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Anonymous User asked:

I want to try doing some local (to me) furry stuff but the idea of showing up alone is scary >w<

any advice?

Hey! Sorry for the delay on this one- was too tired to answer it in a way I felt it deserved yesterday/last night and wanted to give you something a little more cohesive.

I started going to meets way back when I was 17, before my parents knew I was a furry and before I really had much in the way of local furry friends. I had one friend from middle school I'd recently reconnected with that was starting to get more involved in furry stuff, and I'd been somewhat active in online communities (mostly lurking, other than the now-defunct Furry Teens forums), but I was still very much uncertain of myself and at the time my social anxiety was much more pronounced.

Thinking back on that time in my life, there are a few lessons learned that come to mind, that made things easier over time. The first one is one I thankfully figured out early, and that's persistence. Not every meet/con/event is going to go well or end up in you making new friends or even necessarily be fun, but the only reliable way to improve the odds of those things going well for yourself is to keep going to them and learn through experience! If you don't have a great time at the first thing you attend, try to figure out what parts of it didn't work out for you and what parts did, and plan one or two things you can do differently for the next event. And then, crucially- go to that next event! It's going to be awkward and uncomfortable sometimes, but I promise you that will get better the more opportunities you give yourself to learn. Ultimately, if it ends up not being your thing (whether because you don't vibe with the folks in your local community, or the types of events they plan aren't a good fit for you, or whatever else) that's fine too. It's important to know when to give up on something that you aren't getting enough out of, after all- but I feel like you'll gain a lot more from the experience if you've got a good sense of why it didn't work out, since that will help you seek out experiences in other communities that do (or even host your own furmeets that are better suited to your preferences!)

More to your actual point though, going to things alone can definitely be scary. The most obvious way to deal with that is not to go alone at first- when I went to my first furmeet, I brought the friend I'd mentioned, so we had each other there to fall back on. If you don't know any local furries, but you have a good friend who's chill about that sort of thing and would be willing to come along just to support you, that can help a lot too! Another thing I found helpful was offering rides to folks who needed them, or generally looking for opportunities to carpool/travel together. Obviously this requires greater safety considerations, and is something you should be careful about with new acquaintances, but it can be a really fantastic way to get to know someone else who's going!

But there are other ways to approach this if going with someone just isn't an option. One of the more reliable methods is to socialize some online beforehand, so you have a person or two you can plan to talk to at the event. Most meetups or cons have a group chat of some kind associated with them. For smaller local events, that can be all you need- join the chat, introduce yourself, and let folks know you haven't been before, and there's a good chance you'll get some reassurance and make a couple connections, or at the very least learn people's names. Someone who's more established in that community may offer to show you around or introduce you to their friends, or you may run into someone else who's new to things that you can plan to stick with at the actual event so that neither of you are alone. For larger events and conventions you can take a similar approach, with the caveat that the main event chat is probably bigger and faster-moving, so it may be easier to use it to find people you can connect with (other new folks, people with common interests you can talk about, or more established and extroverted community members that might be willing to help point you in the right direction to enjoy the event) and then message with those people directly. Overall, if you try this approach and don't seem to be having any luck, don't let that keep you from going- you might get there and be surprised to find that others remember you from the chat, even if they didn't connect with you directly there.

The last thing that comes to mind is less concrete, but still important, and that's to remember that the people who organize and attend these events aren't so different from you. Many of them are probably just as nervous about being there, or were when they first started attending local meets. You belong there just as much as anyone else does, and you shouldn't let anyone gatekeep you from that (not least of all yourself).

Hopefully some of that was helpful! If you (or anyone reading this really) have questions, want to know more about my experiences with this stuff, or just want someone to talk to about it, feel free to contact me again sometime. I know you sent this anonymously, so don't feel pressured to identify yourself as the asker, either. I hope you find community, wherever you go from here. <3


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