Furry fandom

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The furry fandom is a subculture interested in anthropomorphic animal fictional characters with personality and human characteristics. Examples of anthropomorphic attributes include showing human intelligence and facial expression, speaking, walking on two legs, and wearing clothes. Furry fandom is also used to refer to the community of people who gather on the Internet and in furry conventions.

Video Furry fandom

Histori

According to the fandom historian Fred Patten, the hairy concept originated from a science fiction convention in 1980, when the character image of Steve Gallacci Albedo Anthropomorphics began a discussion of an anthropomorphic character in a science fiction novel. This leads to the formation of discussion groups that meet at science fiction conventions and comic conventions.

The hairy fuzzy specific term has been used in fanzines since 1983, and has become the standard name for the genre in the mid-1990s, when it was defined as "an organized appreciation and dissemination of art and prose about 'Furries', or characters anthropomorphic fictitious mammals ". However, fans regard the origins of the hairy fandom much earlier, with works of fiction like Kimba, The White Lion released in 1965, Richard Adams's novel Watership Down , published on in 1972 (and the 1978 film adaptation), as well as Disney's Robin Hood as a frequently cited example. The discussion of newsgroups on the Internet in the 1990s created some separation between fans of "funny animal" characters and furry characters, meant to avoid baggage associated with the term "hairy".

During the 1980s, hairy fans began publishing fanzines, developing diverse social groups that eventually began scheduling social gatherings. In 1989, there was enough interest to hold the first hairy convention. Over the next decade, the internet became accessible to the general population and became the most popular means for feathered fans to socialize. Newsgroups alt.fan.furry were created in November 1990, and virtual environments like MUCK are also a popular place on the Internet for fans to meet and communicate.

Hairy fandom is predominantly male, with the survey reporting about 80% of male respondents.

Maps Furry fandom

Inspiration

Allegorical novels, including works of science fiction and fantasy, and cartoons featuring anthropomorphic animals are often cited as the earliest inspiration for fandom. A survey conducted in 2007 showed that, when compared to non-furry control groups, a higher proportion of those who identified themselves as furries liked the cartoons "very much" as children and remembered watching them significantly more often, as well as being more likely to enjoy science fiction than the one outside the community.

A non-fur's guide to the furry fandom: What you need to know about ...

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Activity

According to a survey from 2008, most fans believe that visual art, conventions, literature, and online communities are essential for fandom.

Craft

Fans with craft skills create their own plush toys, sometimes referred to as plushies, and also build elaborate costumes called fursuits, used for fun or to participate in parades, undercover conventions, dances, or charity fundraising events as an entertainer). Clothes from various designs featuring simple construction and sport-like mascots for those with more sophisticated features that include the jaw-moving mechanism, animatronic parts, prosthetic makeup, and other features. Clothes in the price range from $ 500, for designs like mascots, up to $ 10,000 for models that incorporate animatronics. While approximately 80% of furries do not have a full fursuit, often citing their costly fees as a decisive factor, the majority of them have positive feelings towards the fursuiters and the conventions in which they participate. Some fans can also wear "partial" clothing which consists only of ears and tail, or head, claws and tail.

Furry fans also chase dolls, record videos and perform live shows like Rapid T. Rabbit and Friends and Funday PawPet Show , and make furry accessories, such as ears or tails.

Role-playing

Anthropomorphic animal characters made by furry fans, known as fursonas, are used to play roles in MUDs, on internet forums, or on electronic mailing lists. Various species are used as the basis of this personas, although many feathered fans (eg more than 60% of those surveyed in 2007) chose to identify themselves with carnivores. The longest furry online role playing environment is FurryMUCK, founded in 1990. Many feathered fans have their first exposure to fandom coming from multiplayer online role-playing games. Another popular social game online is called Furcadia , created by Dragon's Eye Productions. There are also some furry themed areas and communities in the world of Second Life .

Playing roles also takes place offline, by caressing, hugging, and "rubbing" (scratching and caring) that are common among friends at social gatherings. Fursuit or hairy accessories are sometimes used to enhance the experience.

Convention

Sufficient interest and membership has enabled the creation of many furry conventions in North America and Europe. A furry convention is for fans to gather to buy and sell artwork, participate in workshops, wear costumes, and socialize. The world's largest feathered feast, Anthrocon with more than 5,861 participants, held annually in Pittsburgh in June, is estimated to have generated about $ 3 million for the Pittsburgh economy in 2008. Another service, Further Confusion , held in San Jose every January, closely follows Anthrocon in scale and attendance. US $ 470,000 raised in convention for charity from 2000-9. The first known featherweight convention, ConFurence , is no longer held; Califur has replaced it, as both conventions are headquartered in Southern California. A University of California, Davis survey shows that about 40% of furries have attended at least one furry convention.

