Furry Fandom and Drama General

[Touch Of The ‘Tism]

thank you furfag for reminding me of my edgy 14 year old “i hate furries” phase, thanks for the nostalgia

 

[drab assessment]

cause of death is death?

Rabies.

 

[Sneed's Feed And Seed]

normies

Have you seen "Scientifically Accurate"?
They take an animal, give you a few facts about it, and then specifically talk about its penis.
They're as far from "normie" as you can get. They're damn near the "missing link" between furry and normie.

E:

Anyway, there's a furfag convention in Shanghai this week. Thanks America.

This is payback for sending your fighting-age men across California's southern border, you sons of bitches.

 

[SanicBlackMagic]

Expecting a Kiwifarmer to say anything bad about the Kiwifarms is like expecting Animal Control to not celebrate a furry dying.

The worst thing about Kiwifarms is the newfags. The second worst thing about the farms is a 122 page thread of Null sperging about cheese.

 

[Space Lazer Shark]

Hopefully we're back to posting fandom drama besides this old faggot kicking the bucket soon enough, he doesn't seem that noteworthy to me at all just because he is among the first that started this whole thing.
If it weren't for the accreditation of being the founder or something it'd just be a lonely old man that died in the hospital with one literal who to keep him company.
This is the first time i've heard of him so why should anyone care now? All the tears and outrage on either side just seems like a whole lotta nothing if you don't mind me speaking.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

I'd argue that no bloodlines were eliminated. Faggots usually breed through molestation of little kids

Molesting a kid and turning it gay isn't continuing a bloodline, its hijacking it and ending it as well in turn.

 

[Mikoyan]

respond to some of the accusations in this letter

This whole thread touches on things I have opinions on but it's all already been brought out, so meh whatever.

Except one thing: The unicorn dude he's low key arguing with here is Roy Calbeck. This is notable because he's a guy (IRL name: Scott Malcomson) who would've been a great thread subject too early for the Farms. He tried to use fanfic of the depicted unicorn to assert he owned the IP rights to Battletech.

 

[Smar Mijou]

Molesting a kid and turning it gay isn't continuing a bloodline, its hijacking it and ending it as well in turn.

A bloodline is a bloodline, infected or not. Checkmate atheists Kiwifarmers!

 

[Oilspill Battery]

A bloodline is a bloodline, infected or not. Checkmate atheists Kiwifarmers!

I'm not disputing that gay men are aids infected rapists, I'm just saying the homosexual disease has ended tons of actual bloodlines.

 

[Robotic Richard Simmons]

I have empathy for seeing a fetishist suffer from cancer and finally be at peace more than I would a groomer like Keffals.

 

[2020chan]

A bloodline is a bloodline, infected or not. Checkmate atheists Kiwifarmers!

Honestly not surprised at all that Washington DC is top of the list. DC is literally full of AIDS spreading faggots who think they know best.

I have empathy for seeing a fetishist suffer from cancer and finally be at peace more than I would a groomer like Keffals.

I feel more empathy for Anisa and idubbbz losing their doggo. Even more empathy for their remaining doggo who is going to miss her buddy.

This guy on the other hand? Idk, all he did was start a convention and encourage perverts and freaks to ruin what seemed like a far more "normal" gathering over time. Seems like the more innocent, non perverted guests were pushed aside and ignored so this guy could continue his gay orgy patries.

 

[Tennis-Ball-Tony]

One of the things to realize is that when Kage started AnthroCon, his whole "family friendly" thing that was pushed so hard (and still is), was specifically because of ConFurence and Merlino's turning the convention into a sex fueled orgy fest.

 

[TheTourist]

One of the things to realize is that when Kage started AnthroCon, his whole "family friendly" thing that was pushed so hard (and still is), was specifically because of ConFurence and Merlino's turning the convention into a sex fueled orgy fest.

Kage is based I don't give a fuck what anyone says about him.

 

[Mikoyan]

One of the things to realize is that when Kage started AnthroCon, his whole "family friendly" thing that was pushed so hard (and still is), was specifically because of ConFurence and Merlino's turning the convention into a sex fueled orgy fest.

I have a hard time convincing even furries of this these days but it's 100% true.

