>>43202427
I never have and never will extensively interact with another fandom. I simply enjoy things on my own time.

No. Fandom no longer works online the way it used to. Even FIM was unique for the period of its time. The only other fandom similar to it that had existed was Homestuck. Both of those communities had earlier origins in the Invader Zim fandom.

The fact of the matter is, if you weren't here for the golden age of fandom - that's it. It's fucking over. You missed out.
The only way to >go back is to revive the old fandom culture. We've made a lot of inroads on that end, but we are constantly under siege by psyops.
>Inb4 fake old fag
Was here for the original watch thread on /co/. /Co/, DeviantArt, forums, Tumblr, EQD and the (original) ponibooru were the initial hot spots for the early fandom. Fimfic started growing in popularity a little after ponibooru was getting close to dying.

Prior to YouTube, we uploaded a lot of fan music (almost all lost now) to tindeck, grooveshark & Tumblr.
I could talk about the old fandom for days. I'm one of the last people who was actually PART of the old fandom, not just a partial fandomer or fandom hopper like alot of fags now. I was there BEFORE everything turned to SHIT.

>>43202572
I feel like there should be articles of people like you to archive so future generations could grasp on what was like on these times...

>>43202572
My seniority as an old fag is also why I am familiar with homestuck. Back in the day those were the two major fandoms. Outside of the fandom niche spaces (ala ponibooru, etc) we shared the same major spaces; Tumblr, /co/, Deviantart, tindeck.

Chances were if you weren't part of some anime fandom, you were gonna be a homestuck or a brony. Chances were, you could even be both. Alot of us were.

Peel into the old art archives between 2010 - 2013, you'll see HS influence in the art style of BNFS for FIM. Same vice versa.

I am one of the last people from that era. I'm sure some of us are still here, but how many I don't even know. I'd say a majority of the people on board now are late joiners to the fandom (around 2015-2016 joiners) and now adult target audience, with some underage b& lurking and or pretending to be adults.

There's a lot of stuff that's changed how fandom works online. I've seen the rise and fall. Outside of HS & MLP, THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A SIMILAR FANDOM TO THOSE TWO.

Hazbin/helluva gets close in some ways, but the fandom displays the same issues as other modern ones. It's just not the same.
TADC, same issue. Gets close...but just not the same.
Fandom simply does not exist the way it used to online. Alot of that has to do with overinflation of Internet usage. Even more of that has to do with the fact U.S governments are desperate to figure out a way to turn the net into an interactive television they can use to psyop you successfully into a spiritually dead husk of a man.

It's all suffering.

>>43202603
Man, there used to be. It's just...all gone now. You might find some old web news articles covering old fandom, but it's almost all lost at this point. Internet archeology is a mess. There's some crucially important history that is now simply lost to time.

If people have questions, I can answer. I wanna share everything I can before it's all gone completely.

>>43202572
I would listen to a 3 hour audio essay if you recorded one.

>>43202622
TADC has a fandom? Is it just a club of autistic children?

>>43202427
Yeah, juggalos. It's the same mix of wholesome sincerity and teenagery edge for an audience of mostly nerdy white people with GEDs and maybe a job at Walmart. You probably wouldn't make the connection looking in from outside, but they feel exactly the same on the inside.

>>43202656
Juggalos had a small faction in the community in the early days. Alot of us still treated them like shit because that's what you did...but they made some connections by being "self aware'.
If you look through fimfic, I imagine you can still find one of the first juggalos fanfictions that should have happened either just before or just during the advent of AIE.

Believe it was set during the running of the leaves.

Juggalos are more of a quasi-religious movement than a strict fandom though. They're an odd group.
>>43202652
>I would listen to a 3 hour audio essay if you recorded one.
I can do that. Might take me a long time though.
>TADC has a fandom? Is it just a club of autistic children?
Yes and kind of. There's a huge portion of it that are, far as I can tell, aged out Steven Universe fans (post HS-FIM era). The rest are very autistic young adults & children.

It's a huge global fandom, actually around the size we were. It just doesn't have the same magic though that we did. Not any fault on them...just is how shit works now.

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>>43202622
>I'd say a majority of the people on board now are late joiners to the fandom (around 2015-2016 joiners)

According to most polls around /mlp/, the majority of people are 2012-2013 joiners.
Although those statistics could be a bit tricky depending on what do we define as "joining in the year".
I joined the ride in 2013, but practically at the end of it (around December if my memory serves right, but I'm not entirely sure).
While it could be argued that I joined "at the end of an era", I think I got at the last time someone could understand what it meant to be a brony in the early 2010's and get excited for official pony content, despite some duds along the way.

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>>43202622
>Fandom simply does not exist the way it used to online. Alot of that has to do with overinflation of Internet usage.

That's one of the most important things people tend to overlook about why the internet isn't as fun as it used to.
A lot of what made the experience of browsing the web so enjoyable had to do with technological limitations and cultural place it had in society.
We used to treat the internet as just a way to disconnect from reality and pass the time when we were bored, it had a more balanced relationship with other forms of entertainment (videogames, tv shows, movies, outdoors activity, etc.) because of its more limited amount of content, the fact you could only accessed comfortably from a computer, and that people using it understood you did not have to take it seriously.
As the web became less clunky to use and more relevant in our day-to-day lives, the line between "the real self" and "the internet self" began to blur.
You can't just say stupid shit online to have fun and forget about it the next day, you now have to fight for a stupid sociopolitical cause while running the risk of getting doxxed by mentally ill people for daring to oppose their worldviews. You can't simply have a portfolio that you only show to the representative of an employer at an interview, you MUST post it online so that everyone can see how potentially lucrative you are, even if you despite being so public about yourself. Like most things, turning leisures into obligations is a great way to start hating what you love. The worst part is we do not even get paid to deal with all of this crap, we are so terminally online that we do it for free.
But to keep this sort of on topic, Friendship is Magic from 2010 to 2019 (both as a franchise and a fandom) is the most accurate representation of the last decade when it comes to the internet, western animation and even politics somehow.

>>43203054
Yeah, that's about right.
The old internet was better when it was clunky. It felt a lot like dreaming and had a magical kind of quality to it.

Web usership is artificially inflated and maintained by predatory design. But the web we use isn't even the same web as the one before. Logging online was an almost ritual act, you had to turn on the computer deliberately and make the choice to go onto some silly, clunky customized web pages or an image board like ours.

Now you can have a computer with web access on literally 24/7 with most websites being overly sleek so as to maximize your attention.

The truth of the matter is, if web design was still clunky and based around making cool shit and fostering niche info/communities & cultures....there wouldnt be even half as many people online.
>the most accurate representation of the last decade when it comes to the internet, western animation and even politics somehow.
FIM & HS were literally the last things to come out before the world became a political laboratory run by pedophile Gatsby's running Cambridge analytica.

Friendship is magic is literally about virtue ethics. Doing things that are good and trying to be kind because those are the right things to do. It's a more realistic representation of life than life is of itself currently.
>>43202892
>Although those statistics could be a bit tricky depending on what do we define as "joining in the year".
Interesting. There's also a question of how many are telling the truth and aren't bots.
Hate that I even have to think about that sort of thing now.
Otherwise, yeah. Definition becomes tricky. I define early fandom as joining *within* 2010 - 2013 (latest).
>I joined the ride in 2013, but practically at the end of it (around December if my memory serves right, but I'm not entirely sure).
Shit. I'm sorry for you as much as I am glad. You literally joined right at the tail end.
>While it could be argued that I joined "at the end of an era", I think I got at the last time someone could understand what it meant to be a brony in the early 2010's and get excited for official pony content, despite some duds along the way.
I won't argue with that. I'd still award you a fandom veteran badge. December is definitely cutting it close...but I'd say you count. You were around just in time to still catch some of the cool stuff. Fandom blogs, the early music wave, etc. if memory serves that would've been about the same time homestuck & MLP were splitting off from each other as unified fandoms, during the initial redditization.

>>43203054
>Friendship is Magic from 2010 to 2019 (both as a franchise and a fandom) is the most accurate representation of the last decade when it comes to the internet, western animation and even politics somehow.
That's a good observation. I feel like it would be hard to find another thing that is as 2010's to the core as MLP is

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>>43202622
While I understand you comparing the Homestuck fandom to the mlp one, and without a doubt it was quite a big thing - I was enjoying Problem Sleuth before Homestuck came to be, and I did enjoy Homestuck as well - I have to say around when I got into FiM, ponies were invading the Dwarf Fortress forum, while Homestuck was not. Fans incorporated ponies into whatever they were into, in whatever space they were in - my impression was that Homestuck had far less crossover into other interests. Eg I think I recall seeing an mlp battletech merc company and even today we're modding games to have pony. Of course I'm looking through a pony-centric lens, if Homestuck fans did the same thing I wouldn't know because I admittedly never kept an eye out for it, so correct me if I'm wrong. I'd actually go with OP and say that Touhou was more significant than Homestuck and I really only scratched the surface with their musical scene.

Ultimately my perspective is a limited thing, in the end I can only say that nothing else captivated my heart the way ponies did in 2012. No other community had the same effect on me. But I'm sure many of those belonging to other fandoms would say the same about theirs.

>>43202572
Give a detailed list of everything we lost.

>>43202675
>Might take me a long time though.
Give a trip for searching your release posts. Or a keyword atleast.

>>43203951
>Fans incorporated ponies into whatever they were into, in whatever space they were in - my impression was that Homestuck had far less crossover into other interests.
Oh, god, no. If anything homestucks were infinitely worse about this in some ways. homestuck produced CONSTANT crossovers. These were especially big during hiatuses for the comic.
The reason you'd have noticed FIM over HS is that FIM is more "noticeable". Especially if FIM was your primary fandom.

Homestuck producing endless crossovers, AUs, etc got them banned off many platforms, etc. people found it annoying for the same reasons they found ponies annoying. The only difference being homestuck was considered slightly more bearable due to it not being colourful ponies.

The dwarf fortress HS community existed and the most notable form was called "troll fortress". You can still find some old web pages from around 11 years ago for that.
> I'd actually go with OP and say that Touhou was more significant than Homestuck and I really only scratched the surface with their musical scene.
I kinda get the logic. But it really isn't the same. Touhou has its own unique community and it's worth looking at and analyzing. But as a community, they have more in common with older invader zim fans than they do with the MLP & HS communities.

The primary reason touhou isn't the same as the definitive fandoms of early 10s (HS/MLP) really comes down to seniority. Touhou has a very "old internet" aura to it. This lends them similarity (and difference) to the invader zim fandom, which acts as a kind of genetic forefather to the HS & MLP fandoms.

It would be interesting to see however, because of touhous similarity to IZ fandom, what it has influenced on that side of internet culture.
>Ultimately my perspective is a limited thing, in the end I can only say that nothing else captivated my heart the way ponies did in 2012. No other community had the same effect on me. But I'm sure many of those belonging to other fandoms would say the same about theirs.
I mean yeah totally.
That all said, the only fandom that was ever similar to ponies was homestuck. That relationship goes deeper than people remember at this point. Again, lot of old fans from the beginning of the ride were homestucks. Part of that was sharing the same core territories. The other part was similarity in fandom structure.
>>43204307
I feel kinda awkward, but here's a trip for the time being.

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Sonic!

>>43204417
When reading the old archives I noticed /mlp/‘s creativity was absolutely off the brakes back then, literally everyone on the board was creating OC and writefagging, drawfagging, the whole nine yards. No matter how stupid they were conceptually. When exactly do you think the board started losing that creative outburst?
Even now I think the creativity we still have is just momentum from that era.

>>43204302
Fuck it's been like 16 years. I may not be able to give one single list in a sole post.

I can however try to remember and post accordingly.
>Music scene
The music scene was a lot different in the old fandom. Off the top of my head, the most significant loss here was we stopped producing "contemplative" pony music. That's pretty much all gone, with only remnants of the old stuff and some more modern revivals existing.

The most notable of these was SGAP, but sgap was part of a larger movement in fandom which was called the "space pony" community. One zine, now partially lost, was produced for this subset of the fandom.

Space pony community was a subset of the larger movement within fandom producing philosophical songs relating to the fandom & show. Autumn leaves is one such example of an older song, that had later been reworked by TLT.

Alot of that is gone now. We have very, very little left. What little we have left is due to circumstances that I'm sure others have at least partial memory of. The music scene has changed from producing contemplative music to producing primarily "stimulating" music instead.

You can argue vyletpwny is trying to recapture that old vibe, and there's some merit, but it's still very different. A vyletpwny song is notably different from a classic SGAP song, or even older pony songs of this nature.
>Space pony works
Splitting this off as it's special. The community of contemplative fan artists connected to this movement had a variety of ocs that became sub-fandom ocs, most of which have been forgotten and lost.
>Pre EQG humanization
We have a lot of these archived. But they aren't really used anymore. They're kind of scattered to memory.
>Sad-content
We do not make "feels' content anymore. Production of feels content gets a lot of ire in the modern culture.
>Shipping
Fucking mess out there. Don't get me started on this. >Inb4 ship fag - shipping in the fandom used to be a lot different than it is now. If you want to understand this, you need to understand how shipping was utilized in the IZ fandom and how that impacted FIM.

We've kinda brought it back on the board to small extent, which is nice. Wish it would come back fully.

>>43204474
I've only been into ponies since early 2025 so is there any archive resources on brony history

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>>43204466
NTA, but it was a double whammy of the fandom at large hitting its peak and starting to decline combined with social media companies realizing that negativity sells and is more profitable so they started turning people into little balls of rage who hate everything and scream at anything they don't like.
Less positive engagement (from less people being around) and more negative engagement (from all the twittards and such on top of schizos latching on to the negativity and screeching) led to less content because nobody likes getting shat on just because they created and produced content.
Some of the big names left the fandom because they either moved on or something happened in life and they no longer had time, and nobody stepped up to replace them. There were also less newcomers who were just happy to see even bad or mediocre content since they were used to quality stuff. So any new creators just... didn't.

I'm not an old great or that much of an oldfag (around here at least) but I what content I do create stays in generals since the asshats who hate everything hide general threads or at least don't go there to shit on it.

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>>43204481
>implying generals aren't just necrobumped imagedumbs

>>43204474
Had to split this off due to how long it got. This isn't even half of it.
>Crack pone
Gone. We had other weird and unique board ocs in the past as well, also gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.
>Participatory culture
Gone. This was how we were able to produce massive amounts of stuff, so god damn fast. It's also where we got crack pone, pickle, Emily, etc. We just had a thread about that. But nobody produced anything with the forgotten board ocs....they made a few posts then - fwip - gone. Again.

