I appreciate the role you take in our community. Where you brave the hot coals of being seen as "pretentious" or "condescending" in order to advocate for some elevation. It is clear you are very familiar with social media and the impact it has on our microcosm of a subculture. One that every day encroaches closer and closer to the mainstream homogenizing corporate manufacturing plant. It's not far off we'll have Sonicfox and Majira toys in Walmart, and it makes my hairs stand on end to realize that inevitability. It's good that there are people such as you- that you are here to share this dignified, succinct, concise, eloquent rhetoric that I truly, without sarcasm, appreciate existing.

You ride with the current, and attempt to steer with it. You must, how else will you market yourself? Oh, I see the merit in what you do and what you say.

Through-out your entire essay I felt a fever of rage on the rise. I don't color myself a misanthrope, but wholly aware of the dissonance I see strangers as dangerous idiots until I have the chance to judge their character.

I spent years- years of my life that still bleed out today researching sociology. I can't stop myself- it is an obsession. One wholly narcotic and upsetting. Every time I feel I am getting a grip on the bigger picture of our community, as a fractal of larger trends in society, I just get so... Cold, and hot, and the electricity of my skin prickles up and I just want to scream at how negative trends and patterns continue, on and on and on and on. Even with the best of intentions, even with the most virtuous of postures, even with the most immaculate of socially constructed identities-- PEOPLE are still just mobs ready to riot and dance around the effigy of any person- with extreme prejudice. Punching up or punching down.

My own neurosis are intimately familiar to me, and I don't wish to place to burden of persuading me against these deeply rooted perceptions. But I do wish to make a point. I may be disaffected, surviving in an unscrupulous way at the fringes of all society- much less this space with furries I'd defend to death. But

It is possible to go without social media. It's hard, oh yes, it is a trade of inconveniences. You are entitled your privacy and the liberty to do as you please without being on the virtual platforms and stages. Life- this world is enough of a spotlight. You don't have to be leaning for or against anything to choose to abstain. While you've done a phenomenal job of breaking down and reviewing the culture you find yourself in, Stigmata, I am caught wondering how much of this essay was filtered through the same public persona you've mentioned building.

Personas are part of life, and I'd hate to argue against that. I just think of such boundaries, like poor Chet, set up for yourself. Confining, restrictive, in their own right. Oh yes, you could build up another portfolio, another identity online- furries are especially good at that. But when you feel so powerfully, so strongly, identify with the person- the "furson" you've made for yourself. Such boundaries you set for yourself can only feel suffocating. Like a chrysalis, urging you, compelling you to break out and shake it off, in some way. Change always has a price-tag to it, an exchange. While you may lose some of what you had, you may grow to find more.

Or, you might not, because people erase your very existence with a +Block function, as is their right to autonomy, but the sheer permanence of that decision is done so haphazardously and causes so many interpersonal conflicts such as networking to find that a friend of a friend didn't like your wording on a tweet and how absurd is that aren't you just precious I could just eat you up. * Ahem * But it is silly to shout at clouds, innit? •w•

Thanks for engaging with such an expansive comment. It's always bittersweet, to have someone who relates to the negatives that i'm expressing. But I thank you all the same for sharing some of your burdens here.

Something that I wanted to highlight in your journey for understanding, specifically your narcotic and upsetting obsession with sociology, is that it doesn't sound like you're experiencing any recharge. In your journey for understanding, have you found any hope or positive interactions, or has your curiosity always left you feeling more and more cynical? As for myself, I'm finding hope, even if it's change starting with my small audience.

I appreciate how you laid out your unconventional position in the second half of your message, and how you also didn't want me to feel pressured with responding in this way, but I'm thankful I can reciprocate such a thoughtful message:

If I went without social media in this moment, I'd be giving up my career and freedoms as an artist. I would have to build a completely different platform in person and almost from scratch in a local community. I currently live in a space far too costly to make that transition right now. While my ten year plan is intending to meet a life where I don't need any internet to sustain, it's unrealistic to expect that of me right now. My brand includes communication and relationships, and even in one of the best places in the country to initiate that, what little stability I have relies on my ability to market online.

