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crunchycrowe · 4 months

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About Various Unsubstantiated Accusations , CrunchyCrowe / CrunchyCaws PROOF / CONTEXT

Firstly, Posting this just so I have somewhere to link people who bring it up, and tumblr is a place that wont limit my response, and have people only reply to single out of context tweets. - which is what started this whole thing in the first place. This is about accusations that are at time of writing, years old, but still crop up in my day-to day, because the rumors keep ruminating and self-sustain in their own echo chambers as fact, without a DIRECT and VERY VISABLE response. Also, people who I have blocked on twitter, can see this if they choose to.

Originally, I considered one out of context tweet not worth making any kind of deal out of, and id just block people who took a very incorrect and disingenuous read of my words. But it spiraled into serious accusations of my character with little more than "Crunchy supports this thing and is a bad person" When there is not a single screenshot of me saying anything of the sort, because I did not, and I assumed that with people taking time to read, it would straighten itself out. I was wrong.

If someone won't take the time to read my side of the issue, then I would argue that they are not someone to trust with serious accusations, as they are someone who won't look at the source, and therefore, won't know enough about me or the situation, to hurl serious accusations.

I apricate that fandoms these days want everyone to be the best versions of themselves, and thrive for accountability.

It's annoying that the flip side of that coin is when people are wrong. A harmful / untrue rumor will stick to someone forever, and actively muddle the water for everyone: the people that did the accusing, the person accused, and any actual victims that need the support and to be believed.

Believe victims, reserve judgement for people saying things without clear proof because it's cool to be the call-outer.

I always have, and will apologize and admit when I'm wrong and correct myself, in every event that happens. I did so recently on a sketchbook I took too long to deliver, immediately corrected my actions, and hired a manager to make sure everything STAYED right going forward, and the same issue would not repeat itself. Proof / context - My victim stating that the issue is resolved - https://twitter.com/remygryph/status/1718328170531758099 Positive change moving forward, Proof- https://twitter.com/CrunchyCaws/status/1718380185869750685

Earlier AND later in this post, I even admit I'm wrong, multiple times, over multiple things, openly. I will own up to my incorrect actions in every case it happens. Because It happens, people are wrong sometimes, and doubling down on being wrong is not a mature course of action. I find it frustrating that that's what I'm running into with my accusers, simply because they don't want to be wrong.

I have an ACTIVE track record of APOLOGIZING AND MAKING THINGS RIGHT.

If someone is out there claiming I'm actively causing any harm, or am a bad person in some way, ask for the evidence. ask to see victims stories, and support the people who need that support to be made whole.

I WILL POST, SUPPORT, APOLOGIZE, AND MAKE RIGHT - /ANYTHING/ - IVE ACTUALLY DONE.

I DON'T SUPPORT HEARSAY. That's the thing I said that made everyone upset. I get that on the internet, especially in younger circles it's not a popular opinion. Cool, I'll take that criticism, and continue not spreading things I might be unsure of. Scandalous.

WHO WAS THE ORIGINAL POST ABOUT!!?? WHAT DID YOU DO!!?? JUST BE CLEAR !!

I made a vague post about the FURRY FANDOM.

EVERY "PROOF" of me supporting X, Y, or Z, is all circumstantial and bookended with the logical fallacy of applying emotional manipulation, and putting the burden of proof on me, which if you don't know what those are - APPEAL TO EMOTION and BURDEN OF PROOF <- Click them and learn! I am trying to refute everything I can, with as much evidence and context as possible, without appealing to anyone's emotions to the best of my ability.

People thought i was talking about a warriorcat event, when I haven't been active in the fandom for over 10 years. I got dragged in because someone else who followed me, who was STILL IN warriors, applied my words to something i had little to no context for and was not apart of. This original post where I was QRT'd (not by the later mentioned call-outer, who is the continuing problem, by someone I'm on fine terms with) in relation to the situation in the FIRST place- was deleted, because the original poster realized they had made a mistake in dragging me into something I had nothing to do with, apologized, and we are chill with each other.

This shouldn't be an issue.

This was an "if the shoe fits" post. I was not speaking on the situation, but someone put the shoe on, and was upset that the shoe did not fit. ??? ?? ?

I never have and never will make posts about situations i do not have full context and information for. This goes directly against what I believe to be right, you wont catch me doing it. So I would have NEVER commented specifically on a situation in a fandom I haven't participated in in years.

I will be attaching ALL the original context with direct links not JUST screen shots out of context.

The original call out posted ONLY out of context screenshots in an example of cherry picking, another way people will try to convince others of things that are untrue.

Original post that I made - https://twitter.com/CrunchyCaws/status/1626692009640579097

Additional replies and context, completely removed from the callout-ers post and not considered when attacking my character-

The callout post itself (posted a bit farther down) is making accusations of me blocking for reasons that are entirely ASSUMED, and assumed very incorrectly. I have people blocked ENTIRLEY for how they choose to interact with things online, pet peeves in how they interact with social media, certain fandoms, or characters as WHOLE that I find personally /literally/ triggering, and people that reply without reading the full thread. I have PROVABLY - THOUSANDS of people blocked, for impersonal, non-moral reasons. https://twitter.com/CrunchyCaws/status/1742626966820225535

It was unfortunate that people who happened to be on the pulse of this were in a community/circle that I have blocked for the reasons of not liking to view SPECIFIC WARRIORS CATS, PET PEEVE OR PERSONAL TASTE OF DISLIKING CERTAIN FANDOM THINGS- and NOT for any deep or significant moral reasons, literally JUST timeline curation. If you agree with the below, call-out narrative, then I know i can't and won't try change your mind. I know that kind of person probably haven't even read this far, and if you have read this far, you are not the kind of person I am referring to. If i was intense at them, or anyone at the time, I DO RIGHT HERE APOLOGISE FOR MY TONE. I did at the time, react emotionally because they came out with attacks and accusations, instead of asking me what I meant. When I tried to clarify my words, they just, wouldn't believe me. Ironic at best, hypocritical at worst, coming from someone asking to be believed at their word, not believing my word. I took actions and made blocks that were fueled by frustration, that was wrong of me, and for that, I am truly sorry, I'm not just saying that. I have no problem saying my past actions could have been more in tune with the very emotional and intense subject matter at hand, regardless of how blind sighted I was by it. I have since every day tried my best to not let this kind of thing happen again, culminating in this post, where I both apologize for my behavior, but am going to discredit allegations against me that do not have proof. You can see here in this below screenshot that I actually DO NOT have them blocked currently, because I believe in growth and change and clearing miscommunications and having everyone in a situation grow and learn. Once I realized this was a misreading me issue that was going to spiral, I am/was more than happy to make things right in any way I can and move forward in a way to make everyone feel heard and happy. Note that this person said I was defending someone I NEVER MENTIONED OR ALLUDED TO, and did not provide adequate proof of that, because what is posted here, is all I ever said. I have here provided FULL CONTEXT, which this person did not do. This is the smoking gun that is the root of the accusations being hurled at me on occasion. https://twitter.com/GalaxxAi/status/1627726642536763392

