This board seems pretty active to me, is the fandom really dead?
Yeah I killed it, sorry.
>>41838569MLP never dies, it is eternal. Once you get intrigued by the ponies you're here forever.
Infinite mareloving
When a good thread comes along it gets quite lively. The recent milkmare thread is a great example.
i need to maximise the amount of mares in the universe
>>41838575True, can't believe I found ponies through mmo champion back in 2012?
>>41838601Saw that, made it feel like I was back in 2015 kek
>>41838569>This board seems pretty active to meIt's pretty slow compared to the peak but nowhere near dead>is the fandom really dead?Fuck no. I think it's actually starting to grow again believe it or not
>>41838623>Fuck no. I think it's actually starting to grow again believe it or notI believe it, I have inexplicably returned to pone like I never leftSomething is up
>>41838623will admit, I am a newfag who just started watching last year and it(G4) sure seems like it's alive and well to me
>>41838627The pony shadow government is beaming pony into our minds with the 5G cell towers
>>41838569its all just one really schizophrenic anon with a 4chan pass
>>41838629How'd you even find out about it?
>>41838627what brought you back? I'm also a 2024 return
>>41838629beautiful linky
>>41838632The P.O.N.Y program is currently brainwashing all forcing all oldfags to gather around /mlp/ for a purposeAll hail the Ponolith
>>41838638Honestly?I've been spending a lot of time in other boards/groups, and the content I was helping produce/was surround e byfelt so soulless, and grifty. I felt a growing void in my soul that only Pony can fillPone is just kino, nothing else out there compares. We got the best content out of any fandom. Somehow I ended up on this board again listening to Rabiesbun and BGM
>>41838653if you're subjecting yourself to horse music, I highly recommend yourenigma https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCNu86g-C-U
>>41838637Have a friend who i would talk about sonic with and make fun of for being a brony. he won
>>41838629>>41838641LINKA
>>41838632At least they arent G5 cell towers
>>41838659Based
>>41838676Wdym he won? There's few things more cringe than being a sonic fanI believe in pony supremacy
>>41838682The g5 cell towers just beam seething posts about Twilight Sparkle into your brain for some reason.
>>41838719I mean I've been a sonictard since i was a kid and I made many brony friends because of it. However thisbfriend said my drawings reminded him of some pony artist and then he told me I should try watching the shownow i have an applejack sitting on my desk
>>41839042Still cringe, but I respect your vibesAll mare schizos are based
>>41838633It's true, everyone in this thread is meEven right now I'm samefag agreeing with myself
>>41839194See? Flag back off. It's that easy.
>>41839194Incredible, I mean you did post my fav hors
>>41839194you are so based, me. but I just wish I (you) didn't suck so much dick....
>>41839194If you're really me, then what color is my underwear?
>>41839275You should know we don't wear any, mebro...
>>41838627Another 2024 returnfag here. It was youtube recommending clipper anon.
>>41839042>AJBased Applebro
>>41838569The pony fandom is divided into 2./mlp/ and not /mlp/. /mlp/ fandom is not as big as non-/mlp/ fandom. So if you see a 'small' community still alive, you know that because we're pretty close knitted. Other sources of mlp like Discord, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube are more alive than us, so yeah I'd say the fandom is still alive. If you compare relative sizes of it.
>>41838623>>41838627This happened to me recently, joined the fandom in 2024 and suddenly started seeing ponies everywhere, and not even like the typical "Baader–Meinhof phenomenon" (becoming aware of something makes you notice it more) but like I actually can't go a week without seeing something reference ponies outside the fandom.
>>41839265That's not Trixie, we need to see an eye doctor
>>41838653>>41838653>felt so soulless, and griftyNTA but I know what you when I came back to /mlp/ in 2019 because FiM was ending I was surprised how much better it was than other boards like /co/ or /vg/. Its amazing how much less shit an online space is when the users are actually passionate about something rather than just using it for attention/money/clout. The gap has only widened at this point and /mlp/ is the only board I really post on now days.
