A brief history of who ruined furry.

by Patch O'Furr

fritz-the-cat-movie-poster-1972-1010196225Many people are to blame for ruining furry. This list isn’t comprehensive, and some of the jerks on it caused multiple problems at the same time.

1960’s – 1970’s:  Artists ruined furry.

Underground comic artists made a plan to stigmatize fans of funny-animal comics by putting adult stuff in ones like Robert Crumb’s Fritz The Cat and Reed Waller’s Omaha The Cat Dancer.  It worked well enough to keep fans from openly using the “furry” name until the 1980’s.

1985-1988: “Skunkfuckers” ruined furry.

It was just starting to be OK to be furry in public. Then some bad apples got us kicked out of respectable science fiction fandom.  Look at these 1980’s convention room party flyers from Lance Rund and Sy – this is the kind of thing that made furries get isolated apart from other fans, with our own private shame-cons.

furpy3

1989-1992: Transexual freaks ruined furry.**

After getting our own con (ConFurence 0 in 1989), outsiders who weren’t even real furries came in.  Here’s a pic of “Furry fandom founder” Fred Patten with one of the freaks, Robert Hill, AKA Hilda the Bambioid.  You can see Hilda proudly ruining our image in a weird, sexy alien-like costume. This was scandalous enough to make sure that Fred Patten would never be heard from again. It also ruined reliable gender roles in costuming for both men and women at the same time, and made it impossible to tell what kind of person is inside by looking at the outside.

Flayrah commenter: “…the first furry costume worn at a furry convention… Hilda the Bambioid as performed by Robert Hill at CF0 in 1989.“

1993: Furries are finally acceptable!

Things got better.  We were decent enough to show on TV. This special has been cited as the best public representation ever made about furry. It has every furry in the world in the same place together.  You can tell things got worse, because when did that ever happen again?

Commenter Dwight Dutton: “I spotted myself in the background.  The way to put this in perspective is that this was the LAST “Pre-Internet” furry convention.  AOL opened the floodgates a few months after this event.“

1994-1995: The internet ruined furry.

Art and creative writing were overshadowed by the internet, which has neither.  Everything decayed into vapid sex chats and “cybering” on “MUDs” and “MUCKs”.  Degenerate cartoonists spread filth like Tiny Toons porn to undermine any remaining value of the fandom.

Fred Patten:  “What seems most interesting to me is the apparent assumption that furry fandom (and people in general) are just discovering the pornography of high-profile animated cartoon characters with Zootopia.  Doesn’t anyone remember the furry fan pornography of Warner Bros.’ Tiny Toon Adventures TV series in the early 1990s, with the series’ own emphasis on gags about Buster Bunny’s not wearing any pants?“

200163594_26e7dd0c041996-1998: Gays and fetishists ruined furry.

After Mark Merlino started ConFurence, he ruined it.  A homosexual propaganda zine reported that he had a convention you could “write to for more info”, a code to solicit perverted activity. Then the con was overrun with horny gay men who had no other interest.

Commenter: “Confurence ran a add in a gay magazine in the 90’s and furry became identified with gays.” – (Dogpatch Press, There’s a persistent rumor that Furry fandom was perverted by a bad ad for ConFurence).

There was also the “elevator jizz” incident at the con hotel. Merlino tried to cover up suspicious moisture by explaining that you had to use the elevator to get to the pool, so it was a little wet from bathing suits. Yeah, right… furries don’t have physiques for swimming, and you know what it means when you see shorts on a fursuiter.

bfring1999: The Burned Furs ruined furry.

This was a big ruin.  A battle between yiffers and non-yiffers tore furry in two, never to be forgotten.  Now anything using the “furry” name has to get approved by the Burned Furs Board Of Decency.  Behind the scenes, they work closely with The Roberts (a secret society including Crumb and Hill).

2000-2004: The media ruined furry.

