the dude is literally the equivalent of that one popular kid in school who pretends to be friends with what they think is ‘quiet’ or ‘weird’ kid while in the process being very patronizing and in reality is just making fun of the kid with their friends
@@h0peros382 sometimes you can't if you're not able to tell if it's genuine or not. If you suspect they are being mean, ask some other people what they think of it, it may be good to get another perspective. Then, if they are being mean, tell them to fuck off. Or just do it back to them. It makes them feel small and embarrassed
even as someone who reads emotions well and has good intuition, the one popular girl gave me weird vibes. she seems really sweet but smth about her made me feel weird, but subconsciously. consciously, i thought she really was a sweet person, ignoring the subtle alarm bells in my head. turns out she's not that sweet
He really acted like this was a "Vice news investigating North Korea" or a "Channel 5 investigating how immigrants cross the Rio Grande" when it's more like a "I filmed myself buying a ticket to a nightclub and pestered people until they told me where to buy c*ke and then stole the microphone from the dj for two seconds to say nothing"
yup, channel 5 hung out with furries and had a good time and were even like "most people dont even wear any special outfit, but everyone is very nice" or whatever. its like the opposite of what this brain dead twink did, with far too much support.
43:02 ngl this was some genuine second hand embarrassment, everyone was just confused and mostly silent the entire time when he “crashed” the stage lmao
ikr I had to skip ahead i was so embarrassed for him. reminded me of that clip of the guy that tried to rob a nail salon and everyone just stared at him until he ultimately left 😂😂
I was going to say something to the effect "You know, I wouldn't try to infiltrate someone else’s adult fun and then treat it like an expose for youtube, but that's just me", but a lot of other stuff about his behavior really repulsed me. Like I know that stands out as the worst part, but since I never watched the video I was missing a lot of context that made things even worse. The way he crashed the dance competition speaks to a deeper level of content creator brainrot. Also the way he made his fursona a toxic, money-obsessed weirdo was certainly a choice. I think I was most repulsed by his fake rants against made up haters. People are actually bullied for being gay or different. Faking outrage in this way is a mockery.
Went to ANE 2023 the year he went. The NSFW room was curtained off with a staff checking badges for 18+ markers. Yes cons have sexual stuff, no they aren't on the main floor. The lying he is doing isn't just impacting the furry community but as you said it impacts the lgbt+ community as well.
you know whats even more ironic about him AI generating art? its that i feel like commissioning art is a huge part of the furry experience, there is a sense of actual connection there (aka engaging in the community). i cant name a single furry who hasnt commissioned some form of art or at the very least did an AT or something, so this guy just, dressed up as a furry, did some tik tok dances alone in his room, went skiing and, like you said, awkwardly sweated around in a fursuit at a con. that's.. not being a part of the furry community. thats not even scratching the surface edit: since a lot of you ppl lack reading comprehension, my point wasn't that "you need to commission art to be a furry", it was that commissioning art would have been the bare minimum actual meaningful interaction this guy would have done and that most furries have art, commission, art trade, or otherwise. non ai art is a big part of the furry community.
Honestly. The furry community is an art driven community. It's art in every medium and practice, too. Traditional artists, digital artists, musicians, authors, and that's only scratching the surface. Any furry can tell this guy is a character from 100 miles away. The issue is that people who aren't furries or know very very little about them are going to think this is what we are. I just don't really get it? Like? Furries are often comprised of minorities and have just created a space for themselves to comfortably exist.
Right? No jokes even about furries being like the modern day equivalent of art patrons these days?? Like even before I was in the Fandom baseline I knew that Furries love art???
" so this guy just, dressed up as a furry, did some tik tok dances alone in his room, went skiing and, like you said, awkwardly sweated around in a fursuit at a con. that's.. not being a part of the furry community. thats not even scratching the surface" I'd argue that is alright participation in the community - if you aren't being an asshole.
@@vidmuncher I'd argue it's more just, being a furry rather than being /a part of the community/ specifically (i personally know a lot of furries that don't like engaging with the overall community and dont consider themselves a part of it while being furries in their own right), with this guy trying to observe the community but taking like no steps to make any genuine connections with anyone, its hard to call that "engaging with the community" at least in a deep way, at all. There's nothing wrong with being a furry outside of the community / while not engaging with the community, but he wasnt even genuinely that, and his video was about the community as a whole. its more like he seeked out furries that engage in specific parts a lot of nonfurs "hate" the community for, and then furthermore, didnt even get to know them or understand why they do what they do (like the sexual side of the community for example here) All in all, community = a group of people, or adding to that group of people in some way (like making art for them), and understanding that group, which he didn't do any of in a proper way. He knows nothing about the community despite all of those things listed that he actually did
That's even worse, Gen AI is THE MOST isolating thing you can do in terms of community because you don't ask for art, you don't share it heartfully, you STEAL from people. I am beyond repulsed by Anthrop or whatever his name is
Now, I'm no lawyer... But I know EXACTLY why he said he had one go over the video and deem it completely legal. Revenge P@rn. Uploading private sexual content to the internet without the full consent of everyone involved is illegal. Federally illegal. As in when I first heard about this video, I looked up the law and urged the people involved in that section of the video (not directly, but as a general post on my Tumblr) to take legal action against him. And I think they still should consult with lawyers and see what their options for legal recourse are, because that was not ok, and this man needs harsher consequences for that
Well, that was... Sickening. As in, I literally felt sick to my stomach hearing about the perpetration of the LGBT stereotypes as groomers and freaks by that youtuber.
"thank" libsoftiktok for that and Matt Walsh. How come you guys in the US not have anti-hate speech laws? Had Matt Walsh been biased like that in the EU, he would've been arrested and his voting rights would've been stripped off. Not that we are punnitive, we believe in rehabilitation (which that distinquishes the EU from the US; we're focusing on human rights, our laws/constitutions are human rights focused), so he'd have been free to choose either to press an upgrade on his outdated tongue, or go to jail till he turned around As for that bunny dressed person, I blame entirely their parents and bad social media influencers. He may be legally adult, but until his 25s-35s, his brain is still developing, so he's still vulnerable to disinformation and to...making dumb things
@@Urmapleleaf the US is so brainwashed into individualism. Half the population interprets "freedom" as "i can do whatever i want anytime i want, no matter who it hurts".
@@Urmapleleafthe US understanding of "free speech" is wild. I'm South African and if Walsh/LoTT tried that shit here, they'd be hauled before the Human Rights Commission within a week
@@Urmapleleaf We do have anti-hate-speech laws in the US, it's just that the barrier for what defines "hate speech" is set by people whom I would not describe as unbiased.
Soooo ironic that "normies" point and laugh at furries for being cringe and then they really blow our cringe out of the water. All this did is going to make me more cautious and selective about what room parties I attend and who is at them. Glad he could corrupt community of trust to add to his millions. Literally a microcosm of the greater capitalist hellscape.
The host at the dance competition stating that someone crashing a competition is a first, truly hit the nail on the head. Literally the only time they had a problem person (in the context of the dance competition) and it's demonstratively a normie "under cover"... Congrats Anthony Poe, you are the problem. On another (and more important) note, I hope you and the other members of the community'll get plenty of good experiences in the future that'll heal the mistrust he injected with his behaviour 💚
Who wakes up one day thinking "yes, I will get myself invited to a private event and invade a queer space under false pretense and broadcast it for the internet to gawk at". This is absolutely infuriating.
Well, and we're not the Church of Scientology or the Skull and Bones Society! He could've made lots of actual friends and been invited to scores of room parties where he could've potentially been spitroasted like a doner kebab to his heart's content if he'd just said, "Hi, I'm Anthony! What's your name? This is my first convention. What should I do?"
@@bonk1485 , it's pretty sad that you think that being courteous and introducing yourself to people is "NPC behavior." You might want to reflect on that if you actually want to make connections in the world. If you really want juicy insider access to a community, you typically have to interact with people first. Actually knowing about a community and its memes and inside jokes will make your material infinitely better. I've watched a number of very funny videos where people mainly made themselves the butt of the joke and/or engaged in witty banter with people that didn't involve harassing them or putting them down. The "I said something rude to someone and then did a Fortnite dance" schtick is really only funny to middle schoolers.
I'm not a furry but the dismissal of the overwhelming majority of the community being queer in a way that is directly linked to the culture itself because of there being a chunk that is neurodivergent (mostly autistic) is baffling to me as someone who _is_ autistic and queer, because not only is it obvious that there's an immediately noticeable connection between the queer community and the furry community, but also because most autistic people ARE QUEER AS WELL, so there's most likely a huge overlap between those who are autistic furries and those who are queer furries.
exactly exactly! There's also this infantilization of autism, like we're incapable of enjoying life the "right" way. "Don't you know you're supposed to forget the joy of childhood?? Why are you watching that movie/tv/game/music over and over?" Autism isn't a disorder insofar as it disables us in a world built for allists. Autism is just a different, beautiful arrangement of the brain, and we've been around as long as humans have existed! Who do you think innovated the sling spear? It was some autistic person who hyperfocused for weeks to try to build a spear to throw farther and farther. Who do you think went out testing every single clay to find the right mix of minerals to throw on a wheel? Who spent years staring at the sky trying to map the stars with math? Humanity NEEDS autistic brains!
Big oof. My bf and I were at this year's ANE and had a few odd encounters with people and the concept that any one of them could have been playing a similar game as Anthpo is truly unsettling. I'm glad he's catching as much flak as he is for invading a space like that and making a fool of himself.
@@BoringKeith Keith Ballard: I thought the younger generation was suppose to be more in touch with LGBT issues, what is going on?!?!?? Whataltist: let me break it down.
@@celisewillis my point is that not only are zoomers like him and me not in touch with lgbt issues, we also blame them for our current problems, you defund our police, put idiots like Biden, wave the flag of our enemies, and when people like Tem die, you then blame society like Louis did in beastars, it just seems like evil dead rising and the things Anthony Po did were just karma for all the left winged hypocrisies people like Keith been spatting out since day one!
this reminds me of something I've seen Trixie Mattel say a few times "Being gay is not hard, straight people make it hard" and I feel like that's just as true for furries. We're literally just vibing over here minding our own business, it's the people that can't help themselves from gawking and pointing and laughing at a group whose only crime is being different that make being a furry hard.
As somebody who played at the variety show at Anthro New England, and as somebody who functions as a musician in this space, I also have another thought about Anthpo's video that I don't think you touched on, and IMO I think it's worth thinking about considering a thought my normie parents had when they dragged themselves to MFF with me as non-furries: While neither of my parents are queer, the thing they loved most about their con experience was seeing the level and the amount of creativity on display. When I got my dad a badge with him as a sloth, he was amazed both by how fast it was done, and by how much the artist had managed to capture his likeness in sloth form. They also loved that I had my trio there, and they got to see that part of the creativity first hand. My dad especially isn't always fond of how trans folks express themselves, but they get that it is a community event full of extremely creative people, and even not being queer they all really resonated with the creativity, and they also did this without gawking at or calling attention to the fact there's NSFW content within con spaces. Anthpo's entire video shows absolutely no care about any of that, from the discussion of May The Best Man Win to the fact he was intentionally trying to get into the room party. I feel like if he wanted to actually celebrate the fandom at all, at least a word of service towards the creativity of furries would've been great? And ANE had plenty of chances for him to actually show that, from DigiFest and Dragon's Dojo and the Variety Show (which I played Theremin on) and Animal Music all would've been great showcases for that. Hell, he might even have gotten that with the dance comp, if he'd bothered to stay for longer than it took to crash the dance comp. But there's none of that; no celebrating creativity at all from anyone in the fandom, no just, trying to exist. Nothing. So then when you factor in the fact he tried to get into a room party to get content and that his entire attempt to be furry was him creating a bratty persona on TikTok, it feels like exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from someone who only knows the stereotypes and doesn't actually try to dissect those stereotypes. And if nothing else, that part is unconscionable.
As someone entirely outside this space, isn't every con filled with creative people though? They're hotbeds for artist/creator networking, of course you'll see cool things. Not to mention there's actual money behind it. I would hardly think of that first as an aspect that the furry community is defined by. I don't think being queer magically activates a creativity gene.
Yup, even the other coverage of furries that annoys me by painting us as more neurodivergent than queer invariably focuses on the fact that we're an art-driven community. That's an unavoidable fact. But all we get here is that some of us are good dancers, with no further exploration of that context. As far as art goes: he disrespects his fursuit maker, spreads harmful lies about the dealer's den, and crashes the dance competition for content.
@@antoineberkani9747 In this case, it's worth putting within the broader context of the furry community. The fandom as a whole is more a community driven primarily by custom commissions of people's own characters, and more often than not the characters don't exist for narrative purpose the way they would for a comic book artist. In a way, therefore, art in the furry fandom comes with a social aspect that you wouldn't get outside of it, so I imagine a TH-camr would find things to celebrate about the fandom and how it uses art socially, as something more than the commodity or the narrative delivery apparatus other geeky fandoms see it as. As far as the convention culture, too, it's different in the vibe, and also in what attendees can generally expect to get from vendors: from the comic and anime cons I've been to, I've always gotten a sense that the indie artists are there to market themselves, but it is the bigger franchises that dominate the space, or you're there to say hello to various celebrities from the big-name franchises you like. There's an aspect of that in furry conventions too, don't get me wrong, but it is *way* less pronounced in what you can expect from vendors. In furry cons, it's less about what franchises you're into and more "oh yeah, here's a thing that looks cool and is done by a smaller indie artist". So you're not technically wrong, it's just that it manifests in a very different way from a comic convention, you know what I mean? (EDIT: I also have to add the caveat that my parents also come from a medical imaging background, and don't really have the creative bones that my sister and I do. I'm simply offering an observation based on something said by folks with no real artistic skill, so bear that in mind as well.)
Hiya! One of the cover artists for Furry Weekly here. Thank you so much for mentioning us and our work! It is so incredibly disappointing to see someone try to use us as a means to harm and ridicule other furs. Everyone on the team works hard to deliver wholesome content to the furry community. Using our need for staff as a means to gain access to privileges is sickening. Super appreciate someone calling him out for his misdeeds!
how does it keep getting worse and worse with every new revealed part holy💀that comparison of his dance competition editing vs what it looked like to everyone else is MIND BOGGLING. how he never got a reality check throughout the whole process of making his vid is just beyond me
I've often said to my partner that I'm not NOT a furry. I don't have a fursona or anything, but I love the art and seek it out. My favorite thing about the community is how accepting they are of trans people. It's like nothing else. No one bats an eye if I express that I'm a trans man, and the first time I saw a trans man in art was in furry art. It's so different in every other space - other queer spaces included - where they forget we even exist.
Transmasc furry artists consistently exude a powerful energy which is difficult to describe but commands respect. Much love and solidarity from this doofy furry transfem.
@@ConvincingPeople 100% even when there’s non-furry trans masc art, the vibes aren’t the same and they don’t match me. I’m bald, kinda chubby, and very 30 lol. The effeminate twink look is not one I can relate to
I'm really not sure if you know that you're a furry or not... cause it sounds like you're finding community in a space where you don't fit some criteria for not being a part of it (not having a sona is normal).
@@CassieCarryd honestly that’s a good point! I hadn’t really thought about it that way. I guess if I had to define it I’d consider myself furry lite. I mostly lurk on forums and reddit and occasionally comment on things when I feel like I have something to say!
I call it being furry agnostic lmaooo. Like i consume a lot of art, comics, video games etc made by furries... But I don't have a fursona/suit, and I'm not particularly interested in drawing anthros & animals
"For those criticizing me for perpetuating stereotypes amongst the furry community, I want to apologize and emphasize that wasnt my goal in any capacity." *continually calls these adult parties as "Furry Parties", straight up lies about kids being allowed into adult only spaces, makes a fake fursona and says hes a pedo, All without talking to a single furry before even thinking about doing any of this.* Sure......we believe you anthony. :/
I found out about Anthpo's video on a subreddit and was pretty pleased that majority of the people saw through the fake goodwill that he was trying to exude, as well as the sort of implications it held considering 'furry cringe' has pretty much been a proxy for a lot of ableism and queerphobia that's really started to stick out to a lot of people. I hope he doesn't use the notoriety from committing a sex crime to coast more on his career bc he knew what audience he was angling for with that video.
those books werent even in the open dealers den, they were literally inside the 18+ section behind curtains. you had to present your ID to get in to that section
I feel like gen Z has a weird relationship with the queer community. I'm 23 myself and genuine discrimination against people for being queer is pretty universally unacceptable in a lot of spaces I've been in, but at the same time we're still subjected to the same kinds of jokes that every other generation spreads around. I keep going back and forth on whether I genuinely think Anthony could have so much cognitive dissonance that he genuinely doesn't associate being a furry with being LGBT, or if I genuinely think he's homophobic. I think an important thing is that he can be both, and is definitely homophobic. There's a lot of internalized shit that we get from growing up online where bullying is the norm that we have to unlearn just like any other generation. That's why it's very rare to see a gen z person be unabashedly homophobic unless it's "just a joke" (genuinely wishing harm on gay people is obviously uncool to a lot of these kids, but jokes are fair game apparently) IDK, but I definitely agree the othering of autism is super deliberate here, even if he somehow doesn't realize he's just making fun of queer people he's also just straight up saying "they're weird sexual deviants because they're neurodivergent!" Personally that puts a really weird taste in my mouth. Plus, personally my neurodivergence (autism and probably some other things besides the anxiety and depression I've been diagnosed with) manifests as way weirder shit than just an interest in anthropomorphic characters lol. Nobody tell him what being otherkin is, I don't wanna know how he spins that to seem inoffensive while actually mocking us.
