I wish I’d known the fandom was a thing sooner. I discovered my interest in anthropomorphism pretty early (because 80s cartoons), but I lived in the middle of nowhere growing up, and even after we (finally) got internet access, it was pretty bad… I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to just go browse around much, and it wasn’t until late highschool that I realized there was a whole fandom built up around it. This discovery, unfortunately, came about when I got involved in a separate community that was openly hostile to furries, which led to me feeling real awkward about the whole thing, and not really feeling “safe” being openly furry (even online) until years later. I wish I’d just been myself and not worried about what strangers on the internet thought (and started associating sooner with people with similar interests, rather than trying to fit in with folks who clearly did not.)

I did not discover this fandom until I found alt.fan.furry newsgroup in 1990 or 1991. And at the time, I only knew of it for posting artwork or talking about furry comics. I had no knowledge at the time of furry cons. Had I known about the cons as well, I may have gotten into the fandom personally much sooner, before life got Too Busy. I also was unaware of FurryMuck, that would have been a wonderful thing for me to have joined and been active on. So all of my furry fandom time in the 90’s and 2000’s was just the newsgroups (until ISPs stopped carrying them and the dedicates furry newsservers like Critter shut down).