| e621 | |
| Type: | Furry fandom-themed imageboard art website |
| Area Served: | Worldwide |
| Key People: | Jan "Varka" Mulders |
| Commercial: | No |
| Registration: | Optional |
| Current Status: | Active |
e621 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 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]
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 ; 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]
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]
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]