For me, joining the furry fandom has had a huge impact on my life in a good way. I learned that it’s okay if I’m different or “cringe” as long as what I’m doing is making me happy. I no longer need validation from others that what I’m doing is okay because I now realize that those types of people needlessly bully individuals who do stuff that doesn’t match their definition of “based”. I feel more confident in talking to other people which led me to becoming friends with the best person I’ve ever met who is now my partner.
I’m curious to know your story about joining the fandom and how it has impacted you so I can get to know this community better.
My upbringing was pretty conservative and sex negative. That resulted in me resenting and repressing my being queer. Undoing the damage from that has been a long process, but I’m getting there thanks to the friends I’ve made here who’ve helped me become more self-accepting.
@jessecool1234 It has had a huge positive impact, especially since it allowed me to meet people who are non-judgemental and accept me for who I am.
It’s allowed me to be myself in a world where I had learned to pretend to not be “the weird kid” and tried to fit in too much. @chat
By the way, I wasn’t able to reply to this thread on Lemmy. Don’t be discouraged if your receive few replies. There’s something going on.
I joined in the early 2000’s the fandom has had a big impact. Both positively and negatively. Some of the negativity of it was my own fault.
But will say the fandom has allowed me to explore my sexuality more over the years. For a long time I had considered myself straight in the fandom, even though I did look at gay furry art from time to time.
But back then I didn’t want to admit to myself I was gay or even bisexual. To help understand why I didn’t want to admit to myself back then, you got to undersrand when I was in high school in the southern US, being gay was the quickest way to be ostracized and get beaten up. Luckily back then the internet was still fairly young and so people did not exactly know what a furry was. If they did I probably would have been ostracized and gotten my butt kicked. For all people knew, I just drew anthropomorphic cartoon animals.
I was afraid then to look at the truth and admit who and what I really was back then. But because of the fandom and it’s patience with me, I finally came out around 2015, almost a decade after high school, where I was able to admit I was bisexual.
Without the fandom, I don’t think I would have ever explored deeper into my own sexuality. Or found out how much I like Femboys and appreciate them. (///￢ _ ￢///);
And btw, everyone that shares… You are all cute! (´｡• ω •｡`) ♡
Well, had I not joined the furry community, I would never have met so many awesome people, including most of my closest friends and my girlfriend. And it helps me feel a lot better about who I am, and I’ve learned to stop caring about whether or not I am cringe, because at the end of the day, who cares? Life’s too short for that nonsense!
Joining the furry fandom allowed me to get to know gay and trans people and it turns out they’re nothing like what my bigoted parents said they were! Lurking in a couple of furry communities and reading the stories posted by their LGBT members showed me that we’re all just regular people trying to live our lives and nobody deserves the kind of hate I had been trained to give. That realization ended up saving a couple of friendships later on, and eventually led to me discovering that I’m trans myself. I’ve also met some very good and supportive friends in the fandom, so I’d say it’s been a very positive force in my life.
It’s all early days, but it’s been for the better. Shedding self hatred and cognitive dissonance is probably a good thing.
Like you say, trying to get validation from a bunch of people who definitely don’t have your best interest in mind, don’t actually have a clue what the hell they’re talking about and barely know how to run their own lives is unhealthy. Especially when you find out they’re actually 14 years old. Doy
I joined the furry community somewhere in 2009 - the internet was a whole different world at the time. The idea of dynamically fetching content via JavaScript was still “being explored”, in a way.
Initially, I landed on ychan/yiffy.tk and spent a great deal of time there and found many friends. I had landed there, because I was looking for something else, but found a Panty and Stockings rule34 picture and decided to dig down further into this “awkward, odd, but interesting thing”.
To make a long story short: I am german, and my english was bad. Through roleplaying and interactions I learned how to speak and write english so much and drasticaly, that I improved by magnitudes and actually wrote the school’s highest ranked final exam for graduation in my entire year. I also started to run my own community - those who remember who Karma was and what he did, might know what I mean - when the admin started to swing the ban hammer…aimlessly. xD
From there, I maintained the community all the way to 2015. Due to IRL circumstances, I had to let it go. But, it still lives on as a discord server.
In all that time, I have bought many commissions, done a boatload of roleplays, found people to pour my heart out to and find some friends that I have stuck with since. In fact, most of the core-members of the community I founded (Dragon’s Inn) are still my friends!
So yeah, the fandom gave me a lot and I will be forever thankful, which is why I keep using my phoenix icon, although I haven’t bought a commission in a while, let alone roleplayed… It just means too much to me. <3
Test again Edit: ok, apparently communities need to have Undetermined AND English, both selected.
I think positive overall. Yet I still do not yet feel fully comfortable presenting as my fursona on all services.
