There are superstitous fans who take themselves very seriously - the type who’d threaten Steve Bartman for instance. I don’t really know how many of them are the body painting type, but…
Well, there’s Rollen Stewart. 
I know more sports fans than furries with elaborate fantasy lives – like Napoleon Dynamite’s uncle with the photography business. Most of the furries I know “create an elaborate fantasy life” in the same sense that my father-in-law is creating an elaborate sports fantasy life by playing well in the county rec soccer league–they put it on as a hobby, daydream about it when work is kicking their butt sometimes, and otherwise get on with normal lives.
Just because the internet tends to overemphasize freakshow types of all stripes doesn’t mean they’re the most populous in any given group.
I didn’t know what SCA was either, but after a Google search, I think LurkMeister may have been talking about the Society for Creative Anachronism – some kind of medieval re-creationists. They look like losers to me, and if this picture is any indication, the average weight appears to be about three bills.
Those people are usually mocked and derided by normal, well adjusted sports fans though. Someone who just likes to watch and follow sports tends to try to avoid being associated with the drunk, body-painting, bartman-threatening morons.
From what I’ve seen of furries, both on the more wacky spots around the web and on this site, rather than trying to distance themselves from the nutjobs, they instead insist on being grouped together. When a subculture goes out of its way to publicly embrace its most extreme members, its hard to feel bad for them when they get linked to those behaviors.
Napolean Dynamite’s uncle is a fictional character who is not supposed to be a realistic character. he’s also not really a “sports fan.” he’s a guy who wants to relive his high school days. That’s got nothing to do with sports fandom.
Actually playing a sport is not fantasizing about it. I think a better analogy would be somebody who goes around pretending to be a member of the Green Bay Packers – not just a fan, but somone who actually pretends he’s on the team.
So, ivan am I not allowed to be straight furry? Because if I have to start learning how to be a lesbian, I need to let my boyfriend know. (Who’s not a furry. And I’m not sure if he knows I’m a furry.)
raises hand Although does this really count? I mean, well, it’s ivan astikov. I was hoping for a rabid slavering thing about how we’re corrupting children and we all like to fuck goats or something. Do I get to count this as a pit thread for myself? I’ve never been pitted before.
blushes Aw, I didn’t even realize I was well known.
I should point out to everyone (that’d include you Diogenes) that nobody would know that I was a furry if I didn’t tell them. I don’t wear cat ears. I don’t dress up or go to cons or even buy anthro art. I have some Japanese prints with tigers in my house, does that count? The furriest thing I do is pretend to be a tyger while online. (I’ll admit that the word ‘I am a tyger’ were probably ill-chosen. I pretend to be tyger when online.)
The problem isn’t that people don’t take us seriously, it’s that they think we’re something that we’re not (at least most of us - I’ll admit there are some fucking weird people in furdom. But I’ve seen REALLY fucking weird people in Digimon fandom, in Pokemon fandom, in Star Trek fandom, etc. Let’s just say, some Digimon fans scare me. A lot.)
Ah, someone’s seen that CSI episode. Hate to break it to you but NO ONE does that. Because that’s fucking stupid (yeah, let’s wear twenty pounds of fake fur and foam and then have sex! Because heat exhaustion doesn’t mean anything!)
Wait, why am I responding to a known idiot?
Could you guys, I dunno, swear or something? I’m not feeling the hate. Thanks for brightening my day! (Woo! I got pitted. Too bad it’s by known idiots, but still, it counts right?)
Perhaps someone like this?
That’s my point exactly–had you even bothered to read the fucking posts by actual furries, most of them are not getting surgically implanted whiskers and fucking in costume suits. They’re putting on a costume or makeup once in a while and having fun with it, and enjoying it, and then putting it away except for a few daydreams. EXACTLY like the typical sports fan I know who throws on his team jersey, of which he owns 2-6, and maybe some facepaint or a terrible towel or some shit, then after the game he’s back to normal except for the idle daydream about how he coulda had a chance, see, if things had been different.
The above applies to at least a half-dozen people I know, all successful in their chosen careers at varying ages. It also applies to every single self-identified furry I know in real life, which is (hey, I’m a geek) about the same in number as serious but not insane sports fans I know.
I know at least two guys like Napoleon Dynamite’s uncle–who seriously talk about how they were almost on the Packers or wahtever, wear nothign but the jersey, spend welfare checks on gym memberships and shit because they can’t hold down a job because they’re busy training because any day now they’ll be a walk-on.
I know no one who actually owns or has sex in a fursuit.
Me, I raise pet lizards and like sunning on a rock now and again. I also catch the Steelers on the odd weekend. I fit the typical definition of both furry and sports fan. I am an extreme example of neither.
So? Is it better than, say, carrying on extensive debate with people on a message board, under the name of a long-dead Greek philosopher? I can easily imagine a weekend furry who fully indulges himself/herself while holding down a “normal” 9-5 job, fully integrated. If there are furries that psychologically/emotionally/financially cripple themselves with obsession, well, that’s hardly unique to furry-dom.
Actually, furry-dom and cynicism have a lot of overlap in their mutual rejection of human achievement and loftier philosophical goals.
Classical Greek Cynicism does not have the same definition as the modern word.
Um, how many times are you going to say you got pitted before you realize that you really weren’t?
