The Michael Knowles Show - ＂I Get Really Itchy＂ Michael & The Furry ｜ Nathan (Fursona)

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00:00:44.820 Do you think your life would be better if you were not a furry?

00:00:52.980 If I wasn't a furry, well, I'd probably be dead.

00:00:56.580 My associate producer, Professor Jacob,

00:00:58.540 he went to a furry convention.

00:01:00.000 and he said that he saw a big STD screening booth.

00:01:04.880 Why do they have an STD booth?

00:01:06.280 There are parties that do happen.

00:01:09.100 It's better to be safe than to be sorry. 0.91

00:01:11.880 Would you take your head off, your fur head off, 0.96

00:01:14.840 tell the world who you really are, or no? 0.96

00:01:16.520 You want to remain anonymous as a furry.

00:01:30.000 When Macbeth could no longer make sense of the world, he said that life was a tale told by an 1.00

00:01:37.640 idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Now, I think he was wrong. I think 1.00

00:01:43.560 life signifies a lot. What we are seeking to understand today is a tale full of sound and

00:01:51.000 furries, signifying something. So I am joined, very pleased to be joined, by Nathan. Nathan,

00:01:58.420 thank you for coming on the show it's nice to be here you're a furry yeah we've all heard it's hard

00:02:06.040 to miss it's hard to mistake yes we've heard a lot about furries i remember the first time i ever

00:02:10.700 heard about a furry was freshman year of college someone mentioned it and i people were making

00:02:17.020 jokes about it i i even then i couldn't figure out what it was i couldn't figure out even what

00:02:22.540 what the joke was about the culture that they were referencing.

00:02:28.320 Yeah.

00:02:29.460 How long have you been a furry?

00:02:31.400 I believe I've been a furry since maybe 2012, 2013.

00:02:36.500 Wow, that was right around that time.

00:02:38.100 A little bit earlier I was a freshman.

00:02:40.920 Okay, so this is right when furriedom really started to hit the mainstream.

00:02:47.340 What is a furry?

00:02:48.260 so furry it it's kind of a blanket term to an extent uh it's basically people who like

00:02:56.320 anthropomorphic animals obviously enough um and it does go from person to person but

00:03:03.040 for me that's basically what it is i have all these different little characters that i made

00:03:08.160 myself wrote commissioned to art for that i really do enjoy some of them are aspects of me

00:03:13.720 myself, uh, that I want to expand upon. Um, but no, basically people who like anthropomorphic

00:03:21.520 animals. So this character, this fursona that you're in right now is named Nathan. That's not

00:03:28.080 your Christian name. Who is Nathan? Nathan is kind of a shy person. Uh, I made him around the

00:03:38.900 time where I was still very much an introvert. Didn't really talk to many people. My eggshell

00:03:44.560 hadn't cracked. And he was kind of just a reflection of me to kind of look at like, hey,

00:03:53.460 this is kind of who you are right now. But through the years, I made Nathan in 2019. I didn't make

00:04:00.060 him all the way back in 2012. He kind of morphed into kind of who I am as a regular person. It's

00:04:08.500 more a persona just obviously with a bunch of fur so how has he changed and therefore how have you

00:04:17.100 changed well i've become a lot more extroverted i put myself out there obviously you're on this

00:04:22.740 show obviously obviously enough um i've grown a lot more mature since since uh i made nathan

00:04:32.600 and get into this in 2012 yep how old are you then i believe i'm not very good with ages it's

00:04:41.920 terrible i know i think like 13 i'm 23 right now you got into this at age 13 yeah well no uh you're

00:04:49.380 23 right now 24 so 10 years ago you would have been 13 that's 2016 so that you were like 8 if

00:04:57.840 were 2012. Yeah, I think that sounds about right. So you were a kid. You were a little kid when you

00:05:03.180 got into it. How did you get into furries? How does an eight-year-old even know what a furry is?

00:05:07.160 Well, it started at that time. I was really into werewolves as a kid, like really into werewolves.

00:05:14.360 I loved werewolves, cryptids, everything like that. And that 2012 era was when I started getting

00:05:20.600 into that. And then I would say maybe when I turned 12, so a few years after that, I was given

00:05:28.960 a computer as a kid, and I started to do some internet searching. Around that time, that's when

00:05:33.680 furry started to get into a little bit of the mainstream, not nearly as much as it is now.

00:05:39.020 And it kind of evolved from there. I found different artworks of werewolves that different

00:05:44.140 artists in the community made, and then I looked up those artists, and then it kind of snowballed

00:05:48.820 from there. So you're 12 years old. Yep. Your parents give you a computer. Yep. And you start

00:05:54.900 searching for something. Yeah. What are you searching for that leads you to the furries?

00:05:59.760 Just werewolves. Werewolves. Like just straight up werewolf art, werewolf anything. More

00:06:04.180 specifically werewolf art because that leads into that whole world. Does that lead to, I assume it's 0.78

00:06:10.340 not just Google image searches. Yeah. Does that lead to certain platforms, social media websites?

00:06:15.120 Some forums.

00:06:16.280 I didn't really browse the forums as a kid very much, but I knew of them.

00:06:20.660 Mostly just Google image searches, just because I was a kid.

00:06:24.260 Where do you learn the term furry?

00:06:26.300 Well, it was when I started looking at those profiles that the people had whenever they were uploading their werewolf art and everything.

00:06:37.200 So this would be to a forum or a social media platform?

00:06:39.220 Yeah, it would lead to one of those.

00:06:40.880 What are the furry platforms?

00:06:42.480 Well, there is a major one for Affinity.

00:06:46.780 It's a forum that's been running since, like, don't quote me on this.

00:06:52.120 I think, like, 2006, 2007.

00:06:54.200 It's an old forum.

00:06:55.460 Okay.

00:06:57.240 That was a really popular one, and it still is a popular one.

00:07:00.040 People still use it.

00:07:01.440 And it linked more towards that.

00:07:03.060 And a lot of artists have different galleries that they post their art on

00:07:06.860 and everything, and snowballed from there.

00:07:09.120 Okay, so you're 12 years old.

00:07:10.820 Yeah.

00:07:10.920 You're looking up werewolves.

00:07:12.260 You end up on fur affinity, and you say you really like this.

00:07:16.880 Yeah.

00:07:18.060 What is it that you like about it?

00:07:21.840 Is it just the imagination?

00:07:24.200 Is the artistic aspect what's drawing you? 0.98

00:07:26.960 Is there, I hate to say it, but the furries have a reputation as being a sexual subculture.

00:07:33.500 Is it like a sex thing, or is it just an art thing?

00:07:36.280 For me, it's an art thing.

00:07:37.800 I really love the creativity.

00:07:39.840 it's one of my absolute favorite things it it honestly is um just seeing what someone can come

00:07:47.740 up with especially with these silly little animal characters and everything seeing the different

00:07:52.440 designs that people can make uh the fursuits as well that's my other favorite aspect of it

00:07:58.560 that's kind of been my allure ever since i actually joined the fandom so okay so you join it

00:08:04.300 in you know around whatever 2012 or so yeah and then you get really get into it over the ensuing

00:08:10.160 years then you find the furries online yeah do you know any furries in real life at this point

00:08:15.060 not at this point just because at around this time when i really started to get into it

00:08:21.720 2016 2017 2018 2019 not 2019 2016 2017 2018 around that time there was a really popular trend going

00:08:31.360 on on youtube where a lot of people were uploading like cringe compilations of furries and everything

00:08:36.840 that kind of swung the community even further into mainstream like making fun of furries yes

00:08:41.460 so now were you offended by this as a furry um some of them no some of them i could agree with

00:08:48.140 to an extent but um it was really just the mob that it kind of created because in in my opinion

00:08:57.900 with cringeness,

00:08:59.500 there's nothing inherently wrong with it.

00:09:03.180 Like, being cringe is fine.

00:09:04.620 You know, it's more,

00:09:05.900 it's like a lot of people say

00:09:07.360 that to be cringe is to be free,

00:09:09.320 not really worry about

00:09:10.580 what anyone has to think about you.

00:09:14.640 So I was...

00:09:15.800 And to be cringe is to be lame,

00:09:17.720 to be square, to be not cool.

00:09:20.860 Is that right,

00:09:21.780 or am I misdefining cringe?

00:09:24.260 It's to an extent,

00:09:25.340 but it's mostly not to worry about like who really thinks about you you know like like that's what

00:09:33.580 the whole free comes in with it's like you're being who you really truly are without any masks

00:09:39.340 or anything like that but you are literally wearing a mask and being someone who you really

00:09:43.280 truly are not that's the funny part of it i really want to explore that yeah because

00:09:48.020 well i guess we need to establish yeah before you ever got into the furry thing yeah so i don't know

00:09:53.480 You were so young.

00:09:54.380 I mean, I guess when you were seven instead of when you were eight.

00:09:57.420 Tell me about your life.

00:09:58.860 Tell me about your upbringing, school.

00:10:01.220 You make this very curious point.

00:10:03.840 You say, well, to be cringe is to be free.

00:10:05.800 So I embraced the cringeness.

00:10:07.340 That's one of the things that drew you to it.

00:10:09.300 What's that look like?

00:10:10.280 So as a kid, I was raised very Christian, very Mormon.

00:10:16.500 And my parents were great to me, honestly.

00:10:20.060 uh they they knew about um like when i started getting interest in it they knew

00:10:27.300 that i did have an interest in it i just didn't really put it out that much okay to an extent i

00:10:34.140 mostly kind of kept it to myself because you were ashamed of it because you thought it was weird

00:10:39.040 um maybe a mix maybe a mix of both just just because it was so new at the time for me personally

00:10:49.440 and especially going into the 2017, 2018,

00:10:54.560 2016, 17, 18 time period.

00:10:57.140 Yeah.

00:10:57.480 There was just a lot of like just

00:10:58.700 like really like a lot of hate towards the fandom.

00:11:03.240 So I really just kind of kept it to myself

00:11:05.240 to an extent.

00:11:06.600 What did your parents think about it?

00:11:08.020 At the time, like they,

00:11:10.400 I was a little too outworldly with it.

00:11:14.840 They thought it was a little weird.

00:11:16.260 so they promptly uh shut that down to an extent some of the not more extreme things that i was

00:11:24.420 thinking but um they promptly shut it down what do you what do you mean the extreme like actually

00:11:29.860 thinking that i'm a full like full-blown animal and wanting to like be an actual animal and

00:11:36.000 everything like that you're saying you wanted to be an actual animal i was a i was a kid at the

00:11:42.540 time like young impressionable kids so i was but you thought you did think you wanted to be an

00:11:47.840 animal as a kid okay i'm talking tiny yeah yeah so i promptly grew past that after some teaching

00:11:57.640 from my parents when they told you you're not an animal yeah yeah straight up why did you want to

00:12:02.160 be an animal even as a little kid with the i say whimsicalness of everything the you know animals

00:12:11.680 don't really have to worry about much of anything, you know? I was going through like some rough

00:12:18.220 stuff at this time. Parents were fighting, everything like that. So kind of an escape

00:12:24.280 from that to an extent for me personally. Right. Do you think that's a prevalent impulse within

00:12:31.020 the furry community, a desire for escapism? More so escapism from like as a hobby escapism,

00:12:39.440 if that makes sense.

00:12:40.480 It's hard to have escapism as a job.

00:12:42.420 It's nice work if you can get it.

00:12:44.740 I would say more so just to get away from a job,

00:12:48.080 like your regular hobby.

00:12:49.380 That's how I feel about it.

00:12:51.800 So you're going through a little rough patch as a kid.

00:12:54.740 Yep.

00:12:55.320 Parents are fighting.

00:12:56.480 This gave you an escape,

00:12:58.660 not only in terms of something to do or look up online,

00:13:02.680 but this hobby in particular is different from my hobby.

00:13:06.220 My hobby is smoking cigars.

00:13:07.640 Yeah.

00:13:07.800 My hobby is playing ukulele.

00:13:09.440 Your hobby is a little different in that your hobby involves taking on a completely new identity.

00:13:16.400 Yeah.

00:13:17.760 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:13:20.060 Literally.

00:13:20.440 It's just a way to kind of step away from some responsibilities and just be free for like two or three hours most.

00:13:29.280 Film a few little videos, post them online, and then promptly come back into real life.

00:13:34.920 So then, obviously, the follow-up question has to be, is there something about your own true identity, whether we're talking 10 years ago or today or any other number of furries, is there something about one's own identity that feels uncomfortable, issues you don't want to deal with, parts of yourself that maybe you don't like as much, that leads one to take on a totally new fursona?

00:14:01.340 Not just a different personality, but even a different species.

00:14:03.920 Yeah. I don't, it's a case-to-case thing, just because people are obviously so different, and I can't speak for everyone.

00:14:14.140 But in your case?

00:14:14.940 But in my case, I wouldn't really, I mean, I would say a little bit so.

00:14:19.580 When you say you were having a rough go of things, and you didn't really like it, and so you wanted to escape.

00:14:25.180 Yeah.

00:14:25.600 And in this case, in the furry fandom, you're escaping not just to a little hobby for a bit, but into a totally new identity.

00:14:31.900 Yeah.

00:14:32.000 That would seem to imply that when one has that impulse, it's because there's a part of your true identity or multiple parts of your true identity that you're uncomfortable with, that you don't like as much, that you haven't quite worked out.

00:14:45.060 Not really for me personally.

00:14:46.820 It really is just going into a whole different world outside of the real one.

00:14:53.000 But I guess the question is why would you want to do that?

00:14:55.040 Meaning, I like the real world.

00:14:57.340 The real world's tough.

00:14:58.460 There are problems.

00:14:59.320 People go through bad times.

00:15:00.980 But I really like the real world.

00:15:02.560 I don't want to go to a different planet.

00:15:04.800 People say we could go take over Mars.

00:15:06.720 I don't want to go to Mars.

00:15:07.420 I like Earth.

00:15:08.360 Some people want to leave their families.

00:15:09.880 They want to leave their country.

00:15:10.780 But I really like the real world.

00:15:12.840 I enjoy living as myself.

00:15:16.080 So if someone's going to live, even for a couple hours a day, as someone else,

00:15:20.560 that would seem to imply they don't like the real world as much.

00:15:25.020 Am I wrong in that conclusion?

00:15:26.500 I mean, to an extent, responsibilities are tough.

00:15:30.640 work is hard. It's tough to get the day by day. So I would say just a little bit,

00:15:40.780 but not in the sense of I don't like myself because in very recent years, I've become

00:15:46.660 very comfortable with myself improving upon my health, everything like that. It's been pretty

00:15:52.700 good. This is just something that I do. So then previously, before you improved your

00:16:00.480 health or more comfortable. Obviously, previously then, you were less healthy or less comfortable

00:16:05.500 with yourself. So when did that change happen? How far into the furry-dom did that occur?

00:16:13.060 Well. And in what ways were you uncomfortable, if you don't mind my asking? Yeah, of course.

00:16:18.640 There was a period of time, kind of as a kid, where I just didn't really feel right. Like,

00:16:26.600 i didn't fit in because i was shy didn't have a lot of friends everything like that so you know

00:16:34.220 being shy little kid i really like writing so finding out like furries and everything

00:16:41.600 and that i can make these anthropomorphic characters like on paper started making stories

00:16:49.500 and everything like that some small short stories making personalities for my characters

00:16:53.160 and then kind of expanding upon that.

00:16:56.000 So that was kind of my little form of escapism

00:16:58.760 when it comes to furries, at least when I started.

00:17:02.660 This is only recent.

00:17:03.720 I only got this thing last year.

00:17:06.240 The furry outfit?

00:17:08.080 The fursuit, yes.

00:17:08.900 The fursuit?

00:17:09.440 Yes.

00:17:10.220 So how can you be a furry without a fursuit?

00:17:12.980 It's easy.

00:17:15.020 Like anthropomorphic characters,

00:17:17.100 and you have a fursona.

00:17:19.040 That's a pretty simple way to become a furry.