You can see I even unblocked them at the time, ( And currently have them unblocked) so that I could reply to try to be VERY CLEAR that this is not what my original post is about, and to dispel any worry, but I only got double downed on when i tried to explain that it was indeed, just a misreading of my words. They also accused me of Liking things I DO NOT SUPPORT OR PARTICIPATE IN, then NOT PROVIDING PROOF that I liked those things, BECAUSE I DID NOT, THERE IS NO PROOF OF THIS. Again only listed proof is me saying that I don't like it when people drag art I do not like to see onto my timeline, when they also dislike interacting with that kind of art. That if there are no victims, and all parties are in full consent and capable of giving that full consent, and if no harm is done, then things should be allowed to be in their own spaces, un-harassed. Art can sometimes make someone uncomfortable and be challenging. I can agree with that, and also dislike art that makes me personally uncomfortable. I stand by HARMLESS kinks being left alone. I did not state specifics on what those "kinks" were, if something is harming someone, that is not a kink, that's a CRIME, and not what I would ever defend. Here is a statement I made that call-outer did not see or address in any good faith. https://twitter.com/CrunchyCaws/status/1627762856006483970

making incorrect assumptions and framing me as participating in that content when I actually have STRONG feelings to the contrary is frustrating to say the least, and am trying to address it as neutrally as possible, but -( I DON'T LIKE MORALLY DUBIOUS ART THAT IS ACTVLEY CAUSING HARM TO PEOPLE MENTALLY OR PHYSICALLY- I hate it so much i don't want to see it AT ALL- AND HAVE STATED THIS BEFORE BUT THIS PERSON DID NOT ENGAGE WITH FULL CONTEXT OF MY MORALS.) there is no such evidence, substantiating this claim, this is just straight up slander. https://twitter.com/GalaxxAi/status/1627758261129601025

Literally accusing me of illegal and morally dubious behavior over "vibes." But its NOT ok for me to block someone over "vibes" in their words. or I'm doing a criminal behavior. A double standard. You can also see this person cutting off my context, again, so I could see why they would feel negatively about me saying I don't like it when people post things emotionally, and out of context, without thinking critically. Here is a link to my full post, which they did not reply to directly, or site correctly; https://twitter.com/CrunchyCaws/status/1574998020818493440 It is not my intention to put this person on blast, they have been through enough, and I know they just want no bad actors in their fandom, and I agree with the mission, nobody likes bad actors. This is why I dislike this in-fighting so much, we should be on the same side, but the effects of them being the inciting incident and slandering my character can no longer be ignored and I'm putting this all here in context for anyone looking for the full story, and if it goes any deeper. This is IT, thank you for your time if you went through this incredibly beefy read that I found largely unnecessary until I received significant harassment, and people literally trying to get me fired, or wishing actual death upon me as a result of me curating my space. I am putting out in an attempt to quell any lingering worries that I support any unscrupulous behavior. I DO NOT, I JUST CURATE CERTIAN WARRIOR CATS CHARACTERS, PEEVES, AND BEHAVIORS I DISLIKE SEEING, OUT OF MY TIMELINE.

👇 TLDR 👇

I made a post about the furry fandom as a whole, and behaviors i didn't agree with. The warrior cats community was having an active situation unfold, and they decided that my post must have been directly about their situation. It was not. When people started claiming my post was in fact about the warrior cats situation without proper evidence, I blocked them. This is the exact behavior i do not like. jumping onto people and situations without proper context and evidence to back up said claims. People took me blocking them for this behavior as admission of guilt. There was never a post anywhere in support of anyone, I was never involved and I did not interact with the situation outside of being dragged in against my will.

#crunchycrowe #accusations #proof #evidence #hearsay #callout #callout-culture #drama #warrior cats #warriors #furry fandom #furry drama #warriors drama #GalaxxAi #Crunchycaws #Sally #sagutoyas #Incident

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kiwi-smoothi · 1 year

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Hey, just so we're all aware. If you see a person at a con or something, especially a furry convention or Homestuck one, with this tattoo, this is Emma Reese. Also known as Haru Hyena. Who scammed 20k from mostly minors in the furry community. They also got themselves axed from the Homestuck community for pretending to be Broadway karkat.

They are a incredibly manipulative, are an animal hoarder and abuser, ableist and fatphobic. They are also incredibly abusive to their partners.

I know this because I was their partner for about 3 years. I don't want to go into detail about anything that happened, a lot did, but please if you see a person with this tattoo at a con or something, don't interact. Don't pity them, don't try and confront them. The happiest outcome I can think of is watching this person go out in a flicker. They don't deserve some huge escape or apology video, they don't deserve the attention that brings. Just let them faze out into nothing before they find the next fandom to scam out of time and money.

#psa #furry drama #haru hyena #gamzee makara #abuser mention #tw animal abuse #tw ableism #animal abuse mention #ableism mention #tw fatphobia #fatphobia mention #i genuinely just want them to disappear #i don't think they deserve anymore #if you know this person is in circles of yours #or is trying to #please please block them out #your sanity will thank you once you dont have to listen to their guilt trips

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sojrner-fishsticcc · 11 months

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wow cool got my art stolen.

so uh. weird things happening over here. my art got stolen without my credit on twitter, which sucks :( big thank you to @Alter_Ego262 on twitter for notifying me about this. anyway i left a comment saying that this was stolen art, and went onto the twitter's discord server (apparently its some furry group thing?) and tried to ask them for credit. got instantly blocked, so that sucks. but after a closer look this group, Furry Valley, looked a little familiar? and yeah they are familiar because i remember seeing exposees on them because theyre an actual honest to god furry cult. like genuinely, i know the word cult is thrown around a lot but like an actual cult. the leader is well known for blackmailing people into staying, and also all of their socials are super suspicious. they hide any comments about them that are negative. its so fucking creepy. OH AND ALSO THE LEADER SIMBA WAS INVOLVED IN THE KEROTHEWOLF CONTROVERSY. i am not going to discuss that but it is actually one of the most fucked up things to ever happen in the furry community. and the leader was in on that. this is actually fucking horrifying. christ.

dont look into furry valley, all their art is stolen (even from really popular artists? like ones you can recognize on style alone?) and the controversy around them is fucking nightmarish. thats all. fuck these guys lol. at least i have a story about it now. happy pride month.

#furry valley #furry drama #furry #furry art #art theft #stolen art #voidposting #god fuck these guys so much lol #cult?

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6knotty6thotty6 · 11 months

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Non-Furry (Normie) Friends

There’s a tweet that’s been circling around that’s caused some interesting discourse.

