Author Topic: Throwing out a few things for discussion  (Read 9461 times)

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Offline Acton

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Throwing out a few things for discussion
« on: May 16, 2008, 09:02:41 pm »
Being a greymuzzle in a young person fandom: Let’s face it Furry becoming a young person’s thing. I have talked to may other greymuzzles on other forums. One confided to me he is not close to the fandom due to the generational differences.  This does not mean one cannot or should not share interest fandom with younger furs but at times one desires  to meet furs our own age and life experiences.

My repose is first the fandom is about athro regardless of age we all can contribute and enjoy it; second seek the company of older members from time to time. This is why I feel the need for Greymuzzles events at conventions. 

Second I attended a panel at All fur Fun on fury and the public hosted by Two the Ranting Gryphon. An audience member remarked how here introduced his professor to the fandom via a term paper. 2 responded here he is seeing a small trend of older adults who would have became furry if the fandom existed 20 years or more ago. I live the story about the eleventh graders shock when he ran into his English teacher with a con badge on. Is this something you are seeing.

Offline Benjamin

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Re: Throwing out a few things for discussion
« Reply #1 on: May 16, 2008, 10:20:03 pm »
Well, uhh... The fandom actually did exist about twenty years ago. It has it's beginnings somewhere in the early 80s, if I remember the furry historians correctly. The fandom wasn't terribly accessible back then, of course. The organised aspects of it mostly began out of room parties in cons in southern California. Furry is just a heck of a lot easier to find, these days. It's more approachable than it had been, seeing as it's very openly spread all over the internet. You used to have to know exactly where to look, back in the day.
Some of the earliest long distance text based communications consisted of dial-up BBSs each with their own local discussion boards and then a long list of "echoes" which were shared from BBS to BBS in an automated "slow mo" internet sorta fashion that required the BBSes to dial long distance to each other in the network and update each other on what had been posted to the echoes' threads. I was on one of these back in the mid 90s, called The Trap Line, based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
 
You may notice that the youth are what drive a lot of the discussions, noisy parties, flamboyant furryness, and whatnot... however, it's typically the greymuzzles that do things like run the web servers, run MUCKs, build community services and tools, administrate conferences, and whatnot. Yeah, there're some younger furries that run their own services along these lines, but the most established services are by greymuzzles. Maybe those greymuzzles were particularly young when they started these services, but they've withstood the test of time and have well-established services now. Greymuzzles are the quiet backbone of the community.
 
Longevity isn't a very common thing in this fandom, I find. A lot of furs join as they're young, then either RL distracts them off to other things, they grow disinterested, or whatever. Greymuzzles are becoming more populous for the simple fact that the fandom started to see it's first big influx of young fans about ten to fifteen years ago... and those that have survived since that time are now into their 30s and so on.
 
I dunno if it's so much a "young person fandom" as it's a "young person world" in general. In society as a whole, youth tends to dominate culture, as a driving force behind what is considered fashionable. Furry always seems to echo mainstream culture in some way or another. It's in our nature in general, after all.
 
Where I live now, I am perhaps the oldest of the furries... and I'm just 34. There're a bunch of us around our early 30s in age, then there's a bunch that are in their college years. We all get along fairly well, at least. I seem to have a fair bit of respect from the younger furs... but some of that may be from the fact that I run furry.ca and whatnot.
 
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Offline South Munjoy

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Re: Throwing out a few things for discussion
« Reply #2 on: May 20, 2008, 05:54:42 pm »
Well, uhh... The fandom actually did exist about twenty years ago. It has it's beginnings somewhere in the early 80s, if I remember the furry historians correctly. The fandom wasn't terribly accessible back then, of course. The organised aspects of it mostly began out of room parties in cons in southern California. Furry is just a heck of a lot easier to find, these days. It's more approachable than it had been, seeing as it's very openly spread all over the internet. You used to have to know exactly where to look, back in the day.

Years ago, back in '87 or '88, I had a coffeehouse conversation about Science Fiction with another guy who suggested that a lot of the things that I was into was more 'Critter' oriented, with talking/sentient gengineered animals and such. I more or less agreed with him.

