Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

[Taskmage]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Not every oversimplification of the truth is a stereotype, and their relation to the complex realities they resemble is irrelevant. In this case we're talking about non-human races and characters as a vessel for ideals. We could easily replace the system of animal types with the distilled, oversimplified archetypes of fantasy races, or Star Trek aliens, or again superheroes. Each embodies a reduced subset of humanity that makes them easier to understand and relate to than real people, and each has sane, rational aficionados as well as crazies who genuinely believe they have elven souls.

It's common to do the same thing with invented subsets of real people in positive ways as well as negative. A "gangsta" behaves certain ways, dresses certain ways, has certain qualities one might respect, as does a "gentleman," a "stoner," a "nerd," a "prep," a "goth," or what have you. Like your stereotypes, none of these things exist as a real, cohesive thing. More of a platonic form or mutually shared delusion. Or a standalone complex. It's easier to copy and identify with a group subculture then with a full, real human, any one of which is too complicated for any other to truly completely understand.

---------- Post added at 12:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:59 AM ----------

The dude at comicon doesn't think he is, or identify himself as a superhero when he cosplays as Superman, he just likes Superman comics and is there for fun.

Man Has Surgery to Look Like Superman | Parade.com
Real-Life Superhero Phoenix Jones Should Have His 'Powers' Taken Away | The Stir
These stories are just from this month.

[Armando]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

A large number of Furries do identify themselves as whatever animals fake personality profile they decide to emulate.

While I agree with you on some points, I don't think this is a fair statement to pull out of thin air. Like Taskmage pointed out, there's plenty of crazies across the various geek fandoms, and like Yellow Mage pointed out, there's plenty of furries that aren't batshit crazy.

You can't really argue dressing up in a fursuit is any more ludicrous than dressing up as a superhero if neither one actually believes they are what they're dressing as. Both are just having fun dressing up as things they like.

[Murphie]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

And as much as I don't generally like to run to the defense of Furries, I think there is a large group of that subset for whom it really is just a bit of fun. They don't actually identify as an animal, but merely enjoy pretending to be one from time to time, or feel a particular affinity for that, much like the people who dress in costume at conventions.

[Mhurron]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

It's common to do the same thing with invented subsets of real people in positive ways as well as negative. A "gangsta" behaves certain ways, dresses certain ways, has certain qualities one might respect, as does a "gentleman," a "stoner," a "nerd," a "prep," a "goth," or what have you. Like your stereotypes, none of these things exist as a real, cohesive thing. More of a platonic form or mutually shared delusion. Or a standalone complex. It's easier to copy and identify with a group subculture then with a full, real human, any one of which is too complicated for any other to truly completely understand.

But these are all still people. You're seeing yourself as a person with shared experiences with other people. And these are real people, with real shared experiences doing real people things. Not the idea of an animal, that has no basis in any sort of reality.

[/COLOR]Man Has Surgery to Look Like Superman | Parade.com
Real-Life Superhero Phoenix Jones Should Have His 'Powers' Taken Away | The Stir
These stories are just from this month.

I said "normal thought process." No one takes these as normal examples of the fandom and by and large are considered mental instabilities if not outright mental illnesses.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

I said "normal thought process." No one takes these as normal examples of the fandom and by and large are considered mental instabilities if not outright mental illnesses.

But the furry fandom is totally different right? It's all crazies in there, right Mhurron? Not like they have a predominantly sane if eccentric base with a few fringe lunatics giving them a bad name.

[Taskmage]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

But these are all still people. You're seeing yourself as a person with shared experiences with other people. And these are real people, with real shared experiences doing real people things. Not the idea of an animal, that has no basis in any sort of reality.

But they're not real people. They're just ideas of what a person should be like. They're based on imperfect, largely projected and abridged perceptions of what other people are like, just as furry archetypes are based on imperfect, largely projected and abridged perceptions of what animals are like.

I said "normal thought process." No one takes these as normal examples of the fandom and by and large are considered mental instabilities if not outright mental illnesses.

And why does no one take these crazies are exemplars of comic fandom whereas crazies in the furry community are taken to represent their whole group? I think the perception that one has a higher percentage of crazies than the other is based more on cognitive bias and availability heuristic than on facts.

[Mhurron]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

While I agree with you on some points, I don't think this is a fair statement to pull out of thin air. Like Taskmage pointed out, there's plenty of crazies across the various geek fandoms, and like Yellow Mage pointed out, there's plenty of furries that aren't batshit crazy.

You can't really argue dressing up in a fursuit is any more ludicrous than dressing up as a superhero if neither one actually believes they are what they're dressing as. Both are just having fun dressing up as things they like.

Of which I have no issue with. However, it has become something of a hallmark of a non-trivial portion of Furries that they do identify as not human. This is where it has gone beyond just for fun.