Which are you using, because the Classical form looks to me as not contradicting furry-dom at all, what with happiness being the highest goal and virtue being divorced from the trappings of wealth and power.
Actually, “classical” cynicism already had the trappings of furdom. Devoted Cynics were so called because to observers, they were so unkempt that they looked like dogs, or cynoi in Greek.
Go figure.
You had me until you said you like to sun on a rock. I accept that most self-identified furries don’t wear costumes or role-play 24/7. Still even spending a little bit of time pretending to be an animal is kind of weird, and saying things like “I’m a tyger with wings” is just inviting laughter, just like I invited laughter and mockery when I grew my hair down to my ass and wore leather and studs. I even thought I was dedicated to a “heavy metal lifestyle.” I grew up, and I understand that I was not earning the right to be taken seriously.
The correct transliteration is kunikos (pl. kunikoi), which transliterates in Latin to cynicus. Kunikos means “dog-like.” Supposely, Diogenes was called Kuon (“dog”) either because of his reportedly feral behavior (urinating and masturbating in public) or because he likened himself to the virtues of a dog (“I am Diogenes the Dog. I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy and bite scoundrels”). It’s unclear which came first, but he probably embraced an epithet which had already been given to him.
Man, sometimes I forget that the vast majority of the Internet is made up of emotional retards who are allergic to politeness because they think it’s a tool of the Man designed to oppress them. If you don’t like swallowing bullshit, don’t go to the all you can eat bullshit buffet! I think the furries are kind of sad, but I don’t go into their thread to tell them that because it would be rude. I think football is stupid, but I don’t go into their thread to tell them that because it would be rude. I cannot imagine anything dumber than fantasy football, but you know why I don’t go in their thread to tell them that? Bingo! It would be rude.
“Oh, but it’s okay to be rude if the people you’re being rude to are (fill in the blank)!” No, it isn’t. Sit down, shut up, and don’t click on threads about furries if you don’t like furries! Jesus Christ, it isn’t rocket science!
Yeah, I’ll bet none of the cool kids at school eat lunch at their table…
Seriously, “losers” in what sense?
I would too, if I were from South Carolina. The thought of being surrounded by all those Gamecocks makes me weep.
The first game is tomorrow. Sometimes you don’t walk into the all you can eat bullshit buffet; sometimes they build the buffet around you and won’t let you leave.
First off, I’m not into it. In fact, I may have known even less about it than you did before the MPSIMS thread. This is blatantly obvious from my posts in the thread, like this:
And this:
Your comments in that thread were nothing but threadshitting. You came into an MPSIMS thread about fighting ignorance–which some of us who were ignorant about furries were enjoying, since we were, you know, learning stuff about people we wanted to understand–and shat all over it with snippy little comments on how absurd/disgusting/weird/freaky the OP was. In other words, you threadshat with thinly-veiled personal insults in MPSIMS.
If you don’t want to exert any energy to understand a widely misunderstood group of geeky animation fans, that’s fine. I don’t like animated media myself. In fact, anything with talking animals makes me roll my eyes. I have done my damnedest to avoid all popular animated films since I was old enough to say no to them. Even when I was little, I thought the whole talking-animal thing was juvenile and stupid and I wished I didn’t have to watch it all the time. And, in fact, I had to skip over significant portions of one of the pages of that thread (page 2, maybe?) because the whole discussion was making me a little queasy. So I completely understand your unwillingness to learn about that subculture: the whole thing seems childlike and obnoxious at its best (IE, the folks who pretend they’re cats and dogs for kicks) and creepy and disturbing at its worst (namely, the yiffing crowd, which AIUI is a pretty small minority of the furries). But there’s no need to step into an MPSIMS thread just to repeatedly tell them how much you despise them. That’s another rule you’ve broken: being a jerk. If I cared nearly as much about your behavior as you seem to care about mine, I would have reported you by now, but, frankly, I’m kind of enjoying watching you fly off the handle now. I mean, really, I call you out in a mild and level-headed fashion for shitting all over a near-virginal catgirl’s MPSIMS thread and you pit me? It’s amusing, that’s all.
Look, I don’t care what you say about furries in the Pit–in fact, I agree with some of it. It’s just that if you think threadshitting is appropriate in MPSIMS, this may not be the message board for you. Actually, now that I think about it, the mods seem to agree with you, so nevermind–threadshit away.
Here’s the upside, anyway: if the mods change their position and you do get banned for constant threadshitting and jerkery outside of the Pit (I don’t know if you’re this way about everything–I haven’t seen you around much), at least you’ll fit in just fine at 4chan. Every cloud has a silver lining, eh?
That’s not what he said. What he said was that it’s jerkish, at best, to wander into an MPSIMS thread for fans of something you don’t like and shit all over it. I despise talking-animal movies, for example, and the idea of someone in their 20s inventing a furry winged animal that they pretend to be on the Internet makes me retch from the saccharine content. But I didn’t see fit to go into their thread and accuse them of being developmentally stunted, firstly because that’s jerkish behavior and secondly because I recognize that I, too, probably have interests that other people find silly (like rap music and cyberpunk RPGs).
He’s right. Don’t mention bisexuality around me or I’ll destroy an entire city in Germany.
No, I got pitted! Don’t ruin this moment for me! :mad:
