My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

[Giest118]

I don't see how my post was any more dumb than every single thing that comes out of an anti-brony's mouth.

I mean really. They want to claim that bronies are emotionally stunted pedophile faggots, but when I call them equivocal to Hitler, that's suddenly a horrible crime.

...

Oh wait, you have a problem with the part where I told them to kill themselves. That's probably more reasonable.

'Twas a satire of their claims to superior manliness. Chill.

[Skykid]

I don't see how my post was any more dumb than every single thing that comes out of an anti-brony's mouth.

Because this post is a serious attempt to examine the fad from a psychological perspective:

I don't see Bronyism as a mental health issue, just a state of mind. It's the same as goths who cut their arms and actively wallow in sorrow and pain: the connection to a community through music is more important than the music itself. The trend is itself is a form of acceptance: the material is completely irrelevant. Any youtube brony meet video is consistent in the absolute with the exaggerated caricature present in the above animation. Like the weeaboo, life and behaviour is fashioned around the collective community and the liberating freedom - or shielding - it presents from persecution. I refuse to accept that MLP - the material, the show - is the root cause for the fandom. I've watched it and examined it and it's a show for little girls: nothing highbrow. It's just manipulated by defenders into something of higher quality because it's a bubble for their insecurities they don't want people to burst.

And your post recommends people stab themselves in the neck.

I'll leave you to figure it out.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

omg ban plz

For serious.

^

nothing of value would be lost

[Giest118]

Edited my previous post for a bit of clarification just before you posted that.

If you thought I was totally serious in the first place, you're just very silly.

Further, I wasn't talking to Skykid in particular, but rather anti-bronies in general, very few of whom can articulate anything like a reasonable argument.

[Paradigm]

Further, I wasn't talking to Skykid in particular

See, it's funny because your arguments are so dumb that they're not even worth commenting on. But hey, if you want to dispel the Pony fandom, I have a protest idea you can go through with that will not only prove your manliness, but will also get bronies to seriously reconsider their position.

Ten days is pretty poor, maybe shoot for two weeks next time.

[Randorama]

This shit again?

[Giest118]

Ten days is pretty poor, maybe shoot for two weeks next time.

If I was talking to Skykid, I would have quoted him. Like this. Like you just quoted me. Also, if I was talking to Skykid, I would have pointed out that his position is predicated on the notion that if two people like different things, then one of them, and ONLY one of them, has deeply rooted psychological issues. Since I did none of those things, I was talking to far dumber individuals.

See how that works? But if you want to take some kind of hallucinogenic drug that makes it so that I was talking to Skykid, feel free to do so. If I say I was talking to anti-bronies in general, then that's who I was talking to. Stop using your hallucinations as a substitute for real arguments.

But you know what? Fine. If you're all so sensitive that you can't take a retarded joke post, I will edit it.

[Skykid]

Also, if I was talking to Skykid, I would have pointed out that his position is predicated on the notion that if two people like different things, then one of them, and ONLY one of them, has deeply rooted psychological issues.

I really did my best to dispel that. I don't think to be a Brony you have to have deeply rooted psychological issues, per se, but I would expect that such folk would find themselves ill at ease with social "norms" and prefer the pursuit of more niche opportunities for acceptance, where people are likeminded and they won't feel as though they're being judged for their individualism. I think the adoption of MLP is just selfish opportunism to be honest.

You can apply the exact same thing to weeabooism. Those people know all the lines from all the episodes of all the anime, but they don't really care about the anime as much as they do being able to flock around in groups dressed like idiots and shouting 'Baka'; dancing in public formations to rubbish Japanese pop music and vying for attention by trying to raise their voices in some kind of unspoken competition.

The liberating freedom of being accepted by a likeminded community for one or two convention days in the year, despite being perceived by the greater pubic as abnormal, are much more important than what that one guy said in episode 293 of Naruto.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

im probably going to buy Trixie

[Giest118]

I really did my best to dispel that. I don't think to be a Brony you have to have deeply rooted psychological issues, per se, but I would expect that such folk would find themselves ill at ease with social "norms" and prefer the pursuit of more niche opportunities for acceptance, where people are likeminded and they won't feel as though they're being judged for their individualism. I think the adoption of MLP is just selfish opportunism to be honest.

You can apply the exact same thing to weeabooism. Those people know all the lines from all the episodes of all the anime, but they don't really care about the anime as much as they do being able to flock around in groups dressed like idiots and shouting 'Baka'; dancing in public formations to rubbish Japanese pop music and vying for attention by trying to raise their voices in some kind of unspoken competition.

