THE PACK Message Boards

alphanubilus wrote:Disowned for being a fur, or disowned for being gay? I seriously doubt anybody would get disowned just for the account of cosplay. If a person does then that doesn't speak well of their families in the first place.

Not as if either is excusable, but I meant for being furs. You're forgetting that most people don't think of the fandom as harmless cosplay. Most people have heard of it; they just think very little of it. They think so little, in fact, that they have absolutely no problem accepting the very first definition they receive as fact, and for most people, that was the CSI episode, the Vanity Fair article, or some other P.O.S. that tried to depict the fandom as some sick orgy-filled underground fetish culture.

Why do you think I haven't told my parents I'm a fur? Because CBS beat me to them and now they're absolutely convinced it's a group of people that deserves to be lined up and shot.

Notice how my messages are getting more and more blunt? That's that boiling point thingy I mentioned earlier. Be honest Alpha, do you really think it was fair to make the connection between being furry and being gay? I certainly hope you weren't in any way shape or form insinuating that all furries are gay.

Silent Hunter wrote:By request, can I have this thread locked please? It serves its purpose and is no longer needed to be up.

Is everyone else in agreement? Is this thread's purpose served, and are we done? I am planning on locking it when it seems finished, to avoid random flaming later on.

You know how the media is. They are unsympathetic towards the Furry Fandom. So sometimes they give out negative portrayals and information to the Fandom which is wrong.

The Media has a regrettable "King Maker" philosophy, in that "We are right because we're the News."
That applies to a lot more than Furries.
Just remember: The News is a Service; not the voice of God. Surprisingly, many of the major news organizations will listen to their e-mails and snail mail viewers and actually consider the input they get.

So, if you hear something you really disagree with, WRITE!! It works, and if there are enough people taking exception to a news story; the News will change it.
This probably doesn't apply to Fox news, though.

RedEye wrote:The Media has a regrettable "King Maker" philosophy, in that "We are right because we're the News."
That applies to a lot more than Furries.
Just remember: The News is a Service; not the voice of God. Surprisingly, many of the major news organizations will listen to their e-mails and snail mail viewers and actually consider the input they get.

So, if you hear something you really disagree with, WRITE!! It works, and if there are enough people taking exception to a news story; the News will change it.
This probably doesn't apply to Fox news, though.

Mediaopoly

It more or less boils down to:
FOX: Say whatever the Republican Party tells us to.
CBS: Say whatever generates the most income.
ABC: Say whatever is the most inoffensive and family friendly.
NBC: Say whatever it takes to keep our ratings alive.

If you want, you lot can come to australia. We still have our fair share of raging drunks and stoners but I'm pretty much accepted in the local anime convention circle.

All I have to say is this to the furry-haters-

Kaebora wrote:Is everyone else in agreement? Is this thread's purpose served, and are we done? I am planning on locking it when it seems finished, to avoid random flaming later on.

So far the random flaming hasn't started... how about assuming a decent number of the regulars here are intelligent adults who can have debates without the random name-calling? Of course you could always just delete flames if they happen.

Anyway, all that would happen if you locked this topic would be that the next time someone has a problem with something they imagine a furry has done, they'll just start up another topic... my personal feeling is, if you leave this topic open and just merge future topics of a similar nature with it, that way people can just say "read the rest of the topic, the point's already been done to death" and that should be the end of it...

Midnight wrote:

Kaebora wrote:Is everyone else in agreement? Is this thread's purpose served, and are we done? I am planning on locking it when it seems finished, to avoid random flaming later on.

So far the random flaming hasn't started... how about assuming a decent number of the regulars here are intelligent adults who can have debates without the random name-calling? Of course you could always just delete flames if they happen.

Anyway, all that would happen if you locked this topic would be that the next time someone has a problem with something they imagine a furry has done, they'll just start up another topic... my personal feeling is, if you leave this topic open and just merge future topics of a similar nature with it, that way people can just say "read the rest of the topic, the point's already been done to death" and that should be the end of it...

Midnight pretty much hit the nail on the head here. If there hasn't been any serious flaming yet, it would be more worthwhile to keep the thread open and just let it settle. As Midnight said, if someone came to the Pack with the intent of furry-bashing, they would just start a new thread and, with this one locked, it would essentially be like starting from scratch, and as I mentioned earlier, the more often an individual or a group has to debate something and repeat themselves, the less patience they have for it.

