Oct
1st
2013
Sad bronies · 6:12am Oct 1st, 2013
To follow up on my last post... I'm sad sometimes, sure, but I don't stand out here for that. What's getting me down right now is that I've read so many sad or alienated comments from readers and writers on other stories over the past week that it's made me wonder if the press isn't right — maybe there is really something wrong with us. I have four friends on fimfiction who I'm currently worried may commit suicide. That ain't right.
(Plus, I've met some of you. 
)
Are bronies sadder than other people? Or do they just talk about it more, in the safety of their pseudonyms?
Compared to other fandoms, less. If we were talking about forum bronies, or music bronies, or drawfriends, you wouldn't be seeing this.
I'm guessing that this is selection bias on this segment of the fandom, but I'd lie to make you feel better regardless.
Also, summer's ending. Reality is catching up.
Well, I don't know about sadder, though I kinda understand where you are coming from here. There is at least one author on here I am worried may very well kill himself at any given moment. This rather terrifies me. (Especially considering my own neurosis.)
More like, it's the degree to which the bad aspects of the fandom can seem magnified, ESPECIALLY to someone with say, clinical depression.
Consider. You have someone who has depression. For this person, MLP FiM sometimes seems like one of the few bright spots in their life. The community adds another positive. Most of the time. However, when things take a turn for the nasty, (Derpygate being a GREAT example, or perhaps the more recent snit over Molestia.) that can come as a real blow towards this individual, especially if some of the nastiness is directed at them, such a forum debate.
Another danger of using the community as an emotional crutch can simply be a result of people being less than talkative sometimes. Still, I think it's more the disparity that can occur between the attitudes of the fan-dumb, and the cheery, happy attitude of the show and general community.
Without trying to come off as pretentious, although I'm certain it will, I feel like the type of audience that is attracted to this site is more likely to be depressed than other groups; mostly due to a large demographic, maybe not all or most, of the fans of this show being people of older ages.
Thinking about it just from that stand point, my thought process goes like this, what's the one thing people usually think of when they think of age, well, besides more freedoms? I personally like to believe as we get older we trend towards gaining more knowledge in general. And one of the drawbacks of knowledge sometimes is just the worry and paranoia it can bring. For example, think about how popular things back in the 50s and 60s and such are now thoroughly researched and well known, cigarettes for example. Now that we know more about them, they're less idealized and popular, because people know more about them.
I think it's pretty similar here, the older demographics of this show's fans tend to know more than the younger ones, and to be quite honest Life's a Bitch, whether or not people realize it. And since there's this vast group of people who may hold this thought process, naturally it goes to follow that their writing may hold those undertones. After all we do write what we know, and if what you "know" is cynicism and bitterness, than chances are you're writing will probably hold darker themes.
I'm happy!
People who are sad are just more likely to talk about it. I'm generally pretty good. My biggest feeling is frustration with not getting enough done.
Speaking of which, time to do something.
Part of it is also probably a way to vent emotions. With so much fan fiction in this fandom, there's bound to be a lot of unwinding taking place in the form of writing. I'm certainly "guilty" if it.
The enormity of also does lead to more representation for everyone and there's always a vocal bunch. Those who feel more lonely are probