> What and why and when are “furries”? Throwaway. Old-school furry, from the early 90s. I won't try to speak to the history - it predates me by a few years -

> What and why and when are “furries”? Throwaway. Old-school furry, from the early 90s. I won't try to speak to the history - it predates me by a few years - but the comment "furries run the Internet" was true for decades. In the 90s and 00's the level of overrepresentation was off the charts, to such a degree that for awhile one large and successful contracting company (Taos Mountain) would actively recruit from the fandom. Many, many successful early startups had multiple furries working there in key technical positions, including some who's earliest and most influential employees were furries (not naming names because those folks may not want to be 'outed' as furry). I worked for one pretty successful startup that, with I think maybe <100 employees, at least 10 of us were furries. For awhile if a company was an ISP or other service provider, data center operator, had an IT staff of at least 3, or just were a tech company chances are there were multiple furries working there. Some companies still have pretty large fractions of certain departments absent on weekends when large furry cons are being held. I'd say we're still overrepresented in tech but the industry has gotten so much larger that the raw absolute numbers aren't as surprising as they once were.