We've gotten better about this in some ways by bringing threads like /create/ to life. But creation is extremely sanitized on here now, which limits how much people are able or willing to participate.
>Homestuck crossover
We actually lost this early on, around 2013.
>Ponify everything
We technically still do this but again, the energy isn't the same. It's the same issue as participatory culture death. People on the board are constantly getting psyopped and told to stop ponifying certain things.
>Grimdark
Early grimdark in the fandom came from creators like Crookedtrees, who has an insane impact on the fandom culture.

Grimdark intersected with the contemplative pony music & visual art scene (such as the space pony community). This meant a lot of artists were producing spooky art that was meant to instigate a certain philosophical sense of wonder, sadness & terror. Western art theory calls this "the sublime".

Great example of this was crooked trees, who's impact on the fandom was so profound it resulted in a lot of other artists copying him...which lead to the birth of Tracey cage.

Around later 2014 this became completely shitted up with low-tier horror & torture slop. Lot of the good art produced for this is gone. Don't think anyone even remembers "the six of us" at this point.

This has come back slightly, there's one artist who did a great remake of Lil Miss Rarity (which had a great concept in its original form but terrible execution).

Would be nice to see more artists like this one, especially if they become more rooted in the old culture again.
>Fansites
There's a lot of these that no longer exist. What we have now is far less than what used to be.

>>43204495
What about how fanfiction changed? I like early 2010s Fallout Equestria fanfics, but has any of FIM fanfics in general changed?

There's a different branch of pony fandom now, like the Infection AU Tiktok generation. The target demographic who have been old enough to be in fandom now for a few years.
Their fan works are kind of different in tone, and they're closer in character to a typical modern fandom, while brony fandom was different. Bronies were like the kind of like the type of fandom that usually sprouts around serialized lore heavy media I think.
And a big difference: Technical literacy. Bronies are from the era when people did it themselves instead of waiting for corporations or using other people's stuff. From forum and wiki era, not the algorithm era.

Am I onto something?

>>43204495
There were a lot more fanfiction websites. More boorus.... Shit one of the biggest was ponibooru. So much art from the past is gone forever.

Bronihub/bronibooru was the second oldest before derpy. That went offline not too long ago. They seemed to have archived their art at least, so you can still find neat stuff if you peruse it.

Better do that fast though. Who knows how long that archive will survive.
>Pan-fandom harmony
Gone. We used to be spread out amongst board, eqd, fan sites, Tumblr, etc. all gone. Gone gone gone.
>Askblogs
These intersected with Philosophical (grimdark or not) pony art and typically were a vector for them. These are mostly all gone.

I can drop a mention off the top of my head showcasing what the culture used to be like - ask tired tired pie. A nice "friendly" variant on this, analyzing pinkie pie and inverting her character slightly to produce something interesting from her.

This is a dead blog now as far as I'm aware. As are many, many more.

The more famous example from here would be the old AskPinkamena blog. Also dead. This blog was nested in a larger, community driven story with other "canon" sub-blogs.

Also dead and gone.
>Philosophical/instrospective pony art
Space pony community wasn't the only manifestation of this. It was just the most beautiful to me. The majority of fandom centered around making art that touched at deeper feelings. This was often done in a very subtle and beautiful way. ELAOWF when it posts significantly older pieces showcases this very well.

This does not happen anymore. A good portion of art now is made to appeal to hyper stimulation and is just...it's just not interesting.

Good artists making this stuff stick out like a sore thumb because of that. But they tend to be limited, because fanwork creation is extremely sanitized.
>Dudebro Horse fags
This was originally the popular notion of the brony, especially the horsefucker on /mlp/, before the fandom got redditized.

There was one news article in particular that covered this (gone!) talking to people from the board and admiring the culture we had.

Gone.
>Love & tolerate
Gone. Lol. This was kind of stupid, but it was also nice. We produced a lot of goofy memes with this subject.

Tied into the old dude-broism of the fandom and the way we handled ourselves as being more "virtuous" (not that we ever used that term) than the other fandoms which constantly shat on us.

Prefer that to the modern irony poisoning, desu.
---

There's way more but this is all I can bring up right now. I wanna respond to other posts anyway.

>>43202427
Touhou is the japanese version of MLP, it feels similar in certain ways that other fandoms don't really compare, mainly by the fact that it's mostly fandom driven instead of creator driven

>>43202634
Please make a blogpost or some kind of Ponepaste article. I'm an oldfag that jumped on board late 2010 too, but most of my Tumblr/DeviantART and memories are deleted or gone from meds frying my brain.

You are 100% right that things were different. The early 2010s was the ideal form of fandom because we had both independant forums and social media to congregate on. Hell, I used Livejournal for pones for a year before everyone went to Tumblr for that. I'm sad I never got to go to Bronycon.

>>43204495
>Participatory culture
This one's the one that hurts the most, because I thought it would come back with the board starting to make more stuff by themselves after the show's end, but instead everyone who's willing to make anything is isolated on their own circlejerks and won't do anything if it isn't for one of the big events like Mare Fair or /mlp/con

>>43204515
As someone who was into Touhou for a little while before pony, it can't even stand in the SHADOW of pony's worldbuilding.

>>43204542
That's why I've said certain ways, there's still a world of differences between the two

>>43204477
Jesus. There used to be...I'm not sure if there are now. There was one archival website floating around for a bit, but I don't know if it's still there.
Hit up the lost media thread and ask around. Someone may have that sort of thing.
>>43204466
>When reading the old archives I noticed /mlp/‘s creativity was absolutely off the brakes back then, literally everyone on the board was creating OC and writefagging, drawfagging, the whole nine yards. No matter how stupid they were conceptually.
Internet was A LOT different back then. It fostered this kind of creativity and, as mentioned before, FIM was special.

Those two things combined let artists create awesome shit. And because FIM was participatory, it meant we could make even more cool shit because everybody was constantly going "oh FUCK that's cool! Yes! And..." Etc
>When exactly do you think the board started losing that creative outburst?
Same time homestuck did. 2013.

Each year after got a little worse. It was really weird watching this...it didn't happen all at once. Instead people just got angrier and angrier and we made less and less stuff.

2016 was the ultimate "death" of this creative output. Ever since then, we've just been sort of stagnating.

We've gained some of this back. Again, due to efforts like /create/. But the problem traces back to how sanitized we are from the fandom wank that started around 2013 and imploded in 2016. People want everything to be hyper stimulating & easily consumable.

This is an easy problem to fix. We just have to go back to the old participatory culture.
>>43204497
Yes. It's kind of hard to describe.... In a hat, I'd say that a lot of modern writers make their fics like you're kind of stupid. Comes back to the hyper-stimulation thing. Alot of modern writing I notice tends to be trying to jerk off my attention, and spelling things out in the most obvious ways possible. Fic writers are less willing to do weird, interesting or complex topics. Audiences are also less wanting to engage with those things. A significant portion of it now is just straight up porn & unfunny/uninteresting romcoms. Love or hate FOE, I haven't seen anyone try to make something like it again. I can't think of the last time I saw something try to broach anything philosophically interesting. One of my favorite gives way back when was about an aftermath of draconequus genocide...never saw anything like that since.

There's also just a rank quality decrease overall.

>>43204559
>We just have to go back to the old participatory culture.
Never going to happen. What you want back is old internet culture and it's gone thanks to smartphones. It's not going to get any better than this, the old internet is never coming back.

>>43204563
Oh and AI also did a number on creative output, not necessarily because I'm mindbroken about AI, but it makes people less creative because if people want a story they will just ask the chatbot for it, same with art (at least when it's coom, which a lot of the fandom's art output was/is)

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>>43203082
>Friendship is magic is literally about virtue ethics. Doing things that are good and trying to be kind because those are the right things to do.

I'd change the word "is" for "was".
The show used to be about those things but Haber turned it into a show "doing what what the mentally ill writer in turn thinks it's politically correct as a way to inflate their own ego", which does describe what a lot of stories (both real and fictional) became in the 2010's:
Preaching values for selfish desires rather than ethical beliefs.

When I said "from 2010 to 2019", I meant how the show's trajectory over said years accurately reflects similar changes to the ones the 2010's presented during its existence.

>>43204559
>This is an easy problem to fix. We just have to go back to the old participatory culture.
How, though? I know "indie" communities exist and some people (outside of the fandom) have sites on Neocities, but most online communication was broken to happen on social media, Discord, or here. It feels like if you don't already have a clique going it's pointless to try to emerge as a fanworks creator. I used to draw pony art often from 2010-2012 and it's a culture shock trying to come back when DeviantART is overrun with AI bots and people traded longform blogging for shortform content after Tumblr banned porn, which basically destroyed askblogs.

>>43204538
It's a typical life cycle of a fandom: early adopters engage in participatory culture consuming and producing content. Then trolls find their way into the fandom and diffuse negativity and discourage engagement with the fandom. As the participants filter out nobody is left to produce content. The ones who do are constantly compared to or comparing themselves to the original artists. As a result nothing is really being nmade anymore. That's why i constantly encourage new artists in BALE

>>43204575
Oh yeah, Discord, that's another nail in the coffin of fan communities. Taking everything that a lurker could look into and eventually become a participant of into some insular community each with their own petty drama. I think Discord alone is responsible for the majority of this message board dying over the past 10 years. 4chan shit moderation didn't help either.

>>43204559
If we wanna make a solid criticism of modern fanart as a whole (visual/audio/etc) I'd give it four negative categories
1. Counterfeit culture (produced by AI. Ai may be technically skilled sometimes, but the better it gets - the worse it is. Similar to how counterfeit currency works)

2. Acts as a means for affirming an identity in a narcissistic way (be that sexual, political or otherwise. This is bipartisan, as well.)

3. Focuses on hyper stimulation (ie - meant to appeal to you in the most grotesquely stimulating and easily consumable way possible.)

4. Does not "Communicate". (Art is supposed to ""communicate" certain "tastes". Old art is very good at this because it's sincere. Often even when it lacked in technical skill.)
>>43204538
I mean that's the thing. We could do this, we could go back to this any time.
The hurdle is that we need to abandon nu fandom and return to old fandom. We lost touch with our history. Losing touch with that, we became ahistorical. Without connection to that history, we can't build a better present, much less a better future.

We need to stop getting involved in circle jerks that are about affirming our identity or someone else's. We need to pull back from the hyper stimulation or AI generation and make stuff that's actually meaningful to us.

And above all else, *we* need to participate. That means we need to make new things, respond to new things, contribute to new things. The old fandom never just let something exist in a vacuum, they interacted with it all the time and built cool stuff from every new fan work that came into being.

We need this to be the dominant mode of the culture. Focus on creation AND participating in creative works. Make sure when participating, you're doing it from somewhere sincere.

We can have this back literally any time. Just stop feeding into the beast and simply participate and encourage others to do the same. Look at what worked in the old fandom and pick it back up.
>>43204517
>Please make a blogpost or some kind of Ponepaste article.
I might. What would you or other anons interested, want that to look like?
>Hell, I used Livejournal for pones for a year before everyone went to Tumblr for that. I'm sad I never got to go to Bronycon.
Livejournal! Holy shit thats a deep cut!!! I haven't thought about that in a long time... You could find some amazing fanworks on live journal.

Shame it's all gone. I feel for you, I never got the chance to go to bronycon either. Sad it's all gone now.

>>43204589
>literal Reddit post acting like a knowledgeable oldfag
Jesus

Internet started dying with social media like Facebook. It was already too late back then, and the societal effect and brainwashing it had on people was fucking scary to watch. People that were talking to you about the importance of personal life literally did a 180 and now advertised displaying it for everyone to see.
Discord finished it off and definitively killed old forums and niche websites.

It's over.

>>43204579
Yeah. I don't mind Discord that much, it's good for private communities and group chats. But making everything private completely kills any community. I used to lurk forums for months before deciding to join, you can't "vet" Discord servers like that. Some of the best friends I made online as a teen was from shitposting about games in 2008, and we made our own spinoff forums. Those friends normie'd out now and stopped talking, but I've never had the same experience using Discord or social media in my 30s.

>>43204589
>I might. What would you or other anons interested, want that to look like?
Honestly, just use it to sperg about whatever you like. I read some fandom history and internet culture-themed Substacks and they often are just OP blogging about their experiences online. But I think a timeline of events or some kind glossary of what's different compared to now, what sites people used then, various fanwork genres or BNFs back then would be useful. (I'm shocked I never heard about space ponies despite being deep into DeviantART/Tumblr pony fandom 15 years ago.)

>Livejournal! Holy shit thats a deep cut!!! I haven't thought about that in a long time... You could find some amazing fanworks on live journal.
Yeah, Livejournal had their own equivalent to Tumblr's porn ban a decade earlier that probably fucked over the internet. I was a late user to Livejournal (only started blogging and adding people in 2010-2011) but everyone moved to the new shiny toy Tumblr then. I think people used it for live-action/animu fandoms than ponies, but ponies were talked about.

>Shame it's all gone. I feel for you, I never got the chance to go to bronycon either. Sad it's all gone now.
I have no idea what the con scene was like in the 2010s but I had a good time attending a local brony con this year. I've seen anons say that Mare Fair was like the old days but IRL, so I'd like to go there in the future despite being poorfag.

>>43204572
Ohhhh, alright I can see your point.
It's funny, that's another way homestuck mirrors my little pony. The same thing happened for them.
>>43204563
>Never going to happen. What you want back is old internet culture and it's gone thanks to smartphones. It's not going to get any better than this, the old internet is never coming back.
I DO want old internet back. The modern net infrastructure is incredibly poisonous to our wellbeing and is part of why this revival isn't happening.

Honestly, though, this could be fixed. Suppose we can't remedy the issue with where we currently are... We can fix that by a combination of
(A) Switching to a different protocol
(B) Advocating a Luddite net movement [connecting & posting ONLY on actual computers. No smart tech.]

Point (a) if the protocol we are currently on is unsalvageable. This may be desirable even if it is salvageable, especially if we can create our own protocol and distribute it like a walled garden globally.

Point (b) should be pushed regardless of how salvageable the protocol is or if we switch. Using a technology we have to deliberately turn on and make a choice to use will increase the quality of posts, reducing people from just spewing garbage stream of consciousness style.

We may not be able to step in the same river twice, but we can at least clean it out. And if we can't clean it out, we can find a new river and take better care of it.

Reading this thread brought back memories I didn't know I still had. I was 11 in 2010, so FiM and brony fandom culture was a cornerstone of my childhood. Still so mad I never got to go to BronyCon, but I wouldn't trade the memories I made on the internet during those times for anything. I pity those who never got to experience it, but the least we can do is to tell stories so that our history lives on, even long after we are gone.

