For me, doing research means to spend ample time looking things up, rather that be scrolling through forums such as this one, websites, reading books, articles, watching informational videos/documentaries, etc.
To me the best thing you can do is experience. Talk to other therians, or even trusted friends and loved ones. Live out your therianthropy through expression, physically and emotionally, experiment with labels, etc.

Of course you'll need to be careful with those last two sentences. I'm not recommending that you tell others about your therianthropy if you deem it to be unsafe, just for clarifaction! Also, try to stick with what your gut is telling you.

(2023-11-27 7:48)DustWolf Wrote:  Hey guys,

Happy therianthropy day!

As is our historic custom, therianthropy day is celebrated on the first full moon in November, which is today on the 27th .

To quote @BearX who posted this back in 2017:

(2017-11-04 14:44)BearX Wrote:  Today is the first full moon of November, 2017. The first full moon of November has been a sort of de facto "Therianthropy Day" since the mid 1990s. It was when, 23 years ago, on the weekend of November 19 & 20, 1994, the first official AHWW howl was held.

I was unable to attend it, although I did make the two that followed. I was a broke college student and had no transportation at the time. It was fun reading the post-howl reports on the newsgroup, though.

I always felt it was a good time to have an official celebration of therianthropy, since the AHWW newsgroup itself was created in November, 1992. Very momentous for therians, November is.

It was first proposed as a sort of holiday in March of 1996, in this thread on AHWW, should you want to investigate the history. Ultimately, AHWW decided to use it, and it stuck. It went through a few iterations of names, "International Werewolf Day", and then the less species-specific "Awereness Day" (since were is the older term for therian), and after the term therianthropy caught on, "Therianthropy Day".

So, happy "Therianthropy Day". Hope it's a good one.

We never quite figured out what we were going to do for Therianthropy Day. Maybe bake a cake. Maybe be proud and celebrate your therianthropy online by bragging about your animal traits. Maybe just chill out and have that one day in a year when you let your animal side out a bit more than usual. There are no rules on what must be done for therianthropy day.

If nothing else, it's a day to be true to ourselves and remember what all this is all about.

Take care.

LP,
Dusty

We should have a special item for this that's only available on Therianthropy Day! I feel it should be free of charge, jst something to use to celebrate!

Um my shifts are rare but most common are mental shifts. I have never experienced phantom shift. So when I am shifted I want to do more animalistic sound such as meowing, howling, growling. I am more primal and I often want to cuddle or do playfull fights. Also I became more animalistic in basic behaviour. That means I will growl or hiss when somebody is threating me or my friends, or I will be whining when I am scared. Also I like to tilt my head and listwn to sounds and body language. Because I dont wxperience strong shifts and I am always lil shifted it is hard to tell. It is pretty much like ypour whole mind suddenly switch and my instincts are sharper bc I am more fo used on it. I will start thinking just slightly differently that humans. Just like wilf. Hope it helped.

for me most of my shifts are phantom shifts and it kinda just feels like...umm...idrk, like kinda feeling like you have a part of your body that isn't there, and I can like feel it move and stuff but ik its not really there so it's wierd, I also don't know if this is a shift but I do tend to jump around and play in a more animalistic way, like if I'm alone in my room or outside with my neighbors dog then I'll run with her or also like just other stuff like that, idk how to explain a lot of it, I'm sorry

I was in a discussion akin to this on the werelist recently. There, they'd been called "fourth wave" therians. I had a bit to say on the topic, and I still do. Below is my original reply from the werelist, edited a bit for clarity.

Quote: In all the conversations around the state of the community, I feel that we are forgetting to look at the state of the internet as a whole. When I look at what forms of connection are easily available, it's no wonder that the community has become what it is.

Fourth wave [tiktok] therians exist mostly on youtube, instagram, and tiktok. While nuance and the like can be absent in any form of communication, these platforms simply aren't built for it at all. Short-form content thrives off of quick clicks and rapid swiping. You can post all the introspection on those sites you want, but unless it generates easy ad revenue, it might as well not exist at all. This leads to all the posts and conversations that get shared to be ankle-deep at best, ergo that's what the uninformed and uninitiated make the community out to be. You may have the occasional account that gets attention for sharing real experiences, but it's a rarity. We know that social media is predatory and that children are very susceptible to it. There aren't a ton of stand-alone websites like this anymore because of how pervasive algorithm-based platforms have become.

Short-form content has rotted brains to the point where long-form content such as forums and essays cant hold attention. Then it bleeds over into other platforms like Reddit. I could easily write forever about how this probably has a lot to do with capitalism and anti-intellectualism.

Do people need to be aware of the community they're joining before they join it? Absolutely. Should we encourage positive change? Of course. There are a lot of issues that come with children and other uninformed folks joining the community en mass and there always has been. I just think we should be more aware that the environment and framework that these new communities are forming under are inherently hostile to the nuanced conversations that create good community. Growth should always be encouraged, but sometimes the soil you're planted in is pretty nasty.

