Because people didn’t dress up as mermaids and go to cons and express how deep down inside they truly are a mermaid, and have a high likelihood of fucking someone else who also felt the same way.
Not all furries believe themselves to be or want to be animals. It’s a simple interest in anthropomorphic animal art. You’re thinking of therians.
I don’t think many people had “a thing” for mermaids though. It was just another human creature with boobs. I don’t think most people thought about it any deeper than that
Uh… I hate to tell you this but people absolutely dress as mermaids and do conventions… There’s a whole home industry of people who make custom silicon tails.
Dunno what to tell yeh mate, it’s about as oldif not older than Furry culture. Weeki Watchee springs started a whole thing with their Mermaid shows and the subculture basically took off from like the early 60’s… And was probably about as horny as a lot of other subcultures that started around the same time.
To be fair, I think people looked at the folks who were into mermaids as outlandish too. “Been around for a long time” doesn’t mean the same thing as “totally accepted socially”.
But weren’t mermaids seen as dangerous, irresistible sirens also. So the blame was on the evil mermaid, not the person.
I mean, the point of a mermaid isn’t that it’s a sexy looking fish, it’s that other than its tail, it looks like beautiful human women. In some stories, sailors don’t even realize they’re taking to mermaids because their tails are underwater. Also, mermaids were generally considered bad omens or malicious entities, and when they did seduce humans, it was usually to kill them, so it’s not like the folklore was very pro-mermaid sex.
Somebody saying “I am a mermaid” would be looked at strangely too.
And dressing as a mermaid and going to mermaid convention to fuck other mermaids.
That would be strange. Mermaids don’t fuck each other, they get famously fucked by sailors.
Furries aren’t as recent as people tend to think either I might point out, the subculture has existed in some form since like the 80s to my understanding, it’s just more popular and visible these days.
We had a general fen con in the area that was known for two large groups. furries and klingons. furries grew so big they did their own dedicated con. to bad because we had two dance rooms and the fur one had the ac maxed. was so great. dance in the regular one till you are sweating like a pig then move to the fur one.
A lot longer than that. Let me dig and see if I can find the reply someone sent me a while ago
Edit: Tracked it down
Oh I mean, yeah, anthro characters are probably older than civilization, but I meant the furry fandom as a specific subculture rather than specifically the subject it is centered around.