Therians and the Digital Decency Police
When a minority aesthetic goes viral, the algorithm does the rest. On narrative identity, animals and the policing of what’s acceptable.
A girl walks on all fours through a park. She wears a faux-fur fox mask and a tail sewn onto her jeans. There are trees, late-afternoon light and a friend filming vertically. A group of teenagers walks by and the laughter starts, then the shouting. Ten minutes later there’s a video going around, and two days later a pundit with an opinion.
That’s a therian. A person who identifies with an animal, spiritually, mentally or physically, and who often expresses it through a very recognizable aesthetic. The community has been organized on forums for decades, but every so often the algorithm discovers it, squeezes it dry and spits it out. It makes a good case study because it shows the whole cycle any minority aesthetic goes through when it goes viral. First curiosity, then mockery, then politics. And in the end, oblivion, until the next one.
What they are and what they aren’t
First, a misunderstanding. A therian is not a furry. Furries enjoy animals that behave like people and celebrate them with fursuits, conventions and a culture of their own made of drawing and costume. A therian feels like an animal. They may share fur and ears, but one plays with a character and the other builds an identity around it.
What it looks like
What interests me most as a designer is that this identity has a surprisingly codified aesthetic. The quadrupedal posture, which therians have brought into their subculture from sport, quadrobics. Realistic masks. Long tails. And nature as an almost mandatory backdrop, with forest, countryside, low light and vertical framing. There’s a recognizable composition, as recognizable as the mirror selfie or the studio portrait.
The powerful part is that identity shifts from biological to narrative. It doesn’t come on your ID. It’s told, shown, rehearsed in front of a camera. It’s digital self-construction with props and set design, where every photo works as a plot point.
A very old wish
Feeling like an animal is one of the oldest fantasies we have. Hercules puts on the skin of the Nemean lion and keeps its strength. Mesoamerican tradition speaks of the tonal, the spiritual double in animal form that is born with every person. Even Christianity, hardly a fan of zoology, gives us the Holy Spirit as a dove and the devil as a serpent. With a track record like that, being scandalized by a fox mask smells a bit like amnesia.
Get Francesco Maria Furno’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
And in a society that grows grayer by the day, one that has turned the puffer jacket into a uniform and catalog minimalism into taste, animal fantasy is a breath of color.
The cycle
The algorithm rewards the strange and the visual, and therians are both. A video becomes clickbait within hours. Mockery arrives just as fast, and it always picks on whatever looks weak. The schoolyard with the little cat ears and the “you’re such a therian” sung in a tone of contempt. The comment section, the video with canned laughter. And once the story has an audience, someone with a microphone shows up ready to use it as ammunition. The smokescreen theory appears along the way, as if anyone had time to organize a mass distraction with a pair of cat ears.
It already happened with emos, with goths, with hipsters. A small group, an aesthetic of its own, a wave of mockery and politics fanning the flames. The names change, the script stays the same.
In mid-February, one of the first therian meetups in Spain, in Barcelona, ended up being cleared out by the Mossos. People who feel like animals, surrounded by humans who feel very clever.
The decency police
“Don’t draw attention.” It’s the silent mandate of every digital square. A social police makes sure nobody steps out of the gray, and brands as obscene any expression capable of breaking the monotony. It’s the same one that looks the other way when war shows us atrocities in real time. We normalize violence and tell free expression to shut up.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein told it better than anyone. A different sensibility, an odd appearance and a society that would rather shout at the monster than ask it anything. Shouting at the monster is easy. It feels safe, it’s tangible, it’s within anyone’s reach.
I suppose some live it for real, some use it as a pose and some don’t quite know where they stand. That happens with any identity. Still, I fail to see the danger. What threat is there in a headband with goat ears, in a cat tail, in someone moving on all fours? Does feeling like someone else really scandalize us that much, in a world full of people dressed up as something they aren’t?
In the park, the girl gets up, brushes off her knees and takes off the mask to drink some water. Underneath, an ordinary face, sweaty and normal.
The strangest thing in the park that day was the people laughing.
