Telegram was the first major chat platform that allowed custom sticker packs to be uploaded and used by its users. This led to the creation of a fuckton of sticker packs for peoples’ fursonas.
How many furry sticker packs are there? Well, my friend Nican started a project to collect and categorize them all. You can find their project online at bunnypa.ws.
Instead, they ran a vapid “contest” and point to that as evidence of their protocol’s security.
If you’re a cryptography nerd, then you probably already understand that IND-CCA2 security is necessary for confidential messaging. You’re probably cautious enough to not depend on Telegram’s MTProto for privacy.
If you’re not a cryptography nerd, then you probably don’t care about any of this jargon or what it means.
Telegram is best treated as a message board or a mailing list.
Use it for public communications, knowing full well that the world can read what you have to say. So long as that’s your threat model, you aren’t likely to ever get burned by the Durov family’s ego.
For anything that you’re not comfortable with being broadcast all over the Internet, you should use something more secure. Signal is the current recommended choice until something better comes along.
Last year, Telegram rolled out the ability to collect conversations, groups, and chats into folders. Most furries don’t know about this feature, because it doesn’t enable itself by default.
First, open the hamburger menu (on desktop) or click on your icon (on mobile), then click Settings.
Next, you’ll see an option for Folders.
You should see a button that says “Create New Folder”.
From here, you can include Chats or general types of Chats (All Groups, All Channels, All Personal Conversations) and then exclude specific entries.
Give it a name and press “Create”. After a bit of organizing, you might end up with a setup like this.
Now, here’s the cool thing (but sadly doesn’t exist on all clients–use Telegram Desktop on Windows and Linux if you want it).
Once you’re done setting up your folders, back out to the main interface on Desktop and right click one of the folders, then press “Mark As Read”.
Finally, an easy button to zero out your notifications. Serenity at last!
Note: Doing this to the special Unread folder is congruent to pressing Shift + ESC on Slack. You’re welcome, Internet!
Make Yourself Undiscoverable
In the default configuration, if anyone has your phone number in their address book (n.b. queerphobic relatives) and they install Telegram, you’ll get a notification about them joining.
As you can imagine, that’s a bit of a terrifying prospect for a lot of people. Fortunately, you can turn this off.
Under Settings > Privacy and Security > Phone Number, you can limit the discovery to your contacts (n.b. in your phone’s address book).
Turn Off Notifications for Pinned Messages
Under Settings > Notifications, you will find the appropriate checkbox under the Events heading.
A lot of furry Telegram groups like to notify all users whenever they pin a message. These notifications will even override your normal preferences if you disabled notifications for that group.
Also, you’re probably going to want to disable notifications for every channel / group / rando with very few exceptions, or else Telegram will quickly get super annoying.
Increase the Interface Scale
The default font size for Telegram is tiny. This is bad for accessibility.
Fortunately, you can make the font bigger. Open the Settings menu and scroll down past the first set of options.
Set the interface scale to at least 150%. It will require Telegram to re-launch itself to take effect.
Don’t Rely on Persistent Message History
This is just a cautionary footnote, especially if you’re dealing with someone with a reputation for gaslighting: The other participant in a conversation can, at any point in time, completely or selectively erase messages from your conversation history.
However, this doesn’t delete any messages you’ve already forwarded–be it to your Saved Messages or to a private Channel.
Aside: This is why, when someone gets outed for being a terrible human being, the evidence is usually preserved as forwarded messages to a channel.
Although Telegram isn’t in the same league as Signal and WhatsApp, its user experience is good–especially if you’re a furry.
I hope with the tips I shared above, as well as resources like bunnypa.ws, the Furry Telegram experience will be greatly improved for everyone that reads my blog.
Addendum: Beware the Furry Telegram Group List
A few people have asked me, “Why don’t you tell folks about furry-telegram-groups.net and/or @furlistbot?”
The main reason is that a lot of the most popular groups on that listing are either openly or secretly run by a toxic personality cult called Furry Valley that I implore everyone to avoid.
Welcome back to Cryptography Dispatches, my lightly edited newsletter on cryptography engineering. PSA: I've been doing some livecoding on my Twitch channel,...
Search engines have this feature where if you start to type a question, it will attempt to predict your question based on what other people have asked.
This has some hilarious consequences. The PDF file format is apparently the world’s one of the world’s four most popular religions, or so the meme goes. Sometimes this feature gets gamed by large hordes of shitty people (read: 4chan) typing provocative questions into search engines.
Let’s take a look at some of the questions that real people and/or astroturfing trolls have asked Google about the furry fandom and its members.
Answers to Questions People Asked Google About Furries
Note: This is just a subset of all the questions that showed up in Google’s autocomplete for various questions about furries. A lot of the questions are inappropriate or are framed so poorly that they’re not worth answering in the first place.
Soatok is here to answer your burning curiosity.
Do Furries Have Rights?
Yes. Specifically: The same rights as anyone else in the country they live in.
Do Furries Say UwU?
UwU
Do Furries Deserve Rights?
Yes.
I’m glad that matter’s settled, aren’t you?
Do Furries Talk?
If we didn’t, people wouldn’t be so desperate to shut us up, now would they?
