Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Current events

October 23, 2025

Who runs your community? Five stories about predators with powerful friends in fandom

by Patch O'Furr

Sick of bad news? Want some good news? Here’s how to make it. Get armed with knowledge to demand better for your community. When there is injustice, getting justice starts with reporting it. Bad media likes to linger on gross details of crime, but helpful media investigates and criticizes patterns, issues, impact, policy and leadership. This public service is often requested by people who need help — especially when leaders and police don’t help — like when there’s internet activity outside their reach, or news has to reach sources they need to come forward. It’s a job for independent reporting, so it can’t be suppressed when leaders are corrupt or protecting friends. This is news by us, for us, because outsiders and bad people don’t run your community… you do.

Five stories get their own headline posts. Here’s the short versions.

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October 23, 2025

Mare Fair enabled shady crypto nazis and a zoophile organizer who preyed on horse rescues

by Patch O'Furr

SERIES: Who runs your community? Five stories about predators with powerful friends in fandom.

Corruption behind the record-breaking charity 

Florida’s Mare Fair is an adults-only My Little Pony convention. It crosses fandom for a kid’s show with the edgy chanboard culture seen in news reporting about the MLP fandom’s Nazi problem. The con is organized by and for 4chan users, and bounced between 3 venues in 3 years while gaining a reputation for hateful behavior. It keeps raising criticism about swastika displays and racist dogwhistles, while critics face backlash for protesting. One critic tells Dogpatch Press: “Nazis and racists used Mare Fair as a hate safe space, because they couldn’t spread it at reputable cons… it became clear that management did not care.” Defenders have pushed back with denial and apologism about the con raising charity for horses.

Mare Fair is run by Snowpity Inc, headed by Joshua “Corpulent Brony” Hope, who founded it by milking fandom with silver coin sales and his own cryptocurrency. This allegedly ties con finances to shady donors with crypto-wealth, who donate so much that it breaks charity records set by other cons — conveniently buying a PR front. Behind the front of helping horses, Hope and the con management teamed up with Kyle “Lightsolver” Foster to help run Mare Fair. Foster is a zoophile who abuses horses, according to horse rescuers who claim Foster manipulated power over their operations, after keeping a crippled horse alive in pain and using a baby horse for years of sex abuse. On top of that, Hope runs his own website that hosts bestiality videos (evidence below).

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October 23, 2025

UK furry event founder and outed zoosadist ring member is still running events 7 years later.

by Patch O'Furr

SERIES: Who runs your community? Five stories about predators with powerful friends in fandom.

No consequences for participating in the worst crime ring to ever emerge in fandom.

A series of international furry events under the name Club Animalz (and other names) has been held in Manchester and Berlin since 2017. The founder, Foxb/Foxbearance, AKA Ben Mills, was exposed as an animal rapist in the 2018 zoosadist leaks. Mills raped animals on video, in a fursuit made for him, that he used for years. In 2025, his events are still popular and partnered with large cons in the mainstream of furry like Confuzzled.

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October 23, 2025

Mephit Furmeet put one of the world’s most infamous zoophiles on stage to represent the fandom

by Patch O'Furr

SERIES: Who runs your community? Five stories about predators with powerful friends in fandom.

Charles Alexander Berry (Toggle Rat) runs NAMBLA for zoophiles

For years, furry conventions have hosted Charles Alexander Berry, AKA Toggle Rat. He runs a podcast that launders animal molesting as identity, like NAMBLA for zoophiles, while hiding their victims offstage. In 2021 he was outed as a zoophile with his husband running a furry group in Tennessee. Many people’s effort to protect the fandom went unheard in August 2025, when despite protest, Berry was given a platform on stage at Mephit Furmeet, the furry con running since the 1990’s in Memphis, TN.

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October 23, 2025

Tennessee furry group leaders corrupted with predators and drug death: two evidence documents

by Patch O'Furr

SERIES: Who runs your community? Five stories about predators with powerful friends in fandom.

“We need justice”

MurfreesFurs, a furry group in Tennessee with around 1000 members, was the subject of an evidence document with 30 sources alleging that organizers covered up nazis and zoophiles in their inner circle, and failed to protect the community from predators. Sources face retaliation, and Dogpatch Press was pressured for suppression before even reporting. The shocking thing is, it was only part of the problem. A second evidence document came out independently from the first, alleging more serious complicity by MurfreesFurs organizers in CSAM, drug dealing and a fentanyl death. Sources include police reports and prison records.

The first and followup documents:

Reading almost 600 pages is a challenge, so it was boiled down by a two hour phone call with authors of the second doc, who are known but being protected from backlash here. The goal:

“If they’re responsible for a death, we firmly hope that justice is served for the family, and if kids and animals were harmed, we need justice for that too. It’s not enough to get them temporarily out of one hobby group and trust that they won’t just rebrand and come back.”

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August 16, 2025

Help! I’m being impersonated by someone who stole my fursona and refuses to stop.

by Patch O'Furr

Hi, I’m Sierra, a furry in Norway, and I’m experiencing harassment that might be familiar to a lot of people online.

In 2020, I created an original fursona and commissioned art for it. I put years of effort into a character that is special and personal to me. A fursona like mine is one of the things that defines what furries are, so what happened next was not just upsetting to me, I think it goes against what our community is for.

