It all started when SpaceX and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk made a strange tweet that was but one simple word. With that one utterance people started talking in the furry fandom. That word was “fur-curious”. A neologism that indicates that one is interested in fur activities though may not be one themselves. This came up when Elon was discussing a tweet about an article revolving large red squirrels found in India.

The furry fandom’s reaction was as mixed as the backgrounds of people that comprise it.

There are furries who are definitely Tesla fans and would more than likely welcome Musk with open arms: such as the lead administrator of SoFurry and this mouse guy name Twig who proudly shows himself plugging in his Telsa Model 3. However since they’re a Telsa employee, it might make it difficult to use the fandom as an escape from the grind if the boss dives into his hobby.

Those who are not interested in the eccentric billionaire were far more vocal in their concerns. Some of these are furries may have strong misgivings about the CEO’s behaviors surrounding labor unions. Or they may criticize appropriation of government funding for private ventures such as the Tesla solar facility in Buffalo, NY at the tune of 750 million. They also may have been put off by his brazen behaviors regarding a certain Thai rescue mission. Where Elon smeared one of those that rescued kids trapped in a cave as a pedophile when the British man who was able to save the children jibed at Musk who was “overthinking” a rescue solution. Detractors saw Elon’s child rescue plans as a publicity stunt for this company rather than a true act of altruism.

However, far more interesting was the reaction of one individual in the futurist community to Elon Musk’s furry fluff tweets. These communities are very eager to get into space, to plug their brain into the matrix, or maybe just having a world where renewable energy is the norm would be nice. They usually idolize their technology industry gurus. But furries are not space.

So they had one message for Mr. Musk: Get back to work.

The new big thing in Furry Fandom is contests! Yes, now you can enter into a contest to win a paid commission. All you have to do is submit a piece of art, of the finest quality you can make, to specification and for free to the person running the contest… see the flaw yet?

To those of you who've not worked it out: yes, this is what we call a "scam".

Updated with some probability theory showing the scammy nature of these contests.

Alan Berlin, known in the furry fandom as Alan T. Panda, has been convicted of trying to arrange a sexual encounter with a 15-year-old boy. [Skirtandzy/WikiFur]

Berlin, a fursuiter, babyfur, and "daddyfur/caretaker with a cub side", first made the news in 2009, when, on May 28, he was arrested on charges of propositioning an underage boy over the Internet. After the boy's parents found sexually explicit messages on his computer, they contacted the Attorney General's Child Predator Unit; two days later, Berlin was arrested.

Best Magazine nominee Softpaw #4 would be excluded today [Papaya Kitty]

Nominations have begun for the 2009 Ursa Major Awards, furry fandom's popular award for excellence in published works. But new rules intended to safeguard the reputation of the Awards and its sponsoring events will exclude works which won nomination in previous years.

While nominees and winners will still be chosen by popular vote, the Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association intends to block material they deem "obscene, libelous, or otherwise detrimental to the integrity and good standing of the Ursa Major Awards and the anthropomorphics fandom."

Their definition includes "works of a predominantly sexual nature, or which include explicit sexual situations involving characters which may be underage or non-anthropomorphic animals."