Here’s the tweet (along with the sub-tweets due to the character limit):

“Every furry should have at least a couple of boring normie friends to keep themselves grounded in reality tbh.

Generally speaking, I don’t think it’s wise to surround yourself ONLY with people that exist within your niche. Diverse friends is good, I like my boring friends :)

This was meant to be interpreted as “sometimes hang out with people who like boring stuff like sports and cars”

This doesn’t mean you should try to be friends with conservatives and bigots, thas a completely different discussion

aight i see now. my biggest mistake was using the word "boring". obviously these normie friends should still have common interests you guys share. i mainly meant people who arent all about anthro animals/do not associate with the furry fandom. thats all. muting this now.”

This tweet is a mixed bag for me. Obviously, I don’t blame the writer of this tweet. Character limits make any intelligent discussion borderline impossible without just copying and pasting a twitlonger. Some of the comments though show me that some people just fail to realize why some people joined the fandom in the first place.

At the risk of sounding cheeky, the answer is most of us joined the fandom BECAUSE we couldn’t make “normie” friends. Here are some reasons why:

1. Some people live in small towns where public transportation and sidewalks either don’t exist or are only available in cities. Gas is more expensive than ever, so driving to see friends isn’t a sustainable option. Befriending co-workers is an option, but certain workspaces are so hostel and competitive, it makes friendships more of a liability. It's even harder if you're a different age, race, gender, sexuality, etc from the majority of your co-workers. This is an example of how even "normies" don't like making friends out of their comfort zone. These are especially true with jobs in Corporate America when bosses will hold promotions over people’s heads and force them to see their co-workers as enemies to gain superiority over. Social spaces that don’t require spending money, in general, are almost nonexistent. So if you’re too poor to afford to hang out at bars, coffee shops, or gyms, then there really aren’t that many good options for adults to just hang out and meet people. There are clubs for adults, but almost of them require money for entry, and again the ability to transport yourself there. Volunteering is also an option, but some people's jobs are so time-consuming and stressful, that people are too exhausted to spend energy anywhere else.

2. Many furries were traumatized by non-furries from being bullied in school. Even now in 2023, kids are still being bullied for being furries. School can be a real social nightmare for children who aren’t considered “normal.” Any iota of difference can be grounds for bullying. I’m sure a lot of people had that one “weird kid” in their school that everyone was told to say away from. I doubt that “weird kid” was gonna grow up to be a social butterfly. Cliques are also a big deal. If you weren't in a clique, you didn't have friends. I didn’t fit into any cliques in my high school. I wasn’t smart enough to hang around the AP kids. I was rejected by several sports teams for not being able to keep up, so hanging out with the sporty kids was out. I was in band, but the teachers discouraged socializing as it was a distraction from practice, and I was too much of a teacher’s pet to disobey the rules. I was also an introvert. People in general don’t have much sympathy for introverts, especially if they’re not neurodivergent. People often tell us “Just stop being shy” or “just walk up and talk to people, it’s not that hard” when we lament how hard it is to make friends. Some real bootstrap mentality and victim-blaming rhetoric. When you add having niche interest, or god forbid interests outside of your assigned race/gender, then it's no wonder many teenagers end up feeling lonely.

3. On that topic, being disabled and neurodivergent also makes finding nonfurry friends extremely challenging. We sadly still live in an ableist society where the vast majority of people think you can just buy some magic pills that’ll make you feel normal. If people either chose not to do that, or can’t due to lack of money, then they’re seen as selfish/lazy and deserving of being alone. Even though I’m neurotypical, it doesn’t take a genius to do some basic research to see why it’s not easy for neurodivergents people to just “act normal.” Even when neurodivergent try explain themselves, people either don’t listen or still treat them as lesser because they’re “too difficult to deal with.” For neurotypicals, “acting normal” is as second nature as breathing. So meeting other people who can’t do it, causes a lot of judgment and even resentment. "Acting normal" for some people can feel like playing 5d chess with quantum physics. This is the same struggles that cause some people to become hikikomoris. Hikikomoris are seen as losers who are too lazy or selfish to fix themselves. In reality, a lot of them are just mentally ill and/or neurodivergent people whom no one made any effort to understand. Instead of receiving help, they got left behind with nowhere to go but the internet.

Reminds me of another tweet I saw months before the current one (written by an autistic furry):

“i get so comfortable and caught up in the "normalcy" of my social groups and my every day lifestyle and get violently snapped back to the reality that i am fundamentally Different. trying to have any kind of conversation with a neurotypical feels so very alienating. I spend so much time holed up in my little cave talking to my friends and the comfort of it lulls me into a false sense of "...maybe i am fine and okay? my brain works perfectly and i can function well" but any deviation from that is so disastrous to my self and my routine. It just feels like nothing i do or say is the right thing to do or say. and suddenly they're getting mad at me for things i couldn't anticipate. what am i missing? i apparently missed every single warning sign.”

4. It’s no secret that the vast majority of furries are queer. It’s also no secret how queer folks often get treated in the real world. Especially if people are unlucky enough to be queer in the South. For queer people who grew up away from any major cities in conservative households with no access to any transportation, finding anyone who treats you like a human, let alone a friend, can be a real needle in the haystack situation. I'm aromantic asexual and an AFAB non-binary. I have “normie” friends, but all of them are allosexual cis women because they were the only ones who tolerated me. They were nice, but I had little to nothing in common with them outside of caring about our grades. Sexuality is a big deal in high school due to that being the time when everyone is going through puberty. I never cared about dating. So engaging in “who’s the hottest?” “who’s more marriage material?” or “who are you taking to the prom?” banter was impossible. I had to lie about who I was crushing on so people wouldn’t spread roomers that I was a lesbian. I tried being friends with boys, but cis straight teenage boys don’t exactly treat female-presenting people the best, or at least in a non-sexual way.

5. The furry fandom has a level of communal support that "normies" just don’t really provide. Every day I see so many furries promote their friends on their social media pages to help them pay for debt, medical procedures, or just to keep up with bills. Nonfurries don’t really do that. Not to say people's nonfurries have never helped them. It's just that we sadly live in a very individualistic sociality where we’re encouraged to only look out for ourselves. People may make exceptions for their best friends, but it’s unlikely that a community of nonfurries would donate to a random stranger’s GoFundMed compared to furries, especially outside of the internet. People don't open up their doors for official charity associations, let alone strangers asking for donations. The closest you’ll see nonfurries showing any kind of communal support is a church, even then that type of support is only reserved for Christians. It’s also doubtful that they’d pool their money to help a trans person receive gender-affirming surgery. This goes into a bigger discussion about how the concept of communities doesn’t really exist anymore. We live in a very individualistic society where asking for help is a sign of moral failure or weakness, especially if you’re a man. Neighborhoods, especially in the suburbs, are built so it's easy for people to only look out for wherever lives in their home. Everyone else doesn’t matter, or at the very least is second nature. Unless you’re lucky enough to live in a “safe” neighborhood that hosts community events like house parties and BBQs, most people’s neighbors are basically strangers. This is why suburban housewives are prone to feeling isolated and alone. The furry fandom fulfills that need for community that a lot of people were lacking in their personal lives.

