Put yourself in the shoes of someone who wants to send these articles to their manager to support an idea/project of theirs. It absolutely detracts from the professionalism of the post.
Any joe-schmo can string together smart sounding words. You need to signal to me that I need to take these words seriously, and when you mix in your otherworldly passions, I can’t take them seriously, it’s too unfamiliar to me.
Aside from that, what it is about the anime and furry culture that pushes its participants to include it in everything? Every once in a while, I see a post on the cringe subreddit of some young man who has peppered anime and fursonas all throughout a school presentation. What is driving the need to include this in everything?
> Put yourself in the shoes of someone who wants to send these articles to their manager to support an idea/project of theirs.
That is, frankly, your problem and not the author's. The author has already taken the time to distill their knowledge into text, put it online, and allowed you free access to it.
> It absolutely detracts from the professionalism of the post.
From the author's perspective that may be a feature not a bug. Maybe they don't want to come across as professional. It's their writing and their little corner of the Internet. They can create as they please.
> You need to signal to me that I need to take these words seriously
No, they need do no such thing. If you want to extract value from what they've already taken the time to create and share, it's up to you to figure out how.
You're a grown-up. If you can't figure out whether text is enriching and useful to you or not without it being presented with just the right imagery, color, and font, that's on you.
> and when you mix in your otherworldly passions, I can’t take them seriously, it’s too unfamiliar to me.
This is a good sentence. Here you are correctly articulating that it is you who is having trouble assimilating the content they've shared. That's your choice. They have the freedom to put it out there and you have the freedom to ignore it if it's not to your taste. Everyone can do what they choose and everyone wins, for their own personal definition of "win".
> Aside from that, what it is about the anime and furry culture that pushes its participants to include it in everything? Every once in a while, I see a post on the cringe subreddit of some young man who has peppered anime and fursonas all throughout a school presentation. What is driving the need to include this in everything?
It's an important part of their identity and one that has fairly broad negative connotations. They rationally want to normalize it so that they can be their best fully-actualized self without having to deal with shame or criticism like your comment here.
I agree with this post 100%. If a technical post solves my problems, as long as the images are SFW and not too distracting, I'm good with it. Even if they are a bit distracting, that's what reader mode is for, isn't it?
>What is driving the need to include this in everything?
This is just an armchair psychology theory, but I feel like it is just the need for social validation in the absence of it, as well as an attempt to prove that their interests/passions that are considered to be for "weird" or childish people can belong to "normal" adult people too. Hence why they never forget to remind people at any point in a regular discussion about that interest, as if it is a regular everyday thing that a lot of people are into.
And in the meantime, it is also sort of an interest/passion that isn't about an activity (very unlike most other interests/passions), but rather about being a different entity as a person, which makes it more difficult to detach yourself from that interest, as it literally is solely about being another form of yourself.
Overall, I agree with your sentiment however. Having furry content in a technical blog post would essentially prevent me from sharing it with my teammates, no matter how good the actual technical content of that post is.
> Having furry content in a technical blog post would essentially prevent me from sharing it with my teammates, no matter how good the actual technical content of that post is.
I don't disbelieve you, but I do have a question!
Why?
Why is furry/anime/whatever inherently disqualifying, regardless of the quality of the technical content?
(n.b. None of the art is adult-oriented, if that's what you're worried about. I made an editorial decision on day one to keep the artwork featured on my blog 100% worksafe, even if the discussions aren't always.)
> Why is furry/anime/whatever inherently disqualifying, regardless of the quality of the technical content?
It isn't inherently disqualifying, unless it is plastered everywhere where it doesn't belong, like in the middle of a lot of unrelated conversations or in the middle of a professional technical blog post.
For example, if you just have a furry image in your website header, but the content of your technical post itself is on-point and doesn't have a bunch of unrelated furry stuff, most people will have no issues sharing your content and recommending it to others.
For a good example of that, take a look at the website of the guy who did a lot of impressive work and research and became famous for the YOLO image classifier[0]. His website features my little pony characters. He is very openly into it. His MLP-themed resume made as a halfway joke is extremely infamous on the internet. And then take a look at his technical blog posts. He writes really well and doesn't let his interests detract him from quality writing. And no one who is interested in reading about the technical topics he covers seems to have any issues with the content of his posts at all.
It’s disqualifying because, in the case of furries, it started as a sexual fantasy. Much of the furry community sees fursonas as a sexual choice.
