[MuppetFace]

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It's a bit rough comparison, but I think it works.

 
Of course, not all furries are fursuiters.

 

[MeeHungLowe]

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It's both, plus it's pretty much the same as people who enjoy dressing up themselves or their lovers in more conventionally sexy costumes in the bedroom.
 
Those are all separate components and different people are into different combinations of them.

 
Wow - OK.  I guess I understand.  That would seems a bit too close to beastiality to me.  I guess what my neighbors want to do is their own affair as long as they keep their blinds closed.
 
Fursuiters?  Does that mean wearing a full costume with the head and all?  If you are not a fursuiter, then it's just makeup?

 

[a_recording]

It really feels like this thread has come full circle, because I remember last year talking about furries right after I had just attended a local furry convention in Sydney; now its 1000 posts and Furjam is coming up again in a few weeks!
 
Imma go again, since part of my thesis is about furries.
 
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My previously mentioned friend takes her fursona more seriously and has been part of that scene's culture for a while now; I'm pretty sure she's had it since she was a teenager. Apparently some furries even see it as a totem animal or some aspect of their spirituality. 

 
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@MuppetFace, I find it interesting that you created a fursona, as I have friends that have recently asked me to join their wolf pack, which involves much of the same thing. To be honest I told them I respect their interests but am not sure I'd want to owe the level of dedication they ask; half and full moon all night meetings and wearing a wolfs tail (I'm assuming a faux fur ornament) on my bag, as well as joining their "pack." They're friends I see in college every so often, but I just don't wish to change my direction in life for something I don't really beleive in. I'd rather continue to train with my martial arts loving friends.

I did promise to go to one meeting on the next full moon though, which will be interesting.

 
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I really, really don't get the furry/therian/otherkin stuff but I think I've reached the live and let live stage with that now though.  Over the years I've done my best to try and be aware of prejudices and think about them so I can get rid of them.  It actually really freaked me out at first.  I had a pretty poor initial reaction to it for some reason.  After a while I was able to think about it logically and just file it away in the category of "things other people like which I don't like."
 
I still don't get it at all, at least the type where you identify strongly with your fursona.  I'm not going to bother trying to list things but I'm not exactly the kind of person who feels he has to stick with socially acceptable or 'mainstream" hobbies or interests either.  There are all kinds of 'fringe' or 'subculture-y' thing that I'm pretty in to or mildly in to.  Even for most things that I'm not in to at all I can at least see how or why someone would be in to it.  With the more 'hardcore' furries I've got no idea at all.  Normal roleplaying I get.  Roleplaying something unusual and outside normal human experience I get.  Roleplaying weird stuff just for the challenge I get.  I can understand liking and/or being turned on by the art even if I don't/aren't.  Personally identifying yourself with a culturally dependent anthropomorphic characterization of an animal is something I don't get at all.  I think some anthropological examination would be interesting though.
 
I could be friends with people like that, hang out and what not, but I don't really think I could join their "pack" if they were the type that strongly identified with a particular fursona and didn't just enjoy roleplaying, liked the art, or something else.  It would just feel too disingenuous to be "pretending" like that.

 
From my experience meeting furries, this is my impression. Most furries do not consider themselves 'roleplaying' their fursonas. Their fursonas are as Muppetface suggests, totemic - kind of like personal spirit guides that draw from a set of traits that they both recognise in themselves or idealise. So rather than a role or a performance that you inhabit, the fursona has a life of its own.
 
They are a kind of personal mythology. When you consider that people's identities can be summarised as as a story they tell themselves in their head about who they are, based on how they interpret their memories, the idea of having alternate personal narratives doesn't seem all that foreign. At the same time, the idea of describing the mythology as true or false is really besides the point - myths do not function necessarily as a true account of events, but as stories that convey an understanding of events that are intuitive on a basic level. 
 
What I'm really interested in is the idea of ritual and belief in this context. Furries use all kinds of mediums to create their fursonas, to project those fursonas into different spaces, etc etc. I'm particularly interested in how they seem to be especially enabled by technology to do so. ie: I met furries who refer to each other by their fursonas, have separate twitter and social media accounts for those fursonas, make digital art or commission it about their fursonas, and gain fandoms of their own.
 
It seems interesting to me that their standing within the community seems dependant on how well they are able to articulate or realise their fursonas - and because computers and the internet allow for rich content creation, social co-ordination and instantly accessible audiences, its a medium of choice. There are other mediums - making an expensive latex fursuit, carrying around a wolf tail charm, etc. It all seems tremendously ritualistic - they conduct ceremonies and create artwork, or make charms and idols, and in doing so call an idea, or an entire life, into existence.
 