I find it shallow and a bit dishonest to blame children for the issues within the new community. Most of the time, they are completely unaware that a much deeper and richer community lurks right under the surface, and tiktoks endless desire for ad revenue and attention isn't going to spur them onto these deeper conversations, it's just going to keep them on the app.

Ultimately, I think the hype will die out in time. The community will adapt, and those who turned out to be "real" will stick around and contribute. Best thing we can do is gently educate and not shame them.

Seriously, why can't people just admit that they WANT to be Therian? What's the point of acting and lying to everyone else and yourself? Just make it clear that you know you are human and that you are a Quadrobist or Otherpaw. The fundamental difference is that you can CHOOSE to be Otherpaw, you can CHOOSE to be a Quadrobist, but you can't CHOOSE to be a Therian.

Even I respect this difference. I don't fake-claim being Therian just because I want to be 'mainstream' and 'accepted in a community' although I've seriously wanted to. Instead, I was honest and I was still kindly accepted into this community.

There's no shame in being different from the mainstream culture, and Therianthropy certainly should not be a mainstream culture just because people find it really cool. Those who base their life around being socially-accepted and get all their energy from other people's attention are seriously miserable. That is one thing I never understood and never will.

But the really problematic thing is that there's literally no way to day that someone isn't a Therian. It's all in someone's mind, there's nothing physical or tangible that can be used as proof.

So anyways, those were some of my really jumbled-up thoughts about fake-claiming Therianthropy and following this mainstream TikTok and Insta aesthetic. I don't think my paragraphs were well organized but I hope my main ideas and arguments were well expressed.

I think this is one of the most believable theories around the internet. Most Therians certainly have some type of neurological or psychological flaw or struggle that cause them to feel out of place. As an Otherpaw and doubting Therian, I am pretty sure I have Autism, which somehow makes my social life much harder. Maybe because I suffer of such conditions, I don't feel comfortable with myself and I dislike myself for who I am. I believe that this is one of the main factors that affect how I experience Alterhumanity.

Your question about what it means to be human is one that philosophers have debated for millennia, and still, there is no true answer. The majority of my philosophy classes in college centered around that question, which was interesting for me as a deeply integrated therian, and it got me thinking about my own experience.

That said, here's the thing that has been touched on many times here: humans and animals are not as far removed and separate as most think. Humans are animals and thus share core instincts with other living creatures, even if those instincts may seem dulled in the human world. So, how did I determine I was a therian in light of this? I look at all my instincts, urges, experiences, etc. and compared them to what I learned over time is typical of most humans. I was born a therian, so certain things I thought were normal in my early life I quickly learned were not typical at all for humans.

Also, I looked at my experiences and compared them to my knowledge of other animals: do I share this trait with a wolf that humans don't share or don't experience in the same way? Plus, the phantom tail I feel on a constant basis is a bit of an easy giveaway.

Necessary caveat here that the ""line"" I'm about to discuss is individual, and while collectively most people would probably agree on this, it IS still unique to each person. I'm mentioning this here for you to take and then evaluate where you feel you fall along this spectrum as you see fit. I'm no expert, I'm just coming in here with my own experiences and observations from having been in the community for the last 13 years.

I think if we start from the assumption that everyone feels an alienation from humanity at some point in their life, it provides a good baseline. Going further, you find people who have moments where they wish they weren't human, but again, that still falls under the disillusionment, and a step beyond that is likely wish fulfillment. I think anything beyond this is what tips into therianthropy. Because at this step, you have someone who actually feels nonhuman. Most people who simply feel disillusioned or want a break from being human do not seriously go "I would actually consider being a nonhuman animal full time," like, if really pressed on it. Going to make the gender comparison (credentials: I'm trans LOL) and say that even people who are frustrated by the expectations of their gender roles or their anatomy don't necessarily want to transition. Think of all the cis women out there who can't stand getting periods, for instance. I do want to say that this is where that ""line"" is, and I put it in double quotes because even this is a grey area.

This is the point where you ultimately have to decide for yourself if you feel as though you are animal enough to be nonhuman. You have to look to the clues your body and brain are giving you, listen to your gut. Follow the train of thought if you are to seriously consider yourself nonhuman and see if it makes sense, feels comfortable, and then sit with it for a while. The truth has a way of revealing itself to you. Would I, a jaguar therian, consider being one full time for instance? No, I would not. But "wanting to be a nonhuman animal" is not the only metric by which you should judge your nonhumanity. The reason I pulled it as an example is because it's an easy one to use for comparison, and also I'm entirely aware that a lot of therians would in fact choose to be their theriotype without thinking twice about it.

That's why I say to listen to the clues your body is giving you about your nonhumanity. You have to decide if they are a strong enough indicator that what you're experiencing deviates enough from what your average person experiences to be considered falling under therianthropy. No one's going to throw you out if you don't experience shifts, if you don't want to physically be nonhuman, or don't have a theriotype nailed down. We only really care that you're authentically talking about your experiences (to the best of your ability). In my opinion, the fact you're here tells me that there's something notable about what you're experiencing, and that what you've read about therianthropy so far resonated with you in some fashion. I'd start there and interrogate further.