Some wise observations here. I would agree these last few decades are in the "haha just a joke!" era of social justice. I'm in my 30s, and I remember, in highschool, you would lose friends for sincerely saying a racial slur, but "just joking" with stupid family-guy-level racial jokes was a-okay. Almost no one was out as gay, and *no one* came out as trans (although we all managed to find each other haha). You're right that there's still a lot of work to do. "The 8 White Identities" by Barnor Hesse is a great place to see where you have room to grow in allyship, and i think it can be applied generally to LGBTQIA identities, too.
I agree. I am really conflicted about whether or not Anthpo is intentionally homophobic or being very immature and uneducated homophobic. I've been a fan of his past videos, and I've always felt pretty safe watching them. I never thought that he was going to pop out with a blatantly homophobic thing that made me feel unsafe. But now, after his recent furry video, I feel completely different! I am beyond disappointed in his actions. Thank you for your observations.
I'm not a furry (at least I don't think I am?), although I do consume a lot of furry content. But, I was a Brony back in the 2010s. I don't talk about this much cause it's been like 9 years now, but I remember when I met someone at a FiM convention. We liked the same characters and episodes and even liked the same non-MLP fandoms. It was pretty awesome and I thought I made this really awesome friend. Then someone found the guy's tumblr blog....with our conversations in full detail and several posts about his plans to 'befriend a brony' with the ultimate goal being to reveal their true nature as a cruel person two years later. Several posts even stated how he hoped I would unalive myself when I found out the truth. I stopped talking to him. Blocked him on my phone and on all of my social media. Thought I was over it but man, this video just makes me so freaking angry and gives me flashbacks to that time.
oh my gosh, that so awful he did that to you! It makes sense why this video would bring up those old feelings again. It was a pretty deep betrayal. It sounds like they got packed down deep and weren't processed (which is just our brains trying to protect us). I hope you can move thru the anger eventually. He doesnt deserve the space in your brain.
@@PhoenixRedtail I am. It was just a very negative experience all around. I don't consider myself in the fandom anymore, but it's not because of what happened. I liked the 2022 movie and when I told people I liked it, the reactions were so negative I haven't touched anything MLP related since.
As a gay asian furry I thought this sounded familiar until it hit me. This whole video and situation is giving "Logan paul in Japan" vibes, like the whole controversy and back. It's so uncanny that he basically repeated what logan did in his video. He goes into a community in the worst most disgusting and abnormal way possible, he disrespects and stereotypes the people and culture he's using as a prop for views, and he has a segment of the video he decided to keep in that's so disturbing and unacceptable like borderline demonetization material because why not. But except like Logan he continues to keep the video up except it's slightly edited or whatever because money or views I guess? Even if he is sorry (which I obviously he isn’t) he used us in the community like a prop and throwaway costume just for his own profit and views, then he thinks that he can "make it up" with a a donation and an edit? What's he going to do next? Infiltrating the actual lgbtqia+ community as a gay trans woman to film a bondage session?? He's a disgusting person and honestly just throw the whole channel and him away at this point omg.
Not to be that guy but the comparison you made here was beyond weird imo. The way youre describing him here seems really unrealistic, he did do something pretty bad but his intentions were never malicious and he made it clear that he was sorry for any harm he had done when ppl told him how bad it was..
@@CityofChaoss To each their own yes, but it's pretty obvious he had malicious intentions here. I mean you can't tell me im being unrealistic and he was nothing more than just "pretty bad" if he's putting so much effort into "learning" about a community just to play into negative stereotypes, "infiltrating", and then filming, editing, posting complete stranger's very vulnerable and personal moments. What normal person goes the length to do that? And forgive me for drawing comparisons but even the energy and feeling of his channel is similar to old logan videos. Plus again he like Logan apologized too but at least logan took down his video his is still up including his "sigma paws" channel.
I see it, and it's probably why he's successful. A pretty white boy saying nothing of substance with youtube editing (the aesthetics of popular channels are so calcified, I refuse to make a judgement statement here). He's immensely privilaged and young. He has no need to question any of the beliefs instilled in him but knows to pay lip-service to decency. An algorithm washes him in a six figure salary, and nobody has to take responsibility for perpetuating hate speech and misinformation. Humanity becomes less important then clickability, because the ads play at the beginning.
Look, imma just say that, whilst your feelings of hatred, bitterness, resentment, etc., are justified here, there are two things that stand out to me as I read this: First and foremost, I find it strange how you compare the Furry Fandom to race directly. I understand that what you’re trying to do is compare the experiences of BIPOCs and LGBT+ with those of the Furry fandom, but they are simply not the same - and this ain’t me tryna gatekeep neither. Literally, people are born a certain skin tone and with a certain brain chemistry that determines their gender and sexual orientation; the Furry Fandom is a fandom - of anthropomorphic animals. It’s more akin to what skaters and punk rockers were in the 90s, what emo rock was in the early 2000s, what rap music and R&B are to certain groups and demographics, and what the Sexual Revolution has always been to the self-righteous conservative bigots who are hellbent on ruining sex for everyone; they are more akin to any of those things than they are to an “oppressed minority group”, who was born into inequality and oppression. The Furry Fandom is, in essence, an unintentional counterculture. The two categories definitely overlap considerably, don’t get me wrong, but they are not one and the same. To the point, secondly, demanding the reparations you want for this kind of thing (to no satisfaction) is not only beyond harsh, if this guy were actually acting in good faith, but even if he isn’t as the universally accepted “bad vibes” would suggest, who exactly benefits from being proven “right” in this situation?? Like, do you benefit at all, from feeling smug that you were as quick as you were to judge someone here, for factors we can only speculate on, based on a combination of our own intuition and the evidence presented here? Because if he does, then most likely, he benefits from hardening people like you, and turning you against people who might be more genuine in their efforts to try and fit in with the Furry Fandom, which ironically, can lead to gatekeeping, and only further serve his interests. Would you rather be that person, or would you rather try to identify all the different ways that someone in good faith would actually try to, yk, fit in and own up to any mistakes they should make along the way? Do you forgive honest mistakes, if they come from people that are simply not one with the tribe?
@@Succulent_Pomegranate I’ll be blunt, you cannot claim to “understand me” or anything about this situation because you have a very 2d perspective of what I and other people are saying. I didn’t just compare race and fandoms because im asian or it’s a buzzword and I don’t understand the difference between race and fandoms but because he’s doing exactly what Logan did and clearly he doesn't want to be in the fandom. You can't say he was putting “genuine effort” into being in this subculture and that I’m “gatekeeping” because have you watched him? Excuse me for being offended but I never heard of a person “trying to join a fandom” by asking people uncomfortable and inappropriate things, playing an obnoxious negative caricature, filming strangers doing private things unconsensually, and not even taking your actions down so you can continue to monetize it. If you think that this is normal to do when joining a subculture or “an honest mistake” you need help. It’s so obvious he wasn’t trying to join the fandom because what is he doing now? Does he still claim to be a furry? Is he still “in the fandom”? Once he was done using the fandom he just moved on. How do you look at this “furry content” and think “he’s not trying to profit off an already understood and denigrated subculture, he just wants to be in it”. I know I come off as bitter and harsh to you but when you’ve had to deal with people like him all your life just because you’re a queer furry you’re not too quick to forgive just anyone. I only forgive people when they actually deserve it and he doesn’t deserve it.
I remember one of my favorite posts on tumblr, OP said: “hating furries is just the silencer on the gun of hating queer people” and it couldn’t ring truer rn.
I find the bit about him storming the dance comp very interesting. Even through all the chaos of a con, we as a subculture have developed a very orderly, defined, and almost strict social order. He broke that order, apparently for the first time in ANE's history. I just think that shows how little he actually learned, how much he's completely missed out on, in relation to our fandom. He was never truly invested, even just as an experiment, and he never actually cared about our culture.
It’s especially ironic how he’s making us out to be the cringey ones while he’s disrupting the competition and ruining it for everyone else which is what actual cringe is 😭
its still in there, because making that claim about a group know to be very non straight in the current times we live in is not batshit insane at all, not at all, no, never
Ever since I came out as Bi, my perception of things started to shift. I always considered myself an ally (for now obvious reasons :P) but actually BEING LGBT myself... its just so weird looking back and not really... getting it. It's the difference between swimming with fish and actually being a fish. So fundamentally, even if it was done in good faith, just going to LGBT events and pretending to be one themselves does not work. At all.
The unedited video of him crashing the dance comp really sums up everything I hate about these types of TH-camrs. His video looks hype and energetic like he's got the whole crowd with him, but in reality it was incredibly awkward, cringy and annoying. These TH-camrs go around acting like public nuisances that no one wants around but thanks to the magic of editing they can make it look like they got a spot in the limelight.
They are trying so hard to emulate the lightning in a bottle that filthy frank had in an era long past. It's even more awkward after the notable people of that era matured and moved on.
@@edgyzero6305 Plus, wasn't Filthy Frank meant to be a parody character mocking these types of asshole TH-camrs, except no one got the point? The same way Tyler Durden is seen as an idol by "alpha males" despite that character being a criticism of toxic masculinity?
@@Thegr8MC Yeah I do remember George (the guy behind filthy frank) mentioning that filthy frank was meant as an example of what you shouldn't be. There was a self awareness there that just isn't present with people like this. They don't think the idea of a person being an absurd asshole is funny, they just think being an asshole is funny.
I saw part of the Video made by Beta and i didn’t finish it because just imagining someone behaving like that makes me feel uncomfortable. Him just storming on to the dance competition and making a scene got under my skin . I don’t understand the value of that content . I get why it’s popular but this kind of invasive people who see everyone as a resource to use for numbers is disgusting and disturbing to me . Now to something positive thank you for being a positive influence you helped me be more accepting of myself. Your legoshi videos brought me to your channel and your content let me perceive this community. Thank you and everyone else involved for projects like gnollplaying games. This community has become a place of comfort for me .
Is there a term for when someone thinks they're pwning people they see as cringe, but they're actually being incredibly cringe themselves? A lot of these people who think they're showing furries what for just end up looking sad, pitiable, and pathetic, frankly.
Anthpo's method of 'infiltrating the community' or whatver feels like the polar opposite of a video i watched a couple weeks ago of this guy who posed a question along the lines of "can furry art make you rich". The guy in that video went and contacted several furry artists for advice on drawing and showed off their art and such and he actually did alot of practise for drawing just for this little video project: he mad ehis own fursona, learned how to draw for basically the first time and wasnt too upset when his only commision was for 5 dollars from a close freind of his I need to rewatch that video i think because i feel like i couldve forgotten a few aspects but overall it felt more... sincere? Than anthpo's
I think because it's probably a genuine question that actually involves looking at the fandom and reacting like an actual normal person instead of a freak. Anthpo thought 'I wanna film a bunch of gay guys and make it seem like I am gay just like them' rather than 'I wanna know what it's like'.
the one from Syonide right? i subbed to him after watching that. he was so earnest. comes across as a genuinely cool guy. another big difference between the videos is how anthpo put emphasis on the fact that hes not a furry. when i just saw the thumbnail and title of syonide's video i assumed he was a furry.
@@peacefox02yep that's the guy !! I also subbed after watching it because I loved his energy and how much time he was willing to put into it and the fact he went out of his way to find people from the community to talk to
ngl I'd been avoiding info on this whole thing as much as possible before today, but jesus fucking christ I had no idea he'd straight-up been roleplaying as a fake furry (and pretending to be a paedo/zoophile while he was at it??) beforehand
trust me, as a young (gen z) queer autistic person who also is a furry (just haven't settled on one fursone yet lol) this shit bothers us too. especially the implications of SA and contracting an STD that has killed many gay people, even though that wasn't even that long ago historically speaking! younger queers definitely need to freshen our memories of what happened in the past and make sure the same mistakes aren't repeated, especially not by those in power who opress us. but people with big influence like anthpo, are making this really hard. i used to be a fan, enjoyed his content and since he didn't seem outright bigoted (or at least not intentionally) as far as i remember, i assumed that he was a fine guy. but this is now just a grim reminder to queer people never to idolize someone you aren't 100% sure of is safe, so to say. the harm that people like him bring to both neurodivergent and queer communities is immense and it really pains me to see how we're continuously being ridiculed for honestly no reason at all aside from the fact that they just want a scapegoat to poke fun at
Jesus Christ.... As someone, who got to participate in a real furry convention in a very homophobic country feel... Very sad... A bit angry, but mostly sad. As someone who just experienced waking up, going out and seeing "my people" EVERYWHERE, I feel offended. No person should intrude in other's safe space. That's just cruel
(posted this on Beta's video but I wanna say it here too) I was doing human subject research ethics training recently for my senior thesis, and one of the *main* examples of ethics violations was the Tearoom Trade experiment, where Laud Humphreys, a researcher, went undercover and recorded his interactions and involvement with (often closeted) queer men's adult and private lives without their consent. The similarities with what Anthpo did in his video are well... yeah.
I’m a long time fan of anthpo and not a furry, also not LGBT. I initially liked his video, but this really changed my perspective! Thanks for this, you got a new subscriber
And I mean, is an STD screening after having sexual relationships with multiple strangers recommended? Absolutely. Is any fucking else about STDs in Anthony's video helping or going in that sense? Absolutely not! And I'm a gay man and an active member of my local queer community, the "You _will_ get HIV." statement had me retching. This could have been an educational moment, but nope. More fearmongering around STDs, hell knows we don't have enough of THAT.
i've literally never been so appalled in my life; can you imagine, being that rich and that popular on the internet, to only do childish shit like that? Crazy
I don’t really consider myself much of a furry, but as someone who watched Anthpo’s content for a long time I’m honestly really disappointed by these stunts he’s pulled recently. What he did at that convention was super disrespectful and I really hope he’s able to realize this and apologize.
I struggled to articulate all the ways Anthony's video made me deeply uncomfortable. Thank you for putting it to words, this echos how I've been feeling since his video was published.
When you posted that AI generated sona on bsky, I knew something spicy was going on. I never would have seen his video without your analysis. This whole event would have passed me by. I really appreciate that you approached the topic looking for redeeming qualities in this person, and offered constructive criticism on how he could have approached this "experiment." Your editing, your messaging, and your fairness make this a great watch, despite how truly despicable the actions in the source content were.
Thank you for covering this when I first watched the video when it came out it hurt me. I’ve was a fan of Anthony’s videos for over 7 years ever since he was making content in Highschool and College. His videos are honestly really well and endearing with such heart. He brought such thoughtful messages and expressed so much love to his friends. I know as an outsider to his content he seems like someone who has always been a clout chaser but man he changed. I can vouch for his character before. When he left TH-cam it really saddened me and I thought it would be it but man It was a really disheartening for me watching the video on the day it launched with such an ignorant and disrespectful video when he comes from such a great background of content. He left TH-cam for a year or so and I’ve was waiting for his return when he was hinting at it and I wish he never did now. Once again thank you I’m glad people are covering this because it’s something that needs to be addressed. Update: I just watched his latest video about the aliens and it’s a perfect example of his old content and the charm he puts into it. You don’t need to watch the entire video you can watch the last 5 minutes. I don’t know what went wrong to where he felt the need to do what he did.
I don't think it's that complex; probably just spends more time around idiots who love punching down, and punching down can feel good. Then he thought "hey, i could monetize that 🤔" We do both ourselves and creators a disservice when we treat them like they're reciprocal friendships. This guy isn't a character in a story with an arc to fulfill. This guy doesn't know you, and you only know the side of him he's willing to record and post online.
I know how you feel but I would try to not let it get to you, there’s a lot of cool people to meet at cons and fur meets. Just be aware of toxic behavior and use your best judgment just like any other situation and it’ll be okay!
