Dogpatch Press

News in a moment: but first, recommended background for the Epstein story.

The Epstein files represent a major coverup of crime by wealthy elites, broken open as an ongoing public scandal. It keeps exposing worse and worse associations with dead financier Jeffrey Epstein. It’s a story of rich pedophiles and their enablers, including Donald Trump. Do you feel lost about where it starts and ends? Try this episode of radio show This Is Hell for an interview with an award-winning journalist who wrote a book about the coverup. It’s packed with fresh, conversational analysis to help you catch up.

Furries in the files?

In 2019, Epstein’s alleged suicide in jail silenced him from having to testify about powerful friends. It couldn’t silence demands for the government to finally release documents of official investigation… partially and controversially so far. With over 3.5 million pages released as of March 2026 (and who knows how much more to come), you can search for any term in them and possibly get results.

What happens if you search for “furry” or “furries”? Dogpatch Press did this on February 14, before a completely separate effort by fellow furry reporter Sonious published on March 8. You should go read Sonious’ article that propels this one.

• Sonious found 74 results
• Dogpatch Press found 166 results, using the activist-created browser platform jmail.world.

The contents had no major difference compared to what Sonious reported, but there are different takes and context to add.

Footnote: The same search on March 10 has 6 fewer results — the releases have been a mess with files taken back, like to redact victim ID or illegal material negligently exposed by the government.

“Furry” search samples.

Sonious’ article found “furry” results as a simple adjective, in reference to pets or objects (like blankets and animal-print furniture), or typos of the word Fury, but no connection to anthropomorphic fandom.

Sonious points out racist email sent to Epstein by a contact who hatefully compares children in the United Arab Emirates to furry animals. Good eye… the same was independently discussed among Dogpatch Press helpers:

Contents not remarked by Sonious included:

• A normie commercial product shot of a tail buttplug (no context).
• (Sorry, to underscore how serious this is): Redacted photos of Epstein in horrifying contact with extremely young prey, even girls who look 5.
• Random WTF moments:

Actual page of recently released files.

There’s no actual furries. It’s rich, corrupt people being weird and evil. Doesn’t it make us look good by comparison? But keep reading, this has layers…

Fuel for the “evil media” narrative 

Sonious’ article goes back to the early timeline of the Epstein coverup, where Vanity Fair magazine played a significant part. In 2003, Vanity Fair featured Epstein in a story where author Vicky Ward tried to report victim accusations, but it was censored by an editor under Epstein’s influence. Justice was denied by the editor hiding evil, instead of allowing Vicky Ward to serve the public good. Power and favor kept many people quiet for many years, enabling many more crimes.

Now compare a significant event for furries in 2001, when Vanity Fair published the sensationalized article Pleasures of the Fur. The bad look it gave us fueled grievance against the media that is still preached from high places in our community. It’s a central piece of a short canon of media sins that are mostly older than the average fan. Our creed: The Media is Out to Get Us. 

Sonious contrasts the way Vanity Fair punched down at furries in 2001, with kissing up to Epstein in 2003. They went out of the way to smear ordinary fans, but censored abuse accusations at a pedophile elite. Even though we couldn’t see the private duplicity then, they gave us a black eye that we inked on as a permanent tattoo. Now we’re getting new perspective on the hypocrisy of it.

Watching the ongoing Epstein scandal with grievance makes it easier and easier to assume media malice — as folk wisdom and group indoctrination always expects — if you leave out developments after 2001.

How the Us vs. Them narrative fails to tell the full truth

Saying The Media is Out to Get Us assumes It Always Will Be. This narrative was set in stone while Vanity Fair ignored us for the next 15 years.

What was the next mention of furries in Vanity Fair?

In 2016, Vanity Fair published Disney Seems to Be Embracing Its Furry Fan Base. It featured furry screenings for Disney’s Zootopia and joined more good news that quoted Dogpatch Press, the organizer of a theater show for 200 members. It was treated as normal excitement, and that was a big change.

