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NrN 009: Fursuit Makers and the "We" Mentality
10 years ago
<p id="journal">
Nerve-racking Nuisances is a journal series in which I cynically express my contempt towards a certain 'something' on FA that just incites a butt-load of furious rage within me. Though I try to be as friendly as possible, there's always that moment when you stumble upon something that annoys you so much, you'd have to smash your mother's expensive fine china in order to vent your frustration. Luckily, we don't own any fine china, but that vitriolic rage has to leave your system one way or another. If you have any criticism that you want to shoot me, don't be afraid and do so! So long as it's constructive and something I can actually do something with.
For the ninth episode of NrN, a different type of furry artist takes their turn on the chopping board; fursuit creators. Now let me clarify that - while I have no inclination for having a fursuit of my own - I'm completely passive against the concept of fursuits, fursuit making or fursuiting. It's very cool for some, and fursuit makers have provided the community with their great, prolific services. But as with the usual furry content creator, it seems, elitist, grandstanding business attitudes have also infested the constituency of fursuit builders. Their type of pretentiousness is completely different from artists, though, and I will be digging into the soil of their wannabe 'big business' and the arguments that support it.
To give credit where it is due, and not to make this journal seem completely abrasive and jaded, I will say that a lot of them have the 18+ age rule quite right; saying that minors are allowed to commission a suit provided they have signed parental consent. Of course there are still the ones that refuse services to minors not because of the age limit for entering into a legally binding contract, but because of the inane "minors are stupid and immature - doing business with them is unprofessional" bullcrap. Those assholes can go fuck themselves, but I will not be talking about them because it creates no bigger picture. Every decent human being despises them. It's much more of a realistic scenario to arrange a court case for an unpaid fursuit of over $1,500 instead of $40 of artwork, hence why I fully support fursuit makers putting the 18+ age limit in their Terms of Service, provided they won't entirely disbar minors from ordering a fursuit from them. ("Clients under the age of 18 should have a parent / legal guardian consign and vouch for their legal position with their prior consent, written in the initial order request." In the off chance of a fursuit maker viewing this journal, feel free to steal that clause.) If not, and just put "You must be over 18 years of age to order", go ahead; I'm not responsible for your loss of clientele.
Now, after that diatribe of a paragraph, let's get to the chorus, aka. the "We" mentality the title of this NrN alludes to. Now, I must of course say that not every fursuit maker is guilty of conducting in whatever this "We" mentality is. Now what is this "We" shit I'm talking about, you may ask? Well, it's fursuit makers who run their fursuit making business all on their own referring to themselves using plural pronouns, and sometimes even calling themselves a company on top of that. While being aware that the maker is only one person and with absolutely nobody else, how would you feel when reading the following: "We do our very best to parallel our products to the highest of standards."
Seems utterly unnecessary, right? They're managing their fursuit business all and solely on their own with no employed help from a second person, so why would they use plural pronouns to refer to their singular self? There are a couple of arguments I suspect will be used to defend the usage of "we" and "our" by a singularly operated business owner, so I'll be going over these and preemptively refute them.
"It's more professional!"
I've dealt with this asinine crap argument numerous times. It's a blatant cop-out to people criticizing your business and still too many artists seem to espouse this fallacy. Define professionalism, and then explain how using "we" and "our" to refer to yourself falls under that definition.
"Other businesses do it, therefore it makes sense to do it myself as well!"
This is the textbook pompous business attitude in argument form, and will cause numerous analogies to arise from those who can actually think shit through that will refute this argument. Like, does a 5-year-old lemonade stand holder think: "Hey, the company of Microsoft has HRM, PRM, CRM, a Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and a vacancy board. Might want to implement those myself as well!" Granted, supply chain management could work very minimally with fursuit and art businesses, but the others only pertain to huge enterprise businesses that operate on a large scale. And to assert that being an artist or fursuit creator is operating on a scale just as large as the companies you cite as inspirations for your snobby eminence is pretentiousness at its finest. Now, back to the main point. OF COURSE are other big businesses doing it; they are multiple people, so it makes sense that they do refer to themselves with plural pronouns, since they want to speak representatively of the entire company. Case and point, scope matters. Every business has its own size, which is determined by: advertising frequency, international provision, market audience, market ownership, product demand, and physical branches. In the case of a fursuit business, these are respectively almost always FA ads to no ads, worldwide shipping, furry community, average ownership, limited demand, and one phycial location: the maker's house. Of course, the figures given are like I said, average, and I can't dictate if you want to limit your costume creation to only the furry community or the outside world, with roadside advertisements and several physical locations and shit. You are allowed to do that, but it's going absolutely overkill in my opinion, so I and many others will most likely point and laugh at you if you ever decide to stretch that far.
