Endless Thread - Pup Play

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

“Which one of you freaks hijacked the south Boston green space google maps for your furry photo shoot?” Earlier this year, a Redditor was trying to find the person who uploaded pictures of himself posing in a dog mask and rubber suit to this location in Google Maps. But he's no furry. He's a pup. There's a difference, we learned, after speaking to the subject of these photos. Take a walk on the kinky side in this episode that explores the origins of puppy play and how the internet and the pandemic shaped the pup community.

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So that's why I decided to go out and, you know, just be myself. I'm not causing harm to anyone. I'm not causing any, you know, civil disturbances. I'm just a person in a dog mask. Amory, how deep do you go on Google location photos and reviews? Clearly not deep enough, Ben, wherever you're going with this. Well, I love doing this. And I think I realized that a few years ago when I went to Portugal because I was in this

beach town, Lagos, and I went to this amazing beach and I took photos. and for some reason I got prompted to like upload my Google photos of this location to Google Maps. I guess I mean maybe because I'm an Android user. I know you're kind. Yeah, yeah, you're kind. Exactly. Apple would find a way to pretend it was, you know, better than everyone else. Anyway, I uploaded these photos and they end up getting hundreds of thousands of views because this beach is amazing and lots of people go to it, but not as many people take pictures of it.

And Google is telling me, you know, how popular and are amazing I am. Okay, Google. It brings new meaning to that. No, it literally messages me and says, and I'm quoting here, you're popular. Uh-huh. So ever since that trip to Portugal, I pay a little more attention to Google location photos and also the reviews on those photos, Amory, because I just think it's an interesting idea. And I'm not the only one because if,

A few months back on the R-slash-Boston subreddit, there was a post of some Google Photos with a funny title, which I shared with you. Quote, which one of you freaks hijacked the South Boston Greenspace Google Maps for your furry photo shoot? And there's this guy who's wearing what looks like a rubber suit with a mask that makes him look like a dog. And he's got a handkerchief on and a collar, and he's standing in broad daylight on a pier in what's known as the South Boston Green Space,

which is part of the waterfront in South Boston, this area with peers and fancy offices and old warehouses. And there are several photos like this, mask on, mask off, he's grinning, not just at this spot either. Also, there's photos of him, if you look at his profile, in a hotel in Palm Springs. It's variations on a theme. And of course, this post blew up on the subreddit

and people were making all of these jokes and, you know, eventually the magic moment we all hope for as Redditors happens because the person featured in the post shows up in the comments. So we asked him to meet up with us in chat. You can guess where? Palm Springs, baby. We wish. I'm Amory Severson.

I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and you're listening to Endless Threat. We're coming to you from WBUR, the Palm Springs of Boston, if you will. the NPR station. Today's episode, whoop play. How's it going, dude? Good, how are you? Good to see.

You ready to go on a little road trip? Yeah. Right. Were you sitting in this seat last or was Sarah? I don't know. Someone's riding dirty. We're riding dirty to the scene of the photo bomb to talk to the subject of the photo.

All right, so Nat. Nat Worth. Nat worth. Which is his real name. Yeah. Nathaniel? Nathaniel Worth. For Nathan.

Nat Worth, great name. Just graduated from Northeastern, and he is like a Google Photos super user. He's doing this all the time. But a lot of people don't know that this is a thing. Top comment on that Reddit thread? Shuffle Buzz says, on Reddit, says, you can upload any photo to any Google Maps location.

Do what you will with that information. Where is he from? I forget the name. It's one of the states that starts with an eye. Not that many. Illinois, Iowa, Indiana. Idaho. Idaho.

All right, that's one more than I already thought. It's one of us. But we show up to meet Nat at the South Boston Green Space, and we are already learning things. I am from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Natworth from a W, not an I state, has chosen to meet us in what is maybe the loudest damn location in South Boston on this day. Trucks, large vehicles backing up, planes, ships.

