I assume that the (sometimes accurate, sometimes not) association with yiff has something to do with it; but, aside from that, it is rather baffling.
It’s not as though stamp collectors or model train enthusiasts are routinely treated as the funnier flavor of pedophile on the internet, or subject to much aside from disinterest and generally being ignored by people at large.
I’d be the first to say that I think furries are pretty weird, and can’t really fathom wanting to be one; but that’s true of a lot of hobbies, and I can’t imagine getting worked up enough about it to do much of anything; much less stage a chlorine gas attack on a convention.
Aside from the fact that that’s one hell of a dick move, that’s a lot of brain-space being dedicated to furries to bother to do something like that. Possibly more brain space than some furries dedicate to being furries. How do you get so motivated about something like that?
That’s not exactly rocket surgery by improvised weapon standards; but if it were somebody other than furries, or a dude with a beard and a funny name were involved the media would be screaming its head off right about now.
Exactly, and I think calling the folks on Morning Joe ‘news reporters’ is a stretch. They’re the FOX news equivalent of the ‘morning zoo!’ on a college radio station; they goof around, giggle, laugh, and casually report news in between doing their schtick. So one of them ‘running away to compose herself’ after essentially being pranked on-air with furry photos is par for the course.
What’s unfortunate is that “News reporter JUST CAN’T when she sees furries for the first time!” is the national news item that trended most, rather than “19 con-goers sent to a hospital after possible terror attack”. I’d like to think that Morning Joe owes folks an apology, but that’s not really their style.
The big misconception that this story sort of inadvertently enforced is that furries are people who wear animal costumes. Some furries like wearing suits, and that’s cool, but I’d say the majority don’t. They’re just people who appreciate anthropomorphic animals – cartoons, art, movies, whatever. Furries who make suits are often super professional and really talented folks who do good work.
That’s pretty messed up. On one hand it almost sounds like a prank. Only instead of making like a stink bomb they made something with deadly chlorine gas. Which goes past a prank and into - uh - chemical assault?? But they didn’t think this through, as the chances of really hurting someone I think was pretty low. I hope they catch the guy(s)/gal(s) who did it. It will be interesting to see their motivation.
I’ll admit it. The first time I learned what a furry was, I got the vapors. But now I feel like, hey, people gonna be people. They aren’t bothering anyone. Like that guy in Japan that married his very special pillow. Not my ball of wax but if he loves his pillow, no harm no foul to me. Sad that someone would attack someone just for being a little different in their way of accepting and showing love.
Even if it as someone “just” trying to get at an ex, remember that prior to 9/11 the biggest mass murder in the US was done with $1 of gasoline by a dude upset at his ex, so to teach her a lesson he set fire to the club she was in. Which had chained emergency exits to keep people from sneaking in an something like 80 people died.
To a large extent it does not matter what the motivation was. Whoever did this needs to go jail for the rest of his or her life. If it was a 15 year old doing what he thought was a funny prank on weirdos, he needs to go to jail for the rest of his life because he could have killed an ass load of people. If it was jilted ex he needs to go to jail forever, because he could have killed an assload of people, and if it was some religious nut bag, he too needs to go to jail forever.
I really hope that the lesson some future aspiring nut job gets from this is not that a great place to test you homemade weapon of mass destruction is a furry convention because no one will care, and in fact will laugh the attack off if it fails.
I mean, it’s a lot easier to believe that the furry convention had a real psycho in its midst than that there are anti-furry terrorist cells (just like it’s easier to believe that someone was killed by their spouse than by a stranger) but making a gas attack on a hotel goes past get-back-at-my-lover and well into burn-the-world-down.
At the same time, I guess using the word ‘terrorism’ might actually hinder figuring out what happened (wait, this might be true in every case…)
Well, there was that McVeigh fellow, who got rather more than 80…
As much as I abhor what happened, I can’t agree with you on this.
Even if he actually killed an “ass load” of people (which he did not) a civilized society does not send children away for life, no matter how stupid or destructive or hateful was the thing they did.
I can’t decide if she’s covering her face because she totally understands how inappropriate it is to laugh about a terrorist attack, or if she snorted up a booger or cried off a false eyelash or something. I actually think the co-host who was egging her on was worse.
I’d even change the headline to “19 people sent to hospital after possible terror attack”
Even though this was very likely a case of people being targeted for who they are and what they’re perceived as doing I think these are facts that should be addressed in the article itself. Maybe a headline emphasizing that furries are people just like everybody else would tone down the jokes a bit.
Of course I’m probably being hopelessly naïve. No matter the headline there are a lot of people who are either going to make jokes or say “Weirdos like that get what they deserve.”
You say that like furries were never actually persecuted. I’m not trying to elevate furry issues to the same tier as institutionalized racial/sexual/religious oppression, but in many geek circles it is still very much okay to bully and vilify people for liking the wrong kind of comics and for wearing cat costumes instead of Chewbacca costumes. As a geek who’s experienced bullying (though not since high school, fortunately), that’s bullshit and shouldn’t be played down.
For example:
See, if these were normal people, this would be a serious attack, but since they’re known sexual deviants, it’s probably just some deviant thing. Right? For fuck’s sake.
I say it like that, but I do in fact know the truth. I was not around for the days when “skunkfucker” was the original “furfag”, but it’s attested well enough; everyone should be aware that, yes, furries have in fact been bullied by other geeks pretty much since the beginning of the fandom.
On the other hand, there is a tendency for the fandom to be overly sensitive in the cases where everyone notices, while being overly quiet in the more common cases. This is a very visible, very serious incident, but as best as I know, the only aspect to which I could ascribe the quality “more likely than not” is the assertion that the gas release was intentional. I don’t think there’s enough publicly-known evidence to say one way or the other whether the perpetrator was internal, peripheral, or external to the fandom.
I think it’s the equivalent of having Alan Colmes on Hannity’s show on Fox… “see, we’re inclusive of different opinions”… The fox morning news show is far worse anyway, Fox and Friends… shudders