For a small grassroots project, it made a milestone for how fan organizing and reporting can pull notice and manifest how we want to be seen, instead of defensively hiding. Good news wasn’t solicited, it was the organic result of hard work to fill a theater for fun. It accomplished the mission here:

In 2016, there was a wide sea-change going on. Many quality stories were coming from outlets like Vice. Disney was cited as marketing to us with their furriest movie in a generation. We were capable of full-circle influence instead of just reacting.

In spite of this, group grievance stayed stuck in the past. In 2017 there was an announcement of filming at Washington’s first Anthro Northwest convention for This Is Life with Lisa Ling on CNN. Lisa Ling was dogpiled with hate on social media. The show came out as nice as could be, “a flat-out advocacy piece”, implying that it was made with apology by The Media for past judgement. Was it smart to try to make it worse?

This wasn’t simply a case of outsiders wanting to get in, it was partnership. Lisa Ling was welcomed to Anthro Northwest as part of replacing the doomed Rainfurrest convention. That was no easy task. Rainfurrest failed in a mess of bad behavior, and made bad credit for anyone trying to start again. That was OUR fault. (The only media for the last Rainfurrest was positive!) So, Anthro Northwest and The Media were repairing bad credit WE caused — which can always get worse by blaming others for it.

There are real hate agendas in play, but not from professionals cited here. The source of it is right-wing Republicans using Fox News and it’s ilk for demagogic grifting. They cook up conspiratorial hoaxes about furry litterboxes in schools to capitalize on the panic. It isn’t from traditional media, it’s from the swampiest sewers of the internet. The media consistently debunks these hoaxes in our service.

With these examples, how self-defeating is it to cling to us vs. them like it’s 2001?

Sonius’ meta-narrative about media power

Sonious’ article smartly highlights one narrative of media malice. That’s helpful for reinforcing group solidarity, and unhelpful by leaving out context above, where we aren’t just victims to the media, but also capable of manifesting what we want with them. Fandom can be both personal and professional.

Sonious’ article concludes under “Editorial decisions and their consequences”. Despite dwelling on its narrative, it comes back to crediting reporting for power to change history. On a different timeline, if Vanity Fair’s editor didn’t censor one reporter, Americans could have had a different president than Epstein’s friend Trump, if their powerful web of criminal influence was uncovered sooner. Reporters can do the job now, too.

Sonious sees the same power in us:

“We have had pieces in the past that covered problematic figures in the fandom… Other furry news sites also cover such stories… Such articles can cause frustration by those in the fandom as being “just drama” or that “it makes us look bad so it should not be published”. This event shows why the publications of such difficult things are important in spite of the fears that discussing them can cause blow-back.”

Digging into the files found no furries, but several layers about the media — and a cue to compare our own files of the same nature, and how they are handled. We can always make things worse by suppressing bad news from within, and when it happens, the solution may be outside professional help for public interest.

The real furry Epstein files

Abuse scandals happen with churches, schools, Boy Scouts, the top of society, and here too. Hidden abuser networks among us have been outed with few consequences, even with influential people involved. Complicit people can just change identities and go on enjoying community among us. We don’t have an Epstein using power to hide it, we have a vacuum of power.

Part of the problem is dependence on corporate platforms we don’t own. That goes with nobody wanting to own it. You’ll hear “we don’t know them”, while the “us vs them” narrative is aimed against inside reporting, both ignorantly and for coverup. The result is that nobody can hurt us more than we do to ourselves by letting injustice persist.

There’s so much unreported, and scattered across contained communities, that it might only change if professionals apply resources we don’t have. This can revise history about media. A careful eye can notice that the 2001 Vanity Fair story wasn’t entirely off base to cast suspicion. It has a character whose convention-running influence enables abusers to this day. Letting it go this long is nobody elses fault and more people should know.

In history yet to be told, the Rainfurrest debacle had strong geographic overlap with the abuser network featured in 2025 TV docuseries The Furry Detectives: Unmasking a Monster. Influential members are hiding there today.

Being the media

The more we do it, the less outsiders can define us. It can start with defying the narrative of media malice, and the line between us vs them, where talking to them is considered betrayal.

This may bother believers in the narrative, which goes with expectations for vague, undefined objectivity. Objectivity is a fairytale that people claim to want without allowing to exist — because to them, The Media is simply a pejorative, and good doesn’t mean true, it means PR cheerleading. This definition of “good media” doesn’t actually mean truth. That’s helpful to know so you can throw out the whole concept.

