animal fans connect and share their interests growing the fandom considerably and allowing them to coordinate and meet at conventions much easier but soon these groups would grow in size at a rate that none of the time could have predicted at science fiction conventions it was common practice for people to host small parties in their hotel rooms often limited to artists who were presenting work at the convention in 1985 however at a convention called Westar con some attendees offered Marc Merlino and his partner rod O'Reilly their room at the Red Lion Inn to use for a party where they featured a special copy of the then extremely rare animal impacts TV special with other con goers it was around this time that a new name for the fandom was disseminated the furry fandom Marc Merlino at a convention panel explains his understanding of where this change began brew spells at his his plushy fans who started calling themselves fuzzy fans in the Lossless Clubhouse these are people who collected plush animals as a collection not for any other reason and this this guy who called himself dr. pepper this fan who really wasn't a furry to speak of I mean he would let furries into his D&D games he didn't mind them but he really wasn't a furry suggested did we refer he fans he suggested the name they just kind of stuck other people give alternative accounts of its inception however and no definitive origin has been discovered this word would be used both as a noun and an adjective to describe those within the fandom and the anthropomorphic art core to it calling the people within it furries by the following year room parties based on furry interests would become a regular occurrence at conventions which became known as furry parties what exactly occurred at these parties is not documented but the promotional material was suggestive one flyer from Rose Kahn in 1988 depicts a naked anthropomorphic character saying no ma'am the morality and fandom party is next door other promotional material was often of a similarly risque nature eventually interest in these parties grew to a point that the rooms couldn't contain them and there was a belief that the fandom had grown large enough that the room parties could be turned into a convention and so to test this theory Merlino and O'Reilly reserved space with the Holiday Inn in Costa Mesa California to hold what they named conference zero the convention was sparse with basic events and nothing resembling a celebrity guests though only 65 people arrived it was enough for the organizers to consider it a success and they took special note of the fact that two people dressed up as anthropomorphic animals including one in leather fetish gear [Music] the following year they held what they called the first real convention and this one was far more successful with double the attendance and featuring artists prominent among those who read the independent scenes around this time another important interpersonal tool was being utilized by the furry fandom the multi-user dungeon sidenote in the 80s multi-user dungeons mu DS or muds had proven an extremely popular pastime for computer users acting as an early multiplayer experience that played and looked very similar to a text-based adventure game users were able to change the world in ways that other players could experience while also communicating through text they connected through the internet which was becoming more accessible around this time using a protocol called telnet mucks proved to be a popular variant of mud especially for role players due to the way that they were structured they typically did not feature combat but instead focused on building and interaction and side note in 1990 amok specifically for furries was created which they named furry muck while this was the first furry centered one more were created in later years they soon proved to be a popular method for furries to communicate and interact regularly with one another even over great distances then in December a Usenet board specifically for furries was created with a few others being made later under different tags here furries were able to stay current with developments in the community and discuss further with each other it quickly became a central part of the furry community with many major members participating throughout the 90s many smaller fan gatherings called fur meets would begin to form as well sometimes with scarcely more than a dozen people while conference continued to grow into the hundreds the problems with such a large population appeared first in the early 1990s mark Merlino describes these issues to whip this back around at conventions one of the things we had to deal with which helps once you're at a hotel for more than one year was there were people who would sabotage the convention any way they could and the original way is they would try to tell people tell they'd call up the hotel anonymously and say they're selling bootleg videotapes and we actually had the deal with police who came to the convention to go through the dealer's room looking for people selling bootleg videotapes then after that it was uh this is a convention of pedophiles there there are people selling you know illegal underage art you know and photos and movies and such in there and chefs convention down and this still happens the furry population increased even further with the proliferation of a new invention that was gaining popularity the World Wide Web this network allowed people who could afford it to create their own websites where they could host text and images in an effort to give the fandom an easier way to share artwork a man named Brian W Anton opened his private image hosting site the veil and Central Library to allow others to upload their own works soon after fir nation was opened with the same purpose of making art more accessible while also allowing for networking then in 1996 a new virtual world was made available that catered specifically to furries named fur Cadia what made it unique was that it could be easily downloaded and run on a PC and featured a colorful isometric graphical interface both factors making it far more accessible than the text-based MUX according to an interview