Hmm... well I always have liked animals and cartoons with anthro characters. In fact, to this day, any work with some sort of anthropomorphic character draws me in. I never knew why, but anthro characters were always cool to me, but for a while I thought I was sort of the only person who really thought like that. Back in end of my freshman year of high school I first discovered the fandom. I was actually just trying to find any random work with some sort of anthro character when I ran across the wikipedia article on the furry fandom.
At first my expression was like this ===>
I couldn't believe there was actually a whole fandom dedicated to anthropomorphic characters, but...
I read a little further into it and discovered the sexual aspects of the fandom and my expression turned to this ====>
I was pretty much repulsed. The stigma associated with the furry fandom sent me running
After that I pretty much avoided any reference to the fandom, but a lingering interest remained. After all I still loved anthro characters
In the end of my sophomore year I can recall finding a fursuit youtube video and I was both horrified and fascinated. Horrified because the idea of people in giant animal costumes has always been weird to me, even at theme parks I have always avoided greeting characters. However, I was also fascinated because it looked like it was a blast! This slowly eased the furry fandom into a better light for me, but I still could not bring myself to associate with it.
My Junior year I actually met a furry in one of my classes who was pretty open about it, but I never discussed it. It seemed too weird to bring up in conversation. However, my senior year a friend of mine who vaguely knew of the fandom told me this joke idea of going to a furry convention as giraffes. Aside from being kinda awesome, it brought the idea of being a furry back into my mind. I looked up some conventions, went back to looking up youtube videos, and made a broader internet search on what it meant to be furry. Finally it stuck with me when I found some youtube videos of fursuiters who actually volunteered at community events and just made the whole atmosphere fun. It was probably then I came to terms with the furry fandom and officially decided to jump into it. I found this forum and decided it would be a good place to start, so here I am!
Hmm....this is kinda long
For the tl;dr people out there:
Long story short I didn't like it at first, but then I figured "What the hey?" and jumped into it.