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Comment by Levitz | Hacker News Reader

They always served as a escape route for ostracized people. Good luck finding a furry community in the 50s.

I'm not sure we need "social media" for this, unless we consider old php forums "social media" though.

> Good luck finding a furry community in the 50s.

I don't think anyone needed to. My personal theory is that this kind of paraphilia is an indirect consequence of the kind of media saturated environment we live in. I don't think that being a 'furry' is an expression of some intrinsic personal quality. It's a disorder of the modern world.

I find myself wondering “at what price”. For every oddball who found their community online, there must be 10x, 100x, 1000x as many experiencing only the dark side. There are, by definition, not that many oddballs.

It’s a funny blind spot; the tech community is often concentrated oddball, after all.

> For every oddball who found their community online...

I felt very sympathetic to this point in the past. Now I'm wondering if this might actually be a bug, and not a feature.

> Good luck finding a furry community in the 50s.

I’m not sure if it’s healthy to reinforce each and every behavior in the name of “equality”. Maybe it would be better if some things don’t have a community?

Furries have always struck me as odd, but generally wholesome. Yiff aside, they're a LARP group, not a cult of sexuality-- a social clique engaging in cosplay theatre. Where's the harm here?

My comment wasn’t specific to furries.

But the harm in this case would probably be reinforcing infantile behavior and escapism.

Even if they were a 'cult of sexuality' - what exactly is the harm here? I'm always struck by how, even on HN, there is a current of moral busybodies who, often without understanding the topic or subculture, deem certain activities outside the scope of toleration - even those activities which do not cause harm. The justification is usually rather weak too if not backed up by some religious principles.

The sibling comment refers to "escapism" (as though this is always a bad thing, we should chuck out fantasy and most music too) and "infantile behavior" (citation needed, even if this is a thing we should not tolerate).

My point was reinforcement of escapism and infantile behavior.

Again, I can't see those things as necessarily bad in any kind of global sense that applies to everyone, unless you claim to know what's best for everyone. Escapism might be a problem if you're neglecting your duties as a parent, for example. Infantile behavior might be a problem if you're expecting to be constantly helped in the workplace. But those are individual problems caused by underlying issues.

It's similar to gaming. You could say solo gaming reinforces escapism far more than meeting of like minded people in a furry community. But that doesn't mean gaming is bad - it's only bad to the degree that this escapism causes problems in the gamer's life.

> Even if they were a 'cult of sexuality' - what exactly is the harm here?

Because advertising a fetish in public is considered unacceptable by most people?

Shouldn't that be obvious to them? If they go around in public consciously trying to make other people uncomfortable, do you seriously expect them to not get angry about that?

The only people who wouldn’t consider old php forms social media are the users of those forms who want to pretend like they don’t use social media.

If it’s content (media) shared as a form of socialization, it’s social media.

Well, sure, but then we need a different term for modern social media. We can consider every form of chat and forum social media, going all the way back to the telephone or even postal service, but there are very important differences between that and something like Meta or Twitter regarding the purpose of the service (fostering a community v selling ads) and how it works (curating said community v increasing engagement)

Nobody needed a furry community in the 50s because being a furry isn't a thing that comes naturally as an urge that you need to repress due to a lack of social acceptance. You become a furry because you're exposed to furries or furry porn. It's social contagion that leads you to self-ostracization and possibly unhealthy behaviour.

"Exposed to furries"? Come on. It's a subculture like any other, but one which (for fairly stupid reasons in my opinion) faces bullying and harassment. Where do you draw the line between a "social contagion" and a quirky subculture? Are tabletop RPGs a social contagion? What about Ham radio enthusiasts?

Ah, replace furry with any sexuality and that's basically the same homophobic rhetoric repeated today. Guess HN is not immune to completely outdated views on sexuality and psychology.

Funny thing is, you're validating the ones you are calling self-ostracising by spreading misinformation and claiming harm done by their identity. Your comment and how upvoted it is are exactly the reasons why these communities seek safe platforms.

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