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I don't know how to feel about this. (cw: suicide)
a year ago
This is a hard one. Vehement content warnings apply about suicide and hate groups.
A fur I knew named not_coyotic, aka Downspin, aka Raiya, aka Railfoxen, aka Kindrift, aka many many other names, apparently killed themself recently. We were not friends, to say the least, but I am pretty gutted all the same. I don't want anyone to kill themselves, whether I am personally friends with them or not. I'm gonna use Kindrift as their name because thats how i knew them best back in the day. I'm using they pronouns because I literally do not know their gender identity.
People think of the Burned Furs as the only "anti furry" movement that happened within furry, but the BFs were the tip of the iceberg. there were many many small anti-furry groups, forums and websites, both before and well after the BFs heyday in 1998-2002. After the BFs fell apart with infighting, there was a website called Crush Yiff Destroy, where Kindrift was a mod, until it fell apart in infighting, and then later another forum called Vivisector, where Kindrift was a mod, until it fell apart in infighting.
Over the years of furry fandom, anti-furry sites run by ex-furries cropped up, alongside non-furry hate sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica. These sites focus on drama hounding and posting about the very worst people they could find in the fandom, holding them up as caricatured examples of all of the fandom. The logic went, for example "this fur is a zoo, therefore, all furries are zoos, and therefore furry fandom is a corrupt group of zoophiles, and let's hate them all and harass furries, dox dox, boooo", and similar statements, both from furries and ex-furs who had grown disenchanted with the fandom from within and non-furries who liked to blanket their homophobia in anti-furry language. They often say they do this for "the lulz", but its a particularly bitter, hateful form of fun that ultimately poisons you, like repeated exposure to lead or mercury. Its not healthy to spend all your time hating things or people, even if you find it amusing for a time, that laughter quickly becomes toxic. And you can marinate in that toxicity for years, and it can be lethal. Just ask Lowtax.
I do not know what Kindrift's life situation was like recently. I hadn't paid attention to them for many years. I don't even know if they were involved in furry or anti-furry anymore. I do know that when I started drawing, they posted my art on various anti-furry image boards and chan boards and tried to make my stuff into a meme (a la the famous "Bawww!" that drove poor Dougie Bunny off the internet). It didn't take. Nobody cared to make my art into a meme. If I recall they were a regular on a FurryMUCK gathering spot called Calumny Tavern, and they had problems with the Purple Nurple in general and with me in particular for some reason. Maybe I said some bonehead off the cuff thing on public shout one day - that wouldn't be at all unlikely. Whatever it was, they had it out for me for awhile, not just me but other furs, but I did my best to ignore it. I moved on with my life because life is too short to deal with toxic people. Kindrift's harassment of other furs like Xydexx, for whom they had something of a vendetta, was far in excess of any conflict with me.
Years later I had forgotten all about Kindrift and they would occasionally pop up on Twitter and needle me. I blocked them and went about my day.
One thing Kindrift liked to joke about, which a lot of us did, was death. Morbid gallows jokes about killing yourself and jokes about plane crashes and accidents and murders and wanting to die was common with them. Which I didn't even really notice as unusual, because it was so frequent. But looking back now.. they were someone who had a lot of very dark sensibilities.
I wish this didn't happen. I wish there was some way to help them or stop them. I wish they didn't spend their entire lives in a hateful miasma that perhaps played a role in killing them.
It fuckin sucks. I don't want anyone to die, whether we were friends or not. Other furs I know were good friends with Kindrift, which makes me think there was an entire side of them that I never knew or saw, and I'm sorry for their loss.
A fur I knew named not_coyotic, aka Downspin, aka Raiya, aka Railfoxen, aka Kindrift, aka many many other names, apparently killed themself recently. We were not friends, to say the least, but I am pretty gutted all the same. I don't want anyone to kill themselves, whether I am personally friends with them or not. I'm gonna use Kindrift as their name because thats how i knew them best back in the day. I'm using they pronouns because I literally do not know their gender identity.
People think of the Burned Furs as the only "anti furry" movement that happened within furry, but the BFs were the tip of the iceberg. there were many many small anti-furry groups, forums and websites, both before and well after the BFs heyday in 1998-2002. After the BFs fell apart with infighting, there was a website called Crush Yiff Destroy, where Kindrift was a mod, until it fell apart in infighting, and then later another forum called Vivisector, where Kindrift was a mod, until it fell apart in infighting.