If you included pictures of scantily clad people in all of your posts, I would also hesitate to send it to my manager.
Anime has a huge sexual following as well. There’s an entire industry around printing anime girls onto body pillows for these fans to sleep with, for example.
The amount of... failure to understand what you're talking about is on the level of white people trying to explain native american cultures after watching half of Pocahontas while half asleep.
Furries started as a sexual fantasy like The Colbert Report started as a serious news show. It didn't. The Colbert Report was intended to satirize news outlets like Fox, but art imitates life and you gotta talk about the real world at one point or another. Furries started as panels and room parties at science fiction cons and guess what, humans do this thing where art imitates life and is a reflection of of humanity at large.
But, you seem to have made it a goal to intentionally not understand what you're talking about and argue in bad faith, looking for validation of your limited worldview.
To counter your point: My boss actively suggests to people a wide mix of books on subjects, including [The Manga Guide to Cryptography](https://nostarch.com/mangacrypto) and within my company it's not uncommon to see people making MLP references, references to anime and manga (including BNA, Aggretsuko, Hello Kitty, etc) and more.
If you can't read an article for the contents & think critically about its construction and presentation, did you even go to college? Or did you fake your way through that degree? Or were you just not challenged through high school to think and that's where your 4.2 perfect GPA came from?
>Furries started as a sexual fantasy like The Colbert Report started as a serious news show. It didn't. The Colbert Report was intended to satirize news outlets like Fox, but art imitates life and you gotta talk about the real world at one point or another. Furries started as panels and room parties at science fiction cons and guess what, humans do this thing where art imitates life and is a reflection of of humanity at large.
I don't think many care. It's a pop-culture, one of the random interests people adopt to feel "different" in the 20th/21st century (I guess kind of like "occult circles" in the 19th century or similar).
How would one feel about a 30-40 year old "goth"? Exactly.
In the juvenile 21st century culture it might be considered an acceptable passtime for someone over 20-22, but in the end it's no better than being a "goth", a "biker", a "raver", a "b-boy", a "trekie", a "new ager" or similar cringe-worthy identities people cling on to find a community in the absense of a real community of people.
Real community being the variety that focuses on the actual character, personality, work, and behavior -- not on people having some niche affiliation/interest in order to be included.
I know plenty of "aging ravers" who are well into their 50s and 60s (and for that matter - yes, goths over 30, too). Just because a community formed around a common (possibly frivolous) interest doesn't make it "not a real community". I'm part of a certain music community - the actual music itself isn't the draw to me (not to say I don't like it, but it's definitely not my favorite) - it's the kindness of the people. If I might ask - what kind of community are you a part of, and why does it make it better than the community I'm part of? And why even gatekeep what makes a good community?
>I know plenty of "aging ravers" who are well into their 50s and 60s
Sure, my point wasn't that they don't exist, but that it's a sad clinging.
>Just because a community formed around a common (possibly frivolous) interest doesn't make it "not a real community"
In my book it does. For one it makes it exclusionary. And what when you lose interest in the "frivolous interest" later? You lose the friends or alienate some of them? That's not much of a community then to begin with.
>And why even gatekeep what makes a good community?
Shouldn't I rather ask this question to you? After all, you're the one who accepts a community that's gatekeeping based on an interest!
> Sure, my point wasn't that they don't exist, but that it's a sad clinging.
That's like...just your opinion, man. :)
> In my book it does. For one it makes it exclusionary. And what when you lose interest in the "frivolous interest" later? You lose the friends or alienate some of them? That's not much of a community then to begin with.
That isn't what happens, though. They are still your friends, you can still do other things with them! Maybe you met someone at a board game convention, both over the years you stopped playing games (hey, life happens) - doesn't mean you can't or don't meet up with them for dinner, a music event, or...
> Shouldn't I rather ask this question to you? After all, you're the one who accepts a community that's gatekeeping based on an interest!
Aha! Here is the issue. The communities form around those interests, but there's nothing saying you can't join the community without having a heavy interest in it. Probably having some sort of passing interest is how you find out about the community in the first place, but it isn't a requirement. It feels to me that you're making a big assumption about a lot of communities that you've never personally interacted with.
Yes, but either all opinions are equally valid, and things are just matters of taste, or some opinions are more valid than others (not mine necessarily, just some). In which case, one might want to consider whether this one is more valid - and whether being a goth or a furry after teenager years makes much of a sense.
