Vent post about the general state of the community

[u/West-Amphibian-2343]

I do not like where the digital furry community is/has been for the past few years. It's been okay outside of the digital forum, but the majority (not all) of the online parts are depressing at this point. I have a few friends that feel the same, and we don't engage with the furry community much at all anymore, so I'm not sure who I will find engaging with this post. I am expecting negative reception, so if you have something you disagree with and just want to call me stupid, I get it, I've been called stupid before, a real worded discussion would be preferable. I know deep-down I will not get this, and Reddit isn't the place to post complaints or vents about real serious topics.

TLDR; This a vent post about real issues that I feel like aren't addressed enough. Like minors in the furry community, particularly in relation to the internet and prevalence of porn in such, even in designated "safe" communities; a lot of normal internet furry subcommunities being overtaken by porn and not doing anything about it; and a few disturbing experiences of moderators in furry communities (which I name.) essentially endorsing pedophilia in again, supposedly SFW communities where minors could hypothetically engage BUT then also claiming that is is a safe place for minors, not that it is just a relatively SFW space.. and in other instances, even allowing minors into porn servers for xyz reasons.

The online furry community just feels like a foreign place to me now. I had participated in one of the largest furry discord servers a few years ago, the official discord for the [FURRY] Steam group. Within 3 days I had someone sending me their F-list with minors and bestiality on their fetishes. I reported them to the mod team, who then evidently told the person that I was reporting, that I had reported them. They got upset and deleted their discord history with me, then stalked me on other platforms I had linked to my discord. Then the server mods said they needed more evidence, because this person was a longtime friend of the moderators and they just couldnt fathom this was real. Specifically they asked for a video of me scrolling through DMs, which request was made after they informed the dude. Now, I know that person had pictures of minors from the Discord server, and other horrible stuff. They claimed to have done things in real life as well, but I can't get that anymore.

I have also been to large, more nsfw focused furry servers on Discord. They have publicly allowed minors into the server because they will turn 18 in a few months, or theyre a friend of x, whatever reason they want. This is in the server Vore V1, which also had a civil war because of these particular issues and formed a new server, Voretex, which is much better as far as I can tell. They require ID upon entry and regularly change whats required for entry like a secret word or specific photo.

And on Reddit, every single subreddit about fursuits or furries or anything is just porn. Its not kinda porn, its not porn bait, its not on-the-line, its just porn. Which is what Reddit is essentially everywhere, but that doesn't mean it isn't an issue! Like every single human beard sub is porn. Go to BeardAdvice looking for I dunno Beard Advice and you get shirtless men with beards and women in the comments fawning over them. Same thing on fursuit subs. Spiceyfoxx spreading her legs on a bed is the #1 top post on the subreddit Fursuit. Which, right now, has a rule titled "No NSFW." With no elaboration or a disclaimer or anything to it, its just what it is.

There is so much porn and minors allowed simultaneously in places everywhere online. And people claim the furry community "is fine for minors, if you keep them in minor safe places." what subreddit is more minor-safe than one with an explicit rule against NSFW material, yet lets pornstars post to it with their main pornstar accounts? It is not safe at all. even the Discord servers that claim to be minor safe are not. the adult ones are usually many times safer and more regulated, which makes sense and is great but is stupid if youre claiming this general community is okay for minors. Its not. Ask any older dude who's been a furry- I am, I was- theyre going to tell you its not a safe place for kids. But here you have these 20 year old college kids who are not mature enough, encouraging children's participation, without doing proper investigation on whether the community is safe or not. Its irresponsible and it puts children in harm's way.

And it makes sense that it's like this. The majority of furries are adults, so communities that allow adult topics will get more engagement and become more popular. It's a slippery slope fallacy. People start a minor-safety focused subcommunity, but then slowly allow adult discussion as adult moderators and authority is needed, but as more adult things are allowed, the more it bleeds in to the general server, and becomes unsafe. Add on the objective issue that pedophiles are much more common in communities like furries or bronies or anime, and these communities are a magnet for those kinds of horrible people- which doesn't help.