And the seagulls. Matt is not alone. He's with a friend who will only identify himself on our show as Sterling. My name is Sterling, and I'm originally from Southern New Hampshire, and I now live in Dorchester, Massachusetts. And sometimes I like acting like a dog and dressing up a neoprene. and just having a good old time. For some reason, Sterling does not want to give a full name

while talking about his kinks on a podcast. Maybe because, unlike Nat, who just graduated, Sterling has a job where his most obvious sign of interest in this particular kink could be a dog tag he likes to wear around his neck. There was actually a woman I work with at work. She noticed I was wearing this one day and she's looking at me.

You know, giving me like a look, and I'm like looking back at her and she's like, why are you wearing that? So what did you say? Did that begin a conversation about this? Okay. It actually started a conversation where she, when she asked me about it, I told her I was a pup and that this was like a quasi-collar for me, which got me into learning that she is actually a trans woman and that she had just transitioned actually and that the reason why she knew is because she has been in this world before as a man. Okay, wait, we should probably back up a minute. Pups, kinks, furries, glossary needed. And we should start by admitting that Amory and I are what this community might call vanilla.

Speak for yourself. I'm a strawberry, baby. Fair enough. And I'm raspberry. But you know what we mean. This world is a little new for us, maybe, at least as far as we'll admit at work in our podcast. Okay, so, Kinkster, for instance, is like a person who is in. to different kinks, says Nat. Coming from a 22-year-old, kink is more of like an activity and fetish is more like an object. Helpful.

How do you differentiate between a puppy and a furry? Sure, yeah. Good question. I don't know. Puppies, puppies generally have either... Puppies can be furries and furs can be puppies to start.

Furries have full body suits. And yes, if you listen to our podcast, you probably use the internet, so you do not need me to explain what a furry is necessarily. But let's just say anthropomorphic animal characters based off of comic books, and sometimes this furry fandom gets a little sassy. Whereas pups, who can also get a little sessy, generally wear a neoprene so-called hood that is effectively a pretty fancy dog mask. My particular hood is black, navy blue, white, and gray.

And, you know, putting it on is pretty simple. It's a fairly stretchy product. So you just kind of pop it on your forehead first and then, you know, pull it down the back of your head. You never pull on the eyes, though. That's where it rips. So there we go. Nice. Pups can be into lots of different things like motocross.

You know, the thing where the dirt bikes go off the jumps and, you know, people wear the gear from the motocross stuff. or like a puppy can be a furry, a puppy can be into latex, a pup can be into leather, or none of those things. Like, it's really up to each individual person what they want to try and how they want to present themselves. There's a puppy that has actually been working very hard to try and explain this in ways. Support Pup Cooper. On Instagram, yeah, give Support Pup Cooper a follow. Support Pup Cooper here. let's go for a walk. Today I'm thinking about vulnerability and how for some of us, our puppy headspace

helps us connect with parts of ourselves. We don't connect with otherwise. This Sterling told us is exactly why he puts on his puppyhood. It's a moment where you can kind of let go and just be free in a way. You're not so constrained by, you know, worrying about what other people are. You're not being people think, not worrying about what you think other people are going to think, which is, you know, we walk around and we always are thinking that. It's actually pretty deep to think about the idea of letting go of a constant need to be thinking about what other people are thinking about you. That's a really, that's a constant thing that is maybe going on in the background, right?

For all of us. When I put the puppet on, I was actually. Recently, I was in a bar and I put it on, I just started dancing. I didn't care what was going on. In case you didn't pick up on this already, pup play is often specifically people dressing up as dogs and acting like dogs, barking, rolling around together, wearing leashes, and maybe some more explicit stuff too, which will let you use your imagination for.

So, how did Sterling and Nat get into this in the first place? I started exploring, like, kink and pup play in 20. right as the pandemic started when I got out of my first romantic relationship. Nat says something about pups just resonated with him. I think I started by looking in the mirror and just like practicing barking, just to like see what it felt like. Maybe I liked it. For Sterling, same kind of deal. For me, it was sometime in 2020.