Regarding the neurodivergence thing, I think that there is a massive difference between when someone within furry puts emphasis on it and when someone _from outside of the fandom_ puts emphasis on it, particularly if they dodge around the queer aspect. To the former, as a queer neurodivergent furry, I would make the argument that not only are autism spectrum diagnoses notably more common in the fandom than is typical, but wager that *undiagnosed* neurodivergence is proportionally markedly higher within the furry community than within the greater population; however, I would also argue that this has less to do with all furries being secretly non-neurotypical than that the community as a whole is much more accepting of behaviours which mainstream society treats as eccentric at best and aberrant at worst, meaning that folks with ADHD, ASD, tic disorders and so forth can safely unmask around other furries in a way that they might feel that they cannot around "normal people." A big part of that is tied into the sensory and symbolic aspects of furry, but it's also inextricable from the overwhelming queerness: Knowing that your sexuality or gender identity is seen by many as inherently aberrant, particularly when combined with that animalistic aesthetic, tends to breed empathy with or at least compassion for those who are similarly seen as fundamentally alien. To whit, it goes in the other direction as well: When basic social scripts aren't intuitive or even particularly logical to you, questioning other fundamental assumptions with respect to social norms tends to follow, such as those surrounding cisheteronormativity. I think this is probably also why, while right-wing furries certainly do exist, most furries tend to lean left overall, with an unusually high concentration of outright communists and especially anarchists, to the point that it's something of a meme in and of itself. To say that furry is often psychologically peculiar as a furry is, more often than not, to celebrate this peculiarity, this sensitivity to sensations and symbols and this willingness to playfully transgress assumed boundaries without doing harm-an embrace of our freakdom. Conversely, when a non-furry underlines the elevated rate of autism diagnoses, the subtext is decidedly less celebratory and decidedly more… well, condescending at best and nakedly hostile at worst, pathologising the subculture through an ableist framing of the autistic especially as lesser, infantile, and Other, which when combined with the queerphobia has a very similar tenor to the rhetoric of those "concerned parents" who went from playing martyrs online over their children's autism diagnoses to using those diagnoses as leverage to deprive them of agency when they might, say, question their assigned gender at birth. The furry is, I think, a deeply discomfiting figure to a certain kind of reactionary, because we are by and large openly queer, highly accepting of "weird" behaviour, typically socially liberal on the milder end of our politics and vocally radical on the harder end, focused on a shared interest and ethos which has no central intellectual property and thus is impossible to truly own or fully co-opt, and prone to embrace an aesthetic which defies traditional ideas of seriousness and subverts what it means to seem "adult." We make for good boogeymen because we bring together a lot of symbolic threats in one place. This is not to say that Anthony was consciously thinking about, well, much of any of this, but this substrate of intellectual sludge has been floating around beneath the surface of the Internet for a while, and as things get more dire for queer folks and the subcultures which support them, the scum really begins to rise to the surface. We're in a whole new age of moral panic and queerphobic outrage, and the exploitative shock content is the inevitable byproduct. P.S. Much less seriously, it is mildly surreal to see a physical copy of The Fluffer just, y'know, around. Good taste, though. P.P.S. Also, is that wall hanging with the yeens a Gwendolyn Wood/Poodlewool print? It definitely looks like her work. (Gwen's great and her work's great.)
I think you particularly nailed it in the part about how the furry fandom represents a complete inversion of reactionary values. Hell, I think the furry fandom could very well be used to shift the internet Overton Window massively to the Left if we just organized. Anyways, very well written.
Reading this reminds of me of that period in the early-to-mid 2010s when "Alt Furs" like Foxler tried to take over a bunch of furry spaces and got curb stomped almost immediately
Hi, I’ve been a furry, and also a lesbian in secret for so long. I saw your Adastra video and it made me realize so much about myself that I never thought of before. It finally gave me the courage to reach out and join furry groups and start making friends. When I see people like Anthony making surface level judgements and long term insults, it just makes me realize how important and meaningful this fandom is. You really voice my feelings perfectly, and it’s really hard to tell people, because no one would understand. I saw Anthonys video and couldn’t get through more than 5 minutes. Thank you for highlighting this, you have such an intelligent way of speaking about it.
Really good stuff Keith. I really liked your point about how he's just a young guy making stupid mistakes, but because the internet "gifted" him with success his ignorance and idiocy just gets broadcasted to thousands of people instead of being a private experience for him to learn from. This all just sucks because I imagine most of his audience is rather young and impressionable, meaning there's probably a bunch of kids out there who might be inclined to repeat this behavior and then the whole cycle begins anew. You're doing great work breaking this down. I hope this video does well.
Hearing that this guy is 22 is so wild to me- me, who is 29, has never been in a relationshio before and is forever questioning whether I'm ace or pan, who still feels like a child sometimes, who is going to find out in a month whether I am autistic, and who is making nowhere near the money he is. He should be going to parties with his friends, not harrassing communities he has nothing to do with.
This video has been incredibly insightful towards viewing Anthony's video. Honestly, you had me gagged towards the mention of how many of the other glaring fallacies in the video were digressed from the pure shock factor of him recording a "room party", I know I was guilty of it myself. But thank you for the time you've dedicated making this video with the amount its encapsulated. Not just taking what had made up Anthony's video in its entirety, but your own experiences that add a critical human element to it all, which I found personally moving giving an assurance of good faith.
is it just me or does this all just feel like internalized homophobia and projection? like, it wouldn't be the most surprising thing if anthpo was gay and/or a furry to a degree
In one of his recent videos he started a Bachelor like game show where he found his match from both male and female contestants. So I think that he is bisexual. Might be the first time he is open about it though. I haven’t watched most of his videos, so I am not sure.
I'm not even two minutes in and I'm already starting to hate this dude for the cartoon character voice he does while suiting. How much worse is this gonna get
I wonder if anyone's ever tried to do any research into why there aren't more straight furries. The concept itself doesn't have any direct connection to sexuality, apart from the usual "adults are horny and like to combine things they like with sex" that comes standard with any serious fandom. My personal suspicion is that it likely has something to do with the way straight people are expected to "perform" for society; like straight people constantly have to prove to everyone around them that they are, in fact, straight- more than that, they have to prove they are "normal". Being gay already puts one outside of normal, so I guess it's just easier for us to openly enjoy other things that also aren't considered "normal" because there's no pressure to pretend to be. Straight people are terrified of being seen as "cringe" but if your very existence already makes the normies cringe then it's actually very freeing to be able to just stop giving a fuck and be yourself. But that's just my hypothesis, I'd still love to see some kind of formal research.
I actually really love your posit that furries are the default, and straight people have repressed their animality! Hahah this is fantastic, I'm saving your comment and making it my desktop image. This is just me, but i think of it like this: Gay relationships have, for thousands of years, been compared to animals. "Two men can get married, what's next?? Marrying your dog??" It's a dumb fallacy of course, but if you're being treated lesser than human constantly, why not embrace it? If you're part of a group that is othered, just spiritually accepting that, and being like "you know what, animals are powerful and mysterious, I'm a 6ft tall anthro fox with angel wings!" And in the suit, you get that freedom to be yourself, completely stylize every inch of your appearance without thinking about your fleshy human cage. You might enjoy Contrapoints recent video essay called "Twilight"! It's about sexuality and attraction, and how it's healthy to explore different aspect of yourself :)
I think you're right. Society's homogenized and commodified everything now to the point where individuality is expected but then suppressed or capitalized on when any iota of vulnerability is involved. People are lonelier than ever because we've been taught to be closed off and have thick skin. I wouldn't say it's been done deliberately, but there's a lack of awareness that has allowed it to get worse.
I mean, the furry fandom has its origin in a bunch of artists who liked to draw "funny animals" doing relatable stuff, but in a more adult/close to life kinda way compared to Disney. Like a lot of early furry comics heavily feature anthropomorphic animals living in gritty realities, they smoked and drunk, had sex, said curses ect. . Artists are already a group where the percentage of LGBTQ people is higher than in the average population and artists who draw a lot of kinky stuff were even more likely to be in that group (because LGBTQ people are generally more open about those things). Worth to mention that while this was the origin, the modern furry fandom is a lot more broad when it comes to themes of art and stuff and I would say the fandom today is a lot less about being gritty and a lot more colorful. But the starting cast of the fandom (even though not all early artists would later use the term furry for themselves, many kept the 'funny animals' label) was already very LGBTQ: One of the first really big funny animals comics was "Omaha the Cat Dancer" about an anthropomorphic cat working as a stripper which includes a bunch of gay and bisexual characters and was written by Reed Waller and Kate Worley, both were openly bisexual. Or for example, two of the 'founders' of the 'proper' furry fandom, so basically the section of 'funny animal' artists and art lovers who started to use the term furry were Mark Merlino and Rod O'Riley - who met because of their interest to build this fandom, fell in love with each other in the 70s and were in a relationship until Mark Merlinos death this year. And then there is probably a bias of a fandom that mostly consists of men but is all about cute fluffy animals and stuff, like a lot of traditionally masculine heterosexual dudes probably have some problems to be open about liking something like that. Also, furries just seem to be a bit more open-minded and cosmopolitan, quoting Wikipedia here: "Furries rate themselves higher (compared with a comparison community sample of non-furries) on the degree of global awareness (knowledge of the world and felt connections to others in the world), global citizenship identification (psychological connection with global citizens), and environmental sustainability". While all of these things can't be equated with with being LGBTQ, there is certainly a solid correlation. It's kinda similar to "why are there relativaly many LGBTQ people in the tech industry?" Well, they tend to be younger, they tend to live in urban areas which have less restrictive social norms and allow more free self-expression and both makes it more likely that people will openly identify as LGBTQ. (And to finish this triangle relationship: there are also a lot of tech people in the furry fandom and the other way around to the point that there are memes about it)
There is a thing such as outcast morality, indeed. To be openly furry is outcast, to be openly gay is outcast. Thus you will find more overlap within outcast categories. I wouldn't call one more free than the other, though. Not at all. Whether in or out, you are bound by expectation and repressed by self image. To be openly furry is a prison. To be openly gay is a prison. As all label and category are. Don't think you're capable of acting outside of your expectations so easily. Or perhaps more accurate: Don't think it is possible to express the entirety of yourself within a label identity. Self denial is a core human experience. It'd be awfully empty upstairs if it weren't.
WHO FILMS A PRIVATE INTIMATE MOMENT WITH PEOPLE AND THINKS "oh yeah, this isn't a red flag to post to millions of people in PUBLIC???" Like, I swear people only see it as a smaller problem because of the stupid furry stigma. Random person going to spaces they don't belong to act absolutely stupid is already dumb content in itself, but that's taking it WAAAY further than stupidity.
It's geinuenly sad how little these people attempt to understand the community they're "infiltrating" (because had he just tried to join geinuenly even as an observer, he'd likely be warmly welcomed) and that *somehow* they manage to shine the light on the wrong thing every single time. When I was at mff I took part in a small panel for sober furs and had one of these people posing as a normal member while their friend filmed the group in the background. While he got found out relatively quickly and had security called, the fact was they still got footage of all of us explaining our reasoning which included a lot of vulnerable stories of adiction and the like, yet there was no consideration in their minds of "hey maybe we shouldnt be doing this" and its just baffling. These people can't actually be seen as attempting to understand the community no matter how much fluff they try and put in to spin their content in a positive light. They should be called out for this stuff as the needless harassment that it obviously is.
You know watching this video further in im thinking now "Is he trying to find these rooms for content or is he unknowningly exploring his sexuality but under the guise of 'im doing this for content'. I can not see someone who knows like nothing about furries go straight for "i want to find out where they're fucking"
Wow... I'm not a furry, just a follower from before you came out that didn't care. But wow. This guy. I think you sum up everything problematic with this perfectly. I'm really horrified tbh. I've been a chaperone at a furry convention. My younger brother is a furry and trans and while it's personally not for me, I appreciate artistic skill and effort. Fur suits are amazing works of art! Not only are they complicated but people also put who they are into them. That's beautiful. I found it lovely how everyone knew each other via the fur suit designs. I also thought people were very kind to lend my brother a suit for his first convention. Really made him feel apart of it but never in a nsfw way. I believe my brother was 16 or 17 at that point. Gosh that was nearly a decade ago now. Part of me is fired up in a way that makes me want to go out and film a real and respectful look into furry cons (but in my heart I know I won't/cant)
Yeah dude the thing is also that his whole “quitting youtube” was an obvious lie. He took a few months off and than started a huge back log to keep the job going. He never stopped, he just stopped posting for the hype.
Can we all take a step back and realize the sheer amount of editing that went into this video. Like, holy crap, that is a LOT of examples given with solid video evidence to back it up. 1 hour spent per minute of video is average, but there has to be wayyy more to it when it comes to videos like this!
Honestly to me it felt like not only a betrayal, but also anthpo showing his true colors. Up until that moment, he mostly just made silly videos, like recapping series in bad costumes. He was widely known as a wholesome guy and then he just drops THIS. Not only that, he drops it as his big comeback video. It may be cruel to say this about a 22 year old but I kinda do want this video to haunt him for the rest of his career, if not his life.
this reminded me of another non-furry youtuber that attended a furry con. Strange Aeons. a emo/goth lesbian who is known for her videos diving into various communities on Tumblr, and her review of onision's books. (and her long furby's Thursday and GirlGruel) from what ive seen of her content, she is of the mindset that being normal is boring, so be weird. and her videos tend to be a celebration of being weird. it is an interesting video about an outsider's perspective on furries, interacting with fursuiters. She did say that it was a unique, strange experience talking to someone wearing a fursuit. she didn't pretend to be a furry, and she even met some of her fans (unplanned). she went to Furnal Equinox, and her biggest complaints were the theme (she said that its not the worst, but could have been better) and that it was difficult to find the registration table. she said that while she isnt a furry, she loves the idea of having an alter ego, and costume that empowers you to be yourself, and lovingly described a furcon as 'the internet in real life', people being who they really are, and not having to hide themselves. (she does have a art piece with her and her girlfriends fursona's, she is a Furby and her Girlfriend is a cheetah.)
him crashing the dance competition was actually painful to watch, like zero regard for anyone. for the other contestants who are actually part of the fandom. who have put effort and passion into what they do, or the judges, or the people in the crowd or the schedule, all for what? 4 seconds of spotlight? its childish. petty, disrespectful, and short sighted of him to do that. like what did he even expect? everyone to be like "wow look at this guy he's so good dancing to absolutely nothing and interrupting the presenter" like, no?? you're a nuisance who doesn't give a damn about other people. I've never been to a furry convention or any kind of convention before but the dance competition videos have always been some of my favourite videos to watch, to see all the talented people perform and give something back to the fandom in idk it's kind of beautiful in a way. this guy didn't do that, he couldn't care less about the opinions of the real-life people around him or about "impressing" furries at that point, he just wanted to infiltrate to make content for his stupid video so he could get views. and he did "get what he wanted" he absolutely did, and then he ditched without a second thought. from what i know conventions are about, (and from watching an insane number of videos on conventions) meeting other people like you, feeling connected with other members of the community, other people who like the same things as you and accept you as you are. in the future if i get the chance to go, it will probably be one of the experiences i'd have most looked forward to in my entire life. to be able to interact in real life, enjoy something first-hand idk it feels special a little bit? like this guy comes in, and those other youtubers like him, and just completely overlook and disregard what the actual experience would be for someone if they actually even cared, or cared to talk to someone who actually cared, in the name of trying to get content for views and find some scandalous story. i don't like that guy.
i'm more so disgusted at @benoftheweek. he is supposed to be fighting for "equality for all" and he makes very eccentric videos so for him to be involved in this homophobic garbage is a gut punch
I'm not a furry but I gotta say that every time someone makes fun of y'all or for some reason has a "problem" with y'all it reaaaally bugs me because it feels like thinly veiled homophobia, even from queer people sometimes. This video really helped me see that this isn't just a feeling I get. As someone who's also queer I've only had good experiences with the furry community (anecdotal, I know, but still) and I can relate to being seen as "weird" by default. Sadly when I watched anthpo's video I missed a lot of the subtext you pointed out here, so thanks for making this analysis. It really helped shed light on how homophobia, ableism and just general degeneracy-fearmongering there is when discussing the furry community, even in a random TH-cam video that attempts to end on a positive note.
I've been mostly laughing this situation off. Dude comes in thinking he could just easily win the dancer events, but gets his ass kicked in the battle event and didn't even get into the dance comp finals. It's also funny seeing how much he lies/flourishes the story of him with the dancerfurs
This guy talks about "earning furries trust" as if we don't welcome non-furries. Been a furry for 24 years, and never seen a regular person told they couldn't participate in a furry con. This whole thing is like "infiltrating" the public frickin' library.
The whole "this is all legal, I checked with my lawyers" part of his apology is the equivalent of someone saying "yeah I made fun of you in a way that was specifically meant to hurt your feelings because I perfectly knew you were sensitive about that subject, but it's not illegal so it's fine because you can't put me in jail, therefore I won't have any consequences for my actions"
Brilliant video and analysis by the way, as always. Finishing with that dance competition segment, held in almost deathly silence, made my insides collapse like a dying sun. Absolute toilet of a person.