Kage is based I don't give a fuck what anyone says about him.

Kage is absolutely based in the original sense of 'doesn't give a fuck about what people think of his presentation/opinions'. Say what you will about the guy, he's honest.

 

[Toolbox]

We urgently need a thread on Merlino

Agreed - any time someone this lolcow-adjacent gets their history whitewashed it just makes me more curious, specially if it's those from the fandom they were from getting butthurt about them being called into question. Older furfags said Kage was just the alcoholic dad trying to keep the fandom in check and yet I keep hearing more about him as well. Anyone this involved in something degenerate had some skeletons. While it's entirely possible his worst sin is being the main cause of those that have warehouses full of them, I doubt it.

 

[FinnSven]

Rabies.

I wonder how quickly a combination of full blown AIDs and Rabies would kill someone?

RAIDbes.

 

[Breadbassket]

Someone made an article on Mark Merlino on the now defunct site Crush! Yiff! Destroy! it seems to have made in 2006. Do be aware the place generally had an anti-furry slant in its coverage.

Journey To The Center Of Mark Merlino
When one looks at the tremendous mess furries have made of not only themselves but a small chunk of Western culture (to say nothing of the internet), the idea of this disaster having occurred even partially by design is difficult to fathom. The "furry sub-culture" is one of the great unsung geek tragedies of the Western world, utterly destroying, ruining and ass-raping everything it touches.

After all, nobody sane could have actually WANTED TO CREATE a safe haven for people such as Dennis Falk, Sarah Wheeler, Kinberliegh Ann Keister, Bart "Nekobe" Bakovets, Karl "Xydexx" Jorgensen, every single alt.lifestyle.furry poster and whoever the fuck Kajima Frostfang is to get together, right? A "community" for people who absolutely should never get together under any circumstances lest they form a relatively small but destructive cancer on the civilized world? Wrong.

Many furries (especially the disgruntled ones) will tell you frankly that Mark Merlino was the man who started the ball rolling, the man who helped to nudge the furry scene around the U-bend into where it is today. He's been with furrydumb for a long time; reportedly he boasts of having helped create the modern furry culture. We might just give him that credit. Before he came along, what we now call furry was scarcely more than just some sort of primordial gaggle of geeks made up of the fannish fallout of both Richard Adams and Robert Crumb. Back then they called the object of their interest "funny animals". Relatively speaking, these people were fucking saints compared with their modern equivalents. After all, there was no internet in sight and that tiny, tiny population of proto-furries could still be called a legitimate part of geekdom - rather then the fetish-culture-in-denial we have to deal with today. When Merlino met up with this group, he helped to change it forever, molding it to fit his own image.

Although today he enjoys a moderately high standing within the group, Merlino is not really the leader of the furries. The phenomenon is as decentralized as the internet itself. No, Merlino is a boss, a kingpin, a Mr. X. Like a videogame and possibly also action movie villain, he sits behind the scenes, pulling strings and manipulating his inner circle of end-level bosses close friends and lovers to effect some loose control over a vast army of palette-swapped street punks furry lifestylers.This is the story of his rise to power, as best we can decipher it from approximately 10,583 useless Usnet posts and anyone who'll tell us anything.

We've heard two slightly different versions of the beginning of the story. Both say that he was part of (in fact the cofounder of) a general animation fanclub in Texas. Both say he eventually parted with it and went on to do his own thing. They differ as to why. One account says that he was basically kicked from the club for being gay, another says he quit when the club decided to place a bigger emphasis on Japanese animation. It is said that his goal was to create "a gay-friendly fandom", but in reality it's become more of an embarrassment for the gay community.

