May the muffins be forever in your favour.Selfishness has been my wrong motivator for the longest time..... and people don't see who I really am because of that. · 12:25am February 19th
A lot of people in the fandom don't understand who I am and think of me as a bad person. My friend sometimes does, too, and doesn't trust me anymore because of that. There have been moments when she literally asked me "Who are you?". I was always thinking this was stemming from trust issues that she developed because of events in her past and I was only marginally attributing the cause for this question to myself. Now I know better. I was much more the cause for this question than I always thought. Not only have I hurt her with mistakes I made, I also made her feel insecure about who I am by not talking enough about how I think about certain matters or, if I talked about them, by talking about them only vaguely, sometimes incoherently and often angrily and aggressively. This has happened since at least mid-2020 and it gave her a wrong impression of me. This is a large factor in her reason to go into distance from me again. And I have left this wrong impression on other people in the fandom, too, by being too vague about my thoughts on certain matters. But I can't complain about this. Yesterday, when I was thinking more about all this, I realized that all of this happened because I was selfish. And that is another large reason for why my friend went into distance again, perhaps even the biggest one.
For the longest time now, a thing in the fandom that has always very much upset me and made me worried and anxious, was cancel culture, ever since 2015. drawponies in 2015 because of tracing, Toxic-Mario in 2016 because of alleged tracing and many more since then for reasons like relationship abuse, being radically right-wing or bullying, who I can't all remember right now because of my bad long-term memory, but all of them being cherished pony creators who were either of a big significance for the fandom or created pony art that I personally value a lot. Right from the start, I called it out and criticized it when these pony artists and creators got cancelled because of the mistakes and wrongful actions they've made. But I did that with a wrong motivation. I criticized how everything is being taken from these creators, everything they've built in the fandom, how they get shunned by an angry crowd and treated like outcasts and how they get chased out of the fandom, instead of being offered redemption, and I also pointed out how the fandom overall is being affected if we lose large contributors like these. But all of this wasn't really on my mind. I used these things as arguments, to try and save these pony creators from getting cancelled. But what really motivated me was my personal fear of losing great pony content, either because the cancelled artists delete their accounts and all their work when they leave or because they don't create new content anymore. Fanwork for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was so important to me, that the thought of losing even just a little bit of it terrified me and that was why I acted. I wasn't thinking about victims of the actions of those cancelled pony creators, who existed in some of the cases, and neither about the larger consequences, to the fandom or otherwise, that their actions could have and that existed in other cases. Even my arguments how the fandom loses valuable pony creators who create important content when they get cancelled was rooted in my fears of losing pony content I care about and of having access to less pony content overall. I didn't even think how unfair it is to the cancelled pony artists and creators when they're having their entire work in the fandom be ruined and torn down because of a few mistakes they've made. I was merely thinking about myself. I defended these cancelled or soon-to-be cancelled pony creators merely because I didn't want to lose their content, without ever thinking of potential victims who suffered from their actions or showing empathy with such victims and without ever considering the wider consequences of their actions.
Years later, in 2020, when Derpibooru got under pressure because of hosting art that shows Aryanne or other nazi ponies and was accused of supporting nazism, to the point that the entire site was in danger of being deplatformed and disappearing, I was becoming aware of how much cancel culture has become a problem in the fandom. Dealing with the possibility that Derpibooru, and all the pony art and fandom history it has archived, could be deleted and disappear, I was beginning to understand how much the fandom, its ressources and its infrastructure are endangered because of cancel culture. And not long after, I also began to realize how it discourages pony creators or potential future pony creators from creating pony art if their outlook is that they too might get cancelled one day and lose everything. But what motivated me was still just the fear of losing pony content for myself. I was still selfish.