I just had a cringe memory unlock while watching this video. I was at a queer dance event, hanging out with the people cooling off outside, and this one shirtless 20 year old (with sunglasses on despite it being 2am) was there. He compliments this girl (a lesbian) on her glow in the dark wings. She said thanks, and complimented his tattoo. Literally the second thing he says to this woman is "I'm straight, by the way, I think you're hot" to which she visibly cringes and steps away to stand closer to her girlfriend. The guy then laughs that dudebro laugh and goes "Why does everybody turn on me when I say that? That's so unfair!" It's like, dude, why are you here? I'm convinced he just saw a group of people in fetish attire, ditched his shirt, and walked up to blend in, all so he could ?? Hit on lesbians?? IDK Straight guys can be weird
Shoutout to the MC at that dance comp, they played it off so well and turned it into something ACTUALLY funny, not, "funny because its cringe" but "funny because i can pander it to the crowd and make it into a con-meme" thats what you want from an MC
a a former anthpo fan his content arguebly got worse and weir after his return, genuinely grossed out. going to a convention is one thing but then entering a queer space pretending to be gay then UPLOADING it to the internet is a whole other
Great video. Honestly this is the first furry-related video you made I've ever finished to the end, since I am not a furry or gay and my English level couldn't handle that complexity in a unfamiliar narrative context for hours long. I got your point in this one (and learned the weird term neurodivergent). I was once insulted in my own subculture by such kind of behavior, so I got kinda enraged by this guy. And I am so happy that your previous vid received that much resonance. It is really fulfilling to change people's life while being a normal person.
The more I ask the question, "Are the straights okay," the louder the, "No" gets. And I'm becoming increasingly familiar with finding other people's reactions of disgust utterly vile. It made more sense in like, Lily Simpson videos looking at portrayals of trans women in older media (still utterly vile, but it made more sense), but there are zoomers that are still like this?? What??
A lot of modern far-right ideology is just about being disgusted by various groups of people ('the gays', "the blacks', "the transes' ect. ). Like, they will say a lot and talk about how they think those groups are endangering western civilization and how they are just concerned about 'men in women's bathrooms' but when it comes down to the basics they just feel disgust and their entire lives are centered around making it everyones problem.
It really makes me wish I wasn't straight sometimes. Because I don't like how straight people act that I see. But I know that's probably wrong of me to feel somehow.
I'm reminded of whenever we had tourists at playparties. They were always so obvious, as were their intentions. Their "outfit" was just street jeans plus shirtless. That's noone's idea of sexy at a kink party. There's a LOT of naked skin, but the sports bro shirtless look is literally never among it. And the way they stare and stand themselves "conveniently close" to people - well, exclusively women, really - doing anything lewd is just... disruptive and disgusting. There were two women making out on the couch next to me and within ten seconds the couch I was laying on had four guys magnetised to it. I made sure to fully spread out on my couch just so they don't try to sit down. I understand the curiosity, and I do, in fact, think that most non-kinky people would actually profit from attending a playparty with explicit sexuality and kink because it really breaks open a lot of internalised stigma about sex and bodies that you never knew you had, but man, tourism just ruins it for EVERYONE. (And I don't think this holds true for room parties at furry events, from what I've heard about them so far.) The one playparty I've been at that was the only actually completely safe playparty experience I've ever had was an explicitly queer one where the door thoroughly interviewed everyone trying to get in, and they bounced a lot of guys who pretended to be bi (a disgustingly common pickup line these days too, UGH) just to choke when they were asked if they'd like to make out with one of the guys inside. There were two cis men at that party, they were both bisexual, and the _entire_ atmosphere at the party was distinctly more free, open, forthcoming and inclusive than on any event I've ever attended, and it was so obvious that that was just because of the absence of cishet men. Social groupings interacted and intermingled with each other more openly and voluntarily than I'd ever seen, people went to back rooms together after talking for minutes, and several people felt safe being sexual out in the open. This is remarkable because to make this clear, this was NOT a sex party or an orgy, it was a kink party where open sexual interaction is _tolerated_, but neither explicitly encouraged nor expected (another way you can spot tourists - that's what they think is happening just because of the BDSM label). So if visible sex happens anyway, they're either trying to (and I don't mean this criticially) provoke some reaction, or feeling VERY safe and comfortable. They tried to recreate this event once a year later, but the location wanted to sell more tickets, so they insisted on a more lax door policy. It completely fell apart. We had 5-6 men (among maybe 20 participants), half of them most certainly not queer, and we were at the same atmosphere we always have, which I can only now even identify at all because I've witnessed how it feels without them ONCE. Stigma of kink and furry communities differ wildly, so it's not completely comparable, but what I can relate to is how horrifying the idea is of a) being filmed (WITHOUT CONSENT, IT DOESN'T MATTER IF IT'S BLURRED, IT'S STILL NON-CONSENSUAL AND VIOLATING) b) being observed by an uninformed, stereotype-leaning tourist c) being APPROACHED by him with the request of being included d) actually doing the emotional labour of ignoring some of the weird vibes because maybe he's just lonely or a newbie or neurodivergent or whatever to have someone who could really use it be included just for that person to never have intended to actually participate and, WORSE, not actually having needed it, making my emotional labour and the vulnerability of everyone in the room go to waste, e) HAVING THE VULNERABILITY OF EVERYONE IN THE ROOM GO TO WASTE, and then f) finding a stereotype-distorted presentation of all this online, which g) is completely lacking ALL the emotional context of the portrayed events AND community, which is the VAST MAJORITY of what makes these events relevant and gives them impact. Dude could never have gone undercover as a furry even if it had been in good faith and pulled off sensitively. Not being one myself I can only guess, but if it's in any way comparable to why people do kink, you will never have the community experience without the emotional circumstances that led most people there in the first place. Without the life experience of being queer, you cannot understand what a queer space IS. You can only see what it looks like from the outside, and we already know what both BDSM and furry culture look like from the outside. The very best case would be a sensitive, well-meaning perspective, but never EVER the actual experience. One of the best moments I ever had on a playparty was when a whole group of about 20 people was laying around in a room with a cushioned surface which was essentially a 5x6m large bed, which, not coincidentally, is also in my opinion the most important type of room a playparty can have. Because the cuddles, the softness, the vulnerability, the intimacy, that's the most important aspect of BDSM. In that moment is where I kissed my first cis man too, it was really sweet and nice, and I don't think he'd have felt safe enough in any other context because we went on one date a few weeks later, and he was SO nervous to just hold hands even though it was dark and we were completely alone. The vulnerability EMPOWERS. Counterintuitively, it makes people strong. Anything that takes away from that vulnerability weakens the community as a consequence. It's literally toxic.
Thank you, genuinely, for sharing your experience here. You articulate your points really well, and the window you provide into kink culture outside of furry is intriguing to me. It's kind of odd- the furry community having such strong queer and kink-positive involvement means that I've had relatively little direct interaction with queer-focused and kink-focused communities outside of furry. I simply haven't needed to seek those things out individually, because they're already present within furry spaces. But I've often wondered what the experiences in non-furry kink and LGBT+ communities are like.
having seen the reveal of who this is before this video, I described it as "as bad as a pro furry video as one can make without fully being anti furry" and i have to admit i did not encounter any of the sigma paws content directly, so I think I'll have to reevaluate. watching this is an incredible excercise in self torture, thanks.
Anthpo should've stayed gone after the countdown :( this is so disappointing. There was a time when he was funny, he was creative, he was kind and had many friends he cared for. What happened to him?
I was conflicted at first watching this, but as the video kept going it actually gave me a new perspective on anthony's video. Very high quality content, and more people should actually watch this
idk about u.s. or u.k. but here in Brazil discrimination is actually a crime that you cant even pay for bail, so here he would probably be in jail by now lol
The US and UK have similar laws. But I believe the punishments are more financial/lawsuit focused than actual jail-time worthy (depending on the severity).
@@Dr.Oofers here they also have to pay a fee and up to 3 years in reclusion(I googled it just to make sure) but glad that you guys also have laws for this ❤️
@@neo1711 I know right! Cause still we have a ridiculous high rates of lgbt murder BUT our community voice here is getting bigger and LOUDER when comes to our rights
He seems really fixated on the room party, more than curiosity or something similar.... makes me wonder if he was interested but then realized it was a queer heavy space
I mean if it was me, I wouldn't have got into bed with them when I realized they weren't my type... But then again I'm not the type to post a video of strangers being intimate.
This is the most thorough breakdown of everything wrong with what Anthony did that I've seen. All mention the recording, but you also covered the grossness of crashing the dance competition, implying NSFW can be viewed by minors, the pervasive homophobia, the damage to furries' reputation he did as Sigma (the extent of which I hadn't been aware), everything.
Ok so this video started bad... (The shock upon realising it was anthpo? ah that hurt) and kept getting worse and worse... and then the STD joke, and the pause, and it just hit me. holy shit. what the actual fuck? /()\ I am watching the rest of the video in shock... man... Alright. I started this video with the assumption that this was a very niche subculture video, about some in-community struggle, and decided to give it a go, because it's Keith's video essays. Was unpleasantly surprised for it to be someone in my general youtuber-watching bubble, and the horror set in more and more as you revealed further and further, how many stereotypes he's perpetuating and how horrible and violating this situation actually is. In the end, I felt bad. For the community, for the people in the video and those seeing it, and... for AnthPo, somehow. Because he's not that much older than me. Because, as you said, he's supposed to fuck around and find out. He's supposed to. He's also sadly having a much bigger reach with his videos than the fuckery-findoutery is supposed to have. In the end, I do hope he can look at this in the future and realise how bad it all was. I do hope he learns from it in the moment by not doing this again. Thank you for making this video. It felt important, to me. Thanks.
I feel like the only way he'd actually learn a lesson from this is if one of the people in the room parties sue him for lying about the purposes of the video he took and for posting them online, both of which are a felony.
Oh boy, I was not prepared for any of that. It's distressing to know that furries were being used for content farm material by someone with such a large audience. We're not a zoo to be for outsiders to gawk at and it's violating to know how he took advantage of these people for views and revenue. This has definitely done damage to the perception of the furry community and his half-baked apology doesn't undo that. We were used and discarded by someone with too much money and ego for their own good and we're all the worse for it.
The mention of feeling able to be yourself around the convention speaks volumes. As a gay name and furry for over 18 years at this point. Waking up and being surrounded by folks you feel won't judge you is amazing. The high school experience of being gay was I never trusted anyone. I was bullied my whole junior high through high school life due to being the weird artsy kid. Even now I think back on times of deep depression and hating who I was for being different, this spawned the inability to believe I can do much of anything both for myself or m for others. Luckily I actively work on these things in my poly relationship and we try to bolster each other regularly. I hope everyone finds their community and stays honest about their interests and passions.
I discovered you thanks to the Evil Dead video and I really like the rest of your content. I didn't know much about the furry community, but thanks to your work, I'm learning and I keep getting educated. So, the ED video wasn't a total loss after all!
This whole ordeal gives off, 'Logan Paul goes to furry con' vibes. What irritated me most about this situation was that, in order to 'interact' with our culture he crafted a caricature that was so... i don't know, 'outsider looking in.' SigmaPaws' entire attitude was centered around his wealth, body image and his social image. The way he saw 'value' in a person, regardless of who they were, was by the standards he played up in his Sigma Paws act. Seeing Sigma Paws' rants on his tiktok now knowing it as an act, says to me, "It's fine and cool if you're into this furry thing... given you have money, a white-collar job, exercise for sport, etc. etc." These are all like... very concerning things to attach 'worth' to. As they're all things that still link back to what i just call the, American Dream model. Which is: Get job, Get house, get wife, get kids, barbeque hamburgers celebrating your white-picket fence. A model that is just fine given that's how you want to spend your life, but not ok if you think it's the only way someone SHOULD spend their lives. I wish SigmaPaws took the time to interact with Furry Artist, talked about them about their lives and career. Reached out to furry elders about their experiences. But instead he wanted to focus on the thing that everyone loves to gawk at us with. That we have a lot of fun with our bodies. Something to which I really hate that society has twisted into such a taboo. I'll never understand why people are so afraid of intimacy and the joy it brings to us. Anyway, I hope he takes his apology to heart and maybe someday down the line make a much better effort.
This shit should be illegal. I mean it's straight up defamation. Just his target is not a person, but community. Is it a hate crime? Anyway, if you don't like someone, why interact with them? He satisfied his own urges, even if it's not sexual.
In Germany it would probably be considered "Volksverhetzung" (basically "Incitement of the people"). The actual wording of the law is inciting "hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population" which would at first glance not include furries, but I think you could have a good chance if you said it was against queer people, because there is precedent of invoking this law for spreading hatred against women and that case explicitely says that you can also use that law if the hatred goes against people with disabilities, homosexual people, PoCs (actually mentioned in the text with multiple terms), workers, foreigners living in Germany, Bavarians (okay...), civil servants, protestants, freemasons and receivers of welfare aid. Actually, the fact that it includes workers is kinda funny, because the original version of that law was called "Class War Paragraph" and only refered to inciting the population to class warfare. And that's how you change an anti-socialist law so many times it becomes a law to protect minorities.
24:24 it’s such an OBVIOUS lie too! Anyone who’s ever been to ANY kind of convention that allowed adult content age checks. Hell I went to an anime con and one artist had basically PG13 art in one of their art books and they CENSORED THOSE in the display copy even though it was mainly people making out.
You know what people in the community generally say about fursonas and the deeply connection one has with them, and the reflection of one's self embeded into a fursona? Yeah, this guy's "fursona" TOTALLY shows off the type of individual he must be in his life, a selfish whinny rich kid who has never experienced the struggles many people in the community deal with every day, and that his views on the world rely solely on how he can farm numbers off of said people just to... get something out of it? I dunno man, the way he cheap out on a random fursuit, that was just expensive enough to be decent-looking, while mocking at it because it looked like "trash", it just feels hollow in every single aspect. I can't understand why would anyone do this for clout, money or to even make a fuzz about it. His actual personality just seems rotten to the core, nothing even remotely genuine can be seen through his TH-cam persona.
I think my favorite repeating comment under his video was, 'Adult finds out that other Adults have consensual sex'
45 years olds with "19" years old, furrys are truly gruesome
@@_SUPERN0VA_ Is the bridge a rental or bought?
@@_SUPERN0VA_consenting adults? also dragon pfp welcome to the community friend
@@_SUPERN0VA_Dude thinks we are Drake fr 💀
@@ilikespaghetti4458it’s just a dragon but ok
the dude is literally the equivalent of that one popular kid in school who pretends to be friends with what they think is ‘quiet’ or ‘weird’ kid while in the process being very patronizing and in reality is just making fun of the kid with their friends
uh...
As a 'weird' (autistic) kid still in school, how do I avoid this? Pls send advice :/
@@h0peros382 sometimes you can't if you're not able to tell if it's genuine or not. If you suspect they are being mean, ask some other people what they think of it, it may be good to get another perspective. Then, if they are being mean, tell them to fuck off. Or just do it back to them. It makes them feel small and embarrassed
even as someone who reads emotions well and has good intuition, the one popular girl gave me weird vibes. she seems really sweet but smth about her made me feel weird, but subconsciously. consciously, i thought she really was a sweet person, ignoring the subtle alarm bells in my head. turns out she's not that sweet
you are friends with a weird kid to be patronizing. I am friends with the weird kid because nobody else will take me. we are not the same.
He really acted like this was a "Vice news investigating North Korea" or a "Channel 5 investigating how immigrants cross the Rio Grande" when it's more like a "I filmed myself buying a ticket to a nightclub and pestered people until they told me where to buy c*ke and then stole the microphone from the dj for two seconds to say nothing"
Channel 5 the youtuber?
dude, even Channel 5 when they were All Gas, No Brakes went to MFF and had a better time with furries than he did faking being one
yup, channel 5 hung out with furries and had a good time and were even like "most people dont even wear any special outfit, but everyone is very nice" or whatever. its like the opposite of what this brain dead twink did, with far too much support.
43:02 ngl this was some genuine second hand embarrassment, everyone was just confused and mostly silent the entire time when he “crashed” the stage lmao
ikr I had to skip ahead i was so embarrassed for him. reminded me of that clip of the guy that tried to rob a nail salon and everyone just stared at him until he ultimately left 😂😂
@@squtnik That's so funny 😂.
Next time on Boring Keith - Interrogating leather daddies about their mental health
they seem nice
Would watch that
I would like your comment, but that would put it at 70, so I'll put a reply instead.
Can't wait for this one XD
i would like your comment except its at 621 and i can't break that
I was going to say something to the effect "You know, I wouldn't try to infiltrate someone else’s adult fun and then treat it like an expose for youtube, but that's just me", but a lot of other stuff about his behavior really repulsed me.
Like I know that stands out as the worst part, but since I never watched the video I was missing a lot of context that made things even worse.
The way he crashed the dance competition speaks to a deeper level of content creator brainrot. Also the way he made his fursona a toxic, money-obsessed weirdo was certainly a choice.
I think I was most repulsed by his fake rants against made up haters. People are actually bullied for being gay or different. Faking outrage in this way is a mockery.
Maybe the sigma paws persona demonstrates that putting on a fursuit head immediately makes you express who you really are...
@@alicealysia Give a mask to someone and they will show you their real face
yeah it's supposed to be a joke??
@@ding0dkikl_intent is an explanation, not an excuse. That’s a naïve excuse that only works with children. This is a grown adult being dumb
@@ding0dkikl_the faking being a furry? It wasn't a very good joke
I don’t think furries need to flex. We are suspiciously wealthy enough as is lol.
literally the one thing I know about furries is that they are rich
If someone says theyre a furry. Theyre either rich or broke but only cuz they spent all their money on fursuits and comission art.
@@Kris-wo4pj im a furry but broke with no suit or commissioned art lmao 😭
It’s true.
