Community:Furry culture in VRChat

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Furry culture is prevalent in the VRChat community. Furry avatars, or furries, are defined as animals or animal-like creatures with anthropomorphic (human-like) or humanoid traits such as speech, intelligence, and/or bipedal body structure. In addition to avatars, the term 'furry' is also used to refer to people who may identify with said avatars, in some way.

Overview

The furry fandom is inspired by several types of media from around the world involving anthropomorphic animals, such as written works, video games, and animation mediums such as Japanese animation (anime). People often find themselves joining the furry community through shared interest in certain media.

A unique characteristic within furry subculture, is the creation and identification of original characters and avatars that may represent their creator, or likeness. These characters are typically referred to as a fursona (a portmanteau of furry and persona, often shortened to simply 'sona). However, not all furry characters are used as a personal fursona; some may simply be characters designed for original fictional works of their own right. They can each have potentially different personality traits or interests, depending on their purpose.

Furries are more likely to identify with LGBT, non-binary or genderqueer identities, or express their fursona with similar orientations. A fraction of the community, who refer to themselves as therians or otherkin among furries, may spiritually identify closer as non-human, choosing to instead identify as their desired species.

History

In human history

Anthropomorphism has been recorded in human expression for thousands of years. One of the earliest examples for this, is the pre-historic Lion-man figurine, created about 40,000 years ago. Cave paintings throughout time, display interaction between animals and humans. Mythological Egyptian and Greek gods, goddesses and creatures, such as Anubis, Ra, Proteus, or the Minotaur are fables involving human-like bipedal creatures from ancient times, passed down for generations.

Early furry fandom

Modern art and literature containing anthropomorphic animals have been expressed by humans over the past few centuries, however, the biggest influences for the early furry fandom are 20th century science fiction, and animation. Notable examples of this are Kimba The White Lion, Albedo's Anthropomorphics, and Disney movies such as Robin Hood (1977), and Pete's Dragon.

The late Mark Merlino (a.k.a. "Sylys Sable"), attending Furality 2000 in VRChat.

People in the early furry fandom had an overlapping interest with science fiction, and Japanese animation. Niche parties were held at science fiction conventions in the late 1970s, which eventually led to the creation of the "Cartoon/Fantasy Organization" in 1977 by the late Mark Merlino and Fred Patten.

Conventions

By 1988, the first organized furry convention was held in California, USA as "Confurence" Zero. Furry conventions are in-person congregations of furries, and furry fans to meet friends, cosplay, host and attend panels, and exchange art and merchandise with vendors. Most furry conventions sponsor a charity, and host community-run events and panels throughout the duration of a convention.

Throughout the 1990s, and continuing beyond today, more furry conventions began to organize. Many conventions are held yearly, with notable mentions being venues such as Anthrocon, Midwest FurFest, Megaplex, and Further Confusion in the United States; Eurofurence, and Nordic FuzzCon in Europe; Japan Meeting of Furries (JMOF), Kemoket, and Infurnity in Asia.

Many of these conventions temporarily held online iterations of their venues within VRChat, as an alternative way to attend the convention, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Japan Meeting of Furries was the first organization to hold a furry convention in VRChat. During the pandemic, a brand new convention dubbed Furality Online Xperience (FOX) would be hosted natively in VRChat, without any previous venues. Furality would eventually become a sponsored event by VRChat, Inc.

Online

Furries have communicated online via primitive bulletin board systems (BBS) forums in the 1970s and 1980s; boards such as FurNet which echoed FidoNet protocol, created one of the first dedicated online communities for furries. In the 1990s, online servers, such as text-based FurryMUCK began in 1990 as a roleplay community for furries. Video games such as Furcadia was launched in 1996. There were also newsgroups and Usenet message boards that began in this decade, like alt.fan.furry and alt.lifestyle.furry.

Second Life is a online virtual world that pre-dates VRChat, and was used (and is still used) by members of the furry fandom.

Furries and VRChat

VRChat by its very nature provides an environment where members of the furry community can create an avatar based on their ideal sense of self, and feel like themselves more so than in real life.

A furry avatar typically combines features of at least one animal species (e.g. dog, cat, etc.) with anthropomorphic traits. Less anthropomorphic (sometimes defined as feral) furry avatars also exist, which are more lifelike representations of animals (e.g. walking on 4 legs instead of 2), but due to full body tracking being optimized for avatars with human-like body structures, non-humanoid avatars are significantly harder to set up and use, and as such are less widespread.

Since most furries are not 3D modelers, texture artists or Unity developers, members of the community who have any combination of these skills (commonly referred to as artists or creators) have taken on the task of building readily available avatar bases. These are typically distributed on online stores such as Gumroad where these creators are able to distribute their work directly to users.

The bases typically come with source files necessary to customize the avatar, including the models, textures and ready-to-use Unity prefabs or scenes, where all the user has to do is log into the VRChat SDK and click upload to have a functioning avatar, which can then be further customized. These avatar bases provide an easy way for furries to create a VR representation of their characters more easily, lowering the barrier of entry.