ZA Furries

Have you ever pondered the above question?

It was a thought of mine when the feasibility of the South Afrifur 2017 was being debated. One argument compared its possible attendance to the attendance during the early days of Eurofurence. The first Eurofurence convention, in 1995, only had an attendance of 19. The following year, that grew to a still-tiny 35. As a comparison, South Afrifur 2017 attracted a registered attendance of 28. However, Eurofurence went from an attendance 19 in 1995 to a whopping 2 804 in 2017.

So, a question that might follow is this:
How much growth potential does the South African furry fandom have? Is it far-fetched to hope that there will be a significant growth in certain aspects of it, such as convention attendance?

What do you think?

My own opinion is that there are limiting factors that make the potential for growth only a fraction of the furry fandoms in the U.S.A or Europe. These mostly center around demographics.

Let's take a representative demographic of the fandom - what its bulk consists mostly of. The furry fandom is predominantly white, and the average age lies somewhere in the early 20s. If we focus on that demographic alone (white males and females, in the 20 - 25 age bracket), there are just over 300 000 such people in SA (306 415, is the 2015 estimate). In the U.S.A, this demographic is over 14 million: almost 47 times larger. This means that the U.S has an overwhelmingly larger pool of "potential members" that are the likeliest demographic to make up the bulk of the community.

So, in absolute terms, the growth ceiling for SA, going by demographics alone, is already much lower than the U.S.

NOTE: This is NOT a thread to discuss South Afrifur itself! It is focused on the local furry fandom as a whole.

My 5c... Growth of the local furry fandom will probably be from cross pollination from other geek subcultures. IE, gamers, comic book readers, Bronies, etc. I don't see many furries coming in "off the street" as it were.

I feel like we have the potential. We have a lot of members coming in every day. But unfortunately we are faced with one sad fact.

I have 38 welcome messages in my outbox, that never has even been opened.
People come, they register, and never come back.

But this is only the forum. Not the local community.

The telegram and whatsapp groups are pretty active from what I've heard. I pop into fuzzbutts every now and again.

I think Erdwolf is correct though. We need to take a page out of the early furry fandom. Piggyback off of other cons. Maybe run some panels?

But I feel we HAVE potential... There are just under 700 registered members on the forums.
So if we managed to get them all together. We'd have a proper convention.

But of course. That's easier said than done.

It's unlikely to grow to the levels seen in the US, UK or Germany any time soon but it has room to grow. You're right about the demographics but that can change. I don't exactly know how but it will probably require change through the whole country. Also remember that Europe benefits from small size in that a furry convention there draws from all the surrounding countries. Most European countries don't have their own furry convention and those that do are generally quite small. And actually most European furry activity is either in the UK or Germany with many countries not having particularly well-developed communities. A few years back when I talked to an Italian fur he told me that the furry fandom there is basically at the same point as in South Africa. And the drama that sometimes flares up here is not so different from the drama in the Turkish furry fandom, which is also smaller and growing more slowly than here.

Sweden hosts Nordic Fuzz Con " one of the largest in Europe, with over 830 attendees in 2017" http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/NordicFuzzCon

But every time I've been 'active' on the Swedish furry forum, it's been deader than this one. (they have 800 registered members currently)

Yeah but those attendees are not all from Sweden. 25% comes from Sweden and then smaller groups from other countries.
https://www.nordicfuzzcon.org/Registration/Statistics
South Africa suffers from not having other developed countries around it to pull furs from and being too far from Europe and the US to easily justify such travel costs.

I guess I should've been specific, I agree with you. It's "Nordic" as in the Nordic countries, not just Sweden.

from what I’ve seen personally, the fandom is rapidly expanding. lots of greenhorns in the form of high school age kids these days. not to sound like a stereotypical douche, but the growing gay population is probably our best bet for going viral as a community. I’ve spread "the furryness" with powfoo comics quite successfully before in said community.

also if ZaFur intends to be the unifying force for the south african or even african furry community by hosting cons and stuff it'd probably be a good idea to send reps to other conventions like Rage geekfest and all that jaz too. yote has always kinda been an unofficial representative at rage by suiting there i guess but for the furs that are too shy to approach a dude in a suit it might be a good idea to have a kinda furmeet there and announce it on the lan too. \Owo/ i mean seriously i always hear about this rage braai at someone’s house but i never see any mention of it on the lan. and why not have a furmeet in the line? there’s usually an awesome time to be had in the line the night before rage starts and that’s where i personally do most of my socializing when there (because booze & BBQ, bitches).

A tsunami of young furries is coming!
With all its glory… and all its horror…