@@Kris-wo4pj No no, there's also broke furry artists
Went to ANE 2023 the year he went. The NSFW room was curtained off with a staff checking badges for 18+ markers. Yes cons have sexual stuff, no they aren't on the main floor. The lying he is doing isn't just impacting the furry community but as you said it impacts the lgbt+ community as well.
thanks for the on-ground extra info!
It was 2024 though?
The what room?
I was legit in this video and it was 2024
But I agree
you know whats even more ironic about him AI generating art? its that i feel like commissioning art is a huge part of the furry experience, there is a sense of actual connection there (aka engaging in the community). i cant name a single furry who hasnt commissioned some form of art or at the very least did an AT or something, so this guy just, dressed up as a furry, did some tik tok dances alone in his room, went skiing and, like you said, awkwardly sweated around in a fursuit at a con. that's.. not being a part of the furry community. thats not even scratching the surface
edit: since a lot of you ppl lack reading comprehension, my point wasn't that "you need to commission art to be a furry", it was that commissioning art would have been the bare minimum actual meaningful interaction this guy would have done and that most furries have art, commission, art trade, or otherwise. non ai art is a big part of the furry community.
Honestly.
The furry community is an art driven community. It's art in every medium and practice, too. Traditional artists, digital artists, musicians, authors, and that's only scratching the surface. Any furry can tell this guy is a character from 100 miles away. The issue is that people who aren't furries or know very very little about them are going to think this is what we are. I just don't really get it? Like? Furries are often comprised of minorities and have just created a space for themselves to comfortably exist.
Right? No jokes even about furries being like the modern day equivalent of art patrons these days?? Like even before I was in the Fandom baseline I knew that Furries love art???
" so this guy just, dressed up as a furry, did some tik tok dances alone in his room, went skiing and, like you said, awkwardly sweated around in a fursuit at a con. that's.. not being a part of the furry community. thats not even scratching the surface"
I'd argue that is alright participation in the community - if you aren't being an asshole.
@@vidmuncher I'd argue it's more just, being a furry rather than being /a part of the community/ specifically (i personally know a lot of furries that don't like engaging with the overall community and dont consider themselves a part of it while being furries in their own right), with this guy trying to observe the community but taking like no steps to make any genuine connections with anyone, its hard to call that "engaging with the community" at least in a deep way, at all. There's nothing wrong with being a furry outside of the community / while not engaging with the community, but he wasnt even genuinely that, and his video was about the community as a whole.
its more like he seeked out furries that engage in specific parts a lot of nonfurs "hate" the community for, and then furthermore, didnt even get to know them or understand why they do what they do (like the sexual side of the community for example here)
All in all, community = a group of people, or adding to that group of people in some way (like making art for them), and understanding that group, which he didn't do any of in a proper way. He knows nothing about the community despite all of those things listed that he actually did
That's even worse, Gen AI is THE MOST isolating thing you can do in terms of community because you don't ask for art, you don't share it heartfully, you STEAL from people. I am beyond repulsed by Anthrop or whatever his name is
Now, I'm no lawyer... But I know EXACTLY why he said he had one go over the video and deem it completely legal.
Revenge P@rn. Uploading private sexual content to the internet without the full consent of everyone involved is illegal. Federally illegal. As in when I first heard about this video, I looked up the law and urged the people involved in that section of the video (not directly, but as a general post on my Tumblr) to take legal action against him. And I think they still should consult with lawyers and see what their options for legal recourse are, because that was not ok, and this man needs harsher consequences for that
Was about to bring that Tumblr post up.
Well, that was... Sickening. As in, I literally felt sick to my stomach hearing about the perpetration of the LGBT stereotypes as groomers and freaks by that youtuber.
😮😮😢3r
"thank" libsoftiktok for that and Matt Walsh. How come you guys in the US not have anti-hate speech laws? Had Matt Walsh been biased like that in the EU, he would've been arrested and his voting rights would've been stripped off. Not that we are punnitive, we believe in rehabilitation (which that distinquishes the EU from the US; we're focusing on human rights, our laws/constitutions are human rights focused), so he'd have been free to choose either to press an upgrade on his outdated tongue, or go to jail till he turned around
As for that bunny dressed person, I blame entirely their parents and bad social media influencers. He may be legally adult, but until his 25s-35s, his brain is still developing, so he's still vulnerable to disinformation and to...making dumb things
@@Urmapleleaf the US is so brainwashed into individualism. Half the population interprets "freedom" as "i can do whatever i want anytime i want, no matter who it hurts".
@@Urmapleleafthe US understanding of "free speech" is wild. I'm South African and if Walsh/LoTT tried that shit here, they'd be hauled before the Human Rights Commission within a week
@@Urmapleleaf We do have anti-hate-speech laws in the US, it's just that the barrier for what defines "hate speech" is set by people whom I would not describe as unbiased.
Soooo ironic that "normies" point and laugh at furries for being cringe and then they really blow our cringe out of the water. All this did is going to make me more cautious and selective about what room parties I attend and who is at them. Glad he could corrupt community of trust to add to his millions. Literally a microcosm of the greater capitalist hellscape.
The host at the dance competition stating that someone crashing a competition is a first, truly hit the nail on the head. Literally the only time they had a problem person (in the context of the dance competition) and it's demonstratively a normie "under cover"...
Congrats Anthony Poe, you are the problem.
On another (and more important) note, I hope you and the other members of the community'll get plenty of good experiences in the future that'll heal the mistrust he injected with his behaviour 💚
Who wakes up one day thinking "yes, I will get myself invited to a private event and invade a queer space under false pretense and broadcast it for the internet to gawk at". This is absolutely infuriating.
Well, and we're not the Church of Scientology or the Skull and Bones Society! He could've made lots of actual friends and been invited to scores of room parties where he could've potentially been spitroasted like a doner kebab to his heart's content if he'd just said, "Hi, I'm Anthony! What's your name? This is my first convention. What should I do?"
Womp
@@bonk1485 , it's pretty sad that you think that being courteous and introducing yourself to people is "NPC behavior." You might want to reflect on that if you actually want to make connections in the world.
If you really want juicy insider access to a community, you typically have to interact with people first. Actually knowing about a community and its memes and inside jokes will make your material infinitely better.
I've watched a number of very funny videos where people mainly made themselves the butt of the joke and/or engaged in witty banter with people that didn't involve harassing them or putting them down.
The "I said something rude to someone and then did a Fortnite dance" schtick is really only funny to middle schoolers.
@@flyingonthetraparwinds for real 👏👏
@@flyingonthetraparwinds how are you saying womp with a black and splatoon picture
I'm not a furry but the dismissal of the overwhelming majority of the community being queer in a way that is directly linked to the culture itself because of there being a chunk that is neurodivergent (mostly autistic) is baffling to me as someone who _is_ autistic and queer, because not only is it obvious that there's an immediately noticeable connection between the queer community and the furry community, but also because most autistic people ARE QUEER AS WELL, so there's most likely a huge overlap between those who are autistic furries and those who are queer furries.
exactly exactly! There's also this infantilization of autism, like we're incapable of enjoying life the "right" way. "Don't you know you're supposed to forget the joy of childhood?? Why are you watching that movie/tv/game/music over and over?" Autism isn't a disorder insofar as it disables us in a world built for allists. Autism is just a different, beautiful arrangement of the brain, and we've been around as long as humans have existed!
Who do you think innovated the sling spear? It was some autistic person who hyperfocused for weeks to try to build a spear to throw farther and farther. Who do you think went out testing every single clay to find the right mix of minerals to throw on a wheel? Who spent years staring at the sky trying to map the stars with math? Humanity NEEDS autistic brains!
I’m a queer autistic furry 🌚🌚
@@tinywafflerat See? There ya go :D
I'm a queer neurodivergent(?)(undiagnosed, could jus have anxiety or sum) furry :D
@@kitosanimations Clinical anxiety is a form of neurodivergence!!
Big oof. My bf and I were at this year's ANE and had a few odd encounters with people and the concept that any one of them could have been playing a similar game as Anthpo is truly unsettling. I'm glad he's catching as much flak as he is for invading a space like that and making a fool of himself.
Yeah, this kind of stuff shakes our trust in the sincerity of the people around us, in a community defined by that sincerity.
@@BoringKeith Keith Ballard: I thought the younger generation was suppose to be more in touch with LGBT issues, what is going on?!?!??
Whataltist: let me break it down.
@@greygaston1263 do you mean WhatIfAltHist? Interested in the video you're referencing /gen
@@greygaston1263 That made zero sense
@@celisewillis my point is that not only are zoomers like him and me not in touch with lgbt issues, we also blame them for our current problems, you defund our police, put idiots like Biden, wave the flag of our enemies, and when people like Tem die, you then blame society like Louis did in beastars, it just seems like evil dead rising and the things Anthony Po did were just karma for all the left winged hypocrisies people like Keith been spatting out since day one!
this reminds me of something I've seen Trixie Mattel say a few times "Being gay is not hard, straight people make it hard" and I feel like that's just as true for furries. We're literally just vibing over here minding our own business, it's the people that can't help themselves from gawking and pointing and laughing at a group whose only crime is being different that make being a furry hard.
💯💯💯
As somebody who played at the variety show at Anthro New England, and as somebody who functions as a musician in this space, I also have another thought about Anthpo's video that I don't think you touched on, and IMO I think it's worth thinking about considering a thought my normie parents had when they dragged themselves to MFF with me as non-furries:
While neither of my parents are queer, the thing they loved most about their con experience was seeing the level and the amount of creativity on display. When I got my dad a badge with him as a sloth, he was amazed both by how fast it was done, and by how much the artist had managed to capture his likeness in sloth form. They also loved that I had my trio there, and they got to see that part of the creativity first hand. My dad especially isn't always fond of how trans folks express themselves, but they get that it is a community event full of extremely creative people, and even not being queer they all really resonated with the creativity, and they also did this without gawking at or calling attention to the fact there's NSFW content within con spaces.
Anthpo's entire video shows absolutely no care about any of that, from the discussion of May The Best Man Win to the fact he was intentionally trying to get into the room party. I feel like if he wanted to actually celebrate the fandom at all, at least a word of service towards the creativity of furries would've been great? And ANE had plenty of chances for him to actually show that, from DigiFest and Dragon's Dojo and the Variety Show (which I played Theremin on) and Animal Music all would've been great showcases for that. Hell, he might even have gotten that with the dance comp, if he'd bothered to stay for longer than it took to crash the dance comp.
But there's none of that; no celebrating creativity at all from anyone in the fandom, no just, trying to exist. Nothing. So then when you factor in the fact he tried to get into a room party to get content and that his entire attempt to be furry was him creating a bratty persona on TikTok, it feels like exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from someone who only knows the stereotypes and doesn't actually try to dissect those stereotypes. And if nothing else, that part is unconscionable.
As someone entirely outside this space, isn't every con filled with creative people though? They're hotbeds for artist/creator networking, of course you'll see cool things. Not to mention there's actual money behind it. I would hardly think of that first as an aspect that the furry community is defined by. I don't think being queer magically activates a creativity gene.
Yup, even the other coverage of furries that annoys me by painting us as more neurodivergent than queer invariably focuses on the fact that we're an art-driven community. That's an unavoidable fact. But all we get here is that some of us are good dancers, with no further exploration of that context.
As far as art goes: he disrespects his fursuit maker, spreads harmful lies about the dealer's den, and crashes the dance competition for content.
true
@@antoineberkani9747 In this case, it's worth putting within the broader context of the furry community. The fandom as a whole is more a community driven primarily by custom commissions of people's own characters, and more often than not the characters don't exist for narrative purpose the way they would for a comic book artist. In a way, therefore, art in the furry fandom comes with a social aspect that you wouldn't get outside of it, so I imagine a TH-camr would find things to celebrate about the fandom and how it uses art socially, as something more than the commodity or the narrative delivery apparatus other geeky fandoms see it as.
As far as the convention culture, too, it's different in the vibe, and also in what attendees can generally expect to get from vendors: from the comic and anime cons I've been to, I've always gotten a sense that the indie artists are there to market themselves, but it is the bigger franchises that dominate the space, or you're there to say hello to various celebrities from the big-name franchises you like. There's an aspect of that in furry conventions too, don't get me wrong, but it is *way* less pronounced in what you can expect from vendors. In furry cons, it's less about what franchises you're into and more "oh yeah, here's a thing that looks cool and is done by a smaller indie artist".
So you're not technically wrong, it's just that it manifests in a very different way from a comic convention, you know what I mean?
(EDIT: I also have to add the caveat that my parents also come from a medical imaging background, and don't really have the creative bones that my sister and I do. I'm simply offering an observation based on something said by folks with no real artistic skill, so bear that in mind as well.)
Not to mention his use of AI...
Hiya! One of the cover artists for Furry Weekly here.
Thank you so much for mentioning us and our work! It is so incredibly disappointing to see someone try to use us as a means to harm and ridicule other furs. Everyone on the team works hard to deliver wholesome content to the furry community. Using our need for staff as a means to gain access to privileges is sickening.
Super appreciate someone calling him out for his misdeeds!
Those sincere volunteers must be sincere degenerates just like furries.
how does it keep getting worse and worse with every new revealed part holy💀that comparison of his dance competition editing vs what it looked like to everyone else is MIND BOGGLING. how he never got a reality check throughout the whole process of making his vid is just beyond me
“This is not part of the competition- uhh…im gonna have to ask you to go back in…”
*AGGRESSIVE VERY QUIET DANCING*
nothing was wrong with the "body shaming" part it's literally CaseOh
It was way worse than I was expecting. Hard to watch because it was so embarrassing.
@@infinitehexington tbf i dont think the creator watches caseOh
my jaw DROPED when he said that chunie's art was remade with ai so much that it generated the signature
Happened to Shutterstock too if i am correct
I've often said to my partner that I'm not NOT a furry. I don't have a fursona or anything, but I love the art and seek it out. My favorite thing about the community is how accepting they are of trans people. It's like nothing else. No one bats an eye if I express that I'm a trans man, and the first time I saw a trans man in art was in furry art. It's so different in every other space - other queer spaces included - where they forget we even exist.
Transmasc furry artists consistently exude a powerful energy which is difficult to describe but commands respect. Much love and solidarity from this doofy furry transfem.
@@ConvincingPeople 100% even when there’s non-furry trans masc art, the vibes aren’t the same and they don’t match me. I’m bald, kinda chubby, and very 30 lol. The effeminate twink look is not one I can relate to
I'm really not sure if you know that you're a furry or not... cause it sounds like you're finding community in a space where you don't fit some criteria for not being a part of it (not having a sona is normal).
@@CassieCarryd honestly that’s a good point! I hadn’t really thought about it that way. I guess if I had to define it I’d consider myself furry lite. I mostly lurk on forums and reddit and occasionally comment on things when I feel like I have something to say!
I call it being furry agnostic lmaooo. Like i consume a lot of art, comics, video games etc made by furries... But I don't have a fursona/suit, and I'm not particularly interested in drawing anthros & animals
"For those criticizing me for perpetuating stereotypes amongst the furry community, I want to apologize and emphasize that wasnt my goal in any capacity." *continually calls these adult parties as "Furry Parties", straight up lies about kids being allowed into adult only spaces, makes a fake fursona and says hes a pedo, All without talking to a single furry before even thinking about doing any of this.* Sure......we believe you anthony. :/
I found out about Anthpo's video on a subreddit and was pretty pleased that majority of the people saw through the fake goodwill that he was trying to exude, as well as the sort of implications it held considering 'furry cringe' has pretty much been a proxy for a lot of ableism and queerphobia that's really started to stick out to a lot of people. I hope he doesn't use the notoriety from committing a sex crime to coast more on his career bc he knew what audience he was angling for with that video.
those books werent even in the open dealers den, they were literally inside the 18+ section behind curtains. you had to present your ID to get in to that section
Hi vavorr I recognize you from the balisong community lol
@@AshOfSound 😳😳😳
Oh my god no way it's vavorr from the balisong community
I feel like gen Z has a weird relationship with the queer community. I'm 23 myself and genuine discrimination against people for being queer is pretty universally unacceptable in a lot of spaces I've been in, but at the same time we're still subjected to the same kinds of jokes that every other generation spreads around. I keep going back and forth on whether I genuinely think Anthony could have so much cognitive dissonance that he genuinely doesn't associate being a furry with being LGBT, or if I genuinely think he's homophobic. I think an important thing is that he can be both, and is definitely homophobic. There's a lot of internalized shit that we get from growing up online where bullying is the norm that we have to unlearn just like any other generation. That's why it's very rare to see a gen z person be unabashedly homophobic unless it's "just a joke" (genuinely wishing harm on gay people is obviously uncool to a lot of these kids, but jokes are fair game apparently) IDK, but I definitely agree the othering of autism is super deliberate here, even if he somehow doesn't realize he's just making fun of queer people he's also just straight up saying "they're weird sexual deviants because they're neurodivergent!" Personally that puts a really weird taste in my mouth. Plus, personally my neurodivergence (autism and probably some other things besides the anxiety and depression I've been diagnosed with) manifests as way weirder shit than just an interest in anthropomorphic characters lol. Nobody tell him what being otherkin is, I don't wanna know how he spins that to seem inoffensive while actually mocking us.
