Confession time: I've been to a furry convention.
...
...
...
...
...
...
It was for a sociology 101 class. We had to do a final paper about a subculture and since everyone chose easy stuff like the Amish, opus deists, and stuff like that, I decided I would differentiate myself by doing the craziest one I could find (still a great strategy...professors love that shit.) A friend recommended furries, which I googled and decided against because it was too weird, until I saw that there was a fairly large convention in my area--then I decided I would go into the inner sanctum and take a bullet for humanity.
The Cracked article seems to have been written by a guy who has only read online about the conventions. He didn't mention how every art table had 2 stacks of art: one normal, one adult. Or how the adult stack is always much larger. Or the couples who lead each other around on leashes. Or the guys in tiger body paint and not much else. Or how everyone is kinda ugly/fat. Or the animal noises people make. Or how the whole place reeks of B.O. Or the whole fursona thing. It was a weird experience and one I'll never forget...but all in all, it was a bit boring and I ended up going to the hotel bar and drinking with some other people I met there (which is a fucked up story in itself...would you believe the scariest person I met that day wasn't a furry? or that the strangest experience I had there had nothing to do with the furry convention?

)
One other weird thing is that I had to get special clearance since I had a note pad with me and was obviously going around interviewing people...they wanted to make sure I wasn't with the press, I think.