Creative Commons license icon

Violent J's furry daughter calls out snaky fursuit sellers OISK

Edited by GreenReaper as of Fri 20 Sep 2019 - 06:48
Your rating: None Average: 4.1 (22 votes)

A video released last weekend caught viral attention both inside and outside the furry fandom. In this presentation, a member of a rap group known as the Insane Clown Posse talked with his daughter about being swindled by an online marketplace selling inferior fursuit knockoffs.

Violent J of the ICP and his daughter, introduced as Ruby, discussed their personal experience with an online retailer of OISK, a seller on the website DHGate. The family-friendly breakdown goes over how the final product differed greatly from what was advertised on the site.

The well-produced skit is a good conversation starter, particularly when it comes to the topic of these organizations that would take advantage of the dreams of future fursuiters by siphoning money in return for low-quality costumes.

Shining a new light on an old fandom problem

While these snakes may be newly introduced to the outside world though this video, the shifty practice of selling lower-quality rip-offs of popular fursuits using images of real fursuiters has been around for a few years. Odin Wolf created a video in the summer of 2017 where he bought a fake Majira Strawberry suit from the very same website as a gag. While done for entertainment purposes, the video highlights the differences between the advertised costume and the final product the buyer receives.

For those within the fandom, the trick of selling said knock-offs doesn’t work so well. Furs tend to know how much effort is required and that ordering a fursuit isn't a turn key purchase. Moreover, most legitimate fursuit-builders will refuse to copy another fan's fursuit outright. However, as Violent J's video shows, some consumers unaware of the organic and smaller marketplaces that exist within fandom can be tricked into losing hard-earned cash.

It's important to tell those who are new to the fandom, or have family members interested in acquiring fursuits, that there is currently no furry online mass-marketplace where you can buy quality fursuits. There are many reasons that there is no mainstream market for these costumes:

Firstly, fursonas are typically personal characters created by the wearer. Since they are original creations, the fursuit designer has to acquire the custom specifications from the purchaser. It also makes it unlucrative to create carbon copies of any particular style of suit, because people in the fandom typically create very unique characters and generic costumes will not fulfil the demand to bring their character to life.

It’s not like manufacturing a pair of jeans, which can be of use to people who just want a casual pair of pants. Selling them en-masse on a web page in the manner of clothes will earn minimal returns; and they certainly can’t be pre-manufactured in large quantities, as that is just a waste of money. If a seller did this, they would have a lot of unbought product collecting dust with demand being tempered for the particular style of costume.

There are also issues with full fursuits in particular, such as the wearer's build. While clothing sizes can be broken down into one or two numbers that are easy to understand, costumes have to take more into account. The size of hands, feet, body vertical length and girth are only a few things that need to be taken into consideration.

This is also why someone Ruby’s age would have a more difficult time acquiring a commission of a full body fursuit, as she tried to buy from OISK. With fursuit commissions in demand, those who create costumes are hesitant to take a client whose body size is still changing as they grow into adulthood. By the time a year passes of costume development, the client may no longer fit in the costume due to them growing up.

This would more than likely explain why the head of the shoddy product Ruby received from the online seller was so large on her. It was developed for an adult-sized face, with no further input from the buyer about their particular dimensions.

So the simplest way to highlight if a fursuit purchase could be a scam is if it is bought in such a way the require no human interaction with the seller at all prior to payment. If the person creating a custom costume cared about the quality of the product, they have to know the build of the person they are creating it for. Typically, it is only after this information is gathered that the designer can give a fair quote on to the actual cost of their work.

In other words, treat your fursuit purchase like renovating a kitchen, and not like buying a new blender for it.

A demand to be fulfilled

However, as people clearly fall for these snaky tactics, it is evident that clearly despite the above issues there is a consumer demand for a simpler way to purchase fursuits for consumers. Efforts are underway at Furry Network to try to develop a more cohesive marketplace for furry art. This idea continues in its beta form, and curiosity has continued to swirl about the concept of a more intuitive furry marketplace.

Should this foundation prove fruitful in a continually-growing fandom, fursuits would certainly be a part of the new economy. The faster the fandom can create such a homegrown mass-market, the quicker we can help drive the infestation of snakes from the web, directing people to a proper place to buy a product they will be happier with. In the meanwhile you can just use communications services on furry social sites to contact makers directly, or use non-fur services such as commiss.io or Etsy to find fursuit creators there.

There is still no replacement for doing research online for individual fursuit makers and inquiring for quotes and whether they can take on additional clients. After being snaked, Ruby and Violent J did this by finding an Etsy creator by the name of Red Strawberry Studios who made the suit used in the Snake Busters video. Take your time with this purchase, and you too will find the effort well worth it.

Because nothing crashes a future fursuiter’s dream than being snaked!

Comments

Your rating: None Average: 2.3 (6 votes)

I'm glad this video was made. I've known about it for a few days now and I keep meaning to share it to r/furry but the thing is, I can't watch this without taking a few bong hits first and laughing my ass off and by then I've forgotten. It sincerely did not surprise me one damn bit that one of the ICP's offspring would be a furry. Makes perfect sense, really, because it's a millennial who from the time she was born was surrounded by sheer, unbridled, relentless creativity and probably debauchery. And I've never agreed with the blind, impotent rage a lot of furries have towards ICP and their own fandom, Juggalos. It always looked a little too much like, I dunno, trying to punch a mirror with a pair of oven mitts on. I wanted to say throwing stoned (STONES, I mean STONES!) in a glass house but most furries throw like girls and wouldn't even be able to break a window. The girl in the video can throw better than a furry, even though she is both a furry and a girl, and why? Because she's half Juggalo.