The liberating freedom of being accepted by a likeminded community for one or two convention days in the year, despite being perceived by the greater pubic as abnormal, are much more important than what that one guy said in episode 293 of Naruto.

This is by far the most intelligent view I've yet found, as far as "figuring out why Bronies are Bronies" goes. You should realize that it's not really universally true though. For example, I watch MLP because I like it, and I don't go to any cons, nor do I even use it as a tool with which to bond with others in any capacity. I just think the show is fun. I do very few "brony-like" things. What I've done aside from watch the show is make a silly shmup based on ponies, which I did as a kneejerk reaction to playing MLP vs StarCraft 2, which was so godawfully bad that even I could make something way better with a grand total of about three weeks of work.

Part of why I find anti-bronies so impossible to take seriously is that they try really hard to "make sense" of it, as though it's possible to apply universal rules to people's preferences in the random shit they do with their free time.

Of course, the rest of why I can't take anti-bronies seriously is that many of them (not you, it seems) seriously think it's a reasonable argument to say "I found this pony porn, therefore all bronies fap to ponies!" As though merely being in the same group as a brony means you have every property that every brony has. That's what prompted my joke comparison to Hitler earlier.

[Skykid]

I really did my best to dispel that. I don't think to be a Brony you have to have deeply rooted psychological issues, per se, but I would expect that such folk would find themselves ill at ease with social "norms" and prefer the pursuit of more niche opportunities for acceptance, where people are likeminded and they won't feel as though they're being judged for their individualism. I think the adoption of MLP is just selfish opportunism to be honest.

You can apply the exact same thing to weeabooism. Those people know all the lines from all the episodes of all the anime, but they don't really care about the anime as much as they do being able to flock around in groups dressed like idiots and shouting 'Baka'; dancing in public formations to rubbish Japanese pop music and vying for attention by trying to raise their voices in some kind of unspoken competition.

The liberating freedom of being accepted by a likeminded community for one or two convention days in the year, despite being perceived by the greater pubic as abnormal, are much more important than what that one guy said in episode 293 of Naruto.

This is by far the most intelligent view I've yet found, as far as "figuring out why Bronies are Bronies" goes.

It's the same view I've been expressing for the last several pages of this thread. But if you can understand the theory then:

Part of why I find anti-bronies so impossible to take seriously is that they try really hard to "make sense" of it, as though it's possible to apply universal rules to people's preferences in the random shit they do with their free time.

Why can't it be made sense of? Universal rules on preferences don't exist: they're myriad - but when you're looking at something extreme, as in the case of a show made for little girls finding a large adult audience, then you most certainly can make an interpretation or assessment of those adopters and how being attached to the show reflects on them as an individual.

I take on the view that someone likes the show just because it's fun or funny at arms length. I've seen the show and it's ok. It's well written and characterised and animated if you're a little girl. Beyond that I can't see any genuine adult appeal. It doesn't have the humor of a bona fide sitcom nor the entertainment value of a plot heavy anime. I've watched bronies giving lectures as to the underlying, esoteric qualities of the show and seen nothing but an embarrassed looking introvert spend twenty-five minutes tripping over his tongue and failing to make any genuinely valid points.

It comes of as a well laboured excuse, nothing more. I'd much prefer it if he just stood up and said "I struggle in normal social circles, but Bronyism is liberating because I can find a place of acceptance within a similarly socially adjunct community where I feel I can be myself without fear of judgement."

That would be the truth.

[Blackbird]

I think the "social norms"/individualism argument has some weight, but it doesn't really cover everyone. Frankly, I just think MLP is plain better than anything else you could decide to watch. The storytelling is refreshing. When was the last time you watched something on television that wasn't crass, obsessed with wealth or sex, glorifying violence, or filled with pretentious reality tv melodrama? The naivete of MLP is precisely it's appeal. They can actually tell a pure adventure story, replete with an interesting and fantastic setting, and write a straight ending that doesn't try to troll the audience in a cheap play for ratings.

I like seeing dragons and phoenixes and wizards. There is a sense of adventure because I don't know how all of these creatures will act in a world dominated by ponies. Will they be they same? Are minotaurs somehow different in this world? It's fun to see the world setting developed. In ancient times, pony culture was warlike and territorial, much like the Greeks, which I found hilarious juxtaposed with the peaceful present society and completely unaggressive characters. I don't know if knights exist in the setting, but the possibility that they do, and the sense of adventure that comes from not knowing everything about the setting, makes it exciting.

Are there even any other shows in the fantasy genre on the TV now? I'll add that the show is -actually funny-. It's clearly not as witty as the likes of Futurama, but it's quite a bit better than the other shlock that passes as humor these days. There was even a villain song recently that could have been clipped directly from an old-school Disney movie.