with some of the game's producers the population tripled yearly for the first five years it was available to the public the proliferation of these online resources meant that for a large portion of furries the scenes that had been so popular through the 80s were outmoded for a time the increased connectivity allowed furries to discover news eenz and subscribe to them but eventually increasing internet speeds made it easier to upload higher-quality images online all of these factors together saw rapid exponential increase in people referring to themselves as furry but with the increase in size came the inevitable problems that fandoms and they would be extreme after the first year of conference each successive convention would grow by more than a hundred every year throughout the 1990s however as the crowd grew the convention gained more and more of a reputation for wildness and eroticism beyond only the selling of pornography one man by the name of EDD Kline released an open letter to mark Merlino on the furry Usenet board on February 8 1997 illustrating just how extreme the issue had grown at conference he opens with quote mark this letter is in regards to a serious problem that we encountered at conference 8 I direct this letter at you personally because I assume you are still in charge and responsible for the convention in general I say I assume because certain matters have made me question your authority regarding the running of this con mark pay very close attention to what you're reading I do not want any misunderstandings Kline goes on to describe several incidents while he was at the convention quote on Thursday the day of my arrival on our way to get something to eat at the hotel coffee shop we watched two young men deliberately waiting for what we saw to be mundanes see them and proceed to deep throat each other in a rather blatant manner in the hotel lobby obviously getting a kick out of offending people this went on for the period of time it took us to get across the lobby and into the coffee shop they were still there when we left besides that what the hell was one of your security doing walking around in drag what's that got to do with the so-called premise of the convention along with not aiding and the confidence people would be feeling in approaching security that was very immature and unprofessional after this he describes a scene which has now become infamous in the furry fandom and was soon corroborated by other use net posters quote there was a situation in an elevator Saturday evening when I was taking some important guests back to my room for business we were discussing seb business in the elevator on our way up to the room when one of the gentlemen with me leaned back against the wall as most people do when he found his side and pants covered in semen some diseased bottom-feeder couldn't contain himself and squirted all over the wall he then discusses his concern with the direction of the convention quote when did you decide to make this convention something other than anthropomorphic what are you going to do about this lunatic fringe that is seeping into the convention and understand this I don't care whether they're alternative lifestyle lists or otherwise or if they make love to their pets or any other preference that's not what I'm addressing what are you going to do about the people who aren't interested in attending this convention for its intended purposes we overheard others on more than one occasion asked what's a furry and received the answer I don't know I'm just here for the parties and sex what are you going to do about these same people who are going about methodically ruining the reputations of the alternative lifestyle lists as well and if you don't think there's a problem with this you're not looking in the right places get your head out of your ass and clean up your [ __ ] act I'm not the only one that's pissed about this he goes on to indict mark Merlino for driving out the old regular attendees but immediately afterwards he talked about his experience of what had come to be known as pet auctions and suggests he was allowing prostitution quote gee mark innocent naive us we thought it was going to be a pet auction as in people in costumes and anthropomorphic link lines adopting others of similar interests for the benefit of charity we found it was nothing more than a queer auction Kashima offered to do a lap dance as tosh de her zebra dancer to the highest bidder if she was offering this to a furry audience she probably would have brought the house down instead she got crickets know what this means mark she went for $28 and yet some little [ __ ] in tight black shorts offering veiled sex went for $180 in fact all those offering extras at the discretion of the pet sold for over $40 mark all of this came off as a thinly disguised excuse for pandering you're lucky it wasn't shut down there was also the fear that people with cameras were attending specifically to smear the fandom a fear spurred by a general desire for the fandom to be accepted by those from without these sentiments were a demonstration of a concern frustration that had been building in the furry fandom for some time and soon they would culminate into a moment that would help define more concretely what it meant to be a part of the furry community [Music] in late 1998 a woman named Charlotte Rotman wrote a public letter online under the name Squier at entitled this sordid little business alternatively known as the furry manifesto and it expanded upon Edie Klein's letter to apply it to the greater furry fandom she opened with a strong indictment quote I remember when being a pervert was a bad thing if you were warped you tried to hide it and good for you if you did if you were going to polish your rod to autopsy photos or bugger a Shetland pony you did it in the privacy of your own sick sad home no one else especially not me had to know and that was great the best part was if you decided to crawl out on the roof and inform the neighborhood via midnight megaphone that being urinated on got you hot you would be told in no uncertain terms how very diseased you were most people I know don't have too much trouble distinguishing between a