Website and online community

The Internet contains many furry web sites and online communities, such as the Art Community website Affinity Fur , Inkbunny , SoFurry and Weasyl ; social networking site Furry 4 Life , FurNation ; and WikiFur , a collaborative feathered wiki. This, with the IRC network FurNet and Anthrochat , forms an important part of the hairy fandom. Usenet newsgroups like alt.fan.furry and alt.lifestyle.furry , popular from the mid-1990s to 2005, have been replaced by topic-specific forums, mailing lists and the LiveJournal community.

There are several webcomics that feature animal characters created by or for hairy fans; so they can be referred to as a hairy comic . One such comic, T.H.E. Fox was first published at CompuServe in 1986, ahead of the World Wide Web for several years, while others, Kevin and Kell by Bill Holbrook, were awarded the Web Cartoonists' Choice Award and Ursa Major Award.

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Furry lifestylers

The expressions of the furry lifestyle and hairy lifestyler first appeared in July 1996 in the newsgroup alt.fan.furry during an ongoing dispute in the online community. Bishop Newsgroup alt.lifestyle.furry was created to accommodate discussions beyond the furry art and literature, and to resolve disagreements about what should or should not be tied to the fandom; its members quickly adopted the term "furry living beings", and still consider fandom and lifestyles to be separate social entities. They have defined and adopted the alternative meaning of the special hairy word for this group: "someone with an important emotional/spiritual connection with animals or animals, real, fiction or symbolic."

In their 2007 survey, Gerbasi et al. examines what it means to be hairy, and propose a taxonomy in which to categorize various "types" hairy. The largest group - 38% of those surveyed - described their interest in the hairy fandom mainly as a "route to socialize with others who share the same interests as anthropomorphic art and costumes." But they also identify feathers that see themselves as "other than humans", and/or desirable to become more like the furry species they identify.

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Sexual aspects

When compared with the general population, homosexuality and bisexuality are more represented in hairy fandom around factor 10. Of the US population, about 1.8% of people identify as bisexual and 1.7% as homosexuals according to 2011 studies from undergraduates at UCLA. In contrast, according to four different surveys 14-25% of fandom members reported homosexuality, 37-52% bisexuality, 28-51% heterosexuality, and 3-8% other forms of alternative sexual relationships. About half of the respondents reported being in a relationship, of which 76% were in contact with other furry fandom members. Examples of sexual aspects in hairy fandom include erotic art and cybersex themed furry. The term "yiff" is sometimes used to denote sexual activity or sexual material in fandom - this applies to sexual activity and interaction in subcultures either in cybersex or offline form.

Sex appeal to furry characters is a matter of polarization. In one survey with 4300 hairy respondents, 37% responded that sexual interest is important in their hairiness, 38% ambivalent, and 24% responded that it had little or nothing to do with their hairy activities. In a different online survey, 33% of hairy respondents said they had "significant sexual interest in hairiness," the other 46% said they had "a small sexual interest in hairy," and the remaining 21% said they had "non-sexual". interest-in-hair sexuality. "The survey specifically avoided adult-oriented websites to prevent bias.Other surveys found that 96.3% of hairy male respondents reported seeing hairy pornography, compared with 78.3% of women, men estimated at 50, 9% of all the furry art they see is pornography, compared with 30.7% of females.Furries have little preference for pornographic artwork on non-pornographic art.17,1% of men report that when they see pornography, pornography exclusively or almost exclusively feathered, and only about 5% report that pornography is the main factor that leads them to fandom.

Some of the fandoms are sexually attracted to zoophilia (sex with animals), although the majority take a negative attitude toward it. An anonymous survey in 2008 found 17% of respondents reported zoophilia. A previous survey, conducted from 1997 to 1998, reported about 2% of hairy respondents expressed interest in zoophilia, and less than 1% interest in plushophilia (sexually aroused by stuffed animals). The older, lower yields, which are even lower than expected in the general population, are due to the methodology of questioning face-to-face responders, leading to a bias of social desires. In contrast, one study showed 7.5% of the students reported zoophilia, while other studies found only 2.2% to 5.3% who expressed sex fantasies with animals.

Midwest Furfest 2015: More than 5,000 gather in Chicago for Furry ...

