E621 (website)

e621^[b] is a furry-themed booru-style digital art website known for hosting primarily pornographic furry content—called "yiff" in the furry fandom. Hosting almost 4 million images as of January 2024, the website is owned by Jan "Varka" Mulders, who is also the CEO of sex toy manufacturer Bad Dragon. e621 has a safe for work (SFW) mirror site called e926, although it runs on the same servers and thus maintains the same adults-only restriction e621 has. e621 is among the most-visited furry websites, alongside the art community FurAffinity.

e621

Type of site	Furry fandom-themed imageboard art website
Founded	February 10, 2007; 17 years ago (2007-02-10)
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Jan "Varka" Mulders (owner)
Commercial	No
Registration	Optional[a]
Current status	Active

Name

E621 is the E number for monosodium glutamate, a flavor enhancer. Dictionary.com proposes that the website was named after this as a reference to its content being "tasty"; the online dictionary website also notes that e621's safe for work mirror website, e926, is the E number for the bleaching agent chlorine dioxide, which they state is perhaps a "reference to figurative eye bleach".^[1]

Overview

e621 is a furry-themed booru-style imageboard: a gallery in which images, almost exclusively digital art, are categorized with tags. While e621 allows for both safe for work and not safe for work content, furry pornography—known as "yiff"—is the website's largest collection; it is also for what e621 is best known.^[2][3][4] In this way, users can utilise the tagging function to search for artwork containing particular fetishes or kinks.^[5] e621 also hosts other forms of artwork, such as kemonomimi, Pokémon, and ponies from the animated children's TV series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (the erotic art of which is known as "clop").^[6][7][8]

On March 5, 2020, e621 released its source code under the terms of the 2-clause BSD license. The site is a heavily-modified fork of the Danbooru anime-focused imageboard, and uses the Ruby on Rails framework.

As of January 2024, e621 had almost 4 million images.^[2] The website is owned by Jan "Varka" Mulders, who is also the CEO of sex toy manufacturer Bad Dragon.^[9] The website also contains a discussion forum and a wiki for its tags, as well as a safe for work (SFW) mirror site called e926.^[1]

Website blocks

On January 1, 2024, e621 blocked access to itself within the U.S. state of North Carolina following the passing of the Pornography Age Verification Enforcement (PAVE) Act, which requires pornographic websites to verify a user's age.^[10]

Popularity

e621 is among the most-visited furry websites, alongside FurAffinity.^[2][11] A 2017 survey of attendees at Anthrocon—an annual furry convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—conducted by the International Anthropomorphic Research Project found that e621 was the 8th most-visited "furry-themed" website listed by participants.^[12]

See also

• Internet pornography

Notes

1. Required to upload content, view blacklisted content, edit the wiki and content tags, and post comments, "blips", and forum posts.
2. The most common pronunciations of the site's name are "ee-six-two-one" and "ee-six-twenty-one" (likewise, "ee-nine-two-six" and "ee-nine-twenty-six" for e926), though according to one of the site's administrators, "The proper way is ee-six-two-one. Sounding out each letter and number."^{[primary 1]} Collectively, both sites may also be referred to simply as eSix or e6.

References

1. "e621". Dictionary.com. n.d. Retrieved August 20, 2024.
2. Valens, Ana (January 2, 2024). "Thanks, GOP: North Carolina Furries Can No Longer Use the Internet's Most Popular Furry Site". The Mary Sue. Retrieved August 20, 2024.
3. Arčon, Artur Quaglio (2020). "Olhar exploratório sobre a subcultura furry no Brasil" [Exploratory look at the furry subculture in Brazil]. Revista Iniciacom (Brazilian Journal of Scientific Initiation in Communication) (in Portuguese). 9 (1). Brazilian Society for Interdisciplinary Communication Studies: 1. Retrieved August 24, 2024.
4. Dickson, EJ (April 22, 2022). "'When Do I Get to See Mr. Wolf's Cock?': Why Some Furries Are Losing It For 'The Bad Guys'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved August 20, 2024.
5. Adams, Camielle; Plante, Courtney N.; Gerbasi, Kathleen C.; Roberts, Sharon E.; Reysen, Stephen, eds. (2023). Furscience: A Decade of Psychological Research on the Furry Fandom. International Anthropomorphic Research Project. pp. 276, 483. ISBN 978-0-9976288-3-8.
6. Greenhill, Richard (December 19, 2018). "Pokémon porn exists if you gotta smash 'em all". Vice. Archived from the original on May 4, 2023. Retrieved August 20, 2024.
7. Boyle, Jen; Kao, Wan-Chuan (2017). The Retro-Futurism of Cuteness. Punctum Books. p. 90. ISBN 978-1-947447-28-8.
8. Mullis, Justin P. (2015). Playing Ponies: A Critical Evaluation of Religious Elements and Gender Politics at Work in "Brony" Fandom (PDF) (Master's thesis). University of North Carolina. pp. 94–95. Retrieved August 24, 2024.
9. Valens, Ana; Feay, Aithne (November 27, 2019). "Bad Dragon's kingdom of fantasy sex toys is caged by 'queer' capitalism". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on April 19, 2020. Retrieved August 20, 2024.
10. Valens, Ana (January 3, 2024). "A Statewide NSFW Ban? Inside North Carolina's PAVE Act". The Mary Sue. Retrieved August 20, 2024.
11. "e621.net". SimilarWeb. Retrieved August 20, 2024.
12. "Anthrocon 2017 Summary". Furscience. International Anthropomorphic Research Project. n.d. Retrieved August 24, 2024.

Primary sources

1. "e621 pronunciation". e926. Retrieved November 8, 2024.

External links

• e926, the safe for work (SFW) mirror site
• E621 entry at Know Your Meme
• e621 on WikiFur