I'm sorry, everyone.

I like you, and I like the poll when it was on FA. You have to be pretty smart to come up with something like this. I haven't been a furry for long, but I got my first furry hater on You Tube last week and this jerk left me a rude comment on my userpage on You Tube. I deleted it and blocked him. Before so I gave him a few choice words, no swearing or negativity though. I just gave him a piece of my mind and told him " What are you scared of".

Let me give you a quick primer in what's up here:

Furry hatred isn't a big deal. The people who primarily bash on furs also harass the families of kids who have died in stupid accidents and post fake bomb threats online to get attention. The reason they do it is because it gets attention. Other people do it in a lighthearted manner: for example, we're weird. There's no denying that. It's fun to poke fun at it sometimes.

The bottom line is the internet is a much more comfortable place for people to yell and be rude and angry. Rather than care, just ignore it. I guarantee you 99.9 percent of those people wouldn't actually make an effort to do anything in real life that would in the remotest way harm anyone because they're scared crapless. They're not confident, well-organised, dangerous human beings. They're just losers looking to make themselves feel better by picking on the weird quirks of others.

One of the main reasons we wind up the target of so much crap is because most furries seem to almost jump on the idea that there's some sort of furry holocaust going on and that everyone's hating on them for valid reasons and that their hobby is something that needs to be understood and completely 100% respected by the mainstream. That's not the case. Nothing is like that. Another thing important to keep in mind is that people who aren't actively involved in the trolling are either unaware of what furries are or simply don't care. Most of the public's reaction is one of bemusement or disbelief. When you go to a con, you don't see a lot of people around you laughing at you and stuff - the general reaction is interest and good-natured ribbing from people who aren't participating. On the whole, we're not that bad off. The things that you see that are terrible are extremes, and again, that's what you get from any group of people looking for attention. Most people don't believe that, and a good chat with any one of us would quickly dispell the 'sex crazed perverts' myth to anyone who actually cared enough to be affected by a movement to preserve our self-image.

In general, any effort to try and draw attention to 'persecution' isn't actually going to accomplish any good, it's simply going to serve to increase the trolling efforts in your direction, because obviously their attempts have already elicited a reaction from you. That's the long and short of it. If we were to unilaterally laugh off the bullshit, we'd be a lot happier and we'd get bothered a lot less.

I think we all understand what you were trying to do, and it was noble and all. Point is that it doesn't really help. It's been done a billion times before, it'll be done a billion times again. Just keep this in mind:

We ARE weird.

We DO do strange things on the weekends.

That's OKAY because everyone has their schtick.

Laugh WITH the crap and you'll be well off.

Try and act like we're in the midst of a lollercaust and you're just going to increase the drama you see, because people will level the trolling squarely at you.

I think that's about all I had to say, so.