CHAPTER EIGHT
Plugged In: The Electronic Age
Furry fandom and the Internet are siblings, nearly contemporaries. The fandom was born in the mid-1980s, and from its very beginning, electronic boards and Usenet platforms, the Internet’s predecessors, helped it grow. When the Internet burst into full bloom in the 1990s, so did furry fandom. Aided and abetted by Google and its ilk, many a future fur’s curiosity about cartoons, animal art or werewolves would ultimately lead them to the fandom—an experience that would in time be shared by thousands.
Electronic, online bulletin boards, or “BBSs”, were in the forefront of turning Furry digital. These electronic communication systems ran on the earliest personal computers. In that pre-broadband era people had no way to reach the boards except via slow-speed telephone modems. For the most part the boards resided on private home computers, usually with a dedicated phone line connecting them to the outside world. (If the person running the board couldn’t afford a dedicated line, people trying to reach the board had to wait until the phone was free for the evening)…
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CONTINUED IN –
FURRY NATION:
The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood Subculture
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