A ton of factors, but I’ve been a fur for 22 years and I give zero fucks about what others think about it/me, so an unfiltered view.

Most of my friends are furry, and all of them are at least neutral on the topic. I had a clan I was in during my ‘okay yes fine I am a furry let’s make a sona I guess’ awakening, and I was booted for that fact. So everyone I’m friends with has to not be a dick, or you’re getting blacklisted.

Most of my friends are weird, and the furry ones especially. I know no innocent furries, we all have our vices, and I love that. A space where I can be weird, suggestive, kinky, lewd is liberating. But even beyond sexy stuff, it’s just this melting pot of weird interests, hobbies, aspirations, and everyone wants to see everyone else succeed. The ‘vibe’ as the kids call it, online or in person, is always positive. Compared to gestures to the outside world, yeah nah I’m staying in the happy bubble.

Most of us are quite intelligent, lots are STEM, many are post-secondary grads. Most are okay with atheists/non believers. I thiiiink the majority are gay/les/bi. Basically, a group of smart people who aren’t dicks to each other. Again, nice place to be.

With the exception of my first relationship, which was never made ‘official’ but we were together for a couple of years, I only date furries. For the above reasons and more, I limit the dating pool from like a billion+ to hundred-thousands (maybe millions?), then further by being gay (very limited homoflexibility). But I want to be with someone (one or several) who share my interests, excitement, ideas and topics; and who shares similar values, like not being a dick to others. These simple traits are… less common, in the general population.

And of course, the kinky stuff. I’m all over the place and with the exception of some obvious ‘yeah nah’ topics that are generally assumed unless stated otherwise by people, I am will to/have tried a lot of things. Again the sort of non-judgemental environment let’s me say something that would be absolutely wild anywhere else, and others will respond like it’s nothing at all. Being free of judgements is absolutely unique, in my experience.

There are a few shady characters, bad apples, and all that - every group has them. But I haven’t interacted with one myself, and it’s been over two decades, so I’m pretty confident in saying that the bad characters are a rounding error, and that ‘we are all in this for the positivity of each other’.

Im not a furry but I can tell you the answer is all and some combination. I used to go to cons and con folk could range from those who just like sci fi, fantasy, anime, etc to those who are really into one particular aspect to those who its like their whole lives. Many con folk over time sorta developed a consona. They bought clothing and such and over time what they wore to the con would be pretty consistant. My wife has a story about them stopping off at a guys house and he opened the door and when he saw it was confolk he closed it and after a few mins was back in his con outfit. Like no one at the con should see him without it. For me furries are just one of the interests people could be big on at cons. I missed them when they got their own con because the general con they used to go to had two dances and the fur dance had the AC cranked to max. You could go dance at the reg dance and once you were hot and sweaty go crash the fur dance.

I’m a furry because I think anthropomorphic animals are neat. It’s kind of just that simple. Participation as a furry to me is just a minimum of making an avatar (a fursona) and talking to or hanging out with other furries. Honestly, it’s hardly different than modern VTuber obsession – our community just happened to start with early western animation rather than more recent eastern animation.

Furry is a “lifestyle” and can be taken as far as you want it to take it. We are a community you can chill in, a hobby you can participate in as any kind of creative person from artist, to musician, to 3D modeling, to the person developing the extremely complicated sex stuff going on in VRChat, or a kink you can dress up and fuck in. You can either make everything yourself, buy your way in, or it’s honestly totally normal to just hang around artists enough that they end up making things for you when they’re bored – although it’s good manners to actually participate in that person’s area of the community rather than begging for art.

Furry being more of a lifestyle than a hobby means it’s very easy to just include it in your daily rituals. There are hundreds, if not over a thousand furries in the greater Seattle area. I can go to dinner with other furries, I participate in a furry Twitch community, I game online with furries, and I’m currently about to go on a camping trip out in the woods of Washington for an event called Furwood that takes place at an exclusively queer campsite called Triangle Recreation Camp with nearly a hundred people (though many are dropping out due to the expected rainy weather this weekend).

