Let them mock. You have a substantial majority. Getting annoyed by it is pointless.

Well he certainly doesn't think so.

And why do you care what this person thinks?

I have been listening to this all morning. Oh The Music Man homages, how I adore thee!

I don't read fanfic too often (more out of time constraints than anything), but on a whim, I read White Box. Highly recommended, but be warned: it's a well-written kick in the crotch. Just...damn.

Half the problem other people have with this fandom is that bronies feel the need to constantly and loudly justify watching the show.

You really don't.

I don't feel the need to justify it.

To be honest, I do not think that this argument would work with me. There are plenty of popular shows I do not like, why should My Little Pony be any different?

Personally, I'd just go with "Eh, it's a good show. If you don't want to give it a try, cool, but I like it".

But really, I have not seen "bronies" being "mocked and despised". I've read jokes, obviously, but that's harmless and frankly to be expected — it's about the same things people say about trekkies, or Esperanto enthusiasts, or, really, any fandom whatsoever. And I heard about nastiness on 4chan and the like, but from what I heard that site is nasty about everything, in a gross and mostly stupid way — not my kind of thing anyway, so no skin off my nose.

edited 23rd Feb '12 11:16:34 AM by Carciofus

Couldn't have said it better meself.

I will admit, though, that I keep my appreciation of My Little Pony on the cyberspace. None of my Real Life friends know that I enjoy the show, nor that I know of it — I'm not ashamed of being a, erm, "brony", it's just that the subject never came up.

Although... tomorrow I will give a short talk, and I am feeling tempted to somehow work a "20% cooler" quote in it — I mean, last time three different talkers somehow put xkcd*

Which I frankly think is a very poor webcomic, usually — it has a few good strips, but most of the times it is nowhere as funny or clever as it pretends to be.

in their talk, so it's not like me being into a cartoon would be all that surprising...

edited 23rd Feb '12 2:17:37 PM by Carciofus

I usually tend to ignore the haters, with a facepalm usually being the biggest reaction to some particulary dumb haters. But there have been times where the asshole haters were people I use to like watching online, some of which I even looked up to. When stuff like that happens, then the haters are kinda hard to ignore.

But that's just my look on things.

Could you give me an example of such "hating"?

edited 23rd Feb '12 12:16:24 PM by Carciofus

I think everyone in my office knows that I'm a brony, or at the very least, that I like ponies, since my desktop image is Pinkie Pie riding Night Mare Moon. There's a pegasister who works on the other side of the office from me, but we haven't had the chance to talk. Soon...

Otherwise, I try to keep it out of my everyday life. I think my room mate's slowly starting to come around. They don't think I'm gay anymore. It's a start.

Eh, there's been too many to name, most of them I actully forgot what their names were. Although there was Alvin Earthworm, the guy who made Super Mario Bros Z. He didn't like mlp fim, and I'm usually cool with people not likeing it as long as their respectful and at least gave the show a try, but he went and said that his show was way better then it, and he repeatly bashed bronies throughout his rant on the show. After this, I only checked his DA one more time to find that he deleated all his artwork, and I haven't checked his journal since he went into douchebag mode, so I'm not exactly sure what else he's said about the show and bronies apart from his rant.

Oh, and he made porn of Rainbow Dash, with the possible intention of trolling bronies. I might be overreacting, but when he said that his animation was better then the so-called "Cheap" animation of mlp fim, I swore off ever watching SMBZ again.

But ya'know, haters gonna hate.

edited 23rd Feb '12 12:52:13 PM by marston

Hm, that sounds like somebody throwing a hissy fit out of jealousy. Not the greatest behaviour ever, I can agree.

EDIT: while trying to find what exactly he said, I ended up on ED's page about him.

Oh Sweet Hastur No. Why didn't I look at the url before clicking?

edited 23rd Feb '12 12:53:51 PM by Carciofus

Oh, that. Flash artists tend to fall into either awesome bros, or raging self-aggrandizing douchecocks, with very little gradient between.

That, and strictly speaking it's not out of the question for an off-hours labor of love with no deadline by a sufficiently experienced artist to be executed better than a professional work on a blistering, ulcer-inducing "episode a week" timetable.

...I wouldn't exactly use SMBZ as an example though.

...Not so Different? I mean I don't link everything I see on Ponibooru.

edited 23rd Feb '12 12:54:47 PM by Pykrete

Uh, oops. I didn't mean for you to find his ED page. I should have warned you about that. Sorry about that.

Plus, he's not the only person to have done this, he's just one of the few that I can remember, and probably the only one I can talk about without getting just a little bit depressed.

To be honest, because of the things he said {I didn't say everything because most of that included hypocritical charector bashing}, I'm actully surprised that ponibooru didn't mock him in anyway or form. I would have liked to have seen the shitstorm that would have ensured just from the things he said being uploaded.

edited 23rd Feb '12 1:09:06 PM by marston

Eh, no biggie. I'll probably survive, and it was my fault in any case

edited 23rd Feb '12 1:00:44 PM by Carciofus

Yeah, most of the time I just tend to ignore the haters. The only really valid criticism of the fandom as a whole is the "bronies shoehorn the show in everywhere"; there really are some bronies who just can't shut up about it and try to badger people into watching. But other than that, most of the hate is a massive overreaction. Especially as the whole "watching a show for girls makes you gay/girly/whatever" make no sense. My response to that argument is twofold:

1. It assumes that if you like a girly show, you only like shows like that, and therefore couldn't possibly also like adult-aimed works. This assumption is, to put it lightly, completely dumb. Just because I like watching cute ponies doesn't necessarily mean that I don't also think that The Terminator is awesome movie.

2. I'm secure enough in my masculinity that I don't feel threatened by watching something that isn't masculine. If they're so insecure that they think that their manhood will be in danger if they watch a certain cartoon, they're the ones with the issues, not me.

The only sign of hate I saw online was actually on this site, where someone tried to convince us to get rid of the Daring Do page.

Those are some Epic words of truth right there JT.

The other sections of failblog and co. really hate it when bronies make an appearance.

Also, don't mention this show on forums with topics that are vastly different. You will be scorned.

@Kyun: Yeah, that was just one guy cutlisting it; it was never in any danger of getting cut. And yeah, most of the anti-brony sentiment I've seen on this wiki is on Image Pickin' where a couple guys complain about any pony pics that get suggested or used purely on that basis. Of course, it doesn't help that there are also some bronies who suggest crappy images out of Fan Myopia, but still.

But yeah, most of the hate seems to be the shoehorning thing, which is, to a degree, justified. I hate it when people turn against a good show because the fans are annoying.

@Marston: I've been considering writing up a thing explaining why enjoying the show isn't a bad thing, but I haven't had time.

edited 23rd Feb '12 1:14:34 PM by JapaneseTeeth

...yeah, not so much. The last thing we need is acting butthurt about a bit of e-thuggin'.

My advice would be don't bother. Those just feed flames.

edited 23rd Feb '12 1:18:41 PM by Pykrete