Mark Merlino arrived on the furry scene (even though the term "furry" had yet to be coined) during the early 1980s and started a couple of fanzines. That in itself wasn't anything particularly special, but within the space of a few short years he made a shocking and prophetic move: the recruiting drive. He tried to "recruit" new people into the "fandom" in a way that fitted him and his own interests. Of course, the idea of recruiting anyone into a fandom is absurd, but that was only the beginning of what Merlino had in mind. The purpose of these recruitment packages was to attempt to get more people into the sexual side of furrydumb, something which almost didn't exist back then. He wanted to lure closeted fetishists out with handouts of early furry porn and the promise of more(1). This was done at various sci-fi gatherings; if (or when) he was kicked out he'd just move on to the next. "Artwork" for these handouts came from the pioneering furry "artists" of the era, either Ken Sample or Dave Bryant. Other stuff (mostly non-pornographic, but pressure was applied to take it as far as possible) was also commissioned by Merlino and friends. Some of it went towards the development of a furry-themed tabletop RPG called "Other Suns", which Merlino and his friends worked on from time to time. (An overview of one of it's descendants is here.) It featured convoluted rules lifted from a few other games plus a space travel system with classic Derek Smart levels of brokenness and needless complexity.

Sometime during this time, Merlino bought a home in Southern California, which he dubbed the "Prancing Skilltaire". It was often called a "fan commune" and served as the home base for at least one early furry BBS and several early gatherings. The new subculture Merlino was promoting needed to increase in size or at least look bigger, and our best guess is that conventions were seen as the best way to do this. After all, they had always been an important part of Merlino's agenda. The first "furry party" was said to have been organized by him, held at WesterCon '86 in Sacramento, California. After a few of these, he expanded into full-blown conventions with the beginning of "ConFurence" in 1989.

By the early 1990s, MUDs were beginning to take off among BBS and early campus internet users. Furrydumb (and Merlino with it) snapped the idea up as soon as it was practical; role-playing has seemingly always been a cornerstone of the furry existence. When it emerged, FurryMUCK would later take up most of the slack after the BBS-hosted stuff fell into disuse. The people who set it up are another commune, and perhaps another story. It may not have been the first or even the raunchiest, but FurryMUCK survives like a monolith today, withstanding over a decade of furry typefucking, sad hack attacks from frustrated banned users, and a short-lived FBI investigation over "ageplay" (read: pedophilic roleplaying(2). Merlino would later use it as some sort of springboard to infamy - offering, at one point, free admission to his furry conventions to anyone who held an account on the game.

ConFurence continued on, with each gathering possessing a strong veneer of civility and yet getting raunchier than the last. ConFurence 8 was seen as the breaking point; after that many within furrydumb started taking issue with it's organizers. Accounts of behavior that would become all too familiar in a few short years accompanied a larger-than-usual assortment of nasty rumors. In an "open letter", an attendee listed some of the various incidents he witnessed. Nowadays most would by default associate furry conventions with all sorts of TO TEH EXTREAM debauchery; the letter describes nothing that's really new. In fact, most of the complaints are over things that seem tame, but some of it stands out. Most notably, the infamous jizz-covered elevator wall(3) that someone accidentally put his hand in, and that fact that people were showing up who had no real idea what the gathering was about, who were there "only for the parties and sex".

That quote is pivotal, in case you haven't noticed. Merlino, his boyfriend Rod O' Riley and other co-conspirators are said to have advertised the convention very heavily through alternate-lifestyle venues. They were eager to attract new people into a group that was less and less focused on talking animals and more and more focused on drawing together the SO LONELY. The newly reinvented subculture drew in more and more people who were shaky on the whole contact with other human beings thing, people in desperate need of companionship. A very desperate many got it at the cost of their heterosexuality; others who weren't heterosexual to begin with usually also got it at the cost of their dignity. The single-minded nature of furrydumb embraced anything, anything at all as long as it had something to do with talking animals and discouraged almost everything else unless it could be warped to suit furry needs.

In a rare instance of furry self-regulation, Merlino himself would be ousted from control of ConFurence in a wave of fan-political dramaqueenery. The fallout from the Confurence 8 convention disaster prompted many furries to attempt to clean up their act. Of course, since any deviation from the furry party line of taking the concept of tolerance and making a total fuckshit mockery of it is looked upon with scorn, this created a small firestorm that helped ignite the much bigger but even more pointless "Burned Fur" debacle. Merlino was pressured out of heading up the convention, and allowed someone else to run it. (He still helped fund it until it was recently disbanded.) Other conventions sprang up in the aftermath, trying to woo people on either side of the debate.