00:17:22.060 But isn't the fursona, like for my persona, some of it is immaterial.

00:17:28.580 It's my joys, my desires, my whatever.

00:17:31.200 But then part of it's material.

00:17:32.780 Part of my persona is I'm a moderately sized Italian looking guy from New York, middle of my 30s.

00:17:41.340 Part of my persona is physical is what I'm saying.

00:17:43.680 And so if the fursona is even more physical because it involves these fantastical visual images

00:17:50.260 and these characters that you make on paper,

00:17:52.260 then how can you have the fursona

00:17:54.040 without the physical part of it?

00:17:56.960 If you show up to the furry convention,

00:17:58.400 how do you do it without the fursuit?

00:17:59.960 Well, I can actually show you a little bit.

00:18:03.200 This is a badge that I had made,

00:18:05.060 and this is actually my fursona.

00:18:07.040 So what a lot of people do

00:18:08.520 is a lot of people will make art of their characters.

00:18:11.060 So obviously I've had art commissioned of Nathan.

00:18:14.400 Maybe a little too much,

00:18:15.840 a little bit too much money,

00:18:17.180 but that's kind of what people will do.

00:18:19.660 How much have you spent on the art and the costume?

00:18:24.000 How much money would you estimate you've spent on being a furry?

00:18:27.820 It is an expensive hobby.

00:18:29.380 I will put that forward.

00:18:30.940 Could you estimate the number?

00:18:34.480 Well, art, I'll try to estimate it a little bit.

00:18:39.140 I'm going to take these off.

00:18:41.680 I would say I've probably spent like $500 over the span of it.

00:18:46.860 Commissioning art.

00:18:47.640 Yeah, commissioning art, pretty much.

00:18:49.660 Um, recently, this guy,

00:18:53.020 first suits are expensive.

00:18:54.060 I will put that forward.

00:18:55.360 They are.

00:18:56.000 They are literal walking, uh, works of art.

00:18:59.900 That's, that's how a lot of people see it.

00:19:01.960 Um, I-

00:19:02.660 How much do they cost?

00:19:03.700 Well, it kind of depends.

00:19:05.320 Uh, new makers, like super new makers.

00:19:07.740 I'm talking like amateurs.

00:19:09.220 You could probably get one for like $500,

00:19:11.980 and it would just be the, the head,

00:19:14.820 hand paws, and then a tail.

00:19:16.740 Okay.

00:19:17.200 Um, there are different categories,

00:19:19.660 to fursuits when it comes to it so i'm wearing a full partial that's arm sleeves hand paws

00:19:27.140 feet paws and a tail they on the higher side average like forty five hundred dollars and on

00:19:36.580 the lower side which is what i was because i got mine from a newer maker uh like sixteen hundred

00:19:42.400 seventeen hundred which is a good it's a lot of money it's a lot of money but it is uh in the

00:19:48.420 grand scheme of fursuits, it's really, it's a really good price actually. So you're saying

00:19:53.680 the highest that goes at 4,500 bucks. Uh, not that high. I would say the highest that I have seen,

00:19:59.040 um, is a, uh, fursuit. It wasn't, I, I think it was pre-made. I'm not sure, but a lot of artists,

00:20:08.600 what they'll do is they'll do auctions for their different either artworks or fursuits.

00:20:13.260 I think I saw one auction for like $2,500, like $25,000.

00:20:20.540 $25,000?

00:20:21.960 Yeah, a lot of money.

00:20:23.320 Lots of money.

00:20:25.080 That's for the Gucci fursuit.

00:20:26.840 Yes.

00:20:27.200 That's got to be for the top of the line, Seville Row fursuit.

00:20:31.500 They've been part of the fandom since like 2008 minimum.

00:20:35.380 You keep calling it a fandom.

00:20:36.660 Yeah.

00:20:37.160 And I think I'm a Yankee fan.

00:20:38.820 I was watching the Yankees last night.

00:20:40.520 And you know what?

00:20:41.480 When I was a kid, I had Yankee jerseys.

00:20:43.260 I don't anymore.

00:20:44.140 I have a bunch of Yankee hats.

00:20:45.840 So there's a little part of it.

00:20:47.000 But I don't wear the whole uniform and swing a bat.

00:20:52.340 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:20:52.720 But it seems to me when you say you're a fan of something,

00:20:58.320 it seems like what the furries do is more involved than just being a fan.

00:21:02.160 Yeah.

00:21:04.180 Furry fandom is just what it's been known for a long time,

00:21:07.120 and that's kind of just how everyone refers to it as.

00:21:13.260 it is a little more intensive

00:21:15.920 just because there is that personability to it.

00:21:20.560 Like, you might be a Yankees fan,

00:21:22.220 but you're not actually out there swinging.

00:21:24.580 You're not actually doing that.

00:21:26.140 They never called me up.

00:21:27.080 But in the furry fandom,

00:21:28.840 this is your character,

00:21:31.120 and you have other people

00:21:32.320 that also have other characters

00:21:33.840 and that also like other anthropomorphic characters

00:21:36.180 that you might also like.

00:21:37.120 So it's just kind of a melting pot

00:21:39.720 of a whole bunch of different personalities.

00:21:41.240 It really, like, you see all walks of life at the conventions.

00:21:45.300 It is, it expands your world.

00:21:49.320 It's crazy.

00:21:50.220 Why the nose ring?

00:21:53.580 I just kind of, I thought it would add a little bit of character to it because his eyes are blue.

00:21:58.720 So you have the blue nose ring, so it kind of makes his nose stand out.

00:22:02.940 It does.

00:22:03.440 I have a theory.

00:22:04.360 I did a deep investigation on it.

00:22:06.120 Yeah. 1.00

00:22:06.320 That all women, all young women who have the nose ring in the middle, the bull nose ring, are not in a good place. 1.00

00:22:14.340 The little side nose ring for girls is sometimes okay, but the bull one, I find the girls have problems. 1.00

00:22:23.280 But in this case, you're an animal, so it's like the bull nose ring kind of makes sense on an animal.

00:22:28.280 So, all right, I'll leave it as a, I agree, it does work, it plays very well with the eyes.

00:22:32.940 why did so many furries turn us down not to be disrespectful but you were not the first furry

00:22:43.180 we asked for the past year or so we've been trying to get a furry to come sit down and

00:22:48.000 explain furriness to us and furry after furry rejected us why i won't uh assume what that

00:23:00.040 person might be thinking at that time everything going through the head and everything it might be

00:23:06.040 just because uh the date like daily wire as as an example is such a right-leaning

00:23:14.940 organization that i think that might have just been a turnoff just in general because like you

00:23:20.420 mentioned and i am most furries are left-wing yeah that is a fact yeah they're not i don't

00:23:27.460 think there's a single furry in President Trump's cabinet. Or maybe we wouldn't know if there were.

00:23:33.460 Who would be the most likely to? I don't know. Marco Rubio has all sorts of roles in the admin,

00:23:38.900 but I don't think he's a furry. Who wore the Easter bunny outfit? Well, questions that I will

00:23:45.220 think about after our interview. We'll get back to hearing more about that furry in a moment. But

00:23:50.100 first, if you're enjoying this, do not let it end with this conversation. Tune in to the Michael

00:23:54.500 Knowles show every weekday, Monday through Friday. Stay informed daily on the most pressing

00:23:58.500 political and cultural stories. Listen on Apple Podcasts, watch on YouTube, or get the best of

00:24:03.140 both worlds on Spotify, where you can watch, listen, even jump into the comments. I will see

00:24:07.020 you there. Now, let's get back to hearing what happens at the furry convention. When my associate

00:24:14.980 producer, Professor Jacob, was going around to try to get a furry to sit down for this interview,

00:24:20.240 he went to a furry convention and he said that he saw a big STD screening booth at right there in

00:24:30.240 the convention hall. Now, when I go to conventions, there are Republican convention there, which I

00:24:37.140 don't know, maybe it should have, but when I go to, I don't know, a music convention or a cigar

00:24:41.920 convention, there are no STD screening booths. Why do the furries, at least at whatever convention

00:24:48.160 professor jacob was at why do they have an std booth

00:24:50.720 there are parties that do happen they're called room parties and they do tend mind you tend

00:25:03.240 to get sexual tend to not all of them are okay but some of them do tend so it's better to be

00:25:11.940 safe than to be sorry. And the room party is just in someone's hotel room at the convention?

00:25:18.640 Yeah. Most of the time. Or Airbnbs. Imagine you go to the STD booth. You show up. You're in your

00:25:26.580 furry costume. You go to the STD booth. They draw your blood. They tell you no syphilis. You got a

00:25:34.220 clean bill of health. You say, all right, you pay for your STD test. And then you go. You score the

00:25:39.380 invite to the room party, you go there, and as you say, you say, many, but not all. And you say,

00:25:46.760 just my luck, I already got the VD test, and I show up to the furry room party, and I'm at the 0.94

00:25:52.520 one that doesn't turn into an orgy. Could you imagine? There's a party like that. I'll be 100%. 0.83

00:26:01.040 The third year that we went to Anthrocon, there was a room party, and it wasn't sexual

00:26:07.340 in the slightest.

00:26:09.500 Good, I'm glad to hear that.

00:26:11.280 There are a lot of parties that are like that.

00:26:12.820 Good, I like that.

00:26:14.100 You mentioned you were pretty shy as a kid.

00:26:16.220 Yep.

00:26:17.260 Like you said, you were a writer,

00:26:18.880 like a lot of writers,

00:26:19.820 a little shy, a little bit of a loner.

00:26:21.920 And so I was wondering,

00:26:25.460 in preparation for this interview,

00:26:26.900 I was thinking,

00:26:27.460 what would I get out of being a furry?

00:26:30.460 If I were a furry,

00:26:31.440 what would I like about that?

00:26:33.380 And we'll address

00:26:35.240 or bring up some of the rumors

00:26:37.560 and sort of story questions about it in a moment.

00:26:40.240 But just on the most wholesome version of it,

00:26:42.240 I thought, well, you know, if I were really shy,

00:26:44.920 I've read somewhere that among the furry community,

00:26:50.240 they're sort of disproportionately on the autism spectrum.

00:26:53.380 There's a little bit of that.

00:26:54.980 If I were quite shy, I'd love the furry thing,

00:26:59.620 not because I like animals.

00:27:01.100 I actually don't really care for animals at all.

00:27:02.880 I'm more of a people person.

00:27:03.660 But if I were shy, I'd like it because I'm anonymous.

00:27:08.880 Yeah, the anonymity.

00:27:10.200 That's also why I like it.

00:27:11.900 No one can really judge you if you're anonymous because they don't know who you are.

00:27:15.960 All they see is Nathan.

00:27:17.120 They don't see the guy under the mask.

00:27:19.160 That's another big reason as to why a lot of people love fursuiting in general

00:27:24.060 is just because you don't have to worry about how people see you as a person.

00:27:30.440 They just see you as your whimsical little animal character walking around the convention.

00:27:35.080 You don't have to worry about being judged.

00:27:36.440 Yeah.

00:27:37.500 So this, I guess, then sort of affirms my suspicion that a lot of furriedom comes from a place of discomfort with one's persona.

00:27:48.620 I mean, I was trying to think about it, just trying to relate to it in a way.

00:27:51.320 And I thought, well, okay, well, you know where I love anonymity?

00:27:53.860 I'm Catholic.

00:27:54.740 I like it in the confessional.

00:27:56.300 Some of the modern confessionals, they want you to sit face to face with the priest.

00:27:59.240 I don't want that.

00:27:59.820 Yeah.

00:27:59.920 I want to go into a box with a screen, get on my knees, confess all my black and evil and horrible sins, and then have the priest say, I absolve you of your sins as God's representative. 0.89

00:28:11.340 So I said, well, I like anonymity for that reason.

00:28:14.440 I think that's using anonymity for a good purpose, namely to get right with God, to receive God's grace.

00:28:21.160 But anonymity in popular culture is more often seen as conducive to vice.

00:28:26.660 wouldn't you you know uh the the ring of power and the lord of the rings or this idea that if i

00:28:32.380 were invisible yeah or you know i i could i could get up to all sorts of no good i could steal i

00:28:38.020 could i don't know look at the lady in the shower i could do whatever i wanted no one would know

00:28:41.340 it's me in other words i wouldn't be held accountable for my sins which side of the

00:28:48.140 anonymity do you see in furrydom a lot of people actually do get held accountable for for what

00:28:54.420 they do it is very surprising what do they do well there are as in any fandom anywhere there

00:29:01.760 are unsavory characters especially with such a wide umbrella of i like anthropomorphic animals

00:29:08.920 you get all walks of life like i mentioned and there are unfortunately people who do bad things

00:29:14.220 but what do they do mostly like some people don't have a personal space and it's a lot of people

00:29:23.480 think that just because i'm wearing an animal costume that just means you can do whatever you

00:29:30.200 want you have full consent you like there there are unfortunately people that have that mindset

00:29:35.920 and that's even in that's more of like a cosplaying thing so people who even dress up as characters

00:29:42.280 that aren't anthropomorphic animals unfortunately a lot of people have that mindset but we're still

00:29:47.360 dancing around it a little bit you say well you know they do bad things for which they can be

00:29:51.600 held accountable. And you say, well, what are the things they do? And you say, well, you know,

00:29:54.960 they just, they, they don't have personal space, so they feel like they can do whatever they want

00:29:58.440 to do. But I guess not to be a law writer sensational about it. Yeah. It's a bit of a

00:30:02.820 sensational conversation, but what are we talking about? What, what are the bad things that go on

00:30:08.300 at the furry convention? Well, not, there isn't a lot. I will say, obviously you're going to have

00:30:13.500 that person who is very antisocial and touches up on someone. I'm going to be straight up like

00:30:21.180 that does goes and gropes a puppy or something like a like a human but like a furry like a person

00:30:26.540 yes that it is a very unfortunate thing that does happen but people catch on to that like quick it

00:30:35.680 is there people get banned like almost instantaneously when stuff like that happens

00:30:41.280 and it is unfortunately a problem but it's addressed pretty much instantly it's just people

00:30:48.420 do unfortunately have that mindset of you're wearing an animal costume. So that must mean

00:30:53.620 that I can do whatever I can do what I want. You know, it's an unfortunate thing. It really is.

00:30:58.320 That you're anonymous. Yeah. It's funny. One, one thing that happened when I got my show and I had

00:31:04.220 a little bit of a public profile, one thing that I, it was nice. You know, some people come up on

00:31:08.620 the street and say, Hey, I like the show. That's, that's real nice. But then I said, well, hold on

00:31:12.940 now. I can never be rude to a waiter. I'm never rude to waiters, but I said, even if I wanted to

00:31:17.980 be rude to a waiter. I can't be because there's a chance that someone sitting at the other table

00:31:22.100 is going to know me from the show and then I'm going to get a bad reputation. So even if I wanted

00:31:27.140 to do something bad, I really can't do it in public. And you're now in the age of mass surveillance

00:31:33.420 and constant interconnectedness. We're kind of always public. And so I said, so now I really

00:31:38.260 got to watch myself because I'm to whatever degree I am a public figure. And then I said,

00:31:44.040 well, that's too bad. And then I thought, wait a second, that's not too bad. That's actually a

00:31:47.020 good thing. I say, I'm really glad that I have a little bit of a public profile because that

00:31:51.260 actually impels me to behave better because I shouldn't be rude to the waiter and I shouldn't

00:31:58.640 do something I ought not to do. And so actually, oh, that's kind of a good thing. I actually don't

00:32:02.860 really want to be anonymous almost ever. If the anonymity is breeding some kind of bad stuff

00:32:08.760 and the anonymity for the furry community is ubiquitous, is that a moral hazard of

00:32:16.560 the furry fandom?

00:32:19.000 Personally,

00:32:19.680 I just don't think so.

00:32:21.420 Just because the fursuits

00:32:22.620 are so, like,

00:32:24.580 in your face.

00:32:25.340 You know, like...

00:32:26.160 So identifiable.