>>43204616
Dude, AI is getting more advanced every day, and all forms of communication are under attack by both it and politicians. I repeat the same mantra I have had for years now: It's only going to get worse.

>>43204589
I feel ya, back in the day I felt like the only person in the fandom that didn't contribute to it in any way, everyone did everything about ponies, not only art, merch, games, trolling, blogging, endless pony references on everything, it always felt like everyone was on it, just for the love of pony and nothing else. I don't know if that's enough of a motivator for people these days, it seems like everyone just uses pony as a platform for something else that actually motivates them (politics, money, identity, etc.), but I think that this fandom can do it again, as long as they do it for the love of pony, and nothing else

>>43204572
>Preaching values for selfish desires rather than ethical beliefs.
God that hits the nail on the head. This seems to be the only thing people are concerned with nowadays. It seems after 2016 (when people became insane because of politics AND smartphones became widespread) the internet pretty much ended. The worst thing is it's bleeding into real life now as well. No idea where this is going to end but it's definitely not going to get better.

>>43204564
Nothing wrong with the tool (AI), but rather the people who use it and what it does to them. I've seen some people pump out amazing high quality stuff, and then asked them "hey since you can do all this stuff, why don't you ever do SFW things?"

And the answer is always "Not worth the effort"
In other words, people just seek instant gratification and fail to see what you can do with it if you bother putting some effort into it.

I'll keep using it to realize my vision despite it sometimes ending up a bit flawed. I had no hope of doing anything like what it lets me before.

>>43204631
True, but this is more a result of how fast paced the internet (and also real life because of it) has become. Why spend 30 minutes writing a post when it will be buried under mountains of one-liner slop anyway? Not to mention it sucks balls to write a message longer than a couple sentences on that cancerous device, it's no wonder people stick to dumb one-liners. Same thing with pictures: why go through the trouble of making a decent SFW drawing (or even gen) when it will be buried under mountains of NSFW AI slop?

Ponies was big, so it attracted a lot of people, some genuinely talented and enthusiastic.
The show is now dead, so most of them just moved on with their lives and did other things. They had skills, they had drive, so they could actually leave and build something elsewhere.

The people staying on this board and still supporting what it's become are the dregs who can't move on. They're mostly apathetic, depressed, and lazy. They can't create anything themselves but will complain endlessly about the state of things. Generals will have retards asking where the next OP is and letting a thread die when making one takes two minutes. They can't even be bothered to do the bare minimum to keep their own spaces alive.

They're so apathetic they can't even give (You)s or a single word of encouragement to people who actually try to contribute. Post something you made? Silence. Try to start a discussion? Ignored. But post bait or drama and suddenly everyone has energy to reply. The few creators left get zero engagement while shitposters get endless attention, and then these same people wonder why nobody makes content anymore.
That, plus the demoralization tactics that have been running wild for years now.

What remains is a self-selecting group of people too beaten down, too lazy, or too addicted to the familiar misery to do anything else.

>>43204592
Yes.wav
Sometimes reddit spacing is good for actually being able to read. Do you honestly want long effort posts with no spacing at all?
>>43204575
>How, though? I know "indie" communities exist and some people (outside of the fandom) have sites on Neocities, but most online communication was broken to happen on social media, Discord, or here. It feels like if you don't already have a clique going it's pointless to try to emerge as a fanworks creator.
It can feel that way, but it really isn't. People want new stuff. It just needs to be made. If what you're making is sincere, it's more likely to get attention than not.
You probably won't become a BNF, but you'll have a good impact on the culture.
The other issue with this though is the people who get your creation need to RESPOND to it. Especially if they actually enjoy it. Whether that's commenting, reposting or building more stuff off of it.
> I used to draw pony art often from 2010-2012 and it's a culture shock trying to come back when DeviantART is overrun with AI bots and people traded longform blogging for shortform content after Tumblr banned porn, which basically destroyed askblogs.
It's really hard now, yeah. Deviantart was never "great", but it's kinda shit now. Tumblr is like an uno reverse of here. The porn bans killed the blogs and Russia bots killed the culture of participation.
It's gotten slightly better... But if you're on there in the modern day, we both know exactly the problems it has still.

You brought up neocities. That's potentially another piece in this puzzle. We may need to go towards the old decentralized form of the web. Thats probably gonna mean making our own little webrings & websites and cross posting on suitable platforms.
We should probably favor also fan run platforms, avoid the short form webspaces (tiktok, etc) and start working on reunifying the fandom with that in mind.

Those things theoretically should bring the fandom closer together and revive alot of the cultural movement broadly. My experiments of this in other niche fandom spaces paid off pretty well.

For our own board, we can start off experimenting here first. Switch from the nuculture back to the old. After some success, build from there to fix the wider fandom issues.
This will draw people in if it's done properly and become self sustaining, with natural cycles of rise-fall.

>>43204616
>(A) Switching to a different protocol
>(B) Advocating a Luddite net movement [connecting & posting ONLY on actual computers. No smart tech.]
What protocol would be use, and how would only using computers help? The same websites and behavior exist even if you opt-out of smartphones. My job requires a phone (I know) so I only use it for paying bills and calling family, but it doesn't change every other person online is a zoomer brainrotted by Tiktok and politics. I used to webmaster my own site, but kind of fell out because the lack of community involved. I think that's why most people don't bother with alternative internet spaces.

>>43204623
>it always felt like everyone was on it, just for the love of pony and nothing else. [...] it seems like everyone just uses pony as a platform for something else that actually motivates them (politics, money, identity, etc.)
That's what I loved about early brony fandom. It was a melting pot where people of different backgrounds opinions could come together just because we like the same cartoon and drawing fanart. I don't think that aspect can happen again due to political tribalism. I get sick of both trannies and chud shit constantly, I miss when few people cared.

>>43204638
I'm not wholly anti-AI but 100% agreed. It's why I gave up on art and writing for a while, it'll just get buried under attention-seeking slop.

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>>43202427
Absolutely not. I have been around since before the world wide web, and I have had exposure to many fringe cultures over the years.
>there exist a few fandoms with large numbers of - or a few high quality - fanfictions
>there exist a few fandoms with technological or social counter-culture autism
>there exist a few fandoms with super high quality artists in all genres
>there exist a few fandoms with serious real-world and social energy (conventions, imageboards,open communities, archival efforts)
>there exist a few fandoms with decades-long soul and tenacity
>there does not exist even a single fandom outside of MLP that combines all of the above. Not even close lol.

I guess you should mention the furries who at least tried, but the tiny amount of original cultural artifacts they create is pathetic and miniscule compared to MLP.

>>43204644
The thing is we need to raise our standards now that AI exists, especially for material that is wholly made with AI. I'd say every post to a Booru that is made using AI needs to be hand-approved, just like they used to on the Ur-Boorus like Danbooru. Then reject anything that is not even fixed up with a little inpainting, and anything that does not list the generation data. Just my 2cts.

>Touhou
What's so special about it? Looks like the most generic anime shit. I've seen more original things coming from Japan anyway.

>>43204655
It just has a big fan following and large fan output, but in reality, almost all of those "fans" are secondaries.

>>43204644
Could FOSS be a solution to this? Fediverse, Linux, free as in speech software? There are people working on stuff adjacent to this already, like Gemini (Not the AI) web protocol that existed a few years ago, Matrix, and other stuff.

The problem with modern social media is the underlying incentives that Big Tech and private software media has imo. Open source is community oriented.

>>43204657
Sadly, a lot of open source communities have fallen for the political brainrot as well. And it continues to fester because of cancerous social media platforms.

>>43204650
Furries aren't comparable to MLP because it's a big tent. There's fags who just want to hookup and coom, teenagers into roleplaying wolves, some media fandoms like Zootopia overlapping, but otherwise everything furries make is for them. MLP fandom is impressive because all this stuff exists because of one show, furry is a fandom based on an idea.

>>43204653
I'm personally fine with AI-assisted content (vul's music using 15.ai voices has merit), but AI shit in general needs to have their own community and websites. I'm on some "indie" art websites that blanket ban AI art entirely. I know it'll always exist and I'm fine with containment threads on here, but unless there's an overlap with human-made art, I don't want it on boorus or fansites.

>>43204655
It was one of the first fanwork driven fandoms, to the point that the crushing majority of the fandom has never actually touched an official game, most people only interact with the fan work, be it memes, animation, porn, fangames, etc.

>>43204644
>It's why I gave up on art and writing for a while, it'll just get buried under attention-seeking slop.

While that never really stopped me from being artistic, I get the sensation of feeling impotent. The best thing you can do in moments like those is to make art for yourself and no one else. Creating as a way to de-intoxicate the soul helps you to understand what's missing in your life.

>>43204657
The keyword is lack of community, and like >>43204661 said there's too much political brainrot. I don't bother with pone.social nor Twitter for that reason. I get people have their beliefs, but I don't care to hear about it.

I think a good low-pressure first step within the fandom is to encourage people to make little websites on free hosts like Neocities for their pony fanart and fics, and maybe some anons can make a webring for us to find each other. You can code HTML at your own place and update it whenever you want. I know at least one anon has their website, since I stumbled upon this one: https://anonfilly.horse/

>>43204664
>I'm personally fine with AI-assisted content (vul's music using 15.ai voices has merit), but AI shit in general needs to have their own community and websites.
Isn't that already the case for /mlp/?
Voices isn't doing well but was its own thing with 15.ai and HaySay. Fimfiction bans AI, and /chag/ is against uploading here in the first place. They have their own Neocities too.
Derpibooru moved AI to its own website. I believe that's the only one that got some backlash because many AI image guys consider themselves artists, but the move was made regardless.
Other boorus still have AI but should at least filter it off by default in the future.

>>43204664
>AI shit in general needs to have their own community and websites

Quarantine site are a must in this day and age, and I'm glad e621 did an AI-exclusive alternative so artistic cloppers like myself can peacefully jack off to hand-drawn plots.
Meanwhile, DeviantArt is a prime example of what happens with a community when there isn't even the slightest amount of standards in an art site, and that's even before AI exploded in popularity.
People love to complain about the terrible drawings some people post there, but the actual issue people rarely seems to bring is the amount of unrelated filler it has.
I'm visiting your ART site to look for ART of whatever weird fetishes I have, not a inside-joke "meme" about whatever petty drama two nobodies are having.

Blaming AI is barking up the wrong tree. It's just a tool. The slop is a symptom, not the cause. People want instant gratification and content that's easy and caters to them. Hyperstimulation, as the tripfag calls it.
It's more a problem of people no longer taking the time to appreciate art that has thought put into it and needs a bit of time to be... digested? There's probably a better word but I can't think of it right now. But be it fics or pics, the popular ones are quick porn or other immediate fulfillment with little else to it.

>>43204653
e6ai already exists. It's full of boring porn and almost nothing else. As is Tantabus.

You can make good looking creative stuff with AI, but it takes effort and imagination. Check the /aia/ thread on this board, for example. That has a higher portion of OK stuff compared to almost anywhere else but still it's like 5:1 shit to decent ratio.

>>43204620
It doesn't have to. We need to make that choice though. We make that choice by deliberately pulling the fuck back.

If people do that in a real sense, it's gonna cause a massive freakout from corporate types. It'll get even more intense if we actually switch to a decentralized web and or a new protocol.
But it'll be very, very good.
>>43204644
>What protocol would be use
That I'm not sure about. There's a couple out there that could be good...but again, we might even need to make our own.
This is something the community should come together and discuss.
If we make that choice to switch protocols, we are gonna need to fiercely gatekeep that. We can still cross post on the old protocol, but we are gonna have to make sure we keep out the bullshit from here wherever we go.
>How would only using computers help?
It would IMMEDIATELY raise the quality of posts in general (barring AI generated responses).

Using an actual computer forces you to make a choice about connecting to the web. It also forces you to make a choice about WHAT you post. Phones and smart devices are way too easy to use. You don't even need to ever think about turning them on or off. With that in mind, you can use a smart device to just post instantly, without break, everywhere. Ever take a moment to look at modern discourse online? It's all people reacting stream of consciousness.

There's more deliberate intention and thought that goes in when you're using a real computer. Especially if you have it set up in a designated spot.
>Zoomers
Ignore them. Disconnect completely from the brain rot culture. There's no other way. You have values, so stick to those. Especially in the modern world.
This WILL have a positive effect on a larger community. I know, I've experimented with this and seen good results.
>. I used to webmaster my own site, but kind of fell out because the lack of community involved. I think that's why most people don't bother with alternative internet spaces.
Pretty much...it's also just...hold on, this will need a second post.

>>43204688
The thing of it all comes back to the way it's set up now. Everything is hyper convenient & hyper stimulating. So we get alot of people who are expecting that everything else should be this way.
What this results in is this mechanism where art is replaced by "content". Content is kind of like a sludge that gets produced through the sewer pipes of the modern net. It's easily consumable, quickly produced and spiritually dead. When content outweighs art and (real) culture, you start getting materialist nihilists who think their participation ultimately doesn't matter and they're just waiting now to have the pipe shoved in their mouth.

The fact is, your web page probably had a small little number of fans around it...who never said anything to anybody because they didn't think it was worth talking about, because their participation was seen as not mattering.

It does matter. It's important.

If we make our own pages, etc, we need to construct web rings and the like and build that community. Find like minded fags and build up with them.

We can take back the culture if we actually try. Look at the way the old decentralized internet worked. Look at the modern webring revivalism functions. Etc. We have the tools available, we just need to pick them up.

>>43204701
I don't want to potentially deanon but my site did have some fans, I just fell out using it due to personal issues. (It's also sadly not a pony site, but there is pony content). I honestly love seeing personal sites with art galleries, fandom autism, blogs, or essays, etc. Even if I don't agree with it I appreciate someone is putting themselves out there. Luckily there are newbie website resources, if it's not too off-topic I can link them if anyone wants to make their own pone (or even a general personal schizoposting) site and webrings.

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>>43204701
I get where you're coming from, but I don't think it's possible to undo the changes to the internet and especially culture and users. Even 4chan is a relic of the past that would never be allowed to exist in this day and age if it hadn't been grandfathered in from a bygone era. There just aren't enough of us left to split onto a multitude of sites.

The best we can do is give more (You)'s and positive attention to any content creators. Even if they're not the best.

>>43204720
Eh, some of us do use other sites than 4chan, we just don't powerlevel about it. Just because the culture drastically changed doesn't mean we can't try to make our own "old school" spaces. It will never be the same, but it's a break away from the rest of web 3.0.

