Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: WTF

May 4, 2015

Exchanging Fluids on PBS: Your eyes will bug out at this WTF furry video from 1992!

by Patch O'Furr

It wasn’t a science show. It wasn’t mating season on Wild America (the naughtiest stuff PBS usually aired.)  This is something more exceptionally special.

The video starts with happy old ladies in pastel sweatshirts, volunteering for a fundraiser.  It just screams vintage 1980’s and early 90’s. It’s a sight that reminds me of church telethons, pancake brunches, and satirically-cast actors from John Waters‘ Baltimore.  Nobody could make a better audience for a special surprise.

Art_1992

These exuberant ladies are applauding a fundraiser auction of donated art.  It includes a serene mountain landscape, a traditional celebration of the season, and a tasteful portrait of a 1920’s flapper woman.  Then there’s the gay Furry porn.  On Public TV.  In 1992. Before the internet gave dirty animal cartoons to the world.  (I’m not even sure it was easy to show gay people at the time!)  NSFW:

Read the rest of this entry »

8 comments
March 31, 2015

Community > Commodity, and the value of WTF. Part 3 about the FurAffinity sale to IMVU.

by Patch O'Furr

A series of three articles:

 

  1. About the FurAffinity sale, and the issue of trade-offs.
  2. IMVU does a Q&A with me.
  3. Community > Commodity, and the Value of WTF.  Long live furries.

The conclusion brings it all back to commercialization.  I’ve reported this for a while:  Measuring the Furry Economy. – Mainstream advertising: “More and more, Furries are being hinted at in marketing media!” – And the recent $11,575 record fursuit sale and $17,500 top price. Also try: Furry, not an obscure little fandom any more.  I often say that the thriving growth of this subculture is built on WTF weirdness that can’t be digested by the mainstream.  Will that stay true?

___________________________

3) Community > Commodity, and the value of WTF.

___________________________

 

You could write a whole book about a subculture’s place in the larger culture.  (There’s a “Furry coffee table book” waiting to be written.) Here’s a very loose topic about it, with a point:

Commercialization makes some furries fear losing what they love.  But the normals-scaring, freedom-raising, limit-pushing, WTF part of it may save the rest.  The more fringe it is – the more it holds Furry back from acceptance, but keeps it strongly independent. More notice could be a win-win.

Read the rest of this entry »

3 comments