What do you do when people you know become people you knew?
Since my last entry the vitriol and utter hatred from my ‘friends’ has reach a pitch I can only describe as heart-sickening. The ideological left has infiltrated many groups of which I’m a part, and injected in them a type of puritan philosophy that not only mirrors that which they claim to fight against, but amplifies it.
The atheist movement was first. Atheism+ was born out of an idea to make the movement not just about atheism, but about so many other things only scarcely related to it. On paper it sounds like a plan, but in reality it destroyed the movement as a whole because it was politicized. Now, many atheists I know kneel and pray at the altar of social justice, having replaced their former religions with this new, non-theistic one. All the dogma you could ask for, but no white God.
The furry fandom has also fallen prey to this. I knew there were some SJW or far left sentiments there already, but since George Floyd I’ve seen just how terrible the fandom really is. Hard lines drawn…pointing and laughing like bullies at innocent people harmed, their only crime that they didn’t agree wholesale with your views. It’s like this great beast of hatred has finally risen, summoned by the collective toxicity of the furry fandom, and is now staking its claim that the fandom is the property of the far left. Dissenting opinions can just GTFO and forever be labeled racists or some other ista-phobic insult.
I contemplated deleting all the audio from Holy Crap last night. Shujin’s final words on the show basically advocated and apologized for the violence that has ravaged much of the US. He also stands with ANTIFA, as though he’s some kind of edgy dude because it pisses off Trump. He’s one of my best friends – almost a brother – and now I barely know him. Come to think of it, maybe I never knew him at all.
I worried on our last show that he would try to make us all take the BLM pledge. At that point I would have dropped the show entirely, told him why, and then actually deleted all the audio. All those years of laughs and tears…all those memories of people whom I thought were good…all tainted because they were too lazy to get out and vote back in 2016.
I’ve largely dropped the fandom now. On social media, I’ve pretty much dropped anyone who puts their pronouns in their bios, and the second I see a post concerning BLM, racism, or ‘I’m ashamed to be white,’ you’re gone. If I see you posting or echoing some other shit-weasel laughing at someone leaving the fandom or being outed because they won’t conform…gone. If you hate, I have no time for you.
I left FurAffinity for this reason. Of course, it means nothing but to me it’s a cleansing. FA is the most recognized hub of furry activity these days, so leaving it basically means I’ve left the furry cesspool. I still have my online name, and there are some fellow furs whom I still follow. However, that list has reduced greatly, now focusing on people who post their art and keep their politics to themselves. The second they get political, buh bye.
So why my sudden turtling on all this? Simple: politics is two things, personal, and ugly. Just like religion, just like personal preferences, and just like who you prefer to fuck. I. Don’t. Need. To. Know. In the fandom, the only thing you need to have in common with someone is your love of anthropomorphic art. From writing to cosplay, that’s all you should need. However, these days you have to apparently check off a ton of squares in the bingo card for you to be considered ‘safe’ for the community. I don’t check any of them, so I just nope’d myself out of the fandom as a whole before they did it for me. I did you a favor, so fuck off.
Shujin and Kyrin (my girlfriend) both know of this, as do the rest of the HCTV cast. Shujin understood why I did it, and then said if I ever thought he was going down the same road in terms of spewing hate that I should call him on it. I would, but I don’t need an apologist lecture on the benefits of looting. He’s already made his stand, but for the sake of a 10 year friendship, I’m willing to still be there…for now.
When the smoke clears from all this, we’ll see who’s on the right side of history. Will it be the left and their ‘we’re not authoritarian, except we are,’ people, or the right? It remains to be seen.
No matter how it turns out though, the furry fandom can burn in Hell as far as I’m concerned. All you know is hate. All you are is hate. I hope your conventions all dry up and you’re left with nothing but FurAffinity to hold you together because frankly that’s all you fucking deserve.
YIFF IN HELL FURFAGS!