I was browsing my Google news feed, as people who read non-fiction writing tend to, and low and behold, a news article from Rolling Stone came up entitled Will Furries Ever Go Mainstream? The reporter reviews his experiences while attending Midwest FurFest last December.

It’s a good piece that poses the question of whether our fan club, that has grown to the size it has in Rosemont, will garner mainstream attention - or acceptance. It's also long, and coming from me you know that’s saying something.

Like most coverage deemed “positive”, they do seem to marginalize the adult aspects of sexual expression in the fandom pretty quickly by saying that it was not the “main aspect of the fandom”. However, like most clever furs they snuck in a risqué quote about foxes:

dozens of six-foot alligators, snakes, lizards, and other assorted reptiles scramble to pose for a group photo.
[...]
On the floor, about three dozen foxes lie on top of each other in a “fur pile,” orange-and-white limbs and bellies knotted together on the ground.

I see what you did there Rolling Stone. You should be proudly ashamed.

But back to the concept of going mainstream. It isn’t a new question within the fandom which can bring excitement or concern depending on who you ask. We claimed it was happening when Disney used the word “anthropomorphic” to describe the world of Zootopia.

However, I would like to claim that, yes, we are entering the mainstream, whether we like it or not. I even have evidence that we may already be there.

FA Rank – covered in more detail last February – has moved to its own domain: popufur.com

The service has also launched a Java-based distributed updater to spread the CPU load.

Want to know how popular you are on Fur Affinity? FA Rank, by Taren Nauxen, will tell you.

The site uses a form of the PageRank algorithm, which forms the basis for Google's rankings. Watched users gain points which are distributed among their own watchlist.

Not everyone thinks it's a good idea, with an old straw poll showing 42% in favour of closing the site. However, FA admin Dragoneer appears unconcerned.

For those wishing to know full details, source code for the ranking system is available.

Yes, this is old news, but it was never covered here and the rankings were updated recently.