Moving to: m/AskMbin!

I thought hating on furries was a 4chan meme that became a tiktok meme.

But I've a few reasons why that meme may have gained traction. Firstly it's not a sexuality like homosexuality. It's more of a fetish, and people make fun of fetishes all the time - see feet, or, idk, midget. I'm sure some maintain its not sexual, but the community overwhelmingly is. Second, it has associations with beastiality. Now I'd assume the vast majority of furries don't harbour sexual attractions to real animals, but it's certainly on that side of the Venn diagram, which may cause some concern. Finally people involved generally seem to be social outcasts. You don't see many captain of the football team furries or cheerleader furries. If school kids are already picking on the weebs and the nerds, finding out some of them dress up like animals and hang out is fuel for the fire.

As for calls to killing furries, I'd wager the majority of that is just joining in on the meme. I'm sure furries would get bullied at school, but as for vehement violence I doubt it transcends the bullying that the D&D kids receive. Not that I condone any violence or bullying towards anyone, furries included. But if you were wondering why people dislike em, maybe this helps.

It's primarily cringe culture. Some people choose to make themselves feel powerful by bullying and harassing others, and furries are often "easy targets."

It's cringe culture, the same reason people make fun of weebs or anyone else who goes outside of the "norm". There's also the issue that some people think that it's too childish or too sexual (or both at once, somehow)

When we ask people to try to understand something that is outside of their close social norms, hate soon follows unfortunately. People fear and hate "the others" that they do not understand themselves. It goes deeper than that, but it's usually where it starts.

It's a knee-jerk disgust reaction towards any group different from the norm. Furries are also overwhelming queer, so homophobia ties a lot into it.

This article provides a pretty good breakdown of 9 reasons why people would be hostile towards furries.

The one that stood out to me most and was my first thought was:

8. Lack Of Understanding - As with anything new, there is a general lack of understanding of the furry community. The older generation has a more difficult time coming to terms with the furry lifestyle (…) Unfortunately, many people are not willing to give furries any patience. They hate them right away, without a second thought, just because they are different from them.

My guess is that they confuse furries with people who are sexually attracted to animals or animal characteristics.

In reality, furries are people who partially or fully identify with what native people would have called their spirit animal and modern furries call their fursona (except with more or less human features, because they meld what they see as their spirit animal with their human self).

But because drawings of fursonae exist, rule 34 ensures that there is porn of them. Some people really like that kind of porn, unrelated to whether they're furries or not, and I believe it is those people the hate is directed at.

As for why, I would guess it's something like "how dare you sexualise animals!" (or maybe even a subconscious "how dare you make a drawing of what I believe is supposed to be an animal that is actually sexy to me!", similar to how some conservatives are so vehemently against homosexuality because they secretly feel tempted, and then get caught at a gay orgy later). And/or they see it as something like a gateway drug to bestiality (sexual abuse towards animals).

I find the anthropomorphic children's cartoon aesthetic of furries to be extremely cringe. Its juvenile and ugly, and then when its sexualized or people are making fursuits, it becomes exponentially more cringe.

I think if furries had a better art style and less weirdly anthropomorphized, I might even be on board.

Edit: I just want to be clear that I don't hate furries at all and have friends who are furries who I love and respect. I'm just trying to be honest about what I find off-putting about it because I imagine there are other people who have a similar "cringe" reaction to the art style and translate that into hate.

Some people think all furries want sex with animals.

I don't hate them, I just find them weird. Because furry culture seems to be mostly populated by homosexual males, I am basically not interested in it.

Take a walk around Furcadia, check out some user generated dreams, and report back to me what you find

@Alexmitter Bad experiences.

I don't have a problem with furries because they're furries, I just haven't met one that didn't annoy the very piss right out of me.

I will preface this by saying I have zero hate for people enjoying themselves without harming others.

When someone injects extreme representations of themselves into every encounter they have with no regard for context, it can be frustrating. It's off-putting to be having a typical conversation and suddenly have someone use RP text. It's not the culture that is off-putting, it's the out-of-context actions.

I understand that for some, social cues and context around conversation might not be as clear or understood. I just personally have a hard time handling a conversation when the other party is suddenly RPing as their fursona outside of that space.

Just because someone doesn't understand that is no reason to have some sort of extreme hate towards them though.

They're seen as acceptable targets, and the fandom doesn't exactly have the best history of dealing with problematic members.

It goes a bit far though, obviously, given the whole "were subject to a literal chemical weapons attack and no one cared" thing.

I think a large part of it has to do with a lack of education and not liking groups that are different.

I wonder, in a Venn diagram, how many furry haters are also cyclist haters?

If it's a significant overlap, I wonder what the common themes are?

I think there was a wide and deep vein of “look at these fucking weirdos” that shaped a lot of early aughts internet gathering places. I’m thinking of Something Awful in particular but the phenomenon was certainly a lot more widespread than SA.

While “look at these fucking weirdos” was by no means confined to dunking on furries, I feel like for whatever reason furries kind of became the highest profile subculture to be brought to wider, mainstream attention—and derision—during this era. I vividly remember poking around on SA when I was in college circa 2003-04 and there was a lot of anti-furry sentiment (much of it grounded in the assumption that for all furries everywhere furridom was exclusively a sex thing.) Eventually that anti-furry sentiment was felt across the internet. LiveJournal, for example, was home to a lot of furries but also to a lot of furry-hating trolls.

The internet in the first decade of the new millennium was a deeply weird place. For a good (though extremely distressing!) overview of how and why places like SA became what they did, the Behind the Bastards series on Chris Chan is solid. It’s not furry-related, but a similar “let’s gather around and gawk at and eventually harass and provoke this fucking weirdo” thing played out in Chris Chan’s “discovery” by Something Awful. I’ll put a link below with a caveat that basically every type of content warning you can imagine applies to these episodes , though imho Robert Evans and Margaret Killjoy handle the Chris Chan story with as much sensitivity and compassion as one could hope.

Probably because they have associated furries with sexual content that they find weird.