Some wise observations here. I would agree these last few decades are in the "haha just a joke!" era of social justice. I'm in my 30s, and I remember, in highschool, you would lose friends for sincerely saying a racial slur, but "just joking" with stupid family-guy-level racial jokes was a-okay. Almost no one was out as gay, and *no one* came out as trans (although we all managed to find each other haha).
You're right that there's still a lot of work to do. "The 8 White Identities" by Barnor Hesse is a great place to see where you have room to grow in allyship, and i think it can be applied generally to LGBTQIA identities, too.
I agree. I am really conflicted about whether or not Anthpo is intentionally homophobic or being very immature and uneducated homophobic. I've been a fan of his past videos, and I've always felt pretty safe watching them. I never thought that he was going to pop out with a blatantly homophobic thing that made me feel unsafe. But now, after his recent furry video, I feel completely different! I am beyond disappointed in his actions.
Thank you for your observations.
I agree, Gen Z has an interesting relationship with the queer community. I'd honestly read a paper on it
I'm not a furry (at least I don't think I am?), although I do consume a lot of furry content. But, I was a Brony back in the 2010s.
I don't talk about this much cause it's been like 9 years now, but I remember when I met someone at a FiM convention. We liked the same characters and episodes and even liked the same non-MLP fandoms. It was pretty awesome and I thought I made this really awesome friend. Then someone found the guy's tumblr blog....with our conversations in full detail and several posts about his plans to 'befriend a brony' with the ultimate goal being to reveal their true nature as a cruel person two years later. Several posts even stated how he hoped I would unalive myself when I found out the truth. I stopped talking to him. Blocked him on my phone and on all of my social media.
Thought I was over it but man, this video just makes me so freaking angry and gives me flashbacks to that time.
Hey, thats awful
Real sorry to hear u went through that
oh my gosh, that so awful he did that to you! It makes sense why this video would bring up those old feelings again. It was a pretty deep betrayal. It sounds like they got packed down deep and weren't processed (which is just our brains trying to protect us). I hope you can move thru the anger eventually. He doesnt deserve the space in your brain.
As someone still in the brony fandom I’m so so sorry I hope you’re doing better now 😢❤
@@PhoenixRedtail I am. It was just a very negative experience all around. I don't consider myself in the fandom anymore, but it's not because of what happened. I liked the 2022 movie and when I told people I liked it, the reactions were so negative I haven't touched anything MLP related since.
These people want to prove how fucked up and weird fandoms are all the while only proving how fucked up and weird THEY are lmao.
As a gay asian furry I thought this sounded familiar until it hit me. This whole video and situation is giving "Logan paul in Japan" vibes, like the whole controversy and back.
It's so uncanny that he basically repeated what logan did in his video. He goes into a community in the worst most disgusting and abnormal way possible, he disrespects and stereotypes the people and culture he's using as a prop for views, and he has a segment of the video he decided to keep in that's so disturbing and unacceptable like borderline demonetization material because why not.
But except like Logan he continues to keep the video up except it's slightly edited or whatever because money or views I guess? Even if he is sorry (which I obviously he isn’t) he used us in the community like a prop and throwaway costume just for his own profit and views, then he thinks that he can "make it up" with a a donation and an edit? What's he going to do next? Infiltrating the actual lgbtqia+ community as a gay trans woman to film a bondage session?? He's a disgusting person and honestly just throw the whole channel and him away at this point omg.
Not to be that guy but the comparison you made here was beyond weird imo. The way youre describing him here seems really unrealistic, he did do something pretty bad but his intentions were never malicious and he made it clear that he was sorry for any harm he had done when ppl told him how bad it was..
@@CityofChaoss To each their own yes, but it's pretty obvious he had malicious intentions here. I mean you can't tell me im being unrealistic and he was nothing more than just "pretty bad" if he's putting so much effort into "learning" about a community just to play into negative stereotypes, "infiltrating", and then filming, editing, posting complete stranger's very vulnerable and personal moments. What normal person goes the length to do that? And forgive me for drawing comparisons but even the energy and feeling of his channel is similar to old logan videos. Plus again he like Logan apologized too but at least logan took down his video his is still up including his "sigma paws" channel.
I see it, and it's probably why he's successful. A pretty white boy saying nothing of substance with youtube editing (the aesthetics of popular channels are so calcified, I refuse to make a judgement statement here). He's immensely privilaged and young. He has no need to question any of the beliefs instilled in him but knows to pay lip-service to decency. An algorithm washes him in a six figure salary, and nobody has to take responsibility for perpetuating hate speech and misinformation. Humanity becomes less important then clickability, because the ads play at the beginning.
Look, imma just say that, whilst your feelings of hatred, bitterness, resentment, etc., are justified here, there are two things that stand out to me as I read this:
First and foremost, I find it strange how you compare the Furry Fandom to race directly.
I understand that what you’re trying to do is compare the experiences of BIPOCs and LGBT+ with those of the Furry fandom, but they are simply not the same - and this ain’t me tryna gatekeep neither.
Literally, people are born a certain skin tone and with a certain brain chemistry that determines their gender and sexual orientation; the Furry Fandom is a fandom - of anthropomorphic animals.
It’s more akin to what skaters and punk rockers were in the 90s, what emo rock was in the early 2000s, what rap music and R&B are to certain groups and demographics, and what the Sexual Revolution has always been to the self-righteous conservative bigots who are hellbent on ruining sex for everyone; they are more akin to any of those things than they are to an “oppressed minority group”, who was born into inequality and oppression.
The Furry Fandom is, in essence, an unintentional counterculture. The two categories definitely overlap considerably, don’t get me wrong, but they are not one and the same.
To the point, secondly, demanding the reparations you want for this kind of thing (to no satisfaction) is not only beyond harsh, if this guy were actually acting in good faith, but even if he isn’t as the universally accepted “bad vibes” would suggest, who exactly benefits from being proven “right” in this situation??
Like, do you benefit at all, from feeling smug that you were as quick as you were to judge someone here, for factors we can only speculate on, based on a combination of our own intuition and the evidence presented here?
Because if he does, then most likely, he benefits from hardening people like you, and turning you against people who might be more genuine in their efforts to try and fit in with the Furry Fandom, which ironically, can lead to gatekeeping, and only further serve his interests.
Would you rather be that person, or would you rather try to identify all the different ways that someone in good faith would actually try to, yk, fit in and own up to any mistakes they should make along the way?
Do you forgive honest mistakes, if they come from people that are simply not one with the tribe?
@@Succulent_Pomegranate I’ll be blunt, you cannot claim to “understand me” or anything about this situation because you have a very 2d perspective of what I and other people are saying. I didn’t just compare race and fandoms because im asian or it’s a buzzword and I don’t understand the difference between race and fandoms but because he’s doing exactly what Logan did and clearly he doesn't want to be in the fandom. You can't say he was putting “genuine effort” into being in this subculture and that I’m “gatekeeping” because have you watched him? Excuse me for being offended but I never heard of a person “trying to join a fandom” by asking people uncomfortable and inappropriate things, playing an obnoxious negative caricature, filming strangers doing private things unconsensually, and not even taking your actions down so you can continue to monetize it. If you think that this is normal to do when joining a subculture or “an honest mistake” you need help. It’s so obvious he wasn’t trying to join the fandom because what is he doing now? Does he still claim to be a furry? Is he still “in the fandom”? Once he was done using the fandom he just moved on. How do you look at this “furry content” and think “he’s not trying to profit off an already understood and denigrated subculture, he just wants to be in it”. I know I come off as bitter and harsh to you but when you’ve had to deal with people like him all your life just because you’re a queer furry you’re not too quick to forgive just anyone. I only forgive people when they actually deserve it and he doesn’t deserve it.
I remember one of my favorite posts on tumblr, OP said: “hating furries is just the silencer on the gun of hating queer people” and it couldn’t ring truer rn.
I find the bit about him storming the dance comp very interesting. Even through all the chaos of a con, we as a subculture have developed a very orderly, defined, and almost strict social order. He broke that order, apparently for the first time in ANE's history. I just think that shows how little he actually learned, how much he's completely missed out on, in relation to our fandom. He was never truly invested, even just as an experiment, and he never actually cared about our culture.
It’s especially ironic how he’s making us out to be the cringey ones while he’s disrupting the competition and ruining it for everyone else which is what actual cringe is 😭
Did he edit out the lie about being able to buy 18+ books and the references to STDs as well?
just take the whole vid down honestly
Nope!
its still in there, because making that claim about a group know to be very non straight in the current times we live in is not batshit insane at all, not at all, no, never
Ever since I came out as Bi, my perception of things started to shift. I always considered myself an ally (for now obvious reasons :P) but actually BEING LGBT myself... its just so weird looking back and not really... getting it. It's the difference between swimming with fish and actually being a fish.
So fundamentally, even if it was done in good faith, just going to LGBT events and pretending to be one themselves does not work. At all.
The unedited video of him crashing the dance comp really sums up everything I hate about these types of TH-camrs. His video looks hype and energetic like he's got the whole crowd with him, but in reality it was incredibly awkward, cringy and annoying. These TH-camrs go around acting like public nuisances that no one wants around but thanks to the magic of editing they can make it look like they got a spot in the limelight.
its like those videos comparing what being at a headphone dance party is like with vs without the headphones on.
They are trying so hard to emulate the lightning in a bottle that filthy frank had in an era long past. It's even more awkward after the notable people of that era matured and moved on.
@@edgyzero6305 Plus, wasn't Filthy Frank meant to be a parody character mocking these types of asshole TH-camrs, except no one got the point? The same way Tyler Durden is seen as an idol by "alpha males" despite that character being a criticism of toxic masculinity?
@@Thegr8MC Yeah I do remember George (the guy behind filthy frank) mentioning that filthy frank was meant as an example of what you shouldn't be. There was a self awareness there that just isn't present with people like this. They don't think the idea of a person being an absurd asshole is funny, they just think being an asshole is funny.
I saw part of the Video made by Beta and i didn’t finish it because just imagining someone behaving like that makes me feel uncomfortable. Him just storming on to the dance competition and making a scene got under my skin . I don’t understand the value of that content . I get why it’s popular but this kind of invasive people who see everyone as a resource to use for numbers is disgusting and disturbing to me .
Now to something positive thank you for being a positive influence you helped me be more accepting of myself. Your legoshi videos brought me to your channel and your content let me perceive this community. Thank you and everyone else involved for projects like gnollplaying games. This community has become a place of comfort for me .
Is there a term for when someone thinks they're pwning people they see as cringe, but they're actually being incredibly cringe themselves?
A lot of these people who think they're showing furries what for just end up looking sad, pitiable, and pathetic, frankly.
shitty satire? @dinosaysrawr
@@dinosaysrawra clown
@@dinosaysrawr A self-report. Or, well, projecting, really.
Anthpo's method of 'infiltrating the community' or whatver feels like the polar opposite of a video i watched a couple weeks ago of this guy who posed a question along the lines of "can furry art make you rich".
The guy in that video went and contacted several furry artists for advice on drawing and showed off their art and such and he actually did alot of practise for drawing just for this little video project: he mad ehis own fursona, learned how to draw for basically the first time and wasnt too upset when his only commision was for 5 dollars from a close freind of his
I need to rewatch that video i think because i feel like i couldve forgotten a few aspects but overall it felt more... sincere? Than anthpo's
I think because it's probably a genuine question that actually involves looking at the fandom and reacting like an actual normal person instead of a freak.
Anthpo thought 'I wanna film a bunch of gay guys and make it seem like I am gay just like them' rather than 'I wanna know what it's like'.
that sounds interesting! i love it when people discover drawing. I just love when people make things with their own hands haha
@@celisewillishaha same ❤ its so lovely to see others get into drawing
the one from Syonide right? i subbed to him after watching that. he was so earnest. comes across as a genuinely cool guy. another big difference between the videos is how anthpo put emphasis on the fact that hes not a furry. when i just saw the thumbnail and title of syonide's video i assumed he was a furry.
@@peacefox02yep that's the guy !! I also subbed after watching it because I loved his energy and how much time he was willing to put into it and the fact he went out of his way to find people from the community to talk to
ngl I'd been avoiding info on this whole thing as much as possible before today, but jesus fucking christ
I had no idea he'd straight-up been roleplaying as a fake furry (and pretending to be a paedo/zoophile while he was at it??) beforehand
trust me, as a young (gen z) queer autistic person who also is a furry (just haven't settled on one fursone yet lol) this shit bothers us too. especially the implications of SA and contracting an STD that has killed many gay people, even though that wasn't even that long ago historically speaking! younger queers definitely need to freshen our memories of what happened in the past and make sure the same mistakes aren't repeated, especially not by those in power who opress us.
but people with big influence like anthpo, are making this really hard. i used to be a fan, enjoyed his content and since he didn't seem outright bigoted (or at least not intentionally) as far as i remember, i assumed that he was a fine guy.
but this is now just a grim reminder to queer people never to idolize someone you aren't 100% sure of is safe, so to say.
the harm that people like him bring to both neurodivergent and queer communities is immense and it really pains me to see how we're continuously being ridiculed for honestly no reason at all aside from the fact that they just want a scapegoat to poke fun at
agree. also, just have a bunch of fursonas hehe no need to settle on just one!
Jesus Christ....
As someone, who got to participate in a real furry convention in a very homophobic country feel...
Very sad... A bit angry, but mostly sad.
As someone who just experienced waking up, going out and seeing "my people" EVERYWHERE, I feel offended.
No person should intrude in other's safe space. That's just cruel
What country, if you don't mind me asking?
@@AlphaGarg(sadly) ru
@@loratnar5670 Damn... hope you're alright all things considered
@@loratnar5670 as a fellow person from russia, я надеюсь эта помойка станет лучше в будущем..
(posted this on Beta's video but I wanna say it here too) I was doing human subject research ethics training recently for my senior thesis, and one of the *main* examples of ethics violations was the Tearoom Trade experiment, where Laud Humphreys, a researcher, went undercover and recorded his interactions and involvement with (often closeted) queer men's adult and private lives without their consent. The similarities with what Anthpo did in his video are well... yeah.
I’m a long time fan of anthpo and not a furry, also not LGBT. I initially liked his video, but this really changed my perspective! Thanks for this, you got a new subscriber
oh god the std jokes are fucking foul
mizuki akiyama jumpscare?!?!?!?
And I mean, is an STD screening after having sexual relationships with multiple strangers recommended? Absolutely.
Is any fucking else about STDs in Anthony's video helping or going in that sense? Absolutely not! And I'm a gay man and an active member of my local queer community, the "You _will_ get HIV." statement had me retching. This could have been an educational moment, but nope. More fearmongering around STDs, hell knows we don't have enough of THAT.
i've literally never been so appalled in my life; can you imagine, being that rich and that popular on the internet, to only do childish shit like that?
Crazy
I mean, being rich and famous both fry your brain nine times out of ten. The fact that he isn't even more cooked is probably notable, frankly.
I don’t really consider myself much of a furry, but as someone who watched Anthpo’s content for a long time I’m honestly really disappointed by these stunts he’s pulled recently. What he did at that convention was super disrespectful and I really hope he’s able to realize this and apologize.
I struggled to articulate all the ways Anthony's video made me deeply uncomfortable. Thank you for putting it to words, this echos how I've been feeling since his video was published.
He literally has the personality of a middle school kid who is the “class clown”, but he never grew up 💀
When you posted that AI generated sona on bsky, I knew something spicy was going on. I never would have seen his video without your analysis. This whole event would have passed me by.
I really appreciate that you approached the topic looking for redeeming qualities in this person, and offered constructive criticism on how he could have approached this "experiment." Your editing, your messaging, and your fairness make this a great watch, despite how truly despicable the actions in the source content were.
Thank you for covering this when I first watched the video when it came out it hurt me.
I’ve was a fan of Anthony’s videos for over 7 years ever since he was making content in Highschool and College. His videos are honestly really well and endearing with such heart. He brought such thoughtful messages and expressed so much love to his friends.
I know as an outsider to his content he seems like someone who has always been a clout chaser but man he changed. I can vouch for his character before. When he left TH-cam it really saddened me and I thought it would be it but man
It was a really disheartening for me watching the video on the day it launched with such an ignorant and disrespectful video when he comes from such a great background of content. He left TH-cam for a year or so and I’ve was waiting for his return when he was hinting at it and I wish he never did now. Once again thank you I’m glad people are covering this because it’s something that needs to be addressed.
Update: I just watched his latest video about the aliens and it’s a perfect example of his old content and the charm he puts into it. You don’t need to watch the entire video you can watch the last 5 minutes. I don’t know what went wrong to where he felt the need to do what he did.