>>43204657
Could definitely be a solution. It's worth investigating.
>Gemini
Still exists!
>The problem with modern social media is the underlying incentives that Big Tech and private software media has imo. Open source is community oriented.
Agree. This is also why we should probably be supporting fansites over established web spaces. More freedom and community orientation.

We may not always love the other people off board, but they're on the ride with us and we used to get along. We can get along again.
>>43204661
When it comes to the social issues, we need to pull away from the modern political spectrum pretty much entirely.
Again, were just returning to the old way of virtue ethics. What matters is your actual character, not your identity.
>>43204671
>I think a good low-pressure first step within the fandom is to encourage people to make little websites on free hosts like Neocities for their pony fanart and fics, and maybe some anons can make a webring for us to find each other. You can code HTML at your own place and update it whenever you want. I know at least one anon has their website, since I stumbled upon this one: https://anonfilly.horse/
That's a good idea. I like it a lot.

I'll make a website too. I've uploaded various art and greens here. Might as well make a space to catalogue them.

>>43204720
I thought 4chan and imageboards are a very obvious relic from another era. Just looking at the format itself being very desktop oriented and early Web 2.0 looking. It's not closed down walled garden, there's not an algorithm, etc. It's not great but at least it's not have those curated stuff.

>>43204727
>I'll make a website too. I've uploaded various art and greens here. Might as well make a space to catalogue them.
I'd love to see it when you're done. A general etiquette among the "small web" or "indie web" is people leave an email, PGP key, and guestbook for contact. I've had good quality-over-quantity engagement via that.

>>43204720
Anon, in the span of one thread, we've managed to maybe have the most productive and useful conversation we have had in years. Somehow without even going into the typical shit flinging. We already have had people giving constructive help on making webrings, etc.

I think we can do it. We can make something better. It won't be the same river, but it doesn't have to be. We can build a better world for us.

I've been here long enough to know we can do it. We atleast have to try, don't we?
>Pic
Love it

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>>43204739
Just don't go making another dead altchan with bitter cunts who try to raid /mlp/ for users and I'm A-OK with whatever. I'll settle for observing and working on my arts while doing my best to not have my soul crushed by work.

>>43204745
The problem with NHNB is they thought they could bring back the old culture by just banning anything they didn't like. It doesn't work like that. It creates an oppressive atmosphere which is the LEAST thing a person using 4chan wants.

>>43204739
>We already have had people giving constructive help on making webrings, etc.
If there's one thing I hope people get out of this thread, it's that. I tend to just lurk or post drawfag requests but this was probably the most productive conversation I've had online in awhile. I'll go ahead and dump some webring resources if anyone wants to pick it up.
https://www.brisray.com/web/onionring.htm
https://www.brisray.com/web/webri-ng.htm
https://www.brisray.com/web/webringu.htm
One site requires an account to make one, but the other two are javascripts you can just plug-and-play. If anyone wants more website stuff just give me a (you).

>>43204745
Is that your art? it's very nice.

>whole thread
IMHO, reliance on someone else's nostalgia is deadly for the future of fandom and shouldn't be encouraged.

t. came here in '23

>>43204739
>Anon, in the span of one thread, we've managed to maybe have the most productive and useful conversation we have had in years.
>productive
Sorry to be a cunt but nothing was produced.

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>>43204753
No, I'm not KP-Shadowsquirrel. Tho I do love his art. Simple but adorable.
I'm but a greensmith and a slopmancer.

>>43204754
I wouldn't say it's nostalgia, the main point is, to return to what many anons like me (and hopefully you too) came to this fandom for, the love of pony, unclouded by anything else, not just to reminisce about the good times I was barely part of, to create stuff like people did back in the day, just for fun and because you like ponies

>>43204754
Then where do you see the future of this fandom? On Xitter?

>>43204759
Then how can we bronies make something from the thread? I can try and help.

>>43204759
Productive as in we're having actual dialogue and discussing possible solutions. No need to be pedantic.

>>43204745
Will do. I don't wanna make another altchan. We have so many. I just want to see our culture revived back into a participatory one.
>working on my arts while doing my best to not have my soul crushed by work.
Hey, that's still participating. That's exactly the kind of effort we need.
>>43204735
Will do. I'll start working on it today/tonight.
I'll probably take a break from the board for a while as such. I'll also revisit In the meantime, I suggest the community keep triangulating together on building web pages & web ring.
>>43204605
>Discord
I felt that.
IRC beats discord for chat based community, honestly speaking. It's more open and feels less attention grabbing to use. So an IRC is less likely to siphon off a larger culture until its dead, unlike a discord chat.
>Honestly, just use it to sperg about whatever you like. I read some fandom history and internet culture-themed Substacks and they often are just OP blogging about their experiences online.
Noted...guess this is gonna be one of my new community projects for the fandom.
>But I think a timeline of events or some kind glossary of what's different compared to now, what sites people used then, various fanwork genres or BNFs back then would be useful. (I'm shocked I never heard about space ponies despite being deep into DeviantART/Tumblr pony fandom 15 years ago.)
Oh that sounds fun. Yeah, I'll do that. Might take a long time though. We should triangulate with the LMT thread on this.

Space pony community was HUGE. SGAP was the face for it...but when it withered, it withered fast.

The zine for the community was Mines Got Rocks in It. Again, only partially preserved.

The old ocs that were connected and became popular through the artists that started the Space Pony Community;

>Null
>40 winks
>Sunny side up
>Facey

You can also throw star hopper & galaxy in here... But galaxy is technically a G1 pony that became repurposed as an OC.


Anyway...that's all to say, I don't blame you. Alot of stuff got lost, very quickly! And when you try to talk about it now, for a long time the response has been just overwhelming negativity.

There's a lot of art for this subset of the fandom that's being lost to time. Which means even older art it's interacting with is also getting vanished.
>Yeah, Livejournal had their own equivalent to Tumblr's porn ban a decade earlier that probably fucked over the internet. I was a late user to Livejournal (only started blogging and adding people in 2010-2011) but everyone moved to the new shiny toy Tumblr then. I think people used it for live-action/animu fandoms than ponies, but ponies were talked about.
Uhh there used to be AFA, one area for FIM era fanfics in particular.
It was kind of weird because they had a lot of older gen fans. There wasn't a "tension" with them, but there was definitely a kind of weirdness from the shift.
(CONT)

>>43204771
>to return to what many anons like me (and hopefully you too) came to this fandom for
Honestly I came here for tons of already cooked content, not because of (you) all.
>create stuff like people did back in the day, just for fun and because you like ponies
I create all content what I want with AI, and it satisfies all my needs in creation. Simultaneously when I've found CharacterAI, I bought graphic tablet and tried to learn drawing. Dropped it after few weeks, because it's very hard and long to learn.
>>43204772
I see the future of fandom in small island where people enjoy with ponies without restrictions (think about mlpol, but with bigger scale). Plus I see pony future in AI (but advancement of AI, not saying about robots, is already stalling because we haven't invented anything fundamental NEW since the 1970s, except computers).

>>43204777
Problem is we've already had threads about the old internet, old forums, Neocities, and such. They're good for a nostalgia hit and feeling like rebels against nu-internet, but once the threads are gone nothing remains and we just return to normal.
I'm a cunt, but patting ourselves on the back as idea guys who do nothing won't accomplish anything.
There was talk about Neocities and other alternatives. They can be a good starting point, we just need to define what we'd use them for and what we'd actually do with them.
Generals using them to stock art, greens, and such could be cool, but you need people invested enough to maintain them.
Hard ask when 90% of them don't even maintain their OP links.
Then you have to make sure the code is available so someone else can take the torch when the guy inevitably fucks off.

Or why not launch a thread after this one where we can accept offers from anons to do shit like that technically if they bring an idea and propose to maintain it themselves?

Again, I was being a cunt but not a troll. If we just keep jerking off and doing nothing, this becomes another nothingburger nostalgia circlejerk thread.

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>>43204643
>Those things theoretically should bring the fandom closer together and revive alot of the cultural movement broadly. My experiments of this in other niche fandom spaces paid off pretty well.

While I don't doubt the theoretical effectiveness of your proposals, I think there's a missing piece to the puzzle if we try to put it in practice, which is out of our control: Official pony content worth watching.

The brony fandom did not form out of thin air, Friendship is Magic was the glue holding it together.
The more the show changed over the years, the more opinions on it diverged, and the more divided people became on the direction the series was taking, the less stable the community became. This eventually lead to the brony empire collapsing and becoming multiple nation-states at throats with each other. This problem is not even exclusive to bronies, this type of problem is present in most communities made around fictional works with drastic changes over their development (Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft, Fortnite, Game of Thrones) and franchises with vastly different continuations (Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Star Wars, Dr. Who)

When you analyze artistic productions and the communities formed around them, you notice several patterns they share with religions and nations:
If people have a hard time connecting around a core aspect of their culture, cracks begin to form. If nothing is done to amend the main problem at hand, the structure collapses and they start fighting each other out of desperation. To all of this, add the fact that fiction tends to attract highly autistic individuals (well known for having difficulty accepting change) and total chaos is created from attaching wing assets to a character in Adobe Flash.

based on their output over the past ten years, not only what Hasbro has in store for us will be awful, but it will divide opinions on G4 and the franchise even further.

>>43204788
>I come here to leech
>Loves AI
>/mlpol/ good
Is this post bait?

>>43204828
I don't think so. Always bet on indian.

>>43204466
For me, discovering ponies awakened an insatiable need to create that I really can't explain. It drove me to make an effort in a way that I couldn't rightly explain. I'm assuming the huge burst of creativity that happened was because I wasn't the only one who felt that. The sad thing is I burnt out and the motivation slipped through my fingers. I even became distant from the fandom, even though I never truly let go of my connection to pony. It's only in the last 2 years that I started feeling the call to come back like a siren's lure bringing me home. I've been trying to engage more and not just consoom, and rather than feeling grim over the diminishment of the fandom, I feel happy that something soulful still remains after all this time.

Like that small song that got posted during marecon just melted my heart. How can I feel down when the embers are so warm? Nostalgia doesn't even play a part of it, there's stuff in the here and now that's special, pure and good. Real love for pone that makes me want to stick around.

>>43204828
It's a hilarious antithesis.

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>>43204559
>We just have to go back to the old participatory culture
now i gotta ask, how did paddlepop thread make you feel anon? would you have considered that participatory on the same level as back then or was there something missing to it?

Wow, this thread actually went places!

>>43204688
>new protocol
That's not going to work. If someone has to install something to access your site, you've already lost most of the (already half dead) fandom.

>>43204638
>Why spend 30 minutes writing a post when it will be buried under mountains of one-liner slop anyway?
You're not going to like hearing this, but this has always been the status quo. Most art before AI was buried under a mountain of other more popular art. Most amateur artists give up, and there's no shame in that. But the artists that did well? They fought through it, until people realized that their stuff was worth digging for.

>>43204790
Yeah, that's kind of a big one. Hasbro can't be relied on to create anything good. And without something new to focus around, the fandom will inevitably drift apart. Anything that's clearly related and gets big will get C&D'd into oblivion. Maybe some clever AU could get around that, but every step toward legally safe/distinct is a step away from the thing that currently holds the fandom together. There would be a hard balance to strike.

>>43205453
nta but I will say, that thread felt like the old threads, yes. It felt like old 4chan threads in general, where someone just makes a stupid meme or template and it takes off for a while
But that thread is also the exception that proves the rule, because we're still talking about it even now. Back then it would barely be memorable, as there would be tons of threads just like it

>>43204828
No he's just zoomfag cancer. See >>43204754

>>43202427
No, not really.

>>43204589
bump for consolidating info into blogpost(s)

>>43205453
This thread was fantastic and I wish it was more common

>>43206710
Nothing is going to change for the better and things are only going to get worse.

Is this thread going to do something or it's just metafaggotry?

Are we supposed to just go to make more fan works? >>43206723

>>43206841
Sure. Just don't think it will bring back the old days. The old days are gone as long as the old internet isn't coming back, and it never is.

>>43206378

>>43206841
Creating fanworks is what keeps fandom alive because OC is what fandom revolves around. But you can't have "old" fandom back because the way the internet works has fundamentally changed and the concept of fandom solidarity has completely eroded. The main platform of communication and fanart sharing on the internet right now is twitter, which is just like 4chan except no anonymity and there's one board and it's /b/.

And to be fair there was a time when /b/ even had a kind of fandom, but it was effectively a parasocial relationship with a bunch of internet strangers who only got together to be as edgy, and this just created a 50/50 split of people who were neurotic purity testers who still think 4chan is a secret club of people who think exactly like they do or evil invaders who deserve real life death, or people who treat is as an excuse to shitpost and create drama for their own amusement. This is, effectively, what any fandom becomes as soon as it becomes big these days, and so all the people who'd make OC or start a convention or anything like that realise this and go "I'm not a part of the fandom, I'm just going to enjoy the original thing" and never do anything big or ambitious that elevates it to what HS or Bronies were fandom wise.

>>43207776
>The main platform of communication and fanart sharing on the internet right now is twitter
Well that explains why everything is terrible now

>>43202427
>I would say the Vocaloid/Touhou communities
I was just thinking Touhou as a media franchise -- people like it for broadly the same reasons as they like MLP -- but the actual fan communities are pretty different. Not to mention that, outside of Japan, 2hu has a fraction of the influence it once had and is much smaller than even MLP is nowadays.
Also like >>43202572 says real "fandoms" a la Trekkies or whatever the Dr. Who people call themselves don't really form anymore, not just because of the modern content treadmill but also because newer IPs don't have the deep reservoir of older content needed to sustain a fandom. Undertale/Deltarune might be the most recent example of what you might still call a "fandom". TADC might also be included, but it's hard to tell if there's fan engagement at large or if it's 99% children consuming the same dozen fan artists for 30 minutes whenever a new episode comes out.

>>43204753
Thanks for sharing that resource. I'm feeling too crappy at the moment to read through everything in detail, but it's good to hear other people are thinking about other ways for the fandom to connect. I'm not well versed in website admin stuff, and was hoping some resource for doing it in a less centralized way was out there. Bumping so more can stumble across this thread.

>>43204508
looks like there's a copy of bronibooru here: https://iwiftp.yerf.org/Pony/Art/Fan-made/Image%20archives/bronibooru.com/

>>43208986
There's actually a bunch of stuff on there that isn't on Derpi (and thus also not on the alt boorus). Not much stuff that someone on /mlp/ would like though.