Flash forwards to 2003, when my first exposure to 'Furry' was through that cheesy CSI episode. I laughed it off as being a fetish that was too hilariously bizarre to be probable. Then I started searching for 'Furry' on the Internet, and found out that for the most part, 'Furry' was less a bizarre fetish, and more like the conversation that I had years before.

That being said, if there is enough retention in the fandom, people who are now my age (41) will be much more prevailent at conventions.  --This will be an interesting thing to see happening.

Offline Kwan

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Re: Throwing out a few things for discussion
« Reply #3 on: May 20, 2008, 11:47:19 pm »
>.<  Why do people think that nothing existed pre-internet?!
There was a fandom more than 20 years ago (and there were fen on the east coast as well as the west, thank you very much)!   The fandom wasn't as established or organized, but apart from the odd panel or con-room we also had nifty things like fanzines and apazines.   As Benjamin pointed out, the internet allowed the fans to find each other much, much easier. 

When I first learned that other people were into 'animal people' (in the late 80's), the impression I had was that most anthro fen were in their 20-30's.  Now it seems the majority are in their teens, which I think is due to the internet.

Like you Acton, I'd love to see more greymuzzles active in the fandom.  I have no doubt that older fen who have just discovered furry feel discouraged from attending con & meets due to the age gap.  Nobody wants to go to a con & feel like a camp counselor.

But it goes both ways.  I have been to a few meets where I was the oldest one there.  Each time the younger furries were far more put-out by the fact that an old broad was there.  *shrug* 
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Offline Acton

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Re: Throwing out a few things for discussion
« Reply #4 on: June 11, 2008, 12:10:55 am »
I do not believe the issue is nobody know about the fandom but information was sticky pre Internet. Stickiness refers to the difficulty of transmitting information from one person to anther pre Internet. A person on the west cost may not be aware of a furry on the east coast except one knew of a magazine of a furry on the east coast.


I feel cons are more tolerable than fur meets. There are a lot more furs to meet and I can distract myself with panels, fursuiters, art jams and if all else fails go to my room read a book or stay in the  lobby and draw something.

Being isolated is why wee need to start more greymuzzle event at con.

Offline Kwan

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Re: Throwing out a few things for discussion
« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2008, 04:36:17 pm »
::resurrects this thread::

But y'know, I noticed something kind of funny the last con I went to.  There was a greymuzzle panel, which I attended, and very few greymuzzles showed up. 

Several greymuzzles poked their heads into the room, but left immediately.  Which made me wonder whether some greymuzzles, for whatever reason,  don't want to hang out with other greymuzzles, or be seen as a greymuzzle.

Just giving this a possible comment-hook.
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Offline sniffswind

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Re: Throwing out a few things for discussion
« Reply #6 on: September 06, 2008, 11:46:18 am »
I musta missed this thread for the most part.

I agree with Kwan  WHY do people think NOTHING existed before the Internet?!

I think when people expect Greymuzzles, they actually expect GREY ( a la Cobalt...a 60 something adult artist who grew up with the Ventures when they were hot stuff in the pre-Beatles years, or  the LONGEST drawing artist I know of, Urban Hermit, who has posted artwork dating back to 1971!  )

Ive been drawing anthros since at LEAST late 93, when I was in college.  I'd only just found out there were computers coming into common use. (i started, in college, on a very old Windows 3.11 machine grading papers for the Professor I was working for while she took care of her Ph. D. dissertation).  if ida had any Idea that I had a learning disability THEN, and it had an easy fix, I'd probably have an M.A. by now.

I intend to locate and post my OLDEST DATED furry art piece with a deliberate blowup of the date.

Offline Kattywampus

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Re: Throwing out a few things for discussion
« Reply #7 on: October 06, 2008, 06:32:27 am »
I prefer to run with the greymuzzles, but I also like keeping my age a secret.  :3  Well, for the most part.
NYA!  =^_^=

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