Editorial: Hypocrisy! Censorship! The 'Furry Times' we live in
Last week, a Neswbyte was posted linking to an opinion article by Perri Rhodes on a site named Furry Times, covering the controversial Furry Raiders. It ended with with the following indictment of Flayrah from Ahmar Wolf:
Editor’s Commentary
It has always been a policy of mine no matter who you are, and if you have something to say and I would say Perri Rhoades, (who did an excellent job). That you should be allowed to speak, that no one has the right to shut you down…period. Like some tried to do on Flayrah.
Ahmar may have been referring to those who disagree with Perri using our comment karma system to rate down her scores of comments. No one on Flayrah staff had censored Perri. In fact people can still comment there if they wish, including Perri. However, in a fit of irony, Furry Times closed comments on their article which had shamed other sites of censorship.
Let’s take a look at why a site preaching for free speech cut the conversation short on their own controversial article.
Hate speech of a mild-mannered variety
Another article on their site from May 4th lays out why they closed their comments on the article. According to the site owner, hate speech and name calling were the key factor in the comment shutdown.
If You Got Something To Say…
Say it, I will give you a platform as long as you don’t openly bash some sites, as that is due to legal issues I have had with some of them. Or other posters, and I know I have to be careful on how I say this, in other words you disagree with them. Not to call them vulgar names simply because you disagree.
However, I have evidence of what actually ended up getting the comment section shut down, because apparently the comments he was included my own. My comments replying to Perri’s articles were persistently removed by the site’s owner until he got so fed up that he shut them down.
It started on May 1st when I made a comment in response to the article, which was then held in moderation mode. This isn’t anything too unusual, as Dogpatch Press uses the same method of pre-moderated commenting. However, in this case, a day later it was removed.
A recording of hypocrisy in action
Since my comment appeared to be removed from the article, and given the fact that the editor made statements against censorship, I decided that I would try to post it again and see if I received the same results. While doing so I used a recording program to chronicle my actions.
May 2nd 9:00PM
In the video headlining this section, I rewrote the comment that had been deleted to the best of my memory, read it aloud and re-posted it. It was in anticipation that like the first time the comment would be deleted. It would also show that the comment is not hateful, harmful, nor really demeaning in anyway beyond acceptable discourse. It was simply critical of word usage and in the article that compared 2 Gryphon’s lost performance slot at Anthrocon with a terrorist attack and the constant misuse of the word “war”.
For those who don't want to watch the video, the comment is quoted below:
I think you are confused as to what the term zealot means. When I call someone a religious zealot I am not claiming that they are an avid atheist. What that phrase means is it ties the zealotry with the religious aspect of the individual. Zealot is defined as one who suppresses other with a differing viewpoint. Therefore a Burned Fur zealot would be a person who was a Burned Fur and was pushing their viewpoint obsessively on those that were NOT Burned Furs. If anything, Xydexx would have been an anti-Burned Fur zealot.
Such discrepancies in language use make this article hard use make this article difficult to follow. This is why people would point at a sentence like that and call the article fake. Burned Fur zealot is the opposite of what Xydexx is.
The other thing that makes this article hard to take seriously is when you claim 2 Gryphon losing his performance slot at Anthrocon was equivalent to a terrorist attack upon the fandom. As someone who attended Midwest Furfest 2014, I can say that I and a few thousand more others, have received first hand experience as to what a (thankfully minor) terrorist attack looks like in person. So to say such verbiage is eye-rolling and makes the rest of the article seem extremely sensationalist is an understatement.
I can also say that most furrys have never experienced real war. I am one of them who has not. There are some furrys in the military, and if I asked them if the conflict our group had with the Burned Furs was a war, they’d probably laugh me out of the room. But I’m not them, so *shrug*
Only one recorded incident of intra-fandom murder has occurred in the 3 decades of our fandom, and the Burned Fur Fracas had nothing to do with that.
May 3rd 6:00PM
The very next day the comment was removed. I once again posted the comment, and then contacted the site owner via twitter to ask if there was an issue with the site causing dropped comments.
May 4th, 9:00 PM
There was no response on Twitter - and the comment on Furry Times, once again, was gone. I had planned on trying a few more experiments for any reasonable doubt, but to my surprise I did not have to. Not only did was the comment removed, but the comment section was locked.
This was when I discovered the Furry Times follow up article indicating that the comments were shut down due to hateful and vulgar speech. Little does he know I recorded what caused him to shut down the comments, and I don’t believe my statements qualify.
Stones cast within the glass house
The above recording could be seen as a selfish complaint. At the end of the day, it’s just a comment, and it’s the site owner’s right to decline it. Get over it, Tantroo; you don’t have the right to speak everywhere. I’d agree with that statement – and I might not have pointed it out, had said owner not been launching accusation of censorship at other furry media establishments such as Flayrah and Dogpatch Press.
Perri, in comments on my YouTube video addressing the Furry Raiders armbands, claimed that the Anti-Fascists and Social Justice Warrior furries will be the ones to destroy free speech within the fandom. So now it seems ironic that while Flayrah allowed those such as Perri who were arguing in favor of the Furry Raiders to comment as much as they wanted, the site she ran to in order to defend free speech in the fandom shut down their comment section in a matter of days because they couldn’t handle one kangaroo’s dissenting opinion.
It may seem a massive assumption that it was purely my comment that caused the comment section to be shut down. However, if it was not considered hateful by the moderator, then why was it deleted – not once, not twice, but three times – before comments were locked due to 'hateful speech'? It seems a logical conclusion that the action was instead due to the realization that I would keep trying to post my comment, day after day. Instead of dealing with the annoyance of having to decline it again and again, he closed the ability to reply entirely.
Of course, worried that people would accuse him of censorship when shutting it down, he came up with an excuse in the public eye as to why he had to do so. While someone else's comments could have been hateful, given the evidence, I doubt there were any such comments whatsoever. And if he considered my comment hateful, then I question his ability to judge when hatred is occurring.
At the end of the day, I agree with Ahmar Wolf: If you have something to say, say it. But be sure you say it in a place that will respect your words and not toss them aside into the digital dumpster simply because it doesn’t follow the narrative an individual wants to create within the fandom.
About the author
Sonious (Tantroo McNally) — read stories — contact (login required)a project coordinator and Kangaroo from CheektRoowaga, NY, interested in video games, current events, politics, writing and finance
Comments
Good article. I really appreciate you addressing this. That being said I really think there should be some kind of moderation of the newsbytes because in the past few weeks it has been used multiple times to attack individuals. It's for news, not airing your grievances with other members of the fandom.
One thing which perhaps isn't widely known about Newsbytes is that, while any registered user can post there, the automatic syndication to our Twitter feed and FB/LJ/etc. (via the Newsbytes RSS feed) only happens if you've already been marked as a significant Flayrah contributor. So it isn't as effective as some people hope in spreading their views.
It's possible to ban people outright - in implementation terms, it's just a chat room with a few special posting hooks - but as with comments, I'd prefer not to do so if I don't have to. Over the past six years, it's worked remarkably well for its original purpose of letting people post a link to something interesting which isn't necessarily worth writing a story about.
What are the requirements for being "marked a significant Flayrah contributor"?
Not much. I see you've written a good story, go to your edit page and tick the 'contributor' box. :-p
But I would probably not do that if the only thing I've seen you write is self-promotion.
It's roughly equivalent to being an autoconfirmed user on WikiFur, other than the "auto" part. It also enables making/viewing story revisions, and marking comments as spam. There are over 50 'contributors'.
Question: If someone has never submitted a story to Flayrah, but they've posted multiple Newsbytes that are pretty useful/interesting, would you mark them as a contributor?
Probably, yes. Mostly because I wouldn't want to be copying their stuff to Twitter all the time. Usually the people who submit Newsbytes tend to want to submit full stories as well, but it's one way to start.
For instance, even though I'm a former editor who personally edited the Newsbytes archives for years, since I created a new account, I don't get Tweeted. While crossaffliction is a significant user, 2cross2affliction still has to earn his wings.
But, anyway, yes, I think my original response on Twitter was "NO, NOT THE NEWSBYTES, YOU MANIACS!" though I'd say AhmarWolf's original Newsbyte was fair (if eye-rolling) while Ringtailed Fox was the one who went off the party line, as it were.
The first sentence reads more complain-y onscreen than it did in my head.
To be honest, I'm a tad less concerned by comments in Newsbytes without links, because they're only seen on the site, and often can be disregarded (in this case we made an editorial decision to include it in the archived version). It's best if they're not six lines, though.
That guy is an oxygen thief and should be ignored. But it's hard not to laugh when your video says it's cute that he wants to be furry news.
For those who don't know, an "artist beware" about this guy could be in order. Countless times he's come in to various forums and communities to seek attention, but pissed them off with clown-level screwups to the point of getting kicked out. He never gets why.
There was the week when he wanted to be in the Furry Writers Guild, and got mad when we criticized his style of ripping off others' work without permission. He ignored advice about Fair Use to argue his fake version. When that didn't fly he flipped out like we were being meanie haters. He even seasoned it with bullshit about us attacking his site with spam (failing to comprehend how spam happens when you spread links without filtering in place.)
If you need to complain about stolen work, report his site and IP 192.0.78.25 to [email protected] or https://en.wordpress.com/complaints. His ID is findable if you ask around.
I would like to point out, completely off-topic, this is actually the first time Sonious has used the term "editorial" in one of his headlines! And it's still kinda iffy ...
For the record, an "editorial" is the opinion of a majority of the editorial staff and staff in general of an newspaper; otherwise, it's a column, which represents only the opinions of the person writing it.
But, this is interesting; since the Green Reaper years, well, Green Reaper was already at least partially well known for WikiFur, and was the major story contributor for like the first year, so he became the "face" of Flayrah, despite the fact that editorially he never put himself out there.
Then there was me, who, though a noted loudmouth in the comments, went apparently unnoticed as editor in the background until I quit in fit of pique, and so was never the face of Flayrah (a fact that I've used to compare myself to God on Twitter, because of course I have), and of course Green Reaper was still in the background.
Finally, the diumvirate of Sonious and dronon (with Green Reaper still still in the background); dronon seems to be going for the quiet role (sorry to blow your cover), even in the comments, where he's definitely not the wordy screamer I was, while Sonious is actively putting his own face (well, his furry face, anyway) out there.
Edit: These two comments were supposed to be their own thread, not replies to TyphonDog, but things happened. [More things happened.]
Much of my current silence is due to being pretty busy in my day-to-day life! Or, in the case of the RMFC article with the huge number of comments, not wanting to get involved in that mess. I've got my opinions, sure, in any article - but I wouldn't want my opinions mistaken as a "Flayrah position", so I'm treading a little carefully until I get used to these shoes.
Don't take that post as criticism. Of any style.
None taken! It was a valid observation and I thought I'd explain why I'd been quieOMG I need validation please please please^D^D^D^D^D I'M FINE THANKS
That usage may be blurred by the fact that, in smaller fan publications, the singular editor is the staff.
I agree that this piece tends more towards personal opinion. It did not emerge from our equivalent of an editorial board - it was something Sonious came up with. That said, I did have the usual editorial input, and I also agree in principle with the concept of open commenting (though I might not have written three pages on it if I didn't get it elsewhere…).
We're in a somewhat peculiar situation because Flayrah now has several editors, and there is an argument that any one might post "an editorial". It's also meant to represent a range of views within the community, rather than having a philosophical bent – although some would probably still say it's biased towards my views, if only through our liberal polices on publication and moderation.
And a bonus fact: in the UK, general "news" is often far more editorial, both in selection and in tone. The broadsheets may attempt to preserve the editorial/op-ed page, but even there it tends to leak through.
Oh, okay I get it, so this is less like a news article and more like an opinionated column. I wasn't grasping what the whole point of this writing is.
I think Ahmar made an error in his statement below my commentary. It is actually Dogpatch Press that is not allowing me to respond to s—t that is being said about me over there. If anything I think I should thank Flayrah for allowing me more free speech than was perhaps wise to take advantage of.
I have no problem at all with the comment karma system here. If I have a problem with anything in that regard it's that I can't delete my comments if I have an attack of social anxiety and want to withdraw from public view. The karma system and the tendencies of certain people here to vote me down no matter what I say affords me some shelter for my shyness, which I quite appreciate. Plus, it makes it necessary for those who want to see the alternative view to actually go clicking for it, which is efficacious for the readers that don't want to think, and healthy for those that do.
I was not aware that Ahmar had turned off comments on my commentary. I certainly was having no problem with the comments I was seeing. But Ahmar has not been feeling well of late. He may have had to stop comments for health reasons, or something of that nature. He is recovering from a head injury, and if the comments he was getting were particularly hateful, that might have caused him detrimental anxiety that he felt necessary to withdraw from.
But Furry Times is not the only place my commentary can be commented on. The commentary is also on my Live Journal site, complete with references, suggested corrections from readers and an interesting exchange with Flayrah's own Equivamp in the comment section, which will remain open for further comment indefinitely. The page can be accessed here. http://symphonic-rp.livejournal.com/248855.html
Hmmm. The article Sonious linked doesn't say why Ahmar shut down comments on my commentary. It just says he moderates comments and doesn't pass any through that merely throw hate at himself or the author of whatever content he's posting. I see nothing unreasonable about this, as that is his right as the owner of the site.
Though it is not necessarily something I would do on any of my own sites. I write commentaries for the purpose of stimulating discussion, and as you've seen here, I don't believe in wasting troll posts that offer an excuse to explore another angle of the subject. Plus, if I wasn't prepared to deal with hate, I would not be posting on the net at all, as someone will hate you, no matter what position you take on any topic.
