I'm surprised someone actually used the proportional symbol.

Ben... ms paint.. has a text feature...

o-o

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD USE IT.

also hahaha awesome.

oh god. oh god.

i hate you koebi

Trying to quantify the coolness of conventions? What journal are you going to publish your findings in? Can I get in on the peer-review process?

It's really a bizarre phenomenon this popularity of silly pants amongst furries. Overgeneralizing ad absurdum (with gratuitous use of stereotype), we can ask: Do the Tripp-clad become furries because nobody will else love them because they wear stupid pants, or does nobody love them because they are furries and the stupid pants are merely coincidental?

The denominator may need to be expanded to include cardinalities of sets of similar absurd pants worn by attendees. I suggest this because, in light of the local HotTopic ceasing to carry Tripp, my roommate has switched to Kickwear. Without the slightest hint of irony, she chastises me for exhibiting the "He looks like he got dressed in the dark" nerd phenotype.

This is the most thoughtful comment I've gotten on a submission.

People usually wear tripp pants at furcons because they're people who never updated their wardrobe from high school, in which they bought what was cast as "rebellious" by consumerist stereotypes, such as tripp pants.

And on your last points, I have one question for you. How many gay nerds do you know that aren't furries? EXACTLY. The furry fandom is full of people who associated with that kind of culture when they were adolescent. Some didn't choose to buy new clothes.

I'm not sure if I'm entirely convinced, though I don't disagree that these are valid explanations in many cases. My roommate, for instance, continues to wear such pants (post high school) supposedly for comfort's sake, despite their impracticality. I can't say how widespread this opinion is, but I will say that even if absurd pants are discarded after high school, they serve as a gateway to other "artificial bad-ass" affectations, like hair color by Crayola, tattoos, and piercings. Once these manifest, they can persist for some time (with tattoos, indefinitely). And if I understand you, it may be that the absurd pants stage of development is analogous to a pupal stage, after which the "matured" larva will emerge from their Tripp trappings as a furry with their substantial pants budget replaced by a fursuit budget. But is this finally the imago stage of development? If not, then the Furcon Coolness Ratio Theorem may need yet more additions to its denominator.

If we characterize a gay nerd by one who could read either xkcd or slashdot as naturally as they fellate, then (counting myself) I know only two gay nerds. The sample is too small for me to generalize, as I myself am a phenotypic nerd and the other is a phenotypic twink (non-furry). Neither myself nor the other experienced a rebellious "HotTopic" stage. Instead, both of us (separately) seem to have focused any rebelliousness into LGBT activism, which is decidedly practical.