PLEASE RE-UPLOAD THIS TO YOUR PAGE! THIS WAS MEANT FOR THE WHOLE FANDOM TO HEAR!

"Three days after the announcement that Fur Affinity, the largest and most important center of commerce and community for the Furry Fandom, was sold to a non Furry company without our consent or consult, I am very proud to see outrage and recognition of betrayal. To have undermined the artists and creators of the Furry Fandom without a mere mention before the sale, and to have doddled around without telling anyone until two months after, is such an egregious and downright vile offense to our respect, intelligence, and especially our livelihood that as each day goes by instead of this decision getting clearer and clearer it gets more and more baffling the more we attempt to comprehend it.

The Furries of the Furry Fandom are right in their rage, their anger, their feelings of being trampled. We see through the smiling platitudes being fed to us by who knows anymore really. The expectation that we take these reassurances on pure faith leaves us more distrustful given the history of our faith in the announcements of this site, and these reassurances fall in direct conflict with the past actions of the company that now claims to own the medium of our livelihood; the gathering of our most independent Fandom. And though I am proud, very proud, to see just how easily we are seeing and even piercing these flat assurances that nothing will happen, everything is normal, it doesn't affect you, don't look at the pink elephant in the corner... It seems to go amiss as to whats really at stake here; as to what larger "big picture" impact this sell-out has introduced to the Furry narrative. This Fandom has been asked a question. This is a question we would inevitably be asked, and a question which will ripple through all corners of the Furry world across
SoFurry, Weazyl, Anthrocon, Further Confusion, your local furmeet, and right down to you, your future, and your conscious.

The sale of Fur Affinity to a non-Furry company had prompted the whole of the Fandom to answer this: "Will this Fandom, the one truly independent and free flowing Fandom, declare and at all costs maintain 100% control over its soveirenty and keep this Fandom of Furries by Furries for Furries one in which every Furry has the opportunity to be a meaningful actor within their Fandom. Will we commit to keeping the gap between producer and fan non-existent and maintain a Fandom which includes difference, normalizes the fringe, and embraces the outrageous. Will we keep a Fandom which harbors the downtrodden outcast of the satus quo? Will we assert that we as a Fandom are the only ones who have the right to set the course of our Fandom and determine the culture of our people? Or will we trade that in; accept the meddling of outside companies who want to capitalize on our accomplishments and in the process destroy our independence, govern our Fandom for us, and create an impossible gap between the fans and our 'parent companies'. Would we do this in exchange for glitzier web sites, cheap mass produced standardized apparel and even suits, and an Anthrocon three times the size, but brought to you by _______ who will take the income from admission and there will be no charity. At least, that is, for the short time they can engineer a fad till it crumbles and we become an unprofitable inconvenience and we are trashed and left to pick up the shambles and start from square 1.

We as a Fandom must have an answer to this question, because what happens here on FA in the coming months sets a precedent for the next decade of the Furry Fandom. IMVU being a small company, if we let them succeed in their goal of turning the Furry Fandom into a money making machine for them then there will be bigger, stronger, more formidable companies that come knocking, and for them we must have an answer too. This is the next phase of the Furry Fandom in which we must defend what we have built, and further build an infrastructure, an organization that will effectively let us as a Fandom deliver our answer in the loudest was possible.

We have built a powerhouse of an economy solely on art. We normalized homosexuality 30 years before its time. We created a Fandom where anyone can contribute and their

status in the community is based on the merit of their contribution. We are not beholden to a parent company executive behind a desk deciding what gets shipped, made, and who sees it. We do not rely on the creation of a team of people or one man to exist, and once it stops being produced, we disappear. We are a fandom of a IDEA, and idea of acceptance, equality, and self discovery held within the representation of ourselves in an anthropomorphic world. Whats at stake...is the loss of all that, of our identity, and the Fandom as WE have built it."

I Hereby give any and all users of FA permission to upload this to their page. This was made for all users.