They were in their own room in this “mall” that you chose to walk in on and make snarky comments. Then hang around and make some more. In a mall that has clearly posted rules about not being a jerk.
You can make fun of them all you want. But it’s rude to walk in where they are conversing and make fun of them to their face.
This is all true, but doesn’t excuse the mockers. They’re still jerks, even if it’s expected that jerks might pop up there.
These posts remind me of the recent NYT article on trolling. The trolls attitude was that the victims deserved it, for not knowing better that jerk trolls like themselves would attack them. Whatever you think of furries, there is no reason to walk into a thread and make snarky comments while adding absolutely nothing. Whether they’re weird or not has absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s a perfect example of threadshitting.
No, if you’d done that no one would have noticed. What you did was the equivalent of walking up to the adults in fancy dress, getting their attention so they’re all looking at you and then shaking your head in bemusement, in other words, rude. If you wanted to shake your head in bemusement you could’ve just done it in privacy of your own home. Instead you went out of your way to specifically let everyone know you were shaking your head, that’s thread-shitting from where I stand.
In the other thread you asked if furries are “developmentally stunted” simply because they liked to watch movies with anthropomorphic animals in them. Would you ask if all people who like to watch action films are sick because they like to watch people getting shot or things get blown up? Or suggest that all people who watch horror films are closet sadists who like seeing people get stabbed or tortured?
I freely admit that some of the things that furries do is a bit off the wall. But to classify all furries by their actions is the same as saying that all sports fans are weird because some of them paint their faces or bodies in their team’s colors when they attend games.
You (and others) keep talking about furries as “people who wear animal costumes” and use this as an excuse to say things like
NOT ALL FURRIES WEAR COSTUMES!
How many times does that have to be said before it sinks into your heads? Yes, the people who wear costumes tend to get mentioned in media coverage. Just like they do at science fiction, Star Trek, and Star Wars conventions. Or at sporting events, for that matter. That doesn’t mean that all furries, or the other groups I mentioned, do it. There are links in both threads to a Wiki article about furries. Did any of you take the time to read it before throwing around comments based on “something you heard somewhere”?
As for the repeated comments about furries being “thin-skinned” because we get upset about the things people are saying about them: Gee, you’re saying that we’re all sick fucks who need to grow up and get a life because some of us wear animal costumes, or like to watch movies with animals in them. I can’t imagine why that would bother us :rolleyes:
Can we all just agree that furries are a lot more civilized than those assholes who wear sports jerseys and team colors? Talk about a fantasy world. Dress-up wanna-be dickwads. Yeah, sports fans should get therapy, what with them being total mindfucks and all. Who’s with me?
As has been noted before, what a person does in public pretty much puts that behavior into the public domain, like say, a message board. And lets say that message board is dedicated to lively discussions and even–what the hell–fighting ignorance. Then people devoted to the idea of living their lives as cartoon animals become fair game for discussion. It was tacky to laugh at them in MPSIMS because that’s the social, warm fuzzy forum.
When was respect degraded into an automatic, knee-jerk default? Tolerance, sure. People can do whatever they want as long as they don’t harm others. But respect? Whole 'nother thing. See, that’s earned.
An adult who drizzles about yearning to be a cartoon critter, and often one with unlikely factory add-ons–wings, sexy human features, etc.–is pretty much the definition of a loser. Worthy of tolerance? Sure, just for being human. (And not, say, a smokin’ hot telekenetic aardvark with billowing snow-white wings. Or a unicorn But one who’s really hung, and has great hair. Squee!) Respect? Not a chance. Wear kitty ears and a tail in my presence and I’ll just try not to guffaw until you pass. Infantile behavior is ridiculous in anybody but, you know, actual infants.
See, this right here, plus the constant references to fursuits, makes me think it’s just not worth fighting this fight any more. Nobody’s bothering to listen except to their own preconceived ideas, so what’s the point?
Oh well. It could be worse. There’s places on the internet that’ll ban you if you admit to not hating anything with more fur than a catgirl. (By the way, catgirls – normal humans with cat ears and a tail – are classified as anime, not furry. Not that it matters much, that’s just replacing one ubergeekdom with another.)
Furry vs. anime fan. That would actually be a [del]good[/del]hilarious fight.
Oh, and I did read the stuff you wrote. I just don’t believe it all that much, and think that non-sexual furries are an extreme minority and most of the rest are lying about it so that people won’t hate them as much.
Every time someone starts a thread about anime fans/sci fi fans/furries/whatever, somebody compares it to football and wonders why fans of that sport aren’t as reviled. I think a lot of that is because, well, have you ever met a furry that was sane, well-adjusted, and had above average social skills? Just in my observations, rabid football fans are more likely to fall into that category than, say, someone who gets turned on by talking animals who have sex with other talking animals. I know, go figure, right?
You mean rabid football fans who paint their fat beerguts the colors of the team or who are more interested in watching the game than spending time with their family? Yeah, those are some above-average social skills.
You know why you don’t meet sane, well-adjusted furries with average or above average social skills? Because those folks know better than to air their private hobbies in public, especially hobbies that are near-universally reviled because of a few freaks who can’t keep it in their pants. I bet you if you ever found out the secret lives of those friends you think you know, you’d be pretty fucking shocked.
