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A hard look at the furry community
a year ago
A few things have become impossible to ignore as time goes on in some furry scenes for me..
I have become all too use to seeing social dysfunction and toxic behaviour being normalized in all too many spaces, people who seek out conflict and behave in very pedantic and divisive ways. Folks needing to control or manipulate others, their thoughts and their feelings. People who are so conflict avoidant and image-protective that they will do what they can maintain even a false sense of peace, calm and a good image. Rather opposite ends to socializing that make for a very unfortunate mix when in the same space. I see this happen all too often.. In friend groups, hobby groups, fandoms of all sorts. Without fail it always leads to a withering culture, a lack of diversity, in-groups as well as group think that lead to a lack of social cohesion and even xenophobia.
When you combine this with our current online culture which places high value on optics and reputations over communication and accountability, you end up with spaces that inadvertently enable bad behaviour yet come down on anyone who tries to address it. You run into a narrative that will place the blame on people who have been hurt or wronged all because "it was fine till you said something". Protecting the brand, the image, the reputation is all that matters. It only serves to enable bad behaviour and divisive actions.
I say this all being someone who has struggled with their own issues over the course of their life and has been coming to terms with a lot of them, perhaps it is because of this that I am able to more easily see behaviours and ways of thinking that others perhaps do not or even refuse to. There will always be a reason, a justification or a strongly held belief that people can use to excuse their words or their actions, this is nothing new to our society and it was only a matter of time before the fandom was really hit by it with how large and mainstream it has grown. But at a certain point I feel its appropriate to say "If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck and sounds like a duck... its probably a duck" when it comes to the things we see and experience in our spaces rather than find ever further reaching excuses.
One mistake I address in myself is that I often would be too passive and conflict avoidant to a point, bottling a lot of things up till I couldn't. I began really self-medicating with weed to cope with the stresses and loneliness I felt cause of all that. Pushing down the feeling that things were not right and that maybe if I just kept being nice, and giving people chance after chance despite my experiences and gut feelings, maybe I would make it over that hump and things would truly be better.
I have been making a lot of changes in my life the last year and even more so in the last few months. I attribute it as to why I have reached this point. From going to counselling and then later on therapy which I am still doing, to cutting out caffeine cause it made me tense and anxious. As well as cutting out weed cause it was robbing me of everything I was that made me who I am. As I did all this, cracks started to emerge.. I realized that for all those changes, the biggest issue still staring me dead in the face was my social surroundings and the box I had been living in within them, the friendships I had that went in and out of feeling lukewarm, even flaky and unsupportive. I realized why I felt so bad is cause I had been doing so much just to feel palatable or tolerated in the hopes of fitting in and lost a lot of who I was along that path and the writing was on the wall as I reclaimed myself more and more.
I suppose that's where I need to get on wrapping this journal up.. Very recently I was shown exactly what I had theorized and feared in this regard, that there was always gonna be a consequence to having feelings, to not tolerating certain forms of treatment and behaviour, to having my own voice and a sense of self after so long of having very little.
What I am left with now is a deep realization that I need to carry on with my life for the sake of myself. I cannot just slide back into the void just cause I saw and experienced the things I had feared, there is little I can do to change these external factors. All I can do is realize that as much as I continue to work on myself, growing and changing. There are some things out there that may never change and its not my place to cater to it self-sacrificially.
This isn't me leaving the fandom, its just me choosing myself finally. If you too have felt this way, just know you are not alone.
I have become all too use to seeing social dysfunction and toxic behaviour being normalized in all too many spaces, people who seek out conflict and behave in very pedantic and divisive ways. Folks needing to control or manipulate others, their thoughts and their feelings. People who are so conflict avoidant and image-protective that they will do what they can maintain even a false sense of peace, calm and a good image. Rather opposite ends to socializing that make for a very unfortunate mix when in the same space. I see this happen all too often.. In friend groups, hobby groups, fandoms of all sorts. Without fail it always leads to a withering culture, a lack of diversity, in-groups as well as group think that lead to a lack of social cohesion and even xenophobia.