In April 2025, I discovered that a stranger was inexplicably using the fursona I created to impersonate me. Call it… imfursonation? They were stealing the identity I had been building for years, at the cost of my money, passion, friendships, and personal integrity. I did nothing to provoke this creepy wrongdoing and only found out by surprise.

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August 8, 2025

Two years of anti-zoophile community moderation: Heika’s work with Laelaps on Bluesky

by Patch O'Furr

Founder heikadog

In Greek mythology, Laelaps is a dog that never fails to catch what it is hunting.

On Bluesky, tens of thousands of users use the Laelaps anti-zoophile labeler. This volunteer-run project collects evidence of animal abusers and enablers, publishes a list, and shows a label on listed accounts so you’re informed before interacting. A labeler utilizes third-party moderation service, hooked up to Bluesky features that help you choose how to use the platform. It lets you actively curate rather than passively consume what you’re fed.

This is their second anniversary of launching a list, their first anniversary of integrating third-party labeler service, and now the public evidence is just reorganized with its sub-categories for refined use. You can support it with ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/laelapsfyi

Laelaps started with a small team of furries and now reaches people from all walks of life. It sets a standard for community moderation that any group can follow. Founder heikadog (aka Heika, they/them) was interviewed by Dogpatch Press about the mission, methods, history, and impact of the internet’s most successful project in its niche. They say furries run the internet, and here’s more proof.

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July 9, 2025

Preview The Furry Detectives docuseries, and learn how reporting emerged against backlash

by Patch O'Furr

Full series out July 17. The first 12 minutes of the first episode:

The Furry Detectives docuseries — The story they don’t want told, emerging against 7 years of backlash and interference.

Coming on AMC+: this 4-episode series introduces furries who investigated the 2018 zoosadist leaks. (More summary of the leaks.)

The leaks exposed evidence of deep-rooted, ongoing animal abuse networks in the community. They use furry as a cover, for organizing that isn’t easily dismissed with “anyone can be a furry, we can’t gatekeep it” disclaimers. Half of the truth is that abuse happens in any community — and internet tech and platforms are big factors not fully in our power — but the whole truth is that this behavior is uniquely among us in real-life organized ways seen nowhere else. It’s nobody else’s problem when our groups are run by and for us.

Making our own destiny is how fandom works at its best. However before the show releases, it’s catching some backlash for airing problems that the community didn’t properly deal with for 7 years. It’s like some people want things brushed under the rug so ignoring it can make it worse. That behavior was always holding back investigation over 7 years while publishing tens of thousands of words of reporting at Dogpatch Press.

There was a lot of generous team work as well, but some of the most counterproductive behavior was not just from incuriosity and denialism, putting optics over solutions, or random bad actors… Most alarmingly, there’s also corruption from influence at the top.

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July 5, 2025

Newsdump: Room Party art show during Anthrocon, furries on NPR, public image in the media

by Patch O'Furr

Happening now: Anthrocon and Room Party show at Bunker Projects, 5106 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh

Anthrocon has competitors for the world’s biggest furry convention, but is unsurpassed in other ways. Their street parade is a wonder of the furry world, uniquely partnered with Pittsburgh and swarmed by cheering residents on a blocked off city street.

Fursuiters make public image by flaunting millions in art at such events, but it’s also about the artists. They’re enjoying how Pittsburgh welcomes furries like nowhere else, with their own art show at a gallery apart from the con.

SEE ROOM PARTY: http://room-party.com. The show has a 6-week run with film screenings, workshops, and informal art-making gatherings. Curators include Brett Hanover (previously in furry news with his movie Rukus.) Brett sent info:

Room Party is the first-ever large-scale group exhibition of contemporary and experimental furry art, featuring over 50 artists working in drawing and painting, comics, photography, installation, video, and new media. Curated by furry artists Lane Lincecum, Brett Hanover, Cass Dickenson, and Paul Peng, Room Party takes its name from the unofficial hotel room parties held during conventions—embodied virtual realities where furries try on unimagined identities, invent new sexualities and artistic expressions, and discover alternative ways of being known. Room Party brings the love and creativity of these events to Pittsburgh’s Bunker Projects, putting furry artists in conversation with the fine art world, the broader queer community, and the contemporary moment.

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May 16, 2025

Furgeddaboutit 2025 con report: “Controlled burn” cooks up unprecedented results in New Jersey

by Dogpatch Press Staff

GUEST POST: Eberra Wolf (sounds like “a-BEAR-uh”) is an independent reporter from New York City, and focuses on the northeastern United States. He has been a furry since December 2022. Eberra is using community access to submit news as an on-the-scene correspondent – you can submit news here.

Furries playing outside in the courtyard of the Mount Laurel, N.J., DoubleTree on Saturday. (Eberra Wolf for Dogpatch Press.)

Furgeddaboutit had its inaugural convention over the weekend of May 2-4 in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Created in reaction to Garden State Fur the Weekend, another New Jersey convention, it was held on the same weekend 47 miles southwest, about 50 minutes away by car.

By the end of both cons, comparison of the respective results would make an example for the global fandom to remember.

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