The Problems Of Fans & Fandom

[Svevlad]

Ah, I see "weirdcore" is mentioned. I like strange and obscure stuff, sure - I think most actual humans on some level do, but there is something... specific about these types. A certain hipster-ish "pretentiousness from a safe distance." And though we might like the same things (mostly) - there's a distinct mindlessness and subhumanity about them.

There's a particularly popular form of image or video with usually distorted sound, low image quality of shadowy, ominous creatures interacting with the viewer like in a RPG, usually with eyes in random places in the background and whatever, as some sort of weird disassociation "simulation" thing - and what strikes me apart from how unpleasant they are audiovisually in a distinctly *irritating* manner, is how non-transgressive they are. The eldritch abomination might as well tell you to wipe your ass after shitting - it's just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. But everyone acts like it's some work of art or cool or some shit.

A very simple example of something like this fanboying is DDLC - the game is good, interesting approach and plot, can be pretty disturbing and uncomfortable at times, but holy fuck does everyone soy out over it - it might be due to the combination of cute anime girls and [bone chilling spine tingling etc etc copypasta goes here] horror, but nevertheless there are literal walking coal miners attracted to this shit.

Wanna see fucking weird you niggers? I could always find their discords and spam Biden Rape Groyper edits until the entire user base ACKs.

[carcinoEugenicist]

This image is absolutely correct in choosing Vriska as the representative of Homestuck for this demographic, as opposed to any other troll or any of the actual main characters that get introduced at the start of the story (the human kids). Her image as a character has been so mutilated by the "murder lesbian" troon fandom, which I am sure some of you have noticed as a very specific but real strain of troonthought online. I think it is worthy of note that the 'badass murder lesbian' trope could, on surface level, be filled much more readily by Kanaya - who actually enters a lesbian relationship in the story and even brutally kills the rampaging incel of one plotline (Eridan). Kanaya, however, does not suit the troon mind - which is much more acclimated to the bastardization of Vriska they have created as a prototypical nietzschean tranny. Kanaya is somewhat feminine and reserved, whereas Vriska is much more mannish in her actions and motiviations - allowing the AGP troons who disproportionately helped to fill out this image to project onto a superposition of "epic girl lesbian" and their latent male desires of mastery over the world. The worst part is that the actual character arc of Vriska is very well written, but she was in the wrong place at the wrong time metatextually.

Also, man it sucks what happened to the SCP community.

[PIGSAW]

Great topic, much to discuss.

I was reminded of it while watching this:

What I wish to discuss is that due to various factors I will go into more detail shortly, the mindset of fandom, in various forms has become the default view for looking at all media/art for those who rise to the minimum level of being interested in the subject matter and unpassive in absorbing it-a disaster for culture.

I consider this to be one of the main issues in culture today, this mindset reduces all to screeching like monkeys and much worse social behaviors. It effects creativity by colonizing the mind and withering any organic understanding.

Fandom is the wilful submission of a man into a mass.

The mass will always exist. As will fandoms. But the "keys to the kingdom" were given to the mass when authorities ceased holding onto artistic standards.

In other words, the concept of fandom is a theater-kid-ism

I wish for nothing more  for it to have stayed in the minds of such people never moving towards realization but instead it has as I have said burst out from 1970s low rent hotel conference halls to being the default way of interacting with culture on a level beyond couch potato.

Let's talk about furries...

In fact I suspect that most of the fandom types initially don't care that much about the object of what they're fawning over, they're just seeking a group to integrate themselves within and form relationships; this is the genesis of the geeky female nerd rawr, upon failing to integrate themselves into normalfag territory, they turn their sights into random media IPs to form a group and hopefully top the hierarchy. That's how you get dem gals memeing about how le cake is a lie XD yet haven't beaten Portal.

Fandoms are a natural consequence of low IQ niggers being let into what was previously high culture. If you personally do not have an identity, you either subsume into a group identity (hippies, emos, punks, etc.) or you subsume into a media identity.

