Anyone media star, con organizer or tiktoker that stands out as someone that you could point to as a leader?
Or is furry pretty much anarchy (in the best way)?
Is it Super Animal Royal? Does FNAF count as furry? Or if it doesn’t exist, what furry video game do you wish existed?
It's that time of the year again where young furries discover that they can get a very cheap "fursuit" at places that sell Halloween costumes.
These mass-produced suits are often poor quality, but are the most some people can afford.
Along with the store bought suits are sites like MeowWolf (etc) that use basically underpaid labor to crank out generic fursuits (which is a shame because I actually love some of the designs that come out of that store)
Where do you stand? Are you a hardline "a first suit should be one you build if you can't pay a furry to do it" or do we "live in a society" and it doesn't matter? Or some other way to feel?
I grew up with a fandom that was still largely underground and very NSFW, in my experience the fandom has continually gotten younger and more PG.
I know there are people who disagree, and see more evidence that the pure wholesome fandom they grew up with is slipping into degeneracy. And there is evidence for that, certainly, as the rise in popular creators who talk about the NSFW side shows.
What do you think, and do you think it's good or bad?
Or do you?
In person, telegram, bsky, x, some secret third thing?
Or if your a student, whatcha studying, whatcha want to be doing? Not employed or a student, do you wish that was different or is that the end goal?
Bowling? Gaming? Sewing? What else do you do besides furry? Do you incorporate furry into your other hobbies?
There was some discussion recently about the differences between RFH and FurryDiscuss, and I thought there was a really interesting point that came about.
“Low effort” and redundant, etc, posts are removed often because they are seen as low quality, and therefore don’t have any value.
However, despite the complaints about these low quality posts, I sometimes see a lot of engagement and sometimes great conversation in the comments. Some people seem to enjoy using the post as a launching point for bigger discussion.
I’m not talking about bad faith arguments here, like the average “why do furries murder people” Type stuff, but more when someone who is ignorant or immature is trying to test out topics and either fumble it or put their ignorance on display.
Should these kinds of low quality posts be removed always because they can be annoying, or do they have some value to the community as discussion points and learning experiences for people new to exploring community?
Stolen from some comments elsewhere where there was a group of furries discussing how they wished they weren't furries because of the negative perception.
Have you ever felt shame, or even wished you didn't like furry art/fursuits/etc?
We've seen the fandom grow from back-room parties to medium cons to a major economic force that floods into cities and controls the internet.
Where do you think it's going? What's the next thing for Furry? Are we going to see more mainstream pandering? Corporate backed furry art? Actual political campaigns trying to fight fruiting?
Easy question, but how did you decide on a species? Do the colors have any special meaning? Was it difficult, or easy?
I was talking to a very philosophical about furries friend and they made an observation about how many TikTok “furries” don’t actually participate in the fandom.
They don’t have FAs full of favorites, they don’t join discussions or groups on social media, they don’t go to small cons or anything. They just have some expensive recording equipment and an expensive fursuit. They are just using furry for the aesthetic and the clicks.
They also tend to have a lot of opinions on how spaces should be policed, even if they don’t participate.
Is that your experience? Are we seeing a wave of fake furries, who just saw the attention suiters got online and are trying to get in on it while not wanting to actually be part of the fandom?
Or do you think these are furries that are just too embarrassed or self conscious to do anything other than suit and say opinions online, and that they’ll grow out of it. Or some third option.
Hanging out with friends in the hallway clogging traffic? "Those" kind of room parties? Stocking your favorite suiter with a camera you don't know how to use?
Or if you have never been, what do you hope to experience?
Let's dive in.
I noticed that other furry subs often ban discussions for various reasons, and it's a bigger number of removed posts that I realized until I started paying more attention.
It seems like there is a clear demand for more engagement and talking. What kinds of things would you like to see more of in general in the fandom, or even just this sub?
AI is pretty much in the constant discourse cycle these days (and for very good reason) and it has proliferated into furry spaces.
There are furries who believe that AI art is fine - the arguments don't work on them, they don't care about the ecological or copyright issues, and they don't value the labor of the artist. The end result is all they care about and for them slop is good enough.
I'm guessing they are pretty rare, but that's the extreme opinion.
Some furries claim to use AI as a drawing tool. Sometimes to generate reference material, generate patterns, sometimes generate assets for the drawing like a background.
I have heard from some furries that they have used AI for drawing studies or to learn processes, or use it for temporary assets in games or animations. Most programmers I know use AI in some capacity (usually as a requirement of the company they work for).
At what point does using AI tools become problematic in your opinion?
I'm fairly against AI in principal - but my opinion has changed somewhat. I know that a big part of the pro-ai as a tool argument is that it's doing something that isn't taking away from someone's job (i.e. using AI to create a static reference doesn't hurt any other artists, those artists using those assets would otherwise just not have them) and using AI trained on ethical sets eliminates the whole "stealing art" argument, and though the ecological issue still worries me I'm sure many people would argue that simply using the internet at all is pretty much the same.