Angry Tumblr Rant Time GO!

So, yesterday, april 11^th of  2013, turned out to be one of those days when I felt like giving up on the Brony Fandom. I have had moments like those before, nonetheless the whole Derpygate debacle was in my opinion the pinnacle of circle-jerk behavior when it comes to this fanbase. It was rather close when Twilicorn showed up, but not as bad, and since this event in particular caught me moving away from Scotland to Spain I pretty much hovered above it in my airplane while every other brony was fighting in the battlefields of Reddit, Tumblr and 4chan.

It was a difficult time for the community, and things didn’t get any better after what happened at Las Pegasus Unicon, but well after a month of these events I figured that things were calmer. I thought this drama fire storm had died out and that it was fine to make jokes and talk about it.

I was wrong, and thus there came my disappointment.

I will tell you all what happened from my perspective, so you understand why do I bring this here.

I was piddling around Tumblr, bored at around 1 am, when I go to the tumblr account of 8-bit Mickey who, if you didn’t know, is an ex-producer of That Guy With the Glasses. He is well known for wearing an 8-bit tie and being generally nice to everybody. He also has a charming moustache when he decides to grow it. He is also a brony. I check his tumblr very frequently because he reblogs a lot of interesting stuff, including animated shorts, live action shorts, comedy posts, Doctor Who stuff, and so on. So I was checking his tumblr and I see he has reblogged a recent gif set taken from the newest Nostalgia Critic review on The New Looney Tunes show.

So I looked at that gif set and I thought: “Boy, that’s exactly how those super angry bronies looked like when the whole Twilicorn thing was going on”. I followed that thought with “But if I reblog it maybe people will get upset” and then I realized “Wait a minute, why would they be offended? That whole thing died out weeks ago. I bet they have moved on from that already. Besides, this is the Brony Fandom we are talking about! We are so self aware that a little bit more and we will turn into fucking Skynet. Why wouldn’t they take the joke well?” Oh yeah, why wouldn't we take a joke well? How aren't we going to be able to tell when someone is joking and when someone is serious?

So I reblogged it and the post looked more or less like this.

 

“ ^ This is how the Bronies who hated Twilight Alicorn looked like to me”

 

“I wasn’t going to reblog this, but fuck it I am not holding back”

And then I left it there, sitting on my dashboard, as I went downstairs to play some Minecraft and maybe watch some Doctor Who afterwards. So after a while I decided I was getting bored of placing dynamite all over the map so I stopped and went upstairs again to check my computer one last time before going to bed, and there I found out that my post had gotten quite a few angry replies and reblogs.

These replies were nothing out of the ordinary, and actually they were pretty mellow all things considered. I replied to one of them and dismissed the rest, but then something else happened. I started losing followers. Not many mind you, in fact I lost like three or four, and that kind of mystified me. I was like: “Huh, I’m losing followers all of a sudden. Could it be because of this?” I ignored it again and kept on browsing other websites, and when I went back to Tumblr I noticed quite a considerable amount of messages in my inbox, and these messages were not small ones, oh no. They were worth three or four pages in Word, they were insultingly long, and the tone of the messages was the same in every single one of them, and I can sum them up in one single sentence:

“Your opinion is wrong”

It's funny, until it happens to you.

They said other things like how I was misrepresenting the brony fandom, and how that was not how people who didn’t like the change of Alicorn Twilight reacted, and that I shouldn’t have reblogged that since I was wrong about it. I got several, not a double digits number but enough to make me stop for a minute and consider what just happened. I am a small drop in the fandom’s ocean. I am a small contributor who makes drawings and writes review articles in his spare time, so every time I get a comment or a message from someone regarding my latest article or my newest picture I get gladly surprised and try to address it as best as I am able to, regardless of it being negative or positive.

Now, this was not the case.

This was ridiculous. 

People were sending me messages giving lengthy explanations as to why this post was so offensive to them, how it misrepresent them, and how I was being unfair. And I remind you that I am still talking about that reblog I made where I made a joke about the Brony Fandom regarding their over the top and completely unjustified reaction to the change of a character in a children’s cartoon. I had, somehow, made so much damage and offended them so much that they had to get out of their way and spend minutes, maybe hours, writing lengthy replies to my post. They were acting as if I had pissed in their mother’s grave like in “Braindead”. I was baffled and surprised for all the wrong reasons. This was the absolute last thing I expected coming from this fanbase. What the hell guys? What was that? What the bloody fuck was that? So much for love and tolerance when I am not even allowed to express my opinion there. Freedom of speech my balls.

I would agree with their complaints if I had been offensive about it. If I had insulted them or told them that they shouldn't complain, or even if I had been calling names. But I did none of that. I just posted that gift set and every one went ape shit. They rage quit un-followed me and sent angry messages and posted angry comments acting like anything but reasonable adults, which so far has been the default type of brony I have had the luck to talk to. Maybe I didn't explain the intention of the post well enough and people took it like an attack, but that only depresses me even more. Why would I attack my favorite group of people in the World? I will poke jokes at it, like anybody else with a half developed sense of humor would. But apparently I am not allowed to do that or else I will upset somebody.

ONE MILLION YEARS DUNGEON!!!

Of course I ended up removing the reblogs, mostly because one of my friends suggested me that if I kept them up they would just keep attracting drama and people will not let it go. I was getting quickly burnt out about it, so for convenience I deleted all the posts. The funny thing is that as soon as I removed the posts I had a few followers coming back. I don't even know how to justify or understand that behavior. I am going to keep all my opinion articles away from Tumblr and localized in this blog here, where I can manage better and where people are not so asinine. I will keep tumblr just to make posts about Rarity and my artwork, which I hope is the kind of stuff that keeps people happy in their land of colorful lollypops and rainbows. I am not going to say anything or joke about anything over there anymore, since it’s been demonstrated that if I poke fun about other subjects that caused drama in the Brony fandom (The Derpy change, Princess Cadance, Lauren Faust stepping down, Season 3 having 13 episodes only, Meghan McCarthy's latest tweets) I am going to attract those who launched themselves forward to try and correct my opinion.

I’m not angry. I am disappointed and quite depressed. I have been a brony since early 2011, and I still plan on being one for as long as I live. I still think you guys are great and you have great qualities that make you a wonderful bunch to hang out and talk to. But, god-fucking-damnit, sometimes I wish I had a virtual rolled-up newspaper so I could smack each and every one of you in the face. Grow a skin thicker than wet toilet paper and learn how to take a joke, especially when the person making the joke is not calling you anything.

By the way, I am planning on doing a lot more articles since I feel like in a writing mood, so expect more coming soon, both opinion articles and reviews of fan made animations. Until then, beware of Tumblr for it brings people the joyless life of lacking a sense of humor.