But the "furry" is not an "animal-fucker" or any of the other (ancient, and often deliberate) misinterpretations (zoophiles are extremely rare, and far more interesting as individuals) that many "anti-furry" would tell you.
No, the furry is something much worse than someone who wishes to be an animal (only ignoble if selecting a particularly retarded animal, which furries do and that is part of the problem (dogs), how often do you see cat furries? ..avian furfags seek to be grounded with no interest in flight, and the subject of how Web 1.0 - 2.0 furfags were able to contort foxes into a type of "dog" is so important it deserves its own thread), they are someone who wants to be a "cartoon":

We were a very strange fandom. We didn't fully grasp how strange we were going in, but we were not a fandom of a property, nor were we a fandom of a genre. Other fandoms would look at us and get extremely confused. "What are you about?" "WHO are you about?" All of those specificities don't matter. It's the overarching: animals-doing-things-that-animals-don't-do, thing, that binds this all together. Beyond that, it can be anything. 

Mark Merlino is one of the founding members of the furry fandom, along with his long time partner Rod O'Riley, describing himself as the 'Father of the Furry Fandom' in his Oklacon 2004 panel "History of Fur". He got into the fandom in 1971 by meeting science fiction convention attendees with an interest in animal characters. He was one of the founders of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization and by 1985 he organized the first furry room parties, most notably at Westercon, which, due to their growing attendance, lead to the creation of a newsletter and two magazines. In 1982 he created the first furry BBS, Tiger's Den.

Let's get this clarified before I move on: The "furry fandom" has nothing to do with animals, it's the first (or the first I can point to after 16+ years of research sprawling the internet, virtual worlds, and meatspace) "fandom-fandom". From here, we can begin to understand that "furries" are the only "fandom" that has ever mattered or will ever matter. Every other "fandom" that has existed since is downstream from furries— EXCEPT for ANIME:








It is the weeaboo (not the otaku, key difference— the weeaboo and furry are both AMERICAN) who is the antithesis to the furfag.

But why compare the two? Why isn't the opposite of a furry a gamer, or anything else?

I'll show you:



February 29th, 1976

A hatred of "seriousness", "pretentiousness", "impact", and "significance"... hmm, what does this sound like in contemporary terms? Who does this look like in 2023, 47 years later?



One fight, one enemy— who takes many forms (this is the key point, one I will come back to later).

The war of the Goon vs. the Channer is no different.

Chained to them, sharing the same space and air.

The "furry" is the perfect "communist": A deracinated faggot non-faggot (everyone is "gay" now, this is different than being a faggot as many would imagine) born out of genre fiction, cartoon and capeshit obsessive (anesthetic taste)... the furry breathes kikeshit to degrees that would kill a normalfag (as much as they try):



The furry is "terminally online", parallel to the weeaboo (or was, furries have unfortunately "won" post-Chanology (as most 'edgelords' were lost in the 2008 reset) because they are the mass). Deeply connected to the pulse of internet culture.

Right about the time that furry fandom was hitting was right about the time that the AIDS crisis hit.

Now that's a fucking quote, hoo-wee! Can't believe I didn't write that shit.

As a proud veteran of the YouTube Furry War..


(Recovered propaganda showcasing one of our boys executing the enemy, both most likely furries or An Hero now.)

I am most qualified to discuss this subject, and it's crucial relation to ALL "fandom".

I was there, over 9,001 years ago:



The war between weeaboo and furries might as well be as old as the internet itself.

The true war, one fight, against one enemy.

We fought them on YouTube:



We fought them on Second Life:



Some people even fought them in the streets:


(If I told you someone in this video was on a TekWars episode about Gargoyles— that they know Kantbot, would you understand what I mean when I say "...the world will keep getting smaller?")

On every platform there were faggots and retards, and on every platform I would interfere, as would many, many others.



As for what happened? Everyone "grew up".

Well, not exactly.

The current (or maybe last, we haven't moved past it) stop on the hyperreality train, the "furry" seeks to abandon their humanity but not in the way anyone understands. All "fandom" is furry fandom now, and all "gay culture" is downstream from furries:


(Remember what I said about "dogs"?)

"Pride" is the Gay Fandom convention.

