CFD FURRIES VS MEDIA VS TONY THE TIGER

culturally f'd dialog with edgedestroys regarding furries, tony the tiger, tonytigergate, and media interaction

E: Oh man, honestly tonytigergate just turned into a massive ridiculous shitfest such as anything that goes remotely viral with furries has the capacity to do. Interactions with the Tony twitter off the bat started with, from my perspective, equal parts shitposts and confessed attraction, most of which were obviously grounded in sexuality. Some time passed from when that all started and TonyTigerGate came about from my friend Stef (@inuhein) noticing the account was blocking furry accounts even if they hadn't tweeted anything sexual at the account. They thought it was somewhat silly and tweeted #tonytigergate as a completely innocuous joke. I jumped on board with my zootopia tweet which was meant to be tongue in cheek (although I'm sure tons of people, especially outside of the fandom, misconstrued it as "we're here to sexually harass you, learn to deal with it"). A few others like @weremagnus added to it joking that one of the dancers for Gazelle in Zootopia was Tony's brother and he was ashamed, another added that Tony was actually jealous that he didn't make the cut to be one because he had a blue nose, etc, etc, really innocent goofy stuff.Then obviously came all the sexual stuff following this and the hashtag got hijacked to be this idiotic movement of tactless thirst.

I've said this before but I'll be the first to support sexual positivity, I find the whole "PRESERVE THE FANDOM'S IMAGE, DENY OUR SEXUALITY, SWEEP IT UNDER THE RUG" response to media pretty backwards and a waste of time. Everyone knows we draw porn, everyone knows there's a few people that do lewd stuff in their fursuits, that's not a secret anymore so trying to hide it doesn't do anything. I think if you're going to bother to engage outside media at all, you should be asking questions, not going through the whole cover up charade. Like "when channeled through safe, consensual outlets, why should sexuality or even just a weird nerdy interest be a big deal"? A while ago I used to do the whole "oh goodness no, we're not about that!" thing and then I realized, why am I wasting energy on this? Acting as if we're doing something to be ashamed of and denying it only reinforces the stigma that we are something totally outlandish that should be shunned. I'd rather foster an environment of sexual positivity than perpetuate this shame circus apologizing for people in the fandom being more weird than most people are used to, you know?

CF'D: Sure but isn't it kind of a bad thing to sexually harass someone over the internet, even if it is a fictitious cereal mascot?

E: Oh yeah absolutely, I was gonna get to that, I'm not at all defending people sexually harassing that account, I was speaking in broad terms where people flip out over the fandom's sexuality as a whole

E: Despite my views that we shouldn't hide our sexuality, I also think we should hold ourselves accountable when we don't exercise discretion and common courtesy. After all the explicit tweets started going through I started tweeting about how there's a time and place for this kind of stuff and while the internet can't be a safe place, you obviously shouldn't be filling the mentions of a public space with NSFW content. Predictably some people jumped down my throat with the usual WOW THE SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS ARE COMING TO CENSOR ME response and it's just like, no, I'm not? "Time and place" doesn't mean "no, never, yield to my fascist regime", it means use some common courtesy and try to be respectful and aware of what the hell you say. Of course every 4 year old in the world isn't logging into twitter to stalk Tony The Tiger's mentions but really is it necessary to @ the account with stuff that someone underage doesn't want to deal with? You very easily can have a locked afterdark account where you can rave about Tony's junk all you want without being an ass. Between my main, private and music accounts, I manage to stretch even my limited attention span evenly, I don't see the issue with taking NSFW stuff and putting it somewhere more appropriate.

E: All that said though, back on the topic of sexuality in the fandom and media, I think with all of that a nuance of the defensiveness within the fandom hardly anyone notices, or bothers to, is that it's not just that people don't want to be associated with the sexual wildcards, it's that reducing the fandom to this sensationalized sexual freakshow is entirely one dimensional and unfair to the aspects of the fandom. We've built an entire infrastructure out of mostly original content, we have artists, musicians and DJs, writers, poets, sculptors, suit makers, voice actors, the fandom is built upon this mass of creativity, expression and honed talents. I think aware of it or not, people are bothered when all of that is pushed aside for someone on gawker, buzzfeed, MTV, whatever, to point and say "haha, wow, look at these weird freaks". I don't take myself so seriously to be all that concerned with defending the "sanctity" of the fandom's image, but even I can say it can be frustrating that I've spent years developing skills in art, design and music production just for it to all be glanced over for someone to say "dang, you have weird sex". I would hope most people could objectively admit that to some degree that must feel like a slap to the face.

E: While I'm on the topic of how serious anyone takes themselves, I feel like it's worth noting that most people outside the fandom still take us more seriously than many of us do for ourselves. If you read the comments on the Gawker article about TonyTigerGate, you'll notice plenty of people questioning if we're self-aware at all and as far as I'm concerned most of those people should have that question turned on themselves. As far as I know, the vast majority of the hashtag's tweets were total shitposts, sexual or not, and sure I guess you could argue that deadpan sarcasm like that might be hard to register through text but really, with twitter accounts like @dril floating around, I really question what kind of lens of perpetual seriousness people are looking at the internet through. Tons of us thrive on the whole aesthetic of deadpan facetiousness, hell the majority of my tweets if I'm not tweeting about social issues involving race and feminism are usually just that haha.

E: Ultimately I think media interactions with the fandom are just mired by this endless cycle of feet in mouths and breakdowns of communication with no effort to meet a middle ground. The sensational circusfreak gimmick of reporting on the fandom is so wrung dry, of course most furries are on the defense when the media comes to us for an interview. If you want to have a conversation with us, an actual one, if you really wanna know what we're about, then ask the goddamn appropriate questions for it. There's still plenty of people that are down to have that dialogue I'm sure. I'd love to provide my perspective and experiences if someone genuinely wanted to learn what the fandom is about, but as long as the media targets instances of exaggeration for a freak of the week shtick write up, as long as it's more about obfuscating context for ratings, we're not going to have an honest discussion.

CF'D: There are lots of articles by journalists who attend a con and have a really fun time, most of the freak-shows are by tabloidy/sensationalist outlets or amateurs reaching for low hanging fruit.

E: Oh yeah definitely, I've seen plenty of fair representations of the fandom more and more lately where people are realizing the whole 4chan troll party on the fandom is pretty burnt out when at the heart of it the fandom is built upon a lot of fun, imagination and creativity. The downside is I think despite that, most people still willingly buy that low hanging fruit the amateur writers are picking. It's almost kinda sad when you look at it because you would think a lot of people looking to build a career from journalism would want to build some credibility and it's like well, you're going for the safe, blasé, weirdo spin, when you just as easily could do something actually fair and objective but hey [kermit sipping tea meme], maybe that's just me haha.