Is anyone else on the brink of losing total interest in G4?

[Taffeta]

I left for a few days and come back and this thread's discussion has gotten so interesting.

I was just about to say that too.

For anyone not wanting to read 11 pages, half the pony community at the arena are fed up with G4 because of butt-shots.

Moving on.

I was reading through, actually, and the comments about a split community and us/them and it reminded me of when G2 came out. I wonder how many people here have long enough memories to remember the Shadows? It was a time when there was artwork produced of G1 ponies killing or fighting G2 ponies and the atmosphere in the community was horribly toxic. I was a stupid teenager as many of us G1 people were back then, so got into far too many debates on the subject (I was not a Shadow, I was of the opinion all ponies are ponies). People got driven out of put off the community because of that nastiness during that time. It really did become a split fandom. I would say that it was maybe more nasty because the community was smaller and there wasn't really any safe haven from it. But the main point is, we came through it, grew up and survived. G3 didn't get anything like the reaction, albeit their appearances satisfied more folk.

I thought that the pony community graduated that ugly point in its history, but FIM brought in a new community of people who were not pony to begin with and thus decided to make the community what they wanted. Because they got media attention, it supported them to think they were right. And now people think  of them as the community. Even though we were the community long before that.

But the Shadows disappeared. The hostility went away. And G3 happened. So I do have hope that that will happen with G4 too. I've said before but I separate bronies into raving lunatics and normal G4 fans, some of whom happen to be guys.

I dislike the bronydom, and it put me off G4 for a long time, but knowing there were G4 fans out there who weren't part of that madness helped. I think that if the fandom has affected people's affection for G4 it is predominately because Hasbro are listening to them, thinking they're the ones buying the ponies - and mostly, they aren't.

In terms of show accuracy, I would rather have some brushable hair to play with.

[Leave a Whisper]

Yeah, I heard about how horrible the G1/G2 divide got on The Round Stable, which I consider to be a balanced if unfortunately, mostly dead site.

 I'm hoping the same, that the crazies will move on to go troll elsewhere and we'll be left with the sane fans.

Also while R34 is inevitable whether people want it to be or not, I don't care. They're Horses. It's really gross! There's a very specific terminology for it already and it's not meant to paint people in a favorable light.

[Carrehz]

Just my humble opinion but I don't get the G4 fans fixation with 'show accuracy'. And the new ponies are ugly to me. They have rubber hose limbs and real horses, even fantasy inspired ones, simply don't look as comically ridiculous as these new toys do. I'll keep my G4 collection as it's sizable and cute but the new toys are just horrendous to me.

Yup, this.

WRT R34 - I hate that it's out there but it's inevitable, sadly. I'm sure stuff like that existed before G4.. but you would have had to look for it. (I certainly never saw anything bad before G4 became a thing, anyway) My problem with is that G4 fans seem to have difficulty putting it in a place where it won't be stumbled across accidentally. Like, if that's your thing then I'm not going to judge (much :p), just keep it locked away from people who don't want to see it!!

[kissthethunder]

I was around for the G1 vs G2 war. I actually produced a lot of 'unity' artwork around that time because I was tired of something that was supposed to be innocent and loving being depicted as grotesque and divided. I emblazoned one picture with 'hate is not a pony quality'. I do not know how I still feel about the statement but the division of the community now still makes me feel it's relatable.

For a genre that's so focal about unity, acceptance and love there's been a lot of it not happening. Back in G1 the ponies befriended many 'ugly' and 'out-casted' monsters and creatures and often found beautiful creatures were sometimes the most despicable of people.

I dunno why I feel the need to blather on about my personal musings on this as if we're not just a bunch of adults collecting toy ponies to make ourselves happy- but I still feel deep down the message of mlp has remained the same and it's that chaste innocence that I want to hold on to, even in the G4 line. I may not like the direction of the toys anymore and won't be investing any money in them but I still feel there's a need to not be so hard on our fellow pony people just because of differences in taste.

While I still want to vomit at pony porn I also know why it exists and I'm not one to kinkshame. I have a dear friend who contributed to that end of the community not because they want to  but because it pays the bills.

Live and let love I guess <3 I'm trying to get back to 'me' recently and ponies always seems to remind me of who I am under some bad experiences and apathy. I hope maybe others feel the same.