>>43206718
>Nothing is going to change for the better and things are only going to get worse.
Grim because that's true nowadays.

>>43209022
World spiritually ended in 2012 after all, just as it was predicted.

>>43208395
I can provide more website resource stuff if anyone wants it. Those were just webrings, but I have sites with info about coding and general resources.
https://landchad.net/
https://scumsuck.com/documentation
https://kalechips.net/stuff/hosting
https://sadgrl.online/resources/
https://eggramen.neocities.org/code/css_testpages
The most accessible free static host site host is Neocities, but there's some alternatives. If you want a paid host that covers more advanced stuff, I've read nothing but good things about NearlyFreeSpeech. This one also looks promising: https://web1.0hosting.net/

>>43208993
Why not transfer it to Derpi or the alt boorus? Even if /mlp/ wouldn't like it, it's still content to archive.

>>43209270
>Why not transfer it to Derpi or the alt boorus?
I'm not going to look through thousands of images to see what is uploaded and not and tag them. If you want them on Derpi or somewhere else do it yourself.

>>43209282
Actually, maybe it can easily be automated since it comes from a booru after all. I'll ask in the alt booru thread.

>>43208986
Am I crazy or is ponibooru also archived there? Is it actually the case that nothing has been lost? They're even saving Derpibooru, Twibooru, Tantabus, etc etc etc?
>>43209293
I assume /fast/ or /pts/ or someone knows about this? It's just crazy to me that the oldfag hasn't heard of some massive pony media storage that presumably has things he thinks are lost. What's going on here anon? Tell me!

>>43209743
The guy is called Rome Silvanus, an actual furfag boomer that saves literally anything the fandom shits out (and more). He used to have everything (including official stuff and the leaks) available on the clearnet, until Sethisto like a true rat snitched on him to Hasbro and he had to put the official stuff on a Tor hidden service (you can find the link for that in /fast/).

Anyway, Ponybooru was never lost, they released torrents after their shutdown (I have the unrated one on one of my HDDs that I used to seed for many years). Unless you're talking about Pbooru? Not sure what happened to that one exactly, or whether it got imported into other alternative boorus.

>>43204417 (and all the other ones)
I'm not an oldfag, but I'm interested in fandom history. There are some things I do not agree with/have questions about, maybe other anons will find this interesting too.
>The music scene was a lot different in the old fandom
From both personal experience and looking over the Brony Musician Directory (fansite that has been present since 2010, note their article "The Origins of Brony Music"), my impression has been that the fandom has always had an incredible variety of genres, from rap and dubstep to orchestral and rock. In that sense, the diversity has only grown.
>That's pretty much all gone
As you've said yourself, there's a bit of a revival going on. Algoatall is the first name that pops into mind, though he admittedly hasn't uploaded anything on YT for close to a year.
>"space pony" community
I searched as many archives as I could, yet I have not find any mention of this. Far as I can tell, space pony is just an album by SGAP.
With that said, I have heard the term sgap-like before.
>one zine
Name?
>humanisations
As far as I've seen, there wasn't any design that "caught on" and became copied by everyone, like when someone drew Littlepip as being grey with a brown mane and everyone agreed that's what she looked like. From that perspective, all that's changed is how depicting the mane six as being a part of some ethnic/sexual minority became more prevalent.
>Sad-content
Examples? I more or less get what you mean, but all I can think of right now is that one "mlp sad" video that has over 100 million views on YT kek
Either way, though they're not as prevalent, these things are still produced. Two recent-ish examples in video form come to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRIMVnh4tkw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L3E-5pt2cU
>the whole thing with IZ
Never heard of that, sounds intriguing, archives didn't help. Could you tell more?
>Board OCs
I would say board OCs don't last long in general, unless they become strongly associated with a thread or project (e.g. Bundle Joy and the pregnancy general, Silly Stuffing and BtS, the Marecon mascots...)
With Crack Pone specifically, her popularity lasted a month (judging by the archives), fairly decent by all accounts.
>we were able to produce massive amounts of stuff
We still do? As of now, there's at least three threads dedicated solely to producing new art/content (draw thread, /create/, /bale/), two collaboratory project threads (BtS and the Antithology), not to mention any one-off thread that may pop up.
>Early grimdark
From what I've seen, grimdark had a far broader scope than how it is in use now (e.g. Fo:E is labeled as "Grimdark" on EqD, you can find posts on archives referring to it as such). This meaning of grimdark is still retained on the boorus and some fanfic groups. In that sense, Crookedtrees and co. made grimdark centered on a very specific genre while making other forms of it be put to the side or go under different names (dark, serious, etc.)

>>43204508
>Around later 2014...
All the most (in)famous examples I can think of (Sweet Apple Massacre, Cupcakes, etc.) predate /mlp/.
>There were a lot more fanfiction websites
As I've seen, fanfiction used to be primarily hosted on Google Docs and (for some genres, mainly greentexts) pastebin, both of those would cause issues down the line due to removal. Neither of those count as fansites.
In fact, I cannot think of a single MLP fanfic site that is gone. Some have been dead/unactive for years (PFV, mlpfictions, etc.), but you can still access and browse them normally.
Hell, there's arguably more today. Chinks created fimtale around 2018 (by the looks of it, it is still very lively), ponepaste is from 2020, foalfetch had its 2 year anniversary recently, etc.
>More boorus
This is objectively false. Before Derpi, there were only 2 (the ones you mentioned). When ponybooru died, the number of boorus that existed at the same time rose to 5 at most (Derpi, bronibooru., pbooru, Fluffybooru, Octabooru). As of now, we have at least 8 boorus (Derpi, Mane, Poner, Pony, Twi, Foal, Lyra, >Tantabus), with an 9th one in the works (Sunbooru). The peak was around 2020 with 10 boorus active (RIP Rainbooru)
>Askblogs
Those were inseparable from Tumblr. When that site fully went to shit, so did the blogs.
More conventional genres of interactive storytelling (like CYOAs and roleplays) are still well and alive.
>Dudebro
On the converse, you can find many articles (some as early as 2011) which label Bronies as being part of the New Sincerity movement, I've met and seen oldfags who ascribe to it too. I've searched through random oooold archives (of pre-/mlp/ days), neither term comes up.
This is not to mention that the "dudebro" stereotype is still very present in the wider fandom when talking about /mlp/, they just word it differently (shit like "4chan nazi bigots did this and that")
>Love & tolerate
As far as the traditional narrative goes, it was just a tactic/catchphrase used by /b/ronies to ward off trolling, arguably ironic in meaning. It was only later that Ponychan and etc. reinterpreted it as some great "virtue" that all fans should follow.
>>43204589
>We need to stop getting involved in circle jerks
It's funny, if you look at very early /mlp/ posts, you'll see that both /co/lts and Ponychanners were surprisingly opposed to /mlp/ being a board, as both considered themselves superior to the others and did not want to have any interactions with them.
>And above all else...
We do, though? Look at Snow Ponies, look at projects like the Antithology, look at the rise of Mare Schizophrenia/Cytube culture and how it has impacted the board. Numget is the perfect example. Some anon draws Lyra in a funny way on an aggie, it gets adopted as an emote on /mlp/con in 2022, now Numget has close to 500 draws and variants of her on the boorus (I can tell you confidently that there are many more), constantly gets new ones, there are multiple games about and plushies of her.

Calling 4channers "dudebros" seems disingenuous to me.

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What I'm gathering from all this is that claims that something has been lost are exaggerated and we're still doing well. We have a ton of talented people still dedicated to pony, both preservation and in creating new content and organising events, game sessions, collabs, etc.

There are a bunch of problems, mostly with peoples attitudes and perceptions.
>>43204640
Late but here's a (you) for your contribution to the discussion. They're good points although I think you'll realise that not everyone here is apathetic, depressed, lazy, etc. While I've seen some of that myself I also see some anons making an effort.
>demoralization tactics
We've even got a bit of that in this thread!

>>43204790
>The more the show changed over the years, the more opinions on it diverged, and the more divided people became on the direction the series was taking
I think about that sometimes. It might be the one thing that bothers me most, though I've mostly come to accept it.

>>43204507
I would say there are three main pony branches:
-The /mlp/ bronies.
-The MLP redditors.
-The TikTok e-girls.

The first compose adults and boys who got into the ride in the early 2010's with strong feelings of nostalgia towards the golden age of the fandom, either because of the show's quality at the time and/or the general attitude people used to have.
The second are similar to the first but only when it comes to shared experiences, they're less critical about how the show changed over the years but they still have knowledge on the staff changes happening. Due to troll's remorse, many of they seem to have bones to pick with /mlp/ oldfags as a way to "clean" their consciousness.
The third are what used to be the main demographic, zoomer girls who grew up and are more concerned with surface-level fandom culture than understanding the show they once watched and the history behind it. They likely have no idea of who any of the artist or writers are. They would rather waste time drawing Pinkie as fat black woman supporting ANTIFA than doing even the slightest research on the series's production.

>>43211595
You're mostly right except you forgot to add that the TikTok girls would draw the ponies in that dumb infection AU.

>>43211679
I thought it was implied by who I was replying to, but yeah.

>>43209060
That's what I've been thinking ever since it ended. I always felt 2012 was the last great year of the internet, 2013 and 2014 still had some fragments of those glory days but you could tell we were entering a new paradigm. And once 2015 started, there was no going back.

>>43211887
I'm tired of the old glory days, it's time to move on anon. You said it yourself, there's no going back. We're here now and we've got what we've got, which is a LOT more than I could have asked for after so many years. I've been making new good memories in relation to pony comparable to what I experienced in 2012. I've encountered folks new to the fandom who aren't total fags as well as older fans who have the same appreciation as I do. From now on I'm looking forward.

>>43211971
>We're here now
Yeah and "the now" fucking blows, and it's only gonna get worse.

>>43211987
Do what you can do in the present cause the past won't perfectly come back

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>>43211987
Life can be rough, the world can be crazy, messed up stuff is happening, but I'm sticking with my ponybros. I'm scared about the future too anon, but not the future of the fandom. At least not yet.

>>43204643
"Reddit spacing" is a newfag term anyways. Back when you (and I) joined this fandom, Reddit didn't require double newlines.

My Little Pony used to be great once upon a time. We didn't scare as easy, waged wars on pony haters and not other fans. What does pony have, harmony? MHA has harmony. Hazbin Hotel has freedom. We have the number one greatest amount of bronies in prison. Bronies are no longer the greatest fandom in the world.

Hi there anons, lurker here. Just took the past 30 minutes or so to read a lot of this thread and wanted to give my thoughts

I got introduced to MLP content as a whole some time in 2013, more likely 2014, through online roleplays. At the time I hated MLP and swore never to look into it, out of fear that I'd become something I wasn't. I thought it was some pansy shit. The crazy thing is, I was using Equestria as a backdrop for what I was up to. But I still despised it so much and was embarrassed to admit that I wanted so badly to look into it.
I come back around to the topic of MLP in 2023. It's a ghost town now, so I felt better about looking into it. So I watch the whole series and ended up adoring every second. And now here I am, watching remnants of an old guard recount their memories and newfags begging oldfags to 'flutter on'. I'm looking through these old stories from Fimfiction (some 'Becoming Fluttershy' was one that I read most of recently) and I found a lot of unique beauty in it. Before this, I stuck my head in the dirt and never looked out.

In truth, we may never have the 'old internet' back. Time marches forward, and the sands of time will inevitably bury all of this no matter how loud bronies become. We live in a very different climate compared to 15 years ago (can you believe it's been that long?) as we all scroll to the next trendy topic not even a month after it becomes popular.
Despite this, I'd say UNDERTALE and DELTARUNE are the closest thing current internet has to FIM-level fandom with the amount of content that gets churned out on a yearly basis. Compared to FIM, there are no conventions. There's no collaborative writing projects. No request threads. Nothing like that. The only real similarity is the way that they exchange memes and art, and in truth that's all you end up getting. Instead, most UT/DR fandomites are driven to make their own fangame; writing a story is simply not enough. The stakes are a lot larger there with all of the effort that goes into making a game in the first place.

In my experience, I think the biggest problem with 'modern internet' nowadays is seclusion- something I recognize as a holdover from the pandemic. We all want to be in our own groups and do our own thing. We're one-upping ourselves in secret, fighting for the hearts of our peers. We all want to be at the top so that we feel like we own ourselves in a world that wants us to own nothing.
To that end, it's hard to go back to the old internet when we, quite literally, no longer exit our own house of leaves. How can we? The world around us is struggling to hold itself together as-is. We're chewing out our fingernails trying to contain our anxiety.

Overall, I'm happy that some of you are still kicking, and I wish there would be something as universal as MLP once was so that I could feel what it might have been like. But unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

>>43212091
Funny enough, the issue is both seclusion and over inclusion, for lack of a better word. Either groups are in their hidden corner and not really engaging in a greater community, or there is no real greater community and all the fans are the new-age "fans" of everything. People aren't as loyal and will claim to be into stuff just to add it to their collection of media they've consumed. The amount of times people have tried to talk ponies with me yet the second I ask them to tell me the name of a pony they struggle to even call Sweetie Belle anything but "Rarity's sister." They like to not feel like they miss out on something so they jump between every interest they can like a literal infant. I've argued that the modern internet hasn't had fandoms in years and most people who experienced back then have agreed. This board has stagnated compared to how things used to be but having lived through sitting in a fandom and suddenly realizing I was the only one left, this place is still very alive. There is still a core of love for ponies and people who couldn't imagine moving on to something else. It's hard to not feel demoralized from how lifeless it can feel when amazing things aren't being created as quickly or things end up feeling like routine reposts of the same jokes, or even the people in the other "parts of the community" that are just furries with furry drama or larping normies using pony as a skinsuit aesthetic. Despite that demoralization there is still hope and a soul that lives in the occasional thread or in conversations with anons that makes you forget that things have changed so much. I wish the internet was a space for fandoms or those using it acted and felt the way about things as they once did, but that can only be found in those who remember it. Maybe in the future there could be a way for people to learn why it's bad now and it will naturally move into a direction that is equally as good, though still different, from what we remember. I don't see it happening, but it can only be done by living it and showing what we could have: fun cons, cute art, genuine love for something that isn't about ourselves.

