It’s not my thing and I truly don’t get it. That said, I’m curious about the initial draw, how you started and why. What does participating look like to you? Do you consider it an interest, hobby, kink or some combination/something else? I support you doing whatever you like so long as everything is legal/consensual. If you’re going to comment and you’re not a furry please be respectful.

  • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
    141·
    19 hours ago

    A ton of factors, but I’ve been a fur for 22 years and I give zero fucks about what others think about it/me, so an unfiltered view.

    Most of my friends are furry, and all of them are at least neutral on the topic. I had a clan I was in during my ‘okay yes fine I am a furry let’s make a sona I guess’ awakening, and I was booted for that fact. So everyone I’m friends with has to not be a dick, or you’re getting blacklisted.

    Most of my friends are weird, and the furry ones especially. I know no innocent furries, we all have our vices, and I love that. A space where I can be weird, suggestive, kinky, lewd is liberating. But even beyond sexy stuff, it’s just this melting pot of weird interests, hobbies, aspirations, and everyone wants to see everyone else succeed. The ‘vibe’ as the kids call it, online or in person, is always positive. Compared to gestures to the outside world, yeah nah I’m staying in the happy bubble.

    Most of us are quite intelligent, lots are STEM, many are post-secondary grads. Most are okay with atheists/non believers. I thiiiink the majority are gay/les/bi. Basically, a group of smart people who aren’t dicks to each other. Again, nice place to be.

    With the exception of my first relationship, which was never made ‘official’ but we were together for a couple of years, I only date furries. For the above reasons and more, I limit the dating pool from like a billion+ to hundred-thousands (maybe millions?), then further by being gay (very limited homoflexibility). But I want to be with someone (one or several) who share my interests, excitement, ideas and topics; and who shares similar values, like not being a dick to others. These simple traits are… less common, in the general population.

    And of course, the kinky stuff. I’m all over the place and with the exception of some obvious ‘yeah nah’ topics that are generally assumed unless stated otherwise by people, I am will to/have tried a lot of things. Again the sort of non-judgemental environment let’s me say something that would be absolutely wild anywhere else, and others will respond like it’s nothing at all. Being free of judgements is absolutely unique, in my experience.

    There are a few shady characters, bad apples, and all that - every group has them. But I haven’t interacted with one myself, and it’s been over two decades, so I’m pretty confident in saying that the bad characters are a rounding error, and that ‘we are all in this for the positivity of each other’.

    • iocase@lemmy.zip
      2·
      12 hours ago

      Most of us are quite intelligent, lots are STEM, many are post-secondary grads.

      Unironically if a plane crashes heading to a furry convention it would literally bring western software to its knees overnight. There would be outages. “He’s our most experienced engineer! Only John knows how this system works!” Bank of America goes dark

      • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        9 hours ago

        Different scale, but a couple years ago at Anthrocon one of my servers in my homelab threw a warning that the cache drive was running low on health/remaining writes. Odd since it was like, not even 6 months old, but whatever, I’ll fix it once I’m home. Literally like 6 hours later the drive went read-only and died. I had to head to the hotel and make sure the system didn’t lose any data, and would recover successfully, on one of the laptops I brought to the hotel. Then shop and order two new drives, so when I got back home I can do a swap and config. Then back to the con space.

        If I was on that plane or whatever, my family and to a small extent my friends, would be totally fucked. I have stuff automated as much as I can across all systems, but eventually something will require manual intervention and the cards start to fall. And I’m the go-to guy in my social circle, so everyone will just start screaming and panicking.

    • Victor@lemmy.world
      2·
      17 hours ago

      Can I ask an honest question? My impression is that a large proportion of male furries are gay compared to non-furries. Is that just prejudice on my part or is there any validity and/or data on that?