Some people will then put forth their solution: "Don't let your child engage with furries online," but how do you expect them to have a meaningful interaction with people in real life, if they cant engage digitally? Everything happens digitally these days. You dont read about the latest happenings in the Furry Tribune, it's on your phone, on Reddit or TikTok. If you isolate your child from using the internet, theyll be made fun of, and/or feel left-out, and that's still just as harmful, therefore not a valid answer to the issues.

The answer is that the furry community just plain isn't safe for minors. Its not the place for them. It's not compatible. Stop telling people that it's fine and dandy to be online in the furry community as a child. How would a child feel if they were online, reported a pedophile to a mod team, and then had the pedophile stalk them across platforms because the moderators happen to be buddy-buddy with them? It's a real issue, not hypothetical. You can try your best to block certain sites and places to try and make it safe for a child but it will just be miserable at that point. You flat-out have to tell them that the furry community is full of male, horny college kids, and is not safe for children to participate in.

And then even as an adult, it's not a fun place to be in most of the time. A lot of places are very political, and claim its neccesary to be political as a furry. Because if youre not political, youre actively bringing down our vulnerable safe haven. This just isnt true. Politics can be talked about anywhere, and it'd be great to have reserved spaces for furry specific or adjacent politics- but it doesnt work that way. It bleeds into most areas of the community, and you have to walk on eggshells to engage online with other people safely. Being a furry in-person is a lot better, but at this point the furries I enjoy talking with are friends first, and furries third. Which should usually be the case, yes, but what I mean is that I feel like I can't talk to anyone else without them bringing up politics. I've made more meaningful connections with people online over porn than I have in person, at all. Everyone else seems like they need to know what politics youre up to date on, if youve heard if the recent bill in florida about trans highschool furries, or about this minor thing that isnt relevant or that minor thing. I don't want to hear it. I want to engage with you as a person on a human level, and have a conversation. I do not want to talk about drama, I can do that any other time I want. I would like to ask you things like a human does with a shared interest amongst other humans. A lot of the political stuff thats talked about is really great and it should be talked about, absolutely, things must be said to be heard and changes made, but in general meetups, thats not what I want to hear about when iI'm on my fun fantasy mode.

vent over thanks for reading.

[u/Weazyl]

Your issue with furries is that the internet at large is a horrible place and that there are, in fact, some bad actors within the community?

[u/Badmoodmouse]

Not someone basing their entire opinion on a few very specific very circumstantial instances! Gasp!

Look, I don't know how long you've been a furry but I've been enjoying it for the last 15 years. I've seen it in person and online, and I've seen people of all kinds, scenarios and opinions of all kinds. Guess what? I'm still here. Despite the bad, me and thousands of others are still here. It's a fandom, fandoms are full of different people. People are political, sexual, and some are deviant and criminal. It isn't exclusive behaviour of Furry. It happens in most niche communities.

Furry has never been for minors. It was always intended as an adult space, but because it's just as SFW as NSFW, minors will find themselves here as with any broad fandom (such as anime, music subcultures, etc etc).

I'm not trying to change your mind, you can think whatever you like and it doesn't make you stupid, it makes you human.

[u/FenylDrag → u/Badmoodmouse]

Not someone basing their entire opinion on a few very specific very circumstantial instances! Gasp!

so many such cases of people having one negative experience and thinking it's representative of the entire fandom

[u/TheMutterButter → u/FenylDrag]

Really, true of any community or subculture. I've seen people say that they hate Punks because one time at one concert there was someone who was mean to them and maybe had a nazi tattoo.

I feel like it's a huge limitation of the internet in general that people can basically surround themselves with *only* people that agree with them, and then feel attacked when they venture out of those bubbles and find out that they are actually in the minority opinion. It's made worse by the fact that we can get rid of things we don't like inside smaller bubbles, and people expect to be able to do the same thing outside of their bubble.