But some fursuiters do choose to remain silent in fursuit.
Do Furries Want to Be Animals?
We already are animals: Humans are animals.
I mean, really, the only other options are vegetable, mineral, fungus, or microbe.
Do Furries Want to Be Non-Human Animals?
Much better question!
Generally, no.
The people who believe they are (spiritually or otherwise) a non-human animal are called otherkin or therian, not furries.
This really shouldn’t surprise anyone. Furries are nerds. Nerds go to cons.
Do Furries Go to the Vet?
No.
Not only do we not go to the vet, but we’ve historically done a poor job of vetting the people who rise in popularity in our community… which usually resulted in completely avoidable PR disasters that trolls happily abuse, to this day, to try to astroturf the general public into thinking we’re horribly depraved people.
See what I did there? :3
Why Do Furries Matter?
That’s a rather nihilistic question to ask, and it was the most popular “why?” question, to boot.
Namely, the furry fandom saves lives, provides a support system for a lot of LGBTQIA+ people, and is home to some of the best humans you’ll ever meet (including many that are absolutely vital to modern telecommunications infrastructure, i.e. the Internet).
But at the end of the day, this is a deeply personal question and will ultimately boil down to individual opinion and thus is unanswerable.
Why Do Furries Use Telegram?
Counter-question: Have you ever heard of the network effect?
Telegram supported custom stickers before any other major communication medium, so they’ve been accumulating furries for many years before the other platforms caught up.
What other platform makes it easy to respond with this image when socially appropriate? Sticker by Khia, Telegram sticker pack here.
The main reasons furries choose Telegram today are:
Their friends are already using it
They can effectively reply to messages with custom stickers of their fursona, rather than just plaintext or emoji
That being said, many furries these days use Discord too. Main reasons: Gaming and streaming.
If you’d like to learn more about furries and Telegram, and furries using Telegram, and how to make Telegram bearable, check out A Furry’s Guide to Telegram.
Why Do Furries Like Foxes?
Oh contrare!
Just kidding! This sticker’s meaning is “I’m not a fox!” not “Down with foxes!”
There really isn’t a good answer to this question.
The best approximation you’ll find is that: Foxes used to be an extremely popular choice in cartoon animal character design (Disney’s Robin Hood, Star Fox 64, Sajin Komamura from Bleach, etc.).
It’s an emoticon! OwO is like a sideways :3 face, but with surprised eyes. It comes from copypasta started by a shitpost mocking the typical behavior and communication style of furry roleplayers.
How Do Furries Talk?
Rather well, thank you.
Oh wait, you wanted to know about the anatomy that enables speech? Ask a biologist with a passing interest in science fiction and/or werewolves.
Severely allergic. But that’s just me. Photo by Kurdan. Feline fursonas (cats of all sizes) are almost as common as canid fursonas (wolves, foxes, etc.).
If you’re expecting to see us fight like cats and dogs, you’re in for some disappointment.
How Do Furries Make Money?
A lot of us work in tech!
Soatok, the author of this blog.
But not all furries work in tech. You can find us in pretty much every vocation and profession imaginable.
Some furries work full-time as artists and content creators for the rest of the community. All of the art you’re seeing on this page of my fursona was the result of other artists’ work.
How Do Furries Go to the Bathroom?
Generally, fursuiters have to undress before they can do their business, then redress after.
Non-fursuiters? Same as anyone else.
Can I Hunt Furries?
No, that’s stupid.
Furries are humans (and humans are animals).
Wanting to hunt furries is completely sociopathic and immoral.
You’re effectively asking if it’s okay to commit murder against a predominantly LGBTQIA+ community.
But Since Furries Want to Be Animals, We Should Be Allowed to Hunt Them!
No, of course not. Not unless we can hunt you too, anyway!
“All is fair in love and vore,” or so they say. Art by ruemaw
No, but seriously, if you feel like you should be allowed to “hunt” other people, there is something deeply wrong with you and you should seek therapy before you hurt an innocent person.
Are Furries Legal?
Yes. Why wouldn’t we be?
There may be a lot of nuances to this question. (Are fursuits legal in $venue? That will depend on mask laws, etc.)
The author is demi/gay, if anyone was wondering ;3 – Art by Swizz
Those are all the appropriate and interesting questions I could find through Google’s search prediction feature. If I missed any that are worth including, let me know on Twitter or Telegram.
When someone says, “I hate furries,” that’s a dog-whistle for anti-queer bigotry. If it’s not immediately clear why this is the case, I’ll explain why this is true. Observation: Homophobia is…
The PDF file format is apparently the world’s one of the world’s four most popular religions, or so the meme goes.
Soatok is here to answer your burning curiosity.
Art by circuitslime
What other platform makes it easy to respond with this image when socially appropriate? Sticker by Khia, Telegram sticker pack here.
Just kidding! This sticker’s meaning is “I’m not a fox!” not “Down with foxes!”
Photo by Kurdan.
Soatok, the author of this blog.
“All is fair in love and vore,” or so they say. Art by ruemaw
Me, to animal abusers: “GTFO!”
The author is demi/gay, if anyone was wondering ;3 – Art by Swizz
