History of Furries (No pictures included.)

[ChuckleHuck]

On the Internet, of course, no one knows if you’re a dog.

It’s one thing to pretend you’re someone or something you’re not—better-looking, more authoritative, a different sex or gender preference. Digital communication has made intricate and global the game of "let’s pretend," and as a logical extension, there are now developing communities of people with the single common bond that none are who they say they are, but all accept the underlying "make-believe" of the community. How "real" are the communities?

We’re not talking role-playing games here. We’re talking communities. Specifically, we’re talking about a community of people built loosely around the idea that they aren’t really people at all, but instead are, um, "furries." The sort of folk who are getting in touch with their inner kinkajous, if you will.

They hang out together, and there are more of them than you might think.

We’ve heard enough "real weird" on line that the merely bizarre no longer takes us as far aback as it used to. So we approached the digital community of "furries" with open minds. Not so open that stuff would fall out, mind you, but open nonetheless. There is, in fact, a whole subculture of folks out in Usenet newsgroups and digital places with names like FurryMUCK.

The definition of "furry" is, pardon the pun, decidedly fuzzy. It can mean lovers of cartoon characters or "funny animals." (Sloths have always cracked us up.) It can also mean, loosely, fans of anthropomorphic comics like Omaha the Cat Dancer or movies like Feivel Goes West, people who dress up in fur suits and lounge around the house in them, or feel they’re animal spirits trapped in the bodies of humans. They herd in cyberspace, where it’s cheaper than spending a weekend at a "con" like ConFURence in California or Duckon in Chicago, or just the general weird world of sci-fi fandom, where fans of anthropomorphic animals first cut their baby fangs.

On alt.fan.furry they exchange stories and pictures while they discuss the more serious issues of furrydom on alt.lifestyle.furry (Is it improper to dine upon someone you can have an intelligent conversation with? What do you do when someone offers you a chunk of your totem animal chargrilled, cajun style on a stick? What do y’all think about a group delurk on Geraldo? In fur suits with Oreos?)

Furries beget vast quantities of literature and artwork on the Web. Some of the material is cute and cartoonish; while a few web sites, like Miavir’s Collection of Furotica (http://www.dfki.uni-kl.de/~ramsey/furwarn.html), caters to more, ah, purrfectly prurient tastes.

It’s at Miavir’s site where you’ll find the work of Japanese artist Monty, whose anthropomorphic beasties are endowed with multiple pairs of breasts (eat your heart out, Pamela Anderson Lee!), or the Adult Furry Stories classified by interest (Oral, Orgy, Exhibitionism, Male/Male, etc.) Don’t be surprised if you run into cross-bestiality here, like a small gray fox in flagrant delicto with a large, muscular skunk.

Places like these are, in the furry parlance, decidedly "yiffy". Trel’la, a fortyish ocelot "furry persona" in Akron, Ohio, defined for us the oft-used term ‘yiffy’ as "(delicate cough) Well, it’s a term we furs use to describe a certain (cough) state of arousal. It comes from the word ‘yiff’ which is the sound an excited fox makes (presumably). To yiff someone is to...(blush)...well, never mind…A yiffy story is one in which naughty activity predominates."

Conventional and mainstream they ain’t. Not everyone spends time learning how to properly purr (at the front of the throat? The back? From the diaphragm?) or to make love in a fur suit (Nicodemus' Fursuit Pages: Home Page) For them’s that likes role-playing, there’s any of a number of MUCKs (Multi-User Chat Kingdoms) like FurryMUCK, FluffMUCK, Tapestries, and Animal Nation, where you dive in with a text-based telnet program and find yourself in a forest or a cave or in front of a house with a dozen or so, um, furriends.

Considering how much media attention is given to stealth pedophiles and stalkers and other unsavory types behind made-up monikers on the Net, one might be inclined to wonder about alleged grown-ups masquerading as webkittens or anthropomorphic Rottweilers.

Not really knowing what to make of all this, we decided to ask a trained professional, someone who deals with wackos for a living. (If you’re offended by our use of the word "wackos", please bear in mind we mean it only in the most superficial sense.)

"I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘masquerading’," Dr. Lon DeLeon of the Counseling Affiliates of Glastonbury commented. "That’s usually considered not a good thing. If they’re just entertaining or just going along with an acceptable behavior of a subculture, I’d call it going along with the crowd." He didn’t find it terribly unusual for grownups to role-play this way. "People have been doing that all throughout history to entertain themselves, sometimes to interact with people. If it’s grownups playing like children, having fantasies about games that they play, and no one’s getting deceived, it’s another form of entertainment."

