A fucking amazing Flayrah post

[rodox_video]

The post itself is not what's incredible - the comments are what make it incredible.

It's incredible because Mark Merlino and Rod O'Riely show up. Public internet posts from them are very, very rare nowadays, and they proceed to get into an (almost unheard of) argument with the two or three Beardo Generation luminaries who show up to call them out on their shit.

It's a series of massive walls of text, but they're all required reading because they shed brand new light on furry's troubled beginnings.

[katmouse]

At least the walls o' text were readable.

[MazelTovCocktail]

Oh look, it's our old buddy crossy!

[Jim Demintia]

I guess when you stop maturing or improving yourself in your late teens, you blink and suddenly you're 40 years old acting like you're 20, and to you it really seems like these events a decade or more old happened yesterday. I mean, outside of the usual comments from people who need to assuage their own guilt over their sexual proclivities- that thread between Roy Calbeck and Mark Merlino is amazing. I think what's more amazing is how many furries hold onto these soured interpersonal relationships (drama, if you will, but it's broader than that) and truly do not seem to grasp that some of this stuff happened a long fucking time ago.

I mean, not to cross streams and stuff, but this is where people like Dragoneer are headed. 20 years from now they will still be mired in events from 2003 like they happened a year previous.

Reading the rest of that thread...it's Friday and I'm sore and tired, my eyes just sort of glass over. People write walls of text that, in all likelihood, considering the names involved there, they've written before in many different places. Justifying their behavior and justifying (to themselves) their own delusions about just about everything. Some of those posters have been doing this for 10 years or more. At some point, it doesn't win any converts because people who know who you are know it's bullshit and people who don't know don't care. At some point it becomes little more than an exercise necessary to maintain your own delusional view of things.

The article reads like typical Wiki wank- poorly sourced but written in an authoritative tone. Hint: this isn't a 6th grade book report.

[rodox_video]

I like how Merlino and Sable sound pretty much exactly how I expected them to: like they have a billion dicks (and sometimes dongs) in their mouths at all times. Here are some of the better quotes:

The guy wearing a dixie cup in the lobby. A crazy stunt. Security took care of it. Are you implying that someone pulling a stunt like this is  somehow my fault?

We NEVER promoted ConFurence to any gay or alternative lifestyle publication.

You got caught publishing an ad which did exactly that, and complaints were raised about it.

No. Didn't happen. Never happened. This is the most popular BS rumor  that is used over and over again to condemn us. Now I have a idea where  this originated... In a CYD article, the author begged for anyone to  submit proof of this so-called ad... of course, someone would have to  make it up, because it never existed.

And I'm still begging. We may never see these ads; some enterprising individuals on Lulz.net tried to find them a year or two ago and were unsuccessful. Most zines from that period are hideously rare or just plain lost. It is pretty clear at this point that if it ever existed it wasn't exactly an ADVERTIZING BLITZKRIEG, but that doesn't mean that people should stop looking.

---

There's also a wonderful exchange that's too long to quote where Scott Malcomson is talking about the famous "open letter" that brought the excesses of Confurence to light. You know, the one with the jizz in the elevator and all that jazz. Sable's reaction is to call the author of the letter (Ed Kline) a homophobe. Malcomson counters by saying Kline had no such inclinations and was in fact bisexual; Sable fires back by saying that he was a secret homophobe.

It is at this point that you start wondering and marveling at how old these people are.

---

Anyway, this is the most important quote by far. Here, right here, is where Furry Went Wrong. Right in this paragraph:

"Behavioral Restrictions" don't prevent anyone from doing anything. We  always asked attendees to be polite and civil. Wasting pages in the con  book (which no one ever reads anyway) with pages of "rules" served no  purpose but to have something to point to if someone did something stupid. As to who was "begging" me to "install and enforce" codes... Who? Alt-Fan-furry again?

Yeah, man. Who needs rules? Who needs guidelines? That shit's for all those other fetishes! Who needs any structure or maturity or responsibility when you throw all this sex, money and anonymity together? It'll all work out! It's all working out just fine right now!

