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Incredible Frustrations with the Furry Fandom
12 years ago
Alright, there's a whole shitload of drama surrounding this something and whatever happened to who and whatnot. I don't care. Evidently this is some sort of turning point for the fandom. People are taking "ideological stands" and moving over to Weasyl.
What frustrates me is this: there is no ideology to take a stand for, because the furry fandom has no ideology.
There. I said it.
If you want to stand up for something, then stand up for it. Don't think you can just sit by and ignore when something happens that you don't like just because it happens to someone who isn't popular enough to matter. And don't change what you stand for simply because such-and-such popular artist decides to change what he or she stands for either.
Again, there is no "code", except "follow whatever popular artists decide to do". And guess what? That doesn't solve anything. It doesn't make the furry community one I want to associate with any more. It just perpetuates the stereotype that furries are immature and unable to manage their own community any more than a bunch of middle-schoolers.
I want to like you, furry fandom. I really do. But every time I try to give the fandom the benefit of the doubt, something like this happens and now suddenly I have to create accounts on 11,346 different sites with sparse populations just to keep eyes on my friends who decided to leave FA because of whatever reason or "ideological stand" they decided to take.
Know where you stand, furry fandom, and maybe, just MAYBE, folks outside of the fandom can start to take you half-way seriously about this sort of thing. Until then, enjoy wallowing in drama and butthurt.
What frustrates me is this: there is no ideology to take a stand for, because the furry fandom has no ideology.
There. I said it.
If you want to stand up for something, then stand up for it. Don't think you can just sit by and ignore when something happens that you don't like just because it happens to someone who isn't popular enough to matter. And don't change what you stand for simply because such-and-such popular artist decides to change what he or she stands for either.
Again, there is no "code", except "follow whatever popular artists decide to do". And guess what? That doesn't solve anything. It doesn't make the furry community one I want to associate with any more. It just perpetuates the stereotype that furries are immature and unable to manage their own community any more than a bunch of middle-schoolers.
I want to like you, furry fandom. I really do. But every time I try to give the fandom the benefit of the doubt, something like this happens and now suddenly I have to create accounts on 11,346 different sites with sparse populations just to keep eyes on my friends who decided to leave FA because of whatever reason or "ideological stand" they decided to take.
Know where you stand, furry fandom, and maybe, just MAYBE, folks outside of the fandom can start to take you half-way seriously about this sort of thing. Until then, enjoy wallowing in drama and butthurt.
I enjoy watching the world burn. (Though Weasyl is superior, IMO)
Though others have complained about this so now I just crop it big enough that you can see most of what's going on in the image.
The idea is to give your viewers a taste. To draw them in. With some consideration it can be well-composed, too. No one is going to critique your composition from looking at a 150 pixel square.
Check http://dribbble.com/ some time and rage.
It's not pretentious, it's important for artists who want to have some semblance of control over how audiences first view their work.
Well said about this whole incident.
That's all I can see with ths Weasyl. Maybe it's awesome, but when I went to the site and saw most of its FAQ was about dealing with FASCIST ADMINS I bristled. It doesn't matter how fancy the vehicle is, if the person driving it has the mentality of a 6th grader with emotional problems - also with a complete lack of self-awareness - it's gonna crash.
I'm not big on community stuff (still shell-shocked from the aforementioned forum experiences) - all I want is for people to see my artwork. Stop imploding and making it harder for me to reach people, furries!
If you want to stand up for something, then stand up for it. Don't think you can just sit by and ignore when something happens that you don't like just because it happens to someone who isn't popular enough to matter. And don't change what you stand for simply because such-and-such popular artist decides to change what he or she stands for either.
With this, yes I agree wholeheartedly! Thing is, remember that the internet strips down what we call social etiquette, sense of consequences, attention span, and the list goes on a mile long. Can't flirt with people realistically online so I can't imagine being ideological is gonna work either.
You say the fandom has it's issues and doesn't live up to a better example, but remember to compare that to the rest of the communities online. Random forums used to be fun and a great social gathering, now it often has trolls and vampires preying on every conversation possible. I remember I loved modding for TES: Morrowind, I used the forum to discuss it with many inspiring folks but once I came back 3 years later, it turned into a really messy place. It's like Fur Affinity, it was a great community of people you can share art with and talk to without worrying about status or class, now you got a fat place where nobody has time for anybody but their REAL LIFE.
To sum it up, people are far less human online than they are in person. So our little structure online regardless all the drama is pretty damn good for what it is compared to the rest of the crud online.
But yes, let kids be kids while the grownups can worry about more important things.
That and I don't really find following the crowd just cause one person decided to go run away over some drama, very fun.
Social support groups are important, but are outside the scope of most fandoms because it's outside the normal scope of what fandoms are supposed to be about.
One critical essence of a support group is restriction because support groups are made to support a certain segment of the overall population. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with this.
The problem arises because a fandom, is at its core, a flea-market commercial interest pushing non-essential goods for entertainment. A support group can be very insular and cultish depending on how threatened its members perceive themselves. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with this.
Fear is not a bad emotion when it is legitimate. Whether it is fear of a bland, Borg-like, homogeneous society, or fear of a conflict between other men, Nature, or the Self arising from the natural enmity of men versus one's sexual inclinations and human emotional needs, these are issues that must be addressed to promote sanity, well-being, and inner peace.
But a fandom is a poor choice of format to find resolution due to its flea-market atmosphere to attract as many customers as possible in order to financially exploit them. Making the fandom into a "support group", has the same inherent conceptual problems as people going to a bar (a commercial establishment) in order to have their problems resolved. The commercial environment is not necessarily committed to their patron's well-being. If anything, such entity might be commercially invested in preventing them from liberating themselves from the issues they face in order to exploit them longer.
These two types of commercial and humanitarian causes do not compare well for the diametrically opposed goals they seek to achieve. A fandom, as a commercial entity, must not be picky at all about its market base, nor set moral standards that would potentially limit its income, nor invest that money that it has achieved as its end goal for personal benefit for a "greater good" unless superficially in order to bring in more money from advertising a good guy badge. Money is green -- no matter who has it.
On the other hand, a support network with a humanitarian cause for the betterment of its challenged membership MUST absolutely discriminate within an adversarial environment and be codified to an institutionally functional degree. Furthermore, depending upon the amount of internal work its members need to help them function properly in the world, a support network must set strident standards and high levels of expected personal discipline to achieve these goals.
And that's why ANY commercially-interested fandom -- at its fundamental base -- cannot meaningfully help or ennoble the people who are attracted to it. A support network may have whatever aesthetic motifs or identities it desires, but is fundamentally different in nature.
A fandom's goal is to sell an image -- in this case, the anthropomorphic image. A support network's goal is the improvement of its people. We have problems when there is a confusion between the two. Unfortunately, the issue has become so muddled that the idea of supporting an ethical and self-disciplined populace idealizing changing one' shape to express individual branding and identity (a humanitarian issue dealing with somatic rights of self-determination) is tragically no longer distinguished from the commercially exploitable and superficially fulfilling gratification on pornography far removed from channeling natural sexual energy into a positive life outcome.