Another furry website joins the scene - FurryLife Online
A new furry social media site has come forth called FurryLife Online. It seems it’s an annual occurrence these days when a new furry site comes forth with dreams of taking the title of the main furry hub.
FLO is trying to be as broad as its predecessors; and with art galleries, written works, music, clubs, and streaming, there appears to be a lot to offer. But given how many of these sites exist now, can this new one stand out? If so, how? We’ll review the site’s layout and its strengths and weaknesses for each of the main classes of art they support.
This review was published September 2 and is written about the site at this time. Site features are malleable, so may have changed after publication.
For Artists
The gallery page’s layout is a bit odd as it has these groups called “albums” front and center, while new individual pieces seem to be shoved further down the page. In fact the site very much encourages using this album grouping feature to the point of being intrusive: it was one of the first things it asked for as I did a test upload. For artists this may be quite annoying. Another group may find this wonderful, which we will further discuss in the Musicians section.
While some artists may find annoyance in this, a certain segment may find this set-up quite useful: comic artists. When you finish a comic, just upload it as an album and you will have priority over individual pieces when it comes to visibility, giving comic artists an advantage over those who draw individual pieces.
Just be aware if you are to upload your comic you may have to upload your pages in reverse order. I’m not sure if this is the case, as I do not see any examples on the site yet, but given what I have seen in how the album feature has behaved for writers below, I have a hunch that it may be the case.
Right now there also seems to be debate going on about the type of adult content that is allowed to be posted on the site. So if you are an adult artist it may be in your best interest to post general audience works only to this site until they get this figured out. Currently, ‘cub’ or ‘feral’ works are restricted. The feral decision was recent, and what they perceive as feral is defined here.
For Writers
Looking through the first samples of written works on the site there seems to be a particular fluke that may leave SoFurry as the go to for furry writers. It seems you can post multiple chapters into a group, but there is an issue with the order: it posts the latest items uploaded to the group on the top.
See the following examples of Clear Skies, Ladder Racing, and The Kingdom of Solis. These are the first three chaptered series I could find browsing the literature section and all three have the same problem. The last chapter is at the top, and the first chapter is at the bottom. Which means when a user is uploading new content to these groups they are defaulting to be placed at the top.
This means if you want to post these in proper sequential order it takes more effort on the part of the end user. Given that it’s three for three with the chaptered series it is clearly not set up with those in mind. It may be better for anthology style short story groups.
Given this, I don’t see many furry writers flocking to leave Fur Affinity, SoFurry, or Inkbunny for this site until that is fixed.
For Musicians
While writers may not flock to this new platform, this site may find their niche among furry musicians. This is the first site that really allows you to group musical pieces into album-like interfaces. An example of how this looks can be seen in the image below (Grand Sonata in A).
Compared to the audio upload and files of other furry sites, this one is quite powerful and slick. The music will stay with you even if you start browsing for other pieces, which was surprising. However, if you leave the music section of the site for another, it does stop playing.
Being able to group pieces into albums, which have a share button to social media directly attached, is something no other site offers at this time. Musicians on social media have been quite thirsty for a platform to make their own, and in this site there may be a viable opportunity to make this one their home.
Furthermore, while written stories may not be a fan of the site, audio serials could very much be a thing for furry voice actors to dive into here, as you can easily have the chapters or podcast items sequentially placed with one another.
In an odd twist of fate “FurryLife Online” shortens to the acronym of FLO, which is placed on the upper left corner of their interface. Given that shorthand, it sounds more like a musical platform for furries then just a general furry site. Musicians even have a group that already has over 80 members already.
Overall thoughts
With so many furry social media sites vying for attention, each must do something to set themselves apart from the others. FLO’s clear strength is on its musical and audio applications; voice actors and musicians would be remiss not to take advantage of the opportunity to make this site their own.
If they don’t, I can easily see this site dying down into obscurity as many that came before it. Being the hub for furry musicians may not make it the most visited site on the planet, but it will serve a growing community of music-makers that want to feel that they have a place in this fandom.
There have also been rumors of right wing influence in the site, especially in discussion about what kind of adult artwork is allowed. However Deo the Tasmanian Devil, who became renowned for her work against the Furry Raiders and other alt-furry groups, said that she was becoming staff, which may alleviate those political concerns.
While restricting cub work is very much a thing furry sites have done before, this is the first I’ve heard of feral fantasy being rejected, so it’ll be interesting to see if that impacts the future of the site. Would be interesting to see if one just went the whole way and did no adult content what-so-ever, I mean since they already banned two types of adult works, users could just go the whole way and keep it fully clean. [Like Yerf, ArtSpots and SheezyArt before it.]
One could argue that it would be strange to do that since the art gallery already has different partitions for adult and mature works. But there is an odd counterpoint to this, in that the literature section of the site allows adult and general works, but doesn’t segment them into their own portions. I suppose that’s the thing about reading: if you can read it and understand the naughty, then that’s on you.
About the author
Sonious (Tantroo McNally) — read stories — contact (login required)a project coordinator and Kangaroo from CheektRoowaga, NY, interested in video games, current events, politics, writing and finance
Comments
Oh, by reading the website's announcements, I see the fragment of market segmentation this new site caters to. I hope it does well with that group, so users of other furry websites aren't negatively impacted by these new trends.
I really do think making it a straight SFW site makes more sense than trying to split hairs over feral art.
One thing I didn't mention in the review is the mature and adult galaries are opt in, not opt out like most sites.
And they take this NSFW thing quite seriously as even the announcement about the kind of NSFW content allowed has an age verification wall.
You can tell a lot about a site's motives through interface design, and I think they kinda want a general works gallery, but are afraid to just outright be restrictive because of fears that "it won't work" or blowback.
"Gee, I'd love a new furry web site, if there wasn't so much porn on them" said no one, ever.
When we lose the right to be different, we lose the ability to be free
Actually, I've said that a lot.
Just so much.
I'm kind of annoying about it, really.
https://furrylife.online/forums/topic/2112-nsfw-feral-policy/
on one hand i understand the reasoning but on the other its basically implying anyone with a feral type irl animal character is into zoophilia, which isn't really great for the community.
Their logic bending they did to go "Pokemon, My l'il Pony, and dragons are fine" is populism at its finest.
Also dinosaurs! I smell a Land Before Time fan. Or Dinosaurs, Denver... Barney?
Dragons, my little pony fit the definition.
Pokemon would be a stretch, but the other two fit the definition.
I know cynicism would like to blame it on populism and that's fine, that's valid but I prefer to follow reality and the definition.
A huge swath of what's currently banned under that policy also fits that definition (specifically-named examples are TLK and Balto). There's no material difference between Balto porn and Lycanroc porn; there's just a hand-wavey justification for allowing it, because Pokemon porn is favored by the site's audience (as polled).
Yeah, the whole thing with "feral" porn is that, if it was real, it would be perfectly fine; an anthropomorphic animal can consent*. Done deal. It may look like bestiality, but it isn't. Feral is anthropomorphic; not in form, but in intellect. Balto and the Lion King and random furry's OC talking purple skunk fit the definition of anthropomorphic.
Of course, the problem is, ironically, that it's not real; it's a visual representation. In other words, what it looks like is kind of what it is. I mean, for every genuine exploration of what it might mean to be a sentient animal, there's like 20 "I'm not allowed to do straight up bestiality, but here's a good workaround". And everybody pretty much knows this and we all just agree not to bring it up, like body pillows at supposedly "clean" anime conventions. Now this site is trying to close that loophole and just ... doing a really shitty job of it.
In the specific case of Pokemon, they aren't sentient, or at least not to the level of your average human. They're smarter than real world animals, but they're still, in canon, animals (exceptions for some individual Pokemon, maybe). It's completely arbitrary. It's just hypocritical crap.
*Well, that and most "feral" porn is feral/feral, and animals are certainly allowed to fuck each other ...
For your second paragraph, you might be on to something. Though this isn't new to me. The visual looks might as well still be 'fuel' to bestiality fans and this is something I have thought about. However the same could be said for Nick Wilde, Lucario, and midnight Lycanroc as well because I think a lot of them might prefer the same thing a lot of non-zoophiles have. Though, a lot of feral anthropomorphic animals have emotions, intelligence, and a lot of them (e.g. a MLP horse) feel and sometimes even look different. So it doesn't exactly look like bestiality in the same way as Nick Wilde NSFW does because both of them have the same human characteristic(s) in some way. - A bestiality fan or a zoophile might still like MLP horse, but that just means he's a zoophile and a furry unless he is imagining such a character as non-sapient as possible. There is also the fact that makes me wonder, "What the hell does "zoophile" even mean, physiologically speaking?" but man that's another whole thing to talk about it maybe.
Account abandoned and probably will make a new anonymous account with no trace of evidence of it being me. I think it's justified.
"Even if these real life animals are weird colors or supposedly capable of speech/transformation/whatever cool magical stuff in their individual lore, please do not depict their animal forms in sexual situations."
"What isn’t a "real life" animal?"
