I can see it being something like people meeting up and hanging out with people who accept them for their quirks after basically having to hide something for their whole life or be ridiculed. Folks who like sharing cute art that is furry in nature generally get immediately yelled at/made fun of/banned/blocked/etc. in a lot of public spaces and sites, so it's natural that a community would form so people can openly talk about that kind of thing. It's similar to Anime fandom who are treated similarly, or people who enjoyed tabletop RPGs in the 80's (mainly dnd) and were widely viewed as satanists and a menace (at least here in bible belt, USA). Fans of a particular thing that is made fun of by the public get together, enjoy the thing, more people find them and the community grows. Then some people take it too far, the news get involved on something out of context or weird, and that name is tainted forever to the general public.
Disclaimer, I haven't personally experienced any of this (besides a bit of the DnD thing from very religious family members), so I can't claim absolute truth, but it's what I've observed people doing and thought I could throw in my two cents.
Well as I said before, individuals make of it what they make of it. I've been made fun of for my interest in animals (which consisted of drawing them and reading books like Guardians of Ga'Hoole and Redwall), but this was in middle school,
well before I even knew the fandom was a "thing" that existed, so I didn't have that to escape to. I just dealt with the shit until I got to college and could grow and be with people who shared my greater interest in animation altogether. I developed my social skills and confidence through there; furry is thus more easily relegated to a hobby for me.
I do suit as well, but that's because I simply find them fun to both make and wear. To me, it's the other side of the coin to the art of character animation; giving something that is obviously fake the illusion of life for the sake of a performance, a little bit of "magic" if you will. People will say "Well, you do things that you normally wouldn't do out of suit, so it must be an emotional crutch." And I mean, it's a mascot costume. The context of social engagement changes when you are, effectively, a big-ass animal, similar to how I talk to my friends differently than I do my bosses.
No shit I'm not going to steal strangers' hats or do a silly dance in public without a costume on. Most people don't, unless they're whitebread social experiment assholes on YouTube. Funnily enough though, every single non-furry person who has been able to wear my heads immediately-
without fail- start doing exaggerated, stupid shit for the time they have it on. It's just the inherent nature of dress-up.
At most, I can say that what the fandom
has given me is the ability to find creative avenues that I wouldn't have otherwise considered or even thought about without that exposure, and that's because the fandom has no boundaries on what is acceptable art since the connecting thread of "animal" is extremely broad. Making suits is one pursuit, dancing is mildly another. The little bit I know how to do was fueled in part by the popularity of dance competitions at conventions, a mild thought that "Oh hey, that looks cool. I wanna learn some of that stuff too." Did it
have to be furry for me to consider the interest in learning how to do a moonwalk or an arm tut combo? No. But it is what it is.
And I don't like to think that I'm the only person of my kind out there, that I'm the only one who fell into this simply because it is, on the surface, adorable-ass shit and a fandom that truly champions free expression through the arts. If so, in that way, I do find furrydom pretty damn banal in the grand scheme of things. It's just another interest in a laundry list of interests that I have, a part of the sum versus the sum itself. And it would be much nicer if people could understand that versus trying to pick and nag at me looking for shit that isn't there in order to justify their preconceived notion that every single one of us has a kink.