For clarity, I have absolutely nothing against non-furries, or befriending them. I still try to keep up with my "boring normie" friends by sending birthday shoutouts on social media and mailing them Christmas cards. The harsh truth is I’ll never be as close with them as I was in high school since we’re just too different at this point in our lives. They’re all in separate states, have time-consuming career paths, and as previously stated are all allosexual cis women who are either already married with children or dating. It’s just not possible for me to make friends outside of the fandom, at least in my current state. I’ve moved 8 times throughout my life, so I have no childhood friends. I went to college during the peak of the pandemic and took mostly online classes, so I didn’t make any college friends. I live with my mom and have all solitary hobbies. I’ve also mentioned that I’m introverted, so hanging around people irl physically and mentally exhausts me.

So with all this in mind, I hope it’s easier to understand why most furries aren’t exactly interested in having “normie” friends. The fandom was originally created as a safe haven for people who were rejected by the outside world and had nowhere to go. This sentiment grew even more with social media where people outside of America were able to find a home. I wasn’t able to socialize with anyone my age or have people to call my best friends until I joined the fandom. Also, it’s not fair to think of all furries as the same. Yes, some furries are extremely infantilized, self-centered, and only speak in “uwu” and “owo.” However, in my personal experience, furries are just normal people who happen to indulge in the same hobby. I have furry friends who are STEM majors, work in music, are married with children, and have vastly different queer experiences. I think the fact that all these vastly different people who never would’ve even spoken to each other in real life are united under the same common interest is kinda beautiful. As the world grows more and more hostile towards, well, anyone who’s not a cis het white middle-class man, people need the communal support of the fandom more than ever. Instead of shaming furries who are “terminally online,” we should instead address the larger issue of why our current society is built in a way that makes certain people heavily rely on online spaces for love and support in the first place.

If “normies” treated each other with the same unjudgemental kindness and support as furries, then the fandom wouldn’t have been created in the first place.

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supertrainstationh · 11 months

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Disaffinity - Betrayal and Gaslighting of a Fandom

[This piece discusses severe subject matter and is intended for mature audiences]

[If you are looking the intro/news post to my blog that I usually have pinned, PLEASE FIND IT HERE]

Decisions and actions by administration of Furaffinity.net in the Spring of 2023 demonstrate to me that any display of respect toward their users and artists is either performative in nature, or else is temporary, conditional, and based on arbitrary whims and moment-to-moment perceptions of utility rather than loyalty or trust.

Even from my perspective as a family-friendly creator with a negligible following and minimal visibility within Furaffinity, the furry fandom in general, and the wider internet beyond, I am vividly aware of how much it can hurt a creator when the nature and intention of their work is deliberately disrespected by those making misguided judgments and morality-driven accusations of misconduct.

"Disrespect" is a word I use only after careful consideration, but when the morality and acceptability of creators and works that for years were welcomed, encouraged, and even financially patronized by certain Furaffinity administrators abruptly become the subject of an officially sanctioned decency crusade in which those same creators are being faced with expulsion from the site, and slapped with a most severe accusation, that of producing inappropriate images of children, even when the images in question literally do not depict children or underage characters of any reasonable description - "disrespect" sums it up as well as any single word possibly can.

In response to this disrespect, some users and observers involved with the issue have made statements to the effect of "Furaffinity hates its artists."

While my natural reflex is to encourage those frustrated with the situation to dial back such an obviously hyperbolic reaction, upon further consideration, I find it difficult to determine if it could be possible for a person or organization to make implicit public accusations against people of, in essence, creating a form of child pornography, without also saying that they do in fact hate those they are accusing.

If it were possible to accuse someone of creating child pornography, but somehow do so without hating them, perhaps that should call into question the mental state and motivations of the persons or parties casting the accusations.

Deepening the disrespect by Furaffinity toward its own users is the gaslighting practice demonstrated by site staff in making official statements to pacify concerns about the nature and scope of the revised enforcement policy, when details of those statements had already been proven not to be true by specific records of moderation actions which have already taken place, or have been officially threatened to be carried out.

Furthermore, Furaffinity is overtly insulting the intelligence of its users by claiming that this revised policy merely enforces rules that had already been in place for years, and then attempting to establish that the artists impacted by this policy change had been using loopholes to circumvent the official rules of the site all along, and are not being targeted or picked on, but being held accountable for ongoing rule-breaking which was both conscious, and intentional.

It's like a town changing the posted speed limit on a certain highway from 60 miles per hour, to 40 miles per hour, and responding to complaints from ticketed drivers by claiming that the speed limit had always been 40 miles per hour, and that everyone who had previously been driving at 60 miles per hour were habitual dangerous drivers who were now facing the consequences of their deliberate misbehavior.

It's quite rotten that Furaffinity, a keystone website serving a community of people who are already outcasts and misfits in various ways, would spend above and beyond a decade to build up the trust of its users that it was a space where they were not only safe to be themselves, but safe to attempt to make a living on their talent, only to then abruptly accuse their members of having produced egregiously inappropriate content featuring the sexual depiction of children.

This is especially so when the content in question consists of cartoon drawings featuring non-human creatures, and the characters themselves can by no sensible stretch of the imagination be interpreted as representations of children, or people under the age of majority, either mentally or physically.

To be absolutely clear, I am not speaking in defense of artists who draw and publish inappropriate images of child characters, and I am also not claiming that such images are not reasonably objectionable.

What I am speaking in defense of are the significant number of artists on Furaffinity are who being accused by site staff of drawing inappropriate images of children, when the characters they are depicting are literally not children within the context of their artistic designs, fictional lifestyles, and fictional settings.

Furaffinity's definition of what constitutes a "child character" for the purposes of this crackdown have been expanded in a manner so vast and meaningless that a depicted character's chronological age, intellectual maturity, and physical appearance no longer count as valid proof of adulthood, and one might go as far as to joke that even a drawing of that fictional character's imaginary driver's license and birth certificate wouldn't count either.

When explanations of this enforcement policy (as of my writing this) mention that assessments to determine if a drawing of a fictional character or species may count as an inappropriate image of a child will, as a matter of procedure, disregard the creator's intentions, as well disregard any information the creator or other source of material can provide regarding the history or physiology related to that imaginary character or species, there's genuinely nothing that could possibly be assessed other than whether or not a moderator decides they're personally offended by a particular piece, character, or art style.