"fantasy media IPs - This includes established fantasy series like My Little Pony (the adult characters ONLY) because they are a unique species with unique lore.), "
_____
So let me get this straight, a magical talking colorful feral wolf which doesn't reflect a wolf from this planet is not a unique species, but a HORSE that has the same exact situation is? What?
I wish the idea of being smart wasn't so taboo.
That feral decision is completely absurd. It's bad enough that there are all the cub bans but now feral as well. Their inability to distinguish between art and reality is the same thing that used to come up with the outrage over violent video games. The fact that people can't tell the difference between pixels on a screen and a real person or creature is just astounding.
The feral stance might actually be a signal of something much broader in some areas of the furry fandom. I think there are some people that no longer actually care about furry itself but use it purely for the social aspect. Because they don't care about the furry aspect, they are happy to throw out all the parts of furry that actually make furry furry. That explains the feral ban, those people that wanted cons to stop supporting animal charities in favour of sexuality based groups (which is not really related to furry) and the general lack of concern for real animals. I recall one older member of the fandom tweeting that he had to explain why real fur was bad at a convention. It would also explain why furs don't have higher levels of vegetarianism compared to the general population but that has been true the whole time.
I also had to laugh when you said Deo joining staff would alleviate political concerns. I don't know what sort of right wing influence there are rumours about but extreme left wing sounds like a massive over-correction. From what I understand, her politics are just as censorious, violent and hateful as anything in the alt-right.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
So much begging the question here, I can't
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
Yes, that
I was kinda hoping you just didn't know what it was because it doesn't apply here. About the only place you could maybe say it applies is in the first paragraph, which is hardly "so much," but even there, although there is an assumption on the reasoning, the conclusion is separate.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
The most egregious part is the second paragraph, actually.
The second paragraph is very different and follows the scientific process of advancing a hypothesis; there isn't even a conclusion which would be necessary for begging the question to be applicable. It takes into account the known facts and then proposes a possible explanation which could account for the known facts. Note such terms as "might be," "I think" and "would explain."
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
so unbelievably pretentious, go fuck a pencil sharpener
Bro you just sucked all the fun out of trying to argue with him
You haven't even made a single argument yet. You've made unsubstantiated claims.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
To be fair nothing you say has any facts really you are just being a little cunt
Wait... what did Rakuen do to you?
It's like watching a man drown, except I think most drowning people are at least aware of the situation.
Fetish picking & choosing is arbitrary anyway, so why does it matter.
It's not logic what turns you on or off.
can't say i did nazi this comment coming from you.
So you’re a pedophile?
He has been a vocal pedophile and zoophile defender forever
Furries: "The media has it out for us because all they do is depict us as sex freaks and weird fetishists, and I don't understand where they get this from!"
Also furries: "Our top story tonight: Evidence has been found that a new furry website may have once considered not allowing porn. Stay tuned for our in depth coverage of these startling revelations."
Look guys, our editor in chief is posting photo-realistic tiger 69s to my timeline on Twitter (a publicly traded company) created by The Onion (owned by a media conglomerate that caused every member of one of their websites to walk off the job in protest of restrictive content policies). I think your feral porn is gonna be okay if one teeny-tiny furry "art" site decides to opt out.
And ... Rakuen Growlithe is complaining about the Tweet in the replies, because of course he is.
I was going to make a Discovery Channel joke, but they haven't actually regularly aired nature documentaries in so long and I got kind of sad.
https://furrylife.online/forums/topic/2112-nsfw-feral-policy/
WHAT THE F***!!!
Putting cub aside: due to personal experience, having feelings for "feral shaped" anthros doesn't even feel the same as having feelings for the ones from this planet. I mean, a lot of the feral shaped specific wolf characters I like happen to be more emotional and more intellectual, which is very different.
Lion King characters, Balto, etc. are not the same, and they count as anthropomorphic too. It's not just faces either.
Is this where the furry fandom going? Because at this point if it is, I would rather be dead. This is the type of crap that makes me HATE this general fandom.
Account abandoned and probably will make a new anonymous account with no trace of evidence of it being me. I think it's justified.
It's one site (probably not long for this Earth) that's being ridiculous. Calm down.
I know it's one site from what I know so far, though one of my main fears is that more general furry websites might start doing this, and then worse. I've seen many furries complain about those preferring "feral" anthropomorphic characters, and I've been a victim myself on this topic.
Account abandoned and probably will make a new anonymous account with no trace of evidence of it being me. I think it's justified.
I don't know what else to say.