[Ponyfan]

My issue is not with the rump shots themselves but what they seem to represent. It is terrible that it is so easy to find inappropriate pony art/fanfics without even looking for them. The "G4 is the best thing ever and everything else is trash" mentality also bothers me. You wouldn't have G4 without G1 and although they are very different, both are MLP. 






Ponyfan

[Al-1701]

The issue is many of these people aren't fans of My Little Pony.  They're really fans of themselves.  They act like they are the greatest thing on the planet.  Their art and fiction and community are God's gift to the world.  We should be honored they grace us with their presence.

When the 2015 Fair announced the Shakeups and Andrea Libman, bronies on that site were quick to claim they had taken over the Fair in their campaign of total domination of the MLP fan community.

[kissthethunder]

The issue is many of these people aren't fans of My Little Pony.  They're really fans of themselves.  They act like they are the greatest thing on the planet.  Their art and fiction and community are God's gift to the world.  We should be honored they grace us with their presence.

When the 2015 Fair announced the Shakeups and Andrea Libman, bronies on that site were quick to claim they had taken over the Fair in their campaign of total domination of the MLP fan community.

please tell me this isn't true- I'd hate for this to be a real thing. Is this a real thing?

[Leave a Whisper]

The issue is many of these people aren't fans of My Little Pony.  They're really fans of themselves.  They act like they are the greatest thing on the planet.  Their art and fiction and community are God's gift to the world.  We should be honored they grace us with their presence.

When the 2015 Fair announced the Shakeups and Andrea Libman, bronies on that site were quick to claim they had taken over the Fair in their campaign of total domination of the MLP fan community.

What?

They can claim it all they want. Doesn't make it true.

[Baby Sugarberry]

The big difference between the G1/G2 'controversy' and the G1/2/3 vs G4 split is a matter of scope.  Nobody outside of the MLP collecting community is likely to have heard a thing about the former (indeed many people IN the community may never have heard about it if they weren't around at the time!), while the latter has garnered mainstream media attention.  That is never going to go away.  It can't be undone.  Like it or not, the 'first impression' your average person in the first world has of a 'My Little Pony Fan/Collector' is not generally positive. 

Yes, it's stereotypical.  Yes, it doesn't represent all of us, not even a fraction. Doesn't stop folks from replying to my statement of "oh I collect My Little Pony" with "oh, you're a one of those 'bro-nies' then?' with a dubious look.  So I just don't ... mention it anymore.

[kissthethunder]

Doesn't stop folks from replying to my statement of "oh I collect My Little Pony" with "oh, you're a one of those 'bro-nies' then?' with a dubious look.  So I just don't ... mention it anymore.

That's about what my problem with it all was. I hated suddenly being called a brony. I would say, 'no, Brony is a new term for new fans of the show. I've been doing this since I was a kid in the 80's and I work with the vintage merchandise. Very different things'. There also was the stigma that came in about the term brony being associated with pornographic content which actually did cause me problems. I'm an artist. People assume because I love mlp and I'm an artist, that I MUST be drawing 'those things.'

I have nothing against the new fans or where they mix in and all, but I still am not a brony and am a separate thing.

So yeah, the new stigma is going to be a staying one.

[lostpony]

"can't fit into ponywear"  --I love it.  My poor ponies are forced to live out my dressup fantasies...

I don't like being called brony either, before I even knew anything bad about them.

I don't have to be a brony to like pony rumps, I mean ponies.

[kissthethunder]

"can't fit into ponywear"  --I love it.  My poor ponies are forced to live out my dressup fantasies...

I don't like being called brony either, before I even knew anything bad about them.

I don't have to be a brony to like pony rumps, I mean ponies.

Just a quick thank you that you appreciated my tag line there ;-; you know my pain


My last piece on this matter is I'm cool with dudes liking ponies and the new fanbase and all but.... why do oldschool fans have to swept into the same pile of glitter?

[lostpony]

That's a good question and seems to have a bearing on how people feel about G4 or being proud of loving ponies.

One possible answer I think is that before G4, MLP wasn't really recognized by the mainstream so much and G4 really became well known.  The mainstream has a limited attention span so one aspect is assumed to represent the entirety of a subject.  Therefore if you are a fan of MLP, you must be a brony. 

Of course the mainstream has a good attention span for seedy things so whatever negative stuff they've heard must also apply to you. 