Only last year, when Sawtooth Waves (The Brony Notion) got cancelled, after his former girlfriend blamed him in public for failing her grades at school, and took all his analysis videos with him when he left the fandom, my motivation to criticize cancel culture became broader and I began to feel with the pony creators whose entire work in the fandom is being ruined by it. Later in the year, when I defended Mare Fair against the wrong accusations of fascism, this feeling became stronger. But even then, I still didn't have any empathy for victims of pony creators who got cancelled because of abuse and I was still not thinking about the wider consequences actions of certain cancelled pony creators, such as being rascist, might have. I was only thinking about the content I love that could be lost, the slow crumbling of the fandom because of all these cancel culture cases and how wrong it is that cancelled pony creators get their entire fandom life's work destroyed, or, that even a new pony convention that happens for the first time is already at danger of getting destroyed. I was not merely thinking about myself anymore from that point onwards, but I still lacked empathy with victims and care about the consequences. And because of all that, because of my fears of losing pony content and about the condition of the fandom I love, I was never talking about the experiences victims of abuse by cancelled pony creators made or the wider consequences that nazism in the fandom has. I was only caring about keeping pony content accessible, keeping pony creators creating and keeping the fandom alive. My friend noticed this selfishness, long before I did, and it even made her think that the reason why I motivated her to continue with her pony art and certain, specific projects when she faced obstacles that set her back with it, was because so I could get more pony art from her. This was the one thing I was not selfish about, I truly wanted her to succeed and that she doesn't give up, but because of my selfishness in other departments, I made her think that I have ulterior motives about her own pony art.
I am not rascist. I am not a nazi. I don't abuse women, or anyone. I don't bully people. And I am not okay with any of these things. I despise rascism and nazism. I am against the abuse of people. And I am against bullying the most, because I have been bullied for more than half of my school years. But because I was scared I could strengthen cancel culture that way, I hardly talked about those things when they happened in the fandom. And if I did, I kept it vague. I was not even trying to play both sides. I just intentionally hardly ever talked about those matters and if I did, kept it as vague as I could, to not encourage cancel culture in the fandom. This has led to it that some people in the fandom have started seeing me as the aforementioned things; a rascist, a nazi, an abuser, a bully. And why my friend has started to see me like that, too, slowly and over time. Because I was always calling it out when pony creators got cancelled because they were rascist, abused someone or bullied someone, but hardly ever talked about it or addressed how horrible rascism, nazism, bullying and abuse are and how I also think that those things are horrible. I was simply being quiet about those things, for the most part, while I criticized the cancellations. That made me look like I hate the victims and support the offenders. And that made it easy to draw the conclusion that I must be an offender, too, then. My friend drew this conclusion and that's a large reason why she is distancing herself from me now.
I still don't support cancel culture. It's a movement that deprives people who made mistakes or did wrong things of betterment. But I don't support rascism, nazism, abuse and bullying either. And by not speaking my mind about those things, I made it look like I'm supporting them. I was betraying myself that way and I wasn't showing what a moral person I actually am because of that. My selfishness that has prevented me from talking about those things has given a wrong impression of me to many in the fandom and it has chased my friend away. I can't let this happen any longer.
From now on, I will talk more about those things. This won't become the main purpose of my account, I will still continue my writing and my analyses once I am able to again and release blog entries and announcements for that, and I won't turn this into a political account. I also won't tag each of the blog entries of this type with "Filly Friends Forever", because talking about these things is not directly about my friend and our friendship anymore and I don't want to spam readers who have the story in their bookshelves. But if something is on my mind or bothering me, no matter if it's a social issue, a human rights crisis, an environmental problem or about animal rights, then I will talk about it here and show how I think about that.
Deep inside, I am hoping that my friend will come to a better understanding of me again, see again who I truly am, and return, if she should read these blog entries. But I also want to show who I truly am to everyone else and work on fixing this reputation problem I have created with my selfishness and my silence on certain matters. I also need to let these thoughts out, because keeping them inside stresses me and I now think that stress because of unspoken thoughts is also one of the reasons why I wasn't always acting my best in the last seven years. And I hope, by talking about these things and thinking more about them in the process, it will help me to attain my goal of becoming my real, balanced self again this year, rather than choosing extremes like I often did in the last seven years.
