This page is dedicated to that special period when the media had just discovered the furry fandom -- from the mid 1990s to 2000. They didn't know what it was about, and furries weren't always sure either. Or at least, they couldn't agree. For a time media coverage of furries consisted almost entirely of cultural misunderstandings.
Notes:
The earliest article in the collection is from Wired Magazine, in March 1994 -- Johnny Manhattan Meets the Furry Muckers. Despite the title, most of the article is about LambdaMOO. In 1994 the Internet was still a new and mysterious thing to most people, and the description here of an incident on LambdaMOO may be the earliest press coverage of online harassment. FurryMUCK is mentioned toward the end, mostly as a way to bring in the idea of "netsex." On the whole it's interesting to note that this article consists almost entirely of illustrating concepts that you wouldn't have to explain to mainstream audiences now.
In March 1996 the Communications Decency Act had recently taken effect, causing upheaval in the MUCK community. Time Digital reported on it in an article called Furry-Muckity Muck. It's a surprisingly even-handed account of how FurToonia was forced into blocking some of its underage users, causing them to decamp to Sociopolitical Ramifications, outside of US jurisdiction. In hindsight this is the moment when FurToonia began a slow, inexorable decline and SPR became a major hangout.
Marie Claire magazine's Creature Comforts, published in October 1997, focuses more on the relationship aspects of the fandom and less on sex. You're left with two impressions: that furry fandom was thought to be a strictly American phenomenon, and they thought ConFurence was a generic term for any furry convention. ConFurence seems to have dominated the news media's idea of furry fandom, probably because it was the earliest furry convention and allowed journalists to attend. (Anthrocon seems to have since taken on that role.)
The article as a whole is much gentler and less judgemental than most other media coverage at the time. Like many later articles, it does portray the fandom as being mostly about fursuiting. There's a media fascination with fursuits, probably because they make for interesting visuals in a way that nerdy people typing doesn't.
WSVN-TV did a puff piece called Animal Instincts (RealMedia format video) for their nightly news broadcast. The tone is mixed; the anchors seem incredulous about it to a mocking degree, but the narration of the actual piece takes it more seriously. They seem under the impression that it's a new fad. They include a notably non-judgemental clip from a psychiatrist.
The infamous March 1998 Loaded magazine article, "Heavy Petting" probably created more fandom infighting than any other. It launched something of a group panic among furries, and even now it's hard to read. The term "cringe" is overused, but if anything qualifies, it's this.
The author went to ConFurence 9 hoping to find titillating things to snicker about. His utter lack of background research is revealed by such hilarious remarks as, "furries, as a rule, don't drink or take drugs of the non-prescription variety."
He tried getting dirt from the hotel staff, to no avail ("they're really polite and don't cause any trouble"), but hit paydirt when he found someone willing to talk about bestiality. (A great example of how furries' eagerness to talk gets them into unfortunate situations.)
SF Life also weighed in, in August 1998, with an article titled Animal Magnetism. Unlike Loaded, they appear to have done some background research. It touches on online roleplaying (especially sex), plushophiles, and fursuiters, and gives brief mention to the schism then forming in the fandom over sexuality. It ends on an up note, noting how affirming the furry fandom is to many of its members.
In January 1999, as part of a larger segment on fan conventions, NPR show "Beyond Computers" interviewed some people at Further Confusion (then in its first year). The overall tone is friendly and noncombative, and the sexual aspects don't come up. There is a comment about the overwhelmingly male demographics of the fandom, but that's the closest it gets to criticism. The influence of FC's more hands-on media posture is obvious when you compare this to some of the ConFurence coverage.
Fur, My Love by Getting It is a September 1999 article about plushophilia. As you might expect given the name of the publication, it's a pretty straight-up take and relatively non-judgemental. It does seem to suggest that ConFurence is all about plushophiles, although it's not entirely clear they understand "ConFurence" is a specific con and not a generic term.
The British TV show Eurotrash followed a German fursuiter (QuickTime video, sub-potato quality) going to, yes, ConFurence. The entire thing is made to look extremely silly, which admittedly isn't hard. There's very little coverage of the sexual side of things, and in fact one person interviewed claims that having sex in a fursuit is impossible. This is a convenient fiction that'd be used for many years, by many people, in many interviews. By this point at least some furries are starting to gain some measure of discretion when talking to the press.
San Jose-based website Metroactive wrote a piece called Furries of the Valley, highlighting the overlap between furry fandom and high-tech startup culture. It was December 1999 and the dot-com bubble was still growing rapidly. Most people working for Silicon Valley startups were from somewhere else, and furries naturally tended to network, leading to companies and even neighborhoods that were heavily furry. While this phenomenon still exists, it was new and exciting at the time. One of the people interviewed jokes, "A lot of us secretly feel that if furries went on strike the whole valley would grind to a halt." At the time, that felt entirely believable.
In April 2000, New Times Los Angeles did an article titled Venus in Furs, which does a remarkable job succinctly surveying the different factions in the fandom at the time. Fursuiters, plushophiles, zoophiles, squeaky-clean Christian furs — they're all acknowledged, and their objections to each other noted. A rare example of a piece where the author obviously did his research. It ends by describing a furry dance, and noting just how much fun everyone seems to be having.
The Daily Show did an October 2000 segment on a gay science-fiction convention, Gaylaxicon 2000 (RealMedia video, only the furry portion). At the end, they show some (censored) furry porn and talk to a couple artists. The shock value of this segment hasn't really stood the test of time; it seems obvious now that the two artists interviewed are having some fun with Steve Carell. It's also a stark reminder of just how homophobic The Daily Show (and the culture in general) was at the time.
At the time, this was seen as something of a scandal, coming at the peak of the "Burned Fur" movement that strived to push sexual content out of the fandom. Eric Blumrich, one of the most prominant BFers, wrote a long definitely-not-overreacting rant on Portal of Evil in which he compared himself to Martin Luther King. Some of his grievances haven't aged well
(to put it mildly), like his anger over ConFurence having placed ads in gay and lesbian publications. It's startling being reminded that, in 2000, just being gay made you an undesirable sexual deviant in some furries' eyes.
Humor site The Brunching Shuttlecocks, perhaps inspired by the flurry of other media coverage that happened in October 2000, wrote an amusing little article that manages to convey succinctly why trying to cover up the sexual aspects of furry fandom is impossible, and why that shouldn't matter.
"Which is not to malign perversion for perversion's sake. Heck, given the modern standards of beauty, longing to have sex with a full-figured otter woman is only slightly less realistic than wanting to have sex with a supermodel. And the otter lady is probably more fun at the sushi bar."
Another October 2000 piece, this one by a minor political blogger at disinformation, provides a sarcastic and sardonic overview of the fandom. Normally this wouldn't rate inclusion, but in insulting everyone, he gives a pretty good overview of the factions that had formed in the fandom.
This page (and only this page) is licensed CC0 by D. "Orville" Brodbeck dba Laridyne Systems. It's free to reuse without restrictions or attribution. Copyright to content linked from this page is held by the original publishers and no license is implied.