I imagine this will be all over LJ by the end of the day, but hey – here ya go. Pittsburgh City Paper did a front-page article on furries and Anthrocon that hits the stands today, and it is surprisingly even-handed. The reader is left with the impression that furries are a bunch of people who are slightly weird and very geeky, but certainly not the sex fiends that the media has made them out to be. They even got most of the facts right! The web version leaves out many of the pictures that ran with the article, so scans of the article are below the cut (thanks to artemisfur for the scans).
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very good.
Thank you for the scans!
I have noticed that the alternative papers in cities tend to do a good job on furries, at least more even than the mainstream media does.
Oh, good. That article actually came out very well.
Vibrating hamsters….*giggle fit* Now if it played the hamster dance we would all be doomed.
Good on her. THAT is a pretty good all around article that comes about as close to summing us up as can be done by one reporter after a weekend trip.
I’m of the minority opinion once again.
– The article’s title suggests sex.
– The article’s lead in sets up a tone of perversion.
– When it’s not suggesting “sex freak”, it’s suggesting “outcast geek”.
– The entire first half of the article focuses on all our bad press; they even interview Gurley!
– The only highlighted quote of the article describes how furries don’t bathe.
– She not only expressed disdain at AC’s attempts to be more open to the press (seeing it as somewhat fascist), but she ridicules the ease at which she circumvents it.
– She mocks the other media’s failure to get AC’s name right and then gets the origin dates for AC and FC wrong.
– Once again, the juiciest, most suggestive portions of interviews are featured. Rabbit Valley’s sex comics, Artemis’s ostracization, Kage’s reference to lack of cleanliness, etc.
– She visits the art show and merely dedicates half a sentence to the clean art, but spends the next several paragraphs talking about the porn.
– Barely a single sentence is dedicated to the charitable work.
– And it all wraps up with a lengthy interview with a transhumanist referencing Stalking Cat, yet again the fringe elements of the community representing us all.
AC spent *SO* much time and effort trying to make the con look good, trying to bury the negative press and not mention it – instead, it gets not one, not two, but three pages on it, followed six paragraphs of porn. I’m now convinced that this is the best we’re ever going to get and I’m deeply disappointed.
I think in the end all you can do is take an incremental approach. This was a step above some past press that we’ve seen, and we can only hope that future articles will be a step above this one. It’s not a game for the impatient, unfortunately, and it’s maddening at best.
Will we ever get a 100% accurate story about furry fandom in the media? Probably not. Because, when it comes right down to it, for a media perspective furry fandom is boring. It’s a bunch of people who get together, discuss stuff they like, maybe dress up in a costume. It’s only marginally more interesting than a bunch of Pittsburgh Steeler fans getting together before The Big Game. So what do you do if you’re a reporter? Find the more Interesting-with-a-capital-I aspects of the fandom and play those up.
Karl busted his ass, and I think he did a fantastic job herding the media. In the end, though, we can’t control what they write and what they show no matter how hard even if we try.
Karl did do a fantastic job, Jason as well, and I have to keep reminding Karl of that, and that I feel he did. Please don’t suggest that I feel otherwise or that I’m critical of his efforts, because I don’t, I’m not, and I know he reads this.
Our best efforts apparently just don’t work – no matter how perfect our tour and control is, they’re going to write about the porn and emphasize the freak angle anyway. We held this lady’s hand and gave her a whole day’s private tour. The tv reports that staked claims on the sidewalk to avoid having to deal with our red tape ended up being less judgemental.
I’ve been in the fandom for nearly 15 years, working the con for ten. I’m not impatient – I’ve been very patient. She writes about how it’s not about sex, then dedicates six paragraphs to the porn. She finds a very average fan, then proceeds to grill him about how the bad press has ostracized him. It’s a total farce, she’s paying us lip service while thumbing her nose. There’s no respect for privacy, no discretion, no adherence to standards – it’s what it is: a titillating human interest expose.
And, frankly, through no fault of our own, that’s not much better than Vanity Fair, IMHO. If the press is going to spin us as freaks because we’re too boring, as evidenced by the results of the all-access pass this reporter got, then I’m all for a total media ban. The experiment failed. We got better press from the tv news we didn’t invite.
