Grumpy Old Men · 11:55am Feb 25th, 2013
Why has the internet regressed into this?
It's not the Majority that have this attitude, and that I'm happy for. Join some random forum for anything that you do, and it appears to be peaceful and fun on the outside.
Get deeper into it, and you find the people who have really dedicated time to it. Weirdly enough, you don't find endless vats of enthusiasm down there. You find deep trenches of cynical and generally angry people who could be granted a shining palace, and then complain about how there's only two showers instead of three.
And once they complain about the showers, they tend to slip it into a rant about how the people who built the palace tend to not care about them, and it turns into a constant spiral of anger.
I fell into a discussion on the IRC today which followed this exact train of thought. I joined it, and people were talking about pony music. They were criticizing artists of it, and that's fine. Criticism is much better then blind complements, anyone who cares about what they make can tell you that.
Then we got into some more underlying meanings to what everyone was saying. "The Brony Fandom isn't the glorious bunch of nice people that people think."
Yeah, and the Star Trek fandom isn't a bunch of people who live in their mother's basement.
Comments like "99% of the fanfiction on this site is crap", etc, etc. I was even involved in the conversation for awhile, before I just blatantly left the chat room out of disappointment in myself, and my fandom.
It's a FANDOM. We are fans of a show, so we're on here. Maybe it's the inner lying annoyance that I have because of Mane6 and Pinkie's Brew getting Hasbro'd, but why are people just... complaining? I don't expect complete and utter niceness. Hell, one of the main conversations that I pretty much agreed with was the idea that Love and Tolerance isn't a real value, just a meme.
There's a line between being engaging and critical and just plain being someone who doesn't know when to stop complaining about every last thing on earth. It's like these people are caught in the shadow of their own arrogance.
It's sad, in the end, because I know for a fact that I'm guilty of these practices as well. My goal is to remove the mindset, but it's hard when everyone else seems to religiously follow it.
The best way that I've found to remove myself from such a mindset is to first remove myself from the environment that is producing it. Place yourself in an environment that is positive and you'll soon find that your mind will follow. In other words find a place that makes you happy, then reevaluate your thoughts. That's what I find works best for myself.
So true, how I go by is don't make a comment unless you are willing to open a can of worms in the process. That is why I don't comment much on here.
I agree... I was going to make a long reply but the possibilities of me sounding idiotic are too high.
865737
I don't care if you sound dumb. This is a post AGAINST being a cynical grumpy-bear.
865989 Ya you got me Doc.
Have a nice day! 