About the legal issues he speaks of, that actually does have to do with the very unsporting act of Flayrah threatening to sue Ahmar just for mentioning this site in the article. This caused him to censor my commentary in an almost comically ineffective way, which I didn't find objectionable. But again, that is not something I would do on my own site. If I want to tell my readers about something that happened at Flayrah, I'll not only say it happened on Flayrah, but link to it as well. And, of course, I afford Flayrah the same courtesy to mention my sites and link to them all they want, without fear of legal action. Not that there is anything in this common net behavior that one could actually sue over, but apparently Ahmar is not aware of that.
Apologies if Flayrah did not actually threaten to sue The Furry Times. This is just what I heard from Ahmar, and because of his head injury, he seems to have a tendency to exaggerate things in his mind, particularly where threats are concerned. But I think it can at least be safely assumed that something that was said by Flayrah's representative gave Ahmar a panic attack, and that is what's fueling the item Sonious linked.
I apologize personally to Sonious for his responses being blocked. If I'd known it was him being censored I would have invited him to return to our old stomping ground of Live Journal sooner. Since I am enduring the same humiliation at Dogpatch, I know just how bad it feels to be silenced like that.
I certainly don't see anything hateful in what Sonious is attempting to post. However, it is possible that Sonious may have been marked as a hater because of his ultimatum to Foxler on YouTube, which totally crossed the line of respect for human rights. But that seems a long shot to me, as I don't even know if Ahmar saw that exchange.
My subsequent commentaries on Furry Times haven't been archived at LJ yet, but I will be putting them there as soon as possible so that comments may be posted.
I did discuss the use of the word “Zealot” with Equivamp on LJ, and from that discussion I decided no one who wasn't there observing the ongoing war between Zydexx and Ash M Cairo (who was running Burned Fur 2 at the time) is ever going to understand why I refer to both of them as being zealots for keeping the war going, long after there was any relevance to it.
I replaced it with the term “Obsessive,” though a more appropriate term might be “Fanatic.” But those are not really any easier to understand.
It really didn't matter which side either of them was on. They were part of a contingent in the fandom that was insisting that everyone still had to take a position on the issues, which would have no other consequence but to decide which side they would be attacked by. Thus, a Burned Fur zealot at that time was not someone on one side or the other, but one who insisted you had to take a side.
Sonious was there at the time, and he may or may not remember the Bananar account Xydexx created to troll me. It's linked in the LJ version of the commentary.
Yes, what happened to 2 Gryphon and RMFC were the result of terrorist attacks, and why this was a terrorist attack is actually the subject of the entire commentary. Basically I'm saying we owe this entire mess to the influence of The Antifa Furs, and Antifa is on the fast track to being labeled a terrorist organization. They have, in fact, enveloped the entire fandom in a state of terror.
That's why the commentary begins with the arrival of The Antifa Furs, and ends up summing the whole business up as the fandom selling itself out to a Communist terrorist group because of a phony Nazi scare.
What's more, I've heard that RMFC is not the only convention to be targeted for the same shut down tactics. The scuttlebutt is that Califur is the next likely target.
So, yeah, I'm not exaggerating about the terrorist thing. You don't need to drive a truck bomb into a building to create a state of terror that will destroy a con, or get a comedian fired. All it really takes is one well placed tweet, with enough people waiting to fan it into a devastating explosion.
As for if Burned Fur was a war, some quotes from the site of Simo, another oppressive Burned Fur obsessive/fanatic/zealot/never let this thing die kind of guy. “It was in Gallery #25 that Chandler issued his "declaration of war": the "Six Shallow Graves" editorial.” “After the publication of his editorial in Gallery, a nasty flame war broke out.” “To end the war, the Lifestylers and Fans worked out a mutually agreeable modus vivendi.” “Unfortunately, the peace would not last. It was the fall of 1998 and the Great Internet Furry Flame War was about to begin.” “Once a name became attached to Trotman's document, the flame war would erupt in full force. That name was "Burned Fur".”
Yes, it was a war – a flame war. It is referred to over and over again in historical accounts as “The Burned Fur War.” And yes, what we are involved in now is a similar type of war. But instead of fans vs, lifestylers, this time it's Antifa/SJW's vs. the fandom itself. And everyone in the fandom who doesn't get their news spoon fed to them by Dogpatch and Flayrah (who are not seen to be on the side of the fandom) knows it on some level. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/23226816/
Ok, 3 minutes into Sonious' 3rd video he starts in with the attacks. Not that I blame him for being angry. I was pretty pissed myself when this same thing happened to me at Dogpatch. But I can see how Ahmar might actually take Sonious' words and tone of voice as a death threat in his current state of mind, which I will give Sonious the benefit of the doubt that he did not know about, as I've only just learned about it myself. Though I have been suspecting something was wrong for some time now. And you can see by subsequent items on his site, I accidentally triggered him myself.
For the record, to suggest Ahmar is into defending The Furry Raiders would be extremely inaccurate. I've observed that he appears to be scared to death of them. What happened was that he asked me to join Furry Times as a writer, and this particular commentary was just the first thing I wrote after I agreed to his request. It should be clear that the opinions expressed in the commentary are mine, not Ahmar's. Thus he has no reason to be censoring responses simply because they run contrary to my position.
I think it is important to realize that, given the record number of views the commentary got, Sonious was probably only one of many trying to post responses, some of which were, in all likelihood, extremely hateful. Sonious may have gotten unjustly lumped in with others who were actually posting hate comments. Or maybe he felt allowing one comment from Sonious was enough. I don't know, and I'm not going to bother Ahmar at this point about it, as I fear he may be pushing his health to a dangerous level because of the sudden and unexpected increase of traffic and criticism of his site.
So, please, leave the guy alone so he can recover. And if you must be bugging somebody, please do come over to LJ and bug me. I'll be happy to receive all comments, positive or negative. Or, if you like, you may open a discussion of my commentary here. But if you link it or copy it, please use the LJ version with my linked references. The html formatted version is available upon request if it will save somebody some work.
Yeah… Flayrah never threatened to sue Ahmar, or anyone. I'm not sure where that particular gem came from. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's someone I want to get news from... We already have a president in the US that does this, I think that's more than enough of that.
In the third video I noted that he was in over his head after reading his reasoning for locking his comment. After hearing about the fear he has over social engagement I would triple down on that assessment. There was actually a line I had removed from the article in regards of "If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen" but I felt it was a bit judgmental, he should have the right to run a blog. As long as he realizes that is what it is.
But he's kind of wearing his heart on his sleeve for his goals. He's trying to take political advantage of the situation to get people who are writers to jump ship to his site, and apparently failed to do so. (Fred Patten, yourself, etc). He literally put up a news-byte saying he was linking himself to get himself more views. He also has several articles where he randomly bitches about how poor this pays.
I mean, yeah, it doesn't pay well at all, but I'm not going to bring that up in an article unrelated. And not getting paid isn't an excuse for poor quality if one is passionate about it.
But I'll just see it as that, a blog.
If he wants us to leave him alone, then I would ask that he no longer posts anything on his site as a newsbyte source. That's what got our attention, and so taking a break from that will probably lower the stress.
I agree. What he's doing is blogging. He's basically doing the same stuff I do on my blog or on Facebook. Not to put down blogging, but now that I think about it, the only difference I see between what he does and what Flayrah and Dogpatch do is that the latter two are team efforts, which makes for more expansive blogging in a variety of styles. But both are still over-glorified blogs.
Let's see now. Who would I want to get news from? Site A, B or C? None of the above, really.
I think, if we look at what is perhaps the most professional news outlet to tackle the recent situation, Rolling Stone, we see that their professionalism led them to consider the staggering lack of evidence to substantiate The Furry Raiders extreme hate-worthiness. Which of our three news outlets was that professional? None of the above. All went with reporting on and fanning hysteria as if hysteria was fact.
Which one did not give me a hard time for insisting on looking deeper into the situation? Which thought the service of truth even worth getting a reporter inside The Furry Raiders? Well, you could say The Furry Times got one in, but then turned around and labeled their own reporter with the same unreasoning hysteria.
Considering this universal disregard for truth that left individuals in the fandom with no choice but to do their own investigating, I'd say any of these 3 news outlets would have to have a lot of damn gall to even raise the question of professionalism.
Which is why I referred to what we do as "Super Blogs" in my video. Huffington Post is technically a "Super Blog" as well.
In my opinion, the Daily Beast did the best coverage of the Furry Raiders situation outside of the fandom. Not putting down the Rolling Stone or anything, but they took a guy at his word and didn't investigate how their actions may contradict their words. Actions and words are always important to take together.
My hope is to point out that if Ahmar's goal is to present non-fiction items to the community in a factor that would have him be seen as a place to pick up news, then he must— at the very least— meet the standards that he expects from other fandom organizations.
My hope is to point out he can't possibly accomplish such a thing, as he doesn't have a team. A situation I often find myself in and know well. Therefore, any such goal would be unrealistic, and not worth striving for, since I've seem posted many times in the last few days, "Who the heck are Dogpatch and Flayrah." And, "Who needs a Furry news site?"
I think it would be more practical to encourage Ahmar to give up any such sense of competition and to see that his most practical course of action is to embrace the art of blogging, the demands of which are much more realistic considering his resources, and success in which would be more personally rewarding.
The Ursa Major Awards get similar posts. Despite them being around since 2001, there are a discouraging number of posts in furry fandom of, "What the hell are the Ursa Major Awards? I never heard of them."
Fred Patten
Yeah, we have one of the most remarkably uninformed fandoms. There is practically nothing of any importance to the fandom that can realistically be regarded as common knowledge. I suppose this is because there is no one thing every one reads.
I would actually disagree in that if someone is reading their news from a variety of sources they are more informed.
If I consume CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC's versions of the same story then I know the facts and the different variants of spin surrounding the topics.
A diverse pool is needed. The more competition there is the better it is. Mr. Wolf and yourself seem to be leaning on the whole "there should be one person/group" in charge of information.
Just because a furry fan doesn't know some things about a community conflict of old doesn't mean they're uninformed. Perhaps it doesn't impact them. Perhaps information regarding how to use the latest art site is more prudent to them and what they are in the fandom for.
The news should always serve the community, it is not up to the community to serve the news.
You mean the facts and spin held by TV execs in New York, New York, and Philadelphia? ;-)
If you're sticking to English with some video content, you could add BBC News and The Guardian. More generally, there are many good newspaper-based sources, which tend to provide depth.
I recommend BBC News. I look at it at least once a day, as Flayrah readers should know from the BBC News reports of animal interest that I add to our Newsbytes. I'll check The Guardian.
Fred Patten
FWIW, The Guardian (I visited for a news IT meetup) has anthropomorphic pigs in the foyer. I was confused until I heard about their "Three Little Pigs" advert. They have an impressive story workflow backend – as you'd hope, since they presumably threw lots of money at it.
Well, just examples, the long of the short it. The more information one has the better. Even if that information is just the way in which a segment is informed.
Personally I'm starting to judge press organizations about the way they cover fandom events. Because if they can't cover furries right, then how can I trust them on far more harmful and just as secretive organizations?
I think what I was getting at was less about people getting their news from a variety of sources, which is of course a good idea, but more that the majority of The Furry Community is not concerned with what Flayrah, Dogpatch and Furry Times refer to as "news" at all. News to most Furries would be who is the top rated fursuit maker, when is "Zootopia 2" coming out, what is the next convention coming up, etc.
And, in the absence of actual news that is relevant to Furry fans, the 3 so called Furry news services being discussed will try to manufacture news by dwelling on the latest gossip about people in the community who are not actually involved in creating Furry entertainment. That makes them more like Supermarket Tabloids than reputable news outlets. And most Furries just don't have a use for this.
A surprising amount of Furries don't know who 2 Gryphon is, because 2 is not in the business of marketing anything Furry. Foamy The Ranting Squirrel is actually more relevant to Furry Fandom than 2 The Ranting Gryphon. But we don't hear all that much about Foamy in the so called "news" outlets.
Taking this current article as an example, I'm kind of central to it, along with Sonius and Ahmar. Basically 3 furs who know how to make good fly by night tabloid drama of no consequence to Furry fans at all. So this is a fluff piece, space filler, LOL fodder, but not in any sense serious Furry news.
Why are any of us worth serious space in a real Furry news publication if we're not doing anything Furry? I don't know right off hand if Ahmar does anything that could be considered actually Furry. Sonious has a Fursuit and makes YouTube videos. That's somewhat news worthy. I've got an ongoing Furry net serial with hundreds of episodes and hundreds of pieces of art, which is something that other furs are able to get their fursonas in and get free art of their characters. That seems pretty news worthy, but none of these 3 "News" outlets seem to think so. The only news outlet that thought that was newsworthy was The Second Life Newser, which might have all three of the outlets in question beat as far as professionalism goes. But still, nobody seems to read that one either.
Basically, unless we cartoon this little disagreement and let our fursonas hash it out, this is not worthy of a Furry fan's attention. And I would be surprised if the majority of furs don't just skip over it to get to Fred Patton's articles, which are the best thing either Flayrah or Dogpatch have going in terms of actual relevant Furry news. That and any other reviews of new Furry movies, games, or other types of Furry entertainment.
I find all this gossip, politics, back-biting and hate-mongering to actually be detrimental to the mental health of anyone who actually does bother to read this stuff. And it certainly is no asset at all to my personal Furry creativity. If anything, it prevents me from creating stuff Furries actually want to see. So I tend to regard the whole business as worse than a waste of time.