There are of course exceptions to what I've said above; not every person I've met into the furry fandom has a fursona. Some people seem to be casual furries: they make the fursona and enjoy the shared experience of the community, but don't strongly identify with it. On the other end of the spectrum the otherkin literally believe they are furries trapped in a human body, which seems to be an extreme and interestingly socially constructed kind of dysphoria. (Maverick, I hadn't heard of the therians so thank you.)
 
Why I'm interested in this is because I'm wondering if the internet and computing technology seem to be introducing this kind of behaviour (the construction of personal mythos and the creation of spiritual avatars) to people in a way that doesn't immediately arouse prejudice. 
 
In Western culture and philosophy, theatrical metaphors permeate thinking about people's identity. At the same time, there's a deep rooted suspicion (seemingly from Plato onwards) of the artificial or constructed. Almost every single word we have for theatre can be used pejoratively: staged, fake, artificial, histrionic, melodramatic, etc. We think furries are very strange, we scoff at people who have Second Life accounts, Lady Gaga has to vehemently deny being a constructed performance when its quite clear that that her work is about the idea and theatre of pop performance itself and she is a genius at its exploitation and deconstruction.
 
But that prejudice does mean that we might fail to investigate behaviour that is really quite natural and familiar to all people. Rather than interpreting it as artificial performance (and thus immediately rejecting it on the basis that it 'fails' the reality test) are there other metaphors that will work?
 
I referenced an interesting line about this from a text about imitation. "No one would fault children who play doctor for failing to cure the sick." 
 
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Yeah, I'm kind of adverse to the social dimension of the furry fandom. On an individual level, a lot of the people I've met are cool, but in large groups furries can be rather obnoxious. Some of them don't seem to have a respect for personal boundaries, don't seem to practice personal hygiene, disrespect the facilitators who host their conventions, etc. Basically adults acting infantile (sometimes literally...). 

 
Yes, this I have noticed. I had thought anime conventions were a big ball of awkward (and cosplay is another kind of interesting personal ritual, this time towards an established and independent fictional canon), but this was another kettle of fish. 
 
Now of course, another thing that intrigues me is that furries come from a culture that regards their behaviour as deviant. They may not think consciously about it in the pseudo spiritual terms I've detailed above, and yet still have to deal with the cultural inhibition against performance and artificiality. They all concede (or at least the ones I met at the convention) that what they do is kinda weird and awkward, and even in the community they form cliques and factions because 'some furs are just way too awkward'. When I see something like that, I'm amazed at how these people are able to deal with very contradictory ideas in a way that suggest a pretty distinct kind of intellectual flexibility / doublethink. 
 
Now of course, people who are awkward are probably more likely to turn towards an imaginary alternate existence. I think the experience must be in some way rewarding or therapeutic for them though, and I don't see why the same logic can't work for more people. It's strange that imagination is also regarded as infantile in society, as if it were not a fundamental desire of human beings to create and play.
 
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I'm new here and I'm actually pretty scared about posting in this thread, but I guess I don't have much to lose.  I have a lot of questions about the "furry" world.  First - my only exposure has been from brief mentions on TV shows.  Those shows always had a kinky sex aspect to the furry world.  Is that always the case, or is that actually a small subset of that world?  I think I remember an episode of CSI where the case hinged on "bodily fluids" deposited during a "fur pile" - or something like that.  Does that really happen???  That's really gross.

 
A lot of furries do engage in the kinkier aspects of the subculture, and a lot of them don't seem to care for it. I don't have numbers, but I do suspect that its a sexual thing more often than not. Most of the people I met at this furry convention were gay or bisexual. I don't know if this holds for the community at large, but the association between identifying yourself as non-normative in regards to sexual practices and being more liberal about other dimensions of sex seems logical enough. The thing is that when you have a subculture that is so intimately involved with a confusion of the corporeal and the mental, it does seem to give rise to all kinds of fun sexual phantasms.
 
I love CSI episodes where you can tell the writers looked briefly into some kind of news story, and try to make something sensational out of it. I've seen the episodes about virtual worlds, vampire cults, geolocation sex cruising apps. It's hilarious lol.
 
The technical term I believe you are looking for is "yiffing".
 
Also welcome to the thread lol.

 

[a_recording]

Quote:

 
Wow - OK.  I guess I understand.  That would seems a bit too close to beastiality to me.  I guess what my neighbors want to do is their own affair as long as they keep their blinds closed.
 
Fursuiters?  Does that mean wearing a full costume with the head and all?  If you are not a fursuiter, then it's just makeup?

