Thanks Tempe and Dralen for this guest post, a good followup to my “heart of the furry economy“. – Patch

The furry fandom is big and complex. We each have our own groups of friends, and our little sub-fandoms centered around specific shows and interests. It’s easy to not see the fursuit for the fluff.

Once it a while, it’s worth taking a step back and looking at it as a whole.

Furry is incredibly socialist.

This seems like a weird statement on its face. How can a community of people who like cartoon animal media be socialist? Well, we make, buy, and sell things.

“But wait!” you might say. “That’s using money! Furry must be capitalism!”

Socialism doesn’t mean abolishing money, like they do on Star Trek. It just means the economy has to benefit regular people, instead of companies and a handful of the ultra-rich. In fact, since the Furry fandom literally invents itself without some overarching canon coming from any one movie, TV, animation, or comics studio, no one person can ever control who gets paid for their unique creations. This power resides in the creators themselves and the furries who support them. Furry is open source.

It’s also important to look at what furry isn’t: As much as furries love mass media aimed at us (either accidentally or intentionally), Furry is not run by any central authority. There is no corporation or boss dictating what can and cannot be in furry. There is also no central source for merchandise and licensing for “Furry,” and this allows everyone to create openly and freely. This decentralizing nature makes Furry impenetrable to corporate interests, by and large. Wal*Mart may sell cheap generic fursuit heads (which may be an inexpensive entry into the suiting lifestyle), but it’s not your character.

Furry also doesn’t own its own venues, hotels, or restaurants, so some of the things that allow furries to meet and mingle are borrowed and rented, and somewhat outside of the control of the event runners. As such, there are some aspects of furry culture that are subject to market forces beyond our control.

But once you learn that “creators controlling their own business” is the dictionary definition of socialism, you realize furries are positively soaking in socialism.

FURRY SOCIALISM

The furry community is exceptionally socialist. We’re just not used to thinking about it as an economy. Most of its commerce (be it art, fursuits, books, et cetera) is done by people who control their own means of production.

What does that mean? Basically: furry content isn’t made in a factory owned by some rich guy. Let’s say you’re drawing some furry art. You own your computer and graphics tablet. You post the art online without having to pay anybody for the privilege. You can even sell it directly to a customer without asking anybody for permission. (When has FurAffinity ever taken a cut of the money for a commission you bought there?) The product of your labor —the money— is pretty much yours alone.

This is the opposite of, say, making a car in a factory. Every tool you use is owned by some rich people, who get even richer by taking a big chunk of what the customers would otherwise be paying you. If you’ve ever worked a job at a restaurant you can’t afford to eat at every day, you’ve run into this same failure. If there are 10 employees and you serve 200 meals in a shift at a 75% profit, shouldn’t you each be able to afford to go to that restaurant —or one like it— about 15 times for each shift you work?

TL;DR:

If your workplace charges ~$20 per meal, your labor’s worth $37.50/hour.

If your workplace charges ~$10 per meal, your labor’s worth $18.75/hour.

This model applies to just about any business: grocery stores, fuel stations, electronics stores, factories—you name it. It’s a simplification, but not by much. (Tempo, one of the writers of this article, worked for almost a decade building account systems for businesses.) Most businesses run on 6th-grader math.

Where does all the money go? A lot of it goes towards paying another company for advertising to get more business to make the higher-ups more money, while the workers have to work harder and longer hours for the same pittance. (A great advertising campaign doesn’t result in wages going up.) Do the math for your own job some time. You just need to plug in different values. Think about how different your life would be if you were paid a fair wage. This is why people get so mad that economic growth and tax cuts get surrendered to the wealthy. If rich people stop getting paid for doing nothing, we can all afford to live the good life.

No matter what you’re doing in the furry fandom, you’re not handing off most of your paycheck to billionaires.

Art Commissions: It takes a lot of drawings to wear out a graphics tablet. Most of what you’re paying for is the time it takes to practice for a decade or more, read 1000 tutorials, get an art degree, and finally draw the picture of your fursona booping Nick Wilde’s snoot.

Meanwhile, commissioners support artists and share their commissioned pieces for social capital. It both boosts the artist’s visibility and supports their creative endeavor financially, like the relationship between patrons and artisans in the past, when art was more highly valued socially and culturally.

Fursuits: Fake fur and plastic foam cost very little compared to the time it takes to make one—and train to make a good one. Not to mention all the extra time and sanity it costs the maker if you’re getting it customized.

Novels: Even books work this way. About half of the cover price goes to printing, but the rest is split between the publisher (a handful of furries who edit, assemble, and sell the book) and the writer and illustrator who you’re mostly paying like a commissioner. You’re just splitting the commission with everybody else who bought the book!

FURRY CONS

At a larger level, conventions themselves are pretty darn socialist.

They are controlled by the community, not some outside company. Want to help run the con? Just sign up, work hard, and stick to it year after year. You’ll end up running a panel track or the artist alley or some other big aspect of it. A lot of cons make a big deal about joining as a volunteer and then moving up to staff, but guess what: The staff are all volunteers, too!

Nobody is getting rich off them. Even the “CEO” of a con is working for free. Your reg fee goes to cover renting the space, printing badges, and other shared expenses. The sponsors and patrons at a con help subsidize and lower the cost for regular attendees.

Content they produce is available to all furries, even if they didn’t attend. When your favorite author launches a new book, is it only possible to buy it at the convention? No way! It’s usually available online within days of the con ending, if it wasn’t already on pre-order. But convention sales recoup a lot of printing costs, which makes it worthwhile to print the book in the first place. What’s more, a huge amount of projects get started at conventions, simply because you’re putting so many creative furries in the same place and letting them brainstorm. We all benefit. Even if we never attend a single convention.