>>43212091
>At the time I hated MLP and swore never to look into it
It is kind of funny how what you hate becomes what you love. Though I regret getting tied into furshit which I had a justified hate for at the time that I still feel to this day. The furfag fandom as a whole socially is insufferable, culturally is Balkanized, and artwork wise nothing is appealing, it’s all porn, it is solely meant for porn, and that’s how I feel about it. at a young age.
Anyway I used to always hide MLP related content on imageboorus when searching furfag horse porn, but nowadays I don’t. Sexually I’m exhausted I guess after 7+ years of coom.
I first started lurking this board seriously around ~2020-2021 judging by my posts on desu, I can’t believe it’s been 6 years already, I only watched the show in full around 2025, and since then I’ve made some good friends, tried making my own content, and enjoyed one or two anniversary streams (along with /mlp/con and marecon)
I do like how many people show up to both online cons, it’s very comfy and I liked hosting a panel for marecon to the point I want to do my first one for /mlp/con too. There’s unfortunately nothing nowadays that compares to logging into cytube and having passionate panelists run entertaining shit that took at least a couple of hours to make.
I’m just happy we have people participating and making stuff, we could’ve just easily fizzled out like anything else, but pastel horses end up eternal across cultures and time.
>In my experience, I think the biggest problem with 'modern internet' nowadays is seclusion
I’d argue that seclusion is a side effect of the internet being bloated to the point that everything is now a rush to the bottom to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Covid pretty much was just the final flood of normalizing heavy internet use, the majority of people in 2012 didn’t mindlessly spend hours consuming content online,
>cont.

>cont.
and now that social media hit terminal enshittification a couple of years ago (the release of TikTok as a whole and the trend of “optimized” short form content meant to annoyingly grab and strangle your attention), the majority of internet users actively refuse to interact with others or anything else if it doesn’t provide them instant gratification of some kind. For example as the earlier anon at >>43210422 said about Askblogs, those required lots of delayed gratification, along with accepting that you didn’t always get what you wanted and sometimes had to seek or curate it yourself. Algorithms aggressively erode a person’s will to curate their own content, to the point that they’re fine with being spoonfed whatever they’re familiar with, always trying to scroll again and again to see if they get anything that’ll make them good anymore, instead of stopping and thinking about why they like what they do, what they should do to support the content, etc. Most “social media” trends are very on the surface, and will never mirror organic internet memes which had way more depth along with not being the result of advertisements, corporate interests, or trying to influence what people do.
The reason why we can’t have the natural curiosity or “Wild West” culture of the internet is because almost everyone’s been systematically funneled into a walled off ecosystem because of their own ignorance and will for convenience, where their attention is actively manipulated for both influence (buy x, do x, think x) from advertisers, and profit from data brokerage (statistics, advertising models, etc). Because of this, this is why everything feels “secluded” and dead. People are actively fighting to compete for attention for their content, nobody is satisfied with just posting something and having curious people stumble on it and ask questions. It’s all drowned out by advertisers and social media “algorithms” instead of self-curation and random discovery. This will only worsen as people’s first exposure to the internet is merely through closed off “social media” that farms them for attention and outrage while manipulating how they behave and think to a near personal level.

I blane the current centralized internet landscape. In short, Discord killed forums. Short form content got people dopamine addicted. The immediate feedback loop people get indictrinated into is relentless.

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>>43212125
If the 2010s were the last crusades of the wild internet and the 2020s are about the total corporatization and possibly governmentalization of it, I wonder if the 2030s will be something like an awkward middleground between people angry enough to fight for their rights to a decentralized internet and corporations attempting complete and utter control, or if we're all just cooked by then? I hope not.

>>43212131 >>43212134 >>43212136
Eugh. Modern internet is so acidic, isn't it? Critical thought, curiosity, and even basic companionship is so important and we're losing grasp of all of that disturbingly quick. I think you can still find embers of the 'old internet' here and there if you look hard enough, but it's such a shame that a lot of it consists of groomers and religious sycophants now. Maybe that was true way back when due to the lack of restrictions, but even with the idea of restraints on the horizon I feel like we're losing so much.

Here, anons. Have a Flutter I drew a few days ago to help you through these trying times. I'm gonna go rewatch FIM now, since I've got not much better to do in my life at this time.

>>43212150
Religious sycophants is oddly specific. That's just american normies.

>>43212177
There's also a bunch of retards who turn to religion in a misguided attempt to escape the current culture war. Religion isn't the answer, the real change needs to come from within, not dictated by a thousand years old book.

>>43212054
>Bronies are no longer the greatest fandom in the world.

Considering how any big fandoms acts this days, I'm glad bronies became irrelevant after 2014. If things are already bleak with our lower numbers, I can't imagine how awful it would get if we were the main target of AI content farms and virtue signaling.

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I'm not sure how related this is to the main topic, but I sometimes re-watching very specific pony videos from the early 2010's makes me weirdly angry. It doesn't have to do with the specific content of the videos, but just the general idea of what was lost, like if they've taken something away from me and I want the culprit to pay for their crimes.

>>43212834
That sounds genuinely unhinged.

>>43212125
I think you might be talking about people like me, to be honest. I like ponies more for the fan works than the show itself, but the show is decent too because of the art style and the writing style being witty and stuff, but on it's own it's like "Cool, I liked that" but it doesn't really stick with me that way. And I found it interesting when somebody called it "Virtue ethics" thematically. The pony fandom goes so deep and so many directions so even a few years in of being a fan, I've only scratched part of the iceberg. I jump between fandoms really fast and I should probably curb that because I don't have enough time to do that. I didn't know it was common though for so many fans to be like that these days.

>>43212134
The internet's changes I think is metaphorically similar to is the transition from the Wild West to gilded age Company Towns.

>>43212834
You feel it too, don't you? I'm gonna make them give back our past.

>>43212988
Sup Brandon.

>>43212150
Thanks for the Fluttershy anon. Lurk less.

Time to post old forums you've randomly stumbled across
https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/
This one's got a section with images. Maybe there's some old art in there that's been lost for ages.

This entire thread summed up in one video:
https://nitter.net/Jargon_Scott/status/1807112259652538390

>>43214976
explode Jargon Scott with rocks

>>43214995
Genuinely, I'd like to hear what was so offensive about that video that you needed to respond so butthurt. I literally cannot see a single thing in it that isn't carried by /mlp/ at large.

>>43212131
>Covid pretty much was just the final flood of normalizing heavy internet use
This could mean that the Skinner-box-tier status quo will eventually dissipate as people wise up and seek something more meaningful. The things that interested me when I started using the net aren't the same as what I look for now. I imagine I'm not the only one.

>>43204671
People should also consider mirroring good content they find, so these things don't just disappear when someone decides to nuke their site.

>>43215196
>People should also consider mirroring good content they find
It's not that easy. These people hide behind (((copyright laws))) to get content hosts to fall in line. I assure you if you'd make some site where you mirror stuff that people deleted your site would be taken offline in a couple of months. Why the hell do you think Twibooru operates the way it does in the first place?

Do not underestimate the levels of pettiness furfags go to to get their art "deleted from the internet forever!!"

>>43215142
Oh the video is fine, I just don't like Jargon

>>43202427
No

>>43215325
You can't rescue art if the owner is nuts. But I doubt everyone who leaves is like that. Lots probably just hit delete and then disappear. Or they just stop paying for hosting, and the site gets auto deleted. Though Neocities doesn't seem to have a policy for deleting inactive sites, so that's less of an issue there.

>>43215517
>You can't rescue art if the owner is nuts.
Twibooru is doing exactly that, so I disagree.

>>43215667
Also, as a followup to this: if you want to truly save art, upload it to either Twibooru or Ponerpics (they import from each other). LOTS of art does not get uploaded to Derpibooru (basically, ANY art where the artist has said "do not distribute" on their profile page will never even be uploaded to Derpibooru). If you want history to be saved, go scour sites like Deviantart or Twitter (or even Pinterest if you can't find the original) and download everything, especially if the artist has some snowflake "DO NOT STEAL" message on their page.

>>43215667
I wouldn't go that far. Making things a little annoying to take down maybe. But fully ignoring angry artists is just begging for legal trouble. But eh, you do you.

>>43215517
Neocities users can choose to delete their sites or submit their sites not to be archived on wayback, but that doesn't stop anyone from saving websites locally. But most sites I see don't go that far. I honestly don't know any fandom people who predominately self-host their fandom content.

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Nowadays? I don't think so. Just take a look to modern popular internet fandoms like TADC or Bluey.

>>43216193
>But fully ignoring angry artists is just begging for legal trouble.
Skill issue. It's no problem if you're outside the jurisdiction of the DMCA.

>>43216377
What about those? Filled with the typical woke nonsense, I suppose?

>>43202427
Can't think of any modern ones, though some older ones do pop into mind, mostly gaming communities

>>43218183
I didn't consider gaming communities. I feel like those are different most of the time, but I do really love how some still have older forums and habits that make me feel like it's 2009. I also occasionally run into a website for old flash game animators that they still update, seeing them not change the layout or keeping things like the guestbook really warms my heart. That is just nostalgia and can't come back like that but there is something really pure about seeing something like that. What do you think could be a modern equivalent of that sort of soulful creation? With how the internet works now I can't think of anything that can really represent that type of passion and connection

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>>43217026
Not really. TADC fandom is really popular, Bluey keeps the "it's not a children show" aura, there's a lot of fan works but there's an obvious lack of soul and dedication compared to the pony fandom over a decade ago.

>>43218321
>there's a lot of fan works but there's an obvious lack of soul and dedication compared to the pony fandom over a decade ago.

Like a wise guy once said:
"Nerd communities devastated by HRT like black neighborhoods by crack in the 80s."

>>43212988
If I ever get the chance to make Hasbro pay for what they've done to FiM, I definitely will.

>>43218872
A pretty apt comparison. And guess who was behind both of them?

>>43209293
I swear this has been discussed before. I don't know anything about what they do over in that thread, but I assume many duplicates can be quickly identified by using phash (mentioned here: https://desuarchive.org/mlp/thread/38524825/#38585059).

>>43220055
Maybe. They don't seem interested in answering the question, so I guess they simply don't care enough.

A lot of time running the boorus seems to be dealing with schizos that work tirelessly to shit up the place (see: the cbat spammer).

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>>43219602
>And guess who was behind both of them?

Who knows...

>>43218321
>there's an obvious lack of soul and dedication compared to the pony fandom over a decade ago.
One of my theories for this is it's because of social media. Early pony fanart had soul because a lot of artists started from nothing and organically built skill and an audience via Deviantart, Tumblr, and we had our own social media-like fansites. I was active on Equestria Forums for a few years, had an account on Rainbow Dash network before Twitter, and there was a pony-themed Facebook clone I forgot the name of in 2011. I felt like there was less pressure to post enough art and I wasn't competing with other people back then. Communities are splintered between several toxic shitholes now. The fact I'm on 4chan in 2026 when I had Deviantart + Tumblr + forums in 2016 is for a reason.

>>43220875
That reason being...?

>>43220939
Read the whole post, smartie. Web 3.0 cucked the entire internet.

>>43220987
What the hell is Web 3.0? I remember moot saying "Web 2.0 just kicked in yo" but that was ages ago.

>>43220988
NTA. It started in the 2020s when the AI and algorithms and the internet consolidated into a few websites.

>>43220987
>>43220988
>>43221467
I remember when idiots touted that blockchain bullshit was making Web 3.0. Web 2.0 was all about responsive websites, asynchronous calls and that jazz, fuel behind early social media. The consolidation of big sites and the death of small ones feel like enough of a shift of perspective to warrant the Web 3.0 moniker. Either that or defining it as the web age of ads and grifting. Everything has to be ad-friendly, kiss your ad providers and sponsors cocks, so your "content" can earn you your dough. Either way, Web not-fun.0

>>43221467
>>43221656
So "Web 3.0" is just an euphemism for enshittification?

>>43221467
>internet consolidated into a few websites
Already a thing during 2.0. I'd say 3.0 is about AI enshittification and growing censorshit/goverment control.

>>43220988
It's... the internet's current state? I can't tell if you're a newfag zoomer or retarded. The internet is not the same as it was 5 or 10 years ago, it's gotten worse.

>>43221656
>>43221901
Exactly. Early web 2.0 wasn't that bad, we still had independent websites alongside social media like Twitter. But now it feels like we're stuck here unless you're in a private clique.

>>43222067
I can't believe I miss 2016. Back then the Internet already felt like a massive shithole that couldn't be worse. I was wrong.

>>43222067
>It's... the internet's current state?
What technology lies at the basis of Web 3.0 then? Web 2.0 actually was about new technologies that got deployed at the time, it has nothing to do with government overreach or other nonsense.

>>43222073
>What technology lies at the basis of Web 3.0 then
The push of AI for various purposes?

>>43222075
Web3 is about decentralization retard, not your AI boogeyman.

>>43222077
web 3 is about crypto grifting
and it's already dead

>>43222072
It's like the boiled frog. It's not that I miss 2016, it's just that things have gotten so much worse that the bar has gotten lower. I was also able to avoid most of the worst of the worst because I don't use Facebook and what.

>>43222073
You're purposely being retarded and not worth spoonfeeding to.

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>>43220875
I'd like to add that modern artists are way too terminally online compared to older generations. Their sources of inspiration are very reduced because of a lack of unique experiences in real life and quite watered down because of internet censorship limiting what type of content gets views.
A lot of old pony content had a unique vibe to it, with so many influences from everywhere but also a desire to experiment and show their technical skills.
Even the most secluded of social outcasts had some connection with reality and did not replace experiencing a book, movie or videogame with watching TikToks on their phone.

>>43222083
So you know nothing and are just talking out off your ass, as I thought.

>>43222084
this is absolutely true. Reality adds some character and vitality to the personality. Without that, a person and most of what they express will be incestual and hollow, almost nothing fundamentally new or unique. You can see this phenomenon in fetish art, as a microcosm - the media-addict never roots himself in realism and his art drifts away into irrelevance as does his personality.

It's like archery. Although the arrow flies, the archer is the icon of groundedness - he must have a strong stance and draw back the arrow into himself, towards the ground of his being; or the arrow of his will has no power and will fall short of any impact.

>>43202427
Nope, nothing else. Bit sad, eh?

>>43202427
nope nothing pony was a cultural phenomenon nothing will ever come close to how we broke normies brains

Not sure if said already, but we aren't the same people as we were 10 years ago. We grew old, life situations and whole outlook has changed for many of us. That amounts to something in the core of things.

>>43202427
I don't really want there to be anything that replaces MLP for me, even with the state of how things are today. It's special to me because of how it was so special.

Things won't be the same way as before, and that's fine; nothing ever is. I'm still hopeful for the future though. There's a lot of people who still are creating things and conventions are still popping up. A lot of anons are still around even after how much time has passed. Even a lot of the stuff discussed ITT makes me hopeful too. The desire for pone that brought everyone together in the first place is still here, still in a lot of us.