>>41838629>Linkynigger spammer is a newfagExplains a lot
>>41839503This is literally one of my first times posting on the board, AI-jeet, I save any funny picture
>>41839503whats this furry oc donut steel bullshit
>>41839472>Its amazing how much less shit an online space is when the users are actually passionate about something rather than just using it for attention/money/clout.This. The more a cult or fandom is based off solely on financial gains, the worst it becomes. You cannot buy soul.
>>41839549>AI-jeetWhat?
>>41839549>>41839551Ignore the slopmare fag. It posts nothing of value and should not be given attention
>>41839560Look at the right eye and the lower parts of the mane.
>>41839560Anon has brain damage.
>>41839580AI art is based on something, there's no way enough people drew an OC this dogshit for it to train off of. This is just someone's garbage original character and they're bad at art or couldn't afford to commission someone decent
>>41839549>>41839580>>41839597I love the fact shartists are so mindbroken about AI they start accusing each other of using it.Keep seething, your time is almost up.
>>41839597if you throw it in a reverse-image search something similar comes up on yandex. it's AI and now he's mad
>>41839607>shartistI'm an AI prompter retard, that's why I know its not. I'm really impressed that you managed to draw, or at least pay for, something so dogshit that anons can't tell if it was made by a sperg or a GPU
>>41839597>there's no way enough people drew an OC this dogshit for it to train off of.If you believe that, you haven't been outside of /mlp/ and into the broader fandom enoughPony OCs can venture easily into sparkledog territory
>>41839627Kill furniggers. Behead furniggers. Roundhouse kick a furnigger into the concrete. Slam dunk a furnigger baby into the trashcan. Crucify filthy furries. Defecate in a furniggers food. Launch furniggers into the sun. Stir fry furniggers in a wok. Toss furniggers into active volcanoes. Urinate into a furniggers gas tank. Judo throw furniggers into a wood chipper. Twist furniggers heads off. Report furniggers to the IRS. Karate chop furniggers in half. Curb stomp pregnant black furniggers. Trap furniggers in quicksand. Crush furniggers in the trash compactor. Liquefy furniggers in a vat of acid. Eat furniggers. Dissect furniggers. Exterminate furniggers in the gas chamber. Stomp furnigger skulls with steel toed boots. Cremate furniggers in the oven. Lobotomize furniggers. Mandatory abortions for furniggers. Grind furnigger fetuses in the garbage disposal. Drown furniggers in fried chicken grease. Vaporize furniggers with a ray gun. Kick old furniggers down the stairs. Feed furniggers to alligators. Slice furniggers with a katana.
>>41839621>I'm an AI prompter retardPost your best work.
>>41839645its not work lol I just do it to generate shitpost reaction images and cute pictures of my wife
Now literal slop getting postedGreat, cool thread
>>41838569Not dead but I am pretty worried about how it seems like nothing is really shared around or discussed anymore. And I mean BIG things, to a major degree. You see people go on and on about the heavy-hitters from 2021-2014 but it seems as if nothing else has come along since then, and the gap will just keep widening with the years. In other, smaller, less influential fandoms I have seen there is a steady output of content that actually enters general fandom consciousness and culture that then gets put up there with the greats people point to in order to show off the achievements of the group, but recent years for us it seems to be totally dead. Stuff is being made, albeit a ton of it absolute slop, and we still have big con attendances, so we are by no means dead, but I worry for the general 'culture' I guess I could call it of the fandom as a whole, where people keep making things but they're passed over with disinterest as we all keep our eyes glued on the past. Tamers, Infection AU autism, and some way more minor things are all I can think of in recent years as things that have broken this barrier, but even then I wonder about the impact these things will leave, especially when the mandated 1 week of relevance period for popular things in the modern day wears off for Tamers if he takes a break or goes back to Sonic Underground.
