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 Futurists are rustled, and making lists

The article is a click-bait style article written by Futurism’s Jon Christian entitled 6 things Elon Musk could be doing instead of denying he is a furry. It’s a short piece whose sole purpose is to draw attention. So okay, I’ll bite.

First, the so-called list breaks a rule of numerical lists by being unnecessarily redundant. Their first point of the list, running his companies, is repetitive with the other points on the list which are sub-activities of the first point. For instance let’s say I made a list “3 ways to change your diet and live longer” and put in that list the following items:

1. Eat more fruits and vegetables
2. Eat an apple a day
3. Eat celery

As you can see, point two and three are covered by point one. So I could have just as easily wrote the sentence “eat more fruits and vegetables” and cut the list out entirely. Of course, then I couldn’t make my title have a number of things that would make it more attractive to the audience at large I suppose. The internet loves their lists, after all. So I guess it's my responsibility to give a better example of how to do a list properly properly. Let’s just call this “4 problems the list of problems Futurism has with Musk's furry curiosity has - as written by a furry”. This was point one by the way, sorry to dive you into a list without the proper introduction. I guess I'm messing this up already.

The bleak workaholic future of Futurism

My technical technicality grips aside, I’m a bit more concerned with the message that this article sends about concept of perpetual work and it’s growing prevalence in American society. Where we can work from home, but we are also expected to put in a full day in at the office. The American worker, for those who are working, are putting in increasing hours these days.

Heck, some of us crazy people do work in our free time like writing unnecessarily wrong articles about click-bait articles on the internet.

But of course Elon is the CEO, so it’s far more socially acceptable to tease the man about ‘hardly working’ when he does things in his free time. Or in the case of the fur-curious tweet, at 1:45 PM on a Wednesday, you got me there. Which is why most furs who saw this Futurism article had a laugh about it and moved on. Some of those very same furs are the same that noted that things for the common worker sucks because people are overworked.

This isn’t helped by the insistence that CEOs are some sort of prophets of profit either, and that all the time that person spends on this planet should be dedicated toward the pursuit of the investor dollar. It is that very idolatry and the amount of wealth derived from it that makes it seem like this expectation of the 24/7 worker is okay if they make over a certain amount of salary. Because while the wealth isn’t trickling down from the highest offices to the degree it should, the culture of workaholism is.

While we are here, it is also important to note that during break times where the brain is in a more restful state, you can sometimes come up with some strange ideas. Like when I was doing research for this article and was looking into a bunch of Tesla things, I saw this thing called a Solar Roof where Musk’s company had made solar panels into more aesthetically pleasing forms that take the shapes of traditional roof tiling. They are not as efficient as tradition panels, but they are smaller and pretty tough. They’re more a luxury item than practical in their current form. That sense of luxury is why most furries roll their eyes at this kind of technology. However, luxuries sometimes become standards given time and improvement. Your toilet for example.

But during this free time I was able to think that maybe Musk has another goal in mind with these Solar Roof tiles than just getting rich people a nice solar roof. The CEO could be tying it in with his space ventures, which also need ‘grid free’ power, because we can’t run wires through the atmosphere.

As a furry, what came to mind was the scales of a dragon. Would it be possible to make spacecraft that had tiles similar to these Solar Roof items to power its systems? It would cut down on expensive panel arrays if you could generate electric across the surface area of the vessel instead. Add the batteries similar to a more efficient Powerwall-like product developed by the company, then you can have your space vessel powered even if the Earth is between the craft and Sol.

Those thoughts came to myself thanks to this thing called “free time”. Sometimes you gotta sit and relax in an orchard to get lost in thoughts before that spark in the form of falling apples hits you. Don’t get me wrong, hard work has its place. The more you learn from doing in the workplace, the more inspiration you have to draw on with being creative with the tools and knowledge you acquire.

But if you work too hard you’ll experience burn-out. And people who are burned out are more likely to make slanderous statements about men who are free to rescue children in a foreign country while they are stuck in an office, helpless to do anything about it. A rested brain might have stopped such a person to think: “We’re all in this together, and we should celebrate those who step up to do the right thing, and it doesn’t have to be me all the time.”

Godlike Expectations

At the end of the day the CEO is but a mortal man. There is only so much they can control and deal with. Sure if the leader messes things up they should put in the time to fix those mistakes, but there are going to be certain elements out of their control. That’s why point 5 on futurism’s list is silly. So much so, I think I may be taking this list too seriously. Just maybe.