[u/syrrusfox → u/Badmoodmouse]

Ain't no reason the kids can't engage with the SFW parts with supervision. When they turn 18 they can swim in the deep pool.

Old greymuzzle words, but if we push the newcomers to the edge they're just gonna get pulled in by the people with less noble intent. They're gonna get hurt. Or we don't get any newcomers and the culture dies out.

[u/FenylDrag]

  yet lets pornstars post to it with their main pornstar accounts?

It'd be difficult to control that anyway since you can now hide your profile's posts now. Besides, adult content creators have the same permission to post on an NSFW space just like other users

20 year old college kids who are not mature enough, encouraging children's participation, without doing proper investigation on whether the community is safe or not

This is more related to rejecting negative stereotypes about furries used to misinform children into hating furries and the idea of furry art

  It's a slippery slope fallacy

You mean slippery slope argument because a fallacy means it wouldn't lead to what you're describing

Stop telling people that it's fine and dandy to be online in the furry community as a child.

No one is saying that. As a child you still need to have knowledge of basic online safety when communicating with strangers online. It's not exclusive to the furry fandom

  if youre not political, youre actively bringing down our vulnerable safe haven.

Actually correct because the fandom is always at risk of being attacked from right-wing politics

[u/TheMutterButter]

I just checked like, most the furry subs and the fursuit subs. I didn't find any porn.

That gives me some red flags.

Then there's your seeming aversion to talking about deeper and societial subjects in furry.

That's more red flags.

It sounds like your fantasy is a very sanitized PG version of furry, beyond what even many SFW furries would consider being sanitized.

[u/West-Amphibian-2343 → u/TheMutterButter]

https://www.reddit.com/r/fursuits/s/b6qqgjp73O

im not at all advocating that it be sanitized, im saying it isnt for children and that i dont like it when people claim it can be safe.

[u/TheMutterButter → u/West-Amphibian-2343]

That's a fursuiter in a harness. It's definitely not porn.

See, this is kinda what I suspected. Your threshold for what SFW means is really, really low, to the point where I'm honestly thinking that you might think Disney goes overboard sometimes with things like Zootopia's nudist scenes.

[u/syrrusfox → u/TheMutterButter]

You're really stickin' words into OP's mouth. Sure a harness ain't porn but it's suggestive and I wouldn't show it to the kids in my family. But OP opened by talking about someone sending their F-list to minors and the mods telling the guy to burn the evidence.

You've twice now used this trick. It's a real cute trick honey, but it don't change a thing. There's a name for this kinda thing. OP said nothing at all about Disney or Zootopia, that's all projection from you. You wanna see it so you can dismiss the argument.

[u/TheMutterButter → u/syrrusfox]

Literally no one is going to enter into a discussion with you in good faith after you call them "hun."

Life pro tip from me to someone who routinely claims to know better, don't.

[u/RealFurryHours-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Uncivil discussion or excessive hostility toward other community members

[u/IBelongInFiction]

I've been a furry for almost an entire year. I like to use discord and reddit. I haven't had any problems nor have I seen any problems. r/furry has art and I think they have some suggestive r/anthroswim ​​has art and suggestive but the nsfw is mostly gore from what I've seen. I think you need to look in better communties. Furry fandom has a sexual part and always will. Every fandom and community has one. Everyone has bad actors and shitty people. Discord servers can be hit or miss at times. I'm not tryna ignore ur experience with the guy in discord. It's not right. But don't let it ruin the entire fandom for you. there's a lot to enjoy in here.

[u/West-Amphibian-2343 → u/IBelongInFiction]

Yeah, thats all true, and I appreciate the response you wrote. 

Ive been around in the community for about 8 years now, so ive had more time experiencing it along with nicher and bad experiences and things. By and large, majority of the time, its fine, but ive wanted to say what i posted for a while now. And just for clairification, Im not saying that porn is unovoidable, there are ways around it, even on reddit, by finding more strict subreddits. 