[Jim Demintia]

Now that I'm feeling a little less hazy than I was Friday, I read that thread again and it does strike me how fluidly Merlino goes between pointing out that he's bisexual and going to great lengths to distance himself from "gays" (whatever he imagines that to be), then swinging right around and using "homophobia" as a weapon against his detractors. I suspect that Calbeck is getting caught up in semantics—he says "gay activist" when I think he really means that Merlino is one of those people who has this idea that everyone should be "loud and proud" all the fucking time. In the parlance of certain corners of the Internet, he's a "faggot" as opposed to whatever label he feels is appropriate for his sexual preferences.

It's all well and good to be defiant for a certain time after you come out—and to some extent I feel Merlino has a point about a lot of convention attendees being able to be themselves for the first time, but at some point most of us decide to exist in the real, adult world where we are comfortable with whatever it is we like to do in private but do not feel it is appropriate to discuss, much less broadcast, these things among a public that really doesn't want to know. People will be tolerant, people are tolerant, for the most part. That has little to do with the inability to separate public and private life, and the objections many many more people have to people who insist on making their private proclivities public.

[MazelTovCocktail]

Now that I'm feeling a little less hazy than I was Friday, I read that thread again and it does strike me how fluidly Merlino goes between pointing out that he's bisexual and going to great lengths to distance himself from "gays" (whatever he imagines that to be), then swinging right around and using "homophobia" as a weapon against his detractors. I suspect that Calbeck is getting caught up in semantics—he says "gay activist" when I think he really means that Merlino is one of those people who has this idea that everyone should be "loud and proud" all the fucking time. In the parlance of certain corners of the Internet, he's a "faggot" as opposed to whatever label he feels is appropriate for his sexual preferences.

It's all well and good to be defiant for a certain time after you come out—and to some extent I feel Merlino has a point about a lot of convention attendees being able to be themselves for the first time, but at some point most of us decide to exist in the real, adult world where we are comfortable with whatever it is we like to do in private but do not feel it is appropriate to discuss, much less broadcast, these things among a public that really doesn't want to know. People will be tolerant, people are tolerant, for the most part. That has little to do with the inability to separate public and private life, and the objections many many more people have to people who insist on making their private proclivities public.

It's surprising what people are tolerant of when it's not shoved right in their faces. 

I don't see why so many people want the world to know what they like to do in the bedroom as if their entire personality depends on it.

[ProvincialTwit]

I don't see why so many people want the world to know what they like to do in the bedroom as if their entire personality depends on it.

DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER

[katmouse]

For some people, tolerance is not enough, they demand acceptance from everyone, a vastly unrealistic goal. 

[gnpg]

We may never see these ads; some enterprising individuals on Lulz.net tried to find them a year or two ago and were unsuccessful. Most zines from that period are hideously rare or just plain lost. It is pretty clear at this point that if it ever existed it wasn't exactly an ADVERTIZING BLITZKRIEG, but that doesn't mean that people should stop looking.

Okay, this is creepy - I started looking into this urban legend a couple of weeks ago and now this thread comes up.  Haven't had the patience to read through the Flayrah posts yet, but here's what I've found out so far.

It looks like ConFurence was indeed mentioned in a 1997 sex zine.  Did Merlino solicit the zine to include CF, or did the magazine mention the convention on their own accord?  What's certain is that Rod caught wind of it before it was published and made a very rare alt.fan.furry post - he was *not* happy about having the con mentioned. Also, the zine appeared after CF8, when the gay lifestyle element was already entrenched with plenty of momentum - so Merlino didn't need to advertise. My current feeling is that the urban legand of FC actively promoting itself in sex mags is bullshit. Still, I'm curious to know what was actually mentioned in the zine.

The zine in question was issue #10 of 'Black Sheets', edited by a guy named Bill Brent in California.  The title of the issue was "Bestiality and Glamor!" The only description of it I could find was by someone named Rko Lynx.  There do seem to be copies for sale here and there, if anyone has $30 they want to lose. I'm definitely not ordering a copy.

[u63r]

Okay, is it just me, or to the posts actually change opacity when you mouseover them? If so, who designed such a stupid thing?