For all of these reasons, I am going to talk more about important, serious matters from now on. I need to show who I really am or else I will be lost, to make the future a much better one than what the last seven years have been and to embrace my true self again.
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Being a brony doesn't mean someone can't behave badly or generally be an asshole.
Sawtooth Waves admitted to having an inappropriate relationship with a minor shortly before he deleted his YouTube channel.
I had joined this site about 6 months before the whole Aryanne thing exploded. They were posting a lot of Holocaust denial stuff on their socials and got called out for it.
The MLP fandom has been struggling with Neo-Nazis, Neo-Fascists, Neo-Confederates and bigots for some time. Over the past few years there has been a push to excise them and then suddenly it's cancel culture. Unless these people have lost their jobs, their homes and/or their freedom, they've not been cancelled, just denied easy access to a public forum or shamed. It seems that the only people I ever hear complaining about cancel culture are usually doing shitty things. Is it cancel culture or just shitty people being brought to task?
Hug
Good on you for being honest and owning up to an error. I understand the worries about the loss of some of the biggest pony content creators, but I doubt that this fandom is going to die out any time soon - sure, it's not as huge as some other fandoms, but there's enough people here and enough people who join that it'll be around for a good while yet.
I've not been in the fandom for long enough to experience many of these scandals, but I do remember the Sawtooth Waves drama. As disappointed as I was to realise that it was the end of their channel and their analysis videos, I couldn't defend them in any way. They were an adult, and they had a relationship with a minor that also turned very toxic. From experience, I survived CSA, but it has permanently shaped and changed my life, and the thought of other people going through not just the event of the abuse but the aftermath is enough for me to lose any sympathy for the perpetrator, even if they were previously someone I looked up to.
Personally, I'd rather a smaller fandom with less major content creators than a larger fandom that accepts abuse as normal and okay. Assuming that other people share this viewpoint (because assuming otherwise would lead to my faith in humanity dwindling even further than it has already), even if these disgraced bronies had been allowed to stay, the fandom would still suffer because less people would want to be a part of a group that supports these things, thus there would be less people joining and less new people creating pony content. Bronies already have a bad reputation, but if the likes of Sawtooth hadn't been called out and had remained in the fandom, that would have led to the rest of the internet seeing the community as so much worse than we are, and also to more abusers or political extremists or other generally undesirable people thinking that this is a haven for them, and attracting more of those people to the fandom, which doesn't sound great to me. Basically, the cancelled bronies staying would probably lead to the exact same result as our current situation in terms of fandom size and the amount of content that gets uploaded, and the only difference would be that in one situation abuse is normalised and accepted, and in another, victims of abuse get justice and are made to feel safe. I'd rather our current situation, but that's just me.
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I'm sorry, I can't answer your comments here. This blog entry is not really about Sawtooth Waves or cancel culture in general. It's about the mistakes I made and I only mentioned the Sawtooth Waves incident and cancel culture because I needed to explain what mistakes I've made and what I need to do to fix them and to let go of my selfishness. I will eventually talk about cancel culture in a dedicated way in its own blog entry, once I feel ready to do that, and then I will copy your comments over and reply to them there. But debating cancel culture isn't what this blog entry is about and doing that here would feel dishonest and come across like I didn't really mean what I said in the blog entry and I don't want to give that impression, because it wouldn't be a true one.
I reckoned that someone would start discussing cancel culture here, because bringing up cancel culture always creates a lot of emotions, both in supporters and in opposers of it, but this is not the place to discuss it. Using this space to discuss cancel culture, rather than my own mistakes, wouldn't feel right.
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My bad. I respect that. It's still good on you for owning up to your mistakes, and I hope that it allows you to heal some of your friendships with time :)
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Thank you. It's one friendship, but that friendship is worth a thousand friendships.
The first mistake is believing that "cancel culture" even exists to begin with. It is this convenient categorization that clouds your judgement, I think if you practice examining each situation individually and critically you will have a much healthier outlook.