"I'm speaking from a business perspective!"
Which is exactly why you should be using "I" instead of "we". You operate the business on your own, and since your business wouldn't exist without you, you should be speaking for yourself and not for a phantom second person who would be helping you. I think you should be proud of managing a business by yourself; it's a great achievement and the building blocks of your possibly huge career, and you decide to go through the hardship of dealing with all the baggage that comes with running a business yourself instead of getting a second person to carry the load for you. I'm not demonizing the decision to operate a business with more persons, but simply saying that managing a business on your own is something that the operator should be proud of, since keeping track of financial records, ordering materials, storing customer records, answering questions and emails, and of course building the suits, all by yourself, is definitely nothing to scoff at. If anything, this should compel future fursuit builders to refer to themselves as "I". Though there is virtually no incentive needed not to refer to yourself with plural pronouns if you're a single business owner; it's just common decency, and there is no rhyme or reason to do this shit either other than to appear self-righteous and greater than what you actually are.
In essence, this argument is a more subtle hybrid version of the first two arguments above. How would you know that using plural pronouns to refer to the business operation constitutes a business perspective?
"But what if I find someone I want to work with in the future?"
Then you just switch every instance of "I" and "my" with "we" and "our". Copy it into Microsoft Word, Ctrl+H and bam, you're done in less than five minutes. Are you that fucking lazy? Your business appearance represents the contemporary you, not the future you.
If you really want to speak representatively of your own business without coming off as a pretentious asshole, I suggest you use the name you're doing business under to refer to yourself in the introductory section of your business. Even though I'm also not that big of a fan of constantly using your username to refer to yourself if you're a single business operator, the introduction of your business speaks the loudest, so I think it is warranted there. In all other cases, you should just use the singular pronouns. It's a lot more personal and emanates a friendly attitude that doesn't immediately think they're higher up than their commissioners just because they own a business.
To end this rant on a good note, here are some fursuit makers that - as far as I know - employ reasonable business conduct, have a very personal and point-blank eminence and aren't guilty of being complete arrogant whackjobs:
Beastcub
Skyprofursuits
Wildvskings
http://www.morefurless.com/
http://www.donthugcacti.com/
For the ninth episode of NrN, a different type of furry artist takes their turn on the chopping board; fursuit creators. Now let me clarify that - while I have no inclination for having a fursuit of my own - I'm completely passive against the concept of fursuits, fursuit making or fursuiting. It's very cool for some, and fursuit makers have provided the community with their great, prolific services. But as with the usual furry content creator, it seems, elitist, grandstanding business attitudes have also infested the constituency of fursuit builders. Their type of pretentiousness is completely different from artists, though, and I will be digging into the soil of their wannabe 'big business' and the arguments that support it.
To give credit where it is due, and not to make this journal seem completely abrasive and jaded, I will say that a lot of them have the 18+ age rule quite right; saying that minors are allowed to commission a suit provided they have signed parental consent. Of course there are still the ones that refuse services to minors not because of the age limit for entering into a legally binding contract, but because of the inane "minors are stupid and immature - doing business with them is unprofessional" bullcrap. Those assholes can go fuck themselves, but I will not be talking about them because it creates no bigger picture. Every decent human being despises them. It's much more of a realistic scenario to arrange a court case for an unpaid fursuit of over $1,500 instead of $40 of artwork, hence why I fully support fursuit makers putting the 18+ age limit in their Terms of Service, provided they won't entirely disbar minors from ordering a fursuit from them. ("Clients under the age of 18 should have a parent / legal guardian consign and vouch for their legal position with their prior consent, written in the initial order request." In the off chance of a fursuit maker viewing this journal, feel free to steal that clause.) If not, and just put "You must be over 18 years of age to order", go ahead; I'm not responsible for your loss of clientele.
Now, after that diatribe of a paragraph, let's get to the chorus, aka. the "We" mentality the title of this NrN alludes to. Now, I must of course say that not every fursuit maker is guilty of conducting in whatever this "We" mentality is. Now what is this "We" shit I'm talking about, you may ask? Well, it's fursuit makers who run their fursuit making business all on their own referring to themselves using plural pronouns, and sometimes even calling themselves a company on top of that. While being aware that the maker is only one person and with absolutely nobody else, how would you feel when reading the following: "We do our very best to parallel our products to the highest of standards."