Unfortunately, it is easy to get hooked on tabloid non-sense. I find it so much easier to write than Furry fiction. But it's always nagging at the back of my mind that what I'm wasting months at a time on is totally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and I actually owe it more to The Furry Community to be doing that creative anthropomorphic stuff that none of these so-called news outlets think is even worth asking me about.
And I wonder sometimes how much this ripples out to other creative types who are also deterred from creating the things that should be Furry news, because they're too caught up in all this fandom politics BS. And also if the people in this fandom who are more successful, like Fred Patten, are so specifically because they avoid this trash news and refuse to get involved in it, because they know this is not how one proves one's self relevant to The Furry Community, and they've got better things to do.
Now I'm thoroughly depressed. See, this is what happens when you introduce the concept of professionalism to people who are making an occupation out of Furry BS.
I didn't come to The Furry Community to be a professional commentator on Furry BS. I came here with a dream of creating something wonderful. But some times I think the people who told me I came to the wrong place for that were right.
So arguably "The Furry Community" can be divided into two segments: (1) What might be called "the inner circle"; those who organize the furry conventions, follow the furry newssites like Dogpatch Press, Flayrah, WikiFur, FurryFandom.es, etc., run the furry specialty publishers like FurPlanet Productions and Thurston Howl Publications, administer the furry literary awards, etc., and (2) "everybody else"; the fans who attend the furry conventions to wear fursuits or tails, party & dance, and have no interest in who puts on the furry events that they enjoy.
And the second segment is far larger than the first. That's what enables us to claim that there are 50,000 or 100,000 furry fans, when if you counted up all of those in "the inner circle", you'd be hard-pressed to get 1,000.
That's harsh.
Fred Patten
It's more of a continuum. There are people who drop in here from time to time, and people who visit every day. Some or on convention boards, some work as staff, still more volunteer, others are regular attendees, while still more might visit once or twice before moving on.
Any of these might be called furry fans - and the extent to which they are involved in one area might have only a passing relation to their involvement in another, depending on their interests and abilities at the time.
If you were to use those breakpoints, though, I would up the numerical estimates by a factor of ten. There are many organisations out there, and most fans only have time to be involved in a few.
Your comments have not been a waste of time to me as they do provide an insight into concerns that you have.
What is a waste of time is if someone made a comment for a site and then it was deleted before post.
This is what happened to me, which is why I felt it important to share. So others didn't waste their time like I had and would have their words censored.
And clearly according to the comments sections, I'm not the only one who had "wasted their time". Others also had their comments removed.
If Dog Patch does this as well then that is a shame, maybe one can follow my example and record these incidences and bring them forward so that people can address this.
We are an artistic community at heart, one that covers some adult ground, so censorship I think is an important topic to the community. Some may disagree with that, as is their right. But you didn't complain about it when Ahmar was throwing shade at Flayrah for 'committing censorship' particularly as a footer of your own article.
Dogpatch Press has never censored anything that I know of. Many of my comments to posts have gotten a "Your comment is awaiting moderation" message and not been added for several hours, so I assume that Patch has the power to censor and may censor some others' comments. But all my comments have been posted eventually, and I've never heard of any comments made to my reviews not getting posted.
Fred Patten
Well, if you're at Dogpatch, and you see Kylie talking s--t about me, and you don't see me telling my side of the story, it should be pretty obvious I'm being censored. Actually, Blacklisted might be more accurate.
http://dogpatch.press/2017/04/28/collapse-of-rmfc-problem/#comment-39059
And my discussion with Patch on the subject went like this.
https://www.facebook.com/perri.prinz/posts/10213080694762609?comment_id=10213082...
I don't know. Patch has never had a word to say to me that was not in the rude, non-constructive tone of a hateful troll. And the only reason I'm not making as big a deal out of my being censored as Sonious is, is because I don't want anything to do with that fur and the horrid vibes he gives off. So I don't feel any great loss at not being able to participate in his site.
Plus, it was just as easy for me to ban him from my Facebook page. So we're even.
I didn't talk sh-t, sweetie. I handed the truth off.
you are a member of the raiders
you were at the time a member of the sunreavers
you did post about me what you posted.
at no point is any of that a lie.
I admit I didn't read the footer. I assumed it was the standard "The opinions expressed in the above commentary are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The Furry Times." Which I was expecting, since Ahmar and I had an extreme difference of opinion on The Furry Raiders.
If it was my site I'd retract it with an apology. But it's not my site. And Ahmar seems too prone to take things the wrong way. So I don't want to be telling him what to do.
In future I highly doubt I will write for anyone's site but my own. If you look at the article as I present it on my own LJ, it's more than a commentary. It's an educational work of art. It walks the reader through everything I experienced that shaped my conclusions. I can't do that sort of thing on anyone else's site. Nor can I control how long they keep comments open, nor prevent them from tacking stuff I might or might not approve of onto my work.
He also lost about half of my paragraph breaks. But again I just decided to let it slide, because it would have been too tedious trying to get it fixed. I much prefer to do my own blogging so that I can fix mistakes or makes suggested changes instantly.
Really, every blogger is just as much a news service as anyone else. If I'm not getting paid to write for somebody else's blog, why am I giving away the views I could be generating for my own blog? That's the only pay one gets for being in the blog business.
I guess I did it this time just to help out a friend who seemed desperate for content. But from now on I'll produce things on my own blog and just let others link them. Assuming I continue to write blog commentaries. I'm not exactly liking where I see the fandom going. I don't expect I'll enjoy documenting it's downfall.
Might this be a good occasion to invite people to contribute to my furry news website, FurryFandom.Es
I think a site that sticks to some form of journalistic standards goes beyond blogging, regardless of the amount of published entries. Journalistic integrity / standards is more defining than amount of people working for it, and they're not necessarily linked. If numbers was the metric, Buzzfeed would be king of the hill.
Might help to have an article up more recent, Mike. ;)
Still a good looking website. I bookmarked it.
Flayrah is a form of citizen journalism, as well as community journalism by its focus on the furry community.
I've never liked the term "blog", because it's bound up with the concept of personal opinion. While Flayrah has always published content featuring such opinions, I think the majority of our output should not be opinion-based. It's the difference between reporting the news and reporting your views. To this end, I regularly urge Flayrah's contributors to express their opinion in the comments, on an equal basis, rather than the body text.
It's also important to separate the style of content from the mechanism. Most blogs are presented in the form of dated posts with comments; but I'd argue that not all websites which use this mechanism of content organization are blogs. I've actually looked at creating a front page which is more topic/section-oriented to present stories (a-la BBC News) - it's just not been a huge priority.
holy hyperbole, batman!
I emailed Ahmar twice asking him why he didn't disclose that Perri is a member, if not the spokeswoman, of the Furry Raiders. Even asked him on twitter numerous times. asked him if he has permission to post the copyrighted art from artdecade and others that he did. he also posted a comment from Mr. Patten.
never got a response. at all.
also, Perri, I don't think you'll like this, but such is life. https://twitter.com/JunoCoyote/status/862813410467078149
No, Ahmar Wolf never asked my permission to post my e-mail to him on his Furry Times. I don't mind; I would have given permission if he had asked. I didn't say anything to him that I wanted kept private. But he never asked.
Fred Patten
Hi, Kylie. I'm the chair of Tarpaw Furmeet.
Frankly, I don't care what alt-right, alt-fur, or other nazi sympathizers and apologists think about our recent statement in response to their plan to try and use our event as a recruiting ground.
It's our house. That shit won't fly in it.
They can either come and play by our rules, or star as far away as possible.
Frankly, I'm hoping for the latter.
Hi fatbadjah
I saw your statements on twitter. I loved every second of it. I applaud your efforts big time.
The worst anthropomorphic/talking animal novel that I've ever read (in my opinion) is "Solarion" by Edgar Fawcett. There seems to be a similarity in the way that Fawcett depicts all atheists as evil Satanists there, taking orders directly from Satan (the noble dog Solarion opposes them -- well, he doesn't oppose them as much as wring his paws and bewail their nastiness), and Ahmar Wolf is reported here as defining "zealot" as an atheist.
Fred Patten
My word. Not Ahmar's. And I have indeed encountered many a zealot for Atheism.
I might also suggest that an Antifa is a zealot for Nazism. As with the case of Xydexx and Burned Fur, when one's religion depends on the existence of something that's become extinct, one must become over zealous in labeling innocent people as being said extinct thing, and encouraging others to see them that way as well.
Once again, zealotry means "with extreme zeal" or "Fanatical enthusiasm" meaning a positive relationship to the noun it is related with.
A religious zealot is one who practices religion with fanaticism.
An atheist zealot is one who holds atheistic view points with fanaticism.
A religious zealot, by definition, cannot be an atheist. That is a contradiction.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=zealotry
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=zealot
So that means, you believe that Antifa are anti-Nazi zealots, not Nazi zealots.
By saying "I might also suggest that an Antifa is a zealot for Nazism" you are saying (replacing the word zealot with its meaning):
"I might also suggest that an Antifa is a fanatical enthusiast for Nazism"
Atheism is a religious cult. And please don't waste my time with the ridiculous idea that an Atheist is just someone who doesn't believe in God. One does not require an ism, nor a label of any kind, to not believe in God. One needs merely to not give a flip. And one who does not give a flip does not bother sticking any kind of label on himself, let alone an ism that entails prescribed forced believes in a scientifically invalid idea that something which can not be proven one way or the other does not exist.
Antifa are not anti-Nazi at all. They are in the business of actively creating Nazis where none existed, because they can not exist without them. Just as Xydexx was, and for all I know still is in the business of actively creating Burned Furs. Plus, ask anyone who knows anything about Antifa but is not part of the cult who the real Nazis are. They'll point you right back at Antifa.
Fawcett also strongly implies that all scientists = atheists = Satanists. "Solarion" is a hysterical Victorian-era anti-science, pro-Christanity polemic, with an otherwise-saintly (if he had a soul) talking dog bewailing that he's been made by Godless science, and he doesn't have a soul because God didn't give animals souls.
Fred Patten
In fact the only reason I am here is to comment on the article. Other than that you can remove my account as I doubt I would ever be back. So it has come to this making fun of another site. I think the credibility of this site is fading fast in the wake of this article. Which has so far caused my readership to double, and the article mentioned now has over 2,000 views. No site is perfect, you can not name one that hasn't made mistakes. Besides I did not say the editor of Dogpatch was guilty of fraud, I only said accused of fraud. Then posted the link, which I will agree is old. But I also remember someone saying there will be an article giving Patrick Lane's side, so what did we get an article you could find in a Google search on events that took place. Not a word from Patrick Lane, not even a denial...at least I haven't seen one.
Besides I need to make a statement and hope this doesn't get deleted like some of the comments I made on other articles. When I started my blog roughly 10 years ago I had high hopes of everyone helping me trying to gather all the furry news into one place and not what I experienced since. I have reached out multiple times to various sites and the net results were I either get ignored, sworn at or in one case spam attacked. 1800 of them in just 10 minutes. For someone like me who don't want to run a cookie cutter site being shouted by someone who you were paying to write book reviews that you should go to jail, and you weren't violating any laws to begin with. May seem crazy enough but then there is what happened when I sought help from the Furry Writers Guild. Always getting sworn at by it's members in chat, and having my blog called a never ending series of repeated mistakes. No wonder I seek out controversy, it seems no one cares about these subjects at least that is the way I see it. I say what is on my mind, and not hide it behind an invisible wall of rules.
I believe that the lawsuit over Connor Cochran's charges of defamation and fraud against Patrick Lane are currently ongoing. If they are, I would not expect Lane to publicly comment here or in Dogpatch Press before they are over.
Fred Patten
So Patch Packrat is still being sued? I would have thought, given the events as described by Equivamp, that the charges would have been dropped. If Patch is still facing legal action, what he did remains a subject of curiosity.
This issue was never brought up in the article and thus the comment is not on topic with the issues addressed in the article. It's a non-sequitur.
See this is the difference between journalism and what you are doing: I presented evidence of the activity in question, not just lobbing some baseless accusation and expect everyone will believe it to be true just because I said it. It's called trust. It's something that is earned.
I'll say this, your trust account is overdrawn. I do not believe a word you say. And if you want to have some sort of control over the information in the fandom, then that is a big problem.
It's important not to jump to conclusions about the cause of your troubles. Flayrah has multiple layers of spam protection, and some still slips through from time to time, as anyone who's contributed here for a while knows. Nobody needs to deliberately send spam your way - that just comes from having a site on the Internet with the ability to comment.
As for comment deletion; there are only two people on Flayrah who can do that. I didn't, and I doubt mwalimu did, either. What likely happened is that they were rated down and folded automatically (but could still be clicked to unfold), or didn't post in the first place, or were automatically or manually marked as spam - if so, we'd restore them after noticing.
I admit I was mad at flayrah for the comments that were posted about me.
but after sitting down, thinking on it, I was misplacing my anger.
So I'd like to apologize to you here and now in the open.
Watching "Ahmar Wolf" continue to slide during this crisis is almost sad.
Until the Furry Raiders and RMFC controversy, I thought of him mostly as a bottom-feeding fanboy with a blog whose readership didn't exceed two digits--someone who scoured the net to try and repackage others' work as "news," largely to try and farm clicks for his website and build some sort of credibility for himself. But when RMFC was cancelled, he became more unhinged, unstable, and obsessive, with "Perri Rhoades" feeding him material from the sidelines, almost unaware that he was Rhoades' sockpuppet. Last weekend, after "Ahmar" took a sound thrashing from Dogpatch Press' editor, Rhoades fed him an old article about the Peter S. Beagle lawsuit, insinuating fraud.
