In recent years, it seems as though the furry fandom has been receiving more exposure than ever before in the history of furries. Why is this?
What Are Furries?
Just to clarify, furries, or the furry fandom, are a subculture of people who are collectively interested in cartoon anthropomorphic animals. Examples like Sonic, The Hedgehog, Pokemon and Nick Wilde of Zootopia fame come to mind.
They do things like creating furry art, creating fursonas (an anthropomorphic furry persona), attending conventions, making fursuits, I mean if you couldn’t already tell, furries are a pretty creative bunch.
However, they’re quite a stigmatized bunch as well as being relatively underground, which is arguably why they are underground. A lot of people seem to believe that there is an inherent sexual connotation to being a furry, so that if you claim you are a furry then you like having sex in a fursuit or something like that, but that obviously is not the case.
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We bring this to your attention because they’ve recently been popping up more and more and we thought we’d shed some light on it. For one, the growth in membership of the fandom, judging by annual convention attendance, seems to be almost exponential. In 2010, Anthrocon’s (one of the biggest furry conventions in the world) total attendance just about broke 4000, in 2015, attendance was nearly at 8000 and by 2019, there were nearly 10,000 people attending the convention. So what is happening here, what is causing this popularity?
Furry Art In Modern Animation
For one, furry art in modern animation is becoming significantly more popular. Just look at some of the most recent animations released: Universal Pictures’ The Bad Guys, Disney’s Zootopia, DC League of Super-Pets, there is clearly some sort of common interest in seeing these furry characters on the big screen. Although this doesn’t directly correlate to the growth in membership of the furry fandom, it’s making furry animations themselves way more mainstream and therefore, acting as a bit of a gateway into furry content for non-furries.
As well as this, Netflix has done its fair share in pumping out some explicitly furry, Netflix original, animations. By this, I mean to say that these animations are blatantly catered towards the furry fandom. Animations like Beastars and BNA: Brand New Animal do some pretty amazing fan service for the furry fandom in that they look spectacular, which is only complimented by great storylines.
Furries In Pop Culture
However, it’s not just animations that are normalizing the furry fandom in mainstream media, there are even celebrities revealing that they too are in fact members of the furry fandom. We saw this most recently with Lindsay Lohan when she auctioned off an NFT of her fursona claiming that it was supposed to be a message of empowerment. While it was a strange way of revealing that she was a furry, she proved nonetheless, that furries are indeed growing in popularity and that there shouldn’t be any shame in it.
Less recently, but more popularly, professional FGC (Fight Game Community) player and likely one of the greatest FGC players of all time, controversially accepted a 2018 Game Award for Esports Player of the Year in a fursuit as he proceeded to shout out the furry and queer community, then making a tongue in cheek comment about republicans, claiming that he is everything they hate. It was a polarizing acceptance speech in not just the FGC but the gaming community as a whole and many didn’t know how to feel about it. While it may not have been the easiest acceptance speech to digest, it was yet another example of an influencer giving the furry fandom a platform and proving that there shouldn’t be any shame in being a furry.
Furry Art Sites
It’s no secret that making a website is easier now than it has ever been, so it also shouldn’t come as a surprise that furry art sites like furaffinity and inkbunny.net are extremely popular furaffinity receiving about 30.1 million monthly traffic and inkbunny receiving around 4 million. So clearly there is some sort of interest in furry art whether they’re viewing it for fun, or for inspiration, it doesn’t matter.
Growing Popularity Of Furry Art Commissions
More specifically, furry art commissions are becoming extremely popular. The average furry has a fursona and unsurprisingly not every furry with a fursonas has the artistic ability to make it look exactly how they hope. So, a pretty easy solution to this is to just pay someone else who is actually good at art to make the fursona for you. Furries can now easily do this with freelancing sites like Fiverr or even fury art commissioning sites like Fursonafy which allows its users to simply select a package and get to creating their fursona.
In conclusion, the furry fandom is clearly growing in popularity as per all of the aforementioned reasons, and who knows, maybe at some point they will go completely mainstream.