Over the years of furry fandom, anti-furry sites run by ex-furries cropped up, alongside non-furry hate sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica. These sites focus on drama hounding and posting about the very worst people they could find in the fandom, holding them up as caricatured examples of all of the fandom. The logic went, for example "this fur is a zoo, therefore, all furries are zoos, and therefore furry fandom is a corrupt group of zoophiles, and let's hate them all and harass furries, dox dox, boooo", and similar statements, both from furries and ex-furs who had grown disenchanted with the fandom from within and non-furries who liked to blanket their homophobia in anti-furry language. They often say they do this for "the lulz", but its a particularly bitter, hateful form of fun that ultimately poisons you, like repeated exposure to lead or mercury. Its not healthy to spend all your time hating things or people, even if you find it amusing for a time, that laughter quickly becomes toxic. And you can marinate in that toxicity for years, and it can be lethal. Just ask Lowtax.
I do not know what Kindrift's life situation was like recently. I hadn't paid attention to them for many years. I don't even know if they were involved in furry or anti-furry anymore. I do know that when I started drawing, they posted my art on various anti-furry image boards and chan boards and tried to make my stuff into a meme (a la the famous "Bawww!" that drove poor Dougie Bunny off the internet). It didn't take. Nobody cared to make my art into a meme. If I recall they were a regular on a FurryMUCK gathering spot called Calumny Tavern, and they had problems with the Purple Nurple in general and with me in particular for some reason. Maybe I said some bonehead off the cuff thing on public shout one day - that wouldn't be at all unlikely. Whatever it was, they had it out for me for awhile, not just me but other furs, but I did my best to ignore it. I moved on with my life because life is too short to deal with toxic people. Kindrift's harassment of other furs like Xydexx, for whom they had something of a vendetta, was far in excess of any conflict with me.
Years later I had forgotten all about Kindrift and they would occasionally pop up on Twitter and needle me. I blocked them and went about my day.
One thing Kindrift liked to joke about, which a lot of us did, was death. Morbid gallows jokes about killing yourself and jokes about plane crashes and accidents and murders and wanting to die was common with them. Which I didn't even really notice as unusual, because it was so frequent. But looking back now.. they were someone who had a lot of very dark sensibilities.
I wish this didn't happen. I wish there was some way to help them or stop them. I wish they didn't spend their entire lives in a hateful miasma that perhaps played a role in killing them.
It fuckin sucks. I don't want anyone to die, whether we were friends or not. Other furs I know were good friends with Kindrift, which makes me think there was an entire side of them that I never knew or saw, and I'm sorry for their loss.
Suicide is so painful to so many because of all the "what if's" it leaves behind. The pain that led to the tragic act of suicide projects out onto the living who then have to deal with it and come to terms with it.
It says something that in a society that is so stuck in extremes, Right and Left, that with that much support for their point of view, they still ran up against the wall where their pain was so much that taking their own life was considered better than living.
But it does no good, regardless of how they lived their life and how it impacted us, to wish them ill will. Good or bad, their loss in this was is tragic. Thank you for "celebrating" their life through this recollection. It reflects positively upon your character.
We drifted apart over the past few years. This still comes as a shock, and we are very, very sad.
Over the years I've had my fair share of all manner of people in and out of furrydom harassing me "for the lulz", but it never really amounted to much because I simply don't give a damn. I have real, important challenges in life to manage...who's got time for silliness like that?
Of course, a small bit of people I'm sure I gave some reason to hate on me, but eh...I wasn't always very level-headed myself in the past, so I know I wasn't making things better at the time.
But in general mostly it was people I never even spoke to once, let alone met, with some huge issues with me that mostly weren't even remotely grounded in reality, so...why should I care?
Ultimately I always got the impression it came down you, "You exist and I don't like it...PLZ DEDZ K?"
Yeah, healthy attitude there, nutballs. Me not being there won't make your life ANY better, trust me. :P
Yet at the same time, it's easy to fall into the same trap when you hear about things like this, related to one of 'those sorts of folks', to jump right to the "Good Riddance!" statement, but that's just dragging yourself down to the same level of hateful ridiculousness.
These people clearly have a lot of struggles in life, and even though they're being jerks by projecting that onto others, it doesn't mean they deserve to end up dead any more so than them wishing we were. It doesn't excuse their behavior even remotely, but what we really hope for them should be getting help and support...not death.