Is the fandom REALLY going into the direction where they will start bitching about other types of furries for being into "less-human" characters? I've had some possibly irrational fears about this, and of course it I'm seeing evidence of this...
If 'sexualizing' a anthro feral is the same as sexualizing a real life feral, then all anthros are sexualizing all animals from this planet because they are based off them too.
Account abandoned and probably will make a new anonymous account with no trace of evidence of it being me. I think it's justified.
It's not happening, we can't even get rid of borderline CP and actual Zoophiles, feral ain't going anywhere.
Diamond Man.
No fetish is going away from the internet any time soon.
I think my main focus was the more "socially accessible" one. I'm hoping it won't go down the same route like how the cub thing went and/or other awful routes. There are probably still a lot of fictional cub content out there, but a lot of it and the people into it are more outcasted, and I'm hoping many of those who prefers a lot of the colorful feral characters won't end up going into a similar route and that the fandom would end up doing stupid "It's fine being attracted to this, but not like this!" type of directions.
Account abandoned and probably will make a new anonymous account with no trace of evidence of it being me. I think it's justified.
Even if it becomes, like, socially taboo, how much would that really change things for you? Do you hang out with people who think it means you rape animals? Or people you think will start doing so if that becomes a popular line of thought? If so then you need new friends. Not worth dying over.
I've recently been noticing a lot of furries trying to "police" the fandom which even at times contributes to offending. There are some who does this to zoophiles (even if they just want to join for law-abiding reasons) who is against offending outside for their own political fear-mongering agenda. I also seen furries out there who tried to cancel others for believing in forgiveness and for drawing feral anthropomorphic characters ever since that feral ban.
My point I think is that it can be hard for those who are more isolated and I don't want this fandom to become a dictationship of other furries who are wanting friends. I don't want more harassment and I don't want cancel culture inside this fandom to be more socially acceptable, especially if it contributes to terrible things.
It would be a lot better if this sub-culture remained as a sub-culture, where groups of one furry and another can easily be seen separately like in many cultures today. But that's hard to look at right now because of specific people.
Account abandoned and probably will make a new anonymous account with no trace of evidence of it being me. I think it's justified.
Ah you seem new to the present past & future state of events?
Welcome to the shitshow. Every thing under the sun is a public moral and/or political concern.
Ah no?
I knew the fandom has had political issues before, and as someone who believes in change for the good, I like to criticize and spread concern toward something I worry about (like wondering if it's gonna head down to a long-term direction that makes things worse).
Account abandoned and probably will make a new anonymous account with no trace of evidence of it being me. I think it's justified.
I'm confused, Diamond Man, are you trying to say zoophilia shouldn't be policed and is a-okay?
Well as a physiological fan, it seems there are those who prefer zoophilie by being against offending to a real animal and those who wish to take the same direction who already offended, and I think that to take away victimless outlets such as a victimless mursuiting contributes to offending, especially since anthropomorphic animals are a different focus which can really help those with serious mental issues to focus on that than the other thing.
As for those who only prefers real-animals, I am not sure. Though they probably wouldn't want to have any interest into anthropomorphic animals then so I am not quite sure why they would want to be in there unless they are trying to go after more non-human animals.
Also I want to point out that I am AGAINST anyone attempting police the fandom for any political reason whatsoever unless it's about reporting a crime I think. To expect other people who are law abiding to agree with you, and then harass them because they don't agree with you is usually disgusting and wrong. The beliefs in a lot of moral panics are debatable, and as someone who's researched alot, I think that moral panic might be making things worse (harassment, witchhunting, discouragement of getting proper therapy, and some other horrible things).
Account abandoned and probably will make a new anonymous account with no trace of evidence of it being me. I think it's justified.
You're a fan of physiology?
I've never encountered that before.
I actually remember a really good furry website that was filled with people that were also fans of being more careful about many sensitive topics and it was like the only furry website that reminded me of other usually great websites like psychologytoday's US blog. It was [Adjective] [Species] and it's one of my favorite furry websites. Sadly the website support is gone and I do not know any other place that handles it in a similar way.
Account abandoned and probably will make a new anonymous account with no trace of evidence of it being me. I think it's justified.
There are some big assumptions here.
This is all unsurprising, because it seems FLO's community origin is the "anthro" style of furry popularized by DA.
The situation is succinctly expressed in this quote from "how'd ya'll find out about this place?" (posted last year):
Now, this isn't the only route. (Many joined from Twitter recently.) But a key part of its core audience seems to be DA migrants.