00:32:27.000 Yes, identifiable.

00:32:27.920 Okay.

00:32:28.240 Like, almost every character

00:32:29.920 is going to be unique

00:32:30.720 and people are going to recognize

00:32:32.600 the little stuff about your suit

00:32:34.540 and be able to point you out.

00:32:37.600 But you could just get a new suit.

00:32:39.640 Some people do do that.

00:32:41.040 You got to be rich, I guess.

00:32:42.060 The suits are expensive.

00:32:42.680 Yeah, you do have to be rich.

00:32:43.140 But you could get a new suit.

00:32:44.580 You could.

00:32:45.160 It's like in a video game.

00:32:46.120 You start over.

00:32:48.480 But in life, in regular life, you don't get to start over.

00:32:51.300 Exactly.

00:32:52.280 People have unfortunately done that in the past, but they get very, very quickly found out who they were.

00:32:59.280 It's actually kind of surprising.

00:33:00.980 So when people in the furry world do non-consensual sex stuff, they get zapped.

00:33:06.460 They're out.

00:33:06.880 They're out of the convention.

00:33:08.380 But what about the consensual part?

00:33:11.620 I think most people view furries as a kind of paraphilia or sexual fetish, fairly or unfairly. 0.89

00:33:17.960 And then I Googled it a little bit, grokked it. 1.00

00:33:20.880 I said, this is true.

00:33:21.800 And there are some weird sexual stats on it.

00:33:25.600 From what I could see, I don't know how reliable the surveys are.

00:33:29.500 It's quite gay in as much as only, I think it's only 10% of self-identified furries identify as straight or heterosexual. 0.55

00:33:38.880 And the rest of them, it's not that they all identify as gay,

00:33:41.200 but they all identify, or 90% of them identify as bisexual or pansexual

00:33:47.100 or othersexual or gay or lesbian or whatever.

00:33:49.380 So it is, compared to the general population, overwhelmingly LGBT. 1.00

00:33:55.240 Are those stats correct? 1.00

00:33:56.560 Yeah.

00:33:57.080 They are.

00:33:57.680 Those stats are actually from, there's an actual research group

00:34:02.040 in the furry fandom itself at Anthrocon,

00:34:04.840 largest furry convention in the world.

00:34:07.140 That's the one that I go to a lot of the time.

00:34:09.140 They host surveys.

00:34:11.340 They'll have, like, little pamphlets that people can fill out.

00:34:13.720 They have a QR code.

00:34:14.840 So these are, like, actual statistics.

00:34:17.400 So that is very, very true.

00:34:18.700 Yes.

00:34:20.400 Why is that?

00:34:21.380 If this were just, as you said earlier, it's not really a sex thing.

00:34:25.560 It's more about the art.

00:34:26.700 For me personally.

00:34:27.780 For you personally.

00:34:28.340 Okay, fair enough.

00:34:29.120 So for furry-dom as an interest, if it were just about the art, you would expect the, I mean, I guess artists are a little light in the loafer sometimes, but you would expect the sexual identity aspect to basically match the general population.

00:34:46.120 In this case, it's as far away from the general population numbers as it's possible to be.

00:34:51.400 so it would seem that the sexual identity is a big part of it which i think lends some credence

00:34:58.360 to the popular view that this is largely a paraphilia or a sexual fetish i will say that

00:35:06.820 it is prevalent it is like just just straight up but it's not as

00:35:12.280 i would say trying to find a good way to explain this because you're you're not wrong the convention

00:35:20.320 does not the convention oh my god the conference or whatever yeah the uh the fandom does have roots

00:35:26.380 in that aspect it it does um one one of the uh a primary aspect that a lot of people point the

00:35:35.280 furry fandom towards is i don't know if you'll recognize this name uh fritz the cat a comic

00:35:41.840 strip from like the 70s oh yes yeah vaguely vaguely vaguely that's what a lot of people also point

00:35:47.700 towards as what kind of that whole era 70s 80s the comic strip era garfield first the cat everything

00:35:54.120 like that that's what a lot of people attribute towards free free-ness kind of getting popular

00:36:00.840 and then you had the internet in the 80s and then forums in the 90s so people who like that stuff

00:36:05.840 got together talked about it and everything like that so there is definitely roots in it

00:36:11.600 and it is prevalent, but it's not to a point to where it's everything.

00:36:17.880 But, yeah, the connection I'm having trouble making is,

00:36:20.960 okay, sure, there are these comic strips that people like, Garfield or whatever,

00:36:25.500 and since I'm a conservative, maybe I'd have to go back further.

00:36:28.260 If I were a furry, I'd have to be like Flip the Frog, maybe Mickey Mouse.

00:36:31.900 Maybe.

00:36:32.180 But, okay, so they like these comic strips, and you say,

00:36:35.560 so therefore it has the roots in this kind of sexual community.

00:36:41.020 But I'd say, well, hold on.

00:36:42.000 What's the connection between Garfield or Fritz and a sex thing?

00:36:46.680 Well, Fritz the Cat was an adult comic strip.

00:36:50.080 Oh, really?

00:36:50.640 Oh, okay, all right.

00:36:51.680 You can see my ignorance of Fritz.

00:36:53.420 No, you're good.

00:36:53.960 I think it's Fritz or Felix.

00:36:56.080 I don't remember.

00:36:56.880 Felix.

00:36:57.360 Yeah, Felix wasn't a...

00:36:59.520 I don't remember.

00:37:00.280 Was he sexual?

00:37:01.020 I don't think he was sexual.

00:37:01.420 I don't remember what it was.

00:37:02.900 It was either that or like a movie.

00:37:04.740 I don't remember.

00:37:05.660 Okay.

00:37:05.820 It's an old one, though.

00:37:08.240 But...

00:37:08.560 No, no, that's fine.

00:37:09.700 That's the connection I'm trying to figure out.

00:37:11.580 Yeah.

00:37:11.900 Because one of the big questions that people have of furries is not, you know, we're in mixed company on the internet, obviously.

00:37:19.900 Yeah.

00:37:21.480 Do these people want to do weird stuff with animals?

00:37:25.360 No.

00:37:25.960 Straight up, no.

00:37:26.800 But they might want to do weird stuff with guys dressed up as animals.

00:37:30.800 Maybe.

00:37:34.040 But the connection stops at animals.

00:37:37.240 but but the one commonality is there we got animals in both of them and in fact the defining

00:37:44.600 feature of the furry as a furry is that he looks like an animal so like for me i'm a married man

00:37:51.540 yeah three and a half children one on the way and so i don't i don't go out to bars i don't go

00:37:56.780 picking up singles but if i wanted to go find a nice lady if i were single god forbid i'd say 0.99

00:38:02.320 well you know i like a girl that looks kind of like this has this color hair i'm going this is 1.00

00:38:06.620 that's what kind of attracts me

00:38:08.300 and I'm going to look around the bar and I'm going to find 1.00

00:38:10.660 that chick but 1.00

00:38:11.940 if you're a furry and you want to 1.00

00:38:14.580 you know go find a fellow furry

00:38:16.760 necessarily

00:38:18.520 the thing that would attract you to that furry is

00:38:20.600 the animal

00:38:22.440 persona so you

00:38:24.260 I don't think it's a totally unfair leap

00:38:26.620 to take that someone who is

00:38:28.480 attracted to people dressed up like animals

00:38:30.340 might have a thing

00:38:32.600 for animals. It's not an unfair assumption

00:38:34.300 but widely it's

00:38:36.620 not the case. Okay. People are inherently attracted to the human side. That's exactly

00:38:42.920 how it is. Personality is everything like that. The anthropomorphic side of the anthropomorphic

00:38:47.460 animal. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Not the actual animal itself, if that makes sense. Okay.

00:38:53.980 Right now, download Hallow to get three months free. June is the month of the Sacred Heart,

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00:39:43.760 of sin together, not to shame ourselves, but because only when we see clearly can we truly

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00:40:13.900 Heart of Jesus Challenge. How, this is a little far afield. When you were in high school,

00:40:21.860 were you a mascot? No. No. No. Too introverted. You were too introverted to be a mascot.

00:40:29.680 I wondered if being a mascot

00:40:31.160 was kind of a gateway into furredom.

00:40:33.560 I would probably say so.

00:40:35.280 It is.

00:40:35.760 People like different baseball mascots and everything.

00:40:37.720 I would say maybe.

00:40:38.880 Huh.

00:40:40.380 But you were too shy, too introverted.

00:40:42.640 So you had these friends on the internet.

00:40:43.860 Yeah.

00:40:44.180 You then meet them at the conventions.

00:40:46.780 What do you do?

00:40:48.240 I think I was at a political event once

00:40:51.280 in Washington, D.C.

00:40:52.100 I was speaking.

00:40:52.740 It was at a conference hotel.

00:40:54.020 Yeah.

00:40:54.700 And as I'm leaving,

00:40:56.660 I think a furry convention was coming in.

00:40:59.220 And so I only, I was going to get my car, but I saw it. I said, I think this is a furry convention. What happens at the furry convention? Break it down. You arrive in the morning. Hour by hour, what do you do at a furry convention?

00:41:12.880 Well, I will base mine off of Anthrocon just because that is the one I'm most familiar with.

00:41:19.020 I have gone to some smaller conventions.

00:41:21.640 But as soon as you get to the – and Anthrocon happens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

00:41:27.560 It's been happening there since 2008, 2009.

00:41:32.280 It's a longstanding convention.

00:41:34.060 That's why it's the biggest one.

00:41:37.200 When you arrive at the David O. Lawrence Convention Center, you're in a line.

00:41:40.540 for the I think the worst it was for me was like two hours it's bad two hours to get in yeah two

00:41:48.360 hours to get in two hours to get registered how many people are at this convention well this one

00:41:52.000 last year uh I went last year um 18,700 so yeah a lot that's a lot of furries a lot of people

00:42:02.780 yeah how many furries are there oh uh you can't you can't put a number on it you just can't it's

00:42:09.220 such a wide it's just such a wide term huh it's a very large convention and you've got anthracon

00:42:18.300 18,700 fwa which is one that happens in atlanta furry weekend atlanta i think 17,700 maybe 17,500

00:42:28.560 now is it duplicates are people going to multiple conferences uh people go to multiple conventions

00:42:33.100 But it also is region-wise, obviously, Pittsburgh, Eastern, FWA, Southern.

00:42:41.980 And then there's another one, MFF, Midwest Fur Fest, happens up in Rosemont, Illinois.

00:42:47.920 So then you have Midwesterners going to that one because it's just right outside of Chicago.

00:42:52.440 Okay.

00:42:53.940 And what do you do?

00:42:55.000 Wait in line to get in for two hours.

00:42:56.660 Yep.

00:42:56.940 and then what i like to do just because it is base to base um i like to walk around and look

00:43:06.280 at the different fursuits just because i i love them they're they're so uniquely creative to that

00:43:12.320 person like you get all all different types of animals and in some cases which i love the most

00:43:19.120 you can get like insects uh and i think this is this is so funny uh there are two fursuits that

00:43:29.880 i know of one is a cone like a traffic cone and then another one is a spray bottle it is it's

00:43:39.480 crazy but now that's not an animal it's not an animal no and that's that's what i love about

00:43:43.080 and that neither of them are furry like literally they don't have hair but it's a fursuit they have

00:43:48.000 a fursuit body and everything, and it's molded with foam and everything. It's crazy.

00:43:54.440 That's a degree of decadence that I can't even quite fathom, that you go to the conference

00:44:01.380 specifically for the people to dress up like anthropomorphic animals, but then you do something

00:44:05.360 that's even sort of beyond that.

00:44:06.900 Totally, totally. That's what I love about it. It's just so out of left field, and these

00:44:11.360 people make it themselves, and I love that about it. I really do.

00:44:15.380 So you like to go around and look at the different fursuits?

00:44:17.840 because you say they are so tailored to the individual person.

00:44:23.360 In a lot of different ways, they are very representative of that person.

00:44:28.840 So then it seems to me what you're saying is

00:44:30.560 what you're interested in is not so much the fabric or the hair or the colors,

00:44:34.640 but you're interested in the person who made it.

00:44:37.180 Yeah, the designs, the animal that they decided to choose.

00:44:42.020 And if I wasn't...

00:44:43.000 But my question specifically is

00:44:44.800 when you say they're so tailored to the person that's what interests me i guess i'm i'm asking

00:44:51.260 are you more interested in the costume or the costume as a conduit to the person conduit to

00:44:57.280 the person okay just just because it's like why did this person choose this animal why did they

00:45:03.780 choose these specific colors and what made them decide to go with whatever they decided to do

00:45:10.260 And that can lead on to so many different conversations with this person.

00:45:15.380 And that's what I love about it.

00:45:17.560 I wish I was a little less introverted when it came to talking to people in fursuit.

00:45:22.140 I'm terrible with it.

00:45:23.100 I don't know why.

00:45:25.320 You mean you're too introverted when you yourself are wearing the fursuit or when you meet someone else who is wearing the fursuit?

00:45:31.100 When I'm, both ways.

00:45:33.460 When I meet someone that's wearing a fursuit that I love, sometimes I won't even go and take a picture with them, even though I want to take a picture.

00:45:40.120 It's just how I am as a person.

00:45:41.800 Why do you think that is?

00:45:44.540 I'm unsure.

00:45:45.820 It's just kind of that anomaly about me.

00:45:48.840 It's so funny.

00:45:50.940 Huh.

00:45:52.500 The obvious answer, I'm not a psychologist,

00:45:56.720 but the obvious answer would be that you're a little insecure.

00:46:00.400 I would say so.

00:46:01.140 That's got to be it.

00:46:01.940 That's got to be it.

00:46:04.040 And as we've already discussed,

00:46:06.600 part of dressing up like the furry is to overcome that

00:46:09.860 to some degree with anonymity and a kind of necessary and performed outlandishness and

00:46:16.780 extroversion. So I guess what's curious to me is if you've controlled for all of these aspects

00:46:23.300 to overcome your shyness and your insecurity. Why are you still shy? Yeah. I mean, if you're

00:46:29.080 of anywhere you're going to be, if I'm dressed up like a werewolf and with like big giant eyes

00:46:34.520 and a big smile, and I go see the kangaroo costume that I really like,

00:46:40.040 surely in that environment, if nowhere else,

00:46:43.500 I'm going to go up and pat him on the back.

00:46:45.820 Yeah, it's something I've got to work on.

00:46:47.240 It's really just an anomaly of myself.

00:46:49.540 It's something that I've been trying to work on,

00:46:51.460 especially since I started posting my fursuit and everything.

00:46:56.740 I've tried to overcome that gap, and I've been making strides.

00:47:02.680 I'm excited for Anthrocon this year

00:47:04.940 just because I do plan on trying to get as many pictures

00:47:09.220 with the creators that I love

00:47:11.040 and try to get pictures with people that maybe know me.

00:47:14.700 Something I'm trying to work on.

00:47:15.620 Because you're a creator now, too.

00:47:17.380 You're a, this is the weird thing about new media,

00:47:20.560 is you're a fan of these other people.

00:47:24.060 Yeah.

00:47:24.300 But if you're posting these pictures

00:47:26.580 on these forums and social media platforms,

00:47:29.140 then some people might be fans of you.

00:47:30.900 Yeah.

00:47:32.320 That's just how it works.

00:47:33.220 So everybody's a celebrity?

00:47:35.480 Sometimes.

00:47:38.280 I would say that's a pretty interesting way of looking at it.

00:47:41.360 Yeah.

00:47:42.280 So when you say that what you like about the costumes,

00:47:46.840 when you get, you know, it's 10 a.m. at the conference.

00:47:50.040 Yeah.

00:47:50.420 What you like about them is they tell you something about the person,

00:47:52.860 and that can lead to great conversations with the person.

00:47:55.140 Yes.

00:47:55.480 I say this is making a lot of sense to me.

00:47:57.660 Yeah.

00:47:57.860 Because that means that the fursuit is an icebreaker.

00:48:01.240 For a lot of people.

