Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Journalism

August 16, 2021

The Omegle Cat Killer: A true crime tale of stopping online animal abuse (Part 1)

by Patch O'Furr

CONTENT WARNING for animal abuse – Part (1) A Killer – (2) A Trend – (3) A Watchdog

He had to be stopped. Someone was killing cats and posting the videos online. Internet sleuths were hunting a killer who reveled in taunting them. In December 2019, their story came out on Netflix as Don’t F*ck With Cats. It was one of the year’s most-watched documentaries.

As hard as they tried, identifying the killer wasn’t enough. They felt helpless until he escalated to killing a human victim and mailing the body parts to terror targets. Finally the authorities noticed, and Canadian man Luka Magnotta was caught and convicted. The story suggests that taking animal cruelty seriously could have saved a person, and it showed a trend for attention: “Murderers have become online broadcasters. And their audience is us.”

Months after the show, the same trend terrorized the furry fandom and made a new case for the FBI.

More than a copycat

In May 2020, the new Covid-19 situation was turning the world upside down. Stuck in quarantine, furry fans found a way to lift their spirits. They joined a regular event on the Omegle video chat service, using hashtags to meet fellow fans by random connection.

They weren’t expecting to connect to a woman in an animal-skin mask, gripping a bloody skull a little bigger than an egg. It almost looked fake, until she used a finger to pop out an eyeball like a grape.

Whoever was doing this wasn’t just shocking random targets. She knew about the event and targeted them with hashtags like #furries, #fursuit and #furryfandom. It made a trail with sightings of gory animal parts and links to Instagram and Tiktok. It was hard to document live incidents, but alarm spread and reached millions of viewers on Youtube. She got attention she wanted, but where did she come from?

The hype never told the full story. It passed like a blip and Youtubers and blogs quickly forgot. We’ll get to what happened in 2021 — but first, she didn’t just start in 2020 without warning. A path was laid much earlier.

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August 13, 2021

A Call for Preservation of Sources for Furry Fandom History

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Guest post by Gamepopper, an indie game maker and animation fan in the UK.

As a British furry who was interested in the history of the furry fandom, I couldn’t help but notice most of the subject was centred around the United States. This was the case in all the articles and convention panels I could find, and most blatantly in the book Furry Nation: The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood Subculture by Joe Strike. This United States focus continues to this day with videos and documentaries such as The Fandom by Ash Coyote discussing the history of the fandom from the beginnings at science fiction and comic book conventions in California.

As a result, I took it upon myself in 2017 to look into my own country’s perspective of the fandom. This part-time hobby of mine culminated into a lecture at ConFuzzled 2019, The History of the Furry Fandom in the United Kingdom, which focused on the growth of the fandom from the earliest known gathering of twenty fans in 1987 to the present day conventions of over two thousand furries. I spoke about the housecons and fanzines in the nineties, furmeets and mailing lists in the noughties, and the British furry conventions and the difficulties getting them off the ground. I also allowed audience members to make comments and ask questions throughout, which you can listen to in the recorded version uploaded to YouTube.

Watching it in retrospect, I’m still proud of the amount of content in the work, in spite of a few factual errors and omissions that a few people have noted. On the day itself, it went over better than I ever anticipated, with a full room of attendees giving a huge round of applause at the end and many furries coming up to me to appraise my work. One of those people thought that the full history should be written down, and, given the amount of work I had already done, I felt up to the task.

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January 26, 2021

You made it to 2021! — A look back at the Top 20 Furry News stories of last year. (Part 2)

by Patch O'Furr

The Ursa Major Awards are open for nominations! Check the Recommended Anthropomorphics list for stuff to consider.

(Part 1): You made it to 2021! — A look back at the Top 20 Furry News stories of last year.

Here’s more review of last year’s news from Dogpatch Press. These are highlights for this site, and they’re not listed by biggest or most-viewed, it’s a mixed bag of big stories plus inside stuff only a fandom knows.

(11) International animals — What’s life like for a teenage LGBT furry fan in Iran? and Meet Unid, the only known furry from Sri Lanka.

