these are my predictions for how the right wing will evolve in 2014
we were warned. we didn’t listen. but we were warned
This keeps me up at night
I hate the right wing as much as the next guy but why the fuck does every god damn person think all Bronies are assholes. They’re literally just guys who like a certain horse cartoon
@aquatic-sardonic I’m going to assume you’re asking this in earnest and answer as best I can. Simple version, historical: The brony community produced so much untagged pornographic material of such violently graphic nature (and yes I mean violent) that all MLP tags on all social media sites and all search engines at all levels of safe search became totally unsuitable for use by minors, the show’s intended audience. Additionally pornographic artists and those seeking such art monopolized fan venues irl, even children-oriented ones, to the point where it drove others away. This generated some ill-will. Simple version, current: The brony community, particular what can be found on its dedicated forums, is comprised to an unusual degree by virulently misogynistic men. People pick up on this, and it generates some ill-will. Complicated version: We live in a society where men are often socially expected to be emotionally cut off, to reject deep social intimacy as feminine/gay/being weak, to be stoic in the face of sadness. Men are rarely expected or helped to learn any serious empathetic skills or vulnerability. Furthermore, media exploring such topics with a soft or compassionate touch is often restricted to “girl’s” media. My Little Pony was part of a nostalgia revival which saw old children’s properties revived with radically improved production values and general quality, and an explicit deemphasis on some of the aggressive gendering. MLP in particular was a property that succeeded fantastically at its intended goal, handling subjects of emotional intimacy, friendship, affection, and empathetic attachment at a level that was simultaneously nuanced enough to interest adults and simple enough for children to grasp. It did so with good production values and writing and a good dose of sincerity. This happened at the same time as an increasing public understanding of the damage masculine stoicism was doing to men, along with the first generation of teenage men and young men to have been raised on the internet and experienced the duality of connection via the internet and isolation via the internet being one’s source of connection. The result was a large group of ‘bronies’ who aggressively latched on to this source of emotional sincerity which they could seek comfort in. They lauded it as objectively good media to push back against (mostly imagined though understandable) criticisms it might be “for girls”, saying either it wasn’t or that liking something for girls was subversive and cool. At this point all was well. Except the thing is, there are two very different things people believe about why men are forced to be stoic and emotionally cut-off. One is that it’s part and parcel of patriarchal norms, that privileged supremacy is not always without drawbacks, and that a good way to undo toxic masculine expectations is to understand the misogynistic reasons they came to exist. i.e. What you hear feminists talking about all the time. The other is what Men’s Right’s Activists believe, which is that that women really control men’s lives and men’s problems are caused by women in part of an ongoing gender war. That latter is an especially common view among parts of the internet (see above meme culture and online white supremacists) where men’s total social isolation from women is easily accomplished and men don’t actually have to derive their beliefs about women from interacting with women. So when you got a bunch of heretofore socially unaware teenage boys and emotionally isolated young men latching onto this island of emotional sincerity … it was not a foregone conclusion that those fans would have any empathetic skills or social consideration. And then they found themselves inside of a fandom the rest of which was, naturally, rather feminist and actually had empathetic skills. This caused a lot of conflict where “lol kill yourself” memes and “get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich lol” from those isolated young men got … less than stellar receptions. A lot of young men, getting justly criticized for their behavior for perhaps the first time in an environment where they cared about what was thought of them and in which they sought intimacy, were deeply hurt. They were then incredibly vulnerable to recruitment into MRA ideologies which blamed women for their emotionally vulnerable woes. Furthermore, these ideologies didn’t promote actually learning or practicing emotional vulnerability. But rather a sort of “you can’t say we can’t enjoy this, that’s sexism!” without any of the actual scary and hurtful self-reflection that would have been required to live the ideals MLP espoused. They wanted to enjoy emotional sincerity and were angry that they felt unable to do so, but weren’t willing to put in the self-critical work necessary to do so or really had anyone to help them do so. And women proved a ready scapegoat for why they couldn’t do so if the fault didn’t lie in their own need to be seen as masculine. This “you can’t say we can’t enjoy this!” mentality plus the influx of people from chan boards plus the scapegoating misogyny drove a wave of violent pornographic material and aggressive vitriol andbigotry that rapidly drove out most people who preferred gentler fandoms. In the end, the hateful side of the fandom very much won. Lax forum moderation which wasn’t prepared for this saw almost all women and socially conscious men driven from fan forums, leaving mostly only those apathetic to it all and those who reveled in it. As public opinion of brony culture began to reflect this new reality, men who were simply interested in MLP but not the fandom tended to keep quiet about their interest or drop it altogether, not wanting association with the cesspit the fandom had become. Women, people of color, and those of the queer community were driven out by active malice from within the community. It made for a vicious cycle. Now the online MLP fandom is only really populated by those who aren’t bothered by the toxicity and aren’t its targets, which means … well, white cis mostly straight men who say and mean “lol it’s just a joke” about bigotry, and the straight up bigots. So now brony is justifiably synonymous with violent porn recklessly contaminating children’s spaces, the aggressive colonization of compassionate fandom spaces by vile people, and misogyny, racism, and bigotry of every stripe. That’s why so many people don’t like bronies. That answer your question?
