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.

dba_afish said:
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.

Fair. I feel like the amount of individual/small commercial enterprises helps a lot, but that sort of capitalist entrepreneurship culture is a double edged sword because it means some corpo could come in and shift a large part of fandom culture by either pushing those small scale creators and artisans out of business or apply enough pressure to force them under their banner, and therefore under their control. It would drastically change the way furry media is created, presented, controlled, and consumed.