There’s so much going on outside North America. Furry scenes are coming up in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Art is common language for far-flung fans who’d never meet any other way. One in Iran thinks war should be about the best pizza. One in Sri Lanka dreams of coming to a furry con one day.

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January 21, 2021

You made it to 2021! — A look back at the Top 20 Furry News stories of last year. (Part 1)

by Patch O'Furr

The Ursa Major Awards are open for nominations! Check the Recommended Anthropomorphics list for stuff to consider.

1 Year Ago: Hindsight is 2020 — Top 20 furry news stories of last year

“Covid-kun is a new coronavirus mascot from Thailand who teaches kids to wash their hands and social distance.” — @mondomascots (from There’s a Mascot for That? Cute COVID-19 Education.)

It was a multi-headed monster of a year of disasters. But here you are. Have a review of last year’s news from Dogpatch Press. These are highlights for this site and they’re not listed by biggest or most-viewed, it’s a mixed bag of big stories plus inside stuff only a fandom knows.

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November 30, 2020

Buddy the Subway Rat says ‘cheese’ for the media.

by Joe Strike

Welcome to guest Joe Strike, journalist and author of Furry Nation, the furry fandom history book. (- Patch)

In New York City it’s hard to get peoples’ attention if you’re a struggling artist, or even if you’re not particularly struggling…unless you dress up as a rat and gambol around NYC subway platforms dragging a giant prop pizza slice, while making sure you’re videoed as much as possible for your social media platforms.

Jonothon Lyons

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August 31, 2020

Weird Portland, Pepper Coyote and a Sleestak are a perfect match for the dumpster fire of 2020

by Patch O'Furr

Two stories this week are an antidote to a year full of doom, gloom, fire, fury, and not nearly enough hugs and smiles.

First: Possibly some of the peak publicity furry music has ever gotten! Then, a scaly monster stalks the streets of Portland… here’s hoping he does a Q&A for us.

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August 11, 2020

Take the Furry Fandom 2020 Survey from author Tea Krulos.

by Patch O'Furr

If you’ve ever had to explain to an outsider what furries are, you might be a little weird. Or as I prefer, lovably eccentric. There’s a writer who gets the lovable part, and he wants your help to learn more about furries. You can be part of the research:

Click here to take the Furry Fandom 2020 Survey.

Tea Krulos is a freelance journalist and author who covers subcultures, weird news, and strange personalities. He also writes about local art and entertainment for a bunch of magazines and has his own weekly column. His books are about the Real Life Superhero Movement, monster hunters who chase Bigfoot, ghosts and UFO’s, cryptozoology and more. It makes me want to visit a whole book store just for that stuff — and help him make a new book.

Tea and I did an hour interview and he told me about his research. It was just before he led a weekly walking ghost/history tour. Last time I did one in New Orleans, I was happy to have a trusty guide to lead me on a leash. (It kept me from slipping in ectoplasm or Mardi Gras barf.) I think Tea’s research will make him a trusty guide like that. The survey is sociological and asks about a few debated topics, but I know there’s nothing wrong with writing about them from someone who is just learning and being into the same stuff as me. He says:

Hello furry friends — my name is Tea, I’m a freelance writer and author from Milwaukee, WI. As an eccentric punk rocker, I’ve always had an interest in subcultures, social movements, and fandoms and have written about them several times (including roller derby, paranormal investigators, Real-life Superheroes, music cultures and more) and I always approach the people I’m writing about in a respectful (but truthful) way.

I’m working on a future book that examines a variety of subcultures/ social movements that focuses on the years 2015-2020 under the Trump campaign/ administration. To write it I’m doing a lot of interviews and also surveys directed at different groups of people.

I’ve created a survey for the furry fandom that takes about 5 minutes to complete. Your personal info will not be shared. Surveys like this are helpful in getting some idea of who the group is and if their answers are mostly in agreement or split on issues. I hope you participate (and help share) and the last entry asks for contact info if you wish to talk further.

Thank you and a big thanks to Patch for his insight on the survey questions and for helping me spread the word. Hope you’re all well in this crazy year.