00:48:02.560 It's an easy way because I think I love conversations.

00:48:05.620 I like conversations with my wife.

00:48:09.340 When I was single, I liked going on dates with girls because I find girls interesting.

00:48:14.680 And I like, this is probably the most missing piece in our modern culture.

00:48:18.180 I really like conversations with my friends, my male friends.

00:48:21.960 Over a cigar especially is great.

00:48:24.100 But I really like that.

00:48:25.000 I say, oh, yes, you made this point the other day, so and so.

00:48:29.340 and it made, I was reading a book and it made me think of this. And, you know, Aristotle defines

00:48:34.200 friendship in a few different ways, but, you know, some friendships are just of utility. You try to

00:48:39.560 network with each other and help each other out. Some are friendships of pleasure, like you share

00:48:45.060 a common love of cigars or anthropomorphic suits. Yep. And then some are friendships of, of the

00:48:52.160 good, which is where you are both, you're both trained in virtue and you're disciplined and

00:48:58.840 you're contemplating a good together. And Aristotle says, this is the highest form of

00:49:03.200 virtue. And so what's curious about your discussion of, you know, seeing the suits to learn about the

00:49:08.540 person is I'm wondering, is, is furrydom the friendship of pleasure? You just get a thrill

00:49:16.660 out of fur or is, is furrydom closer to a friendship of the good where you're the, the

00:49:23.500 suit and the characters are just an instrument to get to know another human being to think about

00:49:29.580 higher things for a lot of uh for a lot of people it can just be for the fact that oh we both like

00:49:36.880 the fur we both like fur we most people it's about the fur for some for i would say sometimes most

00:49:43.600 but there are people i would like to say that i would like to be that person that wants to have

00:49:50.660 the fursuit be a conduit to learn about that person because as much as i say that i'm introverted as

00:49:57.520 much as i say that it's hard for me to walk up to people and talk to them about their fursuit

00:50:04.300 i really do want that connection to learn about that person to see what makes them drive and

00:50:10.260 everything so i do want to do that it's just for some reason it's hard it's hard it's hard yeah

00:50:17.000 Yeah, because if that's what you're after, if that's what, say, some large number of

00:50:22.660 furries are after, there are other ways to do it.

00:50:25.440 As I agree, men, we're not very touchy-feely, nor should we be, but I keep mentioning the

00:50:32.100 cigar in part because I have my Cigar Company logo on the other wall.

00:50:36.240 Because for men, we don't just say, hey, we're going to talk on the phone tonight, or hey,

00:50:42.040 let's go sit in a park and have a conversation.

00:50:44.040 It's a little weird.

00:50:44.660 but a man will say hey let's go get a drink after work yeah and you don't it's not really about the

00:50:49.140 drink it's not about the booze about it's about the conversation and the connection friendship

00:50:53.040 same thing with a cigar same thing with whatever and so i i guess if that's what you're after

00:50:58.640 do you really need the fursuit to do it not necessarily it's just for a lot of people

00:51:08.640 and even though i have said it um for a lot of people it is easier with with the suit just because

00:51:16.660 you can make that connection with them you can ask them about their sona go on and on and on and

00:51:22.800 then go past the sona and then start talking with them you know as them you know yeah yeah i i wonder

00:51:31.580 too, at least what I had read, you can confirm or deny this, that there's more than a little

00:51:39.380 touch of the tism in the furry community. There's autism spectrum.

00:51:43.600 There are neurodivergent people.

00:51:45.520 Yes. And so I think, look, I run in right-wing political circles that are very focused on

00:51:53.000 political philosophy. I attend the traditional liturgy of the mass. All to say, there's a

00:52:01.980 little touch of the tism in the communities that I run in as well. And sometimes a little

00:52:06.880 social awkwardness or something like that. And so I wonder if with the fursuits, a problem

00:52:14.120 that people who are somewhere on the spectrum sometimes have is that they don't pick up

00:52:18.760 on subtlety. Subtle social cues kind of elude them. It's just part of how it goes. And there's

00:52:24.360 nothing subtle about the fursuit. It's all so obvious. It's like a walking billboard that says

00:52:29.060 I'm goofy or I'm somber or I'm whatever. I like this animal and that symbolizes something. I

00:52:36.180 like this animal. It symbolizes something else. Is that it? Is it the fact that it's so

00:52:41.760 blunt, so obvious

00:52:44.820 that it is appealing as a way

00:52:46.840 to make a connection? I would say so.

00:52:49.020 Yeah. Just, you know.

00:52:51.540 Sorry.

00:52:54.080 Yeah, no.

00:52:54.820 I would say so just because it's like,

00:52:56.480 well, there's

00:52:58.160 someone dressed up as

00:52:59.980 a wolf

00:53:02.460 chasing someone else who's

00:53:04.840 dressed up as, let's say, like

00:53:06.700 a fox. Why don't I join in with

00:53:08.780 them too? Why not? You know?

00:53:10.500 and you don't have to worry about,

00:53:12.700 especially in a setting as a convention

00:53:16.440 or a meet or anything like that,

00:53:19.040 you don't really have to worry too much

00:53:20.380 about other people saying,

00:53:21.640 hey, that's a little weird.

00:53:24.820 A little weird.

00:53:25.400 But it's like this entire convention's a little weird.

00:53:28.060 You know, we're all dressed up as animals.

00:53:30.260 Right.

00:53:30.820 This makes me think then of some friends of mine

00:53:33.240 who don't have kids who like to go to Disney World.

00:53:36.440 I don't want to go to Disney World even with my kids.

00:53:38.220 but some of them they like to do it they like to play they like to do the stuff the kids do yeah

00:53:44.580 but they don't have kids and when you do the stuff the kids do without kids and if you can't have

00:53:48.940 kids i don't know maybe you have some niece or nephew you know you i don't know family friend

00:53:53.060 or something there are excuses to go to disney world if you want to but when you when you do

00:53:57.040 the kid stuff and you're not a kid and you don't have kids it's kind of weird but something that

00:54:01.660 i've discovered having now multiple children is when you have little kids you get to do all the

00:54:07.500 kids stuff, which is really fun a lot of the time, like rolling around and like racing around the

00:54:13.240 house and playing ball or whatever. And you get to do all of that, but it's not weird anymore.

00:54:19.720 And I wonder, you just brought up this example of, you know, sometimes beyond making a human

00:54:26.200 connection and having a conversation, making a new friend. Sometimes I just want to run around.

00:54:30.520 I want to run around and chase people and it's kind of fun. But I wonder, is there a way to do

00:54:37.100 that in a way that is not infantilizing to a grown person, which people view as weird,

00:54:41.780 but in a way where you say, well, maybe I'll get married and have some kids and then I

00:54:46.320 get to chase my kids around the house.

00:54:55.740 I'm trying to think of a good answer to that because that is a very good question.

00:55:00.480 I would say for, rephrase that one more time.

00:55:06.300 I apologize.

00:55:07.680 You want to do the fun kid stuff.

00:55:09.240 Yeah.

00:55:09.680 But it's weird when an adult does kid stuff with other adults.

00:55:13.120 So have you thought, well, maybe I'll channel that desire and do it in a way that is more appropriate.

00:55:20.100 Meaning, you know, if you want to go run around and chase people and, you know, be goofy.

00:55:25.100 Yeah.

00:55:25.920 You can get married and have some kids and then you can do it all day long.

00:55:28.940 And then it's not weird.

00:55:30.980 Then it doesn't incur the kind of social opprobrium

00:55:32.860 that it does when adults do childish things.

00:55:36.520 Well, for me, it's in the sense of

00:55:41.220 when people in the fandom do it.

00:55:44.960 It's as long, obviously,

00:55:46.620 as long as you're not like going around

00:55:47.720 chasing random people.

00:55:49.260 It's frowned upon.

00:55:50.240 Yeah, obviously.

00:55:51.320 As long as it's two people that agree to, you know,

00:55:55.220 play around, have fun in like a convention center,

00:55:58.460 There's no really issue to it.

00:56:01.680 But people think it's weird.

00:56:03.680 I guess that's my point.

00:56:05.100 I'm not saying it's a crime.

00:56:06.180 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:56:06.980 But I would say people think it's a little weird.

00:56:09.200 Inherently.

00:56:09.780 A millennial who doesn't want kids is free to go to Disney World, but it's kind of weird.

00:56:15.620 Yeah.

00:56:16.220 In my humble opinion.

00:56:17.580 And so if we acknowledge that there are activities, behaviors, that seem to be more appropriate for people at different ages,

00:56:24.720 is it, I guess at a very basic level, does it, does it bother you that

00:56:32.760 people think that that kind of behavior is not really age appropriate, that you ought to grow

00:56:40.480 up basically? I don't think, I don't think so. It doesn't bother me very much. No. No.

00:56:45.600 do you think your life you you mentioned you still have these problems you're still a little

00:56:55.160 shy yeah i'm working on stuff you're working on it and you say in some ways the furry thing has

00:57:00.900 helped you to overcome that but you still have all these problems yeah do you think your life

00:57:05.920 would be better that you maybe would flourish more if you were not a furry honestly with all

00:57:14.180 of the

00:57:15.580 sorry, give me a second.

00:57:19.380 With

00:57:19.820 the people that I

00:57:22.100 have met and the

00:57:23.760 conversations that I have had,

00:57:26.320 I honestly don't

00:57:28.020 think I'd be sitting here in front of you.

00:57:30.040 Well, you certainly wouldn't in an interview of a furry.

00:57:31.980 Obviously. That's true. You might be

00:57:33.180 talking about the business you started.

00:57:36.180 Yeah. You might be talking about the

00:57:37.980 sports

00:57:39.680 thing that you won. I don't know what you're

00:57:41.920 talking about. You might be talking about the crime you committed.

00:57:43.680 You might be doing something else.

00:57:45.420 But you're right.

00:57:45.840 You wouldn't be here as a furry.

00:57:46.960 Yeah.

00:57:48.000 But that doesn't answer my question.

00:57:49.740 Yeah.

00:57:50.780 I meant more as a person just because there have been people who have touched my life in a very positive way.

00:58:00.020 Again, in the furry community, you can find people that do have the same struggles as you.

00:58:08.420 And you can relate to that person as a person.

00:58:12.400 Yeah, you guys have whimsical animal characters and everything like that, but you can make genuine connections.

00:58:19.380 And if I wasn't a furry and I wasn't able to make those connections, you know, I don't think I'd be here.

00:58:30.680 Just, they have...

00:58:32.700 What do you mean you wouldn't be here?

00:58:34.040 Well, I'd probably be dead.

00:58:35.580 Do you think you would be dead?

00:58:36.500 I think so.

00:58:37.620 Because you were lonely.

00:58:40.200 lonely shy kind of kept to myself and i had people be nice to me have conversations about

00:58:51.620 my characters want to get to know me learn about me after talking to them about my characters it's

00:58:59.160 been it's been very profound and that is why i have and i'm sure as you've noticed i have such

00:59:05.940 a love for this community.

00:59:07.940 I really do,

00:59:08.780 just because it basically

00:59:10.360 has saved my life.

00:59:11.780 Like, just the people,

00:59:15.480 like, dude, no,

00:59:17.340 there are some fantastic people

00:59:19.200 in this community.

00:59:20.040 I'm telling you,

00:59:21.580 I'm telling you,

00:59:22.340 it outweighs everything

00:59:23.480 you've ever heard.

00:59:24.620 A good example is the,

00:59:27.040 like, the charity outreach

00:59:29.060 that a lot of the fandom does

00:59:30.800 is insane.

00:59:32.340 Like, there are very...

00:59:35.940 well-mannered and righteous people it like it it charity meaning like like they set up like

00:59:45.060 furry hospitals or no like you're saying charity like just personal raising raising money oh

00:59:50.360 towards different things one of my what do they raise money for they donate it themselves no but

00:59:57.940 what are the causes sorry um one big cause that i really liked was last year's um i think it was

01:00:07.840 last year's last year's anthrocon they every convention they tend to have a charity outreach

01:00:15.240 that they do um last year was great i think gray muzzles or gray paws but it was a kennel

01:00:25.760 that housed primarily elderly dogs,

01:00:29.640 dogs that might not be desirable in everything.

01:00:34.500 And they made it to where during the last years of their lives,

01:00:38.400 they could live peacefully until they die.

01:00:41.420 Are they usually animal charities?

01:00:43.460 To an extent.

01:00:44.120 I would guess it would be usually.

01:00:45.140 There have been hospitals, though, like St. Jude's, everything.

01:00:48.280 There have been hospitals. 0.87

01:00:50.120 But last year's was an animal one like that.

01:00:53.160 And I'm less concerned with the neglected puppies and more or the elderly dogs and more concerned with the neglected people.

01:01:01.700 Because what you said starts to change my view of things.

01:01:05.220 You said, initially you said, oh, you know, I was a little lonely, you know, a little shy, but I've overcome that.

01:01:11.920 I've been working on that.

01:01:12.760 Yeah. 0.93

01:01:13.400 Then you tell me, had you not found furrydom, you might have killed yourself. 0.98

01:01:19.180 Most likely.

01:01:21.460 Why?

01:01:21.900 Go into that a little bit.

01:01:23.300 That's a little more than just being a bit shy.

01:01:25.920 There were some issues, like I had mentioned.

01:01:29.800 My parents did eventually end up getting divorced.

01:01:32.960 Sorry to hear that.

01:01:33.880 And then I think what the catalyst for that was

01:01:38.480 is my granddad, who I was very close to,

01:01:42.360 had passed from leukemia,

01:01:44.140 and it was just a slippery snowfall for everyone.

01:01:48.460 Everyone was down, and...

01:01:51.900 It was a really, really rough, rough period, rough, rough period of time. I, I had spoken to different people with it. Um, both people that I know that aren't in the fandom and then people that I know that were in the fandom. And they really did help me with that grieving process, both with the divorce and with my grandpa's passing. So it was, it was just a lot at once for.

01:02:20.420 How old were you when this happened?

01:02:21.820 I think I was like 15, 16.

01:02:24.260 Yeah.

01:02:24.860 Not a good age for parents.

01:02:26.100 Not a good age for all that.

01:02:27.160 No age is good for that.

01:02:28.300 But, and that can happen.

01:02:30.600 You know, patriarch, a matriarch of a family dies and kind of everything starts to unravel.

01:02:35.140 So, so that was it.

01:02:36.520 You would say because of the death of your grandfather.

01:02:39.120 Yeah.

01:02:40.000 And the divorce of your parents.

01:02:42.040 You were suicidal because of that.

01:02:45.080 Or was there something else?

01:02:46.420 There, there, that was precisely it.

01:02:48.600 It was just a lot all at once.

01:02:51.880 Those ideations started to kick in,

01:02:53.640 but luckily I was quickly reeled in from that

01:02:59.320 and realized that little bit of an extreme to jump that far.

01:03:06.320 Sure, but plenty of teenagers think about that stuff.

01:03:09.060 And, you know, it's an amazing rejoinder to people who say,

01:03:12.580 look at how weird our culture is.

01:03:14.420 We have people putting on fursuits and jumping around like puppies.

01:03:17.400 And I say, that is weird. But you know what's weirder is a culture that normalizes and encourages

01:03:24.380 divorce. You know what's weirder is a culture that is increasingly atomized, a culture that

01:03:32.520 loses any sense of moral standards, a culture that can't make sense of suffering because it

01:03:37.820 has no idea of sanctity and grace and doesn't even really consider man's eternal end for which

01:03:44.500 All that really matters is consent and individual autonomy.

01:03:48.460 To me, that's a much weirder culture and probably the cause of the culture of guys jumping around in dog costumes.

01:03:59.240 Do you want to get married someday?

01:04:01.760 I'd say so.

01:04:02.800 Yeah.

01:04:03.480 And, you know, you want to have friends and community and all this.

01:04:07.260 On the one hand, the furry stuff provides you this very niche friend group.

01:04:11.920 But it also kind of isolates you from the more mainstream society.