I don't think it's that complex; probably just spends more time around idiots who love punching down, and punching down can feel good. Then he thought "hey, i could monetize that 🤔" We do both ourselves and creators a disservice when we treat them like they're reciprocal friendships. This guy isn't a character in a story with an arc to fulfill. This guy doesn't know you, and you only know the side of him he's willing to record and post online.
further confusion mentioned! but also this whole situation just messes with my anxiety around talking to new people at cons and fur meets
I know how you feel but I would try to not let it get to you, there’s a lot of cool people to meet at cons and fur meets. Just be aware of toxic behavior and use your best judgment just like any other situation and it’ll be okay!
22:59 wait… it’s a private chat… for a nude space…. And he’s shocked by people being nude?!
Regarding the neurodivergence thing, I think that there is a massive difference between when someone within furry puts emphasis on it and when someone _from outside of the fandom_ puts emphasis on it, particularly if they dodge around the queer aspect.
To the former, as a queer neurodivergent furry, I would make the argument that not only are autism spectrum diagnoses notably more common in the fandom than is typical, but wager that *undiagnosed* neurodivergence is proportionally markedly higher within the furry community than within the greater population; however, I would also argue that this has less to do with all furries being secretly non-neurotypical than that the community as a whole is much more accepting of behaviours which mainstream society treats as eccentric at best and aberrant at worst, meaning that folks with ADHD, ASD, tic disorders and so forth can safely unmask around other furries in a way that they might feel that they cannot around "normal people." A big part of that is tied into the sensory and symbolic aspects of furry, but it's also inextricable from the overwhelming queerness: Knowing that your sexuality or gender identity is seen by many as inherently aberrant, particularly when combined with that animalistic aesthetic, tends to breed empathy with or at least compassion for those who are similarly seen as fundamentally alien. To whit, it goes in the other direction as well: When basic social scripts aren't intuitive or even particularly logical to you, questioning other fundamental assumptions with respect to social norms tends to follow, such as those surrounding cisheteronormativity. I think this is probably also why, while right-wing furries certainly do exist, most furries tend to lean left overall, with an unusually high concentration of outright communists and especially anarchists, to the point that it's something of a meme in and of itself. To say that furry is often psychologically peculiar as a furry is, more often than not, to celebrate this peculiarity, this sensitivity to sensations and symbols and this willingness to playfully transgress assumed boundaries without doing harm-an embrace of our freakdom.
Conversely, when a non-furry underlines the elevated rate of autism diagnoses, the subtext is decidedly less celebratory and decidedly more… well, condescending at best and nakedly hostile at worst, pathologising the subculture through an ableist framing of the autistic especially as lesser, infantile, and Other, which when combined with the queerphobia has a very similar tenor to the rhetoric of those "concerned parents" who went from playing martyrs online over their children's autism diagnoses to using those diagnoses as leverage to deprive them of agency when they might, say, question their assigned gender at birth. The furry is, I think, a deeply discomfiting figure to a certain kind of reactionary, because we are by and large openly queer, highly accepting of "weird" behaviour, typically socially liberal on the milder end of our politics and vocally radical on the harder end, focused on a shared interest and ethos which has no central intellectual property and thus is impossible to truly own or fully co-opt, and prone to embrace an aesthetic which defies traditional ideas of seriousness and subverts what it means to seem "adult." We make for good boogeymen because we bring together a lot of symbolic threats in one place. This is not to say that Anthony was consciously thinking about, well, much of any of this, but this substrate of intellectual sludge has been floating around beneath the surface of the Internet for a while, and as things get more dire for queer folks and the subcultures which support them, the scum really begins to rise to the surface. We're in a whole new age of moral panic and queerphobic outrage, and the exploitative shock content is the inevitable byproduct.
P.S. Much less seriously, it is mildly surreal to see a physical copy of The Fluffer just, y'know, around. Good taste, though.
P.P.S. Also, is that wall hanging with the yeens a Gwendolyn Wood/Poodlewool print? It definitely looks like her work. (Gwen's great and her work's great.)
Excellently written
I think you particularly nailed it in the part about how the furry fandom represents a complete inversion of reactionary values. Hell, I think the furry fandom could very well be used to shift the internet Overton Window massively to the Left if we just organized. Anyways, very well written.
Reading this reminds of me of that period in the early-to-mid 2010s when "Alt Furs" like Foxler tried to take over a bunch of furry spaces and got curb stomped almost immediately
"A big part of that is tied into the sensory and symbolic aspects of furry" I see someone else is a big fan of Patricia Taxxon!
@@arcioko2142 that sounds like caos
Hi,
I’ve been a furry, and also a lesbian in secret for so long. I saw your Adastra video and it made me realize so much about myself that I never thought of before. It finally gave me the courage to reach out and join furry groups and start making friends.
When I see people like Anthony making surface level judgements and long term insults, it just makes me realize how important and meaningful this fandom is. You really voice my feelings perfectly, and it’s really hard to tell people, because no one would understand. I saw Anthonys video and couldn’t get through more than 5 minutes. Thank you for highlighting this, you have such an intelligent way of speaking about it.
Really good stuff Keith. I really liked your point about how he's just a young guy making stupid mistakes, but because the internet "gifted" him with success his ignorance and idiocy just gets broadcasted to thousands of people instead of being a private experience for him to learn from. This all just sucks because I imagine most of his audience is rather young and impressionable, meaning there's probably a bunch of kids out there who might be inclined to repeat this behavior and then the whole cycle begins anew. You're doing great work breaking this down. I hope this video does well.
Hearing that this guy is 22 is so wild to me- me, who is 29, has never been in a relationshio before and is forever questioning whether I'm ace or pan, who still feels like a child sometimes, who is going to find out in a month whether I am autistic, and who is making nowhere near the money he is. He should be going to parties with his friends, not harrassing communities he has nothing to do with.
This video has been incredibly insightful towards viewing Anthony's video. Honestly, you had me gagged towards the mention of how many of the other glaring fallacies in the video were digressed from the pure shock factor of him recording a "room party", I know I was guilty of it myself.
But thank you for the time you've dedicated making this video with the amount its encapsulated. Not just taking what had made up Anthony's video in its entirety, but your own experiences that add a critical human element to it all, which I found personally moving giving an assurance of good faith.
is it just me or does this all just feel like internalized homophobia and projection? like, it wouldn't be the most surprising thing if anthpo was gay and/or a furry to a degree
In one of his recent videos he started a Bachelor like game show where he found his match from both male and female contestants. So I think that he is bisexual. Might be the first time he is open about it though. I haven’t watched most of his videos, so I am not sure.
He's the gayest person I've seen all week. The amount of female brained energy is crazy. It's like boogie2988 and Francis lol.
Definitely.
I'm not even two minutes in and I'm already starting to hate this dude for the cartoon character voice he does while suiting. How much worse is this gonna get
Really bad
like
really really bad
I wonder if anyone's ever tried to do any research into why there aren't more straight furries. The concept itself doesn't have any direct connection to sexuality, apart from the usual "adults are horny and like to combine things they like with sex" that comes standard with any serious fandom. My personal suspicion is that it likely has something to do with the way straight people are expected to "perform" for society; like straight people constantly have to prove to everyone around them that they are, in fact, straight- more than that, they have to prove they are "normal". Being gay already puts one outside of normal, so I guess it's just easier for us to openly enjoy other things that also aren't considered "normal" because there's no pressure to pretend to be. Straight people are terrified of being seen as "cringe" but if your very existence already makes the normies cringe then it's actually very freeing to be able to just stop giving a fuck and be yourself.
But that's just my hypothesis, I'd still love to see some kind of formal research.
I actually really love your posit that furries are the default, and straight people have repressed their animality! Hahah this is fantastic, I'm saving your comment and making it my desktop image. This is just me, but i think of it like this: Gay relationships have, for thousands of years, been compared to animals. "Two men can get married, what's next?? Marrying your dog??" It's a dumb fallacy of course, but if you're being treated lesser than human constantly, why not embrace it?
If you're part of a group that is othered, just spiritually accepting that, and being like "you know what, animals are powerful and mysterious, I'm a 6ft tall anthro fox with angel wings!" And in the suit, you get that freedom to be yourself, completely stylize every inch of your appearance without thinking about your fleshy human cage.
You might enjoy Contrapoints recent video essay called "Twilight"! It's about sexuality and attraction, and how it's healthy to explore different aspect of yourself :)
I think you're right. Society's homogenized and commodified everything now to the point where individuality is expected but then suppressed or capitalized on when any iota of vulnerability is involved. People are lonelier than ever because we've been taught to be closed off and have thick skin. I wouldn't say it's been done deliberately, but there's a lack of awareness that has allowed it to get worse.
I mean, the furry fandom has its origin in a bunch of artists who liked to draw "funny animals" doing relatable stuff, but in a more adult/close to life kinda way compared to Disney. Like a lot of early furry comics heavily feature anthropomorphic animals living in gritty realities, they smoked and drunk, had sex, said curses ect. . Artists are already a group where the percentage of LGBTQ people is higher than in the average population and artists who draw a lot of kinky stuff were even more likely to be in that group (because LGBTQ people are generally more open about those things). Worth to mention that while this was the origin, the modern furry fandom is a lot more broad when it comes to themes of art and stuff and I would say the fandom today is a lot less about being gritty and a lot more colorful.
But the starting cast of the fandom (even though not all early artists would later use the term furry for themselves, many kept the 'funny animals' label) was already very LGBTQ:
One of the first really big funny animals comics was "Omaha the Cat Dancer" about an anthropomorphic cat working as a stripper which includes a bunch of gay and bisexual characters and was written by Reed Waller and Kate Worley, both were openly bisexual.
Or for example, two of the 'founders' of the 'proper' furry fandom, so basically the section of 'funny animal' artists and art lovers who started to use the term furry were Mark Merlino and Rod O'Riley - who met because of their interest to build this fandom, fell in love with each other in the 70s and were in a relationship until Mark Merlinos death this year.
And then there is probably a bias of a fandom that mostly consists of men but is all about cute fluffy animals and stuff, like a lot of traditionally masculine heterosexual dudes probably have some problems to be open about liking something like that. Also, furries just seem to be a bit more open-minded and cosmopolitan, quoting Wikipedia here: "Furries rate themselves higher (compared with a comparison community sample of non-furries) on the degree of global awareness (knowledge of the world and felt connections to others in the world), global citizenship identification (psychological connection with global citizens), and environmental sustainability". While all of these things can't be equated with with being LGBTQ, there is certainly a solid correlation. It's kinda similar to "why are there relativaly many LGBTQ people in the tech industry?" Well, they tend to be younger, they tend to live in urban areas which have less restrictive social norms and allow more free self-expression and both makes it more likely that people will openly identify as LGBTQ. (And to finish this triangle relationship: there are also a lot of tech people in the furry fandom and the other way around to the point that there are memes about it)
I was thinking about this too after hearing that statistic, being straight, leaning-ace myself.
There is a thing such as outcast morality, indeed. To be openly furry is outcast, to be openly gay is outcast. Thus you will find more overlap within outcast categories. I wouldn't call one more free than the other, though. Not at all. Whether in or out, you are bound by expectation and repressed by self image. To be openly furry is a prison. To be openly gay is a prison. As all label and category are. Don't think you're capable of acting outside of your expectations so easily. Or perhaps more accurate: Don't think it is possible to express the entirety of yourself within a label identity. Self denial is a core human experience. It'd be awfully empty upstairs if it weren't.
im really glad you pointed out the art looking like ai cuz that was very obvious to me and i felt like i was going crazy
WHO FILMS A PRIVATE INTIMATE MOMENT WITH PEOPLE AND THINKS "oh yeah, this isn't a red flag to post to millions of people in PUBLIC???" Like, I swear people only see it as a smaller problem because of the stupid furry stigma. Random person going to spaces they don't belong to act absolutely stupid is already dumb content in itself, but that's taking it WAAAY further than stupidity.
It's geinuenly sad how little these people attempt to understand the community they're "infiltrating" (because had he just tried to join geinuenly even as an observer, he'd likely be warmly welcomed) and that *somehow* they manage to shine the light on the wrong thing every single time.
When I was at mff I took part in a small panel for sober furs and had one of these people posing as a normal member while their friend filmed the group in the background. While he got found out relatively quickly and had security called, the fact was they still got footage of all of us explaining our reasoning which included a lot of vulnerable stories of adiction and the like, yet there was no consideration in their minds of "hey maybe we shouldnt be doing this" and its just baffling. These people can't actually be seen as attempting to understand the community no matter how much fluff they try and put in to spin their content in a positive light. They should be called out for this stuff as the needless harassment that it obviously is.
It certainly does sound like he was being deceptive, exploitative and malicious of the Furry community.
You know watching this video further in im thinking now
"Is he trying to find these rooms for content or is he unknowningly exploring his sexuality but under the guise of 'im doing this for content'. I can not see someone who knows like nothing about furries go straight for "i want to find out where they're fucking"
I used to really like Anthony Po but he really fell off. Like bro is disgusting for filming something so private and posting it💀
Bro should've just stopped after college, what a literal joke of a human.
@eggsalad3311 Bro really should have stayed off the internet 💀💀
Wow... I'm not a furry, just a follower from before you came out that didn't care. But wow. This guy. I think you sum up everything problematic with this perfectly. I'm really horrified tbh.
I've been a chaperone at a furry convention. My younger brother is a furry and trans and while it's personally not for me, I appreciate artistic skill and effort. Fur suits are amazing works of art! Not only are they complicated but people also put who they are into them. That's beautiful. I found it lovely how everyone knew each other via the fur suit designs. I also thought people were very kind to lend my brother a suit for his first convention. Really made him feel apart of it but never in a nsfw way. I believe my brother was 16 or 17 at that point. Gosh that was nearly a decade ago now.
Part of me is fired up in a way that makes me want to go out and film a real and respectful look into furry cons (but in my heart I know I won't/cant)
Yeah dude the thing is also that his whole “quitting youtube” was an obvious lie. He took a few months off and than started a huge back log to keep the job going. He never stopped, he just stopped posting for the hype.
exactly! like he had stuff going on in the background (like the cheeseball man thing and obviously the furry tiktok account he had kept for a while)
Can we all take a step back and realize the sheer amount of editing that went into this video. Like, holy crap, that is a LOT of examples given with solid video evidence to back it up. 1 hour spent per minute of video is average, but there has to be wayyy more to it when it comes to videos like this!
Honestly to me it felt like not only a betrayal, but also anthpo showing his true colors. Up until that moment, he mostly just made silly videos, like recapping series in bad costumes. He was widely known as a wholesome guy and then he just drops THIS. Not only that, he drops it as his big comeback video. It may be cruel to say this about a 22 year old but I kinda do want this video to haunt him for the rest of his career, if not his life.
this reminded me of another non-furry youtuber that attended a furry con.
Strange Aeons. a emo/goth lesbian who is known for her videos diving into various communities on Tumblr, and her review of onision's books. (and her long furby's Thursday and GirlGruel) from what ive seen of her content, she is of the mindset that being normal is boring, so be weird. and her videos tend to be a celebration of being weird.
it is an interesting video about an outsider's perspective on furries, interacting with fursuiters. She did say that it was a unique, strange experience talking to someone wearing a fursuit.
she didn't pretend to be a furry, and she even met some of her fans (unplanned). she went to Furnal Equinox, and her biggest complaints were the theme (she said that its not the worst, but could have been better) and that it was difficult to find the registration table.
she said that while she isnt a furry, she loves the idea of having an alter ego, and costume that empowers you to be yourself, and lovingly described a furcon as 'the internet in real life', people being who they really are, and not having to hide themselves. (she does have a art piece with her and her girlfriends fursona's, she is a Furby and her Girlfriend is a cheetah.)
him crashing the dance competition was actually painful to watch, like zero regard for anyone. for the other contestants who are actually part of the fandom. who have put effort and passion into what they do, or the judges, or the people in the crowd or the schedule, all for what? 4 seconds of spotlight? its childish. petty, disrespectful, and short sighted of him to do that. like what did he even expect? everyone to be like "wow look at this guy he's so good dancing to absolutely nothing and interrupting the presenter" like, no?? you're a nuisance who doesn't give a damn about other people. I've never been to a furry convention or any kind of convention before but the dance competition videos have always been some of my favourite videos to watch, to see all the talented people perform and give something back to the fandom in idk it's kind of beautiful in a way. this guy didn't do that, he couldn't care less about the opinions of the real-life people around him or about "impressing" furries at that point, he just wanted to infiltrate to make content for his stupid video so he could get views. and he did "get what he wanted" he absolutely did, and then he ditched without a second thought. from what i know conventions are about, (and from watching an insane number of videos on conventions) meeting other people like you, feeling connected with other members of the community, other people who like the same things as you and accept you as you are. in the future if i get the chance to go, it will probably be one of the experiences i'd have most looked forward to in my entire life. to be able to interact in real life, enjoy something first-hand idk it feels special a little bit? like this guy comes in, and those other youtubers like him, and just completely overlook and disregard what the actual experience would be for someone if they actually even cared, or cared to talk to someone who actually cared, in the name of trying to get content for views and find some scandalous story. i don't like that guy.
i'm more so disgusted at @benoftheweek. he is supposed to be fighting for "equality for all" and he makes very eccentric videos so for him to be involved in this homophobic garbage is a gut punch
Yeah for real, I used to watch him but it seems like he cares more about TH-cam clicks than the harm he might be doing to an already hated community
THANK YOU for mentioning the AI art on the card. It's been bothering me like hell.
other than the sub-text of what he has done
I'm not a furry but I gotta say that every time someone makes fun of y'all or for some reason has a "problem" with y'all it reaaaally bugs me because it feels like thinly veiled homophobia, even from queer people sometimes. This video really helped me see that this isn't just a feeling I get. As someone who's also queer I've only had good experiences with the furry community (anecdotal, I know, but still) and I can relate to being seen as "weird" by default.