— Tea Krulos
www.teakrulos.com

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July 31, 2020

Texas civil rights activist murdered by right-wing extremist with furry fan background

by Patch O'Furr

Months of protest and two killings

Michael Ramos was a Black and Latino man killed by Austin police in April 2020. Since April, hundreds of concerned citizens have been organizing demonstrations as the Mike Ramos Brigade to protest police brutality and call for justice.

This week, their member Garrett Foster was killed while supporting the cause. A video from the scene had a witness report of how they were attacked by a reckless driver who drove into the crowd and shot at them from inside the car. Foster’s killer drove away, but they got his license number.

Garrett Foster died on Saturday, July 25. He was a military veteran and had been pushing his disabled fiance in a wheelchair on another one of nearly 50 days of protesting together. “Garrett’s death painfully reminds us of Heather Heyer’s death in Charlottesville when a pro-Nazi white supremacist deliberately drove his car into a crowd of protesters.” – Mike Ramos Brigade

From the car plates, the killer was identified as Daniel Perry. His lawyer admitted he was the shooter.

BREAKING: Investigation Exposes US Army Sergeant as Murderer of Garrett Foster. (Archive)

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July 2, 2020

The Fandom movie: Furry paws seize the media

by Patch O'Furr

Premiering JULY 3, 2020 at thefandomfilm.com.

When the media shows furries, do they get it right?

It’s a constant furry worry. In 2017 it was announced that CNN was making a show about them. Backlash rose about sensationalism, but few critics gave a fair shake to the producers of This Is Life with Lisa Ling. Then it came out and it was “a flat-out advocacy piece on behalf of Furry“, said Joe Strike, a fan since the 1980’s who wrote a book that covers the subculture’s run-ins with bad media.

Joe Strike’s Furry Nation is the essential fandom history book.

Positive response didn’t satisfy every critic. Some asked why the 3 fans featured by CNN didn’t include more diverse people. But the show (with an asian-american woman journalist) got backlash while asking volunteers to raise their paws and be counted. That seems like damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

In answer to this, The Fandom is a documentary made by the fans. It features outstanding writers (like Joe), artists, animators, musicians, costume designers, event organizers and founders. It celebrates the roots with pro quality and appeal for outsiders who might not have given a fair look before.

For decades this subculture has thrived despite adversity. Bad media is one kind, but not the only kind. Some is internal. Some is homophobic. Some is happening right now with this screwy year. There’s even a villain to tell you about.

$10 million worth of trouble

Anthrocon is the 2nd largest furry convention, led by Uncle Kage (Dr. Sam Conway), the longstanding CEO and fandom public relations figure. It was due to bring $9.9 million to Pittsburgh’s economy in 2020. Now it’s among 70 furry cons canceled by COVID-19. The movie is launching anyways on the con’s dates, without opportunities that could have won distribution. (No film fests either.)

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April 14, 2020

Terror, Teens, and Furaffinity — How a chain of violent hate incidents links to furry fandom.

by Patch O'Furr

The biggest furry art site FurAffinity is hosting promotion for a neo-nazi mass shooter. Brenton Tarrant shot 100 people in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019. Tarrant came from internet radicalizing. He used 8chan to broadcast hate, and is now a far-right extremist hero for copycats around the world. FurAffinity has been closing many reports about it, including mine and others that tipped off this story. Furaffinity’s Code of Conduct (2.7) says: “Do not identify with or promote real hate or terrorist organizations and their ideologies.” They refuse to enforce it.

In Furaffinity’s policy, “organizations” may be a weasel-word to dismiss this as an isolated thing. Treating this as “just art” helps the goal of radicalizing — to worm inside with lying that hate isn’t tied to violence, and violence comes from “lone wolves”. (A goal to provoke, but deny it.)

Single data points make a much bigger chain. When insiders refuse to recognize it or do anything to help, they pass off responsibility to outside sources. This story will be one of those sources, along with FBI docs and current mainstream news that link a fringe of furry fandom to violent hate.

From top left: (1) Furaffinity post promoting the New Zealand shooter. (2) Vice explains hate symbols in it. (3) Furaffinity refuses to enforce their policy.

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