Very good analysis of Furry from the outside, nicely done 👍 Some thoughts I had as I watched it:

• Most of the pearl-clutching about Furries seems to come from Puritan countries, esp. USA & UK. Other countries? Quite the opposite. Examples off the top of my head:

  • Orangina citrus soda (French ad agency FFL Paris)
  • German beer Füchschen (literally, “Foxy”)
  • Mexican baseball mascot lapdancing in the crowd

• Notions of “children”'s mascots almost never occur to any of us Furs, except for the obvious Rule 34 moments. It more feels like, without consciously thinking about it, my childhood interests grew up with me. Does nostalgia play a role? Perhaps some unstated rebellion against squeaky-clean Puritan and Corpo media?

• Xenophilia & neophilia are probably the strongest drivers, conscious or not. Every day in this fandom, someone comes up with something both strange and wonderful.

• Accordingly, Furry art is a wondrous baptism-by-fire of Queer acceptance (also conscious or not), especially regarding body-positivity. As one gets used to seeing an 8-foot fox with 3 pairs of watermelon-size breasts & multiple tentacle dicks, the discomfort of trans and intersex bodies falls away. (I admit to my shame that transmen once made me uncomfortable; Furry art slowly slapped me out of it.)

• It’s both flattering and amusing to have “deeper meaning” / “deep sense of self” ascribed to our silly cartoon animals. Most days it feels like Furry simply is, no hidden depths needed. Is all art like this?   “Just shat out this portrait of some lady over the weekend, it’s whatever” ~Leonardo da Vinci, probably

Agreed. Interpersonal relationships are stronger bonds then us tech dudes (myself included) tend to appreciate.

People are still on Facebook despite all their unacceptable actions over the years, because the alternative is to completely uproot your whole social circle (everyone all at once, good luck with that) or seriously risk cutting off people you care about.

Almost the same applies to Furs still on Telegram, though afaik TG hasn’t ever done anything remotely as bad as Zuck, Elon or Spez

EDIT: sidestepping the uprooting part is what’s fantastic about the Fediverse btw; compat and futureproofing between diff websites being a must-have from the start, and that’s awesome <3

Link to the Steam page still works, so at least the megalist of Furry games is still there

Google’s AOM conflicts of interest aside, the switch makes sense to me. File sizes are still king, for both storage and for Web Vitals – the latter especially matters on slower cell connections.

Though it does cheer me up how the “art software” and photography big-wigs (e.g. Adobe) recently threw weight behind JPEG-XL <3