01:04:18.520 So would you say you're more or less likely to get married, have a family, have a thriving community, have a whatever kind of good life you imagine?

01:04:31.400 Being a furry or not being a furry?

01:04:34.400 I would say equal for both.

01:04:36.640 just because furry for me is like i mentioned at the beginning it's simply a hobby it's a little

01:04:45.760 more of an eccentric hobby of course yeah but it's purely a hobby it can coincide alongside that

01:04:53.420 there are plenty of people that do have families and kids but i'll tell you what if if i had a

01:04:59.700 hobby yeah which was collecting my little pony dolls yeah and that were my hobby and i was single

01:05:05.880 and I start dating a girl and I mention to her, I say, by the way, I haven't mentioned this yet.

01:05:11.680 I have this hobby, which is I collect my little pony dolls. I have 750 of them.

01:05:17.100 That girl, I probably wouldn't get another date. That girl would think that's really weird. And 1.00

01:05:20.300 there'd be like a that girl shaped hole in the wall and she'd run away. And so now I might find 0.91

01:05:24.860 people who share this very niche interest that maybe also is associated with problems, anxiety,

01:05:32.940 depression kind of weird insecurities whatever but if i gave up that hobby and i said you know

01:05:39.420 i'm gonna i'm gonna take the lessons i've learned from this hobby but i'm going to try to channel

01:05:44.200 them sublimate them into a way that is a little more normal i bet i would have a better shot at

01:05:50.860 getting the next date getting married or do you disagree i because it i i do i do see what you're

01:06:02.360 saying you would have an easier time yeah finding someone if you weren't in such an eccentric hobby

01:06:07.800 i i i do agree with that just because there is that stigma with furry and everything that is

01:06:15.740 very true but you you can also find people that enjoy this stuff too right you can marry a furry

01:06:24.600 Yeah.

01:06:25.360 Do you plan to marry a furry?

01:06:28.860 It's crossed my mind.

01:06:30.560 It has crossed my mind.

01:06:32.120 But I feel like...

01:06:33.380 It would be hard not to marry a furry if you were a furry yourself.

01:06:36.980 Yeah.

01:06:38.280 But with it becoming as mainstream as it has been,

01:06:43.200 I would definitely say compared to years beforehand,

01:06:47.300 it is much easier just because you have ways of explaining

01:06:52.980 where you sit in the fandom as an example where you sit in the fandom yeah what do you mean where

01:06:59.320 you sit well like how like how deep into the fandom that that you might be what are the levels

01:07:07.480 of the furry fandom there's like your surface level interest in anthropomorphic animals of

01:07:15.080 course meaning like you watch cartoon you watch the lion king yeah okay and then you've got like

01:07:21.720 making your fursona which is another level and then you've got buying art and commissioning

01:07:30.700 your fursona then you've got getting uh then you have like getting like fursuits and everything

01:07:36.240 and then multiple fursuits and i would say that's about the deepest that it goes so people have

01:07:42.640 multiple fursonas yeah i am also one of them how many fursonas do you have i um like i mentioned i

01:07:50.960 did like to make characters yeah i would say i probably have like three or four okay but they're

01:07:56.040 more characters what are their names well i have nathan of course uh why'd you pick nathan say again

01:08:02.060 why'd you pick nathan i just like the name at the time just like it's not it's a biblical name

01:08:06.340 yeah court prophet for king david but that's not why you picked it no you just like the name i

01:08:12.200 just like the name okay um finnegan is another one finnegan just like the name okay uh cody

01:08:18.820 another one just like the name for that one okay and then my very first one that i made was lake

01:08:24.920 but i haven't really lake lake yeah like the body of water yeah okay how are they different

01:08:31.660 different personalities um like i mentioned nathan is much more of like that shy introverted

01:08:40.300 aspect of myself, but Finnegan for me is much more energetic, explosive, like kind of get out

01:08:51.500 of your shell. That's why, that's, that's why I made him. So even though I do have that like

01:09:01.040 shyness and everything that I did mention, when I do wear him, I do try to be a little more out

01:09:08.480 there. I haven't had much time with him just because I got him the same time. Finnegan has

01:09:14.680 a fursuit. I did get a fursuit for him. So you spent another $1,200 or whatever it was on another

01:09:20.400 fursuit? Maybe. Wow. Yeah. What do you do for work? I work at a hotel. Oh, that must pay pretty

01:09:27.860 well. Decently. All right. It's the number one hotel in its category. Oh. I won't get into

01:09:36.020 super specifics, but it is. Can you get me a deal on a suite if I'm traveling? I wish I could. Darn,

01:09:41.700 okay. Do your colleagues know that you're a furry? I've told a few of them and they don't really 1.00

01:09:47.700 find it that weird just because I have explained to them kind of how I'm explaining to you how

01:09:52.520 it is and they haven't really found it weird. What percentage of your friends are furries

01:09:58.240 versus not furries? Well, I have recently started to try to get to know more furries. I would say

01:10:07.360 unfortunately, out of all the friends that I know personally, I'm the only one.

01:10:14.560 You're the only one. So most of your friends are not furry.

01:10:17.520 All of my in real life friends that I talk to on a daily basis, no.

01:10:23.980 And what, do they know that you're, they know that you're a furry?

01:10:27.700 They don't mind.

01:10:28.940 How'd you get to know them?

01:10:30.400 I knew all of them through one personal friend as a kid.

01:10:36.700 He helped me through those different cycles that I was going through.

01:10:40.180 Yeah.

01:10:41.460 Another one, same thing.

01:10:43.700 And then most of them through the beginning of high school, end of middle school, and I've known them ever since.

01:10:50.260 These are very close-knit friends of mine.

01:10:53.440 All right, now I'm totally confused again.

01:10:55.720 I thought I had figured the furry thing out.

01:10:58.100 Now I'm totally confused.

01:10:59.780 Because you had basically convinced me that people are furries because they want to make friends and they have trouble making friends.

01:11:06.640 This is a conduit to making friends.

01:11:07.860 Which is true, yeah.

01:11:09.280 But you already have friends.

01:11:10.980 I have a few of them, yeah.

01:11:13.540 But you want more friends.

01:11:14.560 Yeah.

01:11:15.160 Yeah, okay.

01:11:16.360 You don't need that many friends, though.

01:11:17.900 This is something I ever...

01:11:19.000 Yeah.

01:11:19.700 Friendship is very important.

01:11:22.000 Friendship is so important, and we don't take it seriously at all today.

01:11:24.820 Yeah.

01:11:25.420 Now, especially, I think, after the sexual revolution, there's this idea that either men are not supposed to have any friends and women are supposed to control the social life of the household, which is, it does happen, but it's kind of funny because women don't actually have friends because all women hate each other, but that's a topic for another episode. 0.59

01:11:41.720 So the idea is that men don't have any friends and they just go to dinner whenever their wife drags them out to see somebody. 0.70

01:11:48.680 or if a man does have a friend, they have to be gay 0.54

01:11:52.680 because the only reason two guys would ever hang out 0.99

01:11:55.220 is because they're gay guys. 0.66

01:11:56.480 Those are the, or I'm sorry, there is a third category 0.91

01:11:59.020 which is you can sit with other men

01:12:01.220 to watch a football game or something.

01:12:04.120 You know, you can have some kind of shared pleasure

01:12:06.480 but the idea that men would ever just sit around

01:12:10.460 talking about their lives or philosophy or religion

01:12:15.460 or something meaningful,

01:12:17.840 The idea that they would do that regularly is kind of out the window.

01:12:21.160 So there's that.

01:12:22.400 But then on the flip side of it, you don't need that many friends.

01:12:25.760 If you have one or two good friends in your life, that's about it.

01:12:30.000 You can't, you know, a friend to all is a friend to none.

01:12:32.340 So you say you want more friends.

01:12:36.200 Which is, have you had a girlfriend?

01:12:39.260 I've had one, yeah.

01:12:40.540 One. Was she a furry? 0.99

01:12:41.800 No. 0.99

01:12:42.500 No. Did she know you were a furry?

01:12:44.720 No.

01:12:45.920 No, you hid it from her.

01:12:47.720 It was that period of time that I mentioned.

01:12:49.980 Dark, dark period.

01:12:51.180 Not that one, but 2016, 2017, 2018,

01:12:55.860 where furry hate was the thing to do.

01:12:59.720 So I just kind of kept it to myself

01:13:01.240 throughout that entire period.

01:13:03.140 And you managed to date the whole time,

01:13:05.800 but you never told her.

01:13:06.980 How much of your day do you spend doing furry stuff?

01:13:12.000 Meaning looking at the art, making the art,

01:13:14.340 thinking about the persona,

01:13:15.520 coming up with the characters, all the way to going to the conventions?

01:13:19.780 Maybe like an hour.

01:13:22.480 An hour a day.

01:13:23.440 Yeah, about that.

01:13:24.980 You sleep eight hours a day.

01:13:26.400 Yeah.

01:13:26.960 So that's one-sixteenth of your life you're spending on this.

01:13:31.440 And, you know, you've probably got to work.

01:13:33.920 Yeah.

01:13:34.820 Let's say you work eight or nine hours a day.

01:13:36.680 That leaves seven or eight hours a day of free time.

01:13:40.040 You got to eat somewhere in there.

01:13:41.680 so let's say you see your girlfriend for i don't know an hour a day two hours a day

01:13:48.100 that means that you're spending half the time you see your girlfriend yeah on the furry stuff

01:13:52.100 but you're keeping that huge chunk of your life away from your girlfriend yeah huh

01:13:56.500 have you had a girlfriend since then no no or would you like a girlfriend i've thought about

01:14:05.640 but I just haven't had the interest very lately.

01:14:11.400 This is another confounding thing for me

01:14:13.560 about the furry conventions.

01:14:15.480 Because I think I might go to a convention

01:14:18.420 for the ukulele.

01:14:21.340 I don't know.

01:14:21.440 I like ukulele.

01:14:22.180 And I would do that,

01:14:22.960 and all I'm interested in doing there

01:14:24.140 is just like playing ukuleles.

01:14:25.860 I might go to a political convention.

01:14:27.520 I go to many of those,

01:14:28.600 usually to give a speech or to hear a speaker.

01:14:31.800 There's a kind of professional aspect to that

01:14:34.340 or civic-minded aspect to that.

01:14:37.060 But if I were going to a purely social kind of convention, 0.85

01:14:40.700 I would be there to pick up chicks.

01:14:43.260 That's why, if I were, you know, single. 0.93

01:14:45.400 That's what I would, if I were there just to meet people

01:14:48.560 and I were single, I would be on the prowl,

01:14:52.440 especially if I were dressed up like a dog.

01:14:54.260 I would be on the prowl 100% of the time.

01:14:58.460 Yeah.

01:14:58.900 But you're not.

01:14:59.800 So we got completely sidelined.

01:15:01.800 All we got to was you wait in line at the furry convention

01:15:04.260 for two hours then you go look around because you want to figure out who made these costumes

01:15:11.200 yeah we're still only at like 10 a.m so then what do you do for the rest of the conference if you're

01:15:16.480 not chasing girls well there are a lot of different panels that people host and that can range from

01:15:23.080 completely different topics it can be something as simple relating to the fandom as fursuiting

01:15:31.100 101 like how to not have heat stroke when you're in a fursuit at like is it hot uh not right now

01:15:37.520 okay but regularly especially at anthracon in the middle of summer yeah yes it gets very hot

01:15:43.780 so it's basically just like 101s how to keep yourself safe um how to not have heat stroke

01:15:50.240 and everything like that for how to make your fursona what animal everything like that two

01:15:56.080 interestingly enough

01:15:58.360 some comedy shows

01:15:59.780 those go on

01:16:00.720 I've

01:16:02.220 I've been to

01:16:03.960 Anthrocon has a jazz band

01:16:05.660 that they do every year

01:16:07.500 now are these

01:16:08.000 these shows

01:16:08.860 yeah

01:16:09.200 like you show up to the comedy show

01:16:10.840 and they're

01:16:11.280 the performers are in the fursuits

01:16:13.120 no

01:16:13.420 no

01:16:14.000 they're just regular people up there

01:16:15.500 interesting

01:16:18.740 some of them

01:16:19.960 there are some

01:16:21.020 where they do have it

01:16:22.280 like

01:16:22.600 the jazz band

01:16:25.080 is a perfect example

01:16:26.060 in Anthrocon.

01:16:28.080 Sometimes I have a singer come out

01:16:29.580 and they'll be in full fursuit

01:16:30.860 and they'll sing in fursuit

01:16:31.800 and I give it to them

01:16:34.240 because that is really hard to do.

01:16:36.480 Yeah.

01:16:38.140 It would be hard to do comedy

01:16:40.280 at a furry convention

01:16:41.360 because comedy is based in incongruity

01:16:44.760 and kind of absurdity.

01:16:46.360 There's no...

01:16:48.000 So is the furry thing.

01:16:50.220 So how do you...

01:16:50.900 It's like, what's the deal with

01:16:52.180 polyester paws?

01:16:55.020 I don't know what it would be.

01:16:55.780 Like you don't, the things you're talking about are, would be normal to the audience.

01:17:01.380 Well, the comedy show that I went to was about law, basically.

01:17:06.600 About law?

01:17:07.320 Law, like.

01:17:08.480 Like the law?

01:17:09.160 Like the law.

01:17:09.740 Like and order?

01:17:10.720 Yes.

01:17:10.940 Okay.

01:17:11.500 Like different really absurd court cases that happened throughout the years.

01:17:16.740 Like, God, I don't remember one of them, but there was like, I'm trying to think what it was.

01:17:22.220 This was two years ago, so this is very.

01:17:24.340 A lot has happened since.

01:17:25.300 A lot has happened.

01:17:26.920 Okay, so you go to the shows, you look at the art, you wait in line.

01:17:33.220 Yep.

01:17:33.960 What else?

01:17:35.100 Well, at night, after you do all that different stuff, go to your different panels and everything.

01:17:41.660 They tend to have dances, and that is my favorite aspect of it.

01:17:45.600 They're raves.

01:17:47.340 They, loud music, everyone's dancing and everything, and that's my favorite part.

01:17:51.480 i i love that just because for me being as introverted as i am i love to kind of just let

01:17:59.120 loose not like crazy amount but just that whole everyone else is dancing i can join in and because

01:18:04.900 i hate i've been to a lot of nightclubs yeah and i hate them i hate them they're so loud you can't

01:18:12.320 talk to anybody yeah everyone's on drugs i don't do i've never done hard drugs uh i don't it's all

01:18:19.120 just, you know, and it's like, in my single days, I'm not that tall, so it's like all

01:18:25.740 these like six foot four, you know, athletes would, you know, they were, that's more their,

01:18:30.840 my speed is a little more dinner parties.

01:18:32.820 Yeah.

01:18:33.160 And I don't, I like waltzing, I don't know.

01:18:37.320 I don't totally love, you know, bumping and grinding.

01:18:40.000 So, you love it.

01:18:41.740 That's what you're going for, is the dance party.

01:18:43.800 To an extent.

01:18:46.160 That and everything else we talked about.

01:18:48.380 Yeah.

01:18:49.120 But are the furry raves like regular raves, meaning is everyone hammered in on drugs and looking to shack up?

01:18:58.080 No.

01:18:58.340 I mean, obviously you can't control what everyone does.

01:19:01.060 So there's going to be that odd person that's showing up drunk or showing up a little bit inebriated.

01:19:07.500 But I wouldn't say it's to the extent of rave because rave culture and furry culture can intertwine a little bit.

01:19:15.100 Like you'll find furries at hardcore raves.

01:19:16.880 That is just something that does happen because that person just so happens.

01:19:20.340 In costume?

01:19:21.540 Yeah. 0.86

01:19:21.960 That person just happens to be a furry that likes to go to raves.

01:19:26.660 So why not wear my animal costume to the rave?

01:19:31.860 And, yeah.

01:19:34.500 Okay.

01:19:34.940 So at night, you finish your panels and your jazz concert.

01:19:39.620 Yep.

