Fireside Talks with Virgil, FC edition; Regarding LGBT group

Hey folks,
For a while in 2020 I used to need to have conversations with our community, seemingly every week. I used these talks to address serious topics such as “Jellenheimers are not fluffies” or “Why do I need to put my name in the title”
(which is a whole lot more important on Reddit)
And today I believe we should have a talk about the LGBT group.

There are some disparate opinions on this.
As many of you will remember, LGBT posts used to simply lumped in with Controversial posts
up until someone came to me and wanted to know why a Pride Fluffy was getting lumped in with Enfie Babbehs and people using fluffies as sex toys.
I couldn’t really argue with that.

And before that LGBT posts were just posted in the general sections.
This was a problem because there are still plenty of people that hate folks for even mentioning LGBT thoughts. There are still places in the world where being a part of this group is enough to get a person killed.
People with these mindsets tend to be extremely vocal about their dislikes. They will go out of their way to harass LGBT people. We still see this every single day in parts of our community.

LGBT people make up a significant portion of our community. I know this because I’ve talked to quite a few of them over the last year and a half. A lot of them are now my friends. They’re people that I want to make room for on this website. They’re people that I don’t want to feel endangered here.

As some of you are aware, Jedan is currently making an amazing comic that centers on a fluffy having an epiphany regarding it’s gender.
By definition this belongs in the LGBT subsection.
The story is truly as “vanilla” as it could possibly be.
I personally think the comic is amazing, and I truly want to see where it goes.

Right now, there’s a pretty disappointing number of people who are opting in to seeing LGBT content, though.
At the time of writing these words, there are only 100 members of the @LGBT group.
And I can understand why a creator would feel starved when so few people are going to see their work.
I have a feeling if this comic were put out in the regular populace, each page would have hundreds of likes in the very first day.

I want to give people the opportunity to choose their own level of involvement here on FluffyCommunity.
But I’ve begun to wonder if perhaps this particular portion of the community should be opt-out, rather than opt-in.

I don’t want to make that decision for everyone, so I believe it’s best that we poll the community to see what everyone thinks should be done.
If you have an alternate idea, I absolutely want to hear it.
I’m going to ask all of you to remain civil while we have this conversation.
The poll is going to be simple, and completely anonymous.
So please let me hear your thoughts on the subject.

We’ll let this poll run until next Friday.
Though I have a feeling we’ll see a trend one way or the other long before then.

Should the LGBT group be opt-out or opt in?
  • Opt-in. If I want to see that stuff, I’ll join the group
  • Opt-out. If I don’t want to see it, I’ll leave the group
  • Fuck you Virgil (I have no opinion on this)

0 voters

25 Likes

How about people realize they can’t control how people enjoy or don’t enjoy there media or are we going to segregate everyone by them dumb shit boxes because people can’t understand that once you put media out in the wild you loose control of it

13 Likes

With the risk of being torn to shreds by whoever disagree with me, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be one of those groups you have to actively opt out of instead of vice versa. It’s not something new. Yes, I know far too many places in this world are acting as if LGBT does/should not exist but seriously, if those who join gets so flustered about something as trivial as love regardless of gender and sexuality or lack there of, then they should just opt out. It’s not like everyone has to opt-in or out of seeing anything related to heterosexuality and being cis for example. :shrug:

26 Likes

Opt-out. I had to opt-out/mute of a number of tags. Its easy with the tools provided.

I’d like to think the majority of people visiting here will have some sense and manners to simply ignore what they don’t want to interact with. Having grown up with conservative Christian church (Pentacostal specifically), even going to a Pentacostal college and helping plant 2 churches? You’d /think/ I’d be against it the LGBT group. I personally think its a great thing, I support it, and think it should be helped to grow BECAUSE of people with backgrounds like mine.

You’ll notice most things you have to opt out of rather than opt in to when signing up for things. The reason being is most companies don’t want you to opt out and going opt in REALLY drops participation in whatever it is (newsletters, sending you emails, whatever). I think letting folks opt out will help the LGBT section considerably, and having the easy opt out will let folks who don’t want to see it (for whatever reason) do so.

Seems as win/win as it can get without putting in place a large moderation team.

23 Likes

Would this be for the other groups too? Like anthro? It was kind of confusing even opting in for some things for me as a new user, so I’m assuming it’s gonna be hard for me to opt out :frowning: I’m mainly on mobile if that makes any difference.

7 Likes

do you want to see furry porn the first time you come here?

7 Likes

Opt out. I know there are some parts of the world that can get you killed for being gay and have families disown you for it, but would that really matter when alongside the gay content is disturbing abuse on fictional horses, using them in the worst ways imaginable?

14 Likes

Did you see where I typed @LGBT ?

Try clicking those letters

That’s the easiest way to join or leave a group

5 Likes

It’s kinda what I thought I was seeing when I was first introduced to fluffies.

10 Likes

I’d imagine anything under Controversial would remain opt-in, which makes sense to me (regardless of the parent group). Anthro seems to get a lot of folks riled up regardless of nudity, sexual content, etc, which is why I think its opt-in regardless. People have gotten flamed on Reddit over it :confused:

I think the big irony is folks who would consider it offensive content might be fine with little smartie horse-things raping mares and stallions. Because its, you know, funny/justice/whatever.

11 Likes

To be fair, some popular art is fluffy version of slave porn comics…so I get that.

7 Likes

Yes, @LGBT is the only group I would currently consider making opt-out rather than opt-in

16 Likes

I’d say opt-out. Personally though, I love to see good artwork by anyone, but some ppl really get hinky over seeing things like that.

12 Likes

which is why you have to click every button on the site in order to find the switch for a big boy mode

5 Likes

Hence why I wrote the Quick Start Guide a few days ago.
I’m trying to make it less confusing

10 Likes

As I see it, it’s the year 2021. There are sadly countries that are very backwards when it comes to LGBTQA+ rights, and it’s heartbreaking. There’s still people who are completely backwards.
But as the activists used to say: “we’re here, we’re queer” and “not happy as in gay, queer as in fuck you”. We exist, times are changing, and people are just going to have to deal with that.

19 Likes

Yeah but I was talking about my introduction, before the censors and walls began to be built

5 Likes

i know, which is why i am telling you it exists now

4 Likes

After all, my character Brenda is bi.

6 Likes

I was asked earlier today what keeps me going.
What keeps me motivated.
I hope they see this thread.
This is what keeps me motivated.
I love this community so much.

22 Likes