>>41839597Your probably right that its just some OC from deviant art but the notch in the right pupil still gives me doubts. I have a hard time believing someone would leave something like that unfixed.
>>41839656Oh, okay. No problem.
>>41838627>>41839447Alright so it's not just me. I'm not going to pretend to know why people are coming back in droves (myself included) but I'm glad it's happening. I missed ponies so much
>>41838569Compare it to /co/Which is slow in its own right, but still faster than us
>>41840614Their board isn't dedicated to a single franchise though
You guys need to understand, being in Pony is like being in the illuminatee. You can't say it out loud, cause people seethe. We got poners in every sector, in every walk of life. From the lowest economic strata to the very top.The pony cabal is very real
>>41841334Can't wait until we have a horsefucker in the oval office
>>41841324Technically this board is devoted to a single show: FIM not a franchise like /vp/
>>41840614>>41841324i think a more apt comparison would be to /vp/ (the pokemon guys) and they're a little ahead of us - they do roughly 1 post per minute more than us. some notable boards we're ahead of>/his/>/soc/>/s4s/>/aco/>/ck//vp/ still has new games and shit coming out, and since it's a videogame franchise people are probably talking about metas and whatnot there; i wouldn't know because i'm not a pokefag. anyway, considering that the show has been dead for 6 years (with countless controversies and divisions beforehand) and how insular we are, i think we're doing pretty decent.though i permanently have all the eqg and g5 threads hidden and so do most people, and they probably skew the numbers a fair bit.
When are we going to get our own pony state run by and for horsefuckers?
>>41842234PleaseWe all need to get rich af enough to pool funds together, and make it happen
>>41842199Pokemon is also the highest grossing media franchise on the planet, so yeah. If we're only one post per minute behind them, I'd say that's absolutely a mark of success.
>>41842199/vp/ isn't just about the Pokémon games, it's the games, the anime, the manga, the TCG, the merch, etc.. Then you have to consider it's the intersection between waifufags who want to fuck the pokégirls, fujos who want to fuck the pokéboys, and furries who want to fuck the Pokémon. It's hard to compare because /mlp/ is relatively homogenuous on it's composition
>>41841334Huge if true
>>41838627>>41838638>>41839313>>41839447>>41840612It's a big surprise , i thought i would find a dead fandom coming back to ponies after having quit almost immediatly having seeing the end of the show but apparently nah, a lot of people are coming back. The uncermonial death of G5 maybe provoked some sort of come back trend of old fans who moved on and realized they kinda missed pones?It's really my best guess
>>41843267I returned in 2023 after I caught the anni in a long time, rewatching the show and content made around it really made me feel happy again. I think it's just people returning to a place they once called home. That feeling of belonging and connection, it's not 2013, but still feels like home.
>>41838601I missed it. Can I get a desu link to it?
>>41843267I went back to mlpol for their anniversary because I was a big part of their start, then someone asked me if I was going to marefair, I immediately said yes, figured it'd be a great send-off to a fandom I used to love, and now I'm here every fuckin day go figure
>>41838569The best way I can describe its current state would be autism-fueled necromancy. Just because it is moving again doesn't take away the fact it is a corpse being puppetered by terminally online people and that is now filled with insects who found a carcass lying in an old cave.I don't really care much about the newfags. If anything, it makes me a bit sad the many who will never experience so much of the best content while it was new.FiM feels so attached to its historical context and legacy that I can't shake the feeling that something is wrong when I see newfags who can't claim a gen of their own like how girls like Faust did with G1 or late millennials did with G4, as if they can only larp as citizens of ruins that were once an empire.
>>41843586>or late millennials did with G4Early millennial. Been on the board since 2012. I'm not just a necromancer, I'm a lich. I'm unfazed by the children because this board was always full of them.
