dba_afish said:
does anyone else find it just totally impossible to get into anything that's already popular?

Not always, but very often, yes. Something popular has to clear a significant hurdle for me to embrace it, which is why I dread the inevitable mainstream adoption of the furry fandom.

furry-fuckboy said:
Not always, but very often, yes. Something popular has to clear a significant hurdle for me to embrace it, which is why I dread the inevitable mainstream adoption of the furry fandom.

Remember, gatekeeper your interests, otherwise they will be ruined by tourists.

I'd reckon that furry's as mainstream now as its likely to ever get. but, regardless I wouldn't say "gatekeeping" is the solution to that. if your community has a strong core that it dosn't waver from, then the negative influences will be filtered out.

furry is a large enough grassroots community now that its core identity is extremely strong. we're unlikely to be tainted by external forces.

we also still have the one thing that other communities gave up and lost their cohesion because of it: websites. our own websites, not third party mass social media bullshit, actual community spaces.

furry-fuckboy said:
which is why I dread the inevitable mainstream adoption of the furry fandom

What I imagined...

The year is 2036. Furry-fuckboy has to wake up at 4:30 AM to get to work at the only remaining employer in the county, an Amazon fulfillment center.
He walks in bleary-eyed, only to be met with that awful thinly-veiled pop song about "cookies". Just when he's able to filter it out as background noise, two asshole coworkers clock in loudly arguing over whose fursona would be able to anally vore the other first.
He wonders if he could go back in time and prevent online payment processors from being invented.