When likening the restrictions of Chet to myself, I question how well you know what my fursonas and online persona are, or if you're familiar with my other material. When creating fursonas or engaging with the fursonas of others, I have little interest in the nonfiction elements. I actively work to understand my filters and internalized narratives, and purposefully surround myself with people who can challenge my limited perspective because my life is about removing as much space between the Jonathan you see in writing/art/tweets and the Jonathan you would have any conversation with. My monkey fursona, for example, is almost an exact avatar of me. He's designed to take my transparency and vulnerabilities to a new level, actually. It is far removed from the Chet archetype, which is about preserving an air of positivity. I aim to preserve an air of genuineness and vulnerability, regardless of how messy or unattractive out-of-context that may be.

I guess that last paragraph I wrote because the end of your message feels like you have a hard time believing that I could actually be cognizant of the meta here, or that, at the very least, I've spent years creating material about something antithetical to being a Chet. I'm choosing to believe you're not familiar with my other works because, if you were and still had that opinion about me, I'd be confused as to what I could possibly do to convince you of where I stand. I may need help there!

I apologize for my clumsy comment. I didn't mean to be so barbed. It isn't that I was pinning you and the Chet-type together personally, as much as any of us and our relationship to our personas. The shadow, the ID, all the other psychological jargon- it can get quite messy. I was trying to approach the topic of personas as restrictive rather than transformative.

You have an impressive sense of foresight. To plan 10 years in advance... And a sense of duty to go along with it, no doubt. You must, to make real those goals. That's pretty admirable, and I find myself envying it and fearing it at the same time. Even reaching shorter goals seems such a puzzle for me. Oh perish the thought, even if we do not have exactly the same principles or approach to life I still find you agreeable. I just want to be clear on that.

It's obvious I'm a touch starved for philosophical kinds of talks, innit? I'll take your suggestion to seek for fulfillment- to fill the glass so as not to simply drain. I do. I could stand to do a bit more, though. Things with actual intrinsic value instead of just, whatever poison it is I'm filling my glass with.

There are things there that I would like to discuss. Shallow to the deep end. You have a monkey? How brilliant, as do I. With a significant and inescapable importance. To the point that, I hear you mention your goals with them and I find our goals for them may have a lot in common. Though I am following different trajectory, and different primary goals in my life that prioritize differently now, I have in the past... Perhaps it's best not to just gloss over the topic. However I will say, your choice to make things into nonfiction has me by the throat. You have insight that I have hunted for. As time moves ever forward I hope that I have other opportunities to discuss things with you.

Ah. You who rises up. I respect and revere what you do, in the things you say and stand for. That is the beating heart of what I wanted to say to you from the onset. The rest of this was just my clumsy stumbling into matters I'm not equipped to discourse on. Please forgive my rudeness.

I offer *Big Hugs*

I'd rather you engaged with the writing instead. When you leave niceties out of context, it has more to do with you feeling better than with anything I'm looking for. :/

I meant it as a compliment but hey, anyway you want it, that's the way you need it, anyway you want it!
"Tips my hat to you & keeps on walking"

I'm serious, please stop leaving me messages like that. It's not cool or funny. It doesn't put a smile on my face, and it's not a compliment. If I'm going through the effort to share something difficult and you leave a comment that isn't even responding to the effort I've put in, it's worse than leaving no comment at all.

I expected better from you, especially after the DM you sent me months ago to make sure we were cool. Currently, we are not cool.

And I'm also serious when I say it a "Compliment" not an insult if you don't see it that way, then you don't see it, let us move on.

I'd rather you took ownership that you're repetitively doing something I've asked you not to do. It's not a "let's move on" kind of thing. Apologizing is different than deferring any responsibility on your part to internalize what I've been telling you again and again. So please either apologize to me sincerely or leave no more comments. Your good intentions aren't making me feel better.