>>41843586Most people I know who watched G4 as it aired are zoomers, and are coincidentally now at the age where they can contribute meaningfully to the fandom instead of just watching from the sidelines
>>41843703This, people keep forgetting this was, at its core, a kids show for kids
>>41843703Yeah, zoomers who were as young as 3 could now be 18 posting among us
>>41843703That explains a lot actually
>>41839503SHLOPASPARKLE DOGWOOF WOOF
>>41839042based AppleCHAD
The only threads that quickly reach bump limit on this board nowadays are the ones about shitmerican poolitics with little to no relation to ponies, mostly offboard fagdom/discord dramas.
>>41844924Don't forget the arguments about pony being furry or whether Tamers is shit or not.
>>41844924Reaching bump limit isn't a measure for success. Most fun threads don't stay long because to drag on wouldn't be fun.
>>41844935It's always the same shitposter and 2-3 autists on the bait threads.
>>41843703If the internet had not gone downhill since the 2010s, the zoomers definitely could have sparked a new wave of glorious ponyfaggotry. However, the current internet (and quality of IRL life) is not conductive to nuanced discussion or the creation of fan content which isn't a grift. We are in for rough times, but as long as we hold ponies dear at heart, we can make a roaring comeback once the internet has somehow purged the bots and bot-tier lowlifes. (>implying those with the power to change things don't WANT this botnet dystopia.) Look at all those returnfags, they prove that horsefuckers are like sleeper cells. Ponies are that powerful. It's more important than ever that anons take care of themselves and don't let the mindrot/society drag them down, so they will be of sound mind to poniponi with passion whenever circumstances are more conductive and inspiring. Though this is going to sound controversial, taking a break from pony (or dialing it down) can help keep the flame alive longer; it's only the mindset of quitting pony in favor of sucking off another fandom that's pretty fucking gay. That's because temporarily reducing poniponi allows an anon to pour that time into new skills and experiences which will feed back into the poniponi, whereas fandom-hopping but otherwise doing the same thing ad nauseam doesn't nurture growth.
>>41844979To unfuck the internet, you would have to un-mainstream it, and annihilate social media.If there's a buck to be had in the lowest common denominator, that buck will be chased after, which incentivizes slop. And if the lowest common denominator remains exposed to things that discomfit them (mostly via social media), they'll cry out and market forces will react accordingly, which disincentivizes outliers. There's no putting that genie back in the bottle.
>>41838569If you're still having fun, all power to you. It's hard to say what sort of discussion you were hoping to see sprout up in this thread, and I don't want to demoralize anyone. I think pastel ponies are too powerful to ever truly die. But I'll have to actually use a bunch of filters if I want to continue using /mlp/. I'm still here because it's my home, but it's not doing me much good these days. Wall of text incoming, but then I'll shut up. >>41845020Mainstream-appeal and monetization can't be revoked, I know. The current mainstream is incredibly mentally ill because of socioeconomic bullshit, but if conditions outside of the internet changed for the better, it would trickle down into online spaces, so that's what I'm waiting for without holding my breath. Hobbies like poni can provide a perfect opportunity to shove your IRL woes aside for a moment and gleefully poniponi on the pony board, but such common sense has been lost since sometime in the 2010s. I try to be uplifting and helpful myself while honest about my gripes, and I won't just abandon this board without trying a little harder first. However, my personal problems regrettably keep me from drawing more, but that's still a net positive as long as I refrain from whining about le society in random threads. I admit I'm venting in this here post in this here meta thread, but at least I will have said everything I have to say about this topic by the time I hit "Post", then I'll shut up and focus on more fruitful endeavors. What I've learned over the years is: Genuine nutjobs (or trolls pretending to be one) are only funny the first few times you ever see one having a meltdown, they are essentially acting like bots. Neither monotony nor doomfagging is good for mental health; OP must still be new if he hasn't grown tired of being exposed to it everyday when hobbies are supposed to provide satisfaction. Bickering and shitposting have always existed on /mlp/, but the golden days were so golden because of a stronger sense of creativity and experimentation. It provided novelty, fun, brain food. Current /mlp/ is a bunch of washed up pony addicts; my waifuism is beneficial to me but most of my time spent here is a blatant mistake. This post too. Consider it a bit of a goodbye, you'll see me around way less although my feelings for poni haven't changed. It's always lovely to see anons pick up e.g. drawing, so all hope is not lost. They're growing, they're doing, they make this fandom worth a damn. Ponies really are accessible enough to prevent the fandom from dying for good. Ponies can always be brought back from the fringe because of how simple yet versatile for expression they are, all the while having a shared visual identity as opposed to e.g. a thousand different Pokeymans. It's the snowpity that will enchant newfags for years to come. It's the snowpity that injects the poniponiponi virus that will stick with you for life.Pony is both a blessing and a curse.
