>>76973219Exactly.
Back when the furry fandom began picking up speed (it has been around since the late 70's, but the internet helped it expand), it was decided since the fandom encompassed a lot of topics, that those wanting in it should be welcomed with open arms, as a way to build community reputation.
This was good, with a lot of overlap occuring between the furry community and the LGBT community - this explains why so many furries are gay/bi/trans - but this open-door policy quickly got taken-advantage of by fetishists who figured out a way for their really nasty kinks (scat, guro, etc.) to get "accepted" - just slap a fox-tail/cat-ears on it.
Unfortunately, by the time this was noticed, it was too late to get rid of them, and it was the sick folks whose habits ended up getting seen as far more common than they really are.
About this time, Something Awful got wind of the furry culture, and as they usually do, they took the worst parts they could find and presented them as common, in their idea of "humor".
Something Awful had no real problem with furries - they knew that few furries were like the weirdoes they highlighted. SA even had a furry admin. When he left to work on other projects, the SA forums had a "purging of furries". This was not serious, a hyperbole joke. They had "executions" of the furries that was just a ban that only lasted as long as the game.
Not long after this, 4chan stole the idea and content from SA... except they completely missed the idea that what SA did wasn't actually representative of the community, but an exaggeration of its worst/least-common aspects, and thus truly believed that all furries are sickass dog-fuckers who dress up in Sonic costumes and gleefully shit themselves. Thus came "Yiff in Hell, furfag!" and the sitewide ban on furry content. Really, if 4chan had just paid attention when they nicked stuff from SA, this mess wouldn't even be an issue.