lifestyle choice and a warning sign yup in many parts of the world the idea of making love to andy Panda is still regarded as somewhat misguided most parts that is except furry fandom I don't know what the hell happened here apparently out of ignorance she goes on to miss attribute the origins of the fandom as entirely non-sexual quote to me and a lot of other people furry simply means a fondness for animal human combinations in art movies books whatever if you're biased towards red wall novels have a soft spot for anime catgirls or can't drag yourself away from the secret of NIMH chances are excellent that you're at least slightly fir inclined that's pretty cool by me the simple definition is probably what started furry fandom in the first place she then goes on to list the groups in the fandom she finds particularly egregious quote the most obvious one so far would be suspicions of bestiality this wouldn't be a problem if the first that did it weren't so damn proud of it for those of you that were out sick that day in sex ed class don't [ __ ] your pets raping Fido is a 100 percent bad idea you're making us all look bad goddamnit her second group of interest was also related to sex as we descend just a step deeper into hell we stumble across the path of the plush a file that's shorthand for I find this Miko doll intensely erotic these are the people who use FAO Schwarz as a singles bar I don't know who decided that this was a valid excuse for a sex life but he probably still lives in his mother's basement you don't have to earn a degree in psychology to figure out how thickly laden with sexual dysfunction the very concept of plushy philia is she then attacked what were known as furry lifestyle errs quote Glee we've got us some self-righteous little pokers down here you see just drawing cartoon animals or enjoying watership down doesn't make you a furry no you're not good enough you're not a furry if it's just a hobby if you don't think you're the astrally projected soul of a wolf trapped in a human body or you don't answer the phone with a meow you're not a furry yup don't you feel terribly inferior now Christ on a fire engine but some people will try and force on you next she speaks on those who attach New Age beliefs to the fandom quote there are no werewolves anyone who claims to turn into a giant dog at the whim of a celestial body should be mercilessly ostracized and laughed at with a maximum cruelty her penultimate target perplexingly was vegans using a naturalistic argument to decry their practices quote for those of you who don't live in California that's the total of shunning of all animal products no eggs no leather no beef no fish no clubbing baby seals until their skulls are soft and doe lyke for reasons beyond my comprehension this sort of self-denial is supposed to put you more in touch with your furriness God knows how I've never seen a pride of lions abandon a mule carcass to chase down a fleeing herd of Gordon burgers animals have a strange way of mutilating other animals that's nature welcome to it and there's nothing more furry and natural than gnawing some flesh kids human beings are omnivorous and that means meat if you don't believe me fete yourself a mirror and smile see those pointy things canines so enough with the tofu and bean sprouts your spirit animals are laughing at you the lust was shorter taunting those who are dn't Lee to be animals themselves numerous people in the furry community saw their own beliefs concerns and frustrations presented in Troutman's post these concerns were founded in the scattered news stories that were beginning to appear about the furry fandom during the 90s often showcasing their unconventional sexual habits many of those attending the conference here told us that being furry is just innocent child's play adults pretending to be kids a lot of what goes on here is undeniably adult oriented and it's not for everyone anyways opening bid $2 at the pet auction for instance furries bid for back rubs and other pet services the motives that are involved in many different areas would tend to be a little bit controversial I don't really go in that direction [Applause] and the furry strip show is definitely not kid stuff as far back as 1994 local news outlets were beginning to write pieces on them the March 1994 edition of Wired magazine wrote about those furries who used MUX quote take furry muck for instance the first anthropomorphic mud it makes lambda mu looked like the Young Republicans people describe themselves as furry cuddly animals more times than not they have furry cuddly animal sex unquote apparently enough support was shown to her the Trotman penned a second piece which she titled a modest proposal borrowing the title from Jonathan Swift's satirical essay this writing published on her personal website reads so quote okay so by now we all know I can complain but I've always been a fan of the fix-it or shut up philosophy below is a small proposal as to how furry fandom is an embarrassment there's no getting around that but that doesn't mean it's beyond repair there was a time when the designation furry didn't double for ZOA file plush a file psychopath or naturist it used to be fun and people used to know exactly where you stood when you referred to yourself as a furry but these days people hate being called as much they cringe at the thought of being lumped together with the platoons of perverts who have decided to set up base camp under the guise of fur edom a lot of cool people have dropped out of fariñas altogether rather than be associated with or pressured by these nutballs I still miss a Brodeur agony agony I wrote this page as a response to the massive influx of support for the furry manifesto maybe there's hope for us after all furriness needs fixing and I think I may have an idea it's not enough to distance ourselves from the previously mentioned drooling maniacs even if by some miracle the masses rose up and managed to expel every last whacko from the fan base the name furry has taken on connotations it will likely never shake common sense decrees a secession is an order a subset needs forming a group of furry types who want to make their interest known without