Being Yourself (Part 1)
I really like video essays. I do a lot of writing (as you may or may not have guessed), and I find video essays are perfect to have on in the background while I work. They're just enough noise that I don't end up having my mind wander too much, but generally not so attention grabbing that I lose focus on what I'm writing. There's just something about listening to a rant about a topic that I'm marginally interested in that makes it much easier for me to dial in on getting writing done.
Oh, really quick, before we go any further, I should clarify. I (Tarro) like video essays, but also I (the person actually typing these words) also like video essays. And those are two distinct people. Tarro is a character. Someone that I've created in order to represent myself in a certain way in order to keep that world separate from the totality of myself. Don't get me wrong, the character is heavily inspired off of myself, but at the same time, there's a dstinction there that's important.
I think it's preaching to the choir a little bit to explain why this is important, but just in case let me touch on it super fast. I consider myself a zoosexual advocate. Many people really do not like zoosexuality. Were I as myself to come out and start trying to change people's minds, even if I promised to do no actual dog smooching myself, it would probably take all of a couple hours for someone to call my work and try to get me fired, cause distress with all my friends and family, and just in general make my life more complicated. That's annoying, and just generally something I want to avoid.
But that's where Tarro comes into play. Tarro is a character I can use to represent myself in this online space. I don't need to be (my full legal name here), I can be Tarro, and raccoon post, and have art to represent myself, and choose how I wish to engage with the online world. To be clear, it's not like Tarro is a totally different person than I am, clearly we're still fundamentally pretty similar at the end of the day in terms of our personalities and the causes that we care about. But there's also some places where we are very different.
Have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons before? Or any Tabletop Roleplaying Game? If you have, you've probably created a character before. When you're going through character creation, it's not just setting your strength and intelligence, it's also doing things like creating a backstory and a motivation. The best TTRPG players in the world are people that really love diving into that side of things. The characters that they create aren't just strong mechanically, but also narrtively. One of the easiest ways to tell that someone is new to the genre is when they create a character called "Stabby McStab-Guy" who's a full strength fighter who's whole motivation is doing the good thing and beating up the enemies and has no other interests outside of that. On the other hand, you can instead make a character that has a lot of nuance, and that fits into the world. Someone that has relationships, and other personal goals outside of the direct plot. A character that really feels like they exist as a part of the world, instead of in spite of it.
See, the issue is, Tarro isn't a very good character. Sure, don't get me wrong, I love them, I think they're very fun. But also, they're pretty single focused. They want to normalize zoosexuality. A very great goal, and one that I can really get behind. But sometimes it can be their only personality trait. This is an issue when it comes to the idea of representation. People are very bad at logical thinking sometimes. A lot of the times, if you see one person that's part of a minority group, you're going to assume that everyone in that group is similar to that one person. And while it's stupid that that point of view exists, it's something that's pretty hard wired in people's brains, and takes a lot of effort for people to overcome. Tarro, generally speaking, is a pretty big zoophile. They tend to not only have a lot of eyes on them, but put themselves in situations where they want people to see them. That's a good thing as far as spreading a message goes. But a bad character can still have a few good one liners and still be a bad character.
There's only so much progress that you can make with facts and logic. People are emotional, and until we actually convince some real scientists to run studies on zoosexuality, a lot of our persuasive power is going to come from our ability to be likable, and show our side of this issue. Much in the same way that we can't "prove" that animals can consent, the other side can't "prove" that they can't. (And yes, I know that it's absolutely possible to prove, it's just not going to actually count until it comes from more neutral voices). Currently, it's a he said / she said kind of situation we find ourselves in. Which means that it's really important to present our side with a lot of charm. A character that only parrots the same talking points over and over doesn't really have a lot of ways to connect with people.
I know this has all been really heady and all over the place, so let me break it down for you a little bit with an example. Say that you're someone with a general aversion to blue cheese. You don't have any strong feelings on it one way or another, you'd just never order it at a restaurant when they ask what dressing you want on a salad. Say you see someone online posting non-stop about how great blue cheese is. They post pictures of it as a dressing, on pizza, just eating it with crackers. That probably isn't effective advertising for you. You have no interest, and there's nothing to relate to, so you don't think about it and keep scrolling.
But, instead of that, say that you come across someone who's really into celery. You're also really into celery. You think it's a great neutral refreshing treat that's got a fantastic crunch. Really great to snack on. You're scrolling through social media and you come across a page that's talking about how great celery is as well. It's another kindred spirit. You give them a follow, and a few days later see a post about how they just tried blue cheese for the first time with celery and that they absolutely love it. Now, next time you're at the grocery store it gives you a bit more pause when you're thinking about what dressing to get.
That example is the basics of what I'm talking about here, but hopefully you get the idea. Tarro being a zoo activist is great, but if people already have a general aversion to zoosexuality, posting the zoo flag a million times will never sway them. But, talking about an obscure anime they're really into might get them to look more critically about you as a person, as opposed to just being a character.
Which is why it's so important that we be more than *just* zoophiles. Our community is amazing, and those that get the time to really know us see that we're all individual people with different likes and dislikes and things we really enjoy talking about for hours and hours with no breaks because someone else brought up the exact perfect thing that we happen to love right now. I've had amazing conversations with zoos about obscure Japanese horror movies, about different kinds of global cuisine. About a great roadtrip they were on one time, about the future that AI is going to bring about in the next decade. Everyone reading this has things that they care about outside of just zoosexuality.
The thing is, this space is one we carved out to be zoos. We make alts in order to have a space to engage specifically in the zoo community. For all those other interests, it's likely that we just talk about them not as our characters, but instead as ourselves. I have another twitter account where I talk much more about League, video essays, and the multitude of other interests that I have. But I restrict those from Tarro, because those are my interests, not theirs. But because of that, from the outside it can feel like Tarro is incredibly hollow. And I think that's true of a lot of zoos that I talk to. What we put out to the world is so shallow compared to who we are.
So what's the solution? The answer seems obvious. Just talk more about things you like on your zoo account. Don't be afraid to show a little personality amongst your presentation of zoosexuality. But, life isn't always that simple. There's going to be a part two to this article (which there will be a link to here if you're reading this after it's already come out) where we get into the details a little bit more. So keep an eye out for that.
I love Tarro. Weird to say when I also am Tarro, although I'm sure all the people out there who have created characters get it. But it's true. I really do love this character. Because the character is me at the core. They say the things I'd say and do the things that I'd do, for the most part. But there's so much more that they're missing, and I want to get better at showing the world that just because we use alts and characters to represent ourselves, that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot more to us behind the scenes.
We're a super diverse community of people with all kinds of interests. And that's what's going to make people give us a chance much more than any activism ever could.
Ariticle written by the person playing as Tarro (September 2024)
Find Tarro at https://twitter.com/hereforthezoo
Questions, comments or concerns? Check out our Discord server! http://discord.gg/EfVTPh45RE