>>41845215>The current mainstream is incredibly mentally ill because of socioeconomic bullshitThe world is largely the same as it ever was. Everything major can be traced back to our heretofore-unprecedented ability to record and share information, instantly and without limit. Turns out, we aren't really equipped as a species to deal with that - we're better-suited to our insular little tribes, our families and neighborhoods and congregations - so being confronted with The Other on a daily basis is frightening. It divides us; it compels us to dig, to see if the person we're engaging with is really "one of us", to call out trespasses, and to root out people as faithless saboteurs. In other words, it afflicts us with the mistrust and paranoia that are by now hallmarks of the past 15 years.Pining for the Old Internet is a bit like pining for the Old West. It was a romantic notion that only existed for its ephemerality, a transitory state. You can't really have a frontier spirit without a frontier, not in any palpable sense; to do otherwise is to cling to ghosts.
>>41845303In other words, the internet becoming mainstream (REALLY mainstream) is the cancer killing society.I always felt internet was both a blessing and a curse over 20 years ago, but that the benefits outweighed the downsides. But nowadays I've started to believe it is doing way more harm than good to society overall.
I have zero qualifications to pontificate about this bullshit but I personally think all fandoms inevitably boil down to a hard core of dedicated autists which means that the pace slows but the quality also improves.I mean I've personally written a 100k fanfic about Cozy that I didn't even enjoy writing by the end of it, like it was going off the mf rails, but I still kept going out of pure desire to see this cartoon horse child's story through to some semblance of an end. It's also unironically one of the best pieces of art I've ever made and yet nobody in my life even knows it exists. If that's not an instant 'tism diagnosis I don't know what is. Ironically I crashed hard once I'd finished it and immediately quit writing for years so take that with a grain of salt lmfao
>>41845215Thanks anon for the postIt inspires me to stop gooning so much to pony or eqg and actually make stuff. I certainly relate with pony being more of an addiction than the positive outlet of creativity its been for the majority of my life.
>>41838569It's not dead, just the posers moved on.
I just joined this fandom this year after suffering in another one and having some serious creative burnout due to work. I ended up writing shitloads of horse fanfic and have felt more creatively inspired and satisfied there than I have in fucking years.
>>41847073The autism is concentrated and dangerously potent
>>41838627Same here. Last time I posted to this board was close to ten years ago, but recently I remembered a giant greentext I never finished, and now here I am this afternoon, looking at pony.What is it, anon? What brings us back?
>>41838627I returned in 2019 but STILL refuse to watch anything past S4.
>>41845020The only reason it's mainstream because of corporate shills absolutely butt-raping the net.The reality is that if there wasnt a handful of boomers and their companeis who saw the net and went "OH FUUUUUCK WE CAN MAKE MOOONEYYYY WITH THISSSS?!?!?! WHY DID I IGNORE THIS LIKE I IGNORED MY SON" back in the 2010's, we wouldn't be where we are now.All the mainstream usage of the internet is completely forced and unnatural. Only sustained by what we would think of modernly as social media. If you got rid of modern social media and net 3.0 infrastructure- the web would go back to being niche.>>41845215For conditions outside of the internet to change for the better, this would preclude that the internet is not being used as much if at all by the mainstream. We gotta face the facts here-normies were never supposed to get online. The net was never really made for the average person- it was always supposed to cater to nerds, hobbyists and artists. This is a big reason why businesses destroyed customizable web pages. take a look here; https://neocities.org/browse This is basically what the internet looked like everywhere back then. Classic webdev, which is fun and interesting, is not friendly to the "consumer". For the consumer/normie to want to use the internet, it needs to be as simple and addictive as possible. Otherwise, the internet would just be that thing they sometimes look at.