But this is quite different from older eras of faggotry:




This is not to say old faggotry = good and new faggotry = bad (although old faggotry = better and new faggotry = worse, is entirely correct), but that looking at these people they are simply NOWHERE near as degenerated. Of course, we could talk about lower levels of poison in food and water, less sedentary lifestyles.. all manner of external differences, but we're still talking about FAGGOTS and especially faggots (back then) at a time where STDs were significantly more deadly. So, what happened? Did the strongmen fags all die of AIDS? Well, that's probably a factor worth considering, but it's not what I think.

I think that furries don't have anything to do with being gay, just like they don't have anything to do with animals, and that both of these details as crucial as they may seem outwardly, are completely incidental.

The furry is then better understood as being more like a Canadian— someone who's identity is reliant on surrounding circumstances to exist at all.
But that fucks up my metaphor, that I watched all of his happen before and it's happening again, if my metaphor was true, there would be a perfect parallel to what I described in the past happening now...



Now finally, I can come back to what I said earlier and connect all the dots— one enemy, that takes many forms:



The troon (NOT the tranny, they are different because of this) is the modern version of a furry, but they're importantly DOWNSTREAM from furries— the furry is not a type of troon, but the other way around. Furries created troons, but they did so in such obscurity no one noticed.

For anyone who remembers Shmorky..



..and for those who don't, he is the perfect example of everything I'm talking about. "First" a goon (functionally second or third in command of SomethingAwful itself), then a furry, then a troon.





There is no single person who has "won" more from the changes in culture than Dave Kelly, even with him being run offline.

We are living in his world.

The world of fandom.

---

BONUS CONTENT:

https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Mark_Merlino

He owns a well-known furry household, The Prancing Skiltaire in Garden Grove, California.

https://dogpatch.press/2017/05/04/fuller...der-story/

https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Fullerton_triple_homicide

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/11/08/ju...community/

[Zed]

...

Excellent post. 

There is a lot to say on the psychology of furries and furry culture.  In the tranny thread, I wrote a lot about digital virtuality and the role it plays in cultivating alters before they manifest in the real. Much of that carries over to furries, with one crucial difference - where trannies attempt immanentize the virtual, the furry ultimately has little interest in doing so. I've known furries in relationships (with other furries), and I've also been (unfortunately) been granted quite a bit of aspect to the nature of their sexual relations. One thing I've encountered a few times is that they rarely actually *have sex*,... instead they will often go in different rooms and engage in ERP over Discord/Second Life/MMOs - 24/7 in-character roleplay is quite common. Relationships in general are more textual than physical. Those who are really into fursuit sex are actually something of an aberration --- that is somehow too real for many of them.

So, where the tranny desires to feminize their physical self in accordance with their virtuality, the furry desires only to go towards a deeper virtuality. Physicality is rejected entirely.

This, of course, is why furries are some of the most vulnerable people on the internet. Even just with online bantz, it takes very little to wound them or cause psychic harm. The digital spaces they inhabit comprise the entirety of the identity, and their flesh is nothing more than a petulant reminder that they cannot become their text.

[PIGSAW]

There is a lot to say on the psychology of furries and furry culture.

I consider them to be the most fascinating "fandom" (well, not really, technically 'Columbiners' or anything about violence is cooler (actually that sucks too since it's reduced to fujoshit), but furries teach you the most) as per everything I outlined. I have more esoteric observations, but I didn't want my post to become so long it's unpleasant to read, and I wanted to offer space for people to interject.

In the tranny thread, I wrote a lot about digital virtuality and the role it plays in cultivating alters before they manifest in the real.

In the documentary I linked "The Fandom" (as well as all of them, really, especially anything post-Tumblr, after the normalization of medicalized language) when they tell stories about how "becoming a furry" "helped them realize they were trans"— they're not lying.
This circumstance isn't actually bad— it's neutral, and the results are what you bring to it (humans are social animals, and even the greatest among us need to see possibilities in the flesh to often realize they're there) with it primarily showcasing how many people shouldn't have last names or be taught how to read or write— as I said, the furry/troon is very close to its opposites and detractors.
Anyway, this isn't to say I "could've been a furry in a different life", as I'm too much of a freak, and actual freaks are not accepted in (any) "fandom" circles (I know all fandoms are full of freaks, but it's rejected, when it's not you get things like early SA, 4chan, etc. at their most destructive, it's good when that happens and what should be aspired to— it's cleansing fire):



I hate to link to these cocksucker "recap" channels on internet history, but since all the old archives for all the oldfaggot shit I talk about is broken, this is the best I can do as some ease-of-access. However, this is a good jumping off point— this YouTube pundit is stolen valor for "Carpet Sample". Both of them can't qualify as "furries", it's one or the other and I have far more respect for this disgusting sigma than any of his detractors. This is an outsider, and furries hate him.