"Ahmar," without doing so much as a simple Google search instead jumps on the article, writing on Facebook "Holy cow. I just posted that on Flayrah. Let the fun begin." So I left a comment on "Furry Times," correcting him...
...and it was deleted. Heaven forbid the facts get in the way of a blogger's (failed) witch hunt.
Even if we disregard his "let the fun begin" remarks, which just smacks of a troll about to farm lulz, "Ahmar" is just trying to get attention at this point in time, crying in multiple Facebook groups about how horribly he's being treated. He thinks that the RMFC collapse/Dogpatch article is his golden ticket to fandom fame and a means to make his blog the authoritative furry news source, unaware that it's largely making him the object of fandom ridicule. It's like he's trying to provoke more and more to get people to pay attention to him, as evidenced by his public Facebook posts where he gloats about his (wait for it...) eight hundred visits a day since Flayrah started calling him out.
RMFC is dead and buried. Let "Ahmar" and his blog fade back into obscurity with it.
To be fair, "eight hundred visits" from Flayrah is kicking ass for Flayrah.
We might even be up to quadruple digits for our own visits!
It's doubtful Ahmar's site gets 800 visits in a whole month. Similarweb.com shows "not enough data to track". As usual he is lying to puff up his spam farm.
July 04, 2016: I am a blogger who currently averages 700 views a day on my Furry Times blog
LOL
So, 801 visits later, but, was scrolling through the, uh, Linkin Park videos, Watch Mojo lists, stuff that was old on r/Zootopia last year, and, uh, that's porn, there, wow, and the general valiant struggle against the English language that is "The Furry Times" and, hey, give the devil his due, this one's got a point.
Full disclosure: in my year(ish) in the wilderness, I submitted my top ten list to [a][s], and I got a very slow response (already just Twittered it), before a rejection (which was fair; it was a long shot, and not a good fit either topically or tonally with [a][s]). I wrote up a bit about Zootopia which was more fitted there, but I never got a response back; I didn't take that personally either, as Ahmar is about right here; we kind of have a dead shark on our hands.
As recently as April 3 of this year, one of the founders of [a][s] is working on an "[adjective][species] Project" called "The Hybrid Award for Excellence in Furry Non-fiction". And the [a][s] Twitter still seems to be maintained by someone. The site might just be trying to go in a different direction.
I am glad that the Ursa Major Awards have added a category for Best Non-Fiction of the Year. But this is just one award per year. I assume the [a][s] award can be presented several times per year.
Fred Patten
Plus it would have awards for different categories of nonfiction!
That is very cool. So as far as I know we have
- The Coyotl Awards - focus on fandom for excellence in furry fiction, voted only by the Furry Writers Guild
- The Ursa Majors - focus not exclusively on fandom, for excellence in any media, voted by the public
The Ursas can be "brigaded" if it's a worry (but campaigning is encouraged), it votes on some popular but dubious stuff (as if Disney will ever care...)
It is interesting to see they are choosing a jury for this award.
The Cóyotl Awards are not only for works within furry fandom, although those usually win. One of the Best Novel (for last year) nominees being voted on now is "Memoirs of a Polar Bear" by Yoko Tawada, a mainstream novel.
Fred Patten
You know what, if I'm being completely honest, the win I most want to see this year is the Zootopia art book in that category. I have no idea what'll actually win, but the artbook is, you know, the only one that's actually furry instead of about people who like to talk about how special they are, and maybe furry on the side.
Great timing with the award too; wait until the year all the furry news sites are blithering about themselves and each other.
I can't come in out of the cold and distract everyone with movie news this time, so you'll all have to figure out how important this argument is yourself.
You're like the out of touch music critic guy who lists Coldplay for best local concert.
Well, they were about fifteen minutes' walk from my local furmeet… back in 1998. (Not that I attended it then.)
Oh, God, I live in OK.
Let's not get into my local concerts.
To be fair though, I abstained from the nomination vote; I don't like the category, but I didn't actually vote for Coldplay.
Mr. Wolf made his rebuttal post here: https://furrytimes.net/2017/05/12/my-rebuttal-to-the-flayrah-article/
Was thinking about just block-quoting the whole thing, but I respect the idea of copy rights and believe if people want to read such things they could go there.
He spends like two paragraphs talking about his interpretation of the article. The rest basically, all I can say is, man you need to learn how to "plead the 5th". Don't bring up all the controversies you had in your history. Your issue with your previous hired writer have nothing to do with the conversation we are having. The same as Patch's legal issue that was commented on here. They have nothing to do with the current conversation which is about furry community news organizations and their uses of censorship.
When I see you bringing up all this mud on yourself, and then claim the damage being done to you is being caused by others, it makes me realize you're doing more damage to yourself without you realizing you are doing so. You're literally stabbing yourself and then trying to scream that someone cut you. Perhaps you should take some time and take a step back and do some evaluation. What do I need to say? How do I need to say it? Is this grievance I have relative to the topic at hand?
Because this is actual advise, if you allow yourself to get hindered by the slights in your life and bring them up at every opportunity, even when the story doesn't call for it, you're not writing about story— you are indeed making yourself the story.
Bragging about numbers doesn't help either. Numbers are fickle. One day things may double. But the idea is do you keep going even when they drop? Because trust me, they are going to drop once all the buzz around this dies down. For example, the RMFC controversy caused my Youtube numbers to go up, and now that it has passed they dropped again. So if I only worried about numbers, then guess what? I'd want things that happened at RMFC to happen more often correct?
That's gross. You realize how gross that is right? If I could exchange the views I had for that video for there to have been a more peaceful resolution to the situation where a convention wasn't lost I would have gladly exchanged it for something as fickle as numbers.
But since you've stated multiple times the numbers are the most important things to you, then the question is: how far will you go to get them?
While I will agree this article does feature me posting about my own experiences with the site, so some could see it (and have seen it) as a 'selfish' article. The purpose of the article was as a 'buyers beware' type of item rather than personal anger at having my comments removed. To let others know that if they see a controversial article on your site that if they choose to comment on it, they may not be heard. Time is a very precious commodity and people want to use it to focus on things that won't be a waste of their time.
In that vain, I'll end with a compliment. At least you started your follow-up article with the reply section locked so there wasn't the illusion that community engagement is encouraged. I'd rather comments be locked than it being pseudo-locked. Best to have no one comment then some be heard and others literally waste their time.
Half of me wants to get involved in all these messes and the other half just wants to hide away until everything goes quiet again. There's basically nowhere at the moment where I can get some nice peace and engage in fun stuff. When did Furry Times even become something people discussed? It was just ignored for years and now suddenly it's a thing? Perhaps after Trump is removed the world will get back to some sort of normalcy. At the moment everyone is just too on edge and eager to get offended and outraged over anything.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
Not offended, nor outraged, just posting observations. You know, that's the scientific thing to do. It was literally an experiment, complete with repeating the experiment to see if the results were consistent.
I was not specifically referring to you. It was referring to the current political and cultural climate where that is the response to everything. Yeah, it happened here on Flayrah but it's happening everywhere else.
From what I can recall (I read the original article a few days back and some of the comments today), I didn't have a problem with the your piece. Flayrah has certainly let people say what they wanted, though I think it would've been better to close the previous discussion as I think it was more harmful than constructive. It also showed again that star ratings of comments are not good as they just reward the majority opinion. If it's going to continue there should probably be some system to prevent abuse, such as only allowing registered users to rate comments and only accounts which maybe have some sort of activity.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
Instead of a star rating system with a karma system that I don't think accomplishes what it means to, might as well be able to mark comments "agree"/"disagree" or things like "funny", "thoughtful", "off topic", etc.
Agree/disagree would make some sense, hiding comments doesn't really. But in the end, what is the purpose behind it? Does it matter how many people agree or disagree with a specific comment? It doesn't benefit someone reading comments and someone who is commenting will know if people are agreeing or not by the responses. In fact, a disagree/agree button might discourage proper comments in favour of the easy way out.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
Or it might discourage discussions you think should be closed for being harmful. Or both. Or neither, I think people here are gonna comment if they have something to say, and rate the post and move on if they don't. Really the point, I think, would be to replace the simple starring system with more clear reasons for how they're being rated.
Some people comment even when they don't have anything to say. (Like this comment.)
Fred Patten
What happened before were not discussions. They were people ganging up and insulting one another.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
And if they'd been left there, displayed in full, the page would have been twice as long and everyone would have have to have read them all to get the good ones. Most people do not have the time, and will just give up entirely, which is not what we want.
That's part of what the ratings are meant to do. Sometimes people just want to say "I disagree", or "me too!" - and when the number of participants grows large, it's better for the sake of the conversation if that's expressed in aggregate via the rating.
Similarly, you say hiding comments "doesn't really make sense", but that depends on what you want to get out of the comments. If you want to read every single comment all the time, by all means, register an account and disable rating-based comment visibility. It's entirely optional. Pages will even load faster!
But most readers are just dropping by, and for them, I believe a filter helps to give them more of the good stuff "at a glance", especially after a few days of discussion and resulting evaluation - both from regulars and others.
We could do even better there, by highlighting "the best" comments up top, but that requires a bit more thought.
But that's not getting to the good stuff, that's the problem. It's highlighting the majority opinion and suppressing dissent. It's essentially designed to produce an echo chamber which is one of the major problems with the algorithmic, social-media style internet.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
I agree. Plus, since it doesn't fold responses to folded comments, people need to read the folded comments anyway if they want to understand what "the good stuff" is talking about.
Well, it might. A faded parent does impact its children's visibility; it's equal to a single vote of the parent's final score, including the modifications from its parent and the poster's average rating.
A folded comment is equivalent to a vote of 2 or less - but without further votes, such a parent only causes a child to fold if the child poster's average rating is also in the vicinity of 2.
Most users have an average rating of 3 or above, which means their replies will never start folded, even with the worst possible parent. This gives them the chance to salvage problematic threads, if they see fit. A top-level comment also has the equivalent of a vote of 3, so it'll only fold instantly if your average rating is 1. (Beware, though, as making poor top-level comments is a great way to lower your rating.)
As for context - yes, sometimes. But often, good comments stand alone; and if not, the others are just a click away.
The truth is, GreenReaper, I think you're the only person who understands what the hell is going on with the folding comment section. I'm not even talking about the reasons for or against it; the sheer mechanics of it are mind-boggling.
Balderdash - the source fits on one page! Admittedly, with lots of three-letter variables…
The rest, as they say, is obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art. Alas, not everyone is an artist.
Nor is everyone really interested in comment chains that go on and on and on ...
Fred Patten
You seem to believe that every opinion is of equal value. But I don't think that's true. Some opinions have a negative impact on specific groups, or those with certain values, and I'd expect them to rate accordingly; but in other cases they're just poorly thought-out or based on flawed evidence (think creationism, anti-vaxxers).
Often these are the most extreme or simplistic positions, which tend to be alluring to those who know nothing about a subject and are looking for a shortcut to base actions on. That's what makes them dangerous. You're right to fear an echo chamber; but that comes about when people are unable to express their opinion at all, not when they're unable to get a positive rating on that opinion from the majority.
I also disagree with the implication that people vote solely on the opinion (if any) expressed by the commenter. There is great variation in the ratings received by individuals expressing similar views - indeed, between individual comments by the same person. That's down to variation in the quality of the arguments employed, the tone used, relevance to the conversation at hand, the subtlety of application, consideration for exceptions, and so on.
'Opinions' are most likely to be hidden if they are expressed poorly, in an uncivil or overly-personal manner, or raised repetitively in unrelated discussions. Such comments are, at best, a waste of time and should be discouraged.
Green, I don't mean to be rude, but anyone can look at this page and see what you're saying is bogus. It only takes 2 trolls to come in here and make somebody totally invisible, regardless of how well that person writes or how significant what they write is. Like Sonious says, if you want this site to only present one side, you should make that clear on the front page so people don't waste their time.
But, in the case of this article, it's not even censorship, it's blacklisting. Which, of course, you're within your rights to do on a private site. But have the guts to be honest about it, rather than trying to justify it with statistical BS.
I'd rather be banned outright like I am at Dogpatch than be encouraged to keep writing for a forum that has no intention of allowing both sides of an issue to be fairly presented. If I'd known I had no chance at all of being heard I could have spared 2 months of my life, and maybe have lived a little longer.
Now will you please just ban me so I'll never be tempted to waste my time here again?
You know, you could try a little self control. That works too. Just a thought.
I'm afraid you're going to have to explain how you define self-control. I'm an intellectual writer trying to convey serious ideas. I spend hours composing this stuff, trying to make difficult ideas clear. In general I don't cuss people out. I try to respond to the most intense mocking with a bit of humor rather than vitriol, but nobody here seems capable of cracking a smile, let alone considering the possibility that they might be wrong about something. And even when I'm trying to agree and be magnanimous, there is no friendliness here at all.
I have lived on this Earth more than twice as long as these idiots who are mocking me. I've been told I'm a person of some writing skill and worthwhile insight. I'm accustomed to being respected, at least for that much. Under the circumstances, you have never seen self-control such as I have displayed here. And I doubt very much you will ever see it again.
Oh, I have a feeling I'll see plenty of it, Perri.