I just love the irony though, that not just any Juggalo, but one of the originals, has now done something better for furries than furries ever did for them, even after all the hate which they're probably aware of. So I think at least for now, furries need to take their self-styled moral superiority to ICP and their fans and shove it up their ass.

Part of me really hopes Ruby sticks with the furry thing, like it's not just a phase, becomes super popufur, and does something far better with that 15 minutes of fame than even a lot of the best "professional furries" do with their entire lives.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (6 votes)

I think the better part of this video is that it's the most successful 'diss' of Eminem they ever did. Even though that wasn't the video's original intent

I mean Marshall spends probably 25% of his lyric complaining that his fame causes him to be isolated from his daughter, and here Violent J comes with a video doing the very thing that Eminem bitches about being unable to do in his hit songs.

It's not hard, just take the time to understand your offspring's interests, and use your platform to help support them in what they wish to do. While angst can help sell records, it doesn't solve the problem. In that way despite Eminem being more famous than Violent J, it could very well be a teaching point for Marshall Mathers on how to be closer with his daughter despite their fame.

As far as furries being crappy to Juggalos, I personally hadn't seen it. Must be I'm following the wrong(?) Twitter feeds.

Your rating: None Average: 2 (4 votes)

I think you might be practicing a bit of Death Of The Author here because, while your interpretation is interesting, as you yourself acknowledge, you're reading things into it that aren't the creator's intentional message. For all we know, Eminem has a perfectly healthy relationship with his daughter, or as much as he can manage with his schedule and commitments, and just doesn't want to bring her into the business before she's ready, before she wants to, etc. And it's not a guarantee for success or happiness either. Hulk Hogan was never able to do much for his daughter despite actually trying what you suggest at least several times. According to death of the author, I could just as easily argue that all he's doing in his lyrics is representing people who actually are in the metaphoric (and fictional) boat with him. If nothing else, it's pretty unrealistic to expect Eminem to see that video at all unless he's a closet furry, and even more unrealistic to expect him to leap to the same conclusion you did.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (4 votes)

Em is pretty close to his daughter. The reason he sings about not being that way is a ruse so that people leave his kid alone and out of their diss tracks.

Like Jay-Z said on Netflix.. all rap is just people telling lies and playing emotional games. Just kids telling whoppers.

Your rating: None Average: 3 (4 votes)

Most who end up in this label are just desperate to climb the social pecking order in any way, even if it means latching onto something completely nonsensical to rail against. Also most carry feelings of aggression from being bullied or reminded their deep attachment to Beanie Babies doesn't make them manly enough from when they were little.

I would actually feel sorry for them if they didn't attack other furs, or other outgroups to label as worse than furs.

Your rating: None Average: 2.8 (5 votes)

No mention of making a DTD eh? It seems like such a devoted process by both the seller and the buyer (get 3 people to wrap you with tape, do the physical exertion of standing in one place for 3 hours while 2 people help) ... mail it out and wait 2 years ... I have a hard time seeing how it could be streamlined better than just "supported" by services like commiss.io or perhaps a boutique market platform.

Anyhow great subject, wicked clown love to Juggalos now. I have a big gay bear jewish b-boy clown friend who is not Down With The Clown but I think even he would admit this is pretty great.

I mean putting those 2 things together is going to have something for most people whether you love or hate either side of the PBJ furry-clown-rap sandwich. It's like the older patton oswalt sketch about how Cirque Soleil brings red and blue staters together where everything is wet and gay and french and on fire.

It got so many blog notices I didn't even look at them all but these stood out.

The Vice one that compared both on the basis of "uncritical nerdy fandom" boiled it down well - https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/qvm48m/insane-clown-posse-furries-violent-...

And the followup interview where Violent J talked about how they got the idea from buying slime before doing this. I love hearing the genesis of an idea from a showman. https://gizmodo.com/furries-are-a-lot-like-juggalos-how-a-clown-rapper-and-18274...

With all that coverage I was wondering how to give it a fresh spin and did hit on a good idea. Just gotta clear the deck of other articles so it might be a little while. Meanwhile, if you are a juggafur or a parent of a furry (or Violent J or even his mom) drop me a line.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (5 votes)

Yes! I was wondering and asking around who the maker of the new, better suit used in the video was. Thanks

Your rating: None Average: 5 (4 votes)

Selling them en-masse on a web page in the manner of clothes will earn minimal returns; and they certainly can’t be pre-manufactured in large quantities, as that is just a waste of money.

Like Wal*Mart's well-received line of Maskimals? OK, not quite the same – but it shows there's a product selling in this market.
As for Furry Network - it's been a year and a bit since your piece about it. Any progress?

Your rating: None Average: 5 (4 votes)

May was their last blog update, indicating they're working on the commissioner end to make it easier to use.

Which, it was easy enough to use as a purchaser, but I certainly didn't use it as a creator, so perhaps they got some feed back from that end that indicated it wasn't quite intuitive.

https://blog.furrynetwork.com/2018/05/25/our-current-development/

Maskimals works, I suppose, if we you know, don't bully kids who wear said masks, like someone had at BLFC...

Your rating: None Average: 3.2 (5 votes)

I saw that video a while back but I was never able to watch the whole thing. It was just too ridiculous! Good for a laugh though.

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~

Post new comment

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <img> <b> <i> <s> <blockquote> <ul> <ol> <li> <table> <tr> <td> <th> <sub> <sup> <object> <embed> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <dl> <dt> <dd> <param> <center> <strong> <q> <cite> <code> <em>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This test is to prevent automated spam submissions.
Leave empty.