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So I was recently reading about this World of Tanks moderator that replaces audio and graphics with pony themed stuff. It wasn't the best implementation, but it was far from bad and basically was meh news. The author did a semi-humorous take on it, so it brightened up my day a bit. I strolled into the comments section of the site I was reading it from though and found a war brewing in there. Fans of FiM and haters and random trolls were all bickering with each other, probably spitting at their screens. Some cursed the site for daring to show anything FiM related; others railed against it because the author jokingly said something about "the horror of it all" a few times. More spit at each other because of the show.
Now, some popular show being on air and having people argue over whether or not it's 'art' or if it's good or if you're evil for watching it is far from new. What draws my attention to this particular case though is the source of the vast majority of the hate surrounding FiM, that is, bronies. The male fans of a show not aimed exactly for them seem to attract flame wars across the internet like politics and religion.
I could act like I'm oblivious as to why this is, but honestly I'm not. Society it seems is far from as progressive as we'd like to think in the twenty-first century. I'm not going say that everyone who hates FiM and its fanbase are sexist pigs who can't accept the fact that a show aimed for young girls has a larger fanbase, but really it's hard to avoid that line of thinking. When was the last time you saw people screaming on the internet about teenage girls liking Transformers, or the plethora of, ah, more male oriented comic book adaptions on television?*
I think it speaks volumes about our society. At the end of the day, in my opinion anyways, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, is an ok show. It has good plots, it has decent characterization, it's something fun to spend half an hour watching. If an episode is on TV I'll sit down and watch it. I don't think of myself as a fan of it, considering that I have yet to geek out and watch the entirety of the show in a few days like I do with most other shows I watch. At the same time I don't hate the show. It's just ok in my mind, and I'm glad for everyone who finds enjoyment in the show.
Ah, back to the whole speaking volumes about our society thing. Sorry, I had to plug in my thoughts on the show somewhere, lest I risk getting a dozen comments screaming at me about me not appreciating true art. I probably still will, but eh, I'll deal with it. Now, society! There seems to be this thought process in our culture** that says girls can like guy stuff, but a guy liking girl stuff is a deviation from the norm. See also, women wearing pants all the time but men causing spontaneous crowds of pitchfork and torch wielding mobs to appear when they wear skirts. This is changing, and not fast enough if I do say so myself, but it's still present all the same. So this creates this strange paradox; you can create a show oriented to men and still have aspects that both genders can appreciate, but shows oriented to women never seemed to achieve that same sort of cross-gender exposure. This is not to say it never happened before now; I believe Power Puff Girls gets used as an example here often.
Then Lauren Faust says screw it, I'm going to break the norm, and we come full circle. People on the internet spitting in each other's faces. I suppose in conclusion, the phenomenon speaks for itself. I can't really expand on the reasons behind this or why the world is like this anymore that what is present. Discrimination across the genders is still common enough, it's just rather than flat out blatant discrimination we get more stealthy discrimination, hiding in tropes we've seen for eons and thus have come to ignore. Any sort of analysis on it shows for itself the source of why people get so upset at the idea of a brony.
A certain unmentionable site has a page called the Girl's Show Ghetto which talks a lot about it, and there's plenty of far smarter people with far more experience than myself who've wrote on the topic, if an in-depth analysis of the topic is wanted. This really was just me ranting about this. Ultimately I'm just grouchy that people can't just accept that a show is a show and to stop making a bloody big deal out of it where it doesn't belong. It'd seem, though, that people will continue making judgment calls based on a genetic lottery for a while more into the future.
*If you have, well, I sure look like a fool to you now don't I.
**'Our culture' is referring to the culture I'm use to, American. I judge it from the internet and, more personally, the culture of the Midwest inwhich I live. If it's different where you live, send me a post card, I'll have to be sure to check it out sometime.
This rant may of offended you; if it did, I do apologize. It's a bit of a ramble fest like most of my rants are and didn't close all that well. If I have offended you, I implore you to say why in the comments so I understand why and can make a more proper apology and maybe better explain my beliefs if they came across as caustic or degrading.
Now, some popular show being on air and having people argue over whether or not it's 'art' or if it's good or if you're evil for watching it is far from new. What draws my attention to this particular case though is the source of the vast majority of the hate surrounding FiM, that is, bronies. The male fans of a show not aimed exactly for them seem to attract flame wars across the internet like politics and religion.
I could act like I'm oblivious as to why this is, but honestly I'm not. Society it seems is far from as progressive as we'd like to think in the twenty-first century. I'm not going say that everyone who hates FiM and its fanbase are sexist pigs who can't accept the fact that a show aimed for young girls has a larger fanbase, but really it's hard to avoid that line of thinking. When was the last time you saw people screaming on the internet about teenage girls liking Transformers, or the plethora of, ah, more male oriented comic book adaptions on television?*
I think it speaks volumes about our society. At the end of the day, in my opinion anyways, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, is an ok show. It has good plots, it has decent characterization, it's something fun to spend half an hour watching. If an episode is on TV I'll sit down and watch it. I don't think of myself as a fan of it, considering that I have yet to geek out and watch the entirety of the show in a few days like I do with most other shows I watch. At the same time I don't hate the show. It's just ok in my mind, and I'm glad for everyone who finds enjoyment in the show.
Ah, back to the whole speaking volumes about our society thing. Sorry, I had to plug in my thoughts on the show somewhere, lest I risk getting a dozen comments screaming at me about me not appreciating true art. I probably still will, but eh, I'll deal with it. Now, society! There seems to be this thought process in our culture** that says girls can like guy stuff, but a guy liking girl stuff is a deviation from the norm. See also, women wearing pants all the time but men causing spontaneous crowds of pitchfork and torch wielding mobs to appear when they wear skirts. This is changing, and not fast enough if I do say so myself, but it's still present all the same. So this creates this strange paradox; you can create a show oriented to men and still have aspects that both genders can appreciate, but shows oriented to women never seemed to achieve that same sort of cross-gender exposure. This is not to say it never happened before now; I believe Power Puff Girls gets used as an example here often.
Then Lauren Faust says screw it, I'm going to break the norm, and we come full circle. People on the internet spitting in each other's faces. I suppose in conclusion, the phenomenon speaks for itself. I can't really expand on the reasons behind this or why the world is like this anymore that what is present. Discrimination across the genders is still common enough, it's just rather than flat out blatant discrimination we get more stealthy discrimination, hiding in tropes we've seen for eons and thus have come to ignore. Any sort of analysis on it shows for itself the source of why people get so upset at the idea of a brony.
A certain unmentionable site has a page called the Girl's Show Ghetto which talks a lot about it, and there's plenty of far smarter people with far more experience than myself who've wrote on the topic, if an in-depth analysis of the topic is wanted. This really was just me ranting about this. Ultimately I'm just grouchy that people can't just accept that a show is a show and to stop making a bloody big deal out of it where it doesn't belong. It'd seem, though, that people will continue making judgment calls based on a genetic lottery for a while more into the future.
*If you have, well, I sure look like a fool to you now don't I.
**'Our culture' is referring to the culture I'm use to, American. I judge it from the internet and, more personally, the culture of the Midwest inwhich I live. If it's different where you live, send me a post card, I'll have to be sure to check it out sometime.
This rant may of offended you; if it did, I do apologize. It's a bit of a ramble fest like most of my rants are and didn't close all that well. If I have offended you, I implore you to say why in the comments so I understand why and can make a more proper apology and maybe better explain my beliefs if they came across as caustic or degrading.
Really, it kind of typifies a lot of the social quagmires found in modern America right now.