Sadly when I watched anthpo's video I missed a lot of the subtext you pointed out here, so thanks for making this analysis. It really helped shed light on how homophobia, ableism and just general degeneracy-fearmongering there is when discussing the furry community, even in a random TH-cam video that attempts to end on a positive note.
I would check out the rest of boring Keith’s videos, as they are probably some of the best videos on this subject there is
@@flyingpiggy1475 For sure! Channel's definitely on my radar now
@@miningglalie I would start chronologically
I've been mostly laughing this situation off. Dude comes in thinking he could just easily win the dancer events, but gets his ass kicked in the battle event and didn't even get into the dance comp finals.
It's also funny seeing how much he lies/flourishes the story of him with the dancerfurs
This guy talks about "earning furries trust" as if we don't welcome non-furries. Been a furry for 24 years, and never seen a regular person told they couldn't participate in a furry con. This whole thing is like "infiltrating" the public frickin' library.
The whole "this is all legal, I checked with my lawyers" part of his apology is the equivalent of someone saying "yeah I made fun of you in a way that was specifically meant to hurt your feelings because I perfectly knew you were sensitive about that subject, but it's not illegal so it's fine because you can't put me in jail, therefore I won't have any consequences for my actions"
Now that’s a voice that sank a thousand ships.
Brilliant video and analysis by the way, as always. Finishing with that dance competition segment, held in almost deathly silence, made my insides collapse like a dying sun. Absolute toilet of a person.
no it is Eric Cartman's voice which is worse
Credit where it's due, it does sound like a voice that might come out of a cartoon animal.
@@dinosaysrawr yeah it does sound like that
He sounds like cool cat
I just had a cringe memory unlock while watching this video. I was at a queer dance event, hanging out with the people cooling off outside, and this one shirtless 20 year old (with sunglasses on despite it being 2am) was there. He compliments this girl (a lesbian) on her glow in the dark wings. She said thanks, and complimented his tattoo. Literally the second thing he says to this woman is "I'm straight, by the way, I think you're hot" to which she visibly cringes and steps away to stand closer to her girlfriend. The guy then laughs that dudebro laugh and goes "Why does everybody turn on me when I say that? That's so unfair!"
It's like, dude, why are you here?
I'm convinced he just saw a group of people in fetish attire, ditched his shirt, and walked up to blend in, all so he could ?? Hit on lesbians?? IDK
Straight guys can be weird
Shoutout to the MC at that dance comp, they played it off so well and turned it into something ACTUALLY funny, not, "funny because its cringe" but "funny because i can pander it to the crowd and make it into a con-meme" thats what you want from an MC
a a former anthpo fan his content arguebly got worse and weir after his return, genuinely grossed out. going to a convention is one thing but then entering a queer space pretending to be gay then UPLOADING it to the internet is a whole other
I only liked him because of adventure time :(
Great video. Honestly this is the first furry-related video you made I've ever finished to the end, since I am not a furry or gay and my English level couldn't handle that complexity in a unfamiliar narrative context for hours long. I got your point in this one (and learned the weird term neurodivergent). I was once insulted in my own subculture by such kind of behavior, so I got kinda enraged by this guy. And I am so happy that your previous vid received that much resonance. It is really fulfilling to change people's life while being a normal person.
The more I ask the question, "Are the straights okay," the louder the, "No" gets. And I'm becoming increasingly familiar with finding other people's reactions of disgust utterly vile. It made more sense in like, Lily Simpson videos looking at portrayals of trans women in older media (still utterly vile, but it made more sense), but there are zoomers that are still like this?? What??
I'm finding that, at least with folks i meet irl, the cool zoomers tend to be women and enbies 😅
A lot of modern far-right ideology is just about being disgusted by various groups of people ('the gays', "the blacks', "the transes' ect. ). Like, they will say a lot and talk about how they think those groups are endangering western civilization and how they are just concerned about 'men in women's bathrooms' but when it comes down to the basics they just feel disgust and their entire lives are centered around making it everyones problem.
It really makes me wish I wasn't straight sometimes. Because I don't like how straight people act that I see. But I know that's probably wrong of me to feel somehow.
26:06 oh yeah the implications of children being able to see it or buy it are so insidious with all the attacks on sex workers and queer folk.
I'm reminded of whenever we had tourists at playparties. They were always so obvious, as were their intentions. Their "outfit" was just street jeans plus shirtless. That's noone's idea of sexy at a kink party. There's a LOT of naked skin, but the sports bro shirtless look is literally never among it. And the way they stare and stand themselves "conveniently close" to people - well, exclusively women, really - doing anything lewd is just... disruptive and disgusting. There were two women making out on the couch next to me and within ten seconds the couch I was laying on had four guys magnetised to it. I made sure to fully spread out on my couch just so they don't try to sit down.
I understand the curiosity, and I do, in fact, think that most non-kinky people would actually profit from attending a playparty with explicit sexuality and kink because it really breaks open a lot of internalised stigma about sex and bodies that you never knew you had, but man, tourism just ruins it for EVERYONE. (And I don't think this holds true for room parties at furry events, from what I've heard about them so far.)
The one playparty I've been at that was the only actually completely safe playparty experience I've ever had was an explicitly queer one where the door thoroughly interviewed everyone trying to get in, and they bounced a lot of guys who pretended to be bi (a disgustingly common pickup line these days too, UGH) just to choke when they were asked if they'd like to make out with one of the guys inside. There were two cis men at that party, they were both bisexual, and the _entire_ atmosphere at the party was distinctly more free, open, forthcoming and inclusive than on any event I've ever attended, and it was so obvious that that was just because of the absence of cishet men. Social groupings interacted and intermingled with each other more openly and voluntarily than I'd ever seen, people went to back rooms together after talking for minutes, and several people felt safe being sexual out in the open. This is remarkable because to make this clear, this was NOT a sex party or an orgy, it was a kink party where open sexual interaction is _tolerated_, but neither explicitly encouraged nor expected (another way you can spot tourists - that's what they think is happening just because of the BDSM label). So if visible sex happens anyway, they're either trying to (and I don't mean this criticially) provoke some reaction, or feeling VERY safe and comfortable.
They tried to recreate this event once a year later, but the location wanted to sell more tickets, so they insisted on a more lax door policy. It completely fell apart. We had 5-6 men (among maybe 20 participants), half of them most certainly not queer, and we were at the same atmosphere we always have, which I can only now even identify at all because I've witnessed how it feels without them ONCE.
Stigma of kink and furry communities differ wildly, so it's not completely comparable, but what I can relate to is how horrifying the idea is of
a) being filmed (WITHOUT CONSENT, IT DOESN'T MATTER IF IT'S BLURRED, IT'S STILL NON-CONSENSUAL AND VIOLATING)
b) being observed by an uninformed, stereotype-leaning tourist
c) being APPROACHED by him with the request of being included
d) actually doing the emotional labour of ignoring some of the weird vibes because maybe he's just lonely or a newbie or neurodivergent or whatever to have someone who could really use it be included just for that person to never have intended to actually participate and, WORSE, not actually having needed it, making my emotional labour and the vulnerability of everyone in the room go to waste,
e) HAVING THE VULNERABILITY OF EVERYONE IN THE ROOM GO TO WASTE, and then
f) finding a stereotype-distorted presentation of all this online, which
g) is completely lacking ALL the emotional context of the portrayed events AND community, which is the VAST MAJORITY of what makes these events relevant and gives them impact.
Dude could never have gone undercover as a furry even if it had been in good faith and pulled off sensitively. Not being one myself I can only guess, but if it's in any way comparable to why people do kink, you will never have the community experience without the emotional circumstances that led most people there in the first place. Without the life experience of being queer, you cannot understand what a queer space IS. You can only see what it looks like from the outside, and we already know what both BDSM and furry culture look like from the outside. The very best case would be a sensitive, well-meaning perspective, but never EVER the actual experience.
One of the best moments I ever had on a playparty was when a whole group of about 20 people was laying around in a room with a cushioned surface which was essentially a 5x6m large bed, which, not coincidentally, is also in my opinion the most important type of room a playparty can have. Because the cuddles, the softness, the vulnerability, the intimacy, that's the most important aspect of BDSM. In that moment is where I kissed my first cis man too, it was really sweet and nice, and I don't think he'd have felt safe enough in any other context because we went on one date a few weeks later, and he was SO nervous to just hold hands even though it was dark and we were completely alone. The vulnerability EMPOWERS. Counterintuitively, it makes people strong. Anything that takes away from that vulnerability weakens the community as a consequence. It's literally toxic.
Thank you, genuinely, for sharing your experience here. You articulate your points really well, and the window you provide into kink culture outside of furry is intriguing to me. It's kind of odd- the furry community having such strong queer and kink-positive involvement means that I've had relatively little direct interaction with queer-focused and kink-focused communities outside of furry. I simply haven't needed to seek those things out individually, because they're already present within furry spaces. But I've often wondered what the experiences in non-furry kink and LGBT+ communities are like.
having seen the reveal of who this is before this video, I described it as "as bad as a pro furry video as one can make without fully being anti furry" and i have to admit i did not encounter any of the sigma paws content directly, so I think I'll have to reevaluate. watching this is an incredible excercise in self torture, thanks.
Anthpo should've stayed gone after the countdown :( this is so disappointing. There was a time when he was funny, he was creative, he was kind and had many friends he cared for. What happened to him?
I was conflicted at first watching this, but as the video kept going it actually gave me a new perspective on anthony's video. Very high quality content, and more people should actually watch this
This guy was more obsessed with sex than the actual furries.
idk about u.s. or u.k. but here in Brazil discrimination is actually a crime that you cant even pay for bail, so here he would probably be in jail by now lol
The US and UK have similar laws. But I believe the punishments are more financial/lawsuit focused than actual jail-time worthy (depending on the severity).
@@Dr.Oofers here they also have to pay a fee and up to 3 years in reclusion(I googled it just to make sure) but glad that you guys also have laws for this ❤️
I did not expect a something like that to come out of brazil of all places
@@neo1711 I know right! Cause still we have a ridiculous high rates of lgbt murder BUT our community voice here is getting bigger and LOUDER when comes to our rights
Based BR moment.
He seems really fixated on the room party, more than curiosity or something similar.... makes me wonder if he was interested but then realized it was a queer heavy space
I mean if it was me, I wouldn't have got into bed with them when I realized they weren't my type... But then again I'm not the type to post a video of strangers being intimate.
bro wen't "undercover as a furry" yet me, a non-furry have more furry friends than him
This is the most thorough breakdown of everything wrong with what Anthony did that I've seen. All mention the recording, but you also covered the grossness of crashing the dance competition, implying NSFW can be viewed by minors, the pervasive homophobia, the damage to furries' reputation he did as Sigma (the extent of which I hadn't been aware), everything.
Ok so this video started bad... (The shock upon realising it was anthpo? ah that hurt)
and kept getting worse and worse...
and then the STD joke, and the pause, and it just hit me. holy shit. what the actual fuck? /()\
I am watching the rest of the video in shock...
man...
Alright.
I started this video with the assumption that this was a very niche subculture video, about some in-community struggle, and decided to give it a go, because it's Keith's video essays.
Was unpleasantly surprised for it to be someone in my general youtuber-watching bubble, and the horror set in more and more as you revealed further and further, how many stereotypes he's perpetuating and how horrible and violating this situation actually is.
In the end, I felt bad. For the community, for the people in the video and those seeing it, and... for AnthPo, somehow. Because he's not that much older than me. Because, as you said, he's supposed to fuck around and find out. He's supposed to. He's also sadly having a much bigger reach with his videos than the fuckery-findoutery is supposed to have.
In the end, I do hope he can look at this in the future and realise how bad it all was. I do hope he learns from it in the moment by not doing this again.
Thank you for making this video. It felt important, to me. Thanks.
I feel like the only way he'd actually learn a lesson from this is if one of the people in the room parties sue him for lying about the purposes of the video he took and for posting them online, both of which are a felony.
Oh boy, I was not prepared for any of that. It's distressing to know that furries were being used for content farm material by someone with such a large audience. We're not a zoo to be for outsiders to gawk at and it's violating to know how he took advantage of these people for views and revenue. This has definitely done damage to the perception of the furry community and his half-baked apology doesn't undo that. We were used and discarded by someone with too much money and ego for their own good and we're all the worse for it.
The mention of feeling able to be yourself around the convention speaks volumes. As a gay name and furry for over 18 years at this point. Waking up and being surrounded by folks you feel won't judge you is amazing. The high school experience of being gay was I never trusted anyone. I was bullied my whole junior high through high school life due to being the weird artsy kid. Even now I think back on times of deep depression and hating who I was for being different, this spawned the inability to believe I can do much of anything both for myself or m for others. Luckily I actively work on these things in my poly relationship and we try to bolster each other regularly. I hope everyone finds their community and stays honest about their interests and passions.
*gay male*
I discovered you thanks to the Evil Dead video and I really like the rest of your content. I didn't know much about the furry community, but thanks to your work, I'm learning and I keep getting educated. So, the ED video wasn't a total loss after all!
This whole ordeal gives off, 'Logan Paul goes to furry con' vibes. What irritated me most about this situation was that, in order to 'interact' with our culture he crafted a caricature that was so... i don't know, 'outsider looking in.' SigmaPaws' entire attitude was centered around his wealth, body image and his social image. The way he saw 'value' in a person, regardless of who they were, was by the standards he played up in his Sigma Paws act. Seeing Sigma Paws' rants on his tiktok now knowing it as an act, says to me, "It's fine and cool if you're into this furry thing... given you have money, a white-collar job, exercise for sport, etc. etc." These are all like... very concerning things to attach 'worth' to. As they're all things that still link back to what i just call the, American Dream model. Which is: Get job, Get house, get wife, get kids, barbeque hamburgers celebrating your white-picket fence. A model that is just fine given that's how you want to spend your life, but not ok if you think it's the only way someone SHOULD spend their lives. I wish SigmaPaws took the time to interact with Furry Artist, talked about them about their lives and career. Reached out to furry elders about their experiences. But instead he wanted to focus on the thing that everyone loves to gawk at us with. That we have a lot of fun with our bodies. Something to which I really hate that society has twisted into such a taboo. I'll never understand why people are so afraid of intimacy and the joy it brings to us. Anyway, I hope he takes his apology to heart and maybe someday down the line make a much better effort.
This shit should be illegal. I mean it's straight up defamation. Just his target is not a person, but community. Is it a hate crime?
Anyway, if you don't like someone, why interact with them? He satisfied his own urges, even if it's not sexual.
Slander maybe? It's not really something you can take legal action for tbh but yeah
That'll be a legal nightmare, this'll be an extremely difficult thing to file a lawsuit against.
In Germany it would probably be considered "Volksverhetzung" (basically "Incitement of the people"). The actual wording of the law is inciting "hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population" which would at first glance not include furries, but I think you could have a good chance if you said it was against queer people, because there is precedent of invoking this law for spreading hatred against women and that case explicitely says that you can also use that law if the hatred goes against people with disabilities, homosexual people, PoCs (actually mentioned in the text with multiple terms), workers, foreigners living in Germany, Bavarians (okay...), civil servants, protestants, freemasons and receivers of welfare aid.
Actually, the fact that it includes workers is kinda funny, because the original version of that law was called "Class War Paragraph" and only refered to inciting the population to class warfare. And that's how you change an anti-socialist law so many times it becomes a law to protect minorities.
24:24 it’s such an OBVIOUS lie too! Anyone who’s ever been to ANY kind of convention that allowed adult content age checks. Hell I went to an anime con and one artist had basically PG13 art in one of their art books and they CENSORED THOSE in the display copy even though it was mainly people making out.
At a loss for words, this is just incredible analysis, and I'm disappointed I ever supported this guy
You know what people in the community generally say about fursonas and the deeply connection one has with them, and the reflection of one's self embeded into a fursona?
Yeah, this guy's "fursona" TOTALLY shows off the type of individual he must be in his life, a selfish whinny rich kid who has never experienced the struggles many people in the community deal with every day, and that his views on the world rely solely on how he can farm numbers off of said people just to... get something out of it?
I dunno man, the way he cheap out on a random fursuit, that was just expensive enough to be decent-looking, while mocking at it because it looked like "trash", it just feels hollow in every single aspect. I can't understand why would anyone do this for clout, money or to even make a fuzz about it.
His actual personality just seems rotten to the core, nothing even remotely genuine can be seen through his TH-cam persona.
Dam, this is one of the most well-deserved, philosophical call-out videos I've seen. Glad it was made.