>>41848746We just need a new protocol. Something that is inherently un-userfriendly.
>>41848746I want to further specify, i dont blame normies for this. I blame companies, and the geriatric evil behind them 100000%. The end point here is that the internet naturally is not mainstream, if anything it's fundamentally incompatible with it- normies who are caught up in the hustle of life generally do not like things they have to think about. Art makes them uncomfortable, as do niche interests (we can look back in tv-slop of decades and find over and over again derision for anyone who genuinely has interests). If the world were to become better socio-economically, this would mean the internet is no longer being strangled into being a new TV you have to fucking live inside of. The average non-hobbyist/artist/nerd would be a VERY infrequent user of the net, they might come on to talk to relatives...watch clips of their favourite shows...etc.. but they'd just as quickly get off because there's not anything on the net 'for' them. (there isn't now either, but the difference is that companies have convinced them there is very effectively). Anyone who remembers the old days knows it was basically like this. People outside of the spheres of autism and art didn't 'use' the internet. The only places they really went if anywhere were facebook- that should say alot.
>>41848763What are you thinking that would look like?
>>41838623Lmao my sister is back to watching and listening to pony song again after 7 years hiatus. She's in college right now and was like 10 when she first found out about the show. Meanwhile, I was too busy cringing at bronies spamming ponies on everything back in the 2010's. Now I suddenly found myself here out of all places and saving pony pics. Something is definitely happening.
>>41847073This, all the posers already moved to vtubers.
>>41848532Are you going to finish it or what? Ponies are waiting.
>>41848763honestly we just need the current user friendly protocols but you only get in if you know someone who's already in. Private, self hosted sites are the way of the future
>>41849413I don't know friend. It turned into a big clusterfuck with several other writefags and I'm not sure it makes sense without them. Starting from scratch might be the way, but the fucker was 75k words and it would take months just to get back to where it was left off.
>>41838627Kids (the target demographic) that simply watched when it first aired and weren't "bronies" are now adults in their early twenties, got nostalgia for it and are reconnecting with their child at heart now that they are all grown up.I'm one of them.
>>41850776I predicted this shit all the way back in, like, 2015. I want my goddamn nobel prize
>>41838627Man that's a lot of replies. Might as well show-up too, I got back here a few days ago, began to draw a lot of ponies as soon as 2025 started, no idea why.
>>41850874Nobel prize in fucking what?
>>41850976>Nobel prize in fucking what?your mom
>>41843703So what you're saying is millennials need to have their kids watch FiM to keep the ride going for another generation
>>41850776I only started watching the show last year
>>41851450That has been going on from the start, hence the poor baby named Pinkamena Zecora [last name]. However, the parent to child pipeline can only do so much; the show will have to remain easily accessible and easy to share between technologically illiterate children. Conveniently, the stylization of FiM makes it look good on screens of any size, so the kids could enjoy it even if it were a secret thing confined to their smartphones or handheld video game consoles or whatever. Torrents filter kiddos, VODs are the way to go. I intend to start a family in a few years. My first daughter will be called Cordelia. Whether or not my children care about FiM, they will know about Discord. I'll bring back the tradition of a household spirit, hoping the kids will grow up feeling protected, curious and independent. That Noodle saved my life and is to blame for their mommy and daddy knowing each other, so he's part of the family. It's as shrimple as that.