A term for false objectivity is view from nowhere. Fandom is always from somewhere. Furry isn’t just a love for anthropomorphism (or it wouldn’t need another label), capital-F Furry has identity that you can pick out if you see it, because you’re in it. It comes from each other, so you can’t be inside and have an outside view at the same time. There’s no such thing as an objective fan. Objective fandom is an oxymoron.

This means crossing a line between reporting news, and being news, because of what fandom IS. Fandom is bias and that’s perfectly valid. You’re here for a reason, so own it. If you don’t like what the media is showing, do it for them, like by organizing a Zootopia screening in 2016, reporting it yourself, and having Vanity Fair quote it to show what you are. Avoiding them and wanting false objectivity is like playing peekaboo with a mirror. Don’t you know what you are?

The Epstein story doesn’t show that we’re inherently better than corrupt elites, but we can be, and here’s a different take on our part in it.

Epstein’s influence on radicalizing the world and how it harms furries — by guest Arrkay

The more files that come out, the more murky theories come out in reaction to coverup and injustice. Here’s a look from Arrkay, a Canadian video essayist for Furry Film Burrow, who chatted about hidden history hinted in the files:

“I feel like there’s a line we can draw that connects furry hate on SomethingAwful — with Epstein possibly influencing keeping /pol/ open on 4chan — to the global litterbox moral panic. While not directly related to furries, Epstein had some kind of hand in maintaining a culture of violence towards furries.

You can take my opinion with a grain of salt, I’ve only listened to a few podcast episodes about it. Epstein was a bit-player, just one piece of a larger network of sex-trafficking rich assholes who see poor people as sub-human.”

• Behind the Bastards: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Build the Modern World

  “To summarize briefly and badly, Epstein met with 4chan founder m00t shortly after m00t took down /pol/ (the politics board), fulfilling his promise to remove the subforum if it ever “turned into stormfront”. Epstein met with him, then 2 days later /pol/ was reinstated. We don’t actually know for certain if Epstein was directly responsible for it, but the timing seems uncanny.”

• MSNOW: Epstein met with 4chan’s founder just as the site’s infamous political thread began

“Epstein’s accomplice Ghislain Maxwell was a power-user of 4chan. Not directly related to furries, but maintaining the environment in which furries are a regular target of harassment — whether its afro-wigged weirdos holding up “yiff in hell furfags” signs at AC, or Milo attempting to round up Proud Boys to march on MFF. Though the emails show that Epstein did share porn of Adventure Time and FNAF characters if that’s furry-adjacent enough.”

Source

“Epstein liked to collect thinkers and professors, and even held symposiums on his child-sex island. He wanted to explore “dangerous ideas” to help shape the world with his money (ideas like “what if we did race-science” and “it should be ok for rich people to fuck 15 year olds”). He would funnel millions of dollars into universities like MIT, to fund professors he liked and divert funds from the humanities. Epstein was an early funder of Bitcoin. Epstein in his emails describes his ideal scenario of using trans women as sex slaves, dissolving the global order, and bringing back “tribalism” so that the elite can essentially become nobility and royalty again.

A few years later, a joke president is elected with the help of 4chan’s Pepe memes and crypto funds, after Gamergate raises Steve Bannon to be his strategist. “Pizzagate” makes it so that calling an elite a pedophile is an unserious joke, and Qanon creates an election fraud conspiracy that results in the January 6 Capitol riot.

I feel like a conspiracy brained weirdo with a wall of red string when I lay it out. There’s a lot of blanks to fill in with the Epstein emails, lots of gaps that are left up to our imagination and interpretation. (One thing is for certain is that Trump raped a 13 year old and is blowing up Iran to distract from it now…)

I don’t think it was intentional but we have felt and seen the after-effects, downstream, where furries are a natural target for radicalized channers. While I’m not surprised that there are no furries (or drag queens for that matter) in the Epstein emails, we shouldn’t ignore the influence he had over online and intellectual spaces that have historically been real assholes to furries. We’ll never know for sure, we only have a small window into a much stranger and darker world.”

– Arrkay

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