Another one I like (or find interesting, at least) is Boomer:





Based Boomer's fucking retarded (again, "dogs"), but on the other hand, never before or since have I seen a paper fursuit.. 40 something year old wizard, never been on a date... he also hosts a pirate radio station:



https://tubitv.com/movies/349289/fursonas

In the documentary he describes firing a grappling hook into a tree in his yard, to set up a satellite to run a pirate radio station.
No one thinks this is interesting, all the furries in the documentary don't really want to talk about Boomer, basically allude to him being a retard that makes "the rest of them" look bad.
Which is true— Boomer just like Carpet Sample is too different to exist in a culture for posers. The weird thing with furries however, is that Rod O'Rapemyassly was telling the truth when he called furries 'strange' initially— because initially furries actually were an outsider culture:

https://poast.tv/w/49jC5gYYGFaaUYYuJrb2M4

All this shit still sucks, obviously, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't want to go to a '90s furcon. Y'know, it's fascinating in the same way the FLDS or Turkmenistan is— it's a walled culture that you might've never heard of if normalfags hadn't gotten their claws in it somehow.
Well, probably not with furries 'cause they couldn't shut the fuck up. But anyway, my point is that this earlier, genuinely strange stage of furry subculture was incidental, not desired. The modern furry, including the troon, is what they wanted from the beginning, it just wasn't available— or known to be possible yet.

Much of that carries over to furries, with one crucial difference - where trannies attempt immanentize the virtual, the furry ultimately has little interest in doing so.

Interesting point.

I've known furries in relationships (with other furries), and I've also been (unfortunately) been granted quite a bit of aspect to the nature of their sexual relations.

I used to know a lot of furries (after Literally Hitler Russiagate'd the election (BIGLY!) the days of being able to talk to a wider variety of retards went out like the dinosaur, which is to say it was never real in the first place), despite how much havoc I caused them on Second Life, some of them (back then) actually had senses of humor and would randomly befriend me (not typically the ones I was attacking, but observers). Unfortunately, because I'm fairly nice, it obstructed me from continuing to beat them up when they did this (I find it difficult to be cruel to people if they're in too close proximity).
I was telling my friend the other day about one I knew named "GiantM Ember" who claimed to be a "Boombox" (I think, which he listed in his profile was a hybrid of Midna from Twilight Princess and Shadow the Hedgehog, this was also considered to be an animal species, the result was a bat furry) who once tried call a "hit" (harass a lot) through me on some other furfag he disliked. I can't actually remember what I did, I think I told him he was retarded, and then agreed to do it because of how fucking funny the premise was.

Their "culture" is fascinating, but the interpersonal details especially:

https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/LockJaw_Arts_murder


(Unrelated, just funny.)

One thing I've encountered a few times is that they rarely actually *have sex*,... instead they will often go in different rooms and engage in ERP over Discord/Second Life/MMOs - 24/7 in-character roleplay is quite common. Relationships in general are more textual than physical. Those who are really into fursuit sex are actually something of an aberration --- that is somehow too real for many of them.

So, where the tranny desires to feminize their physical self in accordance with their virtuality, the furry desires only to go towards a deeper virtuality. Physicality is rejected entirely.

Yes, this is part of why the whole "animal-fucker" thing (which is ancient 4troon misinformation) is nonsense. "Furries" don't like tactile things (which is why I wouldn't consider Carpet Sample to be a "furry"), and the notion of "fursuit sex parties" is actually extremely rare, furfags were never lying when they said that was made up by CSI. Not that it doesn't happen, it does, and it happens a lot more now— but this is because even furfaggotry is being gentrified.
One thing to notice in some of the videos I linked to, is how many non-whites you see depending on era. The All Gas No Brakes video opens with nigger furries talking about "Palestine", because the era of furfaggotry as a walled culture is long over (this is actually a bad thing, unfortunately, them expanding only makes them worse, they become stronger through diluted expansion since it's communism).