>>43223476
I like to think we are the same 10 years later, really.

>>43202572
seeing the gradual downfall in real time was so fucking sad
I can't even put into words the feeling of being into it right at the start
not even a contrarian thing but watching the first couple seasons live and being in the fandom back then evokes feeling an emotions I haven't had since
I get glimpses of it when I lay in bed at night and put on songs from s1-s2 reminiscing
god I fucking miss it so much

>>43223476
My art has gotten better but even though I'm still drawing fanart 15 years later, I've become more blackpilled irl. I'm surprised I can even like MLP because the messages are the near opposite of my actual life experiences with friendship. I always wonder if it's a symbol of hope or nostalgia for us oldfags still here.

Back from break. Still working on website.
>>43210421
>my impression has been that the fandom has always had an incredible variety of genres, from rap and dubstep to orchestral and rock. In that sense, the diversity has only grown.
I honestly feel that it has shrunk, considerably. We have always had a lot of diversity in the old fandom, but if you go back and listen to the stuff that was being made that was popular...it's hard to explain. It's just *different*. It's more thoughtful. It's trying to communicate a kind of vibe with you that the show embodies to the musician. Pony rap is a good example of this.
I admit I could be wrong here, but I don't think I am. There's a few good musicians out there for pony stuff now, but it's just not the same (yet).
>As you've said yourself, there's a bit of a revival going on.
Yeahhh! It's something I'm actually really excited about. I'd be really interested to see where that takes us in a year if we can keep it up.
>I searched as many archives as I could, yet I have not find any mention of this. >Far as I can tell, space pony is just an album by SGAP.
Because its fucking dead. It's all gone dude. All of it, save for parts of the zine.
>Name?
Mines Got Rocks In It
AFA only zine that ever got produced. There's a few links out there that may have the whole thing. Check the deviantart page(s) and see if it still works.
I have an old archived copy of it on a raspberry pi I own somewhere as well.
>As far as I've seen, there wasn't any design that "caught on" and became copied by everyone
There were. They're just...gone. I don't really know how to describe this. It's a weird feeling being an ancient fag. I feel like a Roman who's come back to see the city they lived in, destroyed, and everyone talking about ancient stuff from the remnants of what's left.

There were designs that were popular and common. Kreoss has some old works out there that captured the "common" way the M6 were drawn.

That said there was a lot of variations on style, ethnicity, etc. but there was a few common threads that were carried around that kind orbited around each other. Kreoss's old humanizations are the common way they were drawn, more or less.
It's interesting to look at what's left of these old designs and cross compare them to the post equestria girls world.
This also makes the post-post equestria girls world more interesting. That one rainbow dash figurine that came out a while back was closer in design to the old 00s "sk8r grl" design that was popular with dash in the old fandom.

>>43223884
I used to look back at it sometimes and realize all the sorts of shit I missed out on and it made me desperate to contribute in some way just for a crumb of the same feeling I'd felt when watching the early seasons and looking at the early fandom. Then I realize this stupid fucking board fills that void perfectly.

>>43224303
Examples? I more or less get what you mean, but all I can think of right now is that one "mlp sad" video that has over 100 million views on YT kek
hyperlol.wav
Anyway, uhhh, fuck dude. That's a big ask. Alot of shit is gone! Off the top of my head, bittersweet is one of the more well known "sad" content from the old age. That one got so popular it had a Rainbow Dash Presents for it.
There was an entire thing in the old fandom about making works to try and break eachothers hearts. It was really fuckin cool...at least to me. Read a lot of beautiful stuff.
Bittersweet isn't necessarily one of those. But it holds a special place in my heart because of that time.
>Iz
Invader zim. Alot of western fandom on the internet routes through this one. If you pay attention to the way old MLP/HS fanart is drawn, you'll notice that alot of it has origins in invader zim fan culture spawning out of deviant art. This also lends to a broader "emo' art influence on old fan works. Which is likely a significant reason why sad as a genre did so well.
There's also some anime influence also (naturally), but outside of artists like jose joseco, if you pay attention to the majority of old fanart coming out of the former fandom hotspots, they share a host of "genetic similarities". That is to say, stylistic influences.

One of the oldest remaining invader zim amvs, is about >rape and is handled the same way "serious" >rape was handled in the old fandom in MLP.
For a good reason. We share a kind of genetic link to this other fandom, which isn't really negotiable.

Legitimately a fascinating subset of fandom history which is broadly ignored due to internet archeology crumbling apart.
>With Crack Pone specifically, her popularity lasted a month (judging by the archives), fairly decent by all accounts.
Archives aren't fully archiving everything.
That's the problem. We are losing a lot of shit and we don't realize it. Crackpone would still occasionally pop up. There's a few old threads dedicated also to ponies addicted to crack you can find still saved.
Board ocs do last a long time, when they're actively being remembered...when they aren't, due to culture shifts - they get forgotten.
Tracy cage is barely remembered, for example.
Atleast that's MY opinion.
>We still do? As of now, there's at least three threads
We are definitely getting better about it. I started raising the alarm bells on the lack of production a few years ago, and have been pleased to see an upward curve on this. We are getting good about making stuff again.

It still needs work though. We are very behind
(Cont)

>>43224329
The problem is that people are still being weird about actually participating *in the culture*. One off threads get made....but the input is minimal and if the subject is weird, it gets slid off the board. Those threads should span *alot* more interaction.

Think of the snow ponies. Fun concept! They lasted a long time and they spanned out to making a lot of cool stuff. Those threads were a constant.

When's the last time we have made a new thread dedicated to a concept, and not have someone come in and complain about it being a general. Or had a thread that didn't have a fuck ton of necro bumps?

By necrobumps, I don't just mean bumping a dead thread. I mean bumping a dead thread with literally only the words "up" "bump" "10" etc. if we are bumping a thread, we should always be trying to participate at the same time. That means posting art, greens (even if they're shitty micro greens), etc etc etc.

This is an extremely common phenomenon.
We are getting better about interacting with writers and artists and talking about what they're making and posting art/music/prompts to entice them....but we could do better about this I think. We need to be more autistic when we like something. If we feel inspired, create.

We are comparatively still very behind in terms of creation. We've gotten better, let's keep improving together!
>From what I've seen, grimdark had a far broader scope than how it is in use now
Yes 100%
Grimdark in its truest form is kind of related to tearjearker/sad. It's a sort of dark version of romantic art.
It's cool. We ought bring it back in its original form. I'm pleased to see some people are doing this again and not caring about people obsessed with producing only porn or only the most saccharine nothing possible.
>Crookedtrees and co. made grimdark centered on a very specific genre while making other forms of it be put to the side or go under different names (dark, serious, etc.)
That's not accurate I think. What you're getting here is a projection of the modern fandom, misinterpreting the old one.
Trees was part of the same framework as other old fans in the grim dark world. Go through the remnants of what's left from his part of the fandom, you'll see he's using the same themes as others interested in early grimdark, before it got split off into something that just means "torture porn".
Trees eventually fucked off so hard from the fandom people don't really remember the impact he had. If I drop the name "Xanaxshy" alot of people here aren't gonna remember what the fuck that means.
But xanaxshy was a semi-grimdark variant of Fluttershy, spawning from a semi-grimdark pony au which had direct inspiration *from* crookedrees and other fanartists.
(Cont)

>>43224380
Again, we see that broadening of the genre.... It's important to point this out because he didn't cause a narrowing. If anything, it broadened things more.

What instead happened was when he fucked off, people kind of forgot what the fuck was even going on...and slowly narrowed down the concept of grimdark to focusing primarily around torture and death. Which could be prevalent in the old genre, but we're by no means the sole thing.

When he left, people forgot. When other people like him left, they forgot more. New fans from the post-reddit years got in, saw the old stuff, didnt understand any of it and gradually proceeded to tilt it more and more towards one specific variation of it. So we went from grimdark encapsulating themes of nature/society/relationships/spirituality/anguish/terror/sublime to being about torture and gore.

If you review the old crooketrees cupcakes blogverse, the story revolved around murder and abuse but its tone is alot different than modern variants. You also had a gigantic focus on isolation, pinkies anguish with her life, artistic motivation, found family dynamics.

It was cool. There was a lot more going on than the surface people remember. We gotta go back to the old understanding of grimdark.

>>43224303
Talked about this recently in lost media thread: https://desuarchive.org/mlp/thread/43180838/#43183940
More info there, but TL;DR I've uploaded a copy of kopaleo's zine reconstruction: https://u.pone.rs/xdhirldi.zip

>>43224415
I love you
That brightened up my day alot. I'll see about getting my pi up and running and if I have any more of the zine archived I can pass along to you. I may have the whole thing...may not. I'll see.

>>43224303
On the topic of humanizations I think you can trace most tropes back to the OG humanized artist (and overall OG pony artist), MegaSweet

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Nice stuff oldfag anon.

What we're talking about here isn't just individual. There's big collective dynamics involved. In my own words, I think what makes this fandom special at present is our 'economy', not just of money but of attention and creative passion. I do think the show was inspired by at least Faust's own genuine creative passion, and as a result contains a lot of subtle archetypal messages which catalyzed people's obsession with it. That is, her personal passion ignited other people's personal passion, resulting in a massive surge of collective libido 'straight from the underground', plucking on something more or less universal. Mass movements on this scale, if left to develop, are the cause of social revolution and new nations.

I only bring that history up to compare it to now. As the internet became commodified, of course mass movements had to be fragmented, because they threaten the power structure. This likely didn't happen 'intentionally' by some evil cabal trying to hold their power - it happened because corporations wanted to make money off of it. Corporations can only make money on the internet by attracting and siphoning off these flows of libido. Like a river, the flow of libido is self-reinforcing, but when it's siphoned off and diverted, it easily dries up. The water still exists, but it doesn't flow naturally and this disrupts the whole ecosystem around it (i.e. human life, human culture)

All of these platforms that aren't quite 'free', which force ads or content restrictions are the libido-capturing machinery which eventually saps away all vitality. It's like a factory farm - it encourages the birth of these collective movements, gives them a horrible constrained life, and eventually drains them of anything substantial. Modern fandom is born already inside the gut of this machine, doomed from the start. Our fandom is different, because we reached a critical point just before this oppressive infrastructure was put in place in the 2010s.

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cont. >>43224492

We were lucky to have started where we did. The rise of the internet allowed the movement to attract a massive number of people - and this attraction was, to reinterate, 'from below', a feeling-tone from the activation of an archetypal force that MLP managed to touch on. The loyalty for the fandom was birthed out of something more substantial than just an algorithmic flavor-of-the-month fad. Just having these people who have actually committed to the fandom makes a huge difference - people that aren't themselves caught up in the constant cultural solvent effect of modern media platforms, whose willpower (libido) can be focused in one direction, towards pony. As a result of others having their energy constantly siphoned off in dead-end fads within the gut of the machine, we find ourselves ahead on that front.

The second way in which we're lucky is that due to our well-timed start and our passion, we have at least some of our own parallel infrastructure. We have our own community websites (not including /mlp/ which is frankly oppressive), we have internet infrastructure like pony.tube and so many others, we have serious IRL communities in the form of conventions and local meet-ups, we have numerous little enclaves of roommates and couples who live and breathe pony together. You can see from here that we have our own little parallel world - the brony economy - isolated from the overbearing digestive process of the centralized mainstream economy.

This infrastructure is our primary remaining advantage. The cultural solvent effect of modern media is pervasive and most people are starting to succumb to it, losing some of the single-mindedness of our passion. But where that passion exists, the pony community is the best place I've ever seen to make it manifest. Not only do we have a community of other passionate creative people willing to help, but we have these amazing platforms and celebrations where these passion projects are placed in front of people who WANT to see them. When people spend money in our fandom, unlike outside it, it's not out of guilt or obligation - we spend it largely because we want to support the person's passion and strengthen our community. The same goes for spending our attention - you need only look as far as marecon. We don't watch for the quality or even necessarily for the pony-ness; yet we had dozens of people if not hundreds chilling with bronze-anon, excited to see him practice his passion even though 99% of it isn't fandom related. And similarly these hobbyists aren't just in it for the money, they're in it to make themselves and the fandom proud. There is a surplus of passion going both ways, because the infrastructure isn't stealing it from us.

That's most of what I wanted to say. I think we should celebrate our independence more than we do; and always keep an eye out for the passion in what you and others do. Passion itself is the true core of our fandom, the heartbeat which keeps us alive.

>>43202572
I 'member ponibooru. Good times man. I remember the shock it was to knightly to see his cosy little fanfic site become the second largest of its king in the first 2 weeks of its existence. I remember seeing ponies in odd places everywhere, because it was just fun to fuck around with shit back then.

>>43224712
That's also something that's gone of course, the "weirding normies out" effect (not the "making retards seethe" because people who are mindbroken about ponies are never going to stop). Then: "You watch... My Little Pony? (chuckle) Why?" Now: "Oh, you're a brony. Okay."

>>43224718
Or probably more accurate: "Bronies still exist...?"

I think the 2025 April first event showed that the heart of this place is still alive. While lesser boards were spamming and not even forming full sentences just to stay alive, we held out while still keeping things pony. Maybe they weren't the most substance-filled threads but the activity was still real and was expressing a love for ponies and the endless wellspring of content that still lives in us. Our passion can still carry us.

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>>43224813
Ponies in general will trigger normies until the end of time.

>>43224712
Was there another “fimfiction” for a while? I went through early snapshots on ponychan once and noticed another site with the name but wasn’t sure if that was knighty’s.

Preparing more long ass responses...but won't be posting for a while
>>43225662 #
There were a few other pony fiction websites. One of the earliest fim yuri fictions was posted on this one if memory serves http://www.ponyfictionarchive.net/index.php
that had a god awful pink background. It went out of existence finally maybe 3 years ago? Might be closer to 4 now.

Finfiction wasnt the only place. Just the strongest of them. I believe the other website actually went online before fimfic.

There was someone that talked about protocols? I think Nostr is a great technology that's easy to use. But the problem is that it's filled with spam and crypto stuff. The lack of a network effect hurts it. But at least it's open source and can't be enshittified.
Other than that there's activity pub which is not as advanced from what I know but people actually use it.

>>43224813
>I think the 2025 April first event showed that the heart of this place is still alive
fucking rofl lmao, just because our resident schizo(s) were spamming threads from their pr0xies doesn't mean this board is alive.

>>43226052
Just checked through, I was right. Ponyfictionarchive went online in may. Fim was online in June.
There were a couple others here and there, but shit if I remember them. They didn't last long.
What you saw on ponychan could've been the beta of fimfic. It also could've been several other places, majority of which would've been those like deviant art, Google docs, etc.

