by Michæl W. Bard ©2007 Michæl W. Bard

   It’s been almost two years since I started my exploration of furrydom. It’s odd: Rather than spying from the outside, I’m now poking my way around the inside. And I guess it was inevitable for me to finally reach the parts that aren’t the happy wonderfulness that has been my experience so far.
   Such as, in specific: Politics.
   Now, I know that in any group of people, difficulties will arrive. Conflicts and disagreements, and all that kind of thing. However, it seems that in furrydom such conflicts can take on epic proportions. Now, it might be that I’m just an old fuddy-duddy and not used to the so-called wondrous new electronic world, and yet…
   I’ve now seen feuds that split the entire furry community in my local city (population over 1 million, so it’s not just a handful) into two separate IRC chat groups. Some people go on both channels, most just go on one or the other. This conflict started more than a year ago, before I found out about it, and shows no signs of ending. I’ve picked one channel and stuck with it, simply because I have more fun there. Of course, some people believe I’ve picked sides in this feud about which I know nothing, no matter how much I deny it.
   I’ve seen fun teasing devolve into insults and hatreds. Hatreds that include posting lewd and explicit videos to YouTube and utterly destroying reputations. Knowing both parties, I almost lost it to both of them (in private) calling them fraking idiots and forcing them to, at least, de-escalate their ‘war’. They deny each other’s existence now, but at least there are no more reputation-destroying lewd videos going up.
   Some people have had fun letting their female side out. But I know of one certain individual who now keeps ‘her’ bottled up because people on the channel were grossed out by the very idea. So… pretending to be an animal is acceptable, but pretending to be a girl isn’t?
   Some people, when I’m pre-occupied and don’t notice when they connect, think I suddenly hate them since I don’t instantly greet them—and they never tell me. I only find out about their distress through third parties, and then I have to go and private message them, telling them that, sorry, they are not the centre of my universe.
   And that’s not even including the clingy yiffers who want to bed me the instant we meet…
   Sigh.
   At this point I’m, sadly, becoming worried. I have fun, I enjoy it. But if these micro-wars keep getting worse, I may just drop out of the general community because I won’t be having fun anymore. And I really don’t want that to happen…