This, of course, is why furries are some of the most vulnerable people on the internet. Even just with online bantz, it takes very little to wound them or cause psychic harm. The digital spaces they inhabit comprise the entirety of the identity, and their flesh is nothing more than a petulant reminder that they cannot become their text.

This also gets at the distinct relation between the furry and troon— logocentrism, they want to exist as words and definitions, as well as to revere definitions ahead of truth (which exists outside of people). This exact detail is the truest definition of what a "troon" is.

[Guest]

A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It's all about them. They have mastered the Star Wars or Star Trek universes or whatever, but their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion. Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk for weeks in order to be first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies. Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, you already know what to say to each other, which is so much safer than having to ad lib it. Your fannish obsession is your beard. If you know absolutely all the trivia about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it saves you from having to know anything about anything else. That's why it's excruciatingly boring to talk to such people: They're always asking you questions they know the answer to.

[GraphWalkWithMe]

^^ As much of an utter faggot Ebert was otherwise, he really tore the wig off the "memer" phenomenon there ahead of time.

[Corvid]

When someone says that they are a fan of something, they're expressing that they enjoy or appreciate some work which is necessarily received from someone else. To be a Star Trek fan is to receive the licensed, franchised work of some one else. This can be contrasted with a hobby where the activity is not received, but is rather something that the subject does in their own capacity, skill, or creativity. There's a line of nuance when it comes to things like cosplay wherein the subject is a "fan" (passively receiving) some artistic work, but expressing that appreciation through putting together their own costumes and acting the character, which is a creative activity as a "hobbyist".

It's possible to be a fan without being stupid about it but it requires some level of creative vision within the individual, otherwise you get the aforementioned "fans" who are duds, creative dead ends, who Ebert pinpoints as boring people with no capacity for conversation beyond their niche interest. One which they cannot actually contribute to or work on, because it is not their vision and can only be altered in the lowly category of "fanfiction." This seems to me the core of the problem, at the individual level before any third person has entered the room.

The "fandom" is the group of third persons with the collective creative deficit, who form networks based around their mutual identification with a work that they didn't make. It isn't merely a sum of individuals because we see these types signing petitions, sharing fan theories and lore, propping up merchandise and other such activities which ultimately propagate memes about a work and mediate its enjoyment to the broader world. It's akin to how New Vegas trannies don't remove anything from the game per se, but their chatter crowds out other memes in the New Vegas noosphere resulting in the feeling that they have "ruined" the game. Star Wars fans propagate the meme that Lucas is an incompetent filmmaker, the original trilogy wasn't really his work, etc.

I don't think this'll ever be solved so long as there are combinations of traits which produce uncreative/obsessive types. The best thing to do is simply nignore fans as an artist and autistically shill auteur theory.

[Guest]

One which they cannot actually contribute to or work on, because it is not their vision and can only be altered in the lowly category of "fanfiction."

I find the idea of canonicity a bit quaint in contemporary media landscape. It makes some sense with regular authors in their lifetimes- oh, who here is telling the story? Yeah, listen up. Doesn't make sense when we reach what I humbly nominate the "dem rangs demarcation" where the legitimacy of a work of fiction allegedly depends on the function of a particular legal system, either through licensing agreements or possession of the right to author the story. This point can be crossed before the author is even dead. It is funny to imagine people seriously pondering the "canonicity" of works depending on arcane civil cases, legal coercion or even executive action.

[FlyWithYou]

Seeing things in a "fandom" way is like being trapped in a movie set and becoming convinced that it's the real world. Instead of seeing an artwork as a thing which exists inside a natural order and owes whatever power it may have to its coherence with that order, the fan sees the artificial structure of the artwork as having substance in itself, and blindly seeks to learn its proportions, in a perverted imitation of the philosopher's healthy godly desire to know the true nature of the world.

Art is good, but it must be seen in relation to the world that it comes from. (The world that it's derived from?)