Snapchat filters: Bringing out the beauty in the beast

Why you might secretly be a furry

By Andi Endruhn, Staff Writer

Let’s be honest with ourselves, Snapchat filters are everything we ever wanted.

They clear our skin, give us the glow of a greek deity, and provide the same satisfaction we all get from wasted time spent on Photobooth, twisting our faces into hallucinogenic shapes. But, you will notice one omission from this list. The animal filters.

With an endless barrage of pink-nosed and fluffy eared masks taking over, it’s time for us to confront some harrowing truths.

One: Someone sitting in Snapchat headquarters is a furry

For those of you not in the know (and I apologize for divesting you of your furry-free existence) according to the ever prestigious, and infallible Urban Dictionary, the definition of a furry is contested and variable. In it’s simplest form it is a person with the appreciation of anthropomorphic animals.This appreciation typically extends into a realm of wanting to be, or at least temporarily be these animals with human traits, thus precipitating in the creating of “fursonas,” a furries persona as an animal, and the accompanying fursuit.

There is no other explanation for the endless rotation of anthropomorphic animals that grace the filters bar of snapchat. They’re cute, they clear our skin, and allow for that beautiful feeling of a little kid with face paint. But Snapchat unlike face paint, isn’t limited to the vestiges of youth. Snapchat seems to never go away, transforming each and every one of us into real life depictions of satyrs, and overly cute-sified rabbits. If it were not for someone sitting at a bright beachside office in Venice, California having an extreme interest for fuzzy animal friends (and sometimes scaly but we had to limit our scope) we would not be beset as we are.

What does our endless affection for these filters say about us? We suffer an innate fascination, everyone of us, with the animal filters. We love them.

There is nary one amongst that have not used the dog filter. We are each guilty in our own way. Yes it might have been to cover a zit on your nose, but regardless, you have capitulated to the perpetuation of cute, and thus we must submit to another truth;

Two: Society is filled with furries

Socialized from a young age, we are never taught to think otherwise.

So, you decided to dress up as a cat for halloween, just a simple pair of eyeliner cat whiskers and a tail and ears from the dollar store. Sorry, you’re a furry now. You’ve taken a photo with a mascot at a sports game. Sorry, you’re a furry now.

It happens to all of us. We are trained to love animals, prize them even into the point of wanting to be one. This is apparent right down to the Halloween decision to be suited up in poly-blend onesies rather than be the requisite witch or pirate that would’ve been just as easy.

The kindness to us as children, the benevolence in sparing feelings results in the neverending continuing generation of furries. Bringing us up in a world of anthropomorphic idolization that fills our world with furries, and those aligned. Through childhood consideration we are all conditioned to a furry mindset, meaning dormant furries, populate our world. Have you seen Zootopia? Furry.

Three: We are all furries at heart

While we might all get up on our high horses (pun absolutely intended) about what we all see as a moral divergence from the norm none of us have stopped it ourselves.

We can’t stop it. No one quite wants to. Espousing impulse control does nothing in the face of digitized animal features superimposed onto our faces in good lighting. As every non-millennial will tell you, we collectively agree that a good selfie in good lighting on a good day is one of the small joys in life, much like seeing a dog walk by you on the street. The only thing better is the combination of the two.

Snapchat brings the latent furry out in all of us. No longer is furry-dom banished to distant corners of the internet, Snapchat has enabled and brought it to light. The filters are only a harbinger of what is to come. They are the portent of who we are becoming, and of what we have always been but never known. Each use of the dog filter is complicity in this revelation, and we are powerless to stop it.