I have no disagreement with what you say. I do want to say that I in no way intended to imply that either you thought that Karl had not done a good job or that you are impatient, because I am quite sure that neither of those statements are true. Evidently I need to work on my writing clarity a bit 🙂
I hesitate to start what might turn into an argument in someone else’s journal, but by definition, fans ARE geeks.
The community is all fringe. Some protions of the fringe is less outre than other portions, and a lot of the “mundane” world is way more freaky in secret than most fans are at all, but it’s fringe.
The treatment of sci fi fandom in the press and media has gone through a similarly painfully slow incremental path away from tabloid coverage. And the same is true for gays. I sort of look at it all as a very slow acceptance of the idea that people can be wildly different from “us” (whoever us is) and still be decent, productive members of society.
Which isn’t to say that the article isn’t disappointing or slanted, btw.
god damn … pittsburgh really soaked all this up.
with all this espionage, it makes me wonder again about the guy at the meeting…
dun duh DUHHHHHH
“Who gave Mix a ride?”
*giggles softly*
Ya know… if ya read the article and you don’t go out of your way to look for things to criticize in it… its a damn fine article.
a DAMN fine article.
Those Anthrocon Luckies!!
I found the article on par with CSI, but better than say, MTV or Real Sex. We are, well, freaks, and it’s definately better copy to publish the juicy bits than it is the less exciting details. Too bad real journalism is so rare nowadays.
I am jazzed that two pictures from my booth ended up in the article though… I can’t help but be happy about free publicity.
That’s an excellent article (what a change and what a relief!)
I met Lionel Vogt five years back in a different setting – at Battlebots 2001. He built a mostly weaponless lightweight box, like many first-timers, but differed in two respects – it had a giant tentacled eyeball painted on, and it had an onboard camera system that allowed Lionel to steer it around the arena in first-person. He wore a set of VR goggles to drive it. Even the veterans of special effects, such as Mark Setrakian of Mechadon, were impressed.
This page has a lot of images, since it covers the entire lightweight class of 2001. Vogt’s bot Malice is about halfway down.
http://www.robotmarketplace.com/bbsf01light.html
The interview
Indeed I remember you very well Pteryxx it has been a while.
the interview with me was pretty accurate, I wish that they could have said more about the transformation aspects of technology , but this piece was not just about me. You can find my other bot (once I had secured a machine shop ) that I fought with in 2002 and 2003 Little Peice of hate Far far better a bot indeed.
My side of the costuming portion is not only to give people their dreams and forms but to try and open people minds to the possibilitys of when technology can give us wings, will we soar into the blue? or will we burn them out of fear of all the things we will be able to become. I want most of all to positively offer up the idea that it is okay to want to be somthing more, to experiance things not possible in the forms we are locked into now.
I imagine in many ways a simple video of a sub trying desperately to pick up a rock to take to the surface and failing with its grapper arms. then out of the darkness with biolumenecent lights on his or her body a transumanist aquatic picking up the rock for them and placing it in the basket for them, then swimming off into the black of the deep ocean.
And yes , a grand golden lion form for myself. To finnaly be whole , to feel that power for the first time. To leap from rock to rock along the shoreline while chasing other freinds in their various forms.
I think it is good dream. I Imagine a world with custom avian forms and dragons dot the skies above.
If I make my frozen journey. My “low door ” through time. eventually I can imagine my mind, placed in some great ship, And I will slowy turn away from the only home I have ever known to glide through the galaxy for a couple thousand years and see for myself what(and perhaps who) is out there.
Perhaps one day I will wake up and find that we were not a single voice of sentiant life in the universe, But part of a chorus.
Perhaps one day, we will all be able to become our dreams.
Lionel Vogt
http://www.lionofthesun.com
Wow! I was at the Rodent Party, and I vaguely recall an individual wearing a Cheetah Tail. Never had a clue that they were from the press! Talk about sneaky!
Of course, the party ws quite tame and a good bit of fun too. And heck, I didn’t even know the party was listed as ‘yiffy’ either. Talk about funky to find!