01:19:40.180 You go to the rave with or without hard drugs.

01:19:43.860 Mostly without.

01:19:45.360 Mostly without.

01:19:45.860 Mostly without.

01:19:46.880 So then it's midnight or later, I don't know.

01:19:50.460 And then you just go to bed.

01:19:52.100 Yeah.

01:19:53.040 And you wake up in the morning, do it all over again.

01:19:55.940 Yep.

01:19:57.240 How many times a year do you go to a conference?

01:19:59.820 I've been going once per year since 2021.

01:20:03.000 Okay.

01:20:03.680 Yep.

01:20:06.520 Does it, maybe I'm square.

01:20:09.940 Maybe I'm the square because I don't, I wouldn't want to do it.

01:20:13.120 I don't, even for things that interest me.

01:20:15.160 I don't know.

01:20:15.600 Maybe like a,

01:20:16.760 that's not fair.

01:20:17.460 Maybe a cigar conference

01:20:18.280 or something I get a kick out of.

01:20:19.360 Yeah.

01:20:19.740 But

01:20:20.020 then you go back

01:20:23.120 to your regular life.

01:20:24.180 Yep.

01:20:25.240 Working at the hotel.

01:20:26.240 Uh-huh.

01:20:28.320 What's your regular life

01:20:29.980 look like?

01:20:30.860 Oh, well,

01:20:31.480 I go to work.

01:20:32.660 I unfortunately work overnight.

01:20:35.060 Okay.

01:20:35.200 That's about as fun

01:20:35.980 as that sounds.

01:20:36.880 Yeah.

01:20:37.180 I check into hotels

01:20:38.420 late at night sometimes.

01:20:39.500 Yeah.

01:20:39.640 It looks like a brutal job.

01:20:41.220 It's more boring

01:20:42.220 than it is brutal,

01:20:43.100 thankfully.

01:20:43.500 i work go home talk with my online furry friends for maybe like an hour ish talk to my real friends

01:20:55.120 i mostly do real friends before furry friends because that's just kind of how i go with it or

01:20:59.520 sometimes if i talk online a lot of the time discord is a great thing so in voice chat i'll

01:21:05.620 be talking with my friends verbally oh you don't mean like typing i'm such i'm like a spiritual

01:21:09.880 boomer so you're you've got a headset on or something yeah and you're on my computer okay 0.97

01:21:14.400 this is foreign to me i know even they set up meetings for me and they make me do stupid google

01:21:21.420 meets i said why can't i just have a phone call like people used to do you're a civilized country

01:21:25.460 but and then i think when i think of chatting online i think of like sending a

01:21:29.260 text or dm or something but no you're on something and you've got some voice chat

01:21:34.840 voice chat on

01:21:35.760 and you're talking

01:21:36.440 to your

01:21:37.620 to your

01:21:38.520 my friends that I know

01:21:39.440 very personally

01:21:39.820 your IRL friends

01:21:40.940 yes

01:21:41.220 your in real life friends

01:21:42.520 yeah

01:21:42.780 but also over the internet

01:21:44.360 yeah

01:21:44.900 and then

01:21:46.460 why don't you see them in person

01:21:47.380 we're all busy

01:21:49.240 and my schedule is just

01:21:50.820 it's terrible to work around

01:21:52.580 okay

01:21:52.780 alright

01:21:53.040 and then you talk to your

01:21:54.500 furry friends

01:21:55.100 who are spread all over the country

01:21:56.280 yeah

01:21:56.880 online

01:21:58.500 online

01:21:59.520 but it's all online basically

01:22:00.820 yeah

01:22:01.440 how much of your life

01:22:03.260 do you live online

01:22:04.100 a lot

01:22:04.840 A lot. What percentage would you say?

01:22:09.020 I'll go to say like 90.

01:22:10.840 90% of your life online. Yeah.

01:22:12.800 I suspected this. I think, especially reading a little bit of the history of furriedom,

01:22:19.320 which you've now affirmed, that it really explodes with the internet.

01:22:22.360 Yes. 0.95

01:22:23.000 Because, and the fact that furries are disproportionately transgender or like

01:22:28.280 different combos of gender identities, none of that surprises me because the whole thing, 0.99

01:22:34.840 is about not being in your body, right? The whole thing is I'm going to put on a different body.

01:22:41.540 I'm going to totally change my physical appearance. I'm going to get into it virtually

01:22:46.680 mediated by this computer screen and by the internet. I'm going to have my social life

01:22:51.620 overwhelmingly be outside of my body and mediated by the internet. And then maybe once a year,

01:22:57.880 I'll go to the convention, but I still won't be there in my body. I'll be, I mean, I will be,

01:23:01.880 but I'll have this other body over me.

01:23:04.740 And it seems to me that it's no surprise

01:23:09.960 that furriedom, transgenderism, and the internet

01:23:13.740 all grew up at the same time. 0.50

01:23:16.060 Am I reading too deeply into it?

01:23:18.220 Maybe just a little bit.

01:23:19.500 How so?

01:23:20.180 Just because, like,

01:23:23.180 I...

01:23:23.780 Furry did explode, like, popularity-wise

01:23:31.700 with the internet.

01:23:32.660 Yeah.

01:23:32.920 Especially with those years

01:23:34.520 that I have,

01:23:35.520 that keep going back to.

01:23:37.080 Yeah.

01:23:37.420 Because those three years

01:23:38.920 really were when

01:23:40.060 Ferry went into

01:23:40.880 like extreme mainstream.

01:23:42.480 Yeah.

01:23:43.120 Now, we're being a little loose.

01:23:44.660 I wouldn't call it

01:23:45.720 extremely mainstream.

01:23:47.000 But like comparatively.

01:23:48.520 Comparatively.

01:23:49.160 Definitely relatively mainstream.

01:23:50.460 Yeah, relatively mainstream.

01:23:52.360 Just like,

01:23:52.880 I saw a video,

01:23:53.980 and I don't mean to go

01:23:54.780 super off topic,

01:23:55.640 but I saw a video of

01:23:56.920 Anthrocon,

01:23:57.600 same convention.

01:23:58.600 Yeah.

01:23:59.160 And the lobby that I

01:24:00.780 stood in,

01:24:01.700 like the area that I stood in where it was a video of a couple of really

01:24:05.600 popular fursuiters dancing to a song was completely empty.

01:24:09.280 And it was just like maybe six of them and some people in the background

01:24:12.440 walking and everything.

01:24:15.080 That's not the case now.

01:24:17.320 Now it's the,

01:24:18.480 the entire room pretty much the entire time has maybe a couple hundred people

01:24:23.620 in it at a time.

01:24:26.260 And obviously on peak days,

01:24:27.980 it's like way more.

01:24:29.480 It's so disproportionate to where the fandom was.

01:24:33.820 The fandom was super close-knit, obviously,

01:24:37.980 because it did start on forums and everything.

01:24:40.500 But just with how much it exploded, it's night and day.

01:24:45.160 It really is.

01:24:46.540 Do you know Clavicular?

01:24:48.320 I do know about him, yes.

01:24:49.740 Okay, you're sitting in his former seat.

01:24:53.400 He was a previous guest on this show.

01:24:55.760 And Clavicular is a looks-maxer.

01:24:58.040 Yeah.

01:24:58.300 So he'll do all, he'll inject himself with all these things, hit himself in the head with a hammer to look better, to improve his physical appearance. And I can't help but see a little bit of a similarity between looks maxing and the furry fandom.

01:25:15.640 in as much as it's all very visual,

01:25:18.540 it's about changing your own appearance

01:25:21.020 in a way that makes you feel better about yourself,

01:25:23.980 more comfortable, more sociable,

01:25:26.620 helps you to make friends or other sorts of connections.

01:25:30.480 And is there... 0.94

01:25:32.560 Were furries the early looks-maxers?

01:25:35.440 Nah.

01:25:36.040 No.

01:25:36.560 You see no connection between them?

01:25:37.760 I don't.

01:25:39.400 Let me try to explain it further

01:25:40.820 because I think I made this point to him

01:25:42.820 when he was on my show.

01:25:44.020 I see a connection.

01:25:45.640 getting back to what we were just talking about, between looks maxing and transgenderism. In as 0.92

01:25:52.040 much as transgenderism is when a guy tries to make himself look like a woman. Like he doesn't 1.00

01:25:58.240 actually look like a woman. He just looks like this kind of cartoonish caricature idea of what

01:26:02.440 a woman is. And likewise, looks maxing is when a guy just tries to make himself look like the ideal

01:26:10.760 guy, like a kind of caricature of a big, strong guy, the platonic form of the guy. And now I can

01:26:19.760 add a third category into this. The furry thing is when you try to make yourself look like this

01:26:26.060 character that you have in your head, this ideal character that you've commissioned artists to draw

01:26:30.240 that makes you feel good about yourself, that you think is attractive to other people.

01:26:34.220 All of it is a kind of suppression of your real self and an attempt to sublimate it into what you would have yourself look like if you weren't born with your own body.

01:26:53.520 Does that resonate at all?

01:26:56.800 Not really.

01:26:58.460 Not really.

01:27:00.140 I'm sorry.

01:27:01.220 No.

01:27:01.460 for like i won't speak for everyone just because like i mentioned the fandom is growing

01:27:07.420 thousands by the year it's crazy i'll speak for myself i just

01:27:16.440 even like i see this more of a mirror as myself at least my current persona that i'm wearing at

01:27:28.840 the moment and i don't really see it as me trying to like change kind of who i am like in that much

01:27:39.540 of a sense as like looks maxing or at the beginning of our interview yeah said that

01:27:44.740 the furry community had very much helped you to change who you are and to grow in certain ways

01:27:53.520 and that that was really your objective in it now you're telling me the opposite it seems or am i

01:27:57.880 misunderstanding no it it's it's hard for me to explain

01:28:01.860 nathan for me is what a lot of people in the furry community call a true sona which is really just

01:28:13.960 you but in an anthropomorphic animal form so as i grow as a person nathan grows as a person

01:28:23.300 and that's kind of what it has been meanwhile with like looks maxing and everything like that

01:28:31.000 you are growing as a person but i'm trying to yeah i think they're pretty similar but maybe

01:28:37.960 if you disagree wouldn't wouldn't the same idea hold yeah you you're working on these things

01:28:45.740 you're trying to grow as a person, and you have modified your outward appearance to try

01:28:54.120 to reflect and accelerate that, right? In other words, you, by your Christian name,

01:29:02.560 not Nathan, the character's name, you were kind of shy and not as outgoing. And so now

01:29:10.640 then you made this character, Nathan, who's got like these big gigantic eyes and a big,

01:29:14.460 you know, happy tongue hanging out and is certainly more outgoing than yourself at the

01:29:19.580 time, even if he's shy by furry standards.

01:29:22.760 Yeah.

01:29:23.120 But the character kind of has changed with you and maybe the character as an ideal has

01:29:28.420 helped to change you along the way.

01:29:30.300 Isn't that what you were telling me earlier?

01:29:31.620 It has certainly helped.

01:29:33.580 Definitely.

01:29:34.720 For me becoming a little more comfortable.

01:29:38.200 Yeah.

01:29:38.720 But that's kind of what Clavicular was saying.

01:29:40.740 I don't want to put words in his mouth.

01:29:42.080 Yeah. 0.98

01:29:42.220 He was saying, basically, hitting myself in the head with a hammer.

01:29:45.740 Again, I don't recommend his methods, and I hope he, you know, I enjoyed speaking with him,

01:29:50.960 and I hope he kind of goes on the right path because he's got a lot of talent and skill and stuff,

01:29:55.860 but I hope he harnesses that in a good way that will be helpful to him and others.

01:29:59.720 But the principle is, well, you know, I'm not as good looking.

01:30:04.680 I'm a little shy. 0.96

01:30:05.440 I'm not good with girls.

01:30:06.580 I'm not succeeding in the ways I want to succeed. 0.99

01:30:08.980 So I'm going to hit myself in the head and the hammer, and I'm going to inject myself with a bunch of stuff. 0.99

01:30:13.780 And then I'm going to become that. 0.99

01:30:15.240 As I look more like I want to look, I'm going to really become that guy on the inside, too.

01:30:22.740 It seems very similar to me.

01:30:25.300 I won't speak for the whole fandom, obviously, but I'll speak for myself.

01:30:31.580 It's not more of a, like, I want to look like an animal or anything like that, like looks-maxing.

01:30:40.740 Yeah.

01:30:41.140 It's just more of, as I develop this personality, this fursona and everything, I develop myself as a person.

01:30:54.120 Yeah, yeah.

01:30:55.540 Okay.

01:30:55.860 As I understand that, we're saying pretty similar things.

01:30:59.660 but your mileage may vary.

01:31:02.560 Are there people, to the point you just brought up,

01:31:05.340 are there furries who do want to be animals?

01:31:08.520 I'm not as educated.

01:31:10.640 I will put that full forward.

01:31:13.140 I do not know very much about it.

01:31:15.400 But there are different subcultures

01:31:17.980 where a person might believe spiritually

01:31:21.920 that they are an animal,

01:31:24.140 but I don't know much about it.

01:31:26.180 Got it, got it.

01:31:27.360 There was a guy years ago

01:31:29.720 He was on TV.

01:31:31.020 He was featured on TV.

01:31:31.880 I think he killed himself, unfortunately.

01:31:33.620 But he went by the name Stalking Cat.

01:31:36.140 I recognize that.

01:31:37.360 You've heard about this.

01:31:38.080 Yeah.

01:31:39.040 That was way more extreme than what I'm talking about.

01:31:42.500 Yeah.

01:31:42.820 Well, this guy, he didn't just put the suit on.

01:31:44.700 He modified his body.

01:31:46.740 He did the modification.

01:31:47.120 Yeah, to try to look like a cat.

01:31:49.440 But he said about himself the same thing you're describing, which is he said, no, I am a cat.

01:31:55.280 Obviously, I'm like just a guy.

01:31:56.700 But I think at a deep level, I really, at a non-physical level, I am a cat.

01:32:02.720 And so I want to bring my body more into line with my true self, which is, of course, the premise of transgenderism, which is my body is one sex.

01:32:09.760 But deep, at some deep level that you can never find, I'm actually the opposite sex. 0.66

01:32:15.040 I'm going to bring my body into line with the opposite sex.

01:32:16.960 And so what you're saying is there is a subculture within furries where they believe that despite, you know, having two legs and two arms and everything, they believe that in some way they actually are animals. 0.93

01:32:28.560 They recognize that they are a person.

01:32:30.480 They do, full forward.

01:32:32.120 Again, I don't know that much about it.

01:32:34.240 Okay.

01:32:34.980 But they do have that, like, spirit animal aspect to them.

01:32:40.980 Again, I don't want to make assumptions about it just because I don't know a lot about it.

01:32:46.720 But that is just what I understand.

01:32:48.740 I will make assumptions.

01:32:50.420 They're totally crazy if they think that. 1.00

01:32:52.280 If they think that they're in some way an animal, really an animal, they're totally bonkers. 0.99

01:32:57.760 Like, it's kind of the difference, I guess, to use the now, I guess, more mainstream trans analogy. 1.00

01:33:03.960 It's like the difference between a drag queen and a transgender. 0.60

01:33:07.360 A drag queen is a guy who knows he's a guy, but he just gets a thrill out of dressing up like a lady. 0.96

01:33:12.260 and a transgender is someone who's a guy who thinks he's a girl and dresses up like a girl. 0.98

01:33:20.920 Those are, those are different things. Even though they're both guys who dress up like girls, 0.97

01:33:24.520 they're, they're actually fundamentally different views of the self. And you're saying there's a

01:33:30.480 similar thing. If a guy dresses up like a dog, but he knows he's a person and he just likes dogs

01:33:35.500 or whatever. That's kind of like the drag queen. But the one who says, no, my spirit is actually 0.99

01:33:42.840 the spirit of a dog. That's more like the transgender. Am I understanding that right? 1.00

01:33:48.600 I'm unsure. Just because I don't have a lot of education in it. I really don't.

