how did you join and or find out about or find the furry fandom?

[RangerRivet]

Thats cool, shiro. I never had that whole opportunity to find furry friends. I met one who was too busy with his other friends and his girlfriend to ever hang out, and he wasn't well versed in the furry community. The other one was just a wierdo~ it's just now that I'm starting to see other furries in real life and interact with them

[Shiro]

I was definitely lucky to have stayed in Victoria. It's a very small area with a very high population of furries.

[youngpup]

I had stumbled across the furry fandom scene during my teen years and was really stoked on it then, but as time went on i faded off into other interests.
However recently was looking for a new hobby and source of enjoyment while i struggled with finding somethig to be happy doing with my time as a hobby.As my old hobby slowly turned into a career which i cant complain about, always awesome to get payed for what you enjoy doing but I found my hobby had turned into work and I needed something to make me happy outside of what has now turned into my work.
One day I remembered the furry scene I once enjoyed in highschool and thought I'd like to get back into it. and here Iam. stoked as ever!!  :D :D :D

[JayeCat]

I'm one of those people who's always kinda been ridiculously furry without even knowing that was a thing yet?
Like, even as young as 5 I was telling people that I was a cat. And I've always meow'd a lot in conversations and in relationships I tend to act very cat-like.
In high school I found out about the idea of a furry, but like many other people, I thought it was only a sexual thing for a long time. It was only in the past maybe 2 years that I looked into the community more and realised there's so much more to furriness than sexual stuff, and thereby started educating friends who also thought it was strictly sexual. I went to one furry meetup in Oshawa (ontario), but honestly they weren't much fun, and they were pretty elitist, and even made fun of my tail (like wtf). So I didn't do much furry stuff until I moved out here to BC and then I went to my first fur con with a friend - this past VancouFur :3 AND IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. You guys are seriously awesome.
So yeah, totally embracing the label of 'furry' now, and even starting to put together a fursona. :3

[Giorgio Chum]

The Fandom followed me home one day, and I decided to keep it.

[ChapterAquila92]

About a decade ago, back when I was barely a teen, a whole collection of interests led me to find the Furry Fandom independently. Amongst these included Warhammer Fantasy Lizardmen, Dungeons & Dragons, and Morrowind.

It was my initial interest in Lizardmen from Warhammer that started the process, browsing the internet looking for lizardmen in general. It was out of this that I came up with this drawing before starting my high school days:



With everything said, I had more knowledge of the transformation community than of the Furry Fandom at the time, and it was after stumbling onto TransFur and (briefly) FurAffinity a little later on that I had an idea as to what I was getting myself into. Suffice to say I did what I could to keep my distance after that up until I started going to university back in 2010; up to that point I only knew one other furry in person - a fellow high school student who, like myself at the time, was paranoid about the subject (and perhaps more so for him, considering his concern for his younger brother).

Past that, the rest is history.

[Zaralyth]

It's a tough question to answer, I find. My roots date back to 2006. Even back then the internet was no strange things to me. I do believe it was initially a post on deviantART which had sparked my interest. I read up a lot on the subject, but left it mostly in the dark until around 2009. My brain had developed more and I was more aware and mature about things, so I took the time to reinvigorate my interest. From there my interest only developed more and more.

[Doink]

I tend to justify everything so I started making furry heads so if people wonder why I'm into this sort of thing I just say I make them and sure enough my friends think it's cool as opposed to calling me weird

[00ACE00]

I found out about the character/art side when I was pre-teen. I would pretend to be older and rp with people in a lot of furry themed rps online. Didn't know too much about the adult side till later. Then I found out more on the community through cosplay. I thought all furries were the kind that had sex in their costumes so I avoided the community until a friend told me that most aren't like. Then I tried to make some furry friends at cons...and only ran into those kinds. So I kind of just hid away for a bit but now I'm giving it a second chance and tried to join some official forums.

[Kit]

I think I knew back when I was a teenager when I would watch all those great cartoons, tailspin and all the other great anthro ones, didn't really know what it was or anyone in the fandom until a few years ago. and now ive been to my first con and trying to get a fursuit started :) the rest as they say is history

[Cass-cougar]

How I came to learn of the fandom, is twofold.

When I was in my late teens, I was (and still am) rather fond of Yugioh the Abridged Series. In one of the episodes I heard the term "furry" in the context of dressing up as an anthropomorphic animal. Curiosity got the best of me -because it's a driving force in my life- and I decided to search online, with one particular query in mind: "furry".
An image-search or two later, I mostly found clean art; but, because I had long since grown bored with looking at explicit content featuring humans, and had progressed to hentai, the smutty anthro stuff, which also popped up in my search results, generally wasn't off-putting to me in the slightest.

Since then had been collecting both clean and explicit furry artwork, but it wasn't until 2011 that I really learned about the fandom. One night, while lying in bed, I decide to search for "furry" again, this time in an online music store, belonging to some popular fruit company. I came across this cute little podcast called "Fur What it's Worth", hosted by Elias, Thay, and Roo. After I finished with that, I found Furcast, which appealed even more to me, because of how well it was handled -from a technical perspective- and the content, which was mostly furry-related, and very interesting to the uninitiated, such as myself at the time. Thank you Paradox, Mattox, and Fayroe, for opening my eyes to the fandom. I owe you.

Now I sit on the sidelines, quietly collecting anthro art and smut, and I'll occasionally interact with various elements of this fascinating collective. Case in point: this post.

[CommanderKat]

I actually went to vancoufur as a joke with a friend to just say I survived a furry convention. We kept thinking furries were odd and whatnot but then second day, we're both furries and buying tails and commissions. We were treated so kind and I've never really experienced such a nice Fandom before, I loved the art, costumes and just the vibe.(also always wanted a tail)  Now here I am in forums and going to meets lol

[Owl]

I was aware of it long before I ever actually interacted with it.

I started actually interacting with it mostly due to anonymous boards related to the fandom that I started visiting out of curiosity. Eventually it just gradually became something I nestled into.