Seems utterly unnecessary, right? They're managing their fursuit business all and solely on their own with no employed help from a second person, so why would they use plural pronouns to refer to their singular self? There are a couple of arguments I suspect will be used to defend the usage of "we" and "our" by a singularly operated business owner, so I'll be going over these and preemptively refute them.
"It's more professional!"
I've dealt with this asinine crap argument numerous times. It's a blatant cop-out to people criticizing your business and still too many artists seem to espouse this fallacy. Define professionalism, and then explain how using "we" and "our" to refer to yourself falls under that definition.
"Other businesses do it, therefore it makes sense to do it myself as well!"
This is the textbook pompous business attitude in argument form, and will cause numerous analogies to arise from those who can actually think shit through that will refute this argument. Like, does a 5-year-old lemonade stand holder think: "Hey, the company of Microsoft has HRM, PRM, CRM, a Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and a vacancy board. Might want to implement those myself as well!" Granted, supply chain management could work very minimally with fursuit and art businesses, but the others only pertain to huge enterprise businesses that operate on a large scale. And to assert that being an artist or fursuit creator is operating on a scale just as large as the companies you cite as inspirations for your snobby eminence is pretentiousness at its finest. Now, back to the main point. OF COURSE are other big businesses doing it; they are multiple people, so it makes sense that they do refer to themselves with plural pronouns, since they want to speak representatively of the entire company. Case and point, scope matters. Every business has its own size, which is determined by: advertising frequency, international provision, market audience, market ownership, product demand, and physical branches. In the case of a fursuit business, these are respectively almost always FA ads to no ads, worldwide shipping, furry community, average ownership, limited demand, and one phycial location: the maker's house. Of course, the figures given are like I said, average, and I can't dictate if you want to limit your costume creation to only the furry community or the outside world, with roadside advertisements and several physical locations and shit. You are allowed to do that, but it's going absolutely overkill in my opinion, so I and many others will most likely point and laugh at you if you ever decide to stretch that far.
"I'm speaking from a business perspective!"
Which is exactly why you should be using "I" instead of "we". You operate the business on your own, and since your business wouldn't exist without you, you should be speaking for yourself and not for a phantom second person who would be helping you. I think you should be proud of managing a business by yourself; it's a great achievement and the building blocks of your possibly huge career, and you decide to go through the hardship of dealing with all the baggage that comes with running a business yourself instead of getting a second person to carry the load for you. I'm not demonizing the decision to operate a business with more persons, but simply saying that managing a business on your own is something that the operator should be proud of, since keeping track of financial records, ordering materials, storing customer records, answering questions and emails, and of course building the suits, all by yourself, is definitely nothing to scoff at. If anything, this should compel future fursuit builders to refer to themselves as "I". Though there is virtually no incentive needed not to refer to yourself with plural pronouns if you're a single business owner; it's just common decency, and there is no rhyme or reason to do this shit either other than to appear self-righteous and greater than what you actually are.
In essence, this argument is a more subtle hybrid version of the first two arguments above. How would you know that using plural pronouns to refer to the business operation constitutes a business perspective?
"But what if I find someone I want to work with in the future?"
Then you just switch every instance of "I" and "my" with "we" and "our". Copy it into Microsoft Word, Ctrl+H and bam, you're done in less than five minutes. Are you that fucking lazy? Your business appearance represents the contemporary you, not the future you.
If you really want to speak representatively of your own business without coming off as a pretentious asshole, I suggest you use the name you're doing business under to refer to yourself in the introductory section of your business. Even though I'm also not that big of a fan of constantly using your username to refer to yourself if you're a single business operator, the introduction of your business speaks the loudest, so I think it is warranted there. In all other cases, you should just use the singular pronouns. It's a lot more personal and emanates a friendly attitude that doesn't immediately think they're higher up than their commissioners just because they own a business.
To end this rant on a good note, here are some fursuit makers that - as far as I know - employ reasonable business conduct, have a very personal and point-blank eminence and aren't guilty of being complete arrogant whackjobs:
Beastcub
Skyprofursuits
Wildvskings
http://www.morefurless.com/
http://www.donthugcacti.com/