For example, I always wear a pony T-shirt to church for the last year.  My congregation is getting used to it, and some weeks ago I had a conversation where one brother said So you're a brony?  He said that because that's all he knows about adult MLP fans.  When I said no, I am into my little pony but I'm NOT a brony, he asked why.  I said bronies mostly like only the current show, and I love all My Little Pony including all the older stuff, and that bronies have other passions that I don't necessarily know of, or ascribe to.  It's like a club, and I have no interest in joining it.

I think if G1 adult pony lovers were more known before, then the distinction wouldn't be as hard to conceive of. 

Also of course there are people out there (especially on Youtube comments and probably lots of other places I don't go to have experienced it so much) that are out to offend everyone they can, and knowing that not all adult pony fans are bronies, they call us that saying things like "adult MLP fans are bronies", and when you say no I'm not, they say Yes you are and enlightened conversation ensues.

[Taffeta]

The big difference between the G1/G2 'controversy' and the G1/2/3 vs G4 split is a matter of scope. 

Not really. What you are not taking into account is that that was the late 1990s. If you wanted to insult someone, you probably had to wait for dialup to connect you before you could do so. MLP was on forums and mailing lists, and people did do images, but we are in a totally different world now in terms of technology than we were then. Because everyone thinks they're a vlogger or web blogger or something now, everyone's opinion is out there. We have social media and instagram and all kinds of ways that these things get into the spotlight. Media hubs pick up on what is trending, but in the 1990s, it would have taken a considerable amount of effort for the material to have become so widespread. Now it takes nothing at all. That is the actual difference. It isn't scope. It's era.

But I think the G1/G2 thing was worse. Because I don't see the brony community as part of this community. I see them as something new that got created and went in a certain direction. Any G4 collectors who collect in the same vein we do are not bronies to me, unless they want to use that term - they are pony collectors, or ponypeople, as we once labelled ourselves back when the ponypeople mailing list still existed.

G1/G2's rift ripped through the heart of the only existing community and took damage. We can avoid the brony community and they us. They can think and say what they like but it doesn't affect us in the same way. I agree it has affected the outside view of MLP and MLP fans, but I would like to point out that it wasn't easy in the 1990s, either, because you had "my little pony, skinny and boney" still floating around. MLP in the 1990s were a lot cheaper, but nobody took pony collecting seriously, and thus collectors hid their collecting from outside because of not wanting to be labelled as playing with kid toys as teenagers or young adults.

Really we're not dealing with anything different except that these days everyone thinks their opinion on something has to be shared. And some of those shared opinions have not been so good in certain areas of FIM fandom. That's all.

@Kissthethunder - I still have the poem I wrote back then on my website now because I don't think the mentality has ever changed.
http://www.etherella.com/scrapbook2/ponydream.htm
 In my opinion, ponies are ponies. That's why I don't see the brony fandom as ponypeople - their attitude is more centred on an animated series they are fans of and memes and such from that, rather than the ponies themselves.

It's a little sad that, 17 years on, a poem about ponies fighting that I wrote as a teenager still has relevance. The fact I wrote that then but people are still talking like this now kind of proves to me that what happened between G1/G2 is no different. It's just been facilitated by that horrible thing called social media.

[Baby Sugarberry]

Media hubs pick up on what is trending, but in the 1990s, it would have taken a considerable amount of effort for the material to have become so widespread. Now it takes nothing at all. That is the actual difference. It isn't scope. It's era.

I am relatively certain it /is/ a matter of scope - a tiny niche collector community being at odds with itself over a new version of some toy would not have merited mass media attention then or now - not sensational enough.  Yes it might have gotten some tmblr posts, but having news articles on the television would not have happened as it has with G4 nor would it have reached the general public's knowledge. 

I have been a pony fan since I got my first Cotton Candy in the early 80's.  I remember life before internet.  I remember internet before it had pictures or web domains, web-rings, search engines, and relying on descriptions to make trades.  I remember struggling to get RealPlayer to work so I could listen to the newest audio clip on Dream Valley, and building my own pages in GeoCities.  I got My Little Pony Monthly by e-mail.  So trust me when I say, I remember.  It's actually what made me leave for a very long time.

Whether we see bronies as part of our community or not, the point I was trying to make is that the general public doesn't differentiate.  The saying goes you only get one chance at a first impression, and like it or not G4-bronydom has become the first impression of us as a whole for many people outside our tiny corner of the 'net.