[Chojin]

Okay, to elaborate:

I got into some of the artwork as a chillun, eventually met some of the other people interested in it, and then promptly ran away.

There are so many niches in the already-niche society they've built that it's ridiculous. You have 'babyfurs', which are people who do all the furry crap, but also wear diapers and piss themselves. You have 'guro', who are the people into mutilation. You have 'vore', who are the people who get sexually excited by the prospect of being eaten whole. Yoshi is their patron saint.

Furry fandom people will tell you that it started in print magazines in the 80s, but that's a lie. Like most things the internet unintentionally does, people with horrible personal fetishes found each other and slowly aligned their yearnings to make some sort of perverted deviant megazord.

Like FatSatan once famously wrote:
"The pretense of subculture helps to alleviate the stigma of being socially dysfunctional."