(Translation: They’re not really wackos.)

The reasons why people are "furry" are as legion as their numbers. Duncan Da Husky, a 29-year-old chemical engineer in Virginia, whose furry persona is a six-foot husky-morph, collected furry artwork on the Net and found the subculture more in line with his Native American shamanistic beliefs rather than his former Catholic ones. "We have totems, animal spirits that are with us always," he e-mailed us. "Most people ignore these spirits, but some notice them. Exactly what these spirits can do for us (or us for them), if anything at all, I just don't know. But I recognize that, for me, the spirit of Dog [his furry concept of God] is present."

NEKOmancer, a 16-year-old gray housecat on AOL, thinks that we’re all latently furry. "I think that furriness can appear at anytime in a person, young or old. Maybe their reasons for it appearing are different...but I think it can happen at anytime…Since probably everyone has at least once in their life pretended they were someone they were not it’s wrong to say that once you reach a certain age you're no longer allowed to do that."

So what’s next for Furrydom? Furry Power? Species-change operations? We rather doubt it; but what fun! The Animal Rights Movement may never be the same.

[Ace Mercury]

I think it was two factors that really spurred this entire clique: Disney movies and the internet. Disney exposed the entire world's kids to anthropomorphic animals; due to imprinting, they somehow felt a kindred passion for that sort of thing. This normally wouldn't have spread far beyond one or two people, since, well, it is a relatively rare thing among people. They'd either die alone, or eventually marry and become domesticated. Their furry inclination would be forever buried in their Secret Garden.

However, the internet; boy howdy that changed things. Whatever hobby, interest, or fetish you have, there is an entire community of hobbyists, interesteurs, and perverts who will welcome you with open arms. Once you have a community going, fed by new members as old ones leave, culture happens. Memes, tropes, and traditions are passed down from vets to newbies. Once that happens, it's an uncontrollable juggernaut.

[L007 is Undecided]

Originally Posted by ChuckleHuck

NEKOmancer, a 16-year-old gray housecat on AOL, thinks that we’re all latently furry. "I think that furriness can appear at anytime in a person, young or old. Maybe their reasons for it appearing are different...but I think it can happen at anytime…Since probably everyone has at least once in their life pretended they were someone they were not it’s wrong to say that once you reach a certain age you're no longer allowed to do that."

So what’s next for Furrydom? Furry Power? Species-change operations? We rather doubt it; but what fun! The Animal Rights Movement may never be the same.

Humans are furries, apparently.

And the Furry Power thing is already happening. Fursecution protests are all the rage.

[ChuckleHuck]

^Or, in fact, they are animals in human form!

It's very vica versa at times, but only by one's point of view.

Solidly, Humans themself are furries. By law of history.

[Wonder Wario]

If they're animals, they should'nt be allowed the internet. They need to go live out in the woods and leave modern living to us humans.

[ChuckleHuck]

Now now. I'm very sure they're humans, and need to be shot.

Those furry bastards will have to talk to my 12-guage.

[Sarai and Samiel]

I'm afraid that wasn't especially funny. I expect better comedy out of you, Chuckle. Wonder Wario.... well, I have no idea what to expect out of you in terms of comedy, but I think you could stand at least a little work, given that joke.

That out of the way...

I'm in a bit of an interesting situation regarding this sort of a thing. I've had a rather large amount of contact with furries, particularly due various places I tend to hang about on the internet. It is with that experience in mind that I say to you this: Furries are no more deluded or wonderful than 'not-furries'.

What do I mean by this? Well, there are a number of different kinds of furries.

1. "I'm really not human." These are people who, for whatever reason, are certain beyond all doubt that the only human part of them is their body. They are dead sure that their spirit and personality are those of one or another animal. These people come in two major varieties- which I consider the 'good' variety, and the 'bad' variety.

The 'good' variety are usually heavy subscriptionists to Native American spiritual beliefs or something similar. They are focused not so much on the animal itself as the things that the animal spiritually represents. These people are usually correct, in that they have tendencies and natures aligned with the spiritual concepts they have attached themselves to: they are also frequently, if not friendly, at the very least accepting of other people and thus, other peoples' assertions that these furries are not, in fact, furries, and are acting rather silly.

