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#InternationalAssDay: why is it trending and why are people mad about it?

CS

by Claudia Schmidt

CS

by Claudia Schmidt

International Ass Day is trending on Twitter, but what does it all mean? We deep dive into the furry corners of humanity and the internet’s love of butts. Ass Twitter truly is wild.

I’ll admit I’d never heard of International Ass Day before, but apparently, it’s a thing. And like most things that are a thing, it’s trending on Twitter.

After a bit of digging, it turns out it’s not actually a day in celebration of the anatomical nether region, but instead, something to do with a niche subculture known as furries, and ‘furry ass’ – and it’s infuriating a large portion of the internet.

international ass day furries

International Ass Day is about butts, right?

When most people see International Ass Day trending on Twitter, their mind goes to one thing. However, if you happened to click on the #InternationalAssDay hashtag, you would have been greeted with less butts and more this:

These posts elicited a myriad of responses, including some decidedly NSFW ones (because, duh, butts and stuff), but most people were just plain old m@d because they wanted to see butts:

This is because far from being a day about butts, #InternationalAssDay was a day about furry ass, literally. The hashtag had been appropriated by the furry fandom community, and whilst it started out fairly modest, it eventually managed to pick up so much traction that it climbed up to the #1 trending spot on American Twitter.

A quick search of International Ass Day delivers not much in terms of results – however, National Ass Day is a thing (I won’t ask why), and it occurred a mere four days ago on October 18.

It seems the furry community decided to take this day as their own and commondere the hashtag, ergo #InternationalAssDay was born. Due to some late entries, the date just kept on rolling.

But um, what is a furry?

In case your web travels haven’t led you to the world of furries before, I’ll give you a quick rundown. According to the lay man’s dictionary,Β a furry is someone who has an “interest in anthropomorphic animals” – aka walking, talking animal characters (think Disney’s Robin Hood). However, the term’s meaning is seemingly as complex as it is vague, and Urban Dictionary goes onto clarify that “there is no one single definition of what a furry is.”

Internet polysemies aside, broadly speaking, furries are a fandom comprised of fans, artists, writers, gamers, and role players who interact over the web and meet up for irl conventions. Furries have their own talk; some of them (though not all) own fursuits, which can be worn at the aforementioned conventions; others make furry art or write furry stories – you get the picture.

But there’s also a whole sexual element to the subculture, which, unfortunately, has been warped by a small minority so that furries often carry perverted connotations. Mainstream media paints furries as sex fetishists whose defining trait is that they like to have sex in their animal costumes.

Whilst some do enjoy banging in uniform – an activity they call ‘yiffing’ – a lot of them also don’t. Like most fandoms, there are sexual tropes present, but there are also other facets to the culture, and for many, it’s an entirely non-erotic pursuit. This misrepresentation has sadly attracted a lot of hate towards furries, which at its simplest, is just a group of people who like the idea of talking animals.

But what does International Ass Day have to do with furries?

I think this tweet fairly well sums it up – and you know what? Fair enough.

Clearly, International Ass Day errs on the side of sexual, so it attracted the expected hate. But, luckily enough, it seems that the furry community – who clearly don’t want to bother anyone and just want to get on with their enjoyment of furry things – managed to glean some relish out of the infuriated response of normies:

Then, of course, there’s those people who have no idea what the fuck’s going on and just joined in with #InternationalAssDay, ’cause fuck it.

So is International Ass Day a thing?

Whether or not this is an annual thing, idk. But if it is, you heard it here first.

Whilst it’s mostly fun and games, the clash that #InternationalAssDay elicits between various sides of the web points to a darker shadow cast by our cyberselves – one which involves a culture of intolerance and hate towards other groups of society, which has unfortunately attended humans throughout history.

In conclusion, if you like seeing furry butts, click on the hashtag. If you don’t, or you’re the type to get severely disappointed if you don’t see a real butt, then don’t. Let’s hope one day all sides of the internet can be friends.

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