being associated with the twitching crack babies and their crazed notions I did a little brainstorming and came up with this burned fur the name has a double meaning non psycho furs can be called burned because anyone with a firm grasp on reality would clearly feel slighted by the screamingly deviant direction the fandom has taken another way of looking at it is the example made of furs who have spoken up against fandom perversion and been burned at the stake for it Eric bloom rich is the best example there are others of course once the manifesto is posted to alt lifestyle furry I'll probably end up being one of them unquote this plan was quickly enacted the burned furs established themselves on message boards as a loose coalition of furries and they had the support of many prominent members of the community who were both personally frustrated with the fandom and concerned about its public image however even with the positive momentum behind them they would begin to face trouble almost immediately [Music] Troutman's proposal attracted many who were concerned about the state of the furry fandom but their goals were ill-defined new members would join who defined degeneracy differently from Trotman the point of greatest contention was the belief that the sexualization of furries was a reprehensible activity and there was a sentiment that artists who did so were violating their artistic integrity this was in spite of the official burned for a website stating that they were not against furry pornography or sexual role-playing since the movement was so decentralized and their founding texts so vague anybody including these new members could speak for the group and they came to be associated with anti homosexuality and prudishness even so their influence would be felt in the core of the fandom in 1999 mark Merlino gave control of conference to a man named Daryl xline who made himself known as a burned fur shortly after taking possession of the convention many online furries were skeptical about the conventions future despite the mixed reception of the burne furs other prominent furries began to join and offer their support and one of the most publicly visible was a man named Eric bloom rich the same person mentioned in Troutman's a modest proposal bloom rich would quickly become known as one of the most vocal members of the burned furs and a critic of the furry fandom his stance had been well known for some time before the burn furs were created but compared to Trotman his vision for the fandom was much more restrictive and directed on October 30th 2000 he made a statement on a furry Usenet board that would come to be associated with him in the fandom though he opens by stating that the writing was his alone he quickly abandons this in his piece and invokes the entirety of the burned furs it reads in part quote I warned that if the world at large should encounter our fandom through these elements the fandom would be irreparably damaged tainted as a haven for the sexually degenerate I warned that the proliferation of pornography depicted to the world of fandom aberrant and despicable squee rats manifesto led to the formation of a core group with no ideology no cohesive structure of the the common desire to bring about a change in the fandom we didn't go far enough fast enough our opponents were so brazen and so ubiquitous that our efforts restricted as they were to the Internet and a few cons were unable to maintain and thicken the dangerously thin veil that separated our tainted fandom from public scrutiny we saw that on The Daily Show there he was Kevin Dwayne proudly displaying his filth to the prying cameras of Comedy Central well in the wake of recent events it has become clear that this will not do we must acknowledge our bully pulpit and take on the forces that would destroy our fandom by name we must have the courage to mount the ivory tower accept the uncomfortable mantle of authority and state unequivocably our accusations against these foul excuses for human beings these people need to be exposed for what they are they must be hounded persecuted and driven back into the maggot ridden depths from which they emerged until they are we cannot hope to make any progress toward the rehabilitation of the fandom they so gleefully and selfishly destroyed he then goes down a list of people but the first was Mark Merlino one of the founders of conference quote I accuse Mark Merlino who masterminded the debacle that was conference three advertised almost exclusively through gay and lesbian resources the man who came up with the egregiously vile decision to give every confirmed member of furry muck a free pass to the con he goes on to indict other individuals for creating and selling pornography calling one a [ __ ] to the dollar and accusing another of selling pornography to children his last targets which he called the most despicable of all for those members of the fandom who hadn't spoken on the subject he closed by comparing himself to Martin Luther King and John raba while calling mark Merlino a demon the reaction from the furry Usenet board was aggressively negative bloom rich was immediately attacked for his hyperbole and apparent misunderstanding of the sexual nature of the fandom from its inception while being called out for his hypocrisy rellenos partner rod o'reilly would later defend Merlino right off the bat um no matter what we might as well get into it cuz people are gonna be gonna think about it but you know people started noticing lo and behold hey guess what there are LGBT people showing up at our furry conventions and there are certain people whom that created a panic because you know what are these LGBT people doing at our perfectly heterosexual fandoms we're like what but oh oh oh then they're like oh we see oh we see you gay guys invited all of these weirdos in you you wrote them letters all personally and said hey come to our convention and make it perverted we're like by 2001 few if any people identified with the movement anymore pushed out by the rest of the community while numerous people in the furry fandom still had their concerns the burned furs nor any copycat group would have the same sort of sway they did however