Usual disclaimer, that arguably applies more than ever here: these are only the thoughts and opinions of one person, not facts, nor evidence of anything.
The Cassidy in question is Cassidy Civet, centre of the latest outbreak of Furry Drama(tm). I honestly struggle to know what to think of the whole situation, and at the heart of that is a dichotomy. How do I reconcile the Cassidy Civet I’ve seen in so many furry convention videos – fursuit dance competitions, variety shows, one of her own concerts – who is a good singer, a good dancer, a good performer, writes enjoyable music, and seems thoroughly likeable, with the Cassidy Civet who believes it acceptable to use and misuse the name of one of the most beloved figures in the furry fandom, who very recently passed away, to try and score points in a Twitter spat?
Is the stage Cassidy just an act? A mask of personality as well as the physical one of the fursuit? Or is it more of a Jekyll and Hyde situation, that she’s perfectly capable of being a nice person, but you rile her up, or prick her pride, and out comes Hyde, swinging with no holds barred to win? How much of it is purely her, and how much is prompted by outside influences?
Well, from her tweets, she comes across as self-centred, very keen to justify and push herself, with no apparent acknowledgement of other points of view, which does suggest a quite sizeable narcissistic streak, and yet none of that, at least to me, is apparent in the convention videos. Many of the tweets about her reference her as being a persistent trouble-maker, yet never cite any clear examples, any solid evidence. Other tweets are mocking her, and those, to me, are the most pertinent.
For one, I greatly dislike mocking behaviour, regardless of how worthy of it the target seems to be. It’s always counter-productive, and always demeaning to those doing it. I mean, yes, what your target has done is bad, but you’re not exactly being great yourself, are you? If your only reaction is to mock, what does that say about you? And have you ever stopped to consider that mocking is only ever likely to make the target’s objectionable behaviour even worse?
Put it this way. There are two people in my life that arguably possess narcissistic streaks, one markedly more so than the other. Their behaviour, especially the latter’s, can be very reminiscent of Cassidy’s Twitter attitude, and one particular common trait stands out in the context of this post: if you catch them out, prove them to be wrong, show them to be lying, the immediate reaction is not to admit it, let alone address it, but to double-down on it. You frequently see that behaviour when a politician gets caught lying; they just stack more lies on top, usually becoming belligerent, confrontational. Mocking, to me, will generate the same response, possibly more so because its hostile, demeaning, making nasty fun of someone. In short, one reason Cassidy got so bad is the attitudes of other people toward her, which is actually kind of ironic, in that you’re helping to create and maintain the very thing you’re taking aim at.
For all that, I do believe the mockers have hit on something valid, even if they’re not being entirely fair about it. The biggest single event that caused Cassidy to escalate was her appearance on Canada’s Got Talent. She says she’s proud of it, but I really struggle to see how that experience can be anything other than painful. To me, shows like that are cynical, contrived, exploitative. They’re not out to celebrate talent, they’re out to find a face and a voice that can sell a few records, and generate as much ad revenue as they can in the process. Things they can get a reaction from, that will get people talking and most of all watching, will do the latter, so when Cassidy pitched up in full fursuit, how could they possibly resist?
After all, one of the biggest cliches of these shows is the contestant whose arrogance far outstrips their abilities, because that’s always gonna get a great reaction from the audience, and give the judges something to really sink their teeth into, especially that other big talent show cliche, the Nasty Judge. A furry contestant, that sub-culture the mainstream media just loves to mock and demean and scaremonger about, with an attitude problem, who’s actually wearing one of those silly costumes many of the fandom persist in prancing about in? Potential goldmine.
One small catch: Cassidy can actually sing. We are firmly in the realm of conjecture already, and especially so here, but the fact that she barely got to sing a word – the clip on her Youtube channel is barely half a minute long, and the one I saw on Twitter just 7 seconds – before getting the buzzers makes me wonder if she purposely wasn’t allowed to, as that would rather undermine things. Of course, it’s just as likely, even more likely, that the judges simply saw the fursuit and immediately checked out. “Furry? Ugh. NEXT.”
Either way, as I said, I cannot believe an experience like that, basically being reduced to a throwaway joke on national television, didn’t hurt. That experience happening to someone with as strong a narcissistic streak as Cassidy would have had one hell of a knock-on effect, the doubling-down times a thousand, and that, coupled with the exacerbating factors already detailed, ultimately led us to the point Cassidy Civet is exploiting the name of a dead person in one of the pettiest, most self-serving ways imaginable.
To be clear: none of this is to make excuses for Cassidy. She showed extremely poor judgement, acted like a bully in putting someone else down to big herself up, tried to gatekeep – a rather toxic behaviour in and of itself – a fandom that takes great pride in being open, inclusive and diverse, and did so using the name of someone who was instrumental in making it that way. She is unquestionably a villain, here. However, villains don’t usually arise in a vacuum, there are always external factors at play – something I tried to explore with Cinnamon antagonist Eric, the parallels with which is another reason this is playing on my mind so much – and I believe we need to be aware of them when dealing with and reacting to situations like this, especially if we want to stop them from recurring.
Foxy Musings 