Official communications surrounding this revised policy state that its goal is to make the site's content guideline enforcement robust against situations resembling a specifically cited hypothetical opportunity for abuse in which an artist might publish art of a character that clearly appears to be an inappropriately dressed or provocatively behaving humanoid child, while insisting that the character is actually a millennia-old supernatural being that doesn't physically age, and using this excuse as a chintzy moral justification to circumvent the rules against artwork of child characters in sexual situations.

This hypothetical extreme example provided by Furaffinity would be an obvious bad faith misrepresentation by the creator of their intentions for the character, and would not be accepted by any reasonable person assessing that particular case.

However, the use of that hypothetical case as the foundation for establishing as standard practice the rejection the context provided by creator intent, fictional setting, and the character's backstory, in examining if a character is a depiction of an adult or a child, and instead assuming nefarious intent based on the style of the artist and subjective "cuteness" or "off-modelness" of the character, demonstrates a refusal to employ elementary human capabilities of judgment and comprehension.

Creating and depicting lively worlds filled with imaginary sapient beings of all shapes and sizes, populating those worlds with compelling characters, and exploring the stories of their lives, which may or may not include sexual aspects, and having the freedom to do all of this without fear of punishment or rejection on the basis of what someone else may arbitrarily decide is abnormal or offensive, is what allowed this fandom, and Furaffinity in particular, to survive and grow in spite of many difficulties and controversies, including organized opposition from people outside the fandom who are angry that it merely exists at all.

My own published creations are entirely appropriate for all ages, and I particularly enjoy creating things that I would have been able to enjoy as a small child, and therefore I have nothing at stake in terms of my creativity being limited by these latest policy revisions on Furaffinity.

What drives me to write in response to this situation is not a desire to defend the production and display of inappropriate drawings of children, which should have never been permitted on Furaffinity in the first place (though at one point it incredibly actually was, and remained so for an extended period of its history), but to protest the sheer injustice and betrayal faced by so many creators who trusted Furaffinity as a place they could be themselves, only to suddenly be discarded like this.

The overwhelming majority of the people affected by these policy changes have always been (and rightfully so) vocally opposed to the creation and display of inappropriate images of children, and in spite of finding such images disgusting, suddenly find themselves being accused by officialdom within Furaffinity of producing exactly that.

For what little art I've created myself, I've faced a small amount of my work suffering from accusations by people outside the furry fandom of containing harmful or morally questionably intent, while refusing to listen to me or attempt to understand what I was making, or what I intended to convey with my creations. These accusations hurt me tremendously, and still irritate me, although years have passed.

Even with that experience, I can't guess how I'd begin to process suddenly having the foundation of my presence within the furry fandom pulled out from under me, if it without warning became an official position of a major website at the forefront of the community, that works I produced without any sort of evil intentions have been redefined by site policy as constituting inappropriate images of children, when the images in question literally do not depict childhood-age characters at all.

Pouring salt on the wound is the absolute nature of this dictate, with it being declared final and infallible, regardless of the sexual maturity, age, and fictional history of the characters in the artwork being judged, a standard which renders the actual work in question an invalid source in considering the nature and intention of the work itself.

It is akin to saying that the addends in an arithmetic expression are invalid for the purpose of reasoning the correct sum of those addends.

Even in consideration of concepts such as Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author", no legitimate form of argument or analysis of a creative work demands that the work itself be rejected as a valid source from which to formulate an explication of that work.

It's quite incredible that Furaffinity, which describes itself as an art site, would take such a stance.

This model of assessment could be used to define the character Rocko Rama the wallaby from the animated television show "Rocko's Modern Life" to be a child, even though that character's premise fundamentally depends upon Rocko being an adult homeowner with a driver's license and a job, or to define the character Noelle Holiday the reindeer monster from the video game "Deltarune" to be an adult, even though that character's premise fundamentally depends upon Noelle being a young teenager who lives with her parents and attends high school.

I've both heard of and have been friends with several wonderful people who have endured hideous sexual abuse during childhood.

Only much later in life did they discover adults-only spaces within the furry fandom as some of their first encounters with the idea of sexuality as something with the potential to be positive or healthy, which they then explored through creativity within the fandom, and for some, that included the crafting of adults-only work depicting consenting adult characters, and some of which they actually had the courage to share on sites such as Furaffinity, a place they felt they could trust the leadership to respect and welcome them, and take reasonable steps to shield them from negative treatment for their interests and tastes.

Given the extent that people within the furry fandom tend to identify with the characters they create, and use them as avatars for themselves, I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to have endured sexual abuse as a child, and later as an adult begin to explore sexuality in a way felt to be safe, through making adults-only art of an imaginary being representing themselves, art that they may have been sharing for years on Furaffinity, only to suddenly receive official warning that artwork of their avatar, which represents a fantastic version of their own adult self, has been without warning declared by the website to constitute an inappropriate sexual depiction of a child, and in essence that their own artwork of themselves has been redefined as a form of child pornography.

All of this, because the moderator viewing their art, and judging the art style and proportions of an artist's personal avatar, disapproves of the character's height, head shape, clothing, lack of clothing, leg shape, being too cartoony, being too realistic, being "too cute", having the wrong coloring and shading style, or other arbitrary and frequently contradictory explanations that have been given for many characters of wildly varying size, shape, and attributes, and based on that, officially re-categorizes that character to now define a depiction of a child.

With concerns over adult characters being depicted in "cartoon-like", "excessively cute", or "off-model" art styles being frequently cited as the reasoning for which non-child characters are suddenly being declared by site staff as "sexual depictions of children", I really have to wonder where my own art would stand in this situation.

I do not create adults-only art of any kind, but what art I have created and shared with the furry fandom over the years is limited by a fine-motor disability I have received services for since childhood, in addition to services for autism spectrum disorder.

My handwriting and artistic capabilities always have, and always will, be extremely limited.

Handwriting and drawing come with difficulty, and the results are stunted in quality to the point where art and language teachers as early as first grade were complaining about the lack of detail and "effort" put into my best work.

Art and writing projects took me many times longer than a non-disabled student to attempt, resulting in me spending most of many lunch and recess periods in detention for failing to finish coloring and math classwork on time, in spite of giving the projects my full and undivided attention.

I created a unique species of worm-like creatures specifically to serve as something I could draw using my limited abilities, and every single digital piece I created with these worm characters took me hours of work in a program like Photoshop for a result that others tend to think I effortlessly scribbled together in Microsoft Paint in a matter of seconds.

With my self-invented race of imaginary cartoon worms, I've explored many subjects and themes, including concepts I can only relate to with the perspective I've gained as an adult.

These themes include frustration with debt, and even affectionate encounters between worm characters, with the last of those themes being presented in such a chaste and tasteful manner that I'm sure my childhood Sunday school teacher would have been charmed by it.

The thought of these ultra flat, ultra simplistic cartoon worms of mine being depicted in any sexual situation strikes me as profoundly absurd.