Nah, I'll leave you to the preferred commentary of my trolls.
Unless one of you is coming to me for an interview about Spectral Shadows (and I'm sure it will be a cold day in hell when that happens) I do not ever want to hear about Flayrah again.
Notifications off. I'm outta here.
In the interest of fair play, I was going to go into my "why not submit a story" spiel, but, also giving you the benefit of the doubt, I'll skip it.
Honestly, good luck with the notifications, though.
"I'm afraid I'm too dense to understand what self-control means. I'm a pseudo-intellectual troll trying to undermine serious discussion. I spend hours composing this stuff, trying to be difficult. In general I deserve to be cussed out. I deserve the most intense mocking with humor and vitriol, and everybody here is smiling about me, considering the possibility that one day I might realize I'm wrong about everything. And when I'm trying to be disagreeable and malicious, I deserve no friendliness at all.
I have wasted my life on this Earth like an idiot and you should mock me for it. I've been told I'm a person of poor writing skill and worthless insight. I'm accustomed to being disrespected, at least if I can force anyone to pay attention. Under the circumstances, you have never had any reason to expect self-control that I'm incapable of displaying. And I doubt very much you will ever see it."
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/1c/3c/c7/1c3cc703277f9e9f7bf6b6b0c7252fc2...
Yeah, we're all a bunch of humorless grouches. That's why we pretend to be animals on the Internet and go watch kid's cartoons in theaters and share our thoughts on them. We hate fun around here, that should probably be somewhere on the front page.
"Green, I'm the rudest troll on your site, and myself and my trashy friend from Furry Times are 2 trolls who show why it helps to have folded comments. We have nothing significant to say and this site makes that clear so it people don't waste their time.
In the case of this article, my comments are such trash it makes ignoring me make sense, which of course you're within your rights to do on a private site.
I should be banned outright but I'm still here taking advantage of your generous tolerance for my ridiculous bullshit and whining. I should have spared everyone's time.
Now I need to go away and never be tempted to waste your time here again."
Yes, two votes will fold a comment with default karma on a top-level post: (3+3+1+1)/4 = 2.
It takes one to fold you - (2+3+(1))/3 = 2; and three to fold me - (3.8+3+(1+1+1))/5 = 1.96.
That's the impact of accumulated karma. But it's not the end; some do open folded posts and rate it differently if they disagree. The problem is that they may well agree with the initial rating, especially where the commenter confused significance with length, or included personal jibes.
Don't get me wrong: many readers are overly quick to reach for one star… or five. But what dooms a comment is when the more considerate voters find reasons not to give it a three or a four.
I'm not saying all opinions are of equal value but I am saying that the star rating of comments has little relation to their value and is more related to how many people agree with it. If you don't believe that then just look at many people's ratings (I think I've said this before). Yours and Fred's have have a fairly smooth gradient but with a 1 star spike. Others, like Equivamp, Sonius and me, have a strong bimodal distribution.
5 stars: 42% (758)
4 stars: 9% (166)
3 stars: 6% (102)
2 stars: 4% (71)
1 star: 39% (712)
What do you think is more likely. An almost equal number of my comments are well thought out and based on good evidence as are completely flawed and poorly reasoned? Or half the time people agree with me and the other half they don't?
Or you can look through ratings of art or stories on SoFurry or e621. There is only correlation with quality at the extreme ends of the scale, otherwise how highly rated a submission is seems to fit fairly well with how popular the kinks in it are.
"You're right to fear an echo chamber; but that comes about when people are unable to express their opinion at all, not when they're unable to get a positive rating on that opinion from the majority."
An echo chamber occurs when only one opinion is there and there is nothing to counter it. You've said that the ratings hide comments and generally the minority comments, so the ones that would break an echo chamber. If the comments with low ratings are hidden so no one will read them because you say it saves time then either it fails at its task and people read them anyway or it does create an echo chamber because a comment that isn't read has no more impact than a comment that wasn't expressed.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
If people don't agree, then clearly it doesn't have much value to them. And that's part of what the rating is intended to measure. There's no objective "good post" – there are "good opinions" and "good ways of expression" (both relative, but the latter may have more common ground).
Similarly, there's no "right" way to weigh opinion vs. expression. What you can't see, which I looked up yesterday, is the distribution of votes given. Surprise: it's all over the board. Some people have a very clear bimodal distribution, while for others it's closer to a normal distribution – and the mean can vary from around 2.5 stars to 4. Both factors reflect differing voting philosophies.
As for the distribution of received votes, that probably depends on how opinionated your comments are. If you frequently express strong opinions, people will tend to agree or disagree with your comments based on that. Some such comments may be hidden entirely. More frequently, reasonably-expressed but unpopular opinions are faded; hinting at the reception, but still there to be read. It's not the all-or-nothing situation you imply.
The breakpoints were chosen with reference to our historical debates, so as to make it easy to fold posts which nobody credits, but harder if readers are saying "I don't agree, but at least you're arguing well".
I doubt we're going to come to an agreement here, because we seem to fundamentally disagree over the extent to which it's OK to decrease the visibility of expressions of opinion which most people don't agree with.
Hey guys. I just looked at this page on another computer where I wasn't signed in, and I have to say, I love how it looks like I was never here.
The shy part of me thinks that is really great, because I know that later I'm going to feel self-conscious as hell about posting here. So it's kind of nice to know anything I post will be instantly hidden. But, the thought occurs to me to wonder what this is going to look like to any visitors peeking in on this situation. Don't you think it's going to seem just a little hypocritical to have everyone that's visible ragging on Furry Times for censoring comments, when it's quite obvious some folks are just as censored over here?
Also, I fully expect this is someday going to happen to someone like Sonious, who won't hesitate to make a stink about it and call you out for what this karma system really is, a weapon for anyone who has some interest in seeing that a conversation looks one sided.
Also a note for Kylie and Anon. I turned on block visitors when I first posted. Whatever you've been saying I've not been seeing. Gotta admit, knowing you're talking s--t to the wind more than makes up for being censored.
If you had turned it on, you wouldn't have known what I posted. but that's fine.
you said I talked shit. guess what honey:
-you are a member of the furry raiders
-you were President of the sunreavers
-you did post my private facebook page and my amazon to this site.
none of that is talking shit or telling lies. I know you think you're above reproach and your shit doesn't stink? People who live on bullshit mountain typically do. But you're just like the rest of us. I pity you, Perri. I truly and honestly do. Your mother is sick, you feel trapped, etc and yet you're here rustling up the natives and causing problems instead of taking care of her and yourself. You call everyone that doesn't agree with you a terrorist (which is hyperbole) and whine about non-existent antifas (fyi, until you mentioned that name I'd never heard of them. now i'm proud you'd call me that because fighting fascism is as American as apple pie, mom and Captain America!) instead of taking care of her and yourself.
you whine and moan about your disrespect. you want a clue why you're posts don't show up when you're not logged in? because everyone and their mother are downvoting them you want to know why? because everyone's sick of you and your kvetching about censorship that doesn't exist and other bullshit items.
you know, I was angry at Greenreaper and Equivamp at first on that other thread. Why? because i kept myself private for the most part. my facebook was only for family, i'd never gotten around to making one under my female name because I didn't know if anyone would add me and I couldn't tell my family because they'd just ridicule me and hate me. I was mad at Equivamp for disclosing my twitter page because I had finally found my fursona after 18+ years in the fandom and was happy to have a name to reflect that.
but then I thought about it, talked to Equi more and realized that the person I should have been mad at was you. The single greatest thing you did do was take away an identity. you made me below human, in your eyes to prove a point. but the truth is? you just wanted me destroyed so i'd not stand in opposition to you. yiu did the same thing you claimed the people you aren't did to the Jews, to the homosexuals, to the gypsies, to the disabled and to everyone that wasn't those people but wasnt' like them either.
You picked the tiger to mess with, lil bun bun. Because I stand resolute against you and the Raiders ten thousand percent.
See? I kvetched too. and it'll be downvoted. and that's fine.
but you aren't censored here, Perri. and you aren't talked shit about. go take care of yourself and stop trying to fight an imaginary fight.
Nya Nya. Made you get an account.
Now watch this other little trick. I click "Ignore User," and I still won't hear anything you reply to this. And hopefully most everybody else will follow suit when they get tired of your cry-bully whining.
I'm sure your mother was pleased you took time out of her special day to do this. It's good to have priorities.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10209819468833999&set=a.1020892870188538...
as much as I don't like her, I think even I went too far going after her mother.
Please don't bring her mother into this.
You're right, I was out of line there.
Okay, guys, something that's bothering me, especially since this is an article about censorship:
You can totally type out shit; nobody fucking cares.
Um, I care. Just because I don't get an ounce of respect on this site doesn't mean I have to return the sentiment.
https://goo.gl/photos/EMwNvt1DtB4zVaJC8
Ahmar says he doesn't censor.
this is a comment I left on his site yesterday.
https://furrytimes.net/2017/05/12/my-rebuttal-to-the-flayrah-article/
notice that instead of publishing, he just turned comments off?
hypocrites are usually the ones to yell the loudest. just sayin.
Spahmar Wolf's bottom-feeding "journalism" has a new scoop. He's exposing the mean bullies of the "elite" sites who never heard of his and don't give him attention. (Elite means anyone who doesn't suck at "facts" and "english".) So he discovered that sonious is patch, and they even called his landlord to harass him and he's going to complain to the attorney general!
http://archive.is/SlWcO
History repeats again. Like when he was rejected at the Furry Writers Guild and cried about them "attacking" his site with spam.
If pandering for attention doesn't work, try crying victim. If you have no clue about "journalism" and use a head injury as an excuse for being an asshole, try trolling and inventing drama. Another pathetic lolcow has played his part to win 15 minutes of shame.
If Sonious is Patch, that's going to be real awkward for me in the near future.
This is the first that I ever heard of about Sonious being Patch. That's like saying that Kyell Gold is really Uncle Kage.
Fred Patten
I thought Uncle Kage was Dragoneer! In a Jeckle/Hyde way, what with the lab coat and all.
Kage does have several fursonas; or rather, his player has several fursonas – but Kyell isn't one of them.
Nor is Sonious === Patch, unless my eyes deceive me. (Admittedly, my prescription has gotten stronger…)
I don't know how people manage alter-egos. I barely find time to be myself!
I've been trying to figure out what this covent means for days. It's haunting me. In my dreams a sphinx asks me to explain it, and then she kills me because I have no clue.
Comment**, not covent
I would say dreams mean you might want to log off, but then I dreamed of Portal of Evil again last night.
It shows how little he knows about the topics he is covering. He needs to ask before making accusations such as that. How can I prove what I am saying?
Well, he could go to Patch's and I's Flayrah profiles and realize that they were created at much different times years ago. So if I am actual Patch why would I have created two different accounts at two separate times for the same site?
I mean, and then there is this article that Patch made back in 2012 which I and others felt was a bit controversial content wise for this site: https://www.flayrah.com/4262/san-francisco-rapper-mc-crumbsnatchers-furry-music-...
Try and explain we're the same person after reading through this little bruhaha. If I recall I even called Patch an asshole during the whole thing. I recall that because it's something I rarely do.
This is all the fault of leftists and antifas bringing politics into the fandom. If they kept their mouths shut we wouldn't have all this bickering. since flayrah is on their side I will be getting my news from furry times
See- this is why we need a "funny" or "off-topic" response option.
If it's funny, rate it up, or at least not as down as you might have otherwise. If it's off-topic, rate it down, etc.
The result may be a mixed rating, but that merely reflects reality. Any subtleties in reception will be evident in replies.
Dog Patch Press by Patch O Fur has banned from commenting for the one time I dare to question his vision for the fandom. My response is no sweat off my back I got my own furry blog. I do not need to cast pearls among the swine.
What furry news is doing is not censorship. Only government can censor and is exclusively prohibited by the 1st amendment of the US Constitution. Private sites property like Flayrah, Furry News, and Dog Patch press do not come under the 1st amendment and are free to set commenting policy and remove comments on their site even though it may or may not hurt their reputation. In this case, I cannot blame them. What RooView is doing is borderline harassment or just being a big pain I am guilty of this myself; due to lack of civility I disabled all comments on my Word Press blog, you can create your own blog.
There is a bigger problem with theses “news” sites; these sites were good for review furry media and events but their crusades to reform the fandom in their image have pushed the fandom off the rails. Fury fandom is about the love of art, literature, costuming, and role-playing involving anthropomorphic animals. Furry not about some persons immature, self-centered, trigged, safe space, feelings because somebody is wears, armband, and that has nothing to do with Nazis. If one does not 2 the ranting Griffin, performances, for example, do as I do by not attending. When I joined the fandom in 2006, I was aware there is a lot I object to, from pornography, fetishism and cub furs. I realize I do not have to go to their events or buy their media and still be a fury. I do not need to go on a half-cocked crusade of personal attacks. Now we have individuals with their own agenda tearing the fandom apart.
It time the fury fandom get back to cartoon animals than politics of persona destruction. It perhaps time to evaluate do these new sites, and ask are these news sites are a benefit or a determent to the fandom. I feel much of the drama is 50% person and 50% news bloggers continuing the fan the flames. It is time to ignore, these amateur efforts like Flayrah, Dog Patch Press, World in RooView, and Furry Times and a host of YouTube blogs as being more destructive to the fandom. If somebody objects to some expression, that person needs to deal with it or time to leave the fandom and do so quietly.
If Flayrah needs to be ignored, why have you been an ever-present figure here for seven years?