If your argument is some variety of "anything should go" or "whatever doesn't actively hurt someone else is ok", or "it's a free country", or "whatever gets you through", then sure, can't argue with that...
Why would you be any more likely to loose friends found through something like that than through any other community when circumstances change?
And most communities are based on something, be it interest, experiences, location, profession, ... - which community is not "gatekeeping" through some factor? If you exclude people from your social circles because they "don't belong (anymore)" is orthogonal to that, and not a thing unique to relationships through interest-based communities.
I think your documentary is biased, as it’s been made and hosted by a furry themselves.
On the Wikipedia page about furry fandom, it says:
> The furry fandom has its roots in the underground comix movement of the 1970s, a genre of comic books that depicts explicit content.[5] In 1976, a pair of cartoonists created the amateur press association Vootie, which was dedicated to animal-focused art. Many of its featured works contained adult themes, such as "Omaha" the Cat Dancer, which contained explicit sex.
As well, it even has a section dedicated to sexuality, where it states:
> In a different online survey, 33% of furry respondents answered that they have a "significant sexual interest in furry", another 46% stated they have a "minor sexual interest in furry", and the remaining 21% stated they have a "non-sexual interest in furry".
Although you may not engage with it sexually, it very much has a sexual following.
I read your articles, thanks for sharing. A community of people can loudly declare whatever they want, it’s their actions that determine who they are.
Go and look at some surveys from furries, like the ones listed in the Wikipedia article. Although they say it’s not about sex, they respond differently in private.
Almost every expert who has seriously studied the furry community has come to the same consensus: The public imagination is wrong, often hilariously so.
>Almost every expert who has seriously studied the furry community has come to the same consensus: The public imagination is wrong, often hilariously so.
Almost any expert who dared say otherwise would expect a backslash, being called fascist or whatever, and probably cancellation. So there's that.
> Much of the furry community sees fursonas as a sexual choice.
No, this is a myth that a lot of people outside our community believe.
If you have a fursona, that's supposed to be a representation of you. Fursonas are about identity. It can also be about one's queerness (which is probably fair to say in general, considering 80% of the fandom is LGBTQIA+), but being queer doesn't mean "being sexual".
>> It's disqualifying because, in the case of furries, it started as a sexual fantasy.
>I don't know where you heard that, but it's incorrect.
Maybe that's technically incorrect, but you should check out how the early coverage of furry culture was presenting it as[0]. Here is an interesting excerpt:
"Early portrayal of the furries in magazines such as Wired, Loaded, Vanity Fair, and the syndicated sex column "Savage Love" focused mainly on the sexual aspect of furry fandom."
I wouldn't share a link with my colleagues that contained any cartoon emoting at all, because they would find it (and by association me) infantile and cloying, and I would expect that assessment, in a professional setting. The species or art style is not, for me, the heart of the issue; it's just that people in my line of work are generally not receptive to this method of communication. This same sector of the world would also not respond well to, say, shorts and t-shirts in the office, for almost exactly the same reasons. There is no way in hell I will ever be able to change this, but I would be able to effectively destroy my own credibility by posting links to cartoon-annotated technical articles.
My online sphere of interactions includes both furries and otherkin and we generally get along fine. I don't like that this sort of boundary matters, but it does, and I'm not in a position to do anything about it.
I understand, wrong thought undermines conformism. Though I don't find idea sharing to be a problem, I just speak from myself, I don't get knowledge from one source and a manager won't read a wall of technical text anyway.
> Put yourself in the shoes of someone who wants to send these articles to their manager to support an idea/project of theirs. It absolutely detracts from the professionalism of the post.
I, as a hobbyist who blogs about things in my spare time for my own amusement, owe no obligation to random people's managers.
In 99.9999% of cases, that also includes my own manager at my place of work. (And even then, my only obligation is to not talk about things that aren't meant to be discussed publicly.)
> Every once in a while, I see a post on the cringe subreddit
Any joe-schmo can string together smart sounding words. You need to signal to me that I need to take these words seriously, and when you mix in your otherworldly passions, I can’t take them seriously, it’s too unfamiliar to me.
Aside from that, what it is about the anime and furry culture that pushes its participants to include it in everything? Every once in a while, I see a post on the cringe subreddit of some young man who has peppered anime and fursonas all throughout a school presentation. What is driving the need to include this in everything?