But now, I find it interesting to think of the peril I would be in now on Furaffinity, if, hypothetically, I had decided to use my Doorworms (which I have already used to reflect my non-sexual experiences as an autistic adult) to also explore thoughts or feelings regarding sexuality, as many others within the furry fandom had in the past using their own invented creature characters, back when there was little risk to be seen in doing so.

I created Doorworms to be able to drawn within the limits of my own motor deficits by using simple body shapes and exaggerated facial expressions that autistic people tend to easily relate to, or find appealing.

So would this make my Doorworms, a direct result of my abilities, disabilities, and neurodivergent life experience, a species that would run me afoul of Furaffinity's new acceptable use policies, were I to have chosen in the past to depict Doorworms engaged in sexual activity?

From what research I've done regarding how these policies have been projected to be enforced so far, some characters with typical seeming adult human body proportions have been classified by site staff as inappropriate images of children.

Even if one moderator were to deem my Doorworms acceptable in an adults-only context, there's no reason to expect other moderators would be so permissive, given the extreme variations in what has and hasn't been deemed compliant since the changes were announced.

The incongruent reasoning in moderator decisions is so extreme that one user has claimed that a moderator on Furaffinity went so far as to declare that a reported case of drawings of anthropomorphic child characters being physically abused in a non-sexual manner by adults was acceptable on the basis that the children were being depicted as not enjoying the experience.

Wasn't this all supposed to be about discouraging imagery that exploits the theme of child abuse for entertainment purposes?

To intentionally repeat myself, I say with confidence that Doorworms would eventually be considered forbidden in adults-only material on Furaffinity because official judgments that a character is a child have already been made on that site based entirely on the character being "overly cute", and ignoring the character's physical age, physical maturity, and mental maturity, which are all the defining factors that differentiate adulthood from childhood in any reasonable situation.

Instead, these decisions are being based entirely on assertions that the character's clothing, or their lack of clothing, the shape and size of their eyes, or that a "cartoon like" art style in terms of design, coloration, or line work, any of which can define the character as being an indisputable depiction of a child in an adults-only situation, and inappropriate for display on the site due to being a form of child pornography.

If an imaginary being that in our world would be of similar size and shape to a typical adult human, and would have the body type, mental acuity, and physical maturity, of an adult, and could be expected to be capable of operating an automobile, opening a bank account, or being employed, can in spite of all of this be determined by Furaffinity moderation to count as a "child", there's no possible way I could hope for my own Doorworms, which due to my fine motor disability were created to be as crude and simplistic in style as an artistic depiction of an intelligent imaginary creature could possibly be, to somehow escape eventual judgment from a Furaffinity moderator of counting as inappropriate images of children, if I had decided to explore themes of sexuality using my Doorworms, and posted them to that site.

Feeling reasonable in my prediction of how the preceding hypothetical scenario would be eventually assessed by site staff in this present situation, I'd have to wonder then, if that would mean that artistic expressions of sexuality through imaginary creatures within the furry fandom were, after all, only a privilege for those fortunate enough to lack impairments like mine which restrict their artistic capabilities to those akin to someone only barely learning to hold a pencil, resulting in a style one might perceive as reflecting "emphasized cuteness", or even accuse of being deliberately "child-like" as though to appeal to an indecent and predatory predilection.

Do my limited motor skills and inability to create more sophisticated, realistic, and human-like character designs, invalidate the legitimacy of my right as an adult to use what little artistic capability I have to explore themes that might mirror sexual aspects of my own adulthood?

If that were the case, it would certainly reflect the ongoing struggles many disabled people face in having their adulthood, including their sexuality, respected as valid by non-disabled people who, consciously or not, may view other's impairments, difficulties, or requirements for additional assistance or patience, as placing them in a permanent state of partial childhood, in which the thought of those same people possessing ordinary adult human attributes such as sexuality seems distasteful.

Luckily for myself, the thought experiment as to if my Doorworms would be tolerated in an adults-only context on the Furaffinity of Spring 2023 will never need to be explored in practice, as I regard Doorworms as an intensely non-sexual creation, and would never create or publish adults-only art of any kind, in any context, anyway.

However I do have concern for others like me. My concern is for adults who may have somewhat limited capacity to depict sophisticated or realistic art styles for their creatures, or who draw cartoon creatures with bright clothing and body coloration, and render faces with exaggerated, "cute", simple-to-read design language and facial expressions, as neurodiverse people often do and find appealing.

These are people who were baited by Furaffinity into feeling safe in exploring the expression of sexual themes through creating artwork of physically and emotionally mature imaginary creatures representing themselves, only to be stabbed in the back when their adult-themed work is suddenly judged by Furaffinity as a gallery of inappropriate images of children, regardless of anything those creators have to say about it.

Any creators on Furaffinity whose existing body of work is now threatened by these policy changes are now, if they dare to argue in their own defense, are facing instantaneous dismissal by Furaffinity administration as bad actors who are making excuses for their extensive histories of disrupting and abusing the site and its community by exploiting it to publish inappropriate images of children, a status which marks any argument they could possibly come up with to be inherently invalid for consideration.

What makes this more insulting still is that in spite of the fact that many of these Furaffinity-based artists have not only always been vocally opposed to the sexual depiction of childhood age anthropomorphic characters, but now find that some of the only furry-dedicated websites they can consider as alternatives to display their artwork are smaller sites with sometimes dubious standings within the furry fandom that flourished by serving as havens for those who wished to to draw adults-only artwork of child characters after Furaffinity forbade such images.

If this new policy on Fuaffinity that redefines which characters are considered appropriate for depiction in sexual situations were a simple matter of forbidding creatures from children's franchises such as Pokemon, Digimon, or My Little Pony to be featured; as inconvenient and unpopular as a decision as that would be for some, and in spite of all the backlash I know I would face for stating such an opinion, I wouldn't have placed blame on Furaffinity for doing so.

However, that is not at all what is actually taking place.

I find it incredibly ironic that I am writing this, because not only do I have no financial or recreational interest in creating and sharing adults-only works within or beyond the furry fandom, but for years I have dealt with backlash from other furries for suggesting that the furry fandom's famous and infamous sex-positive nature might, in some aspects, have made itself into an unhealthy excess of what in reasonable moderation could be a good thing.

Over the years myself and others within the furry fandom have been publicly accused of "sex-negativity" merely for discussing the potential for strictly PG, all-ages options for conventions, art sites, and online social spaces, and I've been called a "fake furry" for not only failing to put my sex life on public display, but failing to establish it as the defining characteristic of my online presence.

Sometimes I've even seen expressions of interest in family-friendly spaces within the furry fandom be derided as veiled attempts to promote bigotry toward non-straight people.

I find this attitude ironic given that I'm sure many of these same people are the sort that get outspokenly offended when mainstream media coverage depicts the furry fandom as an insidious subculture of sex-obsessed maniacs that use cartoon animal imagery to attract minors.

