How did yall get into the furry fandom / furry community?

When I was maybe 9 i used to watch telephone and I said "cool I want"

When i was like 10 i made my first fursona, then like almost 2 years later i learned it was called a furry

I honestly had a lot of bipolar opinions about furries. 

But i just think furries are hated so much even tho they are so freaking cool! I wanna make my own fursona and get picked up by someone by the arms *////*

My friends also met some at Comicon, i wish i went but my parents never let me go nowhere

I was a victim of the Warrior Cats to furry pipeline 

I joined a MUCK. It was January or February. By late spring, I went from "I'm not a furry but these people seem cool", through "I might be turning into a furry", to "I was a furry all my life and didn't have a word for it".

I watched Stariat animation memes when I was 10 haha

Ever since Ive had an absence of a father figure

when I was 8 I was scrolling through my sisters phone and went on her TikTok and saw TikTok's of furries and I thought "wow they're so cool!" and now here I am making a fursona and making a paper fursuit (also clover from inanimate insanity mention!! :0)

anime catgirls and an ex of mine who gave me the confidence to express myself :)

Animal Jam, still morn my animal jam account lol 

Zootopia, I love it and then begin to watch more furry related content, but didn't know what a furry was, and I was part of a fandom without knowing :3

ive always loved cats and all of my ocs at the time had cat ears/animal features,, but later on when i was like 9 I discovered via YouTube that theyre called furries and ive been one ever since..!!!

I used to draw "animal people" and made a Totally Not A Total Unoriginal Knockoff comic of InuYasha when I was in middle school starring furries. It wasn't until 2006 in High School that I heard the term "furry" and was introduced to furaffinity. Been here ever since!

I started reading warrior cats when I was in probably fourth grade, and dove into that headfirst. Through watching the AMVs and MAPs on YouTube, I eventually made it to the furry animation meme and speed drawing videos. But what really got me hooked on furries was the rave PMVs to techno music. Immediately obsessed.

i used to play wolves life 2 and animal jam all the time, and warrior cats has always been one of my favorite fandoms I've been apart of ! i adored the animation memes that came out and always wished that it was possible to have a character/dress up like the ocs in the videos ! i always thought that furries were so cool and wanted to be just like them !!! ^^

ive always kinda been a furry... ever since i was a kid i would only ever write stories about animals and related to them more than humans. i also made like "sonas" around age 10 but that was arguably more of a therianthropy thing. but i always liked animal characters more than human characters as a kid, so theres that

Honestly my intro was little scattered. But kudos to this avatar site called wolfhome and alas deviantart when it was ok. 

I had a furry friend and I thought it would be cool to be a furry as well

ohmigosh when i was a kid i used to watch so many animation memes. like as soon as i got acsess to youtube i found them so i grew up thinking furries were the bomb ^^ all of my ocs i made were animal based like. my first Ever oc was a furry character TwT

well i learned what a furry was from Google+ communities when i was 12 and then 2 years later i saw a video of someone making a quadsuit pop up in my Youtube recommended, i watched it, thought it was cool and then went down a rabbit hole of fursuit making videos :>

oh my gosh I love telling this tale (I have done so many a times)

It all started a couple years ago–Must have been about 7 years ago now– that I was watching TheOdd1sOut, specifically the "Reading More Fables" video. In the start of that video there is a bit with the "Furry", and I was like: "Huh? What is this *furry* thing?"
So then one google search later and I was exposed to a whole new world...I remember watching Majira Strawberry and just being enamored with the whole concept. Not 2 days later I was already learning and trying to draw furries and deep in the maws of Furry Amino... Simpler times.

Now, the context for me falling in love so quickly with "being" a furry is that ever since very early childhood I have loved being/pretending/acting as a dog or wolf or any other large canine... I've collected a fair quantity of wolf-related accessories and trinkets. So to see that there was this large online community about (basically) this very thing, it was very exciting, and validating to young me.
During a time where I was just starting out to venture into the unfiltered internet, having something that felt so close to my identity was like having a safety pad to catch me were I to fall...

In short, I was just very fortunate to find my space online early on, and it's something I'm very thankful for, as it has led me to getting to know awesome people that I love and care for. :)

if we include pokemon, then like, since birth? bcs my dad introduced me to pokemon emulators back when i was a literal toddler lol

buuuuut if not then back when i was in 3rd grade i think, i was looking up fanart of my favorite shows/games on deviantart (with unrestriced internet access mind you, leading to some... unfortunate results popping up : ' ) ) and i noticed some nice drawings of some anthro characters i've never seen before

i thought they were from another media but quickly found out they were actually just the artist's fursona and ocs, ofc idk what those words meant back then, making me curious anddd kickstarting me becoming a furry

(ngl what's crazy is that despite being a furry ever since i was a kid, i never had a fursona until like, 2019-2020 bcs i was, and still kinda am, extremely indecisive : P )