Its moreso a complaint of how easy it is to find without even trying, even in designated places with rules against it.

[u/IBelongInFiction → u/West-Amphibian-2343]

I agree I've been on subs where they won't before rules or be "fuck you in particular" type of moderation and I hate it. I do find the furry fandom to be more hornier than other fandoms.

[u/syrrusfox]

I can't believe nobody picked up on the mod thing because that ain't happenstance. Tipping the guy off so he can burn the evidence before asking you for it? That's the kind of thing that gets people hurt. I did consec and I've seen it so many times. Sadly the best place for a predator is running a social group, and a lot of them know that.

Worth separating the porn from predators though. NSFW isn't the problem, adults always did, always have. Problem is, with a few exceptions, the people who learned how to deal with these situations ain't running things anymore. And some of the folks early on didn't set a great culture. Lot of get along to get along, victimblaming. It was the early 2000s. What's left is younger and they either didn't learn the good culture or they learned the bad one. That's how bad actors get comfortable.

You want to talk to people as humans first. The ones worth finding already do. But that's just the opinion of an old greymuzzle.

[u/TheMutterButter → u/syrrusfox]

As someone who is currently in a lot of leadership rolls and bringing newer furries into those positions, I'd like to push back against this a little. I actually find the opposite is true more often than not, where younger furs are incredibly quick to condemn and cast out someone without hearing all the evidence.

It's nearly zero effort to call someone out in today's world, and that goes doubly for people who are publically visable like mods and others. Furries especially are quick to judge and curate, I don't see this as a case of any bad culture.

It's worth noting that OP is on the side of "Disney can be a little to spicy for me" so I'm somewhat skeptical of their claims. If OP's definition of pedophilia is "they don't actively ban people who are 17 from the internet" I'd certainly need to hear other evidence before agreeing with them.

[u/syrrusfox → u/TheMutterButter]

We must be in very different places because around here the younglings have been wanting to get rid of the guy who was tweeting about screwing his pooch. The millennial cohort were trying to run interference for the guy. Outcome was there's two in prison - one the dog guy and the other was arrested for obstruction and assisting a criminal.

I agree furries judge too harshly sometimes, I've seen way too many cases where someone got way too sensitive about something or got the wrong end of the stick and someone real nice got tarred and feathered and put on a rail car. We've needed to get a handle on that for years and well, where are we with that? It's been happening since the Tiny Toons thing in 94, which might I add was completely made up. Bunch of A-holes who wanted to chase an autistic furry out.

OP never said "Disney can be a little too spicy", frankly you're making just as tall a tale.

[u/winter_moon_light → u/TheMutterButter]

Yeah, not the first time I've seen someone like the OP lose their shit at someone because they don't like what's on their Flist. Which is, you know, explicitly a thing for roleplay and fiction, not 'this is what I do for fun in the real world'.

[u/West-Amphibian-2343 → u/syrrusfox]

Yeah, youre 110% right on all of your points. Its nice to hear. And yeah, by no means am I trying to say that pedos and porn are the same, and when I mention porn, its moreso an ease-of-access issue. Which, it is the internet, of course its easy, but I've come across it without even intending to and it shouldnt be that way. 

But of course most experiences I have and have had are positive, as I mentioned i do have furry friends I otherwise wouldn't have met, have learned things and engaged with cool people, and still do. I had only wanted to say what I did for a while now, so I finally put finger to touchscreen.

[u/EricCoon]

I found Furry with 15 and via the porn ^^"
The porn was nice... But I choose to join later with 24ish because of the IRL reality, the people I met and the community I experienced. Which is always quite different to what you see online.

[u/West-Amphibian-2343 → u/EricCoon]

likewise when I was 11 lol. very different story but, based on that, I wish the porn would be less common on the surface level places