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My 10 Years in the Fandom!
12 years ago
This week is kind of special to me, because it marks my 10th year in this crazy thing called the Furry Fandom.
How did I find out about this fandom? In 2003 I "stumbled" onto a website called http://www.keenspot.com/ which had furry-created comics such as The Class Menagerie, Newshounds and The Suburban Jungle (classics all - and they are still online - please read them!).
A link on The Class Menagerie to the Funday Pawpet Show lead me to downloading and watching FPS (episode #176) for the first time. The cast was heading to some event in Philadelphia called "Anthrocon". They showed some videos from AC 2002 and had a long phone chat with a guy in a lab coat about the convention. I thought "Wow cartoon fans have their own con now!" LOL (what did I know?!!!) My interest in this fandom really began right there, and it's kept growing, becoming a big part of my life.
Usually when I get interested... I mean REALLY really interested in something... after a few years I somehow hit a plateau or something changes or happens with it that disappoints me, and then my interest slowly dies off. I look back at all the CD's, comics, books, movies and other things I was into then and ask myself "Why the hell was I interested in THAT??!"
For some unknown reason that hasn't happened with Furry.
But in the past 10 years I've noticed a lot of changes in the fandom. A little history lesson here for you noobs:
Back in 2003 about the only way Furries communicated on the internet was via Live Journal (which I miss being a lively place) online forums or good ol' IRC chat. No Iphones/Android with Twitter back then.
Only around 8-10 Furcons in the USA and around the World.
It was a big deal when the Funday Pawpet Show reached 100 viewers. And when the show reached their 200th show, 300th, 400th... Did anyone think it'd last that long?
There weren't many women involved the fandom and attending cons back then. This is one part that has really changed!
There weren't many fursuit makers then. Most of the fursuits were designed and built by the owners themselves.
Furries in Mexico, Philippines, Russia, and Japan back in 2003?
Uncle Kage wore glasses. :)
There were a couple of furry art sites back then, like VCL and Yerf but nothing had the impact on the fandom like FA did. And just to mention them, RIP to Jaxpad-Artspots, an excellent non-adult furry art site which shut down last year.
No YouTube or streaming video besides Live RealVideo (wow whatever happened to that company?) or Quicktime Mpeg streams. If you wanted to see quality videos from a con, you had to download the file (wait...wait) to your hard drive and then watch it. And most convention or fursuit video was raw footage with little or no editing.
If you wore a FURFAG T-Shirt at a furcon back then you'd probably be told to go back to your room and change or get kicked out. The fandom was still smarting from the bad CSI-MTV Sex II- Vanity Fare media coverage back then.
And if you told other furs in 2003 you really loved watching My Little Pony... they'd really give you some strange looks!
Jeeze, I wonder what this fandom will be like in 2023???
See ya at Megaplex!
How did I find out about this fandom? In 2003 I "stumbled" onto a website called http://www.keenspot.com/ which had furry-created comics such as The Class Menagerie, Newshounds and The Suburban Jungle (classics all - and they are still online - please read them!).
A link on The Class Menagerie to the Funday Pawpet Show lead me to downloading and watching FPS (episode #176) for the first time. The cast was heading to some event in Philadelphia called "Anthrocon". They showed some videos from AC 2002 and had a long phone chat with a guy in a lab coat about the convention. I thought "Wow cartoon fans have their own con now!" LOL (what did I know?!!!) My interest in this fandom really began right there, and it's kept growing, becoming a big part of my life.
Usually when I get interested... I mean REALLY really interested in something... after a few years I somehow hit a plateau or something changes or happens with it that disappoints me, and then my interest slowly dies off. I look back at all the CD's, comics, books, movies and other things I was into then and ask myself "Why the hell was I interested in THAT??!"
For some unknown reason that hasn't happened with Furry.
But in the past 10 years I've noticed a lot of changes in the fandom. A little history lesson here for you noobs:
Back in 2003 about the only way Furries communicated on the internet was via Live Journal (which I miss being a lively place) online forums or good ol' IRC chat. No Iphones/Android with Twitter back then.
Only around 8-10 Furcons in the USA and around the World.
It was a big deal when the Funday Pawpet Show reached 100 viewers. And when the show reached their 200th show, 300th, 400th... Did anyone think it'd last that long?
There weren't many women involved the fandom and attending cons back then. This is one part that has really changed!
There weren't many fursuit makers then. Most of the fursuits were designed and built by the owners themselves.
Furries in Mexico, Philippines, Russia, and Japan back in 2003?
Uncle Kage wore glasses. :)
There were a couple of furry art sites back then, like VCL and Yerf but nothing had the impact on the fandom like FA did. And just to mention them, RIP to Jaxpad-Artspots, an excellent non-adult furry art site which shut down last year.
No YouTube or streaming video besides Live RealVideo (wow whatever happened to that company?) or Quicktime Mpeg streams. If you wanted to see quality videos from a con, you had to download the file (wait...wait) to your hard drive and then watch it. And most convention or fursuit video was raw footage with little or no editing.
If you wore a FURFAG T-Shirt at a furcon back then you'd probably be told to go back to your room and change or get kicked out. The fandom was still smarting from the bad CSI-MTV Sex II- Vanity Fare media coverage back then.
And if you told other furs in 2003 you really loved watching My Little Pony... they'd really give you some strange looks!
Jeeze, I wonder what this fandom will be like in 2023???
See ya at Megaplex!
Then I started to feel old ;)
This will be my 12th year in the fandom; my first con being Anthrocon 2001.
I always enjoy seeing youre videos and photos
In 2003, it had been 10 years since the heyday of the Galactic Rangers (a local computer-based social group to which Rhubarb and I belonged.) It was a local BBS, with first four, then I think sixteen lines. Yes, you had to dial into it. With your modem. We chatted online, swapped jokes and stories and posted to the boards. Mostly we planned where we'd meet next (Pizza Inn? Country Kitchen? Friday night bowling?) and used it as the interstitial glue in our social lives.
When I discovered the fandom two years ago, I commented to Rhubarb that it was like the next iteration of the Galactic Rangers. Had we known about the furries back then, we'd undoubtedly have latched onto it like Kage on German Riesling. Indeed, one could argue that Cosmik's first iteration was a wizard Bear, as drawn in a comic strip by our friend Scott. (If I ever find where I packed that, I'll scan and share it.) Our friend Hollie Hyena and her husband, Trebonius, were both Galactic Rangers as well. All of which is to say that yeah, we've all come a long way, baby.
Here's to another 10-20 years, and beyond. :)
Imagine if some major film company made an all anthropomorphic adventure movie like "Bitter Lake" with a 60 million dollar budget and it became a huge hit!