I have a friend who I talked to in Belgium. And he actually posted a picture on Instagram with his new Puphood. And I don't know why I just found it like the cutest thing ever. And in I think February, 2021, maybe March, I actually did order my first hood. And when I finally actually received it, that was like April 2021. Two years ago today. Funny enough. Okay, let's hear from another pup who also happens to be a pup expert.

A pup spurt? I'm Philip Hammock, professor of psychology and director. of the Sexual and Gender Diversity Laboratory at the University of California, at Santa Cruz, also known as Alpha Pup Turbo, one of two alphas and the founder of a Fog City Pack in San Francisco. Professor Hammock says, yes, the pub scene has been growing over the last few years. One of the things that happened during the pandemic, of course, is that people's social lives, you know,

if they were sort of dablers in social media before the pandemic, they really, a lot of people really, you know, leaned in and that's the only space they had. So I think the COVID era, the lockdown era in particular, provided people with a unique opportunity to go online and really do some exploration, you know, especially if you go to places like Instagram and Twitter. I mean, there's just an explosion of profiles of people affiliated with the Pup subculture. It's a little hard to identify, though, because the growth feels pretty new. But numbers-wise, I mean, I don't think people really started to quantify the community until maybe the last few years. So it's kind of impossible to, I think, document, you know, with hard numbers. But clearly a rise in visibility.

All of that said, Nat backs that rise in visibility up. Well, I was wondering about this, because both of your kind of pup origin stories started to have. happen around the same time. So I was wondering if you feel like this is like a community that's growing or if it's what it is or definitely growing and definitely exploded over the past couple of years. Nat and Sterling say that in the real-life meetups that they show up to, pup play really does skew younger. And they think the growth in puppy play is a sign of the fact that older kink communities that have been around for longer were much harder to find your people for and coalesce around. which meant you had to go to a certain bar or a club or a private event.

In this case, it's splashed all over the internet. And so, you know, you can do one Google search with Pup Hood sometimes, and you can come up with pictures of Nat and myself in public parks. Nat has done this in a bunch of places now, Boston, Palm Springs, and Chicago. He's trying to get the expert photographer badge on Google Maps. It's a hobby, but it's also about normalizing pup play. And here was an interesting discovery. You know what?

Nat and Sterling and others are not the first to photo bomb public locations with pup hoods. They're not even the first to do it and get attention for it in Boston. We'll be back in two wags of a puppy tail. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics. Country music. Hockey.

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Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at wbUR.org slash creative studio. Nat and Sterling. Our two pups at this very loud pier in Boston got briefly and slightly Reddit famous for their Google Maps photos in 2023. But Asela pup legend? He was pup posing in 2017. For the past five years, I've never really let go of my pup side.

It just grew. But he didn't really mean to pup photo bomb. He was just hanging on a public bus, wearing his pup hood. Okay, he was more than hanging. A cella pup legend, an adopted name that is also called a pup sona, is a huge public transit fanatic, hence Acella like the train. So he was pup-pumped to be riding on the new bus line. It was maybe going to take some selfies for his Twitter page.

Also, Puppumped, the general manager of Boston's public transit system at the time, the T, and some members of the press who were interviewing the general manager. And then the next thing I knew was somebody messaging me on Twitter asking, hey, is this you? And I looked at the link that my friend sent me. And I'm like, okay, the MBTA posted something on their Twitter. And, okay, there's the GM. And hey, that is me in the background.

And the next thing I knew, I was looking at the comments and some of the retweets, and it was just blowing up across the puppy community online and the furry community at the same time. A cella pup legend says he had discovered pup play around 2017. When a friend who had a fetish for motorsport gear and motorcycle leathers showed him a puppy hood from a place in San Francisco called Mr. S. Leather. And I made more connections. I travel more to connect with pups across America and even in Europe.

