(I didn’t, largely since I’ve never watched a single episode, but the psychic damage and whiplash of Wholesome Pony Show having said this line was too fuckn much for me)

EDIT: More replies than upbears now. It’s probably an official struggle session now (although most of it is that one person). One must imagine SisyFEWs happy.

  • LGOrcStreetSamurai [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The hatred of My Little Pony’s was the precursor to modern online fandom discourse. People’s online response to this show (good, bad, or indifferent) warped how the internet talks about fandom in a major way and online culture as whole in a lesser extent.

    • pooh [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      People’s response to this show (good, bad, or indifferent) warped how the internet talks about fandom and online culture.

      On a positive note, though, I think it was also legitimately a gateway to questioning gender norms for a lot of people.

      • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Remember that a big chunk of the historical fandom was weirdo fascist edgelords who wanted to fuck the ponies and wrote horny violent fanfics about them. One of the longest fanfics about anything (FOE:PH) is basically “Made in Abyss but it’s ponies and set in a post apocalyptic wasteland.”

        • BeamBrain [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          FOE:PH

          Oh God, I remember hearing talk about how terrible this was and having a peek out of morbid curiosity. I made it maybe a quarter of the way through the first chapter before I had to dip out at the exhaustively described fever dream of what MRAs imagine a society run by feminists would look like.

          • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Wasn’t there also a Fallout crossover fanfic that completely missed the humor aspect that was always present in Fallout and was sort of edgy for edginess’ sake? I never read it, but its fandom was pretty scared-fash at a glance.

            • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              The most infamous of those is the one I mentioned, Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons, but the original Fallout Equestria was also pretty bad just much, much more tame than FOE:PH was.

                • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  It predates it, but it is similar in tone and grotesqueness. Although thinking about the full depth of the problems with Made in Abyss that I covered exhaustively in a post last night, FOE:PH isn’t as bad. It’s a gratuitous, edgy spectacle that handles problematic themes poorly, but it’s merely making an exploitative spectacle of them while Made in Abyss is even worse. AFAIK most of the characters in Project Horizons are adults though, though I think there’s some nonce stuff in there too.

    • axont [any,they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The show’s sudden widespread popularity always felt like a western version of Japanese otaku culture to me. People were making their own comics, fanart, radio plays, etc. It was like doujin circles. They even would stalk the voice actresses like creeps.

      It’s always been interesting to me how closely otaku and western nerds will come to imitating one another without significant contact with the other. There’s like a platonic ideal of weird creepy nerd they’re all drawing from in the ether. They even have their own weird fascist contingents. Japan invented incels too like in the 80s.

      • Wheaties [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Really makes you wonder. This has to be the latest iteration of a longstanding phenomenon, yeah? Cus I just cannot imagine that sort of personality was just spontaneously generated by access to the internet.

        I mean this painting exists

      • uralsolo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        My hypothesis is that Japan just figured out how to turn fandom into an obsessive toy-buying culture earlier than America did. If you go back to something like, for example, the early days of the Star Trek fandom, there was a lot of friction between the creators of that show and its consumers. They were trying to ban fanfiction and conventions and shit.

        Meanwhile Japan figured out that you could capture the fandom pretty easily, sell them infinite low quality figurines and posters, and turn them into a massive army of free advertisement and hype. Nowadays it’s standard practice to do this stuff, although the American version of it ups the ante from the Japanese version, with fandoms developing not just for specific shows and characters but franchises and entire companies.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The hatred of My Little Pony’s was the precursor to modern online fandom discourse. People’s online response to this show (good, bad, or indifferent) warped how the internet talks about fandom in a major way and online culture as whole in a lesser extent.

      Look in this thread. The old tiresome “X is for babies” symptomatic brainworms wriggling is on display. yea

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          I think it’s so inevitable that even bringing up that particular show is going to churn out a similar vibe to what happened in the early 2000s if someone so much as brought up furries. frothingfash

          • uralsolo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Has any other fandom reached the peak that MLP:FiM did? Maybe Rick and Morty, right before the Szechuan Sauce incident embarrassed everyone who liked that show so much that they stopped wanting to be associated with it.

            • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              At the risk of setting them off again, I argue that Gambo, at its height, was like that, and unlike FiM or even R&M it had painfully mainstream saturation. It was basically impossible to exist in public anywhere with a line or a waiting room, where a TV or a magazine could be found, without “WHICH MURDERFUCKER IS ON THE IRON THRONE THIS WEEK?” so-true headlined everywhere, for years. I had to involuntarily learn a lot about that show during that time.

              • uralsolo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Gambo! Can’t believe I didn’t think about that.

                Come to think of it, that one also crashed spectacularly like the R&M one did, although it was from a failure of the show itself rather than the fans embarrassing themselves in thousands of McDonalds all across America. MLP:FiM for all its fandom’s excesses just sort of faded out.

                • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  The banker-born sexpest failson creeps that ran that show had everything going for it and still drove it into the ground with sheer fucking hubris with a side order of resentment toward Emilia Clarke because she started pushing back and didn’t want to just be their (CW: SV)

                  spoiler

                  actually-weeping-because-of-contractual-coercion SV plaything on camera anymore so they character assassinated the character then had her murderfucked as petty retaliation.

      • LGOrcStreetSamurai [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Maybe it’s rooted in weird gender coding stuff? I do find it odd the selective salty-ness of the net being weirded out by one children’s animated television show but not another. I’m not even on the “let people enjoy things” tip, but it’s just weird the show about unicorns, rainbows, and friendship gets mad hate but if it were a show about kiddos fist fighting against the forces of evil and you get a pass.

        It’s always just “You are grown, you are watching a show for girls.” It’s never any valid leftist critique one could probably make in a integrious way like the original poster talking about centrism for example.

        Personally I don’t rock with MLP. However, I dig lots of the new generations cartoons like “Adventure Time” and “Rise of the TMNT” which are “for boys” but no one bugs out about that. Which is kinda telling to me.

        As if we all didn’t go see Barbie by the way. A movie about a product “for babies”.

        • AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Maybe it’s rooted in weird gender coding stuff?

          A lot of it is, “girly” media are constantly ridiculed and villified to an extent that hypermasculine Vin Diesel shlock never is. but ima be honest here, what put me off in regards to MLP where the fedora guys fantasizing about horse ass all day.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          As if we all didn’t go see Barbie by the way.

          I think a recent version of “X IS FOR BABIES” brainworms came from people that didn’t just not see Barbie (it’s fine, no one has to watch it) but made “didn’t see Barbie” into some badge of maturity (or in some cases, performative masculinity) in contrast to Oppenheimer (it’s fine, you are allowed to watch it, or not) as, once again, MATURITY™ discourse.