I will not apologize for something that I did whit good intent & you don't see it that way, from now on I will leave no comment, so block me if you must or whatever you choose to do, your work is awesome & brilliant but you have a serious problem whit people that don't see your point of view.
Merry Xmas, best of the new year 2020 & deal whit it.

thank you for this post, for the work that you're giving out to us for free.. this was relatable to me in so many ways, and it's especially easy to become cynical after experiencing negativity online - I keep finding myself getting angry or obsessing over the smallest comments or a few unfollowers, then trying to put out content to "rebuild" myself and make up for the social losses, and to always keep up the appearance of "chet" (hell, even writing this I worry about someone finding it and disliking me for it somehow). I used to write a lot of personal posts about my experiences with buddhism, mental health, even fetishes when I had a smaller audience but once I moved to twitter it felt like I couldn't speak about those things anymore, and I have to appeal to people who only want cute art in order to keep myself afloat as a creator, when I actually feel like I'm capable of much more personal and meaningful interactions. I started drawing daily to stay grounded and express my own needs, but that has turned into drawings for followers and mass appeal. so when I read your post I felt very emotionally moved, and I feel moved while writing this comment, because of how painful it is to rely on social media that isn't always going to be good for you, but how you still try to be better and you still manage to voice your thoughts while continuing to grow as an artist/creator/person.. so I hope this convoluted comment is understood as a thank you x) I think I've only spoken to you twice at MFF but I felt like you had a really authentic presence, and I couldn't forget it. I hope you keep putting yourself out there authentically despite your hardships.

Honoured that you read and found it useful. I'm glad you feel challenged to put yourself out there again. After you've spent some time on those changes, let me know how it treats you! And thank you for taking the time to speak with me at MFF.

I honestly don't know how to handle social media. My problem stems from my inability to handle the 100s of platforms that are there and manage them.

My family wants to talk on Hangouts, some friends want to talk on Telegram (which I made my main thing after I rejected Skype from my life), others use text messages, others want me on Discord for more than voice chatting. Then there's FA, I'm familiar with it so I stick with it. But then people want me to go onto other sites like FurNetwork and Twitter for furry things. Then my work friends want me back on Facebook (I rid myself of that as the timeline feature was awful). But some hate facebook like me and want to stick to Whatsapp (like my landlord and my union). Others want me to go to Instagram. And then of course there is Youtube where I hide my chill videos.

And then I guess there's like 500 dating apps which all suck? How can I place context in all of these platforms with their limitations and cope with the sheer number of all of them? I opt to not do that and I can get away with it (at some cost) as someone that does not depend on an online brand/following to make my living. I don't know what media platform I should be socializing on to be honest.

I much preferred the olden days, yes where viruses were actually a thing but there was less corporate branding and more make it you. For example I was a fan of the old MySpace where you could customize your profile page to make it you (although I stopped using that after I was hacked by someone intent on showing the world my homosexual tendencies when I was a teenager hiding that). I grew up with the sense that you were wise to keep as much of you as possible off the internet and to hide behind something that could not be used to identify you. I wish there were just a few options like this that could reflect who you are and who you want to present yourself to.

As a non-artist, I suppose I'd rather have fewer watchers that understand me and want to interact with me as opposed to just a ton of watchers who might do the reverse. I'm kinda glad I'm not in the spotlight, all I hear about is people leaving platforms like Twitter (for example Matt Jackson who found it unhealthy but then again has to deal with the pro wrestling community which is the worst, but that's another story) for their mental health. From what little I've seen, you seem to handle it quite well.

But then again, in my avoidance of other platforms I trade off being unable to cope with having 50 different forms of social media for loneliness at times. And then at other times just with the ones I have I feel overwhelmed and not able to give a response worth merit and thought because of the volume of messages and how distracting life can be.

Tl;dr I have no idea what I am doing with social media.

You have my sympathies. I have my fair share of difficulties, but I can't possibly imagine having to juggle even more platforms, with each one holding their own exclusive importance.

Despite all the struggling, I'm glad you think I'm doing an okay job at handling things. It's good of you to prefer a smaller and more intimate set of mutuals. I just hope you can eventually get that without having to pull your hair out across multiple platforms!