"If somebody objects to some expression, that person needs to deal with it or time to leave the fandom and do so quietly"
Can't wait until you're gone! But your type has no ability to live like you preach.
correction
these amateur efforts like Flayrah, Dog Patch Press, World in RooView, and Furry Times and a host of YouTube blogs
should be
these amateur efforts like Flayrah, Dog Patch Press, World in RooView, and a host of YouTube blogs
sorry furry Times
Please go appreciate the "standards" there, it would be like inception of dumb and incoherent
Censorship and the First Amendment while related are not the exact same. If they were then no other country on earth could be accused of committing censorship.
I even state in the article this fact that they do have the right to censor as they are not the government. From the article above:
Their accusation of Flayrah censorship is quoted in the above article as well. Why are you not complaining to Furry Times that Flayrah can't commit censorship because we are not the US Government? Why are you holding one to a different standard then the other when they made the first accusation of censorship? If they didn't make that statement I literally would have no ground to base an article on.
"Actually, it's about ethics in furry journalism."
- this comments section
#gamurrgate
Let's put the karma thing in a way that's easier to understand since there is some confusion on it.
If you only show up to debate controversial things then you're going to have worse karma then if you comment on ALL the things.
That's it, that's the secret.
I mean, I obviously don't see the system as "broken" or "negative" since I am clearly benefiting from it, so obviously that could be argued that. I think Green kind of is a bit too much in love with it, but he created the algorithm and it's a syndrome most algorithm creators have.
But I will say that a lot of people who complain about the karma system tend to be the ones who only show up to share their opinions on things that are controversial, and nothing else. And maybe they too have an addiction to reading too much into the numbers as well and start acquiring a scarlet letter syndrome from it. They want to receive (or don't care really) if they receive one star votes and as much as possible so that they can start claiming with pride at how many one stars they get, and so they are a rebel or what not. This sort of inversi-behavior is not something that I believe Green accounted for in their algorithms, but it is an inevitability on numbered systems.
I'm sure you're going to find some people who pride themselves on how low their credit score is after they are shamed about it enough. Despite having the low credit score leaves them at a financial disadvantage.
But at the end of the day, that's the secret to the karma system. There are people who are fair whether fans sure, but there also seems to be those that are unfair whether fans who just comes around when they want to play devil's advocate on topics of debate. Maybe talk on articles you enjoy instead of the ones you loathe. Engage not only when you want to bitch and whine, but also during the mediocre times, or sunny days as well.
Another tip is knowing how to do math and noting that someone went through and did a mass one star of your past comments to try and prove a point, cause as soon as those kind of things are noted they get reverted.
(I mean, this isn't the first time this has happened, I know the math of averages.)
But do you know the averages of math?
https://furrytimes.net/2017/05/16/the-fatal-flaw-of-furry-fandom-by-perri-prinz/
Perri (cause I know you're still reading and watching) you literally called me a troll while A) misgendering me and B) whining about bullies while complaining about someone 'whines' about bullies.
oh and guess what dearheart, someone making 'use of that information' ? it is doxxing and from a legal perspective in Pennsylvania? it's harassment. Which is why I'd advise you to tread lightly
While I feel bad for you, Perri doesn't care. You are a "villain/troll" and you "deserve it" by her logic. Misgendering only counts if someone misgenders her. Outing only counts if someone outs her. Doxxing only counts if someone doxxes her. Harassment only counts if someone harasses her.
You probably shouldn't have gone on her FB the way you did, that was a wee bit much, but no amount of arguing justifies doxxing and outing of anyone.
My advice? Do what Perri can't - move on.
Would someone please tell me what the whole issue's about, because I'm quite lost. I'll try to sum up what I think I know.
As far as I know, there is a group called "Furry Raiders". Their group leader is a furry called Foxler who enjoys nazi aesthetic and mannerisms. When requested to stop doing it at public events (because it makes people uncomfortable), he refuses.
They reserved in block a large amount of rooms for a convention, hindering the organizer's ability to make their convention run as they expected.
I guess they have some mission statement? Are they asking for less political correctness?
In any case, does this have a connection with Ahmar Wolf's original rant. I see he's supportive of Perri, who some here say is a "Furry Raider". Was his view stated related to "Furry Raiders" ideology?
In regards to just Ahmar Wolf's entry on his site, "Double Standards at Flayrah". If Ahmar Wolf wants to be considered furry press (rather than manage a personal blog where he rants), he would have to behave with some companionship towards people, especially with other furry journalists. I remember I once commented on Dogpatch Press' website, an opinion of disapproval. After a while it still wasn't showing, so I contacted Patch O' Furr by mail and asked him if he was going to accept the comment. He accepted it, and replied to the comment. And that was the end of it. I think using your public news platform for personal rants is the quickest way to lose respectability. Unless that's what you're looking for, a platform for your rants. Which is okay if that's what you want, but then you're not a press site.
I don't think Ahmar Wolf believes he's running a press site? If it's a blog, I'm not sure a blog rant deserves these many comments or attention.
Edit: So apparently the Rocky Mountain Fur Con 2017 had to close due to violence threats between staff and con-goers, related to allegations of them being related to the group "Furry Raiders". I gather the group are very unliked.
http://symphonic-rp.livejournal.com/248855.html
really Perri? You couldn't just log in?
The answer to "humor being lost" in Foxler's statements, is very simply, profusely denying any hatred towards jews / denying favoring nazi ideology.
There is something on the internet called Poe's law, which reads: "Without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers or viewers as a sincere expression of the parodied views."
I laugh at racist jokes but I'll be the first one to tell you I'm not actually racist, I just have a dark sense of humor. Manifested mostly just in private. Nothing Foxler might have said will probably offend me. But I'm also an empathetic individual so I can understand it might upset others. Because they don't get it. But that's beyond the point. Nazi or racist remarks upset people. They're not appropriate in all scenarios.
It's as simple as, saying you actually don't agree with nazi ideology. It's really an awful thing. If he can't openly publicly make this statement so that everyone understands it, help him on that. Or get him a PR.
Being in good terms with fellow furs is more important than whatever principle is guiding him there. Self-expression is not at odds with not looking like a dick.
Or, using Occam's razor, if he looks like a dick, he's actually a dick.
Explanations for his statements that have been offered so far, by him or people defending him that didn't know him until he was controversial:
Don't forget. Furs who hold assholes accountable for their actions are the REAL nazis!
This all seems similar to the people who fly Confederate flags and say, "I'm not a racist or believe in slavery; I just think the design of the flag is pretty."
Fred Patten
I thought the Confederate flag fursuit looked snazzy. Apparently got the owner and builder in trouble, though.
I think not putting a squeaker in the suit that sounded like the General Lee's horn was a missed opportunity.
Abolitionists were the REAL aggressors. Southern heritage is still under attack. Slavery = freedom.
Slavery = freedom may be difficult to justify, considering all the slaves constantly escaping to the north and to Canada. However, abolitionists could certainly be aggressors. Lincoln was too moderate for some.
I read an editorial in a 1857 Southern newspaper, I think the New Orleans Times-Picayune, that called slavery the greatest institution of the U.S. government. It described African-Americans – I forget if it used the n-word – as happy, simple people, satisfied with letting white people do all their thinking and decision-making for them.
Fred Patten
That's a shame. Being unfamiliar with the whole confederate culture / aesthetic, that fursuit looks absolutely adorable.
If you mean "adorably racist", sure.
Sorry, but I don't see anything in the Confederate flag fursuit that looks inherently racist. You have to know what the design stands for, and then it's only pertinent if the fursuit is supposed to stand for racism; not if the fursuiter just thinks the design is pretty.
Hmm. What about a states-right message? Is that offensive?
If enough other people think the fursuit is sending a racist message, then the convention committee might have to tell the wearer that the fursuit is making a number of people uncomfortable. How many? 20? 10? 5? Is 1 complaint enough for the committee to act on it?
Fred Patten
Well, from what I understand, in this case, the guy was a pretty well known troll who was basically testing your very questions; because he was so well known, however, when people found out who it was, the reaction was almost universally "oh, that guy; well that figures" and then basically ignored him.
I don't think the guy was espousing any real political or personal beliefs (about race, state's rights, Southern "heritage" or even the aesthetics of flags); that's the problem with something like the Furry Raider armbands. There's plenty of evidence that they are espousing real views.
I'm going to assume I'm talking out of my ass, then.
It's pretty self explanatory what a suit made in the style of flag of a bunch of racist loser traitors stands for.
Pfft. You're all traitorous rebel scum from this side of the pond!
And remember, we only burnt your house down because you messed up our port.
(And that ultimately only happened because someone flew a traitorous rebel flag.)
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i68/Perri_Rhoades/Foxler%20With%20Context%201_...
https://www.facebook.com/perri.prinz/posts/10213176300112683
They use Perri's photobucket but I wonder who they could be.
Will Flayrah ever solve this mystery?
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/025/581/297.jpg
What I kinda find hilarious is that one of the chief complaints about the Furry Raiders is the armband they use... which is exactly the same armband used on the mascot of the popular furry porn art site U18chan. The armband issue I think is absurd, I have a hard time wrapping my head around why people are flipping out over that detail.
I see what is happening now as sort of a change to the sensitivity rating of people. If it wasn't "nazis" then it would be something else that drive people into this two-minutes of hate outrage. When I first started attending furry conventions I remember seeing a guy dressed in a pretty close replica of a nazi outfit (minus a swastika), no fursuit to go along with it, just a human dressed as that because he liked the aesthetic. I can't remember exactly but I have a vague sense that even back then there were a number of furs who just liked that sort of outfit in general or on their fursonas. I didn't see anybody at the convention flipping out, this was... I want to say around 2005.
What we're seeing now with the outrage and ultra-sensitivities is not a new phenomena but it is one that is given a lot more attention and support than it should have. It's going to get worse if we continue to support it by caving in to its demands, in my other comment I mention how the convention Furpocalypse is now experiencing hatred because of the sponsor level names they plan to use...
I only hope that we don't start seeing violence between furs because some feel justified in their outrage.
Or maybe what you're seeing is the consequences of turning a blind eye back in 2005 gestating for a decade and finally coming home to roost.
Cui bono - who benefits? I don't see this as a natural progression, but a manufactured one. People see profit, in one form or another, in creating this... environment. Eventually those who wanted to control the beast may find it turning on them, though that is little comfort to the majority of us.
2005 is around the time when the Second Life "Furzi" thing was going on, which I'm positive is where the "Founder and CEO" of the Furry Raiders found the armband that he now uses for his group (as well as the alteration of the Nazi Imperial war flag he used when he was still calling himself "Foxler the Hitler of Furry Fandom"). Since that group also received its fair share of backlash, I don't think your idea is very likely.
But I guess a conspiracy theory involving an entity both so strong as to manipulate the entire fandom and so weak as to be "ultra-sensitive" and "triggered" is way more fun.
Interesting. Yeah I really don't know much about the Furry Raiders or the Furzi, thanks for that piece of info regarding them.
But I was actually considering it in a more general sense, I can see where some furs have issues with the Furry Raiders (though I suspect Foxler is trolling people too easily tweaked, he's feeding off that outrage... we've seen plenty of examples of that in the fandom before, off the top of my head I remember Sibe getting a kick out of his detractors' rage) though I think it's odd to go as ballistic as they have in response.
But I think we are seeing, and will see to a greater degree, outrage at a lot of things which were previously seen as minor or insignificant - again per my previous example, the whole string of hate towards a convention theme.
Going back to my previous comment, I think the outrage industry has grown based on support from groups who think they can channel that rage. But... who knows. In terms of the fandom itself, at least the growing rage I've been seeing online is fairly disturbing. I can't be the only one who worries about that, right?
"Yeah I really don't know much about the Furry Raiders or the Furzi"
Then why are your fat little fingers still typing?
A little schooling for you. This is essentially a case of a few rejected trolls cpustering together to grab the fandom's arm and go "why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?" Until finally someone speaks up. And here you are doing that "triggered snowflakes" clown dance about it in proud ignorance of cause and effect.
Do your homework, son, before interrupting the big people like you made brown and need your diaper changed.
*clustering
If you don't know what you're talking about, why are you throwing around these hot takes you know are misinformed? Seems like you're trying to work backwards from a conclusion you've already come to and are hoping that facts will bend to fit what you're saying, instead of saying what the facts actually represent.
So yesterday I became aware of the furry outrage over the upcoming halloween/horror Furpocalypse convention having the audacity of planning to use the theme of Haunted Ayslum with badge levels including Electro-Shock Technician and Lobotomist. Apparently this triggered a lot of furs who started claiming things such as the convention is mocking people with mental issues to claiming they're endorsing things like gay conversion therapy. At least on Twitter it sounds like a number of people are going to boycott the convention, a number of others are pleading or threatening the convention to change the badge levels.
So... yeah, to me it seems like the fandom is slipping into full crazy that is going to sabotage things like conventions and probably turn groups against each other. What's next, a convention theme condemned because of "cultural appropriation"?
How is it that we're getting to the point where adults who still watch cartoons, dress up in animal costumes, and enjoy a lot of weird stuff not having a sense of humor?
2013 just called. I don't know what they where going to tell me they wanted back, though, because I interrupted them and told them Trump was president and now 2013 thinks I'm a liar.
Very interesting, it's weird taking a glimpse back in time and seeing the earlier stage of outrage we're now seeing on an almost daily basis in 2017. Looks like it has blossomed into something truly horrific ^.^;;;
So, Nazi imagery in the past obviously has no impact on today's Nazi imagery, but this is obviously an early sign of what is happening now.
