Alt.fan.furry

alt.fan.furry, also known as a.f.f. or AFF, is a newsgroup centered around furry fandom and related topics. Created on December 18, 1990 by user Tzoq, it was intended to be an online repository for furries to gather and discuss various topics revolving around the still new fandom. It served as a place to advertise, chat, and debate, and became infamous for its collection of massive flame wars. The service would be superseded by more accessible websites such as forums by the 2000s, with use dwindling to a handful of monthly posts. Today it remains as an archive of the early online history of furry fandom.

History
The earliest known furry Usenet group was originally created after fans of Albedo Anthropomorphics gathered in alt.birthright, quickly discovering that it was not a group for the Birthright series by artist Steve Gallacci. One of these fans, Peter da Silva, would start a dedicated newsgroup on October 31, 1990 under the name 'alt.fan.albedo'. The initial message on a.f.a. read:

At that time, Albedo was suffering from extremely infrequent publication and Critters was already defunct. Several members suggested that 'alt.fan.furry' would be a better group name. While Peter da Silva didn't prefer the term, furry was already beginning to supersede funny animal in various fandom mailing lists, and was more all-encompassing than being strictly Albedo related.

Members on 'alt.fan.albedo' in the one month interim included greymuzzles such as Jimmy Chin, mejeep, and Uncle Kage, and Steven Stadnicki.

'alt.fan.furry' later spun off other furry newsgroups, the most notable of which was 'alt.lifestyle.furry'.