new technology and services were about to irrevocably change the fandom in a way that would have made it nearly impossible for the burned furs to achieve their aims and perhaps made it unnecessary [Music] in the early 2000s the internet was seeing rapid expansion in terms of accessibility and speed personal computers regaining increased storage capacity and processing power and scanning technology was becoming more detailed and widely available these factors together would see a widespread increase in internet usage and digital image creation users could now also share images much more easily with one another and furry artists would begin to use it frequently for this purpose digital artistic tools quickly found even more widespread usage among furries as well being an ideal form of art for the Internet this process was expedited by image hosting websites being created and made available for free the earliest was deviantART which launched on August 7 2015 to hosting art in 2002 deviantART was a powerful tool for amateur artists at the time as a place they could upload and share their art since more and more furries were using the Internet to coordinate and communicate deviantART proved to be an ideal choice for them however there was one important limiting factor for the furry community deviantART would allow nudity but not pornography around that same time another private project called gif star was being created to replace the old image archives being used to house furry artwork the word yes meaning anthropomorphic sex in the furry community this website would act similarly to deviantART but specifically for furry artwork and with no content restrictions soon after other image hosting sites based around anthropomorphic artwork would appear such as cheesy are in 2003 and furaffinity in 2005 the latter growing to be one of the largest repositories of anthropomorphic art due to the popularity of deviantART however many furries would continue to use the platform sometimes in concert with other platforms eventually furries became so prolific on the site that in 2006 a specific category for anthropomorphic artwork was created establishing furries as a core demographic of the platform due to the new ubiquity of the internet more and more furries were accessing both these new online resources as well as old ones such as 4k dia the increased connectivity the internet was also making it possible for furries to communicate advertise and organize new conventions easier smaller conventions that had started in the 90s and early 2000s began growing at an exponential rate with new conventions appearing in numerous cities across North America despite the success of these new conventions or perhaps because of it conference would very abruptly begin to decline even before ownership of the convention was passed to Daryl xline in 1998 the official attendance count was approximately 1250 but the following year it dipped by nearly a third to 850 after the Board of Directors announced a change of venue another convention was set up to take its place in the area and by 2003 attendance was just below 500 less than half of where it was only five years prior at this point the convention was closed but even with the closure of conference the community continued to grow the internet proved to be a powerful mechanism for furry artists to make money from their art being able to take Commission's much more easily and deliver them digitally they could now draw directly for interested clients without having to attend conventions though they still would prove a powerful method for artists to increase their popularity these pieces of art would then often be uploaded to image hosting sites such as deviantART and furaffinity allowing the artists to grow an easily visible public body of work creating furry personas or fur sona's grew ever more popular on these sites as well since it was so easy to share them with one another but the creators often commissioning or creating art depicting this furry version of themselves interacting with other personas as a surrogate or an avatar at this point the furry community began to decentralize more and more encouraged by the structure of the internet different websites and small groups began to form around artists styles and interests including pornographic and non pornographic material while image hosting sites made it easy for users to filter out the sort of content they were seeking from their ever-growing databases where the furry fandom used to be a more unified entity based on a few message boards in a convention now people could seek out independent furry material without engaging with the community itself over I'm furry costuming or fur suiting grew ever more refined with crafts people offering suits for sale and shipping them worldwide artists would expand from the traditional cartoonish style and develop their own frequently borrowing styles from others within the fandom even so the influence of anime and Disney is still often visible today the furry community is scattered and splintered subdivided into smaller sections both on the internet and in real life these groups continue to grow more specific as time goes on organized by interests ranging from political affiliations to art styles to sexual fetishes and they continue to subdivide regional furry conventions are common each with their own rules and restrictions on art and conduct even the definition of furry appears to mean something different to every person who claims the moniker to some it means actively taking part in a community of other people with interest in anthropomorphic animals while to others it means only an enjoyment of such media but no matter how each person may define it one thing is clear the furries are here to stay [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Fredrik Knudsen

Views: 4,246,435

Keywords: Down the Rabbit Hole, fursuit, ConFurence, Fredrik Knudsen, Burned Fur, Mark Merlino, Rod O'Riley, The Prancing Skiltaire, Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, CFO, Convention, furry, furries, DeviantArt, FurAffinity

Id: 8aF2GxWi7Ag

Length: 44min 7sec (2647 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 13 2018