Furries to be on "My Strange Addiction" (January 19th at 9PM EST, only on TLC!)

[Conan]

Batten down the hatches and add more RAM to the FurAffinity servers, the latest furry "Scandal" since Chewfox on Tyra Banks is about to hit the airwaves basic cable.

TLC's My Strange Addiction is to feature furries on an episode airing January 19. [DeoVacuus]

Kiira, an amateur fursuit builder, was paid $1500 for her appearance.

Producers of the show have been looking for furs since mid-2010, and also sought to buy fursuit photography. Other announced episodes cover sleeping with a blow-drier, eating toilet paper and thumb-sucking, while past seasons featured eating chalk and extreme tanning.

Many furs fear a reprisal of The Tyra Banks Show, whose host presented furry as a sexual fetish.

My Strange Addiction claims to "[tell] the compelling stories of people who are battling obsessive behaviors on the verge of taking over their lives" and "[follow] addicts as they reveal their strange addictions and meet with psychological experts."

Kiira constructed fursuits for herself and her boyfriend for the show:

    I said many times that it is just a hobby, not an addiction, but they said "Well take you anyways" So I had about a week to make two fursuits, and they just filmed me in various places and all. Even though my fursuits suck in the episode, I still got $1,500 and 15 minutes of fame, which is more than many can say.

The furry episode of My Strange Addiction is expected to air at 9PM EST/8PM CET. Two episodes may air back-to-back; it is unknown which is the furry one, but the schedule should soon be updated.

This should be good.

[rodox_video]

Many furs fear a reprisal of The Tyra Banks Show, whose host presented furry as a sexual fetish.

WHICH IT IS

EXACTLY WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS

[Conan]

Many furs fear a reprisal of The Tyra Banks Show, whose host presented furry as a sexual fetish.

WHICH IT IS

EXACTLY WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS

[ProvincialTwit]

Many furs fear a reprisal of The Tyra Banks Show, whose host presented furry as a sexual fetish.

WHICH IT IS

EXACTLY WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS

(doc conway pic)

He is...the douchiest man in the world.

[a pigeon]

Kiira has posted a pre-emptive response on her youtube account:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py0Sjenivv8

"I went on TV to show off my costumes and my weird hobby, "Ohh no that's so terrible!" How about you go bother someone who abuses children? [...] so what it's an over dramatacized show [sic], and all I'm doing is running round in a fursuit. So what if it sucks. So what if I sound like a freak."

Well, I suppose it's true that it was her choice to go on TV and there are far worse things within furry itself, let alone the wider world, to get worked up about. Although of course, not all see it that way. From the youtube comments:

When that show warps and twists your words to make you seem like some sort of freak, and the entire fandom ostracizes you, you /will care/.
Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame and lifetime of being infamous. :/
The fandom tries so hard to be seen in a more positive light, but it's attention hogs like you who want their name on TV who throw us back 10 miles when we take a step forward.
Thanks a lot.

Here's the issue, Lauren: you've earned $1500 from participating in a show which intends to portray furry as an addiction.
Imagine if your parents had seen furries on a show called "My Strange Addiction" a few years ago. Do you think they would have encouraged your hobby?
I'm willing to talk to just about everyone about the fandom - teen fashion magazines, fetish websites, you name it. But I draw the line at helping people who *intend* to drag the fandom into the dirt. You should have, too.

("You should have"? AFAIK there is no furry omerta nor can any one person presume to speak for the furry subculture)

I do hope that $1500 was really worth it--if TLC used your real name, you won't be able to find a worthwhile job. Addictions (which, even if you were doing it for the money and attention, you are implicitly admitting to having) are generally a deal breaker for any employer, save perhaps for a fast food one.
Employers DO check for embarrassing info on the internet, and generally being an attention whore (and putting your real name out there) counts as such. Might wanna edit your wikifur page.

You'd have thought she got thirty pieces of silver for appearing on TV. Anyhow, I thought this part of a comment, from the comments on the OP article was fair enough:

There is a large sexual component to the furry fandom, whether you like that or not, and it's not wrong to show that. It's a TV show, they do what gets ratings. You can't moan every time something is done that doesn't display the fandom exactly how you think it should be.

[GreenReaper]

("You should have"? AFAIK there is no furry omerta nor can any one person presume to speak for the furry subculture)

Absolutely. But My Strange Addiction is not about communicating the opinions of the subject, or getting to "the truth" (however you wish to define that). It's entertainment.