As one might expect, there's been more than a few disturbing rumors floating around about the more personal aspects of Merlino's life. The nastiest one is that he sat around Lion King MUCKs under one of his various pseudonyms TROLLING FOR FRICKEN ANUS, as they say. Early teenage anus, we might add. We're not sure whether or not anything really came of it, nor are we entirely sure as to whether this info is accurate or not. All we know is that it came from at least two different sources and is as eerily believable as anything else we've heard about the man.

The bitch of it all is that in the end Mark Merlino got more or less exactly what he wanted. Furrydumb is a clusterfuck of epic proportions with an emphasis on providing the lonely/bi-desperate/confused/insane furry fetishist with the possibility of a quick fuck(4) and wank material by the metric shitload. Merlino or his immediate partners didn't really do it all on their own; the retard invasion would have readily happened without them. However, he did see the course that furrydumb was taking and did everything he could to nudge it farther on in that direction. From the beginning, he was quite down with the idea of thousands of weirdos just like him forming a land of make-believe where they could feel like they were important, a place where they could stop pretending that their emotional development hadn't stopped somewhere before the onset of adolescence, a place where all inhibitions disappeared, a place where the "hyooman" world was wrong and the "furs" were right. Good for him and his buddies, but it's unbelievably annoying for the rest of us, ultimately damaging for it's participants and a whole new dimension of sickening to watch.

---

1. If ANYONE has any copies of any text portions of these so-called "recruitment packets", and other similar material Merlino is said to have produced, PLEASE let us know.

2. Let me describe briefly what happened:

On both Tapestries and FurryMUCK, "ageplay" areas had been in existence for quite a while where the CubCentral crowd was allowed to flourish. This roleplaying of pedophilic acts, coupled with the fact that most people cybering on these games are underage anyway, became the basis for a very short-lived FBI inquiry. The Feds didn't really do anything - there wasn't much they could do. They were only following the online activities of one person and never got very far before giving up. They did call a lot of people, however, and anyone running a game that was even tangentially furry-related got quite a scare. There's more of course, but like many things that come up in these footnotes, the subject needs to be fleshed out in a future article on furry roleplaying.

3. We refer the doubters who continue to insist that the substance in question was mayo to this newsgroup post: "There was a situation in an elevator Saturday evening, when I was taking some important guests back to my room for business. We were discussing said business in the elevator on our way up to the room when one of the gentlement with me leaned back against the wall, as most people do, when he found his side and pants covered in SEMEN!"

4. That is, of course, provided that his/her/it's standards are especially low.

 

[DickMain]

I honestly can’t think of a single thing that words on a computer screen has done to hurt anyone.

I kind of interpreted Catler's original post being about people like... who was that faggot school shooter what got cucked by the couch again? I forgot the name. Anyway, I think Catler's point was just where do you draw the line on not being responsible for the actions of the folks whose communities you're hosting, which I think is fair enough to ask (granted, everybody here dunks on couch cuck).

 

[JethroTullamore]

I kind of interpreted Catler's original post being about people like... who was that faggot school shooter what got cucked by the couch again? I forgot the name. Anyway, I think Catler's point was just where do you draw the line on not being responsible for the actions of the folks whose communities you're hosting, which I think is fair enough to ask (granted, everybody here dunks on couch cuck).

It was @FuckYou , and there is no line. The person hosting the site isn’t responsible for shit, if I host a forum and some depressed autist comes on saying he’s going to shoot up a Chuck E. Cheese because that damn mouse didn’t give him his tokens, than disappears and does it after everyone laughs, it isn’t my fault. Nor should it ever be, the person giving you a forum is not now or ever responsible for what your dumb ass does.

 

[DickMain]

It was @FuckYou , and there is no line. The person hosting the site isn’t responsible for shit, if I host a forum and some depressed autist comes on saying he’s going to shoot up a Chuck E. Cheese because that damn mouse didn’t give him his tokens, than disappears and does it after everyone laughs, it isn’t my fault. Nor should it ever be, the person giving you a forum is not now or ever responsible for what your dumb ass does.

Yeah, I don't think they are myself. I still think it's a fair question to ask/comparison to draw even if I don't agree with it myself. Thank you by the way I was completely blanking on the name.