"Protogens DNI", a very harmful sentiment started over a silly video

Written by Klaaru on 12/24/2023

So, I don't typically browse mainstream type social media, such as Twitter or Facebook, but I was made aware about this whole debacle through a friend mentioning how stupid it was. To give context, somebody posted a clip of Lethal Company with a few mods to their Twitter. The mods shown were primarily a dancing mod and a player mod that changes the character model to a Protogen. Said dancing mod had a lot of dances, but they were primarily using ones such as twerking, and another that looked to be thrusting. So, what's the problem? Just a group of friends having fun on a game and sharing it online, right?

Well, someone didn't particularly like it, and decided to QRT it saying they'd start putting "protogens dni" in their bio. Whether this was a joke or not, it went viral started a massive amount of arguing and hatred all over. Now I usually don't doomscroll anymore, I've begun to grow past that, but this time something in my brain just clicked and I simply had to see what was going on. What did I see? A lot of upsetting things being said about Protogens, and anybody who likes them, despite the clip having just been a few people, we're ALL being generalized into the "annoying and overly sexual" label, and possibly worse things have been said, but I didn't scroll for long, I was getting too upset.

Now, my thoughts on the whole thing? It was all really awful, and very hurtful to a large amount of people. Generalizing someone just because of their sona is something I've always hated, it just feels mean-spirited to do. As a joke it can be fine, like "oh, all protogens love to eat RAM". It might be a tired and overused joke, sure, but it's not really hurting anyone. What I saw being posted this time, did, very much so hurt for me to read. I'm an otherkin, I quite literally AM a Protogen, species dysphoria reminds me of this frequently, every day. Reading some of those posts genuinely almost made me cry. Seeing that so many people in the furry fandom would hate me just for who I am really, really hurts to see, and I feel like it's going against what the fandom is. The furry fandom is queer, it's always been queer, sexual, and to some, yes, annoying, but deciding that a specific species isn't allowed to be those things openly feels awful to me.

The whole discourse is incredibly hurtful to a lot of people, especially otherkin folk like myself, and it just shouldn't be happening. We shouldn't be infighting over who can and can't be sexual, when the entire fandom was founded around sexuality. Seriously, if you do your research you can find some of the first examples of the furry fandom even being a modern concept had comics that were about sex. Now, yes, there's a time and place for being sexual, but the poster of the clip clearly has their account labeled as 18+ only, people should've expected it if they paid attention to the sidebar that clearly shows them that when opening the post.

Don't generalize, especially don't hatefully generalize. It hurts those that you're generalizing. It's also really bad to do so when the furry fandom is already very commonly negatively generalized as a whole, you're just giving people more reason to hate us and incite violence, whether it's physical or not. Have constructive conversations, not hateful arguments!