I'm seeing the same talking points brought up a decade ago on ArtSpots, such as latex placed under suspicion. Then there's the fat furs - as they say, "the pressure of concern trolls likely is pushing [staff] in a direction they don't want to go in." Like, for non-con situations. Feral won't be the last of it. The second page is a great example of puritanical 18-year-olds. Then there's the idealistic Burned Furs Mk. 3 twice their age, yearning to "clean house":
So there you go. May just be me, but several dissenting posts (though in fairness, not all of them) and user profiles seem to have been "disappeared" and are now only visible in quotes. Sign-up has also been disabled; although that might be for the best, given everything else they have to deal with.
Now, to the technology: FLO is administered by Venthas (aka LordNowe), who's running it on Invision Community. This is not free software, though I suspect they're not using the cloud-hosted version but rather the self-hosted option. Venthas (or Alex) is also web admin for the new "Artists Beware" - which I think is using the cloud-hosted version, partly because it links back to Invision in the footer. The sites seem to have a form of federated login.
What may cost more long-term is not the software, but use of Amazon S3 to store content. The storing bit is relatively cheap. You could store IB's 3.4TB for barely $100/month. But serving ~35TB of traffic might cost them $3000/month. It's cached through CloudFlare, but such caching is rarely perfect (caches expire; edge nodes must pull from origins). And the front page alone is over 15MB, because they're loading several 500KB-2MB PNGs.
Right now, things are probably fine. It's something that can be improved in the future. Heck, it's always possible they're just using the S3 API and they have a cheaper service (or even their own server) on the backend. But if they are using S3 or similar, it'll be an ever-increasing cost. Oh, and let's not forget AWS prohibits depictions of non-consensual sex acts. (Or content that "relates to bestiality" - soon to include doggy dicks?)
Incidentally, the literature bit didn't come with categories, which is Sonious saw it wasn't rated. I understand the 4.5 update may have changed this. Still, the software provider not adding the features they want could be a risk for the site, though probably not as much as not adding features.
Oh man... Weasyl was targeting that crowd...
They're fuuuuu---[Please sign in and confirm you wish to see adult content to resume reading this comment.]
To be honest I was too more puritanical as a 18-year-old than I am now. Yet I didn't feel I was entitled to dictate the workings of what is fundamentally a free service, on websites.
This new site may be an attempt or practice at an enterpreneurial initiative by inexperienced young people. I'm all for those, it builds character. As long as if it fails, their debt is not huge so they can steer their life in a different direction without sinking.
There are a wide range of hosting solutions for all budgets. Your analysis would indicate they haven't done their numbers, or they're overly optimistic.
Money's not a big issue to start with. People often use such services because they're convenient and already integrated. But there are other methods to provide an S3-compatible object store - either from another provider that's cheaper for their usage (e.g. Oracle, which has a nice free tier, or Backblaze S2), or more sustainably by running their own server with some front-end software - although they'll have to pay to transfer it out of S3 at least once, unless they have a separate backup.
Honestly if anyone's being overly optimistic it's me about likely traffic. It took a decade for Inkbunny to get 2.2 million files, for example. Right now, they've been up for a year and host at most 135k files. They're probably closer to 200GB stored and 2TB/month. Maybe half that - in which case we're talking ~$100-$200/month. If it gets to being more they can cross that when they get there.
Good luck to them. If there are enough people who want a site like that, then they will stick around, otherwise they'll be gone inside of a year. Having read through the rules and some of the forum posts, it would probably be more accurate to call it 'FurryLeft Online'. There were plenty of references to fascists by people who couldn't define the word if their lives depended on it. Certainly the quality of a lot of the art that has been posted so far wasn't that impressive. Still, it's fairly new. I'll check back in six months and see what things are like then assuming it lasts that long.
>Deo is staff.
>Only hipsters are allowed to get porn of their feral characters.
>Q-Anon, All Lives Matter, and Back the Blue are hate groups.
Yeah this shit is dead on arrival, lol. SJWs run everything they touch into the ground.
If it really has "right wing influence", the right-winger should've only let right-wingers be staff. It would've had a chance then.
As predicted above, it turned out to cost too much to run how they were doing it, so FLO turned into a microblogging site. Without all the uploaded content or profile pictures. Then they morphed into something on the Fediverse (specifically, Misskey), which confused people further. Somewhere along the line they were down for a month. They seem to have died completely early this year.
Oh, and that Entail project shut down a few months ago as well, the last news from last year having been a blog post on development. Making a site is hard, let alone running one. (They did seemingly manage to incorporate a Community Interest Company and rent office space, so perhaps it's at least in part to do with beware posts about the project's leader.)
FLO imploded all thanks to their silly rules and idiocracy
And nothing of value was lost.
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