You're dumb.
Pardon? I was clearly referring to the rise and spread of the perpetually outraged; our comment thread here had nothing to do with nazis or their 'imagery'. In regards to dumb, your previous comment which I was responding to was pointing to an old flayrah post discussing convention themes and cultural appropriation... so wth are you talking about regarding nazis in the follow up comment? Before you start screaming, check where you're popping off, you appear to be responding in the wrong thread ;)
There are no "perpetually outraged". Your ignorant babble about how nobody made a big deal about right-wingy types is half true, actually, in the sense that nobody bought what they were selling before. (Hence the Burned Furs going nowhere, and the collapse of ConFurence when it was sold to Burned Fur Darrel Exline and people stopped going and the hotel wasn't booked and the contract made a financial hole too big to repair.)
No, they had to go way out of their way to provoke. As you can see with old, far right wing Burned Furs teaming up with younger 4chan nazifur types right now for trolling. And ones like Casey Hoerth AKA "the furred reich", (the guy using a Hitler avatar on FA,) who was actually a professional campaigner for Trump. This is the kind of agitating asshole you're apologizing for.
There is no "rise" of offended people opposing them from trolling. There are people speaking up about toxic behavior tbat's incompatible with fandom. They have been in fandom for decades and know much more about this than you. Step back , close your mouth and pay attention.
http://symphonic-rp.livejournal.com/249528.html
Just log in, Perri. Not that hard.
No perri, actually give up for good and go find something useful to do with your life because writing clearly isn't your strong suit.
You have good writing skills. It's unfortunate you use them to write negative views.
http://spectralshadows.livejournal.com/46979.html
Why are you hiding, Perri?
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d7/0b/ee/d70bee80b45d4574a7e25070e7cbdaec...
That requires you actually having moved on, and not just logged out but still reading and responding to the thread.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9d/f2/db/9df2db3ba23a9756c44ebae831373...
Except in this case, Perri, the stones are imaginary.
if anyone has thrown stones at anyone, it's you to everyone else.
Get off the high horse.
In speaking of high horses.
420 Blazer would be the best horse name for the Kentucky Doobie!
I got just one more thing to say Perri is not running a large site with a staff, bullies like Sonious and Grim Reaper coming in her life should not be telling her move on. Furthermore why don't you move on, look we all make mistakes but I tell you one thing, a dose of your own medicine might be a good thing to get here.
Didn't you say you were done, too?
Yes. Yes, you did.
Look, we're not leaving because this is our house, and if you weren't here, we'd be arguing with each other, because bless our hearts, that's what we do. But you guys neither like us, nor like being here, and are constantly informing us that you're totally not here and are totally done with this.
And then you KEEP. FUCKING. POSTING!
Also, for crying out loud, you're claiming Sonious won't let stuff go in the very subthread where he's trying to distract us with silly horse jokes so that we'll all just shut up and stop arguing.
I just wanted to say (after taking a three month break) that I am so glad you're part of this site.
:)
http://orig07.deviantart.net/a7bb/f/2012/013/8/b/billy_joel_glass_houses_album_c...
So, honestly, what's the end goal here?
Okay, you started a fight. You two, together, you started it. You publish a piece, namecheck Flayrah as a horrible, horrible place, then post a link back to it on Flayrah. So, even if we weren't terrible egomaniacs forever Googling ourselves, we'd have found it.
Now, you know this place is somewhere, well, like I said, if you weren't here, we'd be fighting with each other over something or other. Or very bored and waiting for the next fight. We're kind of contentious assholes like that; I can't complain because I bare at least partial responsibility for inculcating that attitude. Ahmar may not have known this, but Perri sure as shit did; she's complained about it often enough.
So, I mean, shots fired. Sonious, and probably some others, fired back. You knew we were going to do that. Ahmar couldn't stand the heat, so he instantly started crying like the little ... anyway, Deleted Comment Gate. So, Sonious responded another way, by posting this article which we are now all supposedly still blithering about.
That's all just making the point, now; you started a fight. Please don't deny it. The real question is, what was the end goal? And, I suppose, how did you expect to accomplish that.
Because, you're two people. Neither particularly popular or well known; Flayrah, is, at best, a big fish in a small pond. You're not even that. I assume you thought that you could rally support to your cause, and you'd gain so much of this sympathy and support from the obvious self-righteousness of your cause, that everyone would agree with you and they'd help you out and together, you'd be the leaders of a glorious revolution.
Didn't pan out, did it? Sorry things didn't turn out the way you wanted them to. I mean, Perri couldn't even get the Furry Raiders to come and troll us, for Chrissakes.
But, okay, let's say you had won. What would that have looked like? Well, first of all, you may not have had the exact same goals, after all; let's take Ahmar. He probably just wanted Furry Times to be the new Flayrah, which fair enough; not a very realistic goal, though, even if you "beat" us. I find that most readers, when given a choice, usually prefer written news sources that reliably use punctuation correctly.
That was a cheap shot; I do not apologize.
But Perri, oh, dear sweet Perri. What does Perri want? What would the end of Perri's glorious revolution look like? The end of Flayrah (and probably Gentrified Neighborhood Press, while you're at it), perhaps? Would you like that, Perri? No more Flayrah, no more Patch. Just gone forever, the both of them?
Which begs the obvious question; how are you any different then your supposed Cabal of Evil Antifa Commie Burned Furs and their destruction of 2 and RMFC? Yes, you don't like us, but, come on, I've already described Flayrah as "our house". Just the other day, I pulled a friendly prank on Rakuen Growlithe on Twitter, who I follow, and he follows me, and then we bonded over ponies and Doctor Who, and we don't agree on anything (not even, it turns out, ponies or Doctor Who); we've had some pretty bitter fights here, but this is our house, and we like it, and shame on you for trying to destroy us. Because that's what you're trying to do, and you're going to deny it, but I'm not stupid and manipulable like Ahmar, Perri.
But, screw it, if you can't beat them, join them. Heck, the real sting of it isn't that you tried to fight us, tried to hurt us, maybe even take this thing we love away from us; it's that you picked site that has an editor who can't even write in proper English to publish your story over us. You mad enough to fling stones at us; kind of flattering, and we like stone flinging anyway. But writing for Furry Times ... ouch, Perri. That's uncalled for.
So, there was this guy, desiring_change, hell if I know why, but every few months he'd start lurking and one starring every single comment I made, no matter what; eventually, he'd start posting anonymous comments, and he had a style, you could recognize it, and eventually I'd just call him out and I'd always try to take the higher ground and ask him to contribute a story, and then he'd get embarrassed and disappear for a few months until after a while, I'd just skip to end. Don't know, maybe he'll come back, too, now that I'm back.
But the point is, I didn't really like the state the fandom was in, either, when I started out. I, too, desired change. And, you know what, some five years later, I found that I did change the fandom. And I'll tell you the secret, because I'm nice.
But first, why is Flayrah better than Dogpatch Press? No, it's not because Green Reaper is better than that jackass editor over there (though not exactly a point in its favor). It's because it's been around longer. In journalism, that's the important thing. Have you ever heard of the phrase "paper of note"? See, before the Internet (you're the "elder" here, you remember), history was recorded in newspapers. Not big newspapers, like USA Today or whatever, but small ones. The ones that recorded births and deaths and, honestly, not much else. Because they kept archives, see. And after decades or even centuries, they became the only evidence that all these births and deaths and, honestly, not much else, existed. And I'm saying "not much else" ironically, because "not much else" is, of course, everything.
If a tree falls in the forest, and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound? Yes. A quick, sharp snap. That's all. Then it's over. But if someone's there to hear it, to tell the story of that tree falling, to record it, then that quick, sharp snap echoes in eternity.
When I first began on Flayrah, I was less interested in furry as a group of people, and more interested in furry as an artform. Still am. I did not like where furry fandom was going on this divide, so I wrote an opinion piece. It didn't accomplish jack shit. People weren't ready for it; neither was I, truth to tell (my biggest regret is that I didn't make clear I was trying to talk about what furries did rather than what they should do). But, I didn't give up; I persevered. Ironically, already started the process that would change things.
See, before me, movie reviews just were not a thing on Flayrah. There were a couple, but I was the first to explicitly try and review every major release featuring talking animals; I completely an utterly failed to do so, but I tried. And here's the thing; others started joining in. When I left, last year, it became so clear I had changed things. People worried who was going to review, say, Rock Dog, now that I was gone. New, first time contributors, including contributors who's comments made it clear were more interested in the sociopolitical ramifications of furry than the art. Note, this contributor explicitly states they've been a furry two months. This contributor had never been a furry in a world where Flayrah did not run movie reviews. I turned something that essentially did not exist and made it an essential part, to the point that a newcomer might do it, not because it's necessarily the thing they wanted to do, but the thing they had to do, (much like me having to write about, say, Oklacon).
Another example, more recent, and perhaps even better; Sonious has a YouTube channel. You might have heard of it. Earlier in the year, there were two major stories that concerned furries that happened around the same time, one about furry-as-group-of-people, one about furry-as-artform. Sonious covered both on his channel; the furry-as-artform one was Zootopia at the Oscars, the other, furry-as-a-group, actually got two videos, which is appropriate, because I'm talking about 2. (By the way, I have an amusing 2 anecdote I should share some time, but not right now because this comment is going to be a doozy without it, and it really has no bearing on my point, anyway.) Around the same time, he gained editorial privileges on Flayrah. Stories by Sonious on Flayrah:
2, 0. Zootopia? Won.
Who do you think made the Oscars, of all things, something a furry should care about? Even more specifically than just the reviews, I mean, this is my thing. Sonious can confirm or deny, but surely he had me in the back of his mind when he wrote that article.
So, I changed things. Maybe not a lot; but I did change something. I changed Flayrah, and it's an institution, just by virtue of being around so long (well, it's at least institutionalized, anwyay). It's a big fish in a small pond (remember when I said that, thousands of words ago?), though. And, when future furry historians come and try to find out what it was like back in the day for furries, they're going to look at the oldest, longest lasting news source they can find. And that's Flayrah. And, agree or disagree, love me or hate me, I've written nearly 300 stories as crossaffliction, and, uh, 2 as 2cross2affliction (how appropriate!). That's a lot. You can't take me out of the record without damaging the record. I've left a permanent scar.
So, that's what I'm offering, Perri. A permanent ... whoops, no that didn't come out right. Anyway, you're a historian; I offer you the power to create history. Not fast; this took five years to notice. And not easy; you have to do the work. But if you want to change things, Flayrah can help you do that. Work with us, not against us. It works better that way.
Uh, and I guess Ahmar can come to, but he better know he's going to get the hell edited out of him.
Ahmar has an article being processed (that he originally submitted back in September 2016), about furry 'zines and stuff.
I do think us not even having a small article about 2 getting removed from Anthrocon was a mistake on our part. But I really had lots on my plate back in March at work. And unfortunately I'm going to have to do the same in the coming weeks.
And yes, I felt the Oscar victory was of a slight more note that people would want to read, and yes you may have had something to do with that.
That and since I kind of said it would on November 8th after the Orange Cheeto won the election, so... yeah.
It took you that long to figure that out?
Oscar Best Animated Feature for 2016 was done and dusted one week after Oscars for 2015 were announced. It's only problem was that it was too obviously going to win, so Kubo got propped up by awards pundits just to have something to talk about after an entire year of, "Well, I mean, Zootopia. Duh."
If Clinton won I still think Kubo could have had a chance to beat Zootopia. There was some critique that Zootopia was a bit "preaching to the choir" in tone when it was first released in March 2016.
That issue was kind of silenced in an election where Trump ran on the division tactics of the antagonist in the movie and won, though.
So if there was any chances of an overturn it was defeated on November 8th.
Well, that's fair.
Well, on the other hand, it was proof upsets could happen.
Sure, the more "progressive" Moonlight won over the "nice but not as tough" La La Land at the Oscars, and that might have been reaction to Trump, and certainly, everyone straight up knows the Iran film won not because it was the best (that was generally agreed to be the German entry), but because of the statement it would make against the Muslim ban and Meryl Streep got her 101st acting nomination more for her political Life Achievement Award Golden Globe acceptance speech than for anything she did in the silly trifle she was nominally nominated for.
However, Beyonce's Lemonade, which was much more of a "statement", still lost the Grammy to whatever Adele put out that was, I mean, Adele, so great, but really had nothing important or new (for Adele) to say.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/30/58/7d/30587db8a3ccdef39ac5fd529b03c...
Hang in there!
So how's this posting vapid bumper sticker tier quotes working for you? Feel like a succesful intellectual yet?
Seriously your persistence would be admirable if it wasn't tragic for how misplaced it is. This coming from an artist and avid reader who has been reading bits and pieces of your writing for years because some of your ideas could have been great. It is painful to think how much you could have accomplished in life if only you had learned actual rational thinking and self criticism instead of continuously caving in to the vicious impulses to "win" arguments by twisting definitions and denying ever being wrong. It is really, really painful. It's like watching the chains of Ebenezer Scrooge growing longer and longer every day while he can't see them.
You could have been a true intellectual with a vast culture reaching far beyond the narrow world of fandoms. You could have easily seen what was wrong with your literary writings and fixed it from the very beginning, and now you would be the one reviewed by Flayrah and DP as an influential furry writer. You could have been the one running an influential furry news service. Hell, given your persistence you could probably have ended up working on the script of the next Zootopia right now. You could be fighting stress with confidence instead of despair. And instead here you are, acting smug and answering to a wholesome attempt to talk like adults by posting memes. For fuck's sake this is almost unbearable to watch. This is your life. There won't be another one after it. It is not too late to fix at least some of the mistakes. Why does it have to crash like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOwFVowEugQ
Ah well. Your life, your choice.
