On Anonymity

Hi there! You know what's kinda weird? The fact that right now you're reading words on a screen, as opposed to *watching* something, or possibly *playing* something. Don't get me wrong, I think it's really cool that you're here. The only thing worse than running a magazine in 2025 is running a magazine in 2025 with no readers. But let's be honest, for most people that's kinda strange. When we look at the content that people consume nowadays, most of it is much more video focused one way or another. Sure, music exists, and you can listen to podcasts, but music releases with music videos pretty frequently, and most big podcasts have a video form that you can watch instead of just listen to. Something that actually goes against the origin of podcasts being more of a radio style program. And for those of you under 30, radio is the thing you hear at the grocery store where every song has about 15 minutes of ads after it. 
 
Now, I'm as big of a fan of consuming things with my eyes as the next critter, but as a zoosexual who's trying to make the world a better place for zoosexuals, our love of visual mediums makes things more complicated. You see, I love being a silly raccoon on the internet fighting for the zoo cause. But I also love paying my mortgage, getting to travel, and buying my partner nice things. And all of those are made significantly more complicated if I get doxxed and lose my job. To avoid that, most zoos employ a fun tactic known as anonymity. We keep our online zooey lives and our offline, equally zooey, but more private lives separated so we can stay safe from bad actors who would want to cause us harm.
 
And of course, that's where video comes in. Say that there was a neutral party who wanted to learn about zoos, and to do so they decided to interview someone from the community. If they're a smaller creator, sure they could do the typical Discord call style interview where you flash cut to their profile picture every time the zoo is talking, and that keeps anonymity more. But that's also not very engaging for an audience. It's doable, but also it's ignoring a lot of the content best practices. 
 
Now, there's a solution of course, and that's using a Vtuber avatar. You could commission someone to create you a really cool 3D body that you can use instead of presenting your straight up face to the camera. And that's definitely a step in the direction, but it's also not a solution for everyone. VR is expensive, getting a model made is expensive, having space for a VR setup is expensive. So while it's the best option, it's not without it's own complications. 
 
But let's take this a step further. Let's say that interview with that content creator goes well, and you talk to a couple more people, and the story keeps getting bigger and bigger, until eventually the news even picks up the story. They decide they'd love to have you come and talk to their host, and sure it's still virtual, but it's not really the same, is it? A youtuber's audience is going to understand furries. They're going to understand vtubing. They'll get what's going on much faster than the standard audience will. But reaching out to a larger audience less connected to our typical corners of the internet is different. To them, they're going to be much more off-put by the fact that this person trying to push for accepting the smooching of dogs is wearing a weird raccoon body. It's going to immediately put you at a negative, and the story is so much more easily warped to being about "weirdos that want to dress up as animals" or possibly "people that want to be animals". It's possible to stay anonymous (assuming that the program is find conducting the interview that way), but it starts to put barriers to progress that make things even harder. 
 
But let's take a step past that as well. Media is huge, don't get me wrong. But it pales in comparison to how huge real life is. At some point, we're going to want to stand up and declare "WE'RE HERE" to the world. We're going to want to have marches and hold rallies and conventions just be more openly vocal about who we are and what we want. But it's very hard to do a real life march from our computer desks, even with some serious VR tech. At that point, we need to be there in person. And again, it's not like it's impossible to be in real life anonymously. Masks are very cool and usable. But a bunch of masked people in the street shouting has a very different feel than a group of people protesting together out and proud. People connect with other people much more than they ever do ideas, and by anonymizing ourselves we put one more step between those connections. 
 
The point of this article isn't to say that everyone should immediately come out and go public. I still think in today's climate it's probably not the right call, outside of maybe a few close friends you confide in. My point is that it's probably worth starting to think about this, because it's going to be something major that the community is going to have to come to a head against at some point. And it might not be that far away. Let's say Lex Friedman offered to fly me out to wherever he films from and do a two hour interview with him about the zoosexual movement, but it would have to be in person. What would I say? What would you say if the offer was made to you? And you don't need to use Lex here as an example, he's not exactly a moral beacon or anything. But feel free to fill in the blanks with someone you like that does interviews. Maybe it's Andrew Callahan offering to drive to where you live to spend a day doing a mini-doc. Maybe it's Jubilee wanting to do a Zoosexual AMA. Maybe it's The Yard and after all the animal sex jokes they figure they should just make it official and have a zoo on there. Maybe it's your favorite creator 'cause god knows there's a billion now and I can't list them all. If they reached out to you and said they want to sit down and do a super candid piece of content on zoosexuality, but it required you to be on camera, what would you say? 
 
What if you weren't the first person to do it? Say that Vex came out publicly and went on a podcast and the reactions were about what you would expect. Then, say that you were reached out to by someone else. Would you do it if you got the chance to be second? What about third, or fourth? Would you be the hundredth zoo to come out? The thousandth? Would seeing other people around you come out make you more eager to join in, even if they were receiving hate? 
 
For me, I don't know. I can't help but think about all the amazing good that could do for the movement, but at the same time it's hard to walk into something that's going to change your life forever without a lot of doubt. 
 
Anonymity is a tool, and it's a really amazing one. That's without question. But it's also something that eventually is going to start holding us back. Truth be told, sometimes I already feel it. I would love to make video essays, and record video versions of these articles, and do something ContraPoints style with sets and flair and drama. And while I'm pretty sure I could pull it off in real life, I would have no idea how to do that digitally, and it sure sounds like a lot more work. I think content like that could do really really well, but the need for anonymity supersedes the value of that for me. But eventually that's going to have to change. 
 
You can't change the world without sacrifice. But you can at least be ready for it. I fully believe we'll get there one day, but I want to make sure we do it with two eyes open, ready to face the challenges we're going to reach before we reach them.
 
How many people would you have to reach to come out publicly? How many minds would you have to be able to change to make that worth it for you? How many zoos would you have to be able to inspire to join the community, or at least stop feeling so alone? 
 
What would you give up your anonymity for?
 
 
 

Article written by Tarro (March 2025)

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