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Public perception and media coverage

Initial depiction of furries in magazines such as Wired Loaded , Vanity Fair , and the "Savage Love" syndicated sex column focuses primarily on the sexual aspect of the hairy fandom. The fictitious image of the hairy fandom has appeared on television shows such as ER , CSI: Crime Investigation , The Drew Carey Show , Sex2K on MTV, Entourage , 1000 Ways to Die , Tosh.0 , and 30 Rock . Most furry fans claim that this media portrayal is a misunderstanding, while recent coverage focuses on the mythical debunking and stereotypes associated with hairy fandom. A journalist who attended Anthrocon 2006 notes that "despite their wild imagery of Vanity Fair, MTV and CSI , the furry convention is not about curly sex between people gussi freaks in foxy costumes ", that conference attendees" have no more sex than all of us, "and that the furry convention is about" people talking and drawing animals and comic book characters in a sketchbook. "In October 2007, a Hartford Advocate reporters attended FurFright 2007 disguised by media restrictions. He learned that the restrictions were intended to prevent misinformation, and reported that the scandalous behavior he hoped was unproven. The latest coverage of the hairy fandom has been more balanced. According to Ian Wolf, a 2009 article from the BBC entitled "Who are the furries?" is the first part of journalism nominated for the Ursa Major Award, a major award given in the field of anthropomorphism.

Milwaukee Brewers provider Jim Powell shared the hotel with participants at Anthrocon 2007 a day before the service and reported negative opinions about his feathers. Some Pittsburgh city center businesses welcomed the furries during the event, with local business owners creating special T-shirts and drawing foot prints in chalk outside their shop to attract participants. Dr. Samuel Conway, CEO of Anthrocon , says that "Most people give us a curious look, but they have a good curious gaze.We're here for fun, people have fun with we are here, everyone wins ". Positive coverage was generated after a hairy convention held at a hotel in Vancouver where a number of Syrian refugees were temporarily stationed. Despite staff concerns and warnings that there may be serious negative cultural clashes if both groups interact, the refugee children are all happy to meet the convention visitors who look like live cartoon characters.

According to the Furry Survey , about half of the feathers see public reactions to fandom as negative; less than a fifth stated that the public responded to them more negatively than most of its feathers. Furry fans' confidence that they will be described as "especially obsessed with sex" has caused media distrust and social researchers.

What is the Furry Fandom? Why is it good? - YouTube

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The sociological aspects

The International Anthropomorphic Research Project, a team of social scientists from various disciplines led by Plante, Reysen, Roberts, and Gerbasi, has collected data on hairy fandom using a variety of methodologies. Their 2016 publication garnered several self-reviewed and self-published reviews into one volume. Among their findings: The average adult hair is between 23-27 years old, with over 75% of adult fur reported being 25 years or younger, and 88% of adult hair is under age 30. Minors included in the study for professional ethical reasons. Gender identity: 78-85% of the feathers are identified as male, almost 2% of the feathers identified as transgender, the identity remaining as women. Ethnicity: 83-90% of feathers identify themselves as White, with a small minority of hairy identifying themselves as Asian (2-4%), Black (2-3%), and Hispanic (3%). Furries participate in other fandom: 21% of the feathers consider themselves to be brony, 44% consider themselves as anime fans, and 11% consider themselves sports fans. Furries, as a group, are more liberally political and less religious than average Americans or other comparable fan groups such as anime fans, while still containing bickering groups like neo-Nazis and alt-right activists who are partly affiliated in jesting and partly in earnest. Religion: 54% of hairy ones identified themselves as atheists or agnostics, 23% as Christians, 4% as Pagan, 2% as Wiccan, and the rest identified with other religions. Approximately 70% of adult hair has been completed, or is completing post-secondary education.

One of the most universal behaviors in hairy fandom is the creation of fursona - the representation of anthropomorphic or avatar animals. More than 95% hairy have an anthropomorphic avatar or their own representation. Nearly half reported that they had only one fursona to represent themselves; relatively few feathers have had more than three or four fursonas; in part, this is due to the fact that, for many furries, their fursonas are ideal and meaningful self-representations of their ideal self. The most popular fursona species include wolves, foxes, dogs, big cats, and dragons. The data show that there is generally no relationship between personality traits and different fursona species. However, furries, along with sports fans, report different degrees of personality when thinking of themselves in their everyday identity compared to their fan identity. Some furries identify as some non-human: 35% say they do not feel 100% human (compared with 7% non-furries), and 39% say they would be 0% humans if they could (compared to 10% non-Bungung).

Inclusion and belonging are central themes in hairy fandom: compared to other fandom members such as anime or fantasy sports, furries are significantly more likely to identify with other members of their fan community. On average, half of furry friends are also hairy themselves. Furries rate themselves higher (compared to non-furry comparative community samples) at the level of global awareness (world knowledge and feelings of contact with others in the world), identification of global citizenship (psychological connection with global citizens), and environmental sustainability.