The 'bad' variety have chosen an animal that has a stereotype (playful, friendly cat; timid, reclusive rabbit; sage, advisive elephant; mischevious, genial raccoon; the list goes on...) and declared themselves to be that animal. This is patently false, because as anyone who (for example) owns a cat can tell you, cats are sometimes friendly and playful, but they are equally often capricious, reclusive, uppity, and given their behavior patterns, more than a little autistic- and more than a few are prone to spurts of violence. None of these qualities are represented by 'bad' variety feline furries, but don't tell them that- they'll be all over you trying to convince you that all cats are like them. Often, I consider this a case of self-misidentification- you can really really like one or another kind of animal without being it, and nobody ever said furries neccessarily had to believe that they were a particular kind of nonhuman animal.

2. "I just like the idea." These furries seem to compose the bulk of the group, and their furriness-related hobbies span the entire range. While the most fervent fursuiters are the group 1 furries, there are plenty of group 2 furries that fursuit. There are equally many who simply draw, or who represent themselves via characters who are anthropomorphized animals or humans with animal characteristics (physically).

When it comes to dealing with the outside world, these furries are even more accepting than group 1 'good' furries of other peoples' opinions of the state of 'furryness', and rarely get incensed when people show disdain or discomfort with the concept because, well, it's just something they personally happen to like. Where they like their 'furryness' is also varied- while group 1 furries embed it into every aspect of their lifestyle, group 2 furries mix and match as they feel like, because they don't see the 'furryness' as something mandatory to themselves or as all-important.

3. "OMG FURRY PR0N" These are probably the most common group of furries, and with good reason. You see, this group sees the 'furryness' as an erotic thing, much like some people do excessively muscular or excessively flabby members of their preferred partner sex. This part of the group suffers a lot of drift- as with many kinks, people will tire of them, and people will discover them, on a pretty constant basis. Some people even rotate in and out of circulation on this part of the subculture on a regular, almost time-able basis.

These people are often just as vehement as the group 1 bad furries about defending their interest, because it's *their* interest, and who the feth are you to be judging them anyway- you're a homosexual/bisexual/necrophiliac/corpophiliac/musculophiliac/hypertrophiliac/etcetera anyways. This is kind of sad, because it both reinforces unacceptance of these people, and gives an overall dim view of the subculture as a whole.

IN ANY CASE.

One thing ChuckleHuck missed is the immense impact Japanese culture- or rather, I should say the existence of Japanese Shinto- has had on the furry community. While American comics and European comics have frequently had anthropomorphic animalia in them, and there is a considerable deal of animal-anthropomorphism in native American and native African cultures, Japanese/Shinto (I'm honestly not sure which part certain things originate in) culture has a number of kami who are basically blends of human and animal- not the least famous of which is the nekomata (a two-tailed and usually drunk lusty catgirl), and which influenced the appearance of animal-people in anime and manga (popular culture helps create a subculture? No, really?), spurring all sorts of things- though catgirls have been by far the majority. This is most emphatically demonstrated by the number of 'anthro' or anthropomorphic-animal focused furries- they by far outweigh the 'normal'-animal focused ones, and the vast majority of Disney films have involved animals that were much more anatomically nonhuman. Further, the 'anthropomorphic' animals featured in such cartoons as Mickey Mouse, or the Looney Tunes are generally caricaturized, and most furries specifically do *not* find caricaturized anthropomorphic animals to their liking.

Personally, I think that last distinction is being a little bit picky- but only a little. Then again, I tend to be a picky person.

In the end, unless you're dealing with a group 1 furry, it's simply easier to accept that this is someone who likes that and then move on, simply not bothering to interact with them on whatever they 'feel furry' about if it really does bother you. In dealing with a group 1 furry, it tends to permeate their life, by their choice, and becomes something much more akin to personality aspects like being an incorrigible prankster or commenting on how 'hot' someone walking by is on a very regular basis- if you can't cope with it, you really can't be in regular contact with the person.

Where do I stand in all this? Well, if you've watched me in the Battlefield, or in anywhere else I've shown up for roleplaying games, writing, or other creative pursuits, you've likely noticed that the vast majority of my characters are not human- but they're not patterned after one or another animal.

I certainly don't consider myself 'furry', because I'm not a part of that culture. But I've found that because I tend to represent myself with nonhuman characters (who look nonhuman), a number of nonfurries consider me furry. At the same time, because only two of my characters are specifically related to one animal or another (Duska and Zail) and I still have human characters (one of whom is one of my most major representatives- Selene), most furries consider me nonfurry. So what am I?

Well, hell, I thought I was a person. Now isn't this a little deep for this part of the forums? Ah, well, I felt it warranted saying.

