Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: social media

April 21, 2026

¿Que son los Therian? A viral trend on Spanish-speaking media brings echoes of culture war.

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Guest writer Kamen the Lycanroc has covered NYFurs events, and now looks at world news about Therians, the subset of Otherkin identity.

Screenshot of the Tiktok page Fox_cor, which has become a prominent video used in Latin American headlines.

Therians become a viral trend in Latin America, for better or worse.

“Are you a therian?” A boy from Spain came up and asked EberraWolf, a fellow furry news reporter, as NYCFurwalk hosted their 12th walk through the financial district of New York City. This question not only puzzled the tourists, it took Spanish-speaking countries by storm.

The first notice started with a news profile about a therian Tiktok user named Lexi from Argentina, and turned into a viral topic across Latin America. Therians went from appearing on gossip TV shows in Argentina for a laugh, to an amalgamation of AI-generated videos, false rumors, and memes all over Spanish-speaking social media, with furries getting in on it for better or worse.

Therians became a viral trend in Latin America around the middle of February 2026, with Google trends showing a major increase in searches for therians and other related topics in the region. Spanish articles, videos, and reports are what appeared first on Google searches even in North America. While English-speaking Youtube results of the search term “Therian” brings up Tiktok re-uploads, Spanish-speaking search results bring out news reports and videos in news sources from Mexico to Chile.

For example, El Heraldo De Mexico, a Mexican newspaper, published several videos and YouTube shorts about therians in the span of three weeks, with video titles claiming “They bite children, fight with dogs, and they go to the veterinarian! The very controversial case of Therians!”

While it has remained mostly a trend on social media, it did not take long to escalate. Spanish-speaking sites became filled with AI-generated posters promoting “Therian meetups” in prominent cities in Spain and Latin America. AI-generated videos and images also spread of “Therian Rights protests”, such as a video from a Dominican Republic news channel showcasing dogs attacking Therians at a protest. It only takes a short look to see inconsistencies such as the signs having different languages and the Washington Monument appearing in the background. Rumors have gotten so bad that there was a false news story about a Therian being set on fire in Guatemala.

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November 24, 2025

Furrydelphia drops Twitter – can you #QuitYourX?

by Patch O'Furr

Bad habits die hard. Let’s talk about how furries use Twitter (“X”), despite everything.

We all know what’s wrong with its biggest influencers and owner.

The world’s richest man bought the site to control information.

It’s not just to deceive you for politics — His power rises by growing traffic of any kind.

Every active account gives him power; for or against, real or fake, traffic grows his power, not yours.

Meanwhile you’ll be trolled with denials of what you can see with your own eyes.

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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

Nazifur sex offender keeps going in and out of jail while misleading furries to trust him

by Patch O'Furr

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

Trust put a predator in a power position

In Colorado, Jacob Kovar was a nazifur sex offender who was convicted after his arrest warrant credited investigation by Dogpatch Press. Kovar did crimes as head of security for a furry convention, until they got tipped and fired him. After years in jail, Kovar returned to the community with friends in a regular furry group, while he was allegedly violating parole to be online. Kovar had his parole revoked and was arrested again in late 2025.

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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/Foxberance, 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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February 21, 2025

How to love the freedom of leaderless fandom, and fight the flipside of organized abuse

by Patch O'Furr

 

Do you know the story where several blind people try to describe an elephant by only touching small parts of it? Nobody can say what the whole animal is.

That happens when furry subculture talks about itself, because of how it’s built. The whole thing is a series of bubbles that don’t see each other, in peer-to-peer horizontal structure. Their limited views go with a longstanding habit of reacting against outside stereotypes by falling into their own: The Geek Social Fallacies.

Fallacies can be actively overcome. Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is power. If you don’t like the media, Be The Media. That’s the mission at Dogpatch Press, to tell the full story warts and all, and own it from inside — before outsiders tell it for you — but there’s always resistance. The subculture keeps stubborn blind spots. Many stories are too inside for professionals to investigate, but hobbyists lack the resources, especially when they explore problems that demand action that people don’t want to take. Difficult, costly, critical stories are the ones that stay overlooked, underreported, and suppressed. Nobody is immune to the psychology of denying uncomfortable knowledge. This is how you get too much shallow drama between peer-to-peer individuals, but too little intensive research with wider scope.

You may say the solution is showing more of the positive; but that’s not seeing the whole elephant.

It’s important to do the difficult work of telling the full range of human experience within, and maturely accept a place in society, not apart from it. The more we know, the more it empowers people to do better. This is a challenge always lagging behind the way this community grows.

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August 17, 2021

The Zoosadism Channel: A look at a trend of animal abuse on social media (Part 2).

by Patch O'Furr

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

Huge platforms are letting it happen. It’s under their noses, according to this June 2021 report. National Geographic: How fake animal rescue videos have become a new frontier for animal abuse.

That’s disturbing at wide scale, because of how social media attention meets psychological escalation. Part (1) looked into the Omegle Cat Killer, where an investigator said: “Animal abusers have total power over that animal and, if someone is willing to be that cruel to an animal, evidence suggests they may target vulnerable humans as well,” said Special Agent in Charge Paul Keenan, FBI Indianapolis.” — Kokomo Tribune

Despite such a warning about the extremes, it seems like the odds are against justice. A standout example among furries was Kero the Wolf, a popular Youtuber exposed in a zoosadist crime ring. The evidence led to arrests, but child abuse was the focus and most members got away with it. Kero’s attempts to gaslight the public about his innocence made him The O.J. Simpson of furries. His presence highlights a gap in the laws.

This part covers the exploitation on social media, and Part (3) will feature someone working to bridge the gap.

A content pool with no lifeguard

In 1940, protest rose up about a horse tumbling over a cliff in a Western movie. It triggered regulation for the industry to stop using animals like disposable props. Now Hollywood movies get American Humane certification by following a 132-page guide. But tech platforms aren’t so regulated.

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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

Someone was killing cats and posting the videos online. He had to be stopped, but how? Internet sleuths were hunting the killer who reveled in taunting them. As hard as they tried, identifying the killer wasn’t enough to get official action. The hunters 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. In December 2019, the story came out on Netflix as Don’t F*ck With Cats, one of the year’s most-watched documentaries. The story suggests that taking animal cruelty seriously could have saved a person, and it showed a trend: “Murderers have become online broadcasters. And their audience is us.”

Months after the show, the same trend emerged from inside furry fandom to terrorize the public. It made a new case for the FBI, and you’ll have a lot to think about when you see the updates at the end.

More than a copycat

In May 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was turning the world upside down. Stuck in quarantine, furry fans lifted their spirits by mingling online. 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 meet 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. Something terrible was being done to real animals.

Whoever was doing it wasn’t just shocking random targets. She knew about their 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 the live incidents as they spun past, but alarm spread and reached millions of viewers on Youtube. The creepy intruder got the attention she wanted, but where did she come from?

The shocking hype never told the full story. The Omegle Cat Killer was only a blip before Youtubers and blogs quickly forgot to track if justice was done. Dogpatch Press has the full extent of what happened and the legal outcome — but let’s also look at how she didn’t just emerge without warning in 2020. A path was laid much earlier.

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