I think we've all heard someone at one point say something along the lines of "popular furs are arrogant dicks" or something. I'd like to offer some thoughts or theories about why people perceive that as the case. I would not call myself a "popufur" by any means, I have a relatively small group of watchers given the size of this community, but I guess I have been in it a few years now and kind of have gleaned a lot of information about it over time.
I think first of all that it's ridiculous that people say things like that and ridiculous that people make offhand remarks all the time at people they don't know. First of all, you don't know what someone's like just from their journals and online profile and even twitter and all this stuff. You just don't know someone until you've gotten the chance to interact with them many times, in real time, one on one, in privacy, online or offline.

But more importantly, I feel like there's two things going on here:

1. The more prominent you are on the internet, the more you are aware that not everyone is going to like you and in fact there will be people who go out of their way to dislike you. At least, the more you put yourself out there. Once you really come to terms with that you aren't going to please everyone, you stop trying as much to please everyone and caring what people think of you.
   The fact is, by the time someone is really popular here in this online community, I'm going to go ahead and imagine most of them have had endless shit flung at them by others. Whether it be from the people who will no doubt be talking about how overrated their art or their character is or they themselves are, or from drama and rumors, or even just from the natural effect of rubbing some people the wrong way when you put yourself out there and put your thoughts and opinions out - once the group of people paying attention to you is large enough, there's pretty much an assurance that there will be people who find things you say to be offensive or upsetting or dull. And the whole thing where people are garunteed to dislike you i s nothing new or unique, hollywood celebrities, musicians, any public figure gets this. I know there are probably people out there who really dislike me as a person without even having met me who I don't even know or know of, putting aside those I do know about.
   And so I would say it's easy to see that people are going to become jaded, and for many, that will manifest in an attitude that may come across as being cold or arrogant or hard-edged - but really, it's just because they are perhaps protecting themself from being hurt by being aware of having people out there who dislike them, or because they just don't care what people think anymore, or any other number of reasons they're trying to deal with this in that way.

2. People who act like you're a dick if you aren't becoming friends with everyone who wants to skype you or responding to every note you get or wanting to deal with all of your emails must not realize than when you have a lot of people who want to talk to you and a limited amount of time, you may not always be able to give everyone tons of attention. The whole "popular furs are dicks because they don't talk to people who aren't popular" is stupid first because it's a generalization that may lead to unfair profiling, and second because let's face it, not everyone has time to talk to every single person, and usually there are good reasons why the "popufurs" might be a little more willing to get to know others who are also as entrenched in the community as them. I mean, usually having a popular status is accompanied by the fact that you have put more information about yourself out there, you have more of a reputation, you may be more likely to have common values, etc. It's not just about popularity.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts. I imagine not everyone will agree, but it's what I think at this point about this particular little meme some people carry around the fandom.