They were looking for an actor to play the role of addict. They even sent out a casting call, just to make it even more obvious.

They will take pictures of her prancing about quite innocently in her fursuit with her boyfriend, and have a psychologist call it a sign of addiction. That is their job. It's in the title of the show.

If she tries to say something positive, they will shortly thereafter cut to a shot which makes her look stupid, or an expert saying something negative.

Just watch the other episodes. I did, right before I told them to GTFO when they wanted to license my photos.

I said "should" because Kiira should have known better. In fact, from what she says she did know better, but went on the show anyway.

[UncreativeUsername]

Well, I'm sure Dragoneer is thrilled with this. Everyone's attention will be focused away from him for a while. But, yeah, this is going to be bad, as GreenReaper said. It's in the title. They want to show freaks, not do any real documentary work.

[Pi]

The amount of fuck that I do not give about this is so amazingly nonexistent that I can only think to link a vaguely similar situation (reality TV show hosts and producers are slimy cocks) from a band I happen to like: Information Society meets Band Reunion. This thread is now about music.

[Ben]

I don't know, of all the things listed up there, furry seems like the least insane in comparison.

[ProvincialTwit]

Ahaha the faux righteous indignation is amazing to behold.  This is the sort of thing furries live for; some minor break in the fog of moral ambiguity that surrounds their entire fandom and a chance to point at someone else and criticize their decisions.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and strongly imply that:
1 - Most furries are unlikely to ever see $1500 at one time in their lives
2 - Most of the complainers would likely have done the same themselves
3 - The people raising the biggest stink are really just jealous it wasn't them being offered the money

Plus, GR, it's still hilarious to see the phrase "should have known" as though you're implying they simply had a momentary lapse in judgement and that all furries have an ability - nay, a duty - to self-censor lest anyone "get the wrong idea about furries."

[GreenReaper]

You keep implying this is a matter of censorship. It's not. It's "don't let them use your image to present your hobby as an addiction, when you know and have said that it is not."

The message is not going to be Kiira's. It will be that of the producers. She knew this going in, and did it anyway because of the payoff.

That's what people are annoyed at - that she knowingly traded her association with the fandom for $1500 and 15 minutes of fame. Most furs would not do that, as shown by the fact that they had to hunt for six months after that casting call to find one who would.

[Conan]

I wonder what everyone would be saying if someone who truly has an addiction *coughAllancough* was going to be on.

Probably "hur hur hur they deserve it!"

[AshleyAshes]

I just don't see how 'addicted to furry' will come even close to 'addicted to eating laundry soap' and stuff.  Considdering the other freaky stuff that show is featuring, I think the furry thing will be glossed over by the audience.  God, just thinking of the scene from the commercial where she spoons that laundry soap into her mouth... :X

[MazelTovCocktail]

I just don't see how 'addicted to furry' will come even close to 'addicted to eating laundry soap' and stuff.  Considdering the other freaky stuff that show is featuring, I think the furry thing will be glossed over by the audience.  God, just thinking of the scene from the commercial where she spoons that laundry soap into her mouth... :X

My question is, how do you even sell "addicted to furry"?

[ProvincialTwit]

My question is, how do you even sell "addicted to furry"?

My guess is they would frame it in the guise of more of an obsession than an 'addiction'.  Like saying the people involved aren't able to function in society normally, they have to hide inside their fursuits to go out, etc.  The kind of people I would say are 'addicted to furry' are more 'addicted to drama/attention' than anything (Piche, Conway, 2, etc).  Or the people who spend every ill-gotten penny on conventions and furry art/smut/memorabilia/paraphernalia. 

In the latter case they'd probably have an even easier time finding volunteers to spout about anime addiction/obsession.  Of course the funny thing about THAT is, there's no giant overarching all-encompassing 'otaku fandom' to throw a collective shit fit whenever anime obsession is presented in a negative light.  Which is why furries will always be even lower on the totem pole of sadness than even anime fags.

(ps i hate anime almost as much as furries)

[ProvincialTwit]

lol double posting

That's what people are annoyed at - that she knowingly traded her association with the fandom for $1500 and 15 minutes of fame. Most furs would not do that, as shown by the fact that they had to hunt for six months after that casting call to find one who would.

