he was never mean or nasty to me even when I was in the wrong.

Yeah, I mean 'Neer was far from perfect but I feel like a lot of people are forgetting that people change. That, and everyone has at least one embarrassing/shameful skeleton in their closet. A lot of the people condemning him are young people who just haven't gotten around to doing anything really stupid yet. They will in time. Everyone does. Speaking for myself I probably could have been a bit nicer to him. I remember getting really heated toward him over the whole IMVU sale...but looking back I realize I had no idea the financial position he was in or everything that was going on behind the scenes. Oh, well. I ended up apologizing, at least, and he accepted it so there's that.

I owe a lot to FA. I hope it continues to be an online space for a while yet.

The sad thing is, FA was (and still is) one of the few sites that actually stands up to AI.

I mean, yeah, it's dated... but, like Weasyl and SoFurry, it's dated in a fairly good way: It's one of the few places that actually knows people aren't glued to the computer 24/7 and might check a few times a day. What's more? You can actually FIND STUFF. :O So many people only have art telegrams and discords this day and it's really not good for finding shit. -.-; since it gets buried. It's just like how many people fucked off to Tumblr (like Twitter and Wordpress had a baby with all the negative bits!) and then decided "Twitter/bluesky/mastodon only" and you can't find anything. -.-;

I'm still getting faves on pieces that were uploaded almost 5-10 years ago!

Agree.

I have been using this site since May 18, 2013, when I was 20-years-old. FA was only 8 years old at the time I came here. Dragoneer had made bad decisions like any other human would do. I certainly have my big share of bad decisions. But at the end of the day, he should be thanked for why FA became how it was. It's the largest furry fandom-based website in the world. And this site changed my life literally throughout the past decade. I met so many great people, thanks to FA. And I happily am glad to be a part of the furry fandom community. Some of the most amazing people I met come from a community that I never would have thought would come from anywhere else.

Yes, I did say some stuff that upset him when I didn't agree with him about IMVU buying FA, but he made a heroic decision to buy it back with his own money at the sacrifice of losing his healthcare, because they were planning to shut down the site, after they fired him. However, i did meet him in person in 2013, 2014 and 2015. He was a pretty chill guy. And he even was nice enough to check out some of my works in the past.

FA was one of the best things to ever happen to me. And I can't thank the site enough for where I am now. It's even helped me with my career in doing commission work too. Dragoneer is actually the one to really thank, because he had it for the longest time and he was able to maintain it, despite of everything. He was a legend. A pioneer in the furry fandom and a major contributor to the community that helped unify the entire fandom. I grew up with FA. As of now, I will remember him for his achievements and my memories of interacting that I had with him. I feel that I didn't chat enough, but history can't be changed.

Genuinely wouldn't be shocked if one of the reasons for selling to IMVU was because they offered health insurance.