Please understand this about Perri:
-She suffers from untreated delusions and mental illness
-She builds people she likes into unreal caricatures full of delusional expectations and will ignore all and any flaws to the point of blindness
-She builds up people she hates into unreal caricatures full of delusional crimes and will ignore any and all positives to the point of blindness
-Both of these lead people to fall from grace with her constantly because she only sees people as she wants them to be. When that delusion cracks, she can't handle it
-She cannot let go of anything and has spent her entire life moving from one battle to the next and making bigger than real life villains out of anyone who has "wronged" her
-Her novel was once a very respectable story that borrowed from other sources but not too blatantly, she turned it into a pandering revenge fic for personal gain and popularity. People told her not to - she ignored them.
-She is incapable of change, she thrives on pity and misery for life conditions that she could have changed but simply lacks the will or want
-She is fine with trolling, outing people, doxxing, misgendering, and harassment as long as she isn't the victim of it - she will claim you "deserve it" and she will never let up
-She is beyond help. Many have tried over the decades she's been in various fandoms, Perri doesn't want to learn, grow, or improve.
-She is best ignored and avoided, you cannot reason with her, she will resort to memes and music links. Please don't waste your time
http://images.memes.com/meme/1196964
you just proved his points, Perri. Congratulations.
http://www.gradpsychblog.org/wp-content/uploads/23879527563_e1782ed0a5_b.jpg
She's graduated from verbal diarrhea to pure spam memes and linkbait. Spamming suits her well.
https://derpicdn.net/img/2012/12/17/185568/full.png
She probably thinks you're her x too based on the response, lol. Gotta say, I prefer this junk to the multi-paragraph vomit about how right she is and how important she is.
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/ab/aba336dd3ee98fc433c7a242cd51a7ca53fd3e6dbe6f611a7...
Contrary to your belief, Ms Prinz, everyone who doesn't like you isn't your x making accounts. Some are actually your 'friends' in Second Life :) She's actually publicly said she wants you to leave her alone but keep clinging like a turd caught on the toilet bowl lol.
Hey dudes, we don't actually care about Perri's personal life, even when it's you and not her telling us about it.
I've known Perri and we've had debates on and off for a decade, sir. (March 13th, 2010: http://sonious.livejournal.com/71940.html)
{Full Disclosure this was before I was a writer for Flayrah even}
It's not like I jumped into her life and suddenly started harassing her. We've 'harassed' on another for each other views every once in awhile. Some people, you know, like doing that. It may seem strange, but sometimes people get bored, you know?
But interestingly this article had nothing to do with Perri, it had to do with my comment being removed from their article.
The last phrasing sounds like a threat, and I guess well. If you want to counter with something about me, have at it. Good luck to you. I gave you a link to my livejournal even, I'm sure you'll find something poorly written by a college student.
You won't find anything too terrible though, there was one article I deleted for being a bit young and stupid a year ago. The rest seems acceptable, foolish and young, maybe but acceptable.
On a last note though, you do realize, once again, how hypocrical it sounds to berate me and GreenReaper for 'harassing' others and ending it with a threat/hope that I get harassed.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/89/fd/79/89fd799944f85586f83a093b7cbe3...
If only you could see how ironic that is to come from you...
https://img.memesuper.com/f96ef496248511f7e827f8e46736533b_its-called-adulting-m...
Is this the irony hour or advice you wish you could follow?
oh, that's ironic...
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f2/ed/1b/f2ed1b72a38d68fe1bfbcbff306f9...
I came to one conclusion last night that Sonious that creep who has been nailing my hide to the wall this past week. Is in short bat sh*t crazy and I say this not because of what was said to me. No it's after I found his YouTube channel, and found that this guy never and I repeat never can let something go.
speaking of people who can't let things go....
You know the Youtube video was put up before this article? This article is basically the written form of the video. Chronology happens not based upon what you find and when you find it, it's based upon the time stamps in which they are actually published.
But I guess if a tree falls in the forest it only makes a sound if you're around to hear it.
No worries though, this weekend where my video will most likely be a video form of the Sonic Original Character thing, and will be basically a more comedic piece. I think it's healthy to just let go every once in awhile.
This was nothing personal, in the end, though it may feel that way to you, just a critique about an organization who critiqued us first. You literally "threw the first punch" with the quote I started the article with.
When I debate people, I do so in a Goku-like manner, sure some people may go "Oh man that guy's a hero." but really I just like having debates on the internet, like Goku just likes fighting doods. He doesn't really go with a goal in mind, or an agenda, he just does it to see what happens. And hopefully come out stronger in the end (and hopefully alive, but that's optional I suppose).
It's a hobby. And I enjoy having challenges that improve my abilities and push my patience and stamina to the limits. So like, it's nothing personal, it was just a test of my abilities to present an argument to an audience.
My hope is that you continue to improve as well, but also to have you take some pause. This is because people aren't seeing the reality of this latest furry conflict, and I didn't really either until I watched the latest Culturally F'd today.
See this isn't Furry Raiders v. Social Justice Warrior/Anti-Fas
This is actually a fight of two different ideas furry is founded upon: Freedom of Expression in it's purest sense VS Tolerance/Acceptance. You can see where these two ideas come at odds. It is very much what Western Society as a whole is dealing with. Do we say whatever we wish no matter who gets hurt or intimated? Or do we censor ourselves to allow people who are different or think different to feel welcome?
Since you site took the banner of the former with that comment, I felt it very important to show that while your article was claiming we were silencing Furry Raider critique, that your site was literally removing comments. In reality, though, the reason you WERE probably removing said comments is because you were worried about Perri. That if you didn't sensor me that Perri would have thought that I was being hateful and she would run off and you finally got a writer and such and you really want your blog to succeed.
In essence you censored to protect someone who did something for you, right? Similar to when organizations such as conversions say to the Furry Raiders: "The icon you're using has ties to groups with a history of intolerance that we don't promote here so we're going to censor that so that others feel welcome here, sorry."; correct?
You see this line between Pure Freedom and Pure Inclusion is not an easy one, and it never has been. That's not going to change anytime soon, so it's best to just keep thinking about things, realizing we all have different bounds, but also realize we all may be stronger than we believe each other to be.
Never underestimate anyone, in the end.
Moving on requires no longer checking in and letting go of things like revenge and you, Ms Prinz, never smile and move on from anything, never forgive, never apologize, and never stop antagonizing. Your entire LJ from 2008 forward is testament to the fact of that as are your recent additions to your story. You are the worst sort of toxic person and I pity anyone who earns your delusional ire.
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i68/Perri_Rhoades/BurningAnachronism.jpg
An example of you never moving on, Ms Prinz. Didn't you put her in your novel? Don't you to this day refuse to remove her personal information from your journal? A person who moved on years ago wouldn't have done that. You are the worst kind of toxic person and a coward to boot.
https://cdn-webimages.wimages.net/051a892d6012006657927ed0d54cd19f442dd5-wm.jpg?v=3
I'm not your x, Ms Prinz. If you don't want her still being brought up, why don't you let her go? Up to you to be an adult or as a meme said:
"You cannot move forward when you are constantly looking back"
http://cdn2.gurl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/running-into-your-ex.jpg
*typing skills. Writing requires insight.
No, I'm pointing out that you're making two contradictory arguments in two different threads. Which is a dumb thing to do. When I point out in the Nazi imagery subthread that today's problems might have something to do with how we acted in the past, your reply is, and I quote:
When I point out, in this subthread about furry outrage, where I point out that today's problems might have something to do with how we acted in the past, your reply is, and I once again quote:
See, these two things contradict each other, because you want us to believe this outrage thing is a big problem, and this Nazi thing is not, and it hurts your argument if both have been around a while "blossoming", or both are overblown, "manufactured" problems. So, you have chosen to downplay the Nazi thing, and then, to top it off, pretended that it's unfair of me to pay attention and reply to the entire comment section, and all of your posts in it, rather than the one part that makes you look good.
Meanwhile, my point has remained consistent; this shit is old news. ConFurence ended in shambles almost two decades ago; conventions come, and they go. On the individual level, yes, RMFC being cancelled is going to suck for some people. But the truth is, on the fandom level, whether it was the Nazis or the anti-Nazis doesn't really matter because ten years is actually a pretty good run, and if you can be taken down by either group (or vandalism, like RainFurrest, or drunken sex, like Oklacon) you were probably on the way out, anyway.
Man, end thread guys, we've now violated Godwin's Law bringing the Raider conversation back into this.
You mention the Raiders in the very first sentence of the article.
Just wanted to show that my comments can get rolled up too, lol.
Ahmar Commented on my Youtube and I responded:
I presented the comment you claim was filled with hate on the video in question and I will leave it to others to assess whether it was or not. I assure you it was not, it was an assessment of the comment I was replying to. If you would kindly quote the part of the comment you felt was hateful then I can update my finding with notes on which phrasing you find unacceptable and will censor.
In this way your users will know what will be censored so they can avoid the mistake in the future.
You had an opportunity to address me in private in response to the twitter DM I had sent to you at the end of the second video in which I asked why the comment was not showing up. This DM at this time has still not been responded to. Therefore, I can only conclude that you are making this public statement to try and paint things in your favor and claiming it was a statement of hate.
Thanks for calling me a reporter though, I don't fully see myself as one quite yet. I'm just a roo-kie.
https://furrytimes.net/2017/05/18/the-flayrah-controversy/
oh, the just didn't do it there either.
Oh looky a chart! I have a chart too
https://twitter.com/Tantroo_McNally/status/865345811886034944
So um, yeah. He can blame us for his lowering views all he wants, but it's just what naturally happens after a controversy happens. It blows off and people move on to the next rage inducing thing.
I think it speaks to the reason why media these days is so conflict oriented, and this a problem caused by the audience just as much as the authors.
It's important to know causation. Flayrah did not cause his numbers to drop, just as Furry Times didn't cause the views to drop on my videos.
Something just hit me this afternoon on my way home from work. All of this, the 4 videos and the 100+ comments are over just 1 comment. How can I even take this seriously, I ask you all a question would you go this ballistic if someone took one of your comments down on social media? The answer is no as it sounds to me as quite quite totally insane. Think about this all of this is about 1 comment on what some here has said is a nothing blog. It's a 1 man operation, and I do this because I enjoy it and nothing said here is going to stop me. Personally I rate this the same when someone sent me 1800 spams over an article they did not like, of the one who made death threats to me when I spoke about furry web comics, and they were mad that I didn't include Peanuts by Charles Schultz. I am not joking both of which are true.
But since nobody really cares about my side I figure since this is the last post I will make on this site. Before making my account public domain, yes I plan on posting my login info on social media.
#1 Changes to the article.
I had the author's permission, and anything I wrote I just changed my mind. I been doing this for years.
#2 Why was certain things changed in the article, for example names and sites.
On 3 counts 1st the author changed her mind on some points and the other was 2 parties objecting to their inclusion in the article. One is an actual friend of the author, the other is a mod here who threatened me with a C&D that is a cease and desist in case you didn't know if I did not take this sites name off of the article. I am not saying the name all because what has been said to me and I assure you it was a mod.
#3 why do I put a time limit on posting comments
It's also the same reason I approve every comment. SPAM, and of course trolls. 90% of my comments come from spammers and trolls. You make light of this but it's true. Or explain away why I only have 84 comments on my entire blog and I been around almost 10 years.
#4 Last the net result
Some hardcore and honest facts. My number of daily views are up slightly, the amount of comments are down, and that is because I am posting nothing controversial on purpose. Got 3 today from a company promising to increase my traffic. Meanwhile on social media, only 1 very minor complaint. That was on Twitter and they were miffed at me.
#5 Open Invitation
My contact info is listed on my blog and if anyone here has something they like to say as long it contains no messages of hate. I will post it. That ends the 1st amendment argument. I always had this same offer since I started and almost no one has ever taken advantage of it.
Uh dude, did you log into the wrong account? Like you've been going under the name Fred Fred for a year now and no one made the connection you were Ahmar...
Opps... no wonder you though Patch and I were the same person. How many other pseudonyms you got on here man?
Actually, it looks like he just changed the name of his account.
Apparently, you can do that. Look, I'm crankymcbuttface now! Also, a fifth grader!
(screenshot)
Well that's odd, never knew you could do that.
*facepalms* This is the fandom I have been in for 25 years? Really? FFS people. What ever happened if you don't have anything nice to say KEEP YER FUCKING TRAP SHUT! Goddamned folks.. honestly. People have gotten too big for their britches and think that they speak for all of us (*cough* 2 *cough) sorry.. I am allergic to bullshit.
The thing that irks me the most that people proclaim that they have a right to share your opinion. Sure.. you have a right if you OWN the webpage that you're on. If you don't own it you have privileges on said site. ABUSE those privileges and guess what.. it gets taken away. And then you can while like an entitled three year old that you are about how they're censoring your free speech. Um. No they're not. They just don't want to deal with your self righteous, self entitled bullshit.
There. I am done with this. I am SERIOUSLY considering of doing a negan cosplay.. the only reason so I can make a Lucille. And if you don't know what that is.. google it.
I have no issue with my comment being removed (as is their right). My only reason for bringing it up was the claim came from the very person who did it that Flayrah was censoring others prior to my comments being removed, for whatever reason.
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