Re: Communication Platforms

On 4/6/25 3:54 PM, FrigidFoxtrot wrote:
> Furry has spread out a lot since the days of IRC, MUCKs, and AFF.
> 
> Where are you seeing folks congregate nowadays?
> 
> Here's the landscape as I see it.
> 
> +--------------+
> | Chat clients |
> +--------------+
> - Discord, but seems to mostly be popular with the gaming-oriented crowd. This makes sense, considering it got started as a superior alternative to teamspeak / mumble.
> - Telegram, killer feature is the stickers. Killed Skype because it wasn't neglected by its developers. Feels like almost everyone has a telegram nowadays.
> - Signal. Trying to replace telegram, but adoption rates have been rather slow. The main advantage is the E2E encryption, so the only folks migrating are the ones who care about this in particular.
> 
> +--------+
> | Forums |
> +--------+
> - Reddit's /r/furry, mostly images. Doesn't seem to have much if any discussion nowadays.
> - Reddit's /r/furry_irl, mostly memes. Seems more lively than /r/furry.
> - AFF is, of course, still clinging to life.
> 
> +------+
> | MU*s |
> +------+
> - FurryMuck still exists. Logged in last summer and saw a few hundred folks online.
> - Tapestries seems to be lively as well. Saw 500 accounts online when I hopped on this evening.
> - Secondlife exists, though I only know one person who still logs in.
> - VRChat is the clear successor in all of this, utterly massive platform with lots to do. Seemed to come into its own when the pandemic forced everyone to get their social energy from the internet.

Wolfery, https://wolfery.com is basically a next-gen muck. Web based, text, supports images in profiles, a lot less hardware-demanding and easier to use than VRChat. It gets a hundred-plus people most evenings and in contrast to FurryMUCK/Tapestries a good portion of them are not the Same Old Folks. The admin actually advertises it.

I know a bunch of people who aren't on Telegram because of the phone number requirement, so most of the people I know are on Discord.