MLP isn't the most amazing thing I've ever seen, but it's enjoyable and almost everything else is terrible, so it doesn't have to be amazing to win.

If we're talking just animated cartoon shows in the US, then MLP is hands down the best one, easily. Sure, you could bring in anime, but anime hasn't exactly been amazingly interesting lately either; they're in quite the rut of bland moe fanservice shows.

[Paradigm]

Where's Elixir's old sig when you need it...

[Giest118]

I take on the view that someone likes the show just because it's fun or funny at arms length. I've seen the show and it's ok. It's well written and characterised and animated if you're a little girl. Beyond that I can't see any genuine adult appeal. It doesn't have the humor of a bona fide sitcom nor the entertainment value of a plot heavy anime.

Summary: You don't like it that much.

Your conclusion based on that:

I'd much prefer it if he just stood up and said "I struggle in normal social circles, but Bronyism is liberating because I can find a place of acceptance within a similarly socially adjunct community where I feel I can be myself without fear of judgement."

That would be the truth.

So your argument is literally:
"I don't like the show that much. Therefore, people who do only do so because it lets them have friends."

Now, this looks like it's missing about ten logical steps, so I'm actually going to read your posts from the last few pages to see if that will help me to fill in the blanks.

*goes and does that*

Aha, okay. Your argument is actually more like:
"People who are misfits watch My Little Pony because it allows them to find friends. Since I don't personally like it, that means that when they offer an explanation as to why they like it other than simply wanting friends, they are lying."

... Hm, wait. That doesn't actually sound that much better, since it's still predicated on the notion that two people simply liking different things can't possibly happen, ever.

But you know what? I'll concede; maybe for a lot of people, they do really do it for the social aspect of it. What I take issue with is that you seem to believe that that AND actually liking the show are mutually exclusive actions. A person could easily have both properties. Further, I've already established that I only have the property of liking the show; I do not use it as a social tool. The reason that making sense of the pony fandom is silly is that every single blanket rule you can come up with is, provably, not universally true.

But at least you do it with more class than a lot of people. :V

[BryanM]

If we're talking just animated cartoon shows in the US, then MLP is hands down the best one, easily.

Incorrect. Get on the pony mister.

[Randorama]

Beyond that I can't see any genuine adult appeal.

Nostalgia. There are studies showing that strongly suggest that adults to buy old, reashed products for inflated prices. The ability to "experience again the past" by buying a new version of an old product appears to be a powerful consumeristic pool.

EDIT: there is a second factor which is called "acquired nostalgia". Some consumers are probably willing to spend money and celebrate times past even if they were not even born, when the original show was aired.

This is a known behavioral pattern, but the underlying principles are still poorly understood, in the psychological literature. It is not exactly clear which reasons bring people to acquire a nostalgic feeling for periods of history that may have not even experienced indirectly.

Say, a friend who adores and misses the Rolling Stones and the stoned '60s even if this friend is 20, and his parents liked Perry Como.

[Cuilan]

[trap15]

You sick, sick person.

[drunkninja24]

^^What in da fuck? I mean, I kinda get it, but jesus, that's just horrifying.

[Blackbird]

Damn, I think that's pretty darn close to the weirdest fanart I've ever seen. I mean, wow, I don't even know what to say about that.

[Skykid]

"People who are misfits watch My Little Pony because it allows them to find friends. Since I don't personally like it, that means that when they offer an explanation as to why they like it other than simply wanting friends, they are lying."

I really think that's a grossly unfair and under explored assessment of the reasons I put forward for the existence of a fad like Bronyism, although I think you have some of the gist at least. In defence of your argument, go onto youtube and find me an example of a brony meet where the attendees aren't pure embodiments of the social outcast.

The reason that making sense of the pony fandom is silly is that every single blanket rule you can come up with is, provably, not universally true.

But at least you do it with more class than a lot of people. :V

I agree on both counts.

Beyond that I can't see any genuine adult appeal.

Nostalgia. There are studies showing that strongly suggest that adults to buy old, reashed products for inflated prices. The ability to "experience again the past" by buying a new version of an old product appears to be a powerful consumeristic pool.

That's something nobody on this forum can deny. I have affection for all sorts of cartoons, and of course videogames, from my childhood. But I don't actually see MLP bronyism being a result of nostalgia unless all the middle-aged men who watch it used to watch MLP as a kid: a veritable impossibility since it was so abhorrent there was a risk of blindess if you happened to catch it while channel surfing.
MLP in its current form is most certainly its own beast.