What furries are NOT is:

1. A collective of pedophiles/groomers/zoophiles. They do exist in the community (and basically every online community) but almost every site/app explicitly blacklists this content and good Lord you should see the anti-zoophile witchhunts on Twitter. The natural anonymity of furries and sheer scale of the fandom does result in these things coming up frequently though, and furries could definitely do a better job moderating their spaces.
2. Exclusively people dressing up in fursuits to bang. This is a minority of furries that shit costs thousands of dollars. There is, however, a lot of overlap with puppy play, a bdsm kink involving pups and handlers roleplaying as various animals, usually dogs. I know many people who own a partial fursuit (they wear a head and handles but the rest is normal clothes) and also a leather/neoprene pup mask that they switch to for the actual sex stuff.
3. People who believe they are actually animals. These are called “Therians” and many Therians are also furries but most furries are not Therians. It is pretty normal to ROLEPLAY your sona, but the depth of that roleplay is up to the individual. For example, I refer to myself as a polar bear on the internet but that’s about it. I do however know people in our community who have 10+ pages of lore, use the dreaded creepy asterisks, commissioned custom multi-hundred dollar VRC avatars, and never break character.

Ive kinda always liked things related to it (spent my childhood reading warrior cats and redwall, would always choose humanoid animal characters in games over humans when available, because I found humans kinda ugly somehow, etc) but never really considered myself one until after high school because it was considered “cringy” and I had to grow out of worrying about that. Actually was unfortunately rather judgmental towards furries myself at a certain age just out of denial.

Kinda warmed up to it in college after growing a bit and getting away from my old classmates, but it’s difficult to say what the initial draw was because, well, Ive had some sort of a liking for characters designed as humanoid animal people as far as I can remember (or, given that those are pretty common in kids media, I guess I didn’t really stop preferring them because they somehow felt easier to look at and imagine interacting with than more realistic human characters. I do have social anxiety and autism, which I suspect might have something to do with that feeling but I cant say for sure).

I would consider furry generally a subculture. I can see why some people would consider it a kink, given that furry culture seems to have a weaker taboo about sexual stuff than wider society does and that the community makes a lot of porn, but I don’t think it really qualifies as one for a given person unless one is just there for that and doesn’t have some interest in the wider community or furry characters in other contexts. For my part, I tend to imagine or prefer furry characters in any context that would generally involve human characters. Ie, if I draw or write or just fantasize about something, I’m very likely to work furries in regardless of the content, so them popping up in horny stuff is less a matter of finding those characters an inheritly sexual thing, and more a matter of sexual stuff being included in “everything that normally has humans”.

As far as my participation goes, that social anxiety I mentioned does limit me a bit, Ive not been to any conventions for example despite hoping to eventually. It’s mostly limited to art and internet communities for me at the moment, though most of my current friend group are also furries just cause those places are where I went looking for them.

I have a happiness fetish and those drawings are often happy.

In contrast to porn in general, where participants often seem miserable.

TIL the furry thing is not just an internet meme

Finally someone asking a real question. Been a whole bunch of bots recently.

I’ve liked Anthro characters since I was a child. Grew up watching cartoons like Redwall, Rescue Rangers, Ducktales etc. First stumbled upon some furry art as a teenager while “exploring the internet”, as one does. And I guess from that point it was obvious to me that I’m a furry. It’s definitely not exclusively a kink for me though, but a general interest. I just enjoy seeing those characters in pretty much any context. Throw some anthro characters in a video game and I’m at least twice as likely to buy it than if it were regular humans. It’s also a generally friendly and open-minded community to interact with.

Guy I used to date said he thought people would just be cuter with tails.

No, but honestly mostly because I have enough kinks to keep me entertained already. Sweaty anonymous orgies with random people in fur suits is definitely a path I would follow if I was bored enough.

Speaking only about the porn, I like drawings, and real images of real people usually make me uncomfortable for whatever reason. The quality and volume of the art has increased dramatically over the years, lots of furry nsfw artists are really, really good at what they do.

It’s who I am and basically it’s who all my friends are. It’s a community. It’s a safe space. It’s a counterculture. It’s an overflowing font of creativity and expression and new ideas It’s queer and kinky and holds the fucking line against puritanism and fascism. It’s a rejection of human exceptionalism and solidarity with the beings we share the planet with that so much of humanity is indifferent or even outright genocidal towards.

Furry is so deeply intertwined into nearly every part of my life, because it feels right to me.

Crystal in Star Fox Adventure, I’d say its an interest in furry art though as I don’t care to have anything else the scene likes. It mostly seems to form from environmental pressures and experiences.

tl;dr it’s a creative hobby

Not a furry per se (yet maybe) but I’m in the same social circles, ymmv. Basically it’s just oc cosplay, and like all hobbies and crafts some people have a more enthusiastic, personal approach to it; and some like it surface level.

Essentially, it’s a joint art style in a large art community. People get to create their own characters and share in that art culture, and for some it’s a very powerful escape and a way to explore yourself in a different way.