 

 
 
Lol, its funny to me that the fursuiters seem to be respected as the most hardcore members of the community (since they spent the most money) but its not for everyone.

 

[a_recording]

Quote:

I'm new here and I'm actually pretty scared about posting in this thread, but I guess I don't have much to lose. 

 
Btw, um... how did you ever get that user name past the mods? Lol...

 

[gelocks]

Quote:

Curse you SanDisk!
 
My Clip Zip arrives and immediately after loading a little music on to it it freezes.  I reset it and it hangs on the boot screen.  The PC won't recognize it so I can't format it or update the firmware and no amount of continuing to reset it will make it boot.

 
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This all happened to me when I first got my Zip. Still happens occasionally but it's pretty much fine.

 
WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
 
Don't scare meeee!!!

 

[lee730]

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Btw, um... how did you ever get that user name past the mods? Lol...

lmao just noticed that after you made that comment. It went over my head .

 

[eke2k6]

Life
 
 

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

From my experience meeting furries, this is my impression. Most furries do not consider themselves 'roleplaying' their fursonas. Their fursonas are as Muppetface suggests, totemic - kind of like personal spirit guides that draw from a set of traits that they both recognise in themselves or idealise. So rather than a role or a performance that you inhabit, the fursona has a life of its own.
 
They are a kind of personal mythology. When you consider that people's identities can be summarised as as a story they tell themselves in their head about who they are, based on how they interpret their memories, the idea of having alternate personal narratives doesn't seem all that foreign. At the same time, the idea of describing the mythology as true or false is really besides the point - myths do not function necessarily as a true account of events, but as stories that convey an understanding of events that are intuitive on a basic level. 
 
What I'm really interested in is the idea of ritual and belief in this context. Furries use all kinds of mediums to create their fursonas, to project those fursonas into different spaces, etc etc. I'm particularly interested in how they seem to be especially enabled by technology to do so. ie: I met furries who refer to each other by their fursonas, have separate twitter and social media accounts for those fursonas, make digital art or commission it about their fursonas, and gain fandoms of their own.
 
It seems interesting to me that their standing within the community seems dependant on how well they are able to articulate or realise their fursonas - and because computers and the internet allow for rich content creation, social co-ordination and instantly accessible audiences, its a medium of choice. There are other mediums - making an expensive latex fursuit, carrying around a wolf tail charm, etc. It all seems tremendously ritualistic - they conduct ceremonies and create artwork, or make charms and idols, and in doing so call an idea, or an entire life, into existence.
 
There are of course exceptions to what I've said above; not every person I've met into the furry fandom has a fursona. Some people seem to be casual furries: they make the fursona and enjoy the shared experience of the community, but don't strongly identify with it. On the other end of the spectrum the otherkin literally believe they are furries trapped in a human body, which seems to be an extreme and interestingly socially constructed kind of dysphoria. (Maverick, I hadn't heard of the therians so thank you.)
 
Why I'm interested in this is because I'm wondering if the internet and computing technology seem to be introducing this kind of behaviour (the construction of personal mythos and the creation of spiritual avatars) to people in a way that doesn't immediately arouse prejudice. 
 
In Western culture and philosophy, theatrical metaphors permeate thinking about people's identity. At the same time, there's a deep rooted suspicion (seemingly from Plato onwards) of the artificial or constructed. Almost every single word we have for theatre can be used pejoratively: staged, fake, artificial, histrionic, melodramatic, etc. We think furries are very strange, we scoff at people who have Second Life accounts, Lady Gaga has to vehemently deny being a constructed performance when its quite clear that that her work is about the idea and theatre of pop performance itself and she is a genius at its exploitation and deconstruction.
 
But that prejudice does mean that we might fail to investigate behaviour that is really quite natural and familiar to all people. Rather than interpreting it as artificial performance (and thus immediately rejecting it on the basis that it 'fails' the reality test) are there other metaphors that will work?
 
I referenced an interesting line about this from a text about imitation. "No one would fault children who play doctor for failing to cure the sick." 

 
I still don't quite get it.
 
I have a difficult time understanding why anyone would want to blur the line between fact and fiction like you seem to be suggesting.  I do think the stigma against fiction you mention is pretty silly.  At least when it's just for entertainment.  Work hard, party hard, and if you keep you mental boundaries up then no harm will come from confusing the two.  I think that's probably where the whole stigma of fiction comes from in the first place.  Maybe the thinkers of the time saw it was being abused or maybe it just didn't fit into their preconceived notions of something or other so they disliked it.  Maybe Romy can glean some insights from her knowledge of the history.  I think remaining mindful that your fantasy is a fantasy protects your ability to indulge in it.  In the short term parts of reality you don't like will intrude upon your fantasy, confusing reality and fantasy will limit you ability to affect reality with your decisions, and in the long term fantasy itself will be demonized for the trouble it brings when used improperly.
 
