INDIANAPOLIS, IN— After attending Midwest FurFest as part of what they described as a “fact-finding mission into the furry youth contagion,” a coalition of child psychologists announced Monday that schools should immediately bring back bullying.
“We went in with open minds,” said developmental psychologist Dr. Helen Braddock, “But after seeing a 16-year-old ‘fox boy’ explain his ‘fursona’ to a middle-aged ‘dragonkin,’ we realized society may have overcorrected.”
The group’s report, titled Bullying: Seriously, Bring It Back, argues that decades of anti-bullying campaigns have unintentionally created an environment where “any passing adolescent impulse is allowed to harden into some really weird shit,” providing a linked Google search for “scritching” as evidence in the footnotes.
“For generations, mild but sustained peer cruelty served an important developmental function,” Braddock said. “It taught children which behaviors were charmingly eccentric, and which were socially unwise. Without bullying, we’ve normalized walking around in a $4,000 raccoon suit with cooling fans.”
The group’s initial experiments at the convention reportedly proved extremely successful.
“A single controlled swirlie was enough to make one youth remove his cat ears and go home,” said Dr. Warren Pike. “After a follow-up session with the same patient, conducted inside the cramped, highly structured environment of his locker, we successfully redirected his interest toward learning karate, a socially acceptable group hobby.”
“It’s a classic social contagion,” Pike later claimed on The Joe Rogan Experience. “So many of these confused kids are identifying as wolf-boys, when in previous generations, they would’ve just been thespians.”
Pike added that the problem can escalate quickly if left untreated. “One kid shows up to lunch wearing a fox tail, and without the intervention of a bully, within six months the entire friend group is reading Omegaverse lit-erotica.”
Several parents of furry children have found themselves out of their depth.
“I look at the neighbors and their beautiful trans daughter, and I feel envious,” said Indiana mother Linda Morley. “Why can’t I have that? That makes sense. But this?” She sighed and went back to combing through a kiddie pool filled with kitty litter. “Maybe I just didn’t spank him enough.”
Several schools have already begun testing pilot programs designed to reintroduce bullying in what administrators describe as a “nonviolent, but still traumatic” method. One charter school in Phoenix has hired a rotating team of catty gay men to patrol the halls and deliver emotionally devastating remarks to students before abnormal behavior can fully calcify.
“We don’t want anyone getting an atomic wedgie,” said Principal Darren Kell. “That’s outdated. But if a student walks in wearing a Twilight Sparkle unicorn onesie, we do want a 32-year-old drag queen to look them up and down and say, ‘Yeah… no, girl. Go home and don’t come back until you find some taste.’”
Early data from the program appear promising. One sophomore reportedly removed his fox ears and tail after a hallway monitor told him, “Honey, we’re not in Sherwood Forest, and you’ve got the body shape of Little John, not Robin Hood. Do better.”
Another student abandoned plans to attend FurCon after being informed that his wolf name, “Shadowfang,” sounded like “a discontinued vape flavor,” followed by a prolonged eye roll and the groaned remark, “Oh my gaaaaawd, this place.”
Some parents have already embraced the idea.
“My son came home saying he was a pansexual snow leopard named Kairo,” said parent Sara Cho. “But after three carefully worded insults from the school’s new peer realism specialist, he was back to being a pansexual playing Minecraft. I got my boy back.”
Yesterday, representatives from the furry community pushed back during a tense Q&A with Dr. Helen Braddock at Butler University, arguing that young people deserve safe spaces to explore identity without mockery or shame. Dr. Braddock then acknowledged their concern by threatening to punch the two adult representatives in the face, followed by hitting them twice in the arm for flinching.
The two furries immediately stormed out of the lecture hall to sustained, rolling laughter from the crowd.
Their fennec fox and husky costumes were later found stuffed in a recycle bin inside the student union.