When you combine this with our current online culture which places high value on optics and reputations over communication and accountability, you end up with spaces that inadvertently enable bad behaviour yet come down on anyone who tries to address it. You run into a narrative that will place the blame on people who have been hurt or wronged all because "it was fine till you said something". Protecting the brand, the image, the reputation is all that matters. It only serves to enable bad behaviour and divisive actions.
I say this all being someone who has struggled with their own issues over the course of their life and has been coming to terms with a lot of them, perhaps it is because of this that I am able to more easily see behaviours and ways of thinking that others perhaps do not or even refuse to. There will always be a reason, a justification or a strongly held belief that people can use to excuse their words or their actions, this is nothing new to our society and it was only a matter of time before the fandom was really hit by it with how large and mainstream it has grown. But at a certain point I feel its appropriate to say "If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck and sounds like a duck... its probably a duck" when it comes to the things we see and experience in our spaces rather than find ever further reaching excuses.
One mistake I address in myself is that I often would be too passive and conflict avoidant to a point, bottling a lot of things up till I couldn't. I began really self-medicating with weed to cope with the stresses and loneliness I felt cause of all that. Pushing down the feeling that things were not right and that maybe if I just kept being nice, and giving people chance after chance despite my experiences and gut feelings, maybe I would make it over that hump and things would truly be better.
I have been making a lot of changes in my life the last year and even more so in the last few months. I attribute it as to why I have reached this point. From going to counselling and then later on therapy which I am still doing, to cutting out caffeine cause it made me tense and anxious. As well as cutting out weed cause it was robbing me of everything I was that made me who I am. As I did all this, cracks started to emerge.. I realized that for all those changes, the biggest issue still staring me dead in the face was my social surroundings and the box I had been living in within them, the friendships I had that went in and out of feeling lukewarm, even flaky and unsupportive. I realized why I felt so bad is cause I had been doing so much just to feel palatable or tolerated in the hopes of fitting in and lost a lot of who I was along that path and the writing was on the wall as I reclaimed myself more and more.
I suppose that's where I need to get on wrapping this journal up.. Very recently I was shown exactly what I had theorized and feared in this regard, that there was always gonna be a consequence to having feelings, to not tolerating certain forms of treatment and behaviour, to having my own voice and a sense of self after so long of having very little.
What I am left with now is a deep realization that I need to carry on with my life for the sake of myself. I cannot just slide back into the void just cause I saw and experienced the things I had feared, there is little I can do to change these external factors. All I can do is realize that as much as I continue to work on myself, growing and changing. There are some things out there that may never change and its not my place to cater to it self-sacrificially.
This isn't me leaving the fandom, its just me choosing myself finally. If you too have felt this way, just know you are not alone.
I'm sorry to hear that you've been suffering. I don't believe that you deserve it. I'm glad that you're getting help. I wish you happiness.
I'm surprised to hear that weed has been effecting you so negatively. Your description reminds me of high-dose thorazine! I always thought weed was fairly mild. (Not that I can afford it myself, just what I've heard.)
I do thank you as well, it took me a lot and hitting some very bad lows before I really sought out help and made corrective measures for myself. I am glad for the path I am on now.
As for weed, I discovered first hand that it really can just play off of a lot of the good and bad in ones self. There was for a long while a time where it was fun, it made me feel like everything in life was more vibrant, games became fun, shows became epic, food became amazing and jokes became hilarious. All the typical stuff that one associates with the experience. But when it came to dealing with things like anxiety and depression, it would also send me into deep spirals where all I wanted to do was sit and wish for death to come find me so I would stop feeling this way. As time went on I realized that I would just smoke up, feel a little giddy, but overall numb and empty. After enough of that I finally decided I needed to be done losing myself to the smoke-to-cope life.