Try to be kind to people. I notice a lot of younger furs are extremely judgmental and dismiss and try to “cancel” people without knowing the entire story. Listen before you speak.

I’m not exactly the oldest fur around, but I’ve been a furry for a long time and there’s many advice I could’ve given to younger me.

I have a few, but it mostly boils down to: don’t make being a furry a big deal. Just relax.

More specifically:

• Being a furry is just a hobby. You don’t need to “come out” as a furry or tell anyone. And in most cases, there’s nothing wrong with your friends knowing that you’re a furry, it’s not a shameful secret you need to hide as if it’s a fetish (just don’t let your future employers know). Use a furry wallpaper or furry profile picture if you want to and where it’s appropriate. Of course, with furries being generally seen in negative lights, some caution need to be exercised, and some people may treat you being a furry very badly. Use your own judgement, but for the most part, it’s less of a big deal than I expected.
• Don’t worry about all the hatred. Younger me have seen so many furry hate comments, especially around the “gamers vs furries” time, that she wanted to quit the fandom out of fear. But really, all those hate comments are mostly made by children trying to look cool by attacking a punching bag. It’s mostly empty threats. Just ignore the haters and trolls making fun of you for being a furry and bee yourself. Don’t let fear consume you.
• Don’t worry about how unique your fursona is. Younger me was afraid that her fursona is not unique enough or that someone might have a similar looking fursona, but I don’t care now. Your fursona should reflect what you like, not what is the most unique. If you’d prefer a vanilla looking fursona, that’s fine. If you’d like your fursona to be a polar bear with purely white fur, go ahead. You don’t need to add additional pattern to make it more stand out, unless that’s really what you want.
• Fursona can be changed anytime, so don’t worry about picking the wrong one. Explore around and try out fursona designs you’d like. If you already have a fursona but want to change it, that’s fine. But be aware that any art or fursuits made for your old fursona won’t magically change to your new ones, so do take deep consideration about your fursona before making an expensive art commission or a fursuit.

That’s all I can say for now.

Lessons from 25+ years in varying degrees of furry community involvement:

• When it comes to fictional stuff (art/stories), if you don’t like it, don’t look. Leave people alone if they are not harming real people or animals. It’s not actually the end of the world if you see something that you weren’t ready for, or something that grosses you out or makes you uncomfortable. Either avoid visiting sites with content that bothers you, or block users/tags if the site allows it. This is very easy on most sites now. If you visit some artist or site to shock yourself on purpose, you only have yourself to blame.
• If you’re a young artist/writer/musician, your best chance of finding a creative community is with your peers, rather than established artists, who already have their own peer group.
• If randos online tell you being a furry is cringe, wait until they realize how cringe obsessively hating furries is. On that note, virtually everyone who has a weird thing about furries used to be one, and might come back around once they grow out of that phase. As someone who in fact went through this cycle, I can tell you it is extremely embarrassing.
• Try to be cool to people, in general. Furry is a very small world.

If you’re alive, then you’re succeeding in life.