Ok signing off for real now. Will be back with proper responses to other people who replied to me.

>>43226058
>June
*July
I'm so fucking tired. Alright. BYE.

>>43226055
/vt/roon cope

Reading through this thread as someone who joined the fandom in 2011, took a long hiatus from around 2013 or 2014 and has returned full force, I'm glad that there's still enough passionate people here to keep our cozy little corner of the internet alive

oldfag stories bump

I used memebase my little brony for like months when I was getting into pony, it's a funny feeling seeing the effluvia of these major cultural changes from the sidelines without really understanding what was going on.

>>43226058
It’s probably a different site. If it helps, I also remember seeing derpysquad on the members list who iirc wrote for derpy hooves news. I’ll try to find the wayback machine link for it later.

>>43226058
>>43230165
Okay found it. It's this one: http://web.archive.org/web/20110429085729/http://209.59.149.173/~fimficti/
Taken from here: http://web.archive.org/web/20110429202414/http://www.ponychan.net/chan/collab/res/2794.html

Also found this other one which is just fimfiction but with a different domain: https://web.archive.org/web/20111201215822/http://poni.0au.de/
Is there a reason for that?

>>43222177
>You can see this phenomenon in fetish art

I do follow many fetish artists of body expansion (weight gain, inflation, expansion, etc.) and I'd have to disagree to an extent. While there's many artists that do what you describe, there's also others with great understanding about anatomy and how the human body works, yet bending the rules where it is necessary to keep it appealing without losing the connection to reality.

>>43231491
Fetish art is by definition unrealistic, so I doubt your friends are any better.

>>43231512
You're confusing fetishes with paraphilias are.
Fetishes are objects and situations that generate sexual arousal, while paraphilias are atypical unrealistic version of fetishes.
Drawing an overweight woman without clothes is not a paraphilia on its own. What could be considered one is if it became bigger than a house or something.
Also there's a big difference between "unrealistic" and "disconnected from reality". Hentai is unrealistic because women with those proportions do not exist in real life, but it is still connected to reality because it understands makes cuteness appealing to people.
Same thing applies to fetishes, it isn't realistic for a girl's belly to inflate "just like a balloon" but said belly can be portrayed in such a way that it looks as squeaky as a real balloon.

>>43231570
its the same thing

>>43233145
Except this time it's his fetish, so that means it's obviously completely different.

>>43204655
It's less that Touhou was special and more that NicoNicoDouga from 2007-2011 was special. The community was extremely centralized and monolithic, which created a breeding ground for kino like Bad Apple and Cirno's Perfect Math Class

>>43212834
>very specific pony videos from the early 2010's
Like what?

Pre-2007: Sonic, Invader Zim
2007-2011: Vocaloid, Touhou
2009-2013: Homestuck
2010-2013: My Little Pony, Minecraft, Creepypasta/SCP
2014-2015: FNAF
2015-2018: Undertale, Deltarune
2019-2022: Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss
2023-now: TADC

I was apart of every single pre-2015 internet fandom bandwagon except Sonic and Homestuck. But there was something about Undertale in 2015 that made me snap out of it and realize fandoms weren't for me anymore. Or maybe fandoms themselves changed? I don't know. I just know FNAF was the last time I gave a shit about anything

>>43224303
Anon to who you are responding here, welcome back!
>Because its fucking dead.
The more something is (assuming it existed) notable, or "HUGE" as you say, the more questionable it "being all gone" becomes. /mlp/ is, all things considered, a very well archived board; the fact that there is not a single post about the "Space Pony Community" on it pre-2020s, let alone on EqD or >Plebbit is highly anomalous at best and outright disproves this ever being a thing at worst.
I even tried checking MyLittleRemix, site seems down right now, but the archives once again do not mention anything about the supposed Space Pony Community. The term is not even mentioned in any of the zine descriptions.
To clarify: I do not doubt that artists/musicians/etc. collaborated on a large scale or had some sort of online groups. It reminds me a bit of P@D or certain Cytube (or Synchtube if we are talking about the old fandom) channels.
>On humanisations
After looking through old pics more thoroughly (and with a better method), I concede my point (especially in regards to Twilight); however, it's still not particularly hard to find pics that deviate from the "standard", particularly when depicting Fluttershy or Rarity.
>post equestria girls world
Likewise, searched through these a bit. What I observed was that, while the EqG-ification of the designs is undeniable, the old ones never fully went away, and you can find new art that is rather close to the old style (see Derpi ID 3791959 from this year as an example). This is coupled with the rise of new styles, particularly the "diversity quota" style that's become so common in the fandom's periphery (think Kenyan Rarity from that recent Reanimated project, or Derpi IDs 3346090 and 3761317).
In addition, let's not forget that some things have stayed the same. A 3D anthro from 2014 looks just as shit as a 3D anthro from current year.
>Crackpone would still occasionally pop up.
In the same way that other board OCs (both old and new) do. If you want the raw stats: there were a total of 6 proper Crack Pone threads in her original run, all during August. Of these, only the first 2 hit the bump limit. Most others died at less than 100 posts. After these, they tried joining the Homeless Whore Thread, but that too soon died. By 2015, you already have people asking "hey, remember this OC?" (22333593).
>tracy
She is still very relevant to this day, as she's a core player of /mlp/'s 4CCC team and has been for a long while.
>necrobumps
The Homeless Whore thread from 2014 mentioned before is filled with these. You can easily find older examples, e.g. 4316204 from 2012. It is nothing new.
>Invader Zim
I think there's a simple question to be asked. How much of that influence can be confidently attributed specifically to IZ and not broader movements like your mentioned emo/angst?

>>43224380
>On grimdark
I think the simplest thing to do is to go through some random old stories tagged as grimdark on EqD.
Upheaval: Breaking Point as an example. Twilight gets accidentally teleported to Equestria's border and has to face the horrors of war. This is arguably the closest fic of the ones I'm listing to what Grimdark meant in its original 40K context.
Fillystata, a ponification of a Lovecraft story: Twilight becomes obsessed with her long forgotten ancestor, the occult and foal sacrifice (their blood is the best for spirit-channeling rituals) soon follow. However, all of that is not revealed until the end of the story, so you're left intrigued until the end.
Musical dreams (lost?), a surreal fic that required you to listen to a piece called Dam Sheon Hachol in the background and was dependent on it for atmosphere. The only thing that happens in it is a (day?)dream by Octavia. Something about Rainbow Dash falling and "sensitive skin"?

Now compare all of that to Pinkamena and related stories. The idea that grimdark could be about wide-reaching phenomena like war or slavery was pushed to the side in favor of stories about the experiences of individual ponies like Pinkamena. You say this type of grimdark could be about society, but the way it is presented is fundamentally different: in a fic like FO:E, you are given many different points of view of society/-ies from many perspectives. In Crookedtrees-style grimdark, you only see society from the perspective of whoever the main character is, maybe two related perspectives at best.
Surreal and experimental grimdark was similarly moved aside by a very formulaic "so, this pony is ebil now, what happens?"
The other genres of grimdark weren't fully killed off by Crookedtrees-likes, but they were marginalised (in terms of popularity and, consequently, output) to the point that these genres stopped being called grimdark.

>>43204559
>Love or hate FOE, I haven't seen anyone try to make something like it again.
When talking about the modern fandom, Equestria at War is the example that comes straight to mind. A HoI4 mod of a truly massive scale that has the same phenomenon of "large subcommunity with a surprising amount of people not into MLP" that FO:E had. Many newfags and even a few returnfags I've spoken to or know have said that it was EaW that got them (back) into MLP and the fandom. In some ways, it has surpassed FO:E: while most of the Fallout community knows about FO:E at best as a meme (if at all), EaW has managed to be become one of the top most popular mods in the HOI4 community, and you'd be hard pressed to find someone there who hasn't heard about EaW. Its community keeps actively creating new art and literature, and, it has single-handedly revived the war-grimdark genre (even if it's no longer called as such).

>>43227977

>>43233590
>Many newfags and even a few returnfags I've spoken to or know have said that it was EaW that got them (back) into MLP and the fandom
No kidding. I lost interest in FiM around 2013-2014 and that interest only returned many years later when I was getting into grand strategy/paradox games like HOI4 and discovered EaW.

>>43234245

>>43234305
I do wish there was a good eu4/5 poni mod, but that would be an even more extreme undertaking.

>>43235813
In theory, there's a mod like that in the works by some guy(s?) from the EaW team.
In practice, the last teaser was from August of last year...

>>43236290
So it's silently cancelled?

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>>43237393
I wouldn't go that far. It's probably just very low on their priority list.
The Vic2 mod seems to be going along more nicely, though (teaser from less than a month ago).

>>43235813
>>43237393
(there's also an MLP submod for Anbennar which adds Celestalia, it was originally the 2025 EaW-Anbennar april fools collab nation on Anbennar's side. Fun fact: the Anbennar community does a survey ranking every mission tree every year, Celestalia came out in first place during the last one)
(also bump)

>>43235107

>>43239077

>>43233145
It isn't

>>43233265
Exactly!

>>43233347
Overtime [PMV]
There's just something about how the video feels so early 2010's to me and I feel it speaks to my experience in the old fandom in ways other things rarely do. Think of it as if watching an old video of you having a good time with your loved ones moments after discovering they've been massacred.

>>43233432
>there was something about Undertale in 2015 that made me snap out of it and realize fandoms weren't for me anymore. Or maybe fandoms themselves changed?

Weirdly enough, it is fandom culture what ruined fandoms.
Communities had a different approach to the way they acted around products:
Most people used to make content about stuff they liked because they simply liked it, now they pretend to like said stuff to get an excuse make content about it.
It is as simple as taking a look at how many people have never played Resident Evil games yet claim to be fans of them because they watched a bunch of TikToks online.

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>>43240046
I'd also blame fandom culture for why so many mindless consoomers talk like shareholders at a meeting, evidenced by this obsession some people have with the show's popularity in China.
I don't give a fuck if rice eaters are eating exclusive one-of-a-kind Twilicorn plushies.
I like ponies because of their artistic merits, not their merch revenue or their stock value.

>>43240046
People stopped being in fandoms because they were fans of something, nowadays you have a sizeable amount of people who's just a fan of the fandom, which is why the term "multifandom" became a thing, not because people have multiple interests, but because they're interested in multiple fandoms, without interacting with the source material of said fandoms

The truth is the fandom was always this shit, you just never paid attention to it because there was constant new content for you to either consoom or look forward to. It just seems more noticeable to you now because it's all that is left, but it was always there. Remember that drama such as Derpygate existed since the beginning of the fandom after all.

>>43240334
>>43240059
>>43240046
It's not wrong to like something for shallow reasons. As long as it doesn't meaningfully hurt people. I for example like ponies in a shallow way, but that doesn't stop me from participating as a creative. Also there are fandoms where most people got into it through secondary means instead of the primary source, and it doesn't violate the non aggression principle.

>>43240746
>It's not wrong to like something for shallow reasons

It is.
They pollute discussion around fiction and big companies prefer them over real fans because they're easier to please. Why bother making a sequel or re-interpretation that respects the source material when you can produce low-effort garbage that shills and tourists will eat up as long as it has a recognizable brand attached to it? this is what lead to executives getting away with awful garbage like the Fallout TV Show and a bunch of awful game remakes in recent years because their supposed "fans" have never even played the original.

>>43240560
Retards and awful content in the fandom have always existed, that's right. But I'd say it was still more entertaining to make fun of an oldfag like Brandon than to whine about the average Twitter newfag representing everything wrong with the modern internet. Even bad content of the old days was more interesting to mock than a TikTok e-girl pretending to be from a decade she wasn't even conceived in.

>>43240746
You're wasting your time. The sorts of people that complain about not being a "true fan" are usually just desperate to find some reason why they're better than everyone else. It always just boils down to "everyone should be like me".

>>43202427
The amazing digital circus skibidy toilet

>>43241334

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>>43240746
You like ponies in a shallow way? Like... what way? If you like ponies you like ponies. You're posting on /mlp/ for Celestia's sake. If you're participating in a creative way, how is that shallow? That sounds like investing your time and effort.

I just don't get it.

>>43243261
Anon watches the show for cute ponies doing cute things instead of great storytelling and deep character writing , which makes him a shallow fan. Allegedly.

>>43243607
Ponies are not moeblob comfort animals. People who only like ponies for "cute girls doing cute things" reasons without a doubt posted on /a/ or /jp/ before 2011.

>>43243719
Do you differentiate between watching the show for cute ponies and watching it for "The Plot"?

>>43243769
I watch ponies for the entire package. The characterization, the cute designs, the great worldbuilding, the great music, everything. Singling out just the designs or a few specific ponies makes you an inbred consoomer of braindead moeslop, IMO. Not saying FIM is the peak of writing, but it's enjoyable for more reasons than just "cute ponies doing cute things" nonsense.

>>43243773
True, but some aspects are more important than others. For example, I could probably still watch FiM if it didn't have any adventure episodes like "Over a Barrel" or "Dragonshy", but I couldn't have watched it without its gags and humor.

>>43243779
The humor in FIM is very ho-hum. I found PpG and Dexter's Lab (two shows I used to be a big fan of before FIM) far, FAR more entertaining in that aspect. FIM usually gave me a chuckle at best, though there are some moments when the show did genuinely make me laugh.

>>43202572
Too late for fandom. Too early for mass extinction. Why live?

>>43244921
You're not too late anon. There's still good stuff going on on top of a wealth of older content. Even I'm still discovering old stuff I missed back in the day.
The only thing newcomers are really missing is the initial rush of discovering the joy of pony for the first time with tons of other people. People are still discovering FiM for the first time, but they're joining into a cadre of old fans for whom much of the initial spark of joy has faded or is laden with bitter nostalgia, and if they do discover the show with others it'll be within their own smaller friend groups.

I don't know, just have fun with ponies. That's what we did back then, it's what you should do now. And for those who were around before, don't make it seem like things are over when they're not. It's disrespectful to the ponychads still making an effort to keep the spirit going.

>>43241886

>>43245711

>>43240944
>everyone should be like me

Yes, they should. If they're not, they're part of the problem.

>>43245186
>don't make it seem like things are over when they're not. It's disrespectful to the ponychads still making an effort to keep the spirit going

Nah, things are over. I do my best to contribute to pony projects that I'm interested in but the generation and community it spanned from it haven't been the same for over a decade. Just because people can still enjoy what there is doesn't mean you're having fun with a corpse.

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interesting thread