I'm still not convinced of your latter point.  There are plenty of furries out there who'd be willing to sell their souls - more than enough to overcrowd a good 7 or 8 layers of hell - for something as trivial and material as a couple grand in cash or a scrap of dead tree pulp and colored graphite.  To say it supposedly took them six months to find one furry willing to prance around in a fursuit for fifteen Benjis smacks of somebody not doing their job very well and/or looking in entirely the wrong places.  Either that or the ones they found before were either unpresentable to a basic cable audience or greedy enough to demand more scratch.  Additionally, if one of their demands was "must have fursuit", well, the limited overlap of peple who 1: own fursuits, 2: have fursuits that could be shown on tv, and 3: don't fuck in their fursuits, could probably limit their available choices.

Besides, this entire thing will blow over before the show even airs.  If Conan hadn't crossposted it here from Flayrah, the discussion would've likely been limited to a few first- and second-degree acquaintances of the people involved, and maybe some OMG RIGHTEOUS OUTRAGE when the episode aired from the small audience of furries who obsessively scan the internet and airwaves for anything having to do with furry things (like our good buddy Karl).  TLC's ratings will probably go up by the tiniest margin on the night the show airs from furries watching intently for the faintest beam of negative light, and absolutely nobody who isn't a furry will still be talking about it the next morning.

I mean christ this is the furry fetish subculture we're talking about; they are the experts at freaking the fuck out about the tiniest of things.  I used to read alt.fan.furry back in the late 90s, and I can still remember a thousand-plus-posts thread with people freaking out about the 'Furby' because it had the word 'fur' in its name.  The religious right could take -lessons- from furries on freaking out about things.

[loki]

Why does anyone (especially you GreenReaper) really care about the furry "fandom"? Who cares what she says or does - most likely it will be 100 times better than anyone complaining would probably do. There will never be anyone who makes it look cool; so good luck complaining. Hell, I'm glad she's not fat or that ugly - it's about time they took some who at least LOOKS somewhat normal.

[Jim Demintia]

Being more than tangentally linkable to something like the furry fandom or something like it is about the dumbest thing someone in young adulthood can do, in this day and age. On national TV, no less. This generation has to face overwhelming economic odds in a country with a piss-poor safety net, and it's damn near insurmountable for people who didn't/couldn't go to college or didn't have good manners, work ethic, and habits instilled in them. If you're lucky you'll have a good shot at driving a delivery truck or driving 150 miles on a shitty comp rate and then spending your night installing Ethernet cables in some new big-box store on contract. Those are the good jobs, believe it or not.

There's only so much you can do to help yourself. Most of the time, success is seeded with a healthy dose of luck. But everyone has some level of chance, and you can always guarantee failure. Far too many people, far too many furries, do exactly this through dumb decisions.

A while back, some Silicon Valley CEO said that "in the future" (that meaningless quantifier) maybe kids would have to change their names and assume a fresh legal identity when they turned eighteen. Those of us with a little more capability for human emotion and empathy were taken aback by the narrow focus of that statement, wondering if, perhaps, there weren't larger privacy issues to be discussed there, but there's a lesson in that: if you value your potential future happiness, your future success, friendships, business relationships and earnings, you will keep your real name lightyears away from whatever depths of depravity you choose to sink to in the cold glow of your laptop LCD.

I know that's sort of lost on a fandom that only plans as far as the next convention, but it's still a goddamn important lesson.

[Heimdal]

Do we have any studies on how the 'outside world' views the Furry fandom based on these things? ..like, any studies that are worth a shit?

It's just so entirely speculative that this is 'going to make furries look bad again'. Only the furries are going to care, and the argument could easily be made that the only people scoffing would do so regardless of whether it made furries look good or bad. It is of my opinion that any attempts to get the fandom out there and known is to it's benefit. Anything at all, good or bad. "Spreading ignorance" is a stupid fucking excuse. If the show makes furries look bad, rational people are going to check it's accuracy first, because that's what rational people do..

Whatsherface sold out the fandom for $1500. But nobody outside of it gives a damn about the fandom, so where is the problem? Paranoia.

[ProvincialTwit]

I mean really the only reason ANYBODY goes on these sorts of shows is for the money and the attention.  And people watch them because they secretly wish for the same kind of momentary fame and financial gain.  Or because America loves to look at people who make them feel better about themselves.  People watch shows like this so they can say, "Hey look at these losers, so glad I'm not one of them."  They watch reality shows to live vicariously through people who race around the world or eat gross things or lose a bunch of weight.  Christ this whole thing is just so completely insubstantial in the grand scheme of things.

Also, Jim, that was Eric Scmidtt of Google, who also famously said that the only people who care about privacy on the Internet are obviously doing naughty things, so fuck that guy.