Is The Community Dying?
Last week, we published an article about censorship. You can kinda thin of this like a part two to that. It's a segment from it that I decided didn't really fit, and that I wanted to turn into its own thing. That said, if you hate talking about censorship but like talking about the results of censorship on minority activism for some reason, this is fully self contained, so no worries there. Mostly I call this out because in my head it's the continuation of a conversation, and if you want the full context it lies within that article. Anyway, let's get into it.
So like, Twitter kinda sucks now. I'm sure you've probably noticed, but there's a whole lot of right wing grifters, gimmick accounts trying to get paid, actual nazis, and there is a serious lack of zoophiles. Not to say that there aren't any, there definitely are still some of us on there. But it feels very different to how it felt even a year or so ago. And, of the people that are still there, it's the psychos that actually enjoy the kind of environment that Twitter fosters. And I don't mean that in a mean way, I'm also one of those people. But it's much less cool community stuff, and much more discourse. And even within that crowd, it feels like the population is drying up.
It's no better on Bluesky either. I know there are some zoos that still exist there, but I'm hearing all the time about how easy it is to get banned, and with their new policy rolout as of a few days ago it seems like it's only going to get worse. So, the number of zoos there seems to be shrinking as well. Pair that with the ZDP Discord getting shut down, and it just feels like the community as a whole is drying up a little bit.
Maybe that's just me. Obviously, those tended to be the spaces that I was the most involved in. Maybe the forums are growing by the day, and the other group chats out there are really killing it. Maybe I'm just losing the endorphins of seeing number go up in the areas I control, and that's making me overgeneralize to everything else. It's hard to say. I mean, it's not like there are less zoos now. Statically the percentage of people that are attracted to animals hasn't changed. And, like we always say, that number is likely a massive undercount based on the number of people that are attracted to animals but live in self-denial due to the stigma around the topic.
So what happened?
One of the things that makes being a zoosexual complicated is that so much of our existence is private. Think about it this way. Say that you're someone that's really into baking. You decide that you want to learn more about baking, and make friends with some other bakers. What do you do? Well, there's a LOT that you can do. You can sign up for some baking classes near you if that kinda thing exists. You can get online and get into baking social media circles. You can join the baking Facebook or Discord groups that are out there. You have a million different ways to engage with your hobby. But here's the thing. Say that you get into a baking Facebook group that you really love. You share some recipes, make a few friends you didn't know before, and express your baking pride. In general, you have a great time. But then, that baking group gets shut down.
Doesn't really matter why. Maybe the owner died, maybe they decided that baking wasn't something they wanted to think about anymore. Maybe Facebook deleted their baking group 'cause someone mae a cake with the zoo flag on it. Whatever it is, one day you wake up and that group's gone. I think when putting yourself in the shoes of that person, it's easy to say "well there's a million other baking groups out there, I'll just join one of them." But in practice, I don't know if that's actually how it goes. I mean, you got into the group in the first place to connect with people over baking, and well.. Now you have. You've still got your friends, maybe you're in a couple private chat groups. Maybe you got out your baking energy, and now that that specific craving has been fulfilled, you're good. You don't feel that drive anymore.
And of course, joining another group is a lot of work. You already put in the social time and energy getting to know these people, and building up trust and rapport and connections. To join another group means you have to start that whole lengthy process all over again. Maybe you were there for weeks, or months, or years. Suddenly, all that energy is "wasted" if you need to do it all over again.
I think it's very easy in reality when your space within a community disappears to just take that as a reason to not keep engaging with that community. And doubly so for the zoo community. When your space disappears, not only are you faced with the burden of starting from scratch again, but you need to try and find another applicable space to even start to try. There aren't that many zoo spaces out there. The ones that do exist might not cater to what you're looking for. And of the ones that do, those might be private, and so you need to establish yourself into the community in other ways before you're even allowed to enter the space that you wanted to. I can't tell you how many people I became friends with through Twitter back pre-Musk era who gave up on social media, who I only talk to now in the private group we created for one reason or another. And that's if I have somewhere to talk to them at all. We just occupy different circles now. Smaller circles, with less overlap.
It's not like the community itself is shrinking, it's just becoming less accessible without a central hub that can welcome folks. And, it makes it harder for new people to find those smaller spaces. Which, in my opinion, sucks.
It also makes activism way harder. A united front is a lot more powerful than a bunch of small groups. Nobody cares about zoophiles if it's a bunch of people just sharing feral porn in private tele groups. In fact, it's much more likely that nobody even knows they exist. But when there's zoos getting thousands of likes on social media, or creating spaces with thousands of people in them, It causes people to pay attention.
How do we do activism if the only people seeing our message are other zoos? Don't get me wrong, internal activism is great. We love being able to create a community where we can support each other, but we've already talked about how that's harder without public central hubs. External activism is basically impossible in a world where we can't communicate our message to an audience outside of ourselves. Especially since it's not like we can just stage a protest, or go hold up signs somewhere. In the age of the internet, anonymity is a blessing and a curse, and when our voices are silenced and we're not allowed to exist, that curse is pretty damn big. The battle against censorship is a malicious one not because of the wall it presents, but because of the downstream effects. It's a way to disperse a crowd, not just a way to stop people from talking.
So what do we do? Well, it's not an easy problem to fix. There really is only one solution too. And that's to focus on what we do have control over. We can do as much internal activism as possible, and make sure that we can be an amazing, wonderful, welcoming and educational space for all the zoos that are out there, so that any time there are zoos out there that make friends with other zoos, there are places that we can direct them to. We might not be able to grow quite as visibly, but that doesn't mean we need to stop growing. It's harder, but it's not impossible. Aside from that, we can also try and chase down avenues where we can speak more aggressively. More stickers. More art. More signs that we exist. Even if we can't be seen as easily, we can be felt. We can also pursue places outside the community where we have spaces to speak. Reaching out to sex researchers, youtubers who are interested in talking about weird stuff, scientists who might be interested in studying our community. Maybe a zoo running a zoo account isn't allowed on luesky, but what about a youtuber who interviews a zoo and then posts about it?
The last thing that I think we can do is just to be ready. The internet comes and goes in waves. Facebook used to be huge, now it's where old people go to be scammed by AI. Twitter used to be huge, and now it's just losers who are chronically online. The landscape of the internet is always changing and evolving, and as zoos we can make sure that we can stay on top of it. Even if we understand that eventually we'll always get targeted, that doesn't mean we can't build the best sand castle we can before the tide rolls in. A flash in the pan still garners a lot of eyes, and those consistnt reminders of our existence can still be effective when it comes to pushing our messaging, and getting people interested in learning more.
Have things slowed down? Definitely. At least, it definitely feels that way to me. But at the same time, the number of people reading the articles we're putting out is still going up. They're just finding our content through different places. There's still lots of us out there, even if we're less directly connected.
It's like that scene in every movie where the heroes are separated by some nefarious force. A fog rolls in and suddenly nobody can see each other. The woods get thicker and everyone gets lost. All we can do is fight our own fights as best as we can, confident that everyone else is out there doing the same. And so long as we all believe in ourselves, and in each other, we'll find our way through in the end.
We're so strong. We can win this fight. They're throwing everything they can against us, but I believe in us, and I hope you do too. So let's keep going.
Article written by Tarro (August 2025)
Find them at https://twitter.com/hereforthezoo for some reason still
