That was beautiful... truly beautiful... Come on, everypony! We have a mission this year! A mission that must be completed!
*Tears Drops from my Eyes* I Don't know what to say. Being a brony for over a year and 2 months makes proud to be brony to begin with. :3 I will make it happen. 2012 is our year. A year of Friendship. A year of Peace and Harmony. Were making this world a new... A Better world, where we can make life a wonderful adventure. :3
well, to be fair, this community has lived long enough to be considered more than a fad, and is hardly short-lived by internet standards. With every joke, the internet-wide memes grow shorter-lived (like arrow to le knee), and things grow all the faster. But still the Brony community burns brightly, growing if anything. I haven't seen any big declines, but only growth. I don't know how long we can last, but with all hope we can make it along with the show; how long CAN something like this last? Well, if we can survive the 'meme-killing' effect of mentions in real life beyond Colbert and FOX, and prove that we are a coherent and stable community, I think we can hold together as long as people want friendship and ponies.
I like having bronies being mentioned in real life, as long as it's positive of course. In my experience, people don't like trying "strange" new things unless they discover them themselves. So coming across a brony news article or seeing mentions in a popular news paper could spark interest to at least look up MLP. Whether or not they like it will come after.
Does anyone even know of anybody leaving the community and deciding that MLP sucks? Nobody I know of has left the brony community yet people join every day. I'm sure someday it will slow down and even decline but that day won't be any time soon.
Friendship. That's what you gotta do. Just be the best brony you can be. Spread friendship everyday. -- Sent from my Palm Pre using Forums
Memes don't make the difference, source material does. I had a long ol'spliel about the niche nature of this group already, so I'm gonna make it short hand-The show, at best, has five seasons. I can't see this going for ten years and remaining as fresh and entertaining as it is now. Five, believable. Now, the life span of a group based around any given show(Barring Browncoats, those lovably crazy devils) is, at best, three years after the fact, the end of the show. So, absolutely prime conditions say eight years. Without new material, the group normally cannot survive, and if it does, it's dregs, the most fanatical of the fanatical. Keep trying to churn material over those years though, and you get a whole lot of crap, and thus the fanbase decreases In even shorter hand, we are not the next Harry Potter. We're an amazing and wonderful group, but fans need to recognize now that we don't have staying power. That's why it's important that we go full bore now, do our amazing stuff while we're still growing and passionate, because that's how we're going to define our legacy. We may not last, but we can become huge for our time and become something even non-fans can look upon fondly, and be a positive force of society for years to come even after FiM is over.
He's not. Everyone should follow this message, but you know as well as I do how people in the world are. If even a small group(bronies) can spread friendship this year, then maybe over time other groups and people will start to as well. -- Sent from my Palm Pre using Forums
I guess in every moment like this, there always has to be at least one miserable bugger who just puts a massive dampener on the situation like a big grey cloud over a beach party. Personally, this video didn't do anything for me. I'm sorry, but I just don't really see any substantial message being conveyed. Making 2012 the year of friendship just doesn't cut me as a real idea. Being nicer to each other and adhering to positive moral values is something I feel should be universal, not directly correlated to a children's TV show about magical ponies. I can concede that the community is a very friendly one, and I'm not doubting that people have had important positive experiences involved with it, but that could be from any fandom, really. I heard one interviewee claim that 2011 was the 'year of the pony'. I'm sorry, but I'll outright disagree with that. As much as I enjoy the show and fandom, I'm not going to go as far as dedicate a year to it. Yes the show is good, but the morals and values taught with each episode are supposed to be directed at young children. I'm not sure how I feel when people say they've learned about tolerance and the like from the show. If a children's show is enough to make you adjust your morals, then I do question some integrity there. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'd rather someone better themselves as an individual via a rather mundane medium than not do so at all, but I don't believe that this show can have that big an impact on people, at least not on a scale such as what is made out. I'm not doubting individual cases, but I am fully doubting the show is some sort of elixir capable of solving everyone's issues. It's easy to make things seem highly emotional and sentimental with some soft piano music and faded transition slides, but I still feel the whole thing is insubstantial. By all means go ahead and practice what you preach; It's always a good thing to see that many people extending friendship and other positives, and I'm not saying that anybody shouldn't do it. What I am saying is that this 'brony community' has a tendency to be a bit pretentious and make out it's more than it really is at times. Before you throw examples at me saying 'oh but bronies cured my depression, bronies did this and bronies did that', I'd just like to say that members of this very site helped me through the grieving of the loss a parent. There are things certain individuals said that I'm pretty sure gave enough support to keep me here today, so yes I am aware of how much support we are capable of giving. What I'm saying is that I'm not going to identify ponies with anything they did. If those individuals had thought My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was the worst show in the world and couldn't stand the fandom, the amount of gratitude and respect I had for them wouldn't have changed a bit. Feel free to hold the point that I wouldn't have come into contact with them if it weren't for ponies against me, but I will say that talking in hypotheticals is never a strong argument. Love and tolerance is such a throwaway word in this fandom, that's part of my problem here. It started off as a meme, how anyone thinks adhering to those morals without any personal input instantly makes them a good person is is beyond me. I mean, yes I understand it's a joke, but I've seen the vast majority of this fandom go ape at the mere mention of anything prior to G4. How can one genuinely claim to tolerate anything when simultaneously 'hating' on a little girl's show for being too babyish and not up to the standards of an adult? I mean for Christ's sake it was specifically aimed at little girls, you're not supposed to like it. Friendship is Magic was more ambiguous, thus more appealing to a wider and more varied demographic, but what said people are to G1-3.5, 'haters' are to G4. That's just one example, it extends to rule 34, those who aren't fans of the show, 'trolls' (claiming love and tolerance is different to actually showing it; I've never seen anyone actually empathise with a troll), certain contingents of 4chan and in some genine cases, anyone who has different beliefs to the general brony consensus. I'm not dictating anyone do anything, so don't feel the need to convince me your actions are justified. I'm just serving as a bit of realism that TV shows and fandoms should have effect null on your personality and demeanour. Talking about bronies as some sort of status to a religion or cult with 'messages' and 'missions' is not something I'm going to identify with. I constantly try to make myself a good person by following values of responsibility, respect and empathy because I feel those are important when striving to achieve happiness for yourself. Ponies don't come into the equation. In summary, yes I love the show and fandom, but no I'm not going to try and change the world with it. Global society is far more complex than you think. I'd rather see people focus on bettering their own lives rather than amalgamating fans of a TV show to strive towards some ultimate goal. That's cult like behaviour. Nobody has to listen to me or take anything from what I have to say, I'm just giving my input on the situation.
I suppose we do come off as a religion, but instead, we follow general ideas from a collective, rather than a single source. Hey, if we change the world for the better, I'd be more than ecstatic. If we all end up happy and compromising, that's still striving towards peace (<-seriously, I misspelled this?) and following the same goal path.
Lupr, you took the words right out of my mouth. The video was touching, but overall it's message seemed a bit... hollow. Talking about MLP changing world events is a nice fantasy, but simply loving and tolerating, or 'being a better person' isn't the kind of thing that will have any large effect. That said, it is important to have the kind of morals and decency that the show teaches, and the fact that so many people are embracing it is never going to be a bad thing.
I like the video and the message. It doesn't matter if it's based upon a tv show. The message is a clear one. Sure every one should follow it, but we all know that isn't the case. There is only one reason I say this. There is another movement, way smaller then bronies. They are trying to do the same thing. Their message "Believe in yourself" and "Spread hope like fire" I was a part of that movement for a bit. It is full of great people that only want to make the world better. They are all based around one band, they say the same things. This band helped me through depression, or this song helped me do this. I don't care if others don't like or even believe in the message of Love and Tolerance, HOPE or yourself. I believe in the message. [size=+2] The AVA Message[/size] [video=youtube;iOso6w8ihwI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iOso6w8ihwI#![/video] [size=+2]You can do anything you want in life, anything at all. If you have the slightest bit of risk and if you have the slightest bit of ambition, I swear to god, not only can you change the world around yourself, you might just change the world itself. This isn't about what is cool or not cool, what is punk or not punk. This is about not being an a****** and trying to do something better than yourself. I hear a lot of s***about rock bands pretending they're f******angry, rock bands pretending they're f******rebellious. I think, i'm gonna be an optimistic, and I think i'm gonna feel f*******good![/size]