[Giest118]

"People who are misfits watch My Little Pony because it allows them to find friends. Since I don't personally like it, that means that when they offer an explanation as to why they like it other than simply wanting friends, they are lying."

I really think that's a grossly unfair and under explored assessment of the reasons I put forward for the existence of a fad like Bronyism, although I think you have some of the gist at least. In defence of your argument, go onto youtube and find me an example of a brony meet where the attendees aren't pure embodiments of the social outcast.

The reason that making sense of the pony fandom is silly is that every single blanket rule you can come up with is, provably, not universally true.

But at least you do it with more class than a lot of people. :V

I agree on both counts.

It seems like we're mostly on similar pages now, but I think I've been miscommunicating what my biggest problem is with your argument, for which I apologize.

So, let's assume that 100% of bronies are social misfits. You seem level-headed enough to know that's not quite the case, but for the sake of argument, let's assume it. What I'm not understanding is, why does that mean they don't really like the show?

The only evidence you've put forward for this is that YOU don't like the show. Don't get me wrong, not liking the show is perfectly fine. I just don't see how that's evidence that OTHER people don't like it.

Or maybe that's not what you're saying at all and I've been misinterpreting the shit out of everything, but it does sound like a significant component of your argument is: "They don't actually like the show all that much; they watch it so they'll have a way to connect with other people who also watch it." Maybe this is the case for a lot of bronies; I'm not a mind-reader, so I don't know. Neither do you, so making factual claims about what other people's opinions are leaves me a bit confused.

So I guess my bitching comes down to this: Why are you telling other people what they like/don't like?

[Randorama]

That's something nobody on this forum can deny.

Just to be pedantic, "denying" this would be hard, since the ones who suggest that nostalgia has a consumeristic pull, make this claim based on surveys and other similar data.

I have affection for all sorts of cartoons, and of course videogames, from my childhood.
But I don't actually see MLP bronyism being a result of nostalgia unless all the middle-aged men who watch it used to watch MLP as a kid.

We have no real hard data on this. This means: nobody still has studied the sales figures and made a survey interviewing people who watch this stuff, and buy the new ponies.

And, from a pure annedoctical point of view, I only know women my age who take their children as an excuse to watch and buy again the ponies. On men, we'd need to ask them directly. I guess not, but I say why below:

a veritable impossibility since it was so abhorrent there was a risk of blindess if you happened to catch it while channel surfing.

I am pretty sure that the original ponies had almost no males fans in the day. A paper I read made a survey of what "opposite" gender cartoons people watched, taking a US sample in Boston (or somewhere in NE USA). A general trend was that the least genre-specific cartoons had kid fans from both sexes (one was Jem, go figure), but for the ponies I recall, if memory serves, a 90%+ of girls.

I didn't get blind, the few times I was FORCED to see it, but I was almost lost on why I was supposed to like it. That's because, I believe, the show was designed to only appeal to girls. On the new one, I don't know.

MLP in its current form is most certainly its own beast.

Yes and no. The type of headless chook fandom of bronies can be found across several groups of fans.
To cut a long story short, the world is full of misfits who need to pose as fans of something, right?

I think that we had Trekkers before bronies, and by experience those were really some scary monsters, Major Tom told me.

[Blackbird]

Again with this insinuation that bronies are basically poseurs who only masquerade at liking the show to have an excuse at being social.

Why so condescending? Plenty of people hate watching sports or going to parties, but do it anyway so they can be social. How many people do you know that wear faux-athletic brands of clothing to have the veneer of being interested in sports, when they are not athletic at all? It's a facade. What is more asinine to me than being in a clique of "misfits" is forcing yourself to be involved with something you have no enthusiasm for just so you can fit into a "mainstream" clique. I see the poseurs as being less mature than the misfits, because they are dishonest about themselves. Being overly concerned about what clique you are in is very high school anyway.

I think a lot of bronies are genuinely enthused. There are numerous fan projects that simply could not be completed without genuine appreciation for the show. There have been numerous brony-driven charities just in the last few months. That is not the sort of thing a social misfit, who wants to escape society and live in self-indulgence, would do. You cannot organize such projects without involving yourself.

Regarding nostalgia - There are several significant nods towards Looney Tunes, Disney, Animaniacs, Warner Bros., and other classic cartoons in MLP. There's definitely merit in saying that nostalgia for these animations contributes to the show's appeal.

[Skykid]

To cut a long story short, the world is full of misfits who need to pose as fans of something, right?

Either that or the franchise in question meets reasonable success with an appropriate demographic or disappears without a trace.