Even polite requests for obviously fetish-driven artwork to be appropriately labeled as such and placed in its defined categories to reduce the chance of it being viewed by those who don't want to view it, or who should not be allowed to view it, face routine backlash, which has included publicly published personal statements that have been made by Furaffinity administrators accusing others of being judgmental.

I've also seen this behavior take the form of resistance from furries, who for example, might insist that a drawing of two characters engaged in foot fetish activity that any reasonably informed person can assess to be sexually motivated, can not possibly be considered mature content.

In this example, the claim that the image in question was perfectly acceptable general-audience content was made on the basis that both of the characters, though blushing, and obviously aroused, were fully clothed, and that therefore anyone who dares suggest that such an image might not be appropriate in all contexts and for all audiences fails to understand the "true spirit" of the furry fandom, because the paws of cartoon animals represent joy, freedom, and innocence, or something to that effect.

Though I could go on with a number of more extreme examples than that, both on Furaffinity, and elsewhere, which I have witnessed personally, my real point of interest here is the extent to which I've seen it as routine that people within the furry fandom take personal insult to the idea that a racy, or even sexually explicit image, might be inappropriate in a general-audiences setting that isn't designated for such material.

It's very strange to me watching furries take offense to a request to tag a sexually implicit or explicit piece as not-safe-for-work (NSFW) and treat the concept of NSFW tagging as a judgmental statement on the morality of the particular piece, those who might enjoy it, and the piece's creator.

Maybe I feel strongly about this due to disability services I received to offset my social deficits, which included actual classes attempting to catch me up to speed on what is and isn't considered appropriate in different settings, and in which I was lead to take these boundaries very seriously.

I can't help but recognize the behavior I mentioned earlier from certain furries who lack ability to reasonably judge which subjects are appropriate for which settings and audiences as a form of impairment of its own.

I often wonder how much this phenomenon may have to do with people having growing up in the online furry fandom from a young age, routinely encountering inappropriate content and behavior, and ending up with an improperly developed sense that these boundaries should even exist.

For all its positives, the furry fandom is lousy with environments in which the boundaries between adults-only and family-friendly spaces are often very poorly delineated, or not defined at all.

In spite of its new hyper-vigilance against inappropriate artistic images of children, whether the pieces in question actually feature underage characters or not, Furaffinity itself is a prime example of the problem I'm pointing to, in which actual children are at reasonable risk of being exposed to inappropriate content.

Furaffinity presently allows children as young as thirteen years old to hold accounts.

However, the site itself would be blocked entirely by most reasonably robust parental control filters due it not only hosting adults-only content, but adults-only content of a sometimes extreme nature that even many furries find questionable, and that some furries acquiesce to being in the distant company of due to Furaffinity's near-monolithic status within the fandom, and difficulty some find to be "visible" or “discoverable” without the presence of having an account there.

Since I was a toddler, I was fascinated with animals, cartoon critters, mythological human-animal hybrids, aliens, monsters, human-to-creature metamorphosis, and other themes popular within the furry fandom.

I developed and explored these interests before I had even heard of the internet or the furry fandom, and when my household did get internet access, it was so long ago that my first order of business was dialing up a website via AOL 3.0 that provided coverage of the 1998 launch of the Sega Dreamcast.

It's an incredible advancement that the internet has allowed people who would have lived completely isolated in the recent past to form communities and bonds with those who have esoteric interests in common. In spite of all the drawbacks of the internet that could be discussed, the benefits of its emergence are not something I would want to go away, or be dampened or diminished.

At the same time, now that I am an adult approaching the age my parents were when they first set up an original model iMac equipped with a 56k modem in my bedroom, and left me largely unsupervised to use it freely, it's a bummer knowing that if I were a parent, and had a kid with interests similar to my own at that age, that I could never allow my cartoon, creature, and transformation obsessed child to freely partake in the furry fandom, and that I would have to exhibit so much oversight that I could only imagine it as overbearing and stifling.

And that goes particularly so for Furaffinity, arguably the largest site within the fandom, which allows thirteen year old children to join, in spite of it hosting extreme pornography in a setting where a considerable number of users happen to have a concerning difficulty in accurately determining for themselves whether or not sexually implicit fetish content, or even explicitly pornographic material, should be considered "safe-for-work" or not.

Even as strange posturing in the world of politics and public policy drags the furry fandom into the context of a greater "culture war" in which reactionaries are stoking unfounded animosity toward any culture or subculture even slightly alien to them, the furry fandom has enjoyed an unprecedented period of positive coverage from the mainstream media, who are for the first time willing to understand and explain to their viewers and readers that anthropomorphic art, media, and literature isn't a purely sexual, purely fetish-based, or purely adults-only field of interest.

Years back, even the most benign interview between a furry and the mainstream media could be expected to be twisted into a juicy novelty story about a surreal and shocking sexual underworld that was fixated upon kids-only subject matter. Today however, furries featured in such outsider material happily show off their non-adult artwork and fandom related experiences to outside reporters and film makers, and sometimes even discuss adults-only aspects with minimal judgment, at least from the interviewers themselves.

At the same time, in no other fandom or hobby have I been involved in have I found the need to routinely clarify to outsiders, or even insiders, that my mere mention of being connected to it isn't a declaration of my sexual interests, especially in situations where anything related to sex would (with reason) be unexpected, or inappropriate.

Even with the extent of anthropomorphic content and activities the furry fandom has to offer which are genuinely appropriate for all ages, and that without the context of the furry fandom might be likened to the works of Dr. Seuss or P.D. Eastman, there is a reason the furry scene is so closely linked in the popular consciousness with sexuality of a sometimes extreme nature, and no quantity of fundamentally dishonest attention-grabbing hatchet job exploitative news stories could have capitalized on that association without there being some kind of plausible basis for it.

With that having been said, my main criticism of Furaffinity its apparently desperate desire to enjoy the prestige and benefits of taking up an ambassadorial role at the forefront of the furry fandom as one of its largest and most popular websites, and doing so at a time when the fandom is still struggling to be seen as anything other than an untamed scene of sexual radicals residing entirely on the absolute fringes of society.

This alone would be fine, but Furaffinity also hosts a large of volume of not just adults-only content, but morally and sometimes legally questionable content, and has suffered repeated instances of publicly visible hypocritical standards and selective rule enforcement on behalf of site staff and volunteers.

Administrators currently or formerly attached to the site have been known to harbor and shield from criticism personalities seen among many within the furry community to be controversial, or even overtly objectionable.

Furaffinity does this while maintaining a paper-thin outward facade that's perpetually been a breath away from running afoul of the standards of payment processing companies and other bodies the site needs to appease in order to survive, which in the future could include actual lawmakers who are already setting their sights on punishing public schools for employing people known to be associated with the furry fandom in their personal lives.