Also, just mentioning a "spiritual totem animal" starts me down the path of designing a fantasy RPG class or skill tree and wondering how I'd balance "bear" and "rat" or something like that...
 
The ritual part makes sense though and I hadn't though of it or heard it before.

 

[a_recording]

Quote:

 
I still don't quite get it.
 
I have a difficult time understanding why anyone would want to blur the line between fact and fiction like you seem to be suggesting.  I do think the stigma against fiction you mention is pretty silly.  At least when it's just for entertainment.  Work hard, party hard, and if you keep you mental boundaries up then no harm will come from confusing the two.  I think that's probably where the whole stigma of fiction comes from in the first place.  Maybe the thinkers of the time saw it was being abused or maybe it just didn't fit into their preconceived notions of something or other so they disliked it.  Maybe Romy can glean some insights from her knowledge of the history.  I think remaining mindful that your fantasy is a fantasy protects your ability to indulge in it.  In the short term parts of reality you don't like will intrude upon your fantasy, confusing reality and fantasy will limit you ability to affect reality with your decisions, and in the long term fantasy itself will be demonized for the trouble it brings when used improperly.
 
Also, just mentioning a "spiritual totem animal" starts me down the path of designing a fantasy RPG class or skill tree and wondering how I'd balance "bear" and "rat" or something like that...
 
The ritual part makes sense though and I hadn't though of it or heard it before.

 
Haha, I'm not trying to convince anyone that the fandom is for everyone. It's not for me, though I do think the community is incredibly interesting.
 
The very idea that everyday people can confuse reality from fantasy (or the actual from the potential) is a bit silly. People are usually good at differentiating between the two, and as a people we are fascinated by performance and narrative. It's like the classic argument about violent video games causing gun crime. It reduces a tremendously complex relationship we have with fiction into "monkey see, monkey do."
 
This isn't to say that the media we consume doesn't exert some interesting effects on people. Here's are two interesting papers I've read:
 
Popularity of soap operas correlated to decreased family sizes in Brazil
Liberalised access to internet pornography correlated to decreasing rates of sexual violence

 

[KevinWolf]

@a_recording,
 
The fandom is so diversified that's really difficult to make any generalization. There are Therians and Otherkins, but many just have a character that is an extension of the personality. They indentify themselves with these characters but they don't make any relations like otherkins.
 
And isn't that many that are into the kinky side of the things, from what I really know, there's only a really small minority that are into sexual activities involving fursuits or similars.
 
And fursuits doesn't necessarily fully cover your body, there are partials, which is composed by the head, hand-paws, foot-paws and tail.
 
I'm also curious to know which convention did you went.

 

[MeeHungLowe]

Quote:

 
Btw, um... how did you ever get that user name past the mods? Lol...

 
I have had this username on many forums and never had a problem with it.
 
I'm thinking that Civil War reenactors and renaissance fairs are also just fantasy role playing.  Maybe the difference is as you say - the ability to seperate the reality from the fantasy.  When you start running your real life according to your inner wolf totem, I think it might be time to back away from the bottle and have the bartender call you a cab.   

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

 
Haha, I'm not trying to convince anyone that the fandom is for everyone. It's not for me, though I do think the community is incredibly interesting.
 
The very idea that everyday people can confuse reality from fantasy (or the actual from the potential) is a bit silly. People are usually good at differentiating between the two, and as a people we are fascinated by performance and narrative. It's like the classic argument about violent video games causing gun crime. It reduces a tremendously complex relationship we have with fiction into "monkey see, monkey do."
 
This isn't to say that the media we consume doesn't exert some interesting effects on people. Here's are two interesting papers I've read:
 
Popularity of soap operas correlated to decreased family sizes in Brazil
Liberalised access to internet pornography correlated to decreasing rates of sexual violence

 
Well I'm mostly just trying to understand it.  There are plenty of other thing that I know aren't for me but I can understand why they are for someone else.
 
I didn't mean to suggest that most people will end up with full on delusions or something but patterns of though do reinforce each other and affect people in more subtle ways.

 

[DigitalFreak]

Damn I missed the 1000 page party. So anyone save me any cake??
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I'm going to a headphone meet this Sunday at my buddies place. He just got himself a Hifiman HE-6 and I can hardly wait to give it a listen.

 

[compoopers]

For me the fursuit stuff crosses uncanny valley really, really freaking hard. I know that's not exactly the right way to use that term but I can't really explain it any other way.