[Elon Musk could be dealing with] The constant strain of being held to account by the cruel and capricious media industry who hold him to the impossibly high standard that could only be fairly applied to someone capable of changing the universe’s technological paradigms . [They link to themselves here]

While this element may have been a point of tongue-in-cheek empathy and a poke at the media and themselves, it interestingly also could be taken seriously along with the other elements in this list. If that is the case it’s saying that Musk has to change the nature of the media industry and not just the technology one.

Trust me, no one can really stop people talking about other people. You can attempt to do so and try to become a dictator who calls the press the enemy of the people and jail them. But then all you’d accomplish is journalists complaining about being locked up. So journalists are going to complain, it’s kind of their thing.

So how do you deal with a press constantly bothering you? Well you read other news that isn’t taking about you in some strange annoying third person discussion where people are talking at each other and not to each other (don’t look at me like that). Instead you can read news about giant red squirrels in India, which you joke are probably just people in costumes, which leads to furries, which leads to the original tweet we are complaining about.

So yes, Elon Musk’s tweeting may have been actually him dealing with the thing you stated in point five. By consuming news that he felt wasn’t nagging at him and in essence promoting animal news stories.

But it also had another side-effect of drawing a type of attention on social media, which brings me to my final point.

Musk’s social media activity works as a quasi-ad

There is also another possibility that Futurism didn’t think about, and that is Musk was working when he said the word fur-curious, and this is where we move on from the technical to the social. Futurism considered the tweet as wasted effort by Musk that didn’t help him or his company in any way. But I think at this point it’s obvious why it was well worth the effort of a one word tweet.

Remember how I said that I was researching Tesla and then had some strange dragon-scaled solar-powered spaceship fantasies? Well, there’s more to that statement then the fact I’m a bit eccentric. It also shows that with one tweet Elon Musk got at least one person to start looking into their products and the direction of their companies more closely. For better and for worse.

It was at that time I came to the realization that with that tweet I was suddenly looking at their products and what their company was all about. So in a sense that one small tweet was an effective advertisement of Tesla at the furries. And furries acted like one normally would when advertised to: reject, accept, or become curious. Clearly his fur-curious-ness had made me Tesla-curious. It got me thinking about the future of technology, which if I ever wanted to write science fiction could be useful.

Now, through that research I found I’m not quite in the place to invest in such hefty products myself, and it would not be in my financial interest. My auto has about 5 more years in it yet, and my roof probably has that if not more.

In speaking of autos, seriously $2,000 for a coat of red paint on the Model 3? Oh, sorry, a ‘multi coat’? Here furries get mocked for wearing animal suits at that price. At least we can do more with that then to make our car look marginally sexier. Black paint is the one color that comes at no additional cost.

I guess I could get solar panels, if I wanted to get anything. Getting paid for the electric that my house would generate while I’m in the office all day would be nice. But technology continues to improve at such a rate that I feel assessing and waiting would be best for me and continuing to find ways to make marginal improvements to energy efficiencies in the household. Cells may be far more efficient in a few years, so waiting for the innovation curve to peak would be sound in my mind. Government grants may lapse by that time, however.

Okay, yes, we get it, I did get a bit green-curious and started investigating things I wouldn't have otherwise.

Many are going to, rightfully so, point out that what I’m doing right now could be seen as quasi-advertising for Tesla simply because Musk said the word fur-curious. And that’s the insidious part of this phenomenon. Being part of the conversation can be flattering. It gets into your head. You start thinking about the future, the opportunities you have in the present and if there is action you can take to make the world better and maybe through that be happier yourself. But will the stuff really make you happier once you have it, or will you be regretting your resulting indebtedness?

That’s why being an educated consumer is important, especially as the fandom continues to grow and people realize our eccentric lot does have a sense of community and that some of us have some expendable income. The kind of income that gets you to a hotel room in a distant city for a weekend party. We sometimes forget that some aren’t even blessed to have that. It’s the kind of income that can donate tens of thousands to charitable causes annually. Salesmen are gonna want a piece of that pie. It can be easy to get lost in the excitement of cool gadgets, but only you can assess if buying certain products are right for your situation.

Remember, other companies are selling solar panels and electric cars as well, so be sure to shop around when it comes to such future commitments if you wish to buy those kind of things.