If past and ongoing questionable and hypocritical conduct among Furaffinity's leadership was merely limited to a long ago incident in which an administrator banned a user from the site for discussing the adults-only aspect of the furry fandom on a daytime television talk show, while the same administrator who issued the ban was known to have funded the creation of custom-made publicly accessible adults-only furry artwork that was published on the very website they banned the user in question from accessing, I'd have no response other than to point and laugh at the irony.

But the sheer volume of obviously bad decisions, direct and indirect compliance in cover ups of alleged and suspected wrongdoing on behalf of certain users (some of which might have been worthy of professional criminal investigation), as well as the granting of privileged permission for continued and overt terms of service violations on behalf of popular or well-connected users, and more nonsense aside from this, all permeate Furaffinity's history and present.

As one of the largest websites in the furry fandom, which many fandom members depend on as the axis of their participation within it, this is not a disaster waiting to happen, its a disaster that's been happening for over a decade.

Furaffinity is an ongoing disaster which the furry fandom has been ingeniously and painstakingly deriving utility from, like squeezing water from a stone in the desert.

The tolerance for mediocrity and discordance from the website itself on behalf of its users, and ingenuity and cleverness from the same to make practical use of it, is made necessary by site's status as a monolithic burning cenotaph of a tower upon which more and more unstable floors are continuously and precariously added like Jenga blocks, while the rest of the surrounding city that is the furry fandom has been starving for wood and nails to build anything larger than a small shack.

As I write this, Furaffinity continues to harbor content of a far more severely ethically dubious nature than art of imaginary adult creature characters that are rendered with "emphasized cuteness" or "off-model body proportions" while being depicted having consensual sexual encounters.

Even if properly tagged and categorized adults-only content is concealed from view of the accounts of Furaffinity users that list their birth-date as indicating an age under that of legal adulthood, I as a parent wouldn't be okay letting my thirteen year old self, if Furaffinity had existed back then, have an account on that website; not when an artist can post something such as a drawing of two cartoon animals relishingly licking each other's feet, or urinating on themselves, and list it as appropriate for all ages based on the logic that the character's genitalia aren't exposed, and where site moderation is known to sometimes take months to respond to enforcing user-generated reports over such cases.

Some might say I'm attempting to instigate a moral panic against Furaffinity or even the furry fandom itself by mentioning these problems, but Furaffinity has done that on their own by starting a crusade against some of the least objectionable adults-only material on their site, while continuing to allow art which replicates real-world criminal acts of sexual violence against animals in a shockingly realistic manner that upon first glance can be mistaken for actual photographs when seen in their miniaturized preview size, all as it fails to address with satisfaction many basic systematic and administrative shortcomings like those I've mentioned above.

Stanley Cohen, who is credited with establishing the phrase, "moral panic", described it as when:

"A condition, episode, person, or group of persons, emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests. While the issues identified may be real, the claims exaggerate the seriousness, extent, typicality, and/or inevitability of harm."

I think Cohen's insistence that an irrational moral panic by definition does not exclude the possibility of a legitimate concern lying at its root to be an interesting one in this case.

In years past, Furaffinity was known to have permitted sexual artwork of imaginary creatures and humanoid animal characters that were explicitly presented and described by the artist as being children.

Even after policies forbidding such content were enacted on Furaffinity, it has been recorded that certain users whose adults-only artwork enjoyed particular popularity on the site, continued to, without consequence, post adults-only art featuring characters which on their Furaffinity listings were explained by the artists as being "short adults", while the same characters were openly described as being underage when posted on other websites that lacked rules forbidding underage characters in adults-only pieces.

The presence of artists who knowingly and intentionally present adults-only art of characters which are very obviously meant to represent children, and make bad faith claims that the characters are intended to be "short adults", or belong to an imaginary humanoid species which retains prepubescent physical attributes at an advanced age, is an actual problem.

However, this problem is not at all significant to the extent which the revised acceptable use policy on Furaffinity would suggest they are.

This is especially true when these revised rules, rather than target specific cases of actual misuse, instead redefine vast quantities of already existing material on the site to constitute alleged inappropriate child images, even if the images in question do not feature anything resembling a child or any other sexually immature imaginary creature or being.

To build on my analogy from earlier, this would be akin to a police department cracking down on illegal underground street racing circuits, not by hiring more officers to patrol particular highways known to be frequented by these unlawful racers, but by reducing the speed limit to a walking pace, and declaring that everyone operating their car at speeds that were formerly within the speed limit must have been participating in street racing gangs all along.

My understanding is that Furaffinity's former policy, which actually permitted sexually themed artwork of child characters, was changed in large part due to pressure from third parties such as advertising service providers, payment processing companies, and prospective investors or owners, which Furaffinity depended on for revenue to run the site, and who didn't want their businesses associated with such objectionable material.

In the case of the Spring 2023 rule changes however, I doubt that demands from third party businesses making ultimatums to Furaffinity as a condition for future transactions were the core cause of these specific policy updates.

I say this because I find it difficult to believe that a brand manager from a company such as Visa, American Express, or Pay Pal, in the course of preserving the good will and reputation of their company, would know of, care about, or even be able to comprehend the sorts of discussions this policy change has provoked.

These discussions often consist of esoteric debates over subjects such as if a magical transforming fox monster from a video game, or a computerized feline imp from a twenty-five year old Japanese cartoon, count as adult characters in the context of these imaginary creature's ability to undergo instantaneous supernatural transformations induced by elemental trinkets and magical phrases.

If it turned out third party demands were the underlying cause of these changes, I imagine the new policy was specifically formulated in such a manner that Furaffinity could sacrifice a calculated number of users in the course of presenting theatrical reforms that an uninformed outsider could perceive as bringing that site in alignment with higher standards and casting out significant numbers of alleged bad actors, while they remain ignorant of what's actually been going upon the site this entire time, which would likely drive them to abandon ship immediately.

The fact is, in spite of whatever strengthening of the moral fabric of Furaffinity that those at the helm of that site may think they are carrying out by cracking down on adults-only art featuring adult characters arbitrarily deemed to be "children" based on unpredictable and incongruent judgments of art style, Furaffinity remains to be a site that not only currently allows near-photorealistic computer generated artistic depictions of human beings sexually assaulting unintelligent, non-anthropomorphic animals that are obviously incapable of consent, but allows children as young as thirteen years old to hold accounts there.

It is akin to the captain of an airship inflated with explosive hydrogen gas ejecting passengers that were wearing wool sweaters for fear the sweaters could build up static electricity and spark a fire, but openly permitting the on-board smoking of cigars, lighting of fireworks, and wielding of flamethrowers by a handful of favored passengers, while the majority of those on board would rather have had the airship inflated with non-explosive helium in the first place, but tolerate the risk for lack of any other practical means to travel, and the likelihood of being thrown out the window should they speak up on the matter.

It's all rather silly.

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