Just to elaborate, because reading Sonious' reply reminded me that some of y'all well, er, let's just say you have a funny way of reading things...
I was mainly talking about the internet-side of things, hence my numerous references to old defunct mediums that, duh, existed only the internet. I can barely say a word about the "lifestyle" aspect with much confidence because I just haven't experienced much of it.
However, I definitely can see how the way the internet has changed has also had some changes on the lifestyle (and by lifestyle, again, I'm keeping my definition about as simple as I can so for my purposes, "lifestyle" just means furry interactions in the meatspace) though they're probably very subtle for most. I think the main reason I perceive as big a change as I do is because of how long I've been in the online fandom, and almost exclusively at that.
I'm not gonna lie, I still feel a sense of loss over the death of forums, chat-rooms, and just the old-web in general, but especially as a furry. It feels almost like the old fandom went away. Objectively, I know the only major difference is that people moved on to different platforms with different ways of communicating. It's just that I'm hesitant about a lot of these things like Twitter and Tumblr (well I guess Tumblr is a non-issue now) because I feel they've really had a cheapening and shallowing effect on our online interactions. It's like the expression "you can't go home again", starting out in one kind of online fandom, leaving for a while, and coming back to find everything's changed and everyone you knew is gone, and you find it hard to relate to these new furries on these new platforms.
So trust me, I know it's still primarily on online fandom. Personally, I've always been ambivalent at best about calling it a "lifestyle", again, because I've never truly known it as that.
Just to elaborate, because reading Sonious' reply reminded me that some of y'all well, er, let's just say you have a funny way of reading things...
I was mainly talking about the internet-side of things, hence my numerous references to old defunct mediums that, duh, existed only the internet. I can barely say a word about the "lifestyle" aspect with much confidence because I just haven't experienced much of it.
However, I definitely can see how the way the internet has changed has also had some changes on the lifestyle (and by lifestyle, again, I'm keeping my definition about as simple as I can so for my purposes, "lifestyle" just means furry interactions in the meatspace) though they're probably very subtle for most. I think the main reason I perceive as big a change as I do is because of how long I've been in the online fandom, and almost exclusively at that.
I'm not gonna lie, I still feel a sense of loss over the death of forums, chat-rooms, and just the old-web in general, but especially as a furry. It feels almost like the old fandom went away. Objectively, I know the only major difference is that people moved on to different platforms with different ways of communicating. It's just that I'm hesitant about a lot of these things like Twitter and Tumblr (well I guess Tumblr is a non-issue now) because I feel they've really had a cheapening and shallowing effect on our online interactions. It's like the expression "you can't go home again", starting out in one kind of online fandom, leaving for a while, and coming back to find everything's changed and everyone you knew is gone, and you find it hard to relate to these new furries on these new platforms.
So trust me, I know it's still primarily on online fandom. Personally, I've always been ambivalent at best about calling it a "lifestyle", again, because I've never truly known it as that.