Furry Merry Christmas, media relations, RISK!, animal blessing… Newsdump (12/22/14)
by Patch O'Furr
Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag. Story tips are always welcome.
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Around Furry fandom and in the media:
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A Furry Merry Christmas To One and All – from Tom Broadbent, documentary photographer.
Tom takes us to the Londonfurs annual Christmas party. “Retro gaming was the theme and it was hosted at the Amber Bar in Moorgate.” (More about his art.)
Fred Patten shares:
“The November 30 update to the 2014 Recommended Anthropomorphics List is now online, and Dogpatch Press is included among the year’s Recommended Anthro Magazines. If you know of something good released during 2014 and it isn’t recommended yet, hurry up and recommend it!”
Meet the Penn State Furries! (Shared from FurryMedia.)
Author doesn’t know what to expect... finds a light, pleasant social experience. Perfect.
What’s important to note about this group is that because their interest is so…unique, so is their friendship.
More followup to MWFF chlorine attack story, summarizing “As it happened.”
See a timeline of social media reactions.
Furries Set The Record Straight: There’s Nothing To Be Afraid Of.
In my opinion, this HuffPost article is better than the one below, using the same sources.
9 questions about furries you were too embarrassed to ask.
VOX rides the “furries” news spike that followed the MWFF attack. This is just a personal opinion but I have a problem about the approach. I feel it over-relies on the International Anthropomorphic Research Project to act more objective than it is. You could argue that this single source of a handful of Furry academics (not neutral ones) design info with advocacy, and do hobby research with “Scientist-sonas”. Surveys are loaded with debatable premises that come from overbearing influence of fashionable trends, rather than results. Over-labeling is an example: “Species Identity Disorder” may be better called Make-Believe.
It rationalizes about sex- “Only” half of furries are somewhat or more influenced by porn (so not even a majority aren’t.) The topic isn’t bad – it’s just sex. It’s not a Slippery Slope to bad things. It’s just one preference in Collective Individualism. (I try to avoid saying “we” when writing about furries to respect individualism.)
A fan outcast is remembered today by a mocking name (“Tumbles”) – can he get sympathy for another side of the story?
A witness remembers an infamous convention story. Years after it faded into internet history – this is a good season to consider it more gently.
RISK! show personality retweeted the notice of This Furry Life podcast.
Kevin Allison is a sketch comedy veteran. His podcast is a hugely entertaining inspiration. It was so cool that he noticed a This Furry Life announcement.
O come, O come all ye who are told by monolithic and monied storytelling shows that your life is too shameful to be shared in public.
— Kevin Allison (@TheKevinAllison) December 11, 2014
@DogpatchPress @Potoroo @RISKshow Sure, we'd love to feature furries on RISK! A dear friend of mine is a very sex pup.
— Kevin Allison (@TheKevinAllison) December 12, 2014
Furry wishes from Andrew W.K.
A little late for #FursitFriday Had a blast tonight with @AndrewWK! Thank you everyone for coming out to @houseorock! pic.twitter.com/7Llyw0yMFL
— Sebris (@SebrisKiba) December 20, 2014
Amazing Wolf fursuit triggers massive urge to hug.
Wild Life’s Wolf just sold for $5169 – news for a coming article about top auctions. More photos here. (Send amazing fursuiters for future Newsdumps!)
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Random fun
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Vice magazine goes to a Blessing of the Animals Mass in Paris.
The reporter talks to Monseigneur Dominique Philippe. The Mass annoyed some of his superiors, but he made a statement that animals have souls.
Top 10 Cutest Animals in Science 2014
If only half of Furries are somewhat (!) influenced by porn – then that tells me that Furry’s got nothing to do with porn, which is my sentiment exactly.
Let me explain:
An interest in anthropomorphic creatures CAN become sexually charged. Yet that doesn’t tell us anything about the interest as such.
Ones aesthetic preconceptions (ones Furryness for example) can define what porn one finds appealing. (That seems obvious – to me at least).
Yet I’m not shure it CAN even work the other way around. (Can my porn viewing habits influence my aesthetic preconceptions? How much aesthetically unappealing porn would I have to watch until I found it aesthetically appealing?)
But if Furry was defined by ones porn viewing habits, then this would have to work.
So I insist: Furry has in it’s heart nothing (!) to do with porn viewing habits.
Furry is this aesthetic appreciation of anthro characters. From this, everything else flows. Everything else is something entirely different.
You’re right, though. Even if Furry “were about” porn, that wouldn’t in itself be a slippery slope. I don’t see that at all.
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On the FRP-Front:
One shouldn’t discount the data, just because it seems to be “in your favour”. That always strikes me as pretty cynical.
I either make the effort to find faults in their methodology, or I admit I have no data. Everything else would just be conspiracy theory thinking. (“It’s got to be wrong because it seems to match the expected outcome of the researchers. Obviously this is all made up so they can sell their viewpoint to the ignorant masses. Wake up, sheeple!”) 😉
Other than this issue, I really enjoy your Newsdumps in general. 🙂
I think it’s an interest, not an identity. But it’s made of people, not ideas. If people claim a certain influence, then it is about that, for them. You can’t choose who else chooses the same interest as you, or say it has nothing to do with them. But with “collective individualism”, you can say they don’t represent you or speak for you.
There’s plenty of discussion about the survey methodology flaws. One of the researchers told me that certain questions being criticized were designed to “elicit response”. Like advertising and propaganda. They were loaded with built-in assumptions that weren’t even defined, to prepare expected answers before anyone speaks them.
For example, they separate a group of females apart from others, to prepare them for loaded questions that boil down to “how much sexism do you experience from the sexists that dominate our sexist culture?” It didn’t make any operational definition for sexism. That’s not science, that’s propaganda.
It’s built on religiously held assumptions that if a group has more males than females, it must be because they drove females out with bad behavior. That’s a false leap to conclusions, ignoring all other reasons that people get together. Common sense is all you need to know that this smells bad – and that’s not a conspiracy theory. It allows none of the reality of a culture of acceptance and support. It’s an insulting judgement against any group of 2 or more guys, or anyone who pursues a hobby out of interest.
There’s plenty of evidence that free choice of interest gathers the membership, and it has less bad behavior than society in general. http://dogpatchpress.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/all-humans-welcome/
The previously linked article shot down biased assumptions about bad behavior- http://dogpatchpress.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/nerd-culture/
Someone took a computer security paper about “female bots” and leapt to conclusions that it showed sexism. But when you actually read the paper, it says nothing at all about who does the behavior it discusses, how many or why. In fact it may be caused by all females attacking other females. Or a single Nigerian 419 scammer looking for money. Any other guess is equally valid as saying it represents anyone in our interest group.
When people leap to conclusions about “bad men” and design surveys to “elicit response” about those conclusions, it reveals that they spread religion, not science.