01:33:53.740 I'll confess to basically total ignorance on this topic, but my producer, Ben Davies,

01:33:59.620 was doing research. I don't know. I'll have to ask. I don't want to ask him about his research.

01:34:04.280 But one thing he came across is this group called Therians, and he said this was notable because it was a lot of very good-looking women who are kind of furries, but kind of not furries.

01:34:17.540 I actually haven't seen it.

01:34:19.160 I'm not even, I'm not pretending.

01:34:20.740 This was all my producer, and he told me, I had to ask you about the hot Therians.

01:34:26.840 Do you remember that group that I told you about, the subgroup that I mentioned?

01:34:31.600 Which one? The one that thinks, the group that thinks that they are really...

01:34:36.100 The one that I do not know a lot about.

01:34:37.700 Yes.

01:34:38.680 That is what aetherian is.

01:34:41.640 Got it.

01:34:42.680 Again, I don't know a lot about it, so I can't fully explain it.

01:34:46.440 Is my producer right that that group is good-looking? 1.00

01:34:52.420 There are a lot of good-looking women. 1.00

01:34:54.260 Are they better-looking than the average furry community? 1.00

01:34:59.520 I don't know the answer to that. 0.95

01:35:01.600 Because that would check out with what is a meme, and I think probably a scientific discovery, which is the hot-crazy axis, that there is sometimes this relationship between women being very good-looking and being very crazy. 0.68

01:35:15.320 And so if a woman thinks she's a chipmunk or something, I wouldn't be that surprised if she were more likely to be good-looking than the more grounded, normal woman, some of the time. 0.70

01:35:29.500 Again, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush. 0.94

01:35:31.600 Speaking of the spirit, you mentioned at the top that you were raised LDS, Mormon.

01:35:37.380 Yeah.

01:35:38.180 Are you still that or have your religious views changed?

01:35:43.080 Do they intersect with furriedom?

01:35:46.060 They don't intersect.

01:35:48.500 And I'm not really that much anymore.

01:35:52.200 Okay.

01:35:52.940 Just because of everything that I went through around that time.

01:35:57.320 So I would say no, not at the moment.

01:36:00.040 Do you have any spiritual inclination?

01:36:04.900 To an extent, like, there's like no shot that, like, I'm trying to, I haven't thought about this for a very long time.

01:36:15.600 So I would say not necessarily.

01:36:19.620 Not necessarily meaning you don't have a spiritual inclination?

01:36:23.160 Not really.

01:36:24.320 I haven't thought about it for such a long time.

01:36:26.480 I really haven't.

01:36:27.180 Hmm. So what do you think about other than the furry stuff?

01:36:32.200 Well, I think that I'm in college trying to get my business degree and, you know, kind of living day to day.

01:36:45.140 What do you want to do after college?

01:36:46.880 um maybe i like accounting um like basic accounting uh inventory management is something

01:36:57.280 that i really loved uh no one has ever said that before in the history of language i know i know

01:37:02.500 inventory management is something that i really love i i liked it a lot i worked at i don't know

01:37:08.120 if you know a place called lush it's i don't it's it's like soaps and everything okay i liked

01:37:13.520 going in and doing

01:37:15.680 FIFO first in, first out

01:37:17.520 for all the inventory stuff.

01:37:19.160 It just kind of had

01:37:20.160 some stuff click for me.

01:37:21.280 So that kind of,

01:37:23.440 I would not mind

01:37:24.440 doing inventory management.

01:37:25.580 So that's why I have a business.

01:37:26.880 That's great.

01:37:27.640 Business administration.

01:37:28.740 We might have to hire you

01:37:30.080 for Mayflower Cigars.

01:37:31.360 Do you smoke cigars?

01:37:32.540 I do smoke a little bit of cigars.

01:37:34.440 All right.

01:37:34.980 That's a fandom that we share.

01:37:37.180 Yeah.

01:37:38.120 Not so much the furry thing.

01:37:41.040 Is there any limit

01:37:43.520 on what a furry is.

01:37:46.160 I'm thinking of this now

01:37:47.060 because of all these identities.

01:37:50.740 We've kind of now

01:37:51.840 expanded the definition of identity

01:37:54.180 to just... 0.58

01:37:55.640 You could be straight, but LGBT. 1.00

01:37:58.300 I don't know how you can do that, 1.00

01:37:59.480 but that's now part of it.

01:38:02.780 We just have blown away all the limits.

01:38:05.280 So you mentioned earlier

01:38:06.300 you can be a furry

01:38:07.500 dressed up like a traffic cone,

01:38:09.220 which is not...

01:38:10.280 Furries are supposed to be

01:38:11.140 anthropomorphic animals.

01:38:12.220 Those are more joke costumes.

01:38:13.520 Yeah, of course, but it's like, but it is, there's still kind of part of it.

01:38:16.940 Is there, can you be, do you have to be a mammal to be a furry?

01:38:22.780 No, like I mentioned, there are insects.

01:38:25.440 Insects, that's right.

01:38:26.260 Are there fish?

01:38:26.900 Can you be a fish?

01:38:28.640 I don't think I've seen one.

01:38:31.120 I don't think.

01:38:32.060 No fish furries.

01:38:33.320 But I have seen fish fursonas.

01:38:38.000 Like as in like an actual, like, so what I mean when I say I haven't seen one is I mean

01:38:42.540 fursuit prize. The $5,000 costume.

01:38:45.240 Yeah, I haven't seen that, but I have

01:38:47.260 seen fursonas that are like koi fish,

01:38:49.560 bass, salmon.

01:38:50.960 Would it be insensitive to wear fish net

01:38:53.440 to a furry convention?

01:38:55.780 To the fish fursonas?

01:38:57.300 I don't think so. They'd get past it.

01:38:58.620 They would get past it, yeah.

01:39:00.360 There are even

01:39:03.100 mythical animals, like

01:39:04.900 dragons,

01:39:07.780 manticores, I think

01:39:08.960 that was one that I saw.

01:39:10.040 um what what's a manticore i it's it's the greek like lion head snake tail okay um

01:39:22.300 eagle wings so it's greek mythology i'm not as i that's kind of what i remember with the

01:39:31.900 very short period of time i took world history in high school so we're talking years yeah i think

01:39:36.920 that's what kind of clicks with me i'll take your word for i clearly was sleeping through the

01:39:41.420 my high school class on this so it all sounds very nice and wholesome uh-huh would you let's

01:39:50.480 say someday you get married have kids uh-huh would you encourage your kids to be a furry

01:39:53.960 for for me with kids it's like if they have an interest in it

01:40:02.580 that is their interest but i don't want to force it you know like like oh dude yeah no you'll like

01:40:11.720 this a lot just because you like if if if they show an interest in it and they keep having that

01:40:16.680 interest sure enough you know i'll make i'll keep by them i'll support them but if they don't show

01:40:22.740 an interest in it that's fine that's that's it's their choice do kids go to the conventions

01:40:30.360 I've seen a few.

01:40:31.620 Huh.

01:40:32.840 With their parents?

01:40:33.820 Yeah, with their parents, of course.

01:40:35.100 Are their parents furries?

01:40:36.680 Some of them aren't.

01:40:38.620 Huh.

01:40:38.980 But some of them are.

01:40:40.320 But a lot of them aren't.

01:40:44.440 And is there, as you've, you've insisted that the furry conventions are mostly above board,

01:40:51.340 that it's not just like a bunch of weird sex stuff.

01:40:53.420 Yeah.

01:40:53.580 So in that way, I guess maybe it's okay for kids to go.

01:40:58.440 But even down to the fact that the identities are so kind of sexually deviant at these conventions, isn't that in a way kind of scandalous to bring kids to?

01:41:10.880 There are periods of time where kids aren't allowed.

01:41:14.840 And that's obviously like 9, 10, 11 when those dances happen.

01:41:21.300 That's a pretty good time for kids to like, hey, you're not allowed here.

01:41:25.400 because people get crazy people get crazy okay there are also age-restricted conventions out

01:41:33.740 there too a recent one was 21 plus actually it happened in las vegas obviously why it was 21 plus

01:41:41.600 is because it was being hosted in the casino so oh i thought you were gonna casino is one thing

01:41:47.780 okay yeah i thought you were saying because they were doing weird freaky scandalous stuff that

01:41:51.440 kids don't want to see. It was mostly casino. Okay. All right. That's more wholesome actually

01:41:56.480 than I expected. Clackjack is a little more wholesome than what I would imagine. Okay.

01:42:03.420 But I can't help but think, even as you're allaying my fears, that there's something

01:42:08.140 kind of scandalous about it. Because getting back to the thing we were talking about a little

01:42:12.820 earlier, even if it's all kind of innocent, it does seem like the sort of thing that adults

01:42:21.860 shouldn't do. Spending time and money dressing up in animal costumes to go kind of chase each

01:42:31.520 other around at a convention hall. And then even if they weren't going to the rave at night and

01:42:36.940 going to lectures on how to make the costumes or whatever, it just seems like the sort of

01:42:42.800 thing, pardon my

01:42:44.220 judginess, that is

01:42:46.420 unbecoming of an adult, and therefore

01:42:48.400 scandalous to children.

01:42:50.360 Am I being too prude?

01:42:52.240 Maybe just a little bit.

01:42:54.060 Just because it

01:42:55.920 like, I'm trying to think

01:42:58.480 of a good way.

01:42:59.840 Don't yuck my yum, is what you're saying.

01:43:02.040 Don't yuck my yum. Who cares? What's it to you?

01:43:04.300 If we want to do something fun and frivolous,

01:43:06.080 who cares?

01:43:08.720 To an extent.

01:43:09.560 what percentage of furries at these conventions are married um

01:43:17.480 i don't know the answer to that i really don't you don't have a sense walking around talking

01:43:24.160 to people no no i don't just because it's a lot of friend groups that show up for conventions

01:43:28.240 you can't you can't really tell and what what kind of jobs do they have in real life like have i

01:43:34.760 before i met you yeah i had not to my knowledge ever met a furry before in my life

01:43:39.040 where are all the furries

01:43:43.680 during the course of the day

01:43:45.480 I have a

01:43:46.940 somewhat funny joke

01:43:48.860 there is a joke

01:43:51.360 to where if you were to put

01:43:53.340 all the furries inside of an

01:43:55.680 airplane or like fill an airplane with

01:43:57.620 furries and if that airplane was

01:43:59.600 to just spontaneously explode 0.92

01:44:01.480 IT would

01:44:05.360 go down the drain

01:44:07.600 It's a lot of IT people. 1.00

01:44:09.820 A lot of computer nerds.

01:44:10.840 Yes, lots of computer nerds, yes.

01:44:12.960 That checks out for me.

01:44:14.420 And inventory management.

01:44:16.500 Yeah, yeah.

01:44:17.860 Perhaps.

01:44:19.800 But lots of IT, but it really is all walks of life.

01:44:24.080 Like I recently saw on Twitter, I saw a rescue,

01:44:30.300 like an Alpine rescue helicopter operator.

01:44:33.900 just flying there to flying to save people in the alps just had a big fur hat on no he probably

01:44:43.300 didn't have did he have he didn't have the mask on i i it was either he did have it on i think so

01:44:48.640 but it wasn't obviously to to help someone because that that's terrible i can barely see out of this

01:44:55.540 thing right it would not be efficient um but people do post pictures of what they do and i've

01:45:01.680 seen all walks of life, like the mountain rescue helicopter. I saw someone who was in the Swiss

01:45:08.340 army recently. Um, a really good example of someone that is extremely prevalent that has a

01:45:18.100 very, uh, important, not like important, but he did something that was really good. I forget his

01:45:24.600 name, but he was a doctor. I don't know if you probably heard about this about, um, it was a

01:45:31.160 Harvard

01:45:31.780 class, and they had 0.98

01:45:35.180 someone in fursuit come out. Does that

01:45:37.280 ring any bells? I didn't

01:45:39.300 know that that literally happened, but it

01:45:41.240 doesn't surprise me at all. It did literally happen.

01:45:43.400 And the guy who was in that fursuit, I

01:45:45.260 forget his name, he's a doctor.

01:45:46.900 He passed away, unfortunately, recently.

01:45:49.860 But

01:45:50.080 do you have an Apple Watch? No.

01:45:53.120 Oh. Only a dumb watch. I don't use 0.99

01:45:55.180 a smart watch. Well, the heartbeat monitor

01:45:56.920 in Apple Watches was designed

01:45:59.180 by him. Oh, wow. Yeah.

01:46:00.980 there are prevalent people. The, um, the lead biological, uh, doctor for the Moderna vaccine

01:46:09.180 checks out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You're affirming all of my prejudices, all of my

01:46:15.160 priors that that's amazing. There are a lot of intellectuals there. It's another reason why I

01:46:21.980 like it a lot, but it seems so frivolous. And so you got all these brainy people, including the

01:46:28.140 IT department and even the super geniuses at Harvard or whatever, that's kind of barbell

01:46:33.960 strategy. You either do the most intellectual thing or the most frivolous thing. Or maybe

01:46:37.940 furrydom is intellectual. I don't know. It's obviously artistic and autistic. It's got

01:46:42.920 something for everybody, I guess. Speaking of, what about politics?

01:46:48.440 Politics?

01:46:49.060 How does it break down politically? I can't imagine there are very many conservative Republican

01:46:52.960 furries.

01:46:53.540 You would be surprised.

01:46:54.720 Really? No.

01:46:55.520 There are conservatives, there are Christian furries, lots of Christian furries, actually.

01:47:01.760 Really?

01:47:02.180 I actually know a few.

01:47:03.020 Jesuit. 0.87

01:47:03.720 Yeah, genuine Christian furries, yeah.

01:47:04.920 No, I said Jesuit. 1.00

01:47:05.860 Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. 1.00

01:47:07.180 That's a point for a, that's a cheap shot. 1.00

01:47:09.940 Christian furries. 1.00

01:47:10.760 Yeah.

01:47:18.380 I guess there's a meme that goes around.

01:47:20.660 We were talking about confession earlier, which is like, I'll go in to the confessional,

01:47:27.220 I'll say, bless me, Father, for I have sinned, Father, five times this week, I peeled an

01:47:33.420 avocado and smashed it into my face until the goop ran down my suit jacket.

01:47:40.160 And the priest will say, well, that's weird, but it's not a sin.

01:47:43.700 You know, it's not, it's definitely weird, but you actually don't have to confess that.

01:47:46.260 I guess what you're describing as the furrydom probably falls into that category, other than maybe it's like a waste of time in some way.

01:47:57.460 I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe people balance their life in a way that it works.

01:48:01.080 So I want to, before we get to the Christian part, conservative Republicans.

01:48:05.320 Yeah. I haven't really interacted much with the conservative side of the fandom, so I don't know that much, but they do exist.

01:48:16.260 I wonder if you could do like a big fuzzy MAGA hat or something on top of a, or a, they compare Donald Trump to like Chester Cheeto or something.

01:48:26.060 I don't, are they open about their politics?

01:48:30.120 Some of them are.

01:48:31.500 Really?

01:48:31.920 Are they shunned by the, look, this is a, this is a group that's like 90% LGBT and like tech guys, the tech guys skew lib in my experience.

01:48:40.780 And you're telling me that some guy rolls in there and says, yeah, man, I voted for Trump three times.

01:48:45.420 I was at the Capitol on January 6th,

01:48:47.260 and the other furries are going to be cool about it?

01:48:49.040 No way.

01:48:49.780 Probably not.

01:48:50.440 No way.

01:48:51.580 So are they ostracized?

01:48:53.180 Are they in as much as...

01:48:54.200 The furries are kind of a marginalized community.

01:48:56.360 Yeah.

01:48:56.560 Are the conservative Republican furries

01:48:58.180 the super marginalized community?

01:49:00.560 I don't have much knowledge on that.

01:49:03.560 Because you marginalize them.

01:49:05.020 Because you're ostracizing those Republican furries.

01:49:07.800 You're not hanging out with them.