Another big ruin.  MTV, CSI, and Vanity Fair did attack pieces to stigmatize furries.  Now not only was furry torn in two, it would also never grow bigger than it was.

2005-2007: “Popufurs” ruined furry.

The Furaffinity website was launched. It turned fandom into a shallow game to have the best social media profile. Fursuiting raised the bar with incredibly nicely made suits, and you could only be a real furry if you had thousands to spend on them.  It was no longer about being an anthropomorphic animal, but just about pretending to be one.  Winners got high social status and riches, and everyone else had no choice except to follow them.

2007-2010: Cons ruined furry.

Too many cons started, watering down the power of the original con, Anthrocon, and it’s defense of furry virtue.  CEO Uncle Kage was the one holding things together with a “family-friendly” policy.  It was so fragile that one wrong word, or one mean news piece could make it all come crashing down.

2010-2014: Kids ruined furry.

It’s no longer a serious scholarly pursuit. Now furry is all about being silly.  Cons are overwhelmed with drunken, rowdy young fans who chase off the older “graymuzzles” and bring unwelcome new customs like dance crews. They only come for “raving” and parties, forgetting how the fandom was founded.

2015-now: Everyone ruined furry.

IMVU bought FurAffinity. After the announcement in March 2015, the site was dragged down for shameless commerce instead of keeping it pure for macrophile cockvore art. Look at this sellout furfag (*me):

84943849Babyfurs, cubfurs and diaperfurs ruined furry. Rainfurrest could have survived small stuff like vandalism causing office floods – but the hotel simply couldn’t abide the PR damage of a back-view pic of a funny-dressed guy being shared on twitter by furries.

2 The Ranting Gryphon ruined furry with mean transphobic jokes, showing that people who cross species for fun aren’t tolerant.

Uncle Kage ruined furry by being a Fuhrer-like cult leader, causing those mean articles we hoped would never happen.

Disney ruined furry by putting out Zootopia without giving us enough credit for inventing anthro animals. Soon we’ll be overwhelmed by fake furs.

This week: I ruined furry TWICE.

There was a tragedy in Southern California, and it involved super obvious furry social media profiles.  So I put out a statement and talked to one reporter. Requests to say more were turned down, but then it went into articles from the LA Times, NY Daily News and others.  There was no way to stop them from saying it was sad and sharing fundraisers for victims. Whoops.

Then Rolling Stone did an article.  Articles are written ahead of time, so without knowing it, they posted a link to here just 15 minutes before a new one posted here.  Theirs said “the entire fur fandom is sometimes equated with fetishism. The truth is, in fact, much more innocent…” and it linked here when the top headline was for Wild Things, a furry fetish party.

Whoops again.

My tail is tucked and my head is hanging in shame for ruining everything. Mea culpa. OK, their article was nice and nobody sent abuse here, but somebody somewhere is judging.

Let me repeat: *somebody, somewhere.* That ruins everything.

Quick fact: 1993 was the only year furry wasn’t ruined. That’s the one we need to get back.

PS. I forgot to blame scammers, art thieves and plagiarists.  Am I missing anyone else who ruined furry? Please tell me below.

Actually nobody ruined furry. There are no fake furries vs. real ones. And there’s no nerd fandom that can be kept “pure”, but others have more powerful bad influences than ours. (What real power do members have in organizations run by volunteerism?) Our bad influences are good at keeping distance from insincerity, while bringing passion to a thriving, yet self-directed subculture. That’s the kind of purity I love. Thank the freaks.

** EDIT: Yes this article is entirely satire made with love for everyone, including freaks, oddballs, and their bad influences and strangely sexy selves. Chasing acceptance too much is craving approval from people who don’t give a shit about you. FREAKS RULE. Express yourself and #KeepFurryWeird. Years after posting this, let’s explain context of “transexual freaks” above: Robert Hill quoted Rocky Horror Picture Show about himself, not as a slur. Regardless, this site avoids bad words and uses better ones these days.