Lewis Black had a bit about gay people. One line goes something like “Gay-bashers don’t know what a real gay person is like. That’s because they stand up in a bar and go “You know, if a fag ever came in here, I’d kick his ass!” A gay guy isn’t just going to walk up to him and go “Hi, how you doing?”” Obviously it’s not a direct comparison, but it’s applicable enough.
I checked out the thread in question because I had the impression that furries were people who put on animal costumes when they had sex and was mildly curious as to why. Then I saw this in the OP:
It reminds me of a girl I used to date. She believed (maybe still does) that she’s a reincarnated angel who cut off her wings and became a human somewhere around the beginning of time so she could be with another angel who did the same thing. She referred to her angel-self by another name, sometimes in the first person, other times in the third person. Her angel form looked different from her human form, and she would describe herself in a similar fashion as STG does (eg: "I’m an angel with waist-length blonde hair, green eyes, and golden wings). When she met other people who she also believed to be reincarnated angels (like me, for instance), she would describe their angel form as well [sup]1[/sup]. I eventually broke up with her for being overbearing and smothering me. This cause a subsequent nervous breakdown, because we were soul mates and she couldn’t bear the thought of our not being together in this life.
Having read the other thread, I see striking similarities between furries and my ex-girlfriend. I believe she created her alter ego partially because she always felt like an outsider and desperately needed to feel special, but I don’t doubt that the large quantities of drugs she ingested also played a part. I’m not a psychologist, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most furries also felt like similar outcasts as children.
Just my $0.02.
[sup]1[/sup]I apparently have jet black shoulder length hair, green eyes, and wings with a dark tint to them.
Depends on what you mean by “social skills”. Vicariously mutilating your enemy on the field of contest does correlate highly with a desire to do the same in the field of business. But just because one’s an asshole climber in real life doesn’t mean one’s successful at it, it seems about the same percentage of huge sports fans are successful in business as the average population while at the same time being raving assholes.
And the truly socially skilled screw you and you’ll like it. Not so with my dick’s bigger than yours painted-chesters.
I can’t say that I’ve ever met a furry in real life. Or if I had, they’ve managed to disguise their hideous true nature so well that they had me fooled. Insideous! I have, however, met sports fans who are primary a-holes who go into bouts of depression when their team loses (See: Michigan fans last year. Is that normal? That doesn’t seem normal for a well-adjusted person), who threaten violence if someone in the “wrong” shirt walks into “their” bar, and cheer when fights break out at a game. Yeah, I’ll happily say that rabid football fans are more fucked up than furries (especially given the loose definition of furry as we’ve seen here).
You know what, give me the hot chick who likes to watch Disney movies any day of the week over the drooling maniac who screams at the television when a play doesn’t go his way.
In any case, are you claiming that the furries who are representing on this board are not sane, not well-adjusted, and don’t have average social skills? Because, hey, you’re wrong.
Me, personally? I think dressing up as an animal is all kinds of fucked up, but I don’t think they need therapy and to suggest they do so is not only rude but phenomenally ignorant and more than likely an attempt to prevent looking into the mirror.
Ah, you are a student of the Diogenes the Cynic school: “I heard something somewhere about this subject, have formed my own conclusions about it, and am no longer interested in hearing facts which contradict those conclusions.”
I’ve been working at, and therefore attending, a furry convention for eight years now. I’ve met a lot of furries, and I can state from personal experience that it is not a sexual thing for most of them. Not all fursuiters want to have sex while wearing their costumes (yes, there are probably a few, but I wouldn’t call them typical of fursuiters).
If you can provide any basis for your beliefs about furries beyond “I heard it somewhere, therefore it must be true”, I’d like to hear it. If you can’t, then fuck off and go find someplace else to play.
I had started to respond to this piece of idiocy, but on preview I see that others have already said what I was going to say. Except to repeat that I have met a number of furries who were sane, well-adjusted, and had above-average social skills. And I have met a few sports fans who didn’t, but unlike you I haven’t used that as a reason to think all sports fans are like them.
Which brings up another point: How many furries have you actually met, on which you are basing your opinion of their mental status and social skills?
Oh, yes. This isn’t just (generally) true of furries, but of most geeks with insular, ‘not-normal’ hobbies. Fantasy is an escapism, a way of getting away from the world that they find unpleasant or scary. When I was young, I had deep, strong fantasies about finding an X-Wing or the Millennium Falcon on Earth and leaving for the Star Wars universe.
These days I’m having similar intense fantasies about winning the lottery and escaping my current financial troubles.
ahaha I was just thinking that. If it’s not sexual, then… what the fuck? That makes it like ten times harder to comprehend, doesn’t it?
Oh, hey Lurkmeister: don’t wet your fursuit, dude (or should I say, “fox?” Wolf, maybe? Tanuki?).
My experience has been every furry I’ve run into online (except here, but this place is atypical). Thankfully, I’ve never run into any that I know of in real life.
I disagree that it’s normal for any fan or hobbyist to immerse themselves in a fantasy alter-ego. That’s emotionally stunted and maladjusted and it’s not analogous to sports fans or Star Wars fans. Going around saying “I’m a tiger with wings” is deeply childish and reality avoidant and honestly, kind of obnoxious. It isn’t normal or healthy. It isn’t cute or interesting. It’s fucking stupid and lame and it should be mocked and ridiculed for the good of society.