01:49:11.080 Maybe not intentionally.

01:49:12.580 Not intentionally.

01:49:13.340 Yeah, okay.

01:49:14.100 You've got to go hang out.

01:49:15.020 If you're going to go to the convention anyway,

01:49:16.500 you have to reach out to the conservative furries.

01:49:19.460 For the Christians, do they talk about their religion? 0.74

01:49:23.940 Yeah.

01:49:24.780 There are panels where they host about talking about it.

01:49:28.820 So what do they say?

01:49:30.040 They just meet up with other furries and...

01:49:31.920 No, but what do they say about their religion?

01:49:34.320 Like I would say the religion tells us,

01:49:38.780 Christianity tells us,

01:49:40.020 to comport ourselves with dignity. Christianity tells us to do a lot of things,

01:49:48.540 but part of it is we're to comport ourselves with some dignity, in humility, and we're not

01:49:54.840 supposed to be grandiose or anything. I'll quote St. Paul, who says, when I was a child,

01:50:04.060 I did the things proper to a child. But when I became a man, I put away the things that are

01:50:09.060 proper to a child, and I did the things that are proper to a man. It seems to me like playing

01:50:16.180 around in costumes is contradicting that. Or no? Well, people don't do it all the time.

01:50:26.100 That's true. I guess I go to Halloween parties sometimes. I put a costume on.

01:50:29.680 People don't do it all the time. How does this relate to

01:50:32.740 cosplaying which is something i don't really know much of anything about but i've seen it and i i'm

01:50:40.200 still trying to figure out even what it is because as far as i can tell it's just when you put on a

01:50:43.620 costume and play around cosplay is uh you're playing as a character in popular media that

01:50:49.720 that is the basic definition of cosplay so furries are playing characters they might be

01:50:57.040 anthropomorphic but they can be their own or established characters so there is an intertwine

01:51:04.080 between those two so furries are a subset of cosplay kind of like a square is a rectangle

01:51:10.220 but not all rectangles are squares i would say i would say to an extent yeah okay did you ever

01:51:17.180 were you ever into cosplaying or it's just straight to furry give me the give me the good

01:51:21.520 black tar stuff no as as a kid i i had done a tiny tiny little bit of cosplay with a few of my

01:51:27.940 friends like with my brother's friends basically do you have any other hobbies i play a lot of

01:51:36.680 video games do play a lot of video games i like photography photography is a good one i took

01:51:43.820 photography all throughout high school um i did film photography i did digital photography i know

01:51:49.260 little bit on um photoshop but i haven't done it in a very long time but it's something that i

01:51:56.480 really do like and i still do some you like it but you don't you haven't done it a long time i

01:51:59.780 haven't done it in a while just because i haven't had the time but you you have time to play video

01:52:05.900 games you have time to talk to your friends on the internet you have time to talk to your furry

01:52:10.180 friends on the yeah you have time to do the furry art you have time i my point is when you say my

01:52:15.680 other hobby is I play video games. This idea I keep coming back to that you live your life 90%

01:52:21.580 online. And I wonder, look, I get it. I doom scroll all day. I work online. But wouldn't it

01:52:29.880 be better to live in the real world? I find when I put the phone down for two days, I can never do

01:52:34.880 that. One day, half a day. I feel better. I feel more human. I feel more like an integrated person,

01:52:41.380 body and spirit. When you mention that you have these different fursonas, and this is this part

01:52:47.220 of me, and this is that part of me, and this is this other part that I want to be, I say, oh,

01:52:51.160 I totally get that. But you're an integrated human being. And you have a real body, and you

01:52:56.600 have a real appearance, and you have a real name, and you have real character traits and habits and

01:53:02.640 virtues and vices. And let's say, isn't it all kind of a big distraction in this hobby, which

01:53:10.680 is different from other hobbies in that this hobby is really about you. It's very focused on

01:53:15.140 yourself, your attributes, what you are like and who you want to be. Wouldn't it be better for you

01:53:22.240 just to live your life, ideally in the real world, not mediated virtually,

01:53:27.120 as the integrated whole that you are?

01:53:32.020 I would say so, but I don't think that it would change much about myself,

01:53:37.940 furry or not furry if that makes sense because i've always been a homebody i've always been

01:53:44.120 i don't really i've never been the person to adventure that much it's kind of unfortunate

01:53:51.400 well if it's unfortunate then change it there's nothing wrong with being a homebody but if you

01:53:55.960 don't want to be a homebody and you don't want to go adventure then go adventure what's stopping you

01:54:00.620 I'm unsure.

01:54:04.560 So go do it.

01:54:05.620 You obviously have money if you're spending thousands of dollars on fursuits.

01:54:09.220 True.

01:54:09.620 You probably go make it to Italy if you want for that.

01:54:11.820 You can get a coach ticket for like 700 bucks.

01:54:14.720 Probably.

01:54:15.120 This really gets to the thematic question or the question that kind of threads all of

01:54:23.300 together, which is, I see your observation that being a furry has helped you in many

01:54:32.100 ways socially. You say you would have killed yourself had you not been a furry.

01:54:36.420 So you credit that with helping you to develop in some way. But my question is,

01:54:42.900 is being a furry impeding you now from developing in some way? And are there things that you would

01:54:50.340 like to do that you're not doing that maybe you should devote your time and resources to,

01:54:56.900 and even some of the newfound confidence that you may or may not have cultivated through

01:55:02.420 furriedom. In other words, if the furry suit is an instrument to go make friends,

01:55:07.620 could your very presence in the furry community be not something that you regret, but just be

01:55:14.340 something that you're grateful for that was an instrument to the next phase of your development?

01:55:19.860 All the things you want to do that, unfortunately, you haven't done.

01:55:23.440 That's kind of how I've been with it.

01:55:26.440 Like, I would never have even thought to go to Pittsburgh for this convention.

01:55:34.700 And I love Pittsburgh.

01:55:35.740 It's a great city.

01:55:37.180 Someone almost blew me up in Pittsburgh once, but otherwise it's a nice city.

01:55:39.800 Yeah, well, otherwise it's a nice city.

01:55:42.960 I never would have thought about doing that.

01:55:44.760 And going out there and just seeing the city, because the furthest I've ever been outside of Alabama has been Nashville and Chattanooga.

01:55:57.000 That's about as far as I've been.

01:55:58.600 So seeing just how, just seeing Pittsburgh itself, it has started to spark that more adventurous side of me.

01:56:08.100 I do want to go out more.

01:56:09.620 I just need to get up and do it, basically.

01:56:13.140 Yeah.

01:56:13.840 Would you go back to Pittsburgh without the fur suit?

01:56:17.020 I would say so.

01:56:18.340 And you'd go to Italy?

01:56:20.080 Yeah.

01:56:20.820 Then you'd go...

01:56:23.660 So then would you live your life?

01:56:26.100 Is there going to be a time when you retire from being a furry?

01:56:29.400 There might be.

01:56:31.140 There...

01:56:31.940 When is that time?

01:56:32.980 That's a very interesting answer.

01:56:34.580 When is that time?

01:56:36.220 When has the furdom run its course?

01:56:39.960 When do you hang up the head?

01:56:43.200 When do you hang up the paws?

01:56:45.620 It depends.

01:56:47.160 It really does, because there are people in the furry fandom that are very old.

01:56:54.900 I believe it.

01:56:55.480 Yeah.

01:56:55.820 Yeah.

01:56:56.600 But you said you might quit.

01:56:58.200 You might not be one of those guys.

01:57:00.320 And I wonder what the very fact that you acknowledge that means that there would be some criteria,

01:57:06.180 some conditions that would be satisfied, at which point you would say,

01:57:09.540 you know what, this furry thing, it's been a lot of fun, but I'm done with it now.

01:57:14.000 What would those conditions be?

01:57:15.960 I don't even know.

01:57:17.440 It's just that there's always a chance that you could hang something up.

01:57:22.460 There's always a chance.

01:57:23.260 There's never not a chance where you don't stop.

01:57:26.640 I'll never stop being a Yankee fan.

01:57:28.740 Yeah.

01:57:29.480 I'll never stop being a Catholic.

01:57:31.980 There are some things where I can say definitively, I'm ride or die.

01:57:37.520 this is for the rest of my life. But there are other things, even cigars, which I love so much.

01:57:42.700 I could see a world. If my doctor told me, which I don't think he would, and as George Burns

01:57:46.960 observed when he was smoking 15 cigars a day at the age of 92, he said, look, my doctors are dead,

01:57:50.760 so I don't even listen to them. But if my doctor said something I love, I don't know, whether we're

01:57:55.300 talking about fruity seltzer or cigars or whatever, hey, Michael, you know, you're going to die if you

01:57:59.500 keep doing that, so you got to give it up. I'd say, okay, it's fine. You can quit it.

01:58:04.040 this is one of those things you say you could give up.

01:58:08.920 It's not as deep to your personality as being, I don't know, a Yankee fan or a Catholic.

01:58:14.260 So, but you don't have the sense of what that is,

01:58:17.280 which implies to me that you're doing the furry thing because you're after something else.

01:58:22.940 I may have misspoke a little bit.

01:58:25.140 Okay.

01:58:25.900 May have misspoke just a little bit.

01:58:27.940 for

01:58:31.060 let me think for a second

01:58:35.960 furry does mean a lot to me

01:58:41.300 no one denies that it means a lot

01:58:43.740 you're on my show right now wearing a wolf head

01:58:46.320 it does mean a lot to me

01:58:49.080 and right now

01:58:51.100 at this moment I don't

01:58:53.340 honestly think that there would be a time

01:58:55.600 where I would

01:58:57.140 ever give up. What changed? 30 seconds ago, you told me you certainly could see a time when you

01:59:04.620 hung it up. I believe I misspoke on that one. Well, you didn't just misspeak, you changed your

01:59:09.800 mind. Yeah. Misspeak is when I use the wrong adjective. Yeah. You changed your answer here.

01:59:17.400 Why? Because you don't want to be seen to downplay how much you like the furry thing?

01:59:25.800 No. I love it, like I mentioned. I do.

01:59:31.660 So then why did you previously tell me you could quit it someday?

01:59:43.060 Because I think you probably could quit it someday. I think you told me the—I think the first answer was the right answer.

01:59:48.840 And probably you changed your answer because you don't want to seem like you're dissing this community that has been very good to you.

01:59:55.800 But I think you probably could quit.

01:59:57.480 I don't think being a furry is like being a Catholic or something. 0.79

02:00:00.420 Yeah.

02:00:00.680 Or even a Yankee fan.

02:00:02.580 I think you probably could hang it up.

02:00:05.160 It definitely could happen, but I don't really see exactly.

02:00:10.500 You just don't know what the conditions would be?

02:00:11.920 I don't know what it could be.

02:00:13.260 It could definitely happen, but I don't know what could make me want to leave.

02:00:23.860 What's the next furry event?

02:00:26.800 Anthrocon, again.

02:00:28.080 That's the one that's coming up again.

02:00:29.600 Yeah.

02:00:29.860 When is that?

02:00:31.380 First through the seventh is when I'm going, but it's the second through the fifth.

02:00:37.280 No, sixth.

02:00:37.920 My bad.

02:00:38.940 Are you going to get flack at Anthrocon for coming on this show?

02:00:41.800 I don't think so.

02:00:43.000 That's good.

02:00:43.340 Why not?

02:00:43.700 Because I'm a nice guy.

02:00:44.420 That's why.

02:00:45.360 I've spoken.

02:00:46.420 I've actually spoken to a lot of people about it.

02:00:48.700 Really?

02:00:49.180 They said this was actually a great opportunity.

02:00:51.620 Good.

02:00:52.060 Good.

02:00:52.460 I'm glad to hear it.

02:00:53.580 Is there anything, before I let you go, before I let you sort of scamper and run away, is

02:01:03.200 there anything that you want the world to know about the furries that we haven't talked

02:01:12.920 about over the last two hours? 0.98

02:01:14.880 Damn, two hours? 0.97

02:01:23.580 It's not as taboo as it seems. 0.99

02:01:28.760 Well, it is taboo.

02:01:29.700 I mean, it is,

02:01:30.620 but not to the extent.

02:01:34.560 When you say that,

02:01:35.660 it could be taken one of two ways.

02:01:37.080 Yeah.

02:01:39.140 It's not as taboo as it seems,

02:01:40.940 meaning it's kind of mainstream now, guys,

02:01:42.600 so if you want to be a furry,

02:01:43.980 just be a furry.

02:01:45.240 Or,

02:01:46.600 it should not be taboo

02:01:48.460 because it's not that bad.

02:01:51.860 Which way do you mean it?

02:01:52.860 I think,

02:01:53.580 Not that bad.

02:01:54.920 Yeah.

02:01:59.380 What's the worst part of the furry community?

02:02:03.500 I haven't really had much personal experience with the really bad part about it.

02:02:09.960 What is that part?

02:02:10.560 i would say a lot of the like super excessive drug use that i've noticed but that's again

02:02:31.360 just me personally but with the rave scene and furry scene kind of intertwining with that that

02:02:39.620 is something

02:02:41.380 but it's not like

02:02:42.760 people are passing out drugs

02:02:44.560 at the convention center

02:02:45.480 like oh I use this

02:02:46.520 this this

02:02:46.840 you probably need a lot 0.99

02:02:47.660 with those big snouts

02:02:48.700 you know

02:02:49.080 it's very hard

02:02:49.780 I mean you would need

02:02:50.620 like

02:02:51.060 probably a couple of pounds

02:02:53.320 of cocaine

02:02:54.000 to get all the way up 0.69

02:02:55.140 the fursuit snout

02:02:56.220 so I could see how drugs

02:02:57.500 could be a problem

02:02:58.520 it's an issue

02:03:00.900 but yeah

02:03:05.040 it

02:03:05.660 it

02:03:09.620 I'm sorry.

02:03:15.140 That's it.

02:03:15.760 Okay, that's fair.

02:03:16.540 Just the drugs.

02:03:18.200 That's my biggest problem.

02:03:20.540 Okay, all right.

02:03:24.820 Would you...

02:03:25.800 I'm not encouraging you to do this.

02:03:27.400 Yeah. 0.99

02:03:29.180 Would you take your head off, 1.00

02:03:32.100 your fur head off, 1.00

02:03:33.320 tell the world who you really are, 0.78

02:03:34.480 or no?

02:03:34.940 You want to remain anonymous as a furry.

02:03:37.760 I'll remain anonymous.

02:03:38.940 I would...

02:03:39.620 I recommend that. I don't think, I think that's the right decision.

02:03:43.720 Business major kind of tells me not to take this off.

02:03:46.420 Yes. And does that, as I leave you to go, you know, wolf away.

02:03:57.400 Doesn't that contradict the thing that you just said, which is it's not that taboo?

02:04:02.400 It's not that taboo, but I don't want people to know I do it.

02:04:05.100 And, therefore, because again, I'm not encouraging you to take your fur head off on camera, doesn't

02:04:14.900 that...

02:04:15.900 Since it does seem to contradict that, is that maybe a sign that maybe at a certain

02:04:23.820 point you ought to give it up if you find something still a little off or odd or shameful

02:04:29.580 about it?

02:04:30.580 I don't think so.

02:04:37.440 All right, we'll see.

02:04:38.360 Next time I see you, maybe you'll have the fur head on.

02:04:41.640 Maybe you'll have the fur head off.

02:04:42.780 In either case, it has been a great pleasure, Nathan.

02:04:46.080 I very much appreciate your coming in.

02:04:48.740 And who knows?

02:04:49.940 You know, the world is so weird.

02:04:51.060 Maybe next time we chat, I'll be sitting here and I'll have my own fursona on.

02:04:55.480 Hopefully.

02:04:56.160 I don't know what kind of animal I would be.

02:04:58.560 Maybe you can tell me in the comments.

02:04:59.780 We'll see you next time.

The Michael Knowles Show - May 30, 2026

＂I Get Really Itchy＂ Michael & The Furry ｜ Nathan (Fursona)

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