Bad habits die hard.
Let’s talk about how furries use Twitter (“X”), despite everything.
We all know what’s wrong with its biggest influencers and owner.
The world’s richest man bought the site to control information.
It’s not just to deceive you for politics —
His power increases by growing traffic of any kind.
Every active account gives him power; for or against, real or fake, traffic is power.
Meanwhile you’ll be trolled with denials of what you can see with your own eyes.
Going along with it is a choice.
The problem grows by using it for any reason, even to protest.
Leaving and taking your traffic away is the way to change this.
I chose to stop using my account a while ago. (Now it’s parked to prevent name squatting.)
That account had 10k followers gathered organically, with no ads, and I left the same way.
Dogpatch Press continues doing work that has always stood on its own.
Now here’s another positive example of such action.
It was their private choice.
They aren’t throwing shade or pushing about it.
They just set an example for others who share the same community.
Furrydelphia is only the 13th largest con, but they left ahead of cons with more power.
You can do it too.
What’s stopping you — maybe dependence on artist income?
Let’s talk about your power.
Do you like jokes about how furries run the internet?
This joke holds truth, because you can treat Twitter as like that airplane.
Furries are a small percent of users, but the kind with highest engagement.
Furries have often been trending topics.
Valuable users like this are key to keeping sites alive.
That means you aren’t too small to matter, and not stuck on one site.
Being alone can feel powerless, but there’s power to take action together.
Let’s look at how to do a power move.
Big cons have power to coordinate and make a leap together.
Conventions are like flagships of the furry community. The top 3 have over 180,000 Twitter followers, and drew around 55,000 attendees this year. Imagine if just these 3 agreed to move elsewhere at the same time (and gathered some influential community members to raise the number much higher.)
That’s not a huge percent of around 40 million active monthly American users on the site, but proportionally, that can make a huge impact on fandom. A small number of big accounts could make a community tipping point.
There’s a principle about collective power: a small number of strategically placed workers, in one union, can stop one business or industry, that stops a war or takes down a government. It’s like a pebble starting an avalanche.
Twitter won’t die just from furries leaving, but there is potential for collective action to remove one community. In fact, the more specific it is, the more potential there may be. When Twitter dies at some point, it will probably come from slow bleeding of valuable segments like that.
Consider how nonprofit cons don’t have to grow, yet the top cons are highly demanded, with rooms selling out and higher record attendance every year. That makes power to pull users where they go, rather than having to cater to where users are. That can lead to a tipping point that single income-dependent users may be reluctant to approach first. A small number of large users could make the choice easy for everyone else.
Ask them to lead and make a path to follow.
It doesn’t have to be instant. Do you know con staff? Start putting the idea in their minds. Raise demand for alternatives for an alternative community that doesn’t have to settle for the status quo.
Dogpatch Press has contacts who staff cons. Several (who obviously won’t be named) answered questions.
One con social media lead said:
“When the Elon Musk Twitter purchase originally happend, then when things started getting really bad, there was a lot of talk around it. It’s the same story as with everyone – “Oh, it’s not that bad. This is where all the furries are.” I really, really struggle with this like… am I crazy? Or is everyone else crazy? Elon Musk is a terrifyingly bad dude who’s openly trying to manipulate reality to support a white supremacist narrative. It’s not even hidden… Why are you on his platform? Nobody seems to care, everyone seems perfectly content just tumbling down the hill together.”
Another con staffer said:
“It’s worth a shot, but there’s an issue with foreign users who still only use Twitter and are relatively insulated from issues in Western space. Maintaining a Twitter account benefits those groups, and I don’t know if cons removing themselves from the platform would move those communities.”
Dogpatch Press said:
“When it’s for IRL events with one location, followers out of country must be much less than the effective majority. If info is replicated elsewhere like Telegram, then numbers don’t have to matter as much as accessibility, especially if cons have demand to pull instead of push towards a tipping point.”
Accomplishing this would be like being the tail that wags the dog. It’s quite a challenge, but that’s the power that makes fandom go. You also don’t have to wait for others to go first. Try starting the conversations, making hashtags like #goblue (sky) ? — and call it —
The #QuitYourX Challenge
Further insight about how many top X influencers are based in Russia, Nigeria, India, etc while manipulating American users as if they are here:
“The incredible genius Elmo the Musk decided for greater transparency to release where all of the X accounts are broadcasting from and it appears that over 60% of the biggest Maga influencers are in point of actual fact from either Nigeria or India removing any doubt whatever that the majority of congressional Republicans who often cited these influencers to steer American opinion towards what these foreigners think they should be doing rather than what is best for the American people.
Elmo quickly dispensed with this feature after he learned so many MAGA influencers were from Nigeria and India and he did things to repair the damage but it was too late because all the top liberal influencers screen grabbed where all these Charlatans were working from. Elmo turned the feature off I guess to give the accounts long enough to buy a VPN and change their countries of origin.” – Thomas Clay Jr.
“Developing the intellectual equivalent of an immune system against this kind of propaganda and fakery seems like a crucial part of collective survival, but there should also be the public-health equivalent of the major platforms not indulging it all, which they do because being the richest, seventh-richest etc. person on earth is not enough for these morally impoverished criminals. And yes, MAGA people seem to be exceptionally immune-compromised, and vice-versa, in this regard.” – Rebecca Solnit
Media-literacy about social-media is a public health issue. Cons have hosted physical health testing to play their part as central community resources. This may not be as big a challenge as you think!
Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon. Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)
Original post written by Patch O’Furr
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