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How the furry community went past itself

Posted by AtosW on 2023-November-5 13:21:34, Sunday

This was written for another board, but it's somewhat relevant here, so i'm posting it here anyway:

I often think about people i used to know online, especially when i don't have anyone currently to talk to, which is most of the time nowadays. I try not to make that much of it, and even deliberately swear not to look up what people i used to know IRL do nowadays - if they're not in touch with me, they're gone as far as i'm concerned - but it's a different thing with people online who just disappeared.

There was one particular furry i remember from the mid-00s, he was just the perfect example of the kind i'd need in my life nowadays. Not only was he one of the few i knew with some very specific preferences that few others are okay with, he was so much fun to talk to, and it bugged me that he just disappeared one day, and i though i never heard of him again. A while ago i had searched for his old names and found nothing, even asked someone on Furaffinity who had mentioned him and who didn't know anything either.

Then it occured to me that shortly before he disappeared, he changed to another name, and searching for that one i found another name that i had forgot, but remembered when i saw it, and he was actually still active and posting on Twitter under that name.

Then i remembered the whole story.

He never actually disappeared. He just changed name, interests and personality completely, and i stopped talking to him because we had nothing in common anymore. It's like, over less than a month he just abandoned his old persona and became a boring, bitter Furaffinity-blogging, occasionally convention-going mainstream furry with the most annoying and mundane kinks, that he was still posting about now, 15 years later.

And when i saw that, i remembered it. It's just that i had forgotten THAT part, and only remember him as he was when he was a part of "my community" and actually fun to talk to.

Then it stroke me how many others in my past who did the same thing. There were some who legit just disappeared, including one who seemed to wipe almost any trace online of him ever existing despite running several forums and being one of the most visible people in Y2K Sonic fandom, there's barely a single mention of him anywhere left on the web. But there were many more who i just stopped talking to because on a whim, they completely changed and i had nothing in common with them anymore.

And then there's the real question that's remaining - if this is somehow natural to furry and fandom communities, why does it happen with them but not with me? Why am i the one left whining 25 years later that the communities i grew up with don't exist anymore, and that things aren't like they used to be? Why do they somehow move on, and not me?

I've long felt that there's something about me that's very rare, that i just lack the personal traits that turn someone into "an adult" in the eyes of today's society. I just never bought into it, and it keeps me from understanding the priorities and concerns of everyone else, especially as they grow older.

I think i can only ever get along with teens, even if they keep breaking my heart. Not that i do get along, but at least i feel that i get something out of it, unlike talking to today's fake "adults", who are now mostly younger than me, and it just makes me feel like i'm looking into a doll's house through a glass wall. I got no place in today's furry community, i miss when it was grassroots-run, a genuinely international and online community, and i hate what Furaffinity and the fucking conventions did to it.

I guess i'm just someone who'll never grow old, and it's not fun at all, if it sounds like it might be.
AtosW

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