12/26/2011: It frustrates me that I had to provide scientific proof to the bronies on Ponychan that happiness comes from interpersonal relationships and altruism (as opposed to career, physical posessions, etc). I had thought that bronies would have figured this out long before Secret Of My Excess, and it troubles me that such an obvious thing was not accepted as true until I provided the study proving it. It makes me wonder what other obvious things the brony community (including myself) is missing.

For the most part I stay away from RPers, especially those who pretend that they’re actual characters from the show—that’s why I dont follow Tumblr ask blogs or go to /rp/ or anything like that. But there is someone pretending to be Rarity on /pony/ and it makes me so angry! She portrays Rarity as a snob and it’s disgraceful. (i’m told that it’s just a joke, but whatever) whoever it is gets a ton of attention as if she is the real character. If I wanted to see someone RP i would go somewhere else. I go on /pony/ to see what the brony community is discussing about the show. It’s fucking annoying,

Enough that I have some grasp of the established characterization, which allows me to read MLP:FIM fanfiction written by online acquaintances of mine and have some understanding of what’s happening.

The show itself—I mean no offense to anyone, but it just doesn’t appeal to me that much.  It’s cute and it’s well animated and the characters are actually engaging, rather than being repugnant and nausea-inducing as they were in the 80s version of the show.  Yes, I’m old enough to remember it.  Yes, I’m probably old enough to be your father.

I don’t think of myself as a “brony.”  I know a few of those who do identify themselves as such to be articulate, if slightly eccentric individuals whose interest in the material drives them to write fanfiction, and reading fanfiction is one of my hobbies.  In the aggregate, “bronies” come across to me as, frankly, creepy and immature.  As is the fanfiction, in the aggregate.  I thought anime fans were a bit off, speaking in general terms, though some anime fanfiction is gorgeously written, but then, encouraged by amusing characters and work by talented amateur authors, I looked around Ponychan and Equestria Daily.

I shouldn’t have.  98% of the writing I see is pure, refined, distilled autism in liquid form, poured onto the screen directly from the veins of some unfortunate who hates his life so much that he wants to be a pastel-colored cartoon pony, the sort of thing they used to call “a cry for help,” where the self-insert protagonist discusses his attempted suicide resulting in waking up in Equestria in a pony body in the very first chapter.  I’m aghast.  Not just from the perspective of a lover of the language, but also, secondarily, from knowing that I live in a society with these people, and they have access to the Internet.  And perhaps I’m a callous old bastard but it awakens in me an urge to find these people, tap them on the shoulder, and say “no, just no.  You need help.  Professional help.  Stop posting.  Turn off the computer.  Get help.  Seriously.  Get off the Internet, turn off the TV, get out of the basement, and get help.”  And that’s an unusual thing for me.  Once upon a time I participated in many a Usenet flame war (remember Usenet? remember email lists?  remember when you couldn’t use the Internet if you didn’t have enough working synapses to set up a DOS terminal program to talk to a 9600 baud modem and use a UNIX(tm) shell account?) and engaged in online behavior that amounted basically to heckling the mentally ill, at the time not so much in hopes that they’d get help as that they’d quit spamming sci.chem and sci.engr and leave us the hell alone so we could go back to talking shop.  And maybe these are small enough things to waste my finite time and capacity for concern on, what with the crumbling economy and the Iranian nuclear weapons program and a hundred other things I could bore you by rattling off.  But I can’t do anything about those either, and thinking about this prevents me from worrying about them, so here we are.

And where were we again?  Oh, yes.  Bronies.  Creep me the hell out.  Calm the hell down, you guys.  It’s just a TV show.  Furries, you too.  Jeez.  It’s a big, scary old world out there.  It is later than you think.  Get a grip.