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my work. <3

You covered so much ground here, that I'm not sure what I want to respond to... maybe I'll come back later; it's such a lovely, comprehensive piece. I think the most salient, 'jonathan vair duncan' point that I got from this is the need to communicate with people in a direct, open, and forgiving way, knowing that social media on this scale is way too much to ask of a human being.

Also, I'll add that sometimes I unfollow people because I want to take a break from their art, or give someone else a 'spot'. I might still enjoy their art, but maybe I feel like I 'get it', or I feel like it's time to give someone else a turn. I read my twitter feed/check FA once a week for my own sanity. It's at the point where I have hundreds of people I want to follow on twitter, but I already feel like it's too much following 80 people.
I guess my own strategy is to shut up for the most part, and post art, with the occasional 'crafted phrase/'on-brand tidbit'. I feel strangely constricted by the idea that I should not waste people's time.

I think your reduction to the most salient JVD point is fair. I thank you for responding on that.

When you say you feel you "get" someone else's art, I think that makes sense. For that reason I sometimes let artists come into my radar through more sporadic means than an inbox notification. Something I haven't heard before is when you said, "I feel like it's time to give someone else a turn." You're referring to how limited your attention is to looking at multiple artists, yes?

Yeah, I think that's what I meant, though I don't think it made sense. It's not like I unwatch artists that still add value to my life. I think it was more of a general expression of discontent from when I think about how many great artists don't have the following that they deserve. I want to make sure everyone knows that their art is important and special.

Really enjoyed this. I struggle with my art because most of the time I don't see the point of doing it. Making stuff just for fun doesn't fulfill me. But I can't -not- do it at all. In particular, sharing that your work has given hope gives -me- hope. Maybe I don't have to understand why my work is important to anyone else. Maybe I can just trust that it inevitably will be important to someone, somewhere, someday.

In the meantime, I have been slowly finding ways around my own frustrations. I am hopeful by next year I will have made the break-through in self and art that I am seeking. Thanks for sharing.

"I’d say the greatest reward I could now receive is hearing that my work restored hope to someone who was too deep into darkness to ever expect a break. I’ve stopped people from committing suicide because I chose to share my brokenness in both art and writing. Giving hope is better than giving someone a distraction. It’s better than doing something just to be sexy or cool. Saving someone’s life is objectively more important to me than working in a AAA game studio, on my favourite musician’s album art, or being the most popular artist on any one website."

Thanks for reading, and glad you got something constructive out of it. Based on your first paragraph, my other articles will probably help you too. If you haven't read them yet I strongly recommend it. Probably this one, which has lots of relevant content despite the expectation the title and image sets for it only being porn.

I'm excited for your journey to do more art that's unapologetically you. <3

Thank you for this. Not only the content in itself but the examples you repeatedly set by daring to be so open and personal about your own life. I very rarely post comments or interact on any fundamental level, especially on a venue like FA, so even if I disagreed with something you wrote it impacted me strongly enough to want to give something in return - to brave myself to give some tiny tidbit of input in return. If nothing else, thank you for that.

I feel like a huge issue with social media in general is the pretense all of them give about their own humanity. They try to mimicry normal human interaction with a specific set of tools available and the sorry reality is that to a large extent we buy straight into it; that this is normalcy. But having everything written down for people to see, even years later, is not exactly translateable into having a casual conversation with someone face to face. It makes it possible for someone to judge us on mistakes and successes we did literally decades ago but without the concept of time passing to provide the "hey, maybe this person has changed in the twelve years since this was posted."

"How will this reflect on me tomorrow," is a pretty unnatural consideration we deal with when posting almost anything on the internet and it probably affects us in unhealthy ways wether we are aware of it or not. I think platforms like Twitter are particularly at fault here; they promote short, quick and in the moment activities or thoughts to mimic what a face to face conversation would be like without being able to remotely provide the same level of interaction. It leaves an enormous amount of space for interpretation and more often than not we choose, because it is a very human thing to do sadly, to interpret things negatively.