More money doesn’t buy you a radically better experience. Even the shiniest super-sponsor only gets additional swag/access—both of which are available to regular attendees. Some cons offer a special “gala” event in thanks to the patrons and sponsors that gives an air of exclusivity and elevates the overall experience without truly stratifying the total experience of all of the different levels of attendees.

FURRY WEBSITES

The same argument could perhaps be made for furry art sites.

Community-run, non-profit. All the mods and coders are volunteers. When you comment on FA or post photos from a convention on social media or even just add tags on e621, you aren’t doing that for profit. You’re doing that because we’ve all agreed, without ever saying it aloud, that we benefit from people pitching in.

For the benefit of everyone. For the low price of zero dollars, you can make an account on a furry site and check out tons of cool art and stories. The same applies at the friendly furry newspaper you’re reading right now: articles about the fandom, written by people in the fandom, hosted online for you for free. No pay walls, no levels of membership.

Money can’t buy you a meaningfully different experience. Some furry sites sell memberships, but this is basically just a PBS tote bag—a thank you for donating money. Having a little star by your username doesn’t change your experience much.

Even for-profit sites are artist-run. Sexyfur, Tailheat, and anyone on Patreon require payment—but even these often make some version of the content available. Even in these corner cases, you’re still supporting independent artists directly and not giant corporations. Artists that make some or all of their money through Patreon or some other sort of paywall are still controlling their own production, and charging what the market will bear in a collaborative way with their patrons and customers.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU?

So the furry fandom is socialist. What good does that do you, as the average furry? Well, it means that the economic system of paying billionaires to do nothing all day isn’t the only game on Steam. We, as a society, have options. And it’s examples like furry that you can point to when you’re having conversations about how the economy should work.

The furry fandom as we know it couldn’t exist without socialism. Just because you’re buying a fox costume doesn’t mean you’re not spending real money.

Socialism isn’t magic. It’s just math. It even works in our fandom, where the math is always a little fuzzy.

About the writers:

Dralen Dragonfox is a Toronto furry that has been in the fandom since 1993, and currently is on staff for Camp Feral!, volunteers for Furnal Equinox, and co-founded the monthly party Howl.

Tempe O’Kun is a novelist (Sixes Wild, Windfall) and writes for furry media analysis channel Culturally F’d. He lives in North Dakota and is a husky dog cowboy.

"Why do millennials hate the rich?"

"Why do millennials pirate everything?"

"Why do millennials drift towards socialism?"

"Why are millennial furries?"



One answer: Disney's Robin Hood — Smol Fluffy Boi With A Bow (@Fox_Fusion) July 11, 2018

Editor’s note from Patch:

I suggested adding “what furry isn’t”. If we talk about things not being centrally-planned and stratified, even different wealth or popularity doesn’t stop an average fan from participating DIY-style.

If we say it’s not industrial-capitalist, that means there’s no furry-labor-class with furry-bosses ruled with automation. Even computers and imported fake furs make bespoke, handcrafted goods and experiences. Mass media/pop culture directs other fandoms, but furry has exceptional independence (I call it a dance with the mainstream.) And it was here in the 1980’s, fully-furred with its own cons and hand-made media, before the internet helped it grow.

If it was “libertarian” capitalist you might have to pay a private owner for sharing art. There’s respect for original fursonas, but that’s a social contract when it’s nearly impossible to truly enforce copyright and licensing of collective creations like a fursuit by a designer, maker, performer and photographers. (Stay tuned for my interview with Quietfire Tiger, where that point came from a Hollywood costume department for his TV appearance on Lucifer.)

It’s a village-commons concept. It has cottage industry where “pro fans” make a living fan-to-fan (see the heart of the furry economy.) But the village has no king.

Of course, it’s mostly culture and leisure. Furries don’t own hotels or properties (except some furry houses) so meatspace meets are temporary. But that can also happen for free in a park or a walk around town. While not everyone has the privilege to fly around to cons, uncritical nerdy fandom runs on passion. You can call it a bubble of escapism, and it may skew male and young and highly educated – but it still makes a worthy ideal and working model. (Silicon Valley skews the same way, but it’s seen as a test-bed.)

It’s also organic and nobody decided who could join. If you’re conservative, libertarian, or other, contributing good content outlasts natural disagreement among sub-fandom groups. It takes special effort to earn unwelcome.

I'm friends with people of all affiliations and yet none of them share racist memes, debate the reality of the holocaust, bash LGBT rights or spend time praising fascism.



Differing views don't require hateful behavior, which is why most people choose not to associate with it. — Chip Fox 🦊 (@chipfoxx) July 13, 2018

The village concept and its organic success contradicts some shrill, trollish “OMG communism!” screeching from a fringe. When the community discusses being healthy about itself, rejecting nazi-furs isn’t “dictating” or “totalitarian” at all. It’s simply a very basic standard of free association by those who don’t want to hang out with hateful losers. Speaking of…

Oh look, alt-right fan art! Enjoy the self-owning irony of using Orwell, as if he wouldn’t say “Nazi Furs Fuck Off”:

“The only regime which, in the long run, will dare to permit freedom of speech is a socialist regime. If Fascism triumphs I am finished as a writer — that is to say, finished in my only effective capacity. That of itself would be a sufficient reason for joining a socialist party.”

– George Orwell, “Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party.”

George Orwell was socialist and his book Animal Farm makes a fine match of furry and politics. He wrote Homage to Catalonia about joining the Lincoln Battalion (the first racially integrated American military force) to fight fascism during the Spanish Civil War. (Read: Far-right commentator gets ‘schooled’ by historian over George Orwell and Antifa.)

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