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author=Pizza
These furries in particular were sort of asking for it, yeah, but go fuck yourself if you think the fandom at large is bringing all the dumb, pointless hate on themselves.

This aggressive self-martyrdom is why furries are so often a ripe target.

When your raison d'etre is sexualizing cartoon mascots, you really need to expect other people to think you're risible.

Aight just to 100% clarify what I'm tryina say here

There are hobbies that tend to attract a level of mockery because they, or their proponents, are extremely silly in public.

There are multiple ways to react to this mockery. One is, "Haha, yeah, we look like dorks, but it's fun so whatev." One is just ignoring it and having fun. One is to immediately get defensive and angry if even the slightest whiff of this happens.

Generally, when you start acting like an angry jerk if someone brings up the idea that your hobby looks super weird to outsiders, you're not going to come off as particularly sympathetic or likeable, which is the one thing that will make you more acceptable in most people's eyes.

ESPECIALLY if you come into some other person's space with your defensiveness, because then it just looks like an invasion.

ESPECIALLY when you start directly comparing your hobby to issues like racism and homophobia.

This is behaviour that I have seen repeatedly over the years when the subject of furries comes up: a big ol' avalanche of super-angry and defensive people over what are usually relatively minor slights. (In general, from what I've understood from friends inside the community, a lot of that comes from furries soaking in the various geek social fallacies, where there is a lot of us vs. them immaturity and a lack of self awareness. I don't know, my personal contact with the community is restricted to a couple of cons where I helped babysit the anime room.)

It is this belligerent behavior that I refer to when I argue that furries are bringing mockery onto themselves, because all they are doing is allowing people in their community to paint a huge target onto themselves over perceived slights.

FFS, they're getting up in arms that a corporate twitter account for a children's cereal is banning people because folks with the same style of avatar have been addressing sexually explicit messages to it. That is risible on every single level.