I have a very good friend who wears a fursuit from time to time. He is approximately 30 and has Asperger syndrome, which has caused him serious problems throughout his life.
There is a worldwide furry/fursuit community. They are extremely supportive of each other. I get the impression that many of them have Asperger or similar conditions.
People with Asperger often struggle to interpret facial expressions and nuances of mood in others. They struggle to filter information and visual stimuli. Very often, the secondary effect of their condition is that they were marginalised and bullied at school and they struggle with certain kinds of social interaction. (Of course, details vary between individuals.)
The fursuit hobby helps such people to cope in 3 ways:
1) The "animal" has no variation of facial expression, so communication is through words and big obvious gestures.
2) I suspect that the static face of the mask means that there is less visual information to "overload the circuits".
3) Hiding behind a mask and a persona is a well known way to overcome social awkwardness.
Apart from that, 4) it is
harmless fun.
So, it is not a "trivial fursuit".
Unfortunately, furries (fursuit enthusiasts) often find themselves mocked and sometimes physically bullied. FFS. It is just a harmless hobby, like playing music, or juggling, or collecting stamps, or making model railways, or flying kites, or going to concerts, or being interested in yowies. Leave them alone.
Of course, every so often, an individual decides to seek attention from the media, and the media then print a sensational or silly story without doing any deeper research.
Moving on, Diogenes, the first Cynic, argued that we should all be more like dogs. A dog does not pretend to like you: it either likes you and shows it, or doesn't like you and shows it. A dog has no false modesty, and no social airs and graces. The word
cynic comes from the Greek for
dog, and is related to the more widely known known Latin
canis which gives us the word
canine.
Diogenese kept his personal possessions to a minimum, and allegedly lived in a barrel (probably a large earthenware pot?) and did all his bodily functions in the street, just as a dog would. There are many stories of Diogenese that you can look up for yourself. Wikipedia is a good starting point.
In my view, any fool can see that social conventions are artificial and arbitrary. The wise man accepts that some conventions are useful
despite the fact that they are arbitrary. Diogenese was little more than a very early punk rocker, defiantly shouting, "Everything's sh*t, I believe in anarchy," whilst relying on wider society to carry on growing and transporting the food he needed, and to protect him from crime and violence and so on.