And no, actually I wasn't making this up.
Go do the page, don't try to read it in the little embedded window, it's far too small.
Furries From A to Z (Anthropomorphism to Zoomorphism)

Definitions -
'The furry does (distorted) or does not (undistorted) consider the “self to be less than 100% human.”'
'a furry is labeled either attained or unattained. Is the furry the species he or she wants to be? If the furry says they would be 0% human if possible, that isunat t ained because they are a human and have not reached their goal. If the furry did not want to be 0% human, that isat t ai ned because to the objective
observer, they have attained this goal because they are a human.'

"The second largest group was the distorted unattained type (N = 51). This furry considers
the self to be less than100% human and would become0% human if possible. This type
was 25% of the furries who answered both of the key identity questions"

"The distorted attained type (N = 44) considers the self to be less than 100% human but does not wish
to be 0% human; this was 22 % of the sample"

These two groups make up almost 50% of the studied sample and have beliefs that they are not fully human.

Now the largest single group (38%) would be the doing it for fun people.
'The largest group in our sample was the undistorted attained type (N = 77). This is the individual
who says they are not less than 100% human and do not wish to become 0% human.'

Can you honestly say that if we went to Comicon and surveyed people dressed as Superman, we could expect almost 50% to say they believed they had in some part real super powers?

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Furries still diverge from any other fandom like this. The dude at comicon doesn't think he is, or identify himself as a superhero when he cosplays as Superman, he just likes Superman comics and is there for fun. A large number of Furries do identify themselves as whatever animals fake personality profile they decide to emulate. The guy in a wolf suit does have a high chance of honestly believing that he is a wolf born as a human.

Pardon me, but didn't you just have a whole diatribe about how stereotypes are a bad thing?

[Mhurron]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Pardon me, but didn't you just have a whole diatribe about how stereotypes are a bad thing?

Look up.

[Taskmage]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Furries From A to Z (Anthropomorphism to Zoomorphism)

I challenge the methodology of this study. The survey was done at a furry con, asking questions like "What percent human are you?" to people dressed up like animals, then recorded the responses as representatives of their actual beliefs. I believe it is likely that a large percentage of responses were in character, in the same way that someone dressed up as Diana Troi at a Trekkie convention would reply to such a survey that they are 50% human.

---------- Post added at 01:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:58 PM ----------

Troi is probably a poor example, but I couldn't think of a famous halfbreed with less human features off the top of my head.

[Mhurron]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

I challenge the methodology of this study. The survey was done at a furry con, asking questions like "What percent human are you?" to people dressed up like animals, then recorded the responses as representatives of their actual beliefs. I believe it is likely that a large percentage of responses were in character, in the same way that someone dressed up as Diana Troi at a Trekkie convention would reply to such a survey that they are 50% human.

If you ran the same study on the general population, you would probably find that there were no Furries in the world. It was a study of people who identified themselves as Furries so you have to go where they would congregate. The choice is not only sound, but basically the only choice.

As for expecting the answers supporting the "I'm an animal" position are all or mostly roll playing, 52% of respondents must not have got the memo that wearing the fur suit is roll playing. They had to read and sign a consent form detailing what was going and those that obviously misunderstood some of the questions were discarded from consideration. They didn't go up to a dude in a racoon suit, ask him if he was dressed as a racoon and simply report that dude thinks he's a racoon.

The questions were also not simply limited to those cosplaying at the convention.

Also, assuming possible bias or just general shyness -

Due to anticipated furry suspiciousness about research and the convention chairman’s
belief that furries would not want to take the survey, the Personality Checklist was not
self-report. We expected that participants might refuse to complete a self-report checklist
which included personality disorder traits. Thus, participants were asked to describe the
typical furry in the Personality Checklist section of the survey.

[Taskmage]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

If you ran the same study on the general population, you would probably find that there were no Furries in the world. It was a study of people who identified themselves as Furries so you have to go where they would congregate. The choice is not only sound, but basically the only choice.

Just because you couldn't design the test better yourself doesn't mean it's a good test. Even so, you're drawing a false dichotomy. They could have simply collected contact information at the con itself, then asked their questions later when the subjects were not cosplaying and immersed in the context of their entertainment. Better, they could have used the con's newsletter subscribers as a test group, which would have included people who identify as part of the furry community but weren't so into the culture as to attend.

The questions were also not simply limited to those cosplaying at the convention.

The sample sizes are different by an order of magnitude.

the Personality Checklist was not
self-report. We expected that participants might refuse to complete a self-report checklist
which included personality disorder traits. Thus, participants were asked to describe the
typical furry in the Personality Checklist section of the survey.

That's even worse. So this data doesn't even describe what the average furry con attendee is like, it describes what furry con attendees think the average furry is like, which is still fraught with cognitive bias and only marginally better than asking the general populace what the average furry is like.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Like I said, lies, damn lies and statistics.

Pretty much this.

[Murphie]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Can we go back to talking about hats or something?

[Taskmage]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Can we go back to talking about hats or something?

This thread about test methodology blows chunks compared to the hat and furry threads.