So, let's assume that 100% of bronies are social misfits. You seem level-headed enough to know that's not quite the case, but for the sake of argument, let's assume it. What I'm not understanding is, why does that mean they don't really like the show?

No, and by this I can see that I haven't been clear enough and sort of expected people to read into my lines of thinking without enough info, so I apologise. To get a little deeper into it: I don't think Bronies don't really like the show. On the contrary, they love it: but I'm theorising about the underlying reason for the appreciation.

I'd wager it's not the comedy, characters and intelligently crafted dialogue (not my words, but whatever); but it's the sense of belonging that is the true driving aspect of their affection: even if they are not fully conscious of it.

In this respect yes, we're talking about hardcore bronies, yes we're talking about adult males who buy the toys and brush the hair, no we're not talking about people who have observed it and accepted only that there is a base level of enjoyability to be had if they're so inclined to spend their time watching the show.

To clarify: my belief is that bronies deem the quality of the show to be vastly superior to how good it is in actuality because they have a sub-conscious connection to the community that make up the surrounding fad; a community which is, in a roundabout way, supportive of their particular lifestyle and social behaviours.

MLP is like comfort food for compulsive eaters: it's not particularly healthy, but it makes them feel good.

[Giest118]

I'd wager it's not the comedy, characters and intelligently crafted dialogue (not my words, but whatever); but it's the sense of belonging that is the true driving aspect of their affection: even if they are not fully conscious of it.

Aha, okay. I understand your position a lot better now.

Which means I don't really have anything else to say, other than... good discussion. It's nice to see that SOME non-bronies can talk about this stuff without going into a feral rage. Unfortunately, a good chunk of what I see from the "other side" is random thoughtless bullshit, the likes of which I responded to with my initial shitpost. Sorry if that offended, by the way; I just hear crap way too often and assumed this thread was just more of that without really fully reading past the first two pages.

[Randorama]

A community which is, in a roundabout way, supportive of their particular lifestyle and social behaviours.

That's roughly a definition of "fandom" one could find in sociology books, and that applies to Ponies, Trekkers, Vaderians,...,etc. Desmond Morris wrote several works on this topic (The naked monkey, or something like that).

Or: Bronies authors and Hasbro sell people a way to belong to something greater than them, not just ponies. The innate, unconscious desire to be part of a group is fed, as Freud would have it. You opened a thread about this, no?

Doesn't soccer work like this, too?

[Blackbird]

Well, sure, a good community makes anything more enjoyable than when you enjoy it alone. This is why we have shmups farm: because it's fun to share strategies, scores, and discuss the merits of different games, rather than appreciate them in a vacuum. Shmups as a hobby becomes more enjoyable because there is a community attached to it.

Half Life has had a very lasting popularity, in some part due to how exploitable it was by users. A community built up around Gmod and just making the characters do silly things.

You can say the same thing of gaming as a whole; there is a sense of camaraderie between fellow gamers. This sense of unity makes gaming as a hobby more enjoyable. People like socializing, and this is as good a talking point as any.

We're kinda getting into chicken and egg territory here, though. Was MLP exciting, and therefore it gathered a community that made the show even more appealing, or did the show become good because it developed a community?

I would argue again that having people involved in a weird community is still preferable to having socially withdrawn introverts that don't interact at all (and interact badly when they do).

[Skykid]

Or: Bronies authors and Hasbro sell people a way to belong to something greater than them, not just ponies. The innate, unconscious desire to be part of a group is fed, as Freud would have it. You opened a thread about this, no?

Yes, and Edward Bernays appropriation of Freuds theories into commercial ventures. I have to say though, if the creators of MLP formulated and implemented an innate, unconscious lifestyle appeal to a large demographic of twenty-something men with intent, it's the most staggeringly well concealed example of the process I've ever witnessed.

Which means I don't really have anything else to say, other than... good discussion. It's nice to see that SOME non-bronies can talk about this stuff without going into a feral rage.

That's cool man. I actually really enjoy in-depth discussion, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't an asshole once in a while too. I have to have some fun with it y'know, they're ponies ffs.

[Randorama]

Yes, and Edward Bernays appropriation of Freuds theories into commercial ventures. I have to say though, if the creators of MLP formulated and implemented an innate, unconscious lifestyle appeal to a large demographic of twenty-something men with intent, it's the most staggeringly well concealed example of the process I've ever witnessed.

I know people who do this for a living, and have a Ph.D. in Psychology. Roughly, they help designers, marketing advisors, etc., within companies on how to create products that cater the typical unconscious desires of certain demographics.

You may become scared to know more about this.