The primary thing to know about the furry fandom is that the term “furry” is obscenely broad. The vast majority create animal characters (“fursonas”) to represent themselves, but not all. Many go in for the kinkier side (I do), but not all. (There is, in fact, sex at furry conventions, but you have to actively go looking for it, and it is not easy to find.) You see plenty of minors at furry conventions (some of whose parents are rich enough to put them in fursuits!) and people who are into the kinkier side switch that part of their brains completely off while chatting with them at a panel or giving them headpats in the hallway. Getting headpats and/or hugs from total strangers is a very common thing at virtually all in-person furry related events, but again, not all furries like it, and you’ll see about equally as many people at cons wearing “don’t touch me please” signs somewhere on their clothing as “please hug me” signs. While we’re on the subject of common misconceptions, most furries (~80%) do not believe they are animals; the ones that do are called therians, and most therians do not consider themselves furries. Also, not all furries have fursuits. This is primarily because they’re completely custom, made-once-and-never-again wearable pieces of art, and are priced accordingly (between four and five figures depending on who you get them from). According to the surveys conducted by Furscience, about 10% of furries own fursuits and another 50% want one, but some people don’t and they’re just as much furries as anyone else. (Also, even the ones that do have them don’t wear them very often, partly because of stigma, but mostly because however hot you think it is under all that fur, it’s hotter.) Some furries like roleplay, some don’t. Some like making their own art, some don’t. Some like looking at furry porn, some don’t. Many spend a lot of time in VRChat or Resonite with their own characters as their skins (although most just download a premade skin like a Novabeast, a Sergal, or an Avali, change the colors, and call it a day). Some furries don’t do VR at all. A lot of furries work in STEM fields (IT, programmers, engineers etc), and STEM people are overrepresented in the fandom, but the vast majoirty do not and are as broke as anyone else. There are a lot of things that people associate with the furry fandom, and it means something different to basically every single person that’s in it. That’s kinda par for the course when you have a fandom (just like the fandom for a TV show) when the thing that they’re fans of is pretty much exclusively things each other have made.

Essentially, the only rule is, if you want to be a furry, congrats, you’re a furry.

Unless you actually genuinely want to fuck dogs. Maybe the one thing that unites all furries everywhere is how much they hate zoophiles. If word gets out that you’ve even considered it, the entire rest of the fandom will come together to disown you.

Oh, one other thing: furries in their day-to-day lives are just normal people. 99.99% of the time when you’re talking to a furry, you won’t know it unless you ask. It’s a hobby that we do in our spare time (going to conventions or local meet-ups where it’s not so weird to wear a fursuit since we’re all doing it, or making or commissioning art, or roleplaying, or hanging out in VRChat, or what have you). Even most furry content creators on the internet (with the exception of the full time drama YouTubers) spend most of their time playing videogames or doing little relatable animations.