Recently, I just came back from a trip to Berlin where they were having a big leather fetish event there called Easter Berlin. Asela Pupp says the scene in Boston is big and inclusive. He says there's a big group chat on the messaging app Telegram, where pups have been connecting since 2013, but also that the kink has evolved a lot over the years. Originally, puppy play, it was more of a dominant and submissive type of role play where one would take on as like the submissive person in the. scene in the play session and then one would be like the Dom or the dog handler. And then recently,

it's kind of slowly evolved from kind of a humiliation fetish to now more of like a self-identity, a way to, you know, escape from the usual routine world of, you know, working and sleeping and eating to, you know, just being a carefree dog, living in the moment. Asela pup, Sterling, and Nat say that while local promoters in Boston's vibrant scene are definitely creating spaces where pups can and sometimes do do more than roll around, there's also just a lot of social hanging out. It's a great place to meet people. Just say hi.

It might be intimidating at first to say hi to someone that you might be interested in, or you can just be like, hey, I like your catsuit. Or is that rubber or I like your pupa? If you're hearing this and saying, I would never, or what's the big deal? Sure. But the pup play kingsters we're hearing from don't take these gatherings and these spaces for granted. For Nat, Boston's scene was a respite after high school in Wisconsin. Yeah, when I was graduating high school, I was valedictorian at my class.

It's traditional for, like, the valedictorian to give a speech a graduation at my religious high school. And in the draft for my speech that I submitted to the administration, I talked about being gay, and they did not like that. They're like, you can't give a speech. I was like, but I would love to, like, I'll still edit the speech out to your standards. They're like, no, we can't trust you to give a speech at graduation, so I didn't. Like, I was lucky, in a sense, to have been, well, one to, like, have made it out and with minimal emotional damage. but there are like trans kids who are being expelled from their schools just because they aren't being allowed to use their bathroom,

the correct bathroom. And schools are even riding into their policies that trans kids can't use their preferred pronouns. I don't know. It's just like really disgusting what happens. Nat is from an evangelical Christian family, and while he's radically open with his parents, they're not always speaking plainly with each other about why, for instance, he's in Chicago

on a given weekend at the Mr. International Rubber Kink event. Sterling is not as far out about his Pupsona. So I can say that I have not told any of my family, except for one of my cousins, who is also gay, so a little safer with her. Pups have had some spotty moments in Boston. Nat says he was spat on by a person riding the bus in the south. end. Sterling talks about the challenges of organizing events at bars, where people have complained even when pups are just simply hanging out socially, buying drinks and food. Nat says when the Reddit

thread about his photos on Google Maps blew up, people reported his Google Maps account, which is like a whole extra set of steps from just seeing his stuff on Reddit. So my photos got taken down for a while. I think it was like a month. And then I emailed Google, and they're all back now so you can Google dry. Even though it's incredibly freeing for these pups to fully take on this identity, it does feel scary at times. I mean, we're already under scrutiny,

you know, and the fact that people tend to find anything we do offensive, but the pup community in particular, I mean, we're once, one step removed from drag queens right now. For now, Kingston pups like Acella, Nat, and Sterling seem to still feel safe to be themselves in public, posing in their hoods and their rubber suits and their dog collars, talking to podcasters in the middle of the day. On a pier in Boston, while vanilla people ride by on bikes or take their dogs on a walk.

The more free you are to express who you are, the more you're, the more, I don't know, what is it? The more yourself you are. Oh, hello, dog. We have a real dog. Oh, whoop. Don't worry about it. Aw. Hi.

He actually looks like that. This could not have been a better end to this conversation. We have a real dog ending up. Well, Nat and Sterling, thank you so much. Thank you for having us. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was written by Ben Brock Johnson, co-hosted by Ben and myself. Amory Siebertson, and produced by Quincy Walters.

Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus. The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, Matt Reed, Emily Jankowski, and Summata Joshi. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between humans with pups and actual canines. If you have an untold history or, say, I don't know, an unsolved mystery or another wild story from the internet, kinky or otherwise, hit us up. Email endless thread at WBUR.org. See you next week.