[Wonder Wario]

I was'nt joking.

[Ace Mercury]

VGF Forums: sometimes friendly and playful, but equally often capricious, reclusive, uppity, and given their behavior patterns, more than a little autistic - and more than a few are prone to spurts of violence.

Seriously, though, I wonder if the furry phenomena is somewhat of a microcosm for our culture and the human condition (ironically enough). A person's persona is the exterior mask that they present to the world; however, it's important that it's not an intentional construction, but something that is generated without conscious thought. =\

I remember reading an article (on the internets) about why religion would be evolutionally selected. The crux of the argument lies with our ability to judge the intent of a thing. With a person, we can somewhat predict how another person will act. We project how we would feel onto the other person and guess that, hey, I would/wouldn't like this, so he would/wouldn't like this too. This is essential for a tribe of humans to cooperate together. Handily enough, this skill extends to other situations. For example, when we see a boulder teetering on top of a cliffside, we say that the boulder "wants" to fall down. In reality, the boulder is a rock, and thus has no feelings. You would be crazy to believe that. But, the analogy of "wanting" is so powerful, we attribute it to everyday phenomena without batting an eyelash. Actions, even potential ones, imply desire; desire implies emotion; emotion implies a sentient mind. For more complicated non-humans, such as animals, our projected feelings are even more pronounced. An example would be a goose's nest. When an egg rolls outside of the nest, the mother will nudge it back into the nest. Makes sense, right? If my baby fell out of my crib, I'd put it back; wouldn't you? We think the goose thinks this. In reality, it's pure instinct; anything that looks remotely like an egg is nudged into the nest (golf balls, beer cans etc.). If the egg is taken mid-nudging, the rest of the nudging motion is carried out anyways. But what of arbitrary events, like thunder and solar eclipses? "Who did that?", we ask, and "Why?"

Now, what does this have to do with furries? It's the same situation with our domestic pets; we think they feel lonely when we leave for work, that they're ruining your house out of spite, or other desires that requires our bloated prefrontal cortex. Animals are complex enough to attribute our emotions to. This is why there are a brazillion furry websites, but no Yahoo group with people proclaiming that they're really rocks, trees, or sea slugs. A dog's actions we attribute to an intelligent, thoughtful mind with emotions and aspirations; these things we make up to explain their wacky behaviour. One day, they sit down at a computer, stumble upon a furry site and think "Hey, wait! Those dog-like emotions and aspirations, I have those too!" People can believe that dogs are just like humans, except they don't walk upright and can't use tools.

Another impulse behind proliferation of furries is something called the Uncanny Valley. (It's wholly unscientific, but it's an interesting thought at least.) The idea in this case is that the more human-like a thing is, the more we're attracted to it. This makes animated cartoons so much more interesting than stick figures. However, once you approach near human-like appearance, things start getting ugly. Have you seen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poser"]bad CG models[/url] of humans? They have a subtle creepiness to them. Something was just not right. That is the uncanny valley. Anthropomorphic is far enough from being human that it never enters this "uncanny valley", and thus keeps most of it's attractiveness.

[ChuckleHuck]

This wasn't supposed to be funny. It was supposed to be educational.

Internets are serious f*cking buisness.

So far, me and Ace have followed that concept. I think.

More so than less, furries tend to be animals. As for what we would commonly think furries of as the pictures you'd find on 4chan or something. But how it first dawned the name was by human people in fur suits themselves, as said earlier.

Claiming it weird would...probably be a supported opinion, I hope. Clainming it NOT weird would be a scarecely supported opinion. Though, both are still opinions. The fact is, depending on what fetish you have, depends on what opinion you would strike at these pictures.

How did they turn from people in fur suits to H-Anime?

Well, I myself, can only blame the people in the suits.

[Ace Mercury]

I think it's something innate to our culture or genetics; it's beneficial to have a few wacky people in a tribe, if only for diversity purposes. It's just that the internet exploded it. Now they made up their own tribe, comprised solely of wacky people.

[Chunky Kong12345]

tl;dr

[ChuckleHuck]

Originally Posted by Chunky Kong12345

tl;dr

Do you realize how stupid you sound right now?

[Wonder Wario]

Pfft, everyone knows the Pope can't read.

[ChuckleHuck]

Actually, I think you mean he's To Lazy;Didn't Read.

[Wonder Wario]

Well obviously he's lazy if he never learned to read in the first place. 9_9

He fakes it.

[ChuckleHuck]

Hmm...no wonder I never understand what the pope says when he reads.