When this behaviour is even promoted in social media algorithms for how we see content (because "any content is good content") I can't even imagine the nightmare of placing your business income in its' hands as well. Until social medias can, or is forced, to take responsibility for the wellbeing of their respective users rather than just view them as monetary traffic I guess it really falls to each of us personally to be the tools that their platforms do not provide: To ask instead of interpreting between the lines and to have the humility to ask for forgiveness if something we did or wrote came across or was recieved wrong.

Thank you for showing it is possible to do so, but in particular how important it can be to someone when you do.

(I in turn am sorry if this comment goes all over the place. I am part venting, part trying to give support and/or be constructive.)

I'm grateful you felt obligated to reflect and respond. There isn't a lot I can build off of beyond nodding aggressively in agreement towards what you've written, but I can think of one thing:

I realized early on that everything I did could be archived and may eventually make its way back to my offline identity, so I shouldn't ever do something on social media if I think I could grow to regret it. Having my real name (a unique one at that) tied to virtually everything I post has forced me to shirk any temptations to expect anonymity, or to use another person as an opportunity to slander or vent my negative emotions.

Sucks that social media is a lie that we buy into (again, agreed), and that we're not supposed to be in this position to begin with. But I feel like my best chance at freedom is to be as vulnerable as possible, even when I'd rather not. At least I get to preserve the illusion that some of my discomfort is on my own terms!

Having an online persona/fursona to hide behind is a failsafe for a lot of people so they (I admit I do it to an extent as well) can hide behind anonymity. With it, we can pretend whatever flak is sent our way is aimed at that representation of ourselves and not directly at us. But it IS pretend and the discomfort of recieving flak in any form won't be diminished by hiding behind an avatar. Who are we really helping by doing that in the first place? It certainly is not us personally.

Being completely honest about oneself is probably less hurtful in the end. At least then you do not have to deal with the idea, and discomfort for that matter, that even when you try to be someone else people will still find ways to hate you for it. I try to force myself to be as much myself online as I would be offline - for you to not use that shield at all is brave and admirable.

Thanks! Hope that kind of bravery continues to spread.

I understand how it feels to realize something is important but to lack exactly the right diction to respond. Thanks for trusting me with the bizarre comment. I'm glad you took the time to write it out. <3

I finally got around to reading this, and while a little late (oops), I appreciate your input on it all.

I have a lot of these anxieties you mention, enough that I'm kinda happy having little to no online following, and a lot of these reminded me of my own interactions with people online, usually more in chatrooms/discords more than twitter or other more social platforms. Still, it's very relatable. Cause while Discord doesn't exactly suffer from the clout-power juice or whatever (at least outside of some individual servers), it's still very often that I hear of trash-talking others in them, either through DMs, VC, hating other people due to misunderstandings, and well-- This can all happen in real life too lol. It's frustrating, and I have more than a few friends who love to slap the block button in more ways than one, often hurting someone far more than necessary, who has no idea why. They're just quick on the trigger for it, quick to accuse, rather than try to talk to people why they're having problems with them. That's something I never really understood personally, I guess cause I tend to see it similarly to the way you described it. While I'm more than likely not going to message them first, I'm definitely open to talking to them than cutting them off. I hate doing shit like that and finding out I had it all wrong in my head, and that I'm the one who fucked up, and caused the pain they had no answer to.

I was reminded of people in high school, somewhat childish interactions, those who would lose something and just immediately swear someone stole it, and go about demanding and accusing-- only to find it within the hour, more than likely having been misplaced but them being too prideful to see it that way. Or someone who would cling instantly to literally anyone who would return their superficial affection and claim them as a close person, only to be heartbroken or pissed and/or betrayed they had different thoughts after a little more honest interaction.
And how quick people are to place blame on someone else, try to find ways to knock them down, or dig up trash, usually out of stretched assumptions. A lot of old memories came back, also of my own mistakes as well, as it seems to happen whenever I read your long introspective Patreon posts.
That sounds like I disliked it, but that was good I assure you! I'd lie if I said it didn't drain me to go through this, but in a good way. It's nice to self-evaluate every now and then.

I look forward to seeing more of these, and I'm very glad you're putting them up for free so many people can hear your voice and experiences, not enough talk about them.