It would therefore essentially be easier to keep this thread open so that, in the event that the furry issue does resurface, instead of plowing through all of this a second time, we could just redirect said furry basher to this thread as a sort of furry FAQ (IE: don't accuse furries of anything already covered here n' such). It wouldn't absolutely guarantee that intent flamers would never touch the furry issue, but it would make it that much harder for them to hide their true intentions.

So no, there's no point in locking a topic there is nothing wrong with. If it aint' broke, don't fix it, right?

I'm not even part of these boards anymore and i agree with Terastas and Midnight.
(Same here. After all, if threads like the pointless talk and rant are still going on, why not something like this, that might be a little better for the site?)

i don't really have any problem with furrys as long as they don't interfere with my life in a negative way...

This thread has been most civil. *hands everyone some Grey Poupon*

MattSullivan wrote:This thread has been most civil. *hands everyone some Grey Poupon*

( )
Nice one!

Very well. The Pack hath spoken, and I shall step aside. It's just that earlier this year it was so bad that we had to lock threads as they started, due to the already high tensions. I'm glad that isn't the case anymore. I suppose we can be a bit more lax now, since everyone is ok with it.

Probably because we have people like Pariah, and you, {if i remember you are a furry too}, that no one has any problems. You both are people i'd like to meet sometime... if i ever get enough money to go down to texas, or if either of you ever come up here to the Ticoshicon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Frankly, i wouldn't mind meeting most of the people in the pack. Why do people have so much of a problem towards Furries anyway? It's starting to get to the point where i'm really worried for you guys and girls.
Stay safe everyone for that matter.
Oh, and as to the guy whose spouting the negative things, i say shove a ducky in his tailpipe.
I'm kidding, i'm kidding.

I know this is always a big topic and that we have a lot of (awesome!) furries on here...but Im dead tired of debating it and talking about the haters.

Because you just know that when someone makes a sarcastic yobbish remark about furries, that person is automatically a "furry hater" and/or you have to put up with that person's antics by whatever means...

Furry fandom is experiencing a problem similar to the "Trekkie vs. Trekker" issue of the mid-nineties, or the highly influential Goth bands like Bauhaus and the Sisters of Mercy adamantly refusing to acknowledge themselves as Goth. It's a problem of nominalism, which my father elegantly described as the reduction of philosophy into the much more menial debate about the meaning of words. I am what I am. Am I a furry? I consider myself a therianthrope, but I've wandered around a convention in a werewolf outfit. It's not a cute, cartoony one, but appearantly they don't have to be. (I'll be doing it again the day after tomorrow, as A-Kon is this weekend.) Last year, I overheard someone refer to me and two others with me, including the costume designer (our own ShadowSaber) as furries. She, the designer, took great offense. At the time, though I was not myself angered, I thought compelled to correct a categorization error, but in retrospect, perhaps we were furries, a sub-type of furries that aren't cute.

But, regardless of whether or not we are or were furries, we are what we are. Words exist to define and explain the world. The world does not in turn exist specifically to serve the dictionary. Since we each use words slightly differently, terms may mean different things to different people. I do grant that word use involves a consensus, and certain words carry certain connotations. (It's a safe bet that "the N word" and other racist terms are by consensus best left in the history books.) But, being upset about whether or not I'm in a certain category speaks more about self esteem issues than about my actual identity. And, with a little Googling, one finds that most furries aren't any more perverted than the rest of this sexually obsessive culture, then the stigma of the term loses meaning, instead placing me in the same league as right-brained intellectuals with whom I firmly identify.

But, sometimes getting introduced to new words can help seed understanding of new ideas. Case in point:

Kaebora:

You wouldn't accuse everyone here at the Pack of trying to become werewolves, would you? It's beyond reality...[/qoute]

Dreamer:

You're forgetting about our resident transhumanist Scott Gardner though.

Well, I'm kind of an outlier in that regard, as transhumanism right now is a fringe philosophy--but I stand behind it, as I firmly believe it represents the future of ethical thinking as technology advances. Transhumanism as an ethical and philosophical set of principles handles contemporary and near future medical technology a lot better than our present systems, and it's certainly better fit to handle potential technologies presently described by science fiction that could some day become real. Basically in a nutshell, transhumanism is the belief that the goal of human technology should be to develop a way to make the mind and consciousness exist independently of our physical form, so that we can decide for ourselves what sort of beings we wish to be. Such technologies would render obsolete nearly all medical problems known today, as defects of the body or of the chemistry of the brain could be overcome when all else fails simply by relocating consciousness into something that works better.

Terastas:

As for Scott, well, I think he could defend himself better than anyone could, but comparing some spiritual slant on werewolves like transhumanism or therianthropy to an actual pursuit of real life physical werewolfism is about as far of a stretch as you can get.

Actually, werewolves would be one of the less dramatic byproducts of such technology. Since most humans aren't particularly interested in therianthropy and most contemporary medical research isn't going towards genetic engineering a lycanthrope virus, it's more likely than not that when and if werewolves do become possible, we'll have already achieved some much more phenomenal but logistically easier breakthroughs, like curing old age or expanding intelligence enough to make being aan enlightened supergenius pretty ordinary. (Imagine what we can achieve as a species once we cure stupidity!) Being a werewolf might be fun for awhile, but without a dying body, I might be more interested in developing mental extensions that allow me to have several conscious streams running simultaneously, greatly improving my ability to concentrate, and perhaps a network of more than one physical body in which to distribute these selves. Of course, I could just as well make at least some of these bodies shape shifters, or at least wolves or varying degrees of animal / human hybrids. I'd look forward to watching the Andromeda galaxy collide with ours three billion years from now and perhaps find work managing the terraforming of Earth, keeping it viable for life as the sun expands into a red giant. There are a lot of interesting things one can do in the future, provided one can live long enough to make it to the moment at which a transhuman leap is possible. Since the technological jump makes the difference between experiencing less than a hundred years of existence versus billions of years as an evolving superconsciousness, I fully expect the idea to gain appeal as soon as it starts to seem more plausible to the everyday person.

morphological freedom is the principle that people as conscious beings have the right to be whatever they want to be. In modern times, it is at worst a teenager's justification to parents as to why they should be allowed to have a tattoo but at best an elegant solution to medical ethical dilemmas faced when sexual reassignment surgery first became possible. That same principle in the future is also a logical argument in favor of not stopping people who wish to engineer themselves into animal anthropomorphs. (There's a tiny handful of people doing it today, such as the tiger guy with orange and black stripe tattoos, pointed teeth, and facial implants. Well, it's a start.)

(As a side note, it's spelled "Gardener", with two eees. But, that's picking nits, especially since it's a fake name anyway.)

Erm... Scott, I think a syntax error has me left confused. Are you quoting me? I don't remember saying that, but I agree with it I guess.

Oops. First, that was Terastas, not Kaebora. Second, "qoute" isn't a word, even in BBCode.

i might go to acon nest year if it is close to where i live..

Terastas wrote:

PariahPoet wrote:All I want to know is where exactly are you guys surfing!?
I'm an active part of the fandom, and I've never come across that kind of abomination. You have to be really looking for some creepy stuff if you accidentally ended up with something like that.

*nods* Like I said before, there is some really weird stuff in the fandom and it can be easy to find, but only for people who are looking for it.

I just want to say that I visited FurAffinity today and hit "browse." "Cub" stuff was immediately apparent. So you don't really have to go looking for it, and you don't have to look hard. It's right there in the open. No search parameters, nothing advanced. Just clicked one button.

Berserker wrote:I just want to say that I visited FurAffinity today and hit "browse." "Cub" stuff was immediately apparent. So you don't really have to go looking for it, and you don't have to look hard. It's right there in the open. No search parameters, nothing advanced. Just clicked one button.

OK, first and foremost, the actual phrase used on the scroll menu is "Baby Fur," which is another can-o-flamebait I'd rather not open except to say that it's a much broader, more encompassing term. And that's just me nitpicking, so please don't breathe too much into that.

Secondly -- and this is the point I want to make the most -- it was still entirely up to you if you clicked it or not. You have to click "Update" after selecting an item off of the scroll menu, so there's no merit to any claim of "accidentally" clicking it.

Really, is humanity so weak-willed that if I posted a link and marked with something intentionally deterring like, oh, The Senior Citizen Pornography Studio, would all of you really click it?

Oh, and finally, unless you're a registered user that specifies in their account profile that they do want to be able to view adult material, picking any category marked "(adult)" and clicking "Update" isn't going to bring up much. So that's another reason you can't "accidentally" look at F.A.'s adult content.

What can be concluded here is that you can't blame people that create the art for purposefully leaving adult content in easy reach of public view. It's just the flaws of the systems that store and display the art.

I don't even ave a problem with people who like babyfur art...IF, it's CUTE.

Cute...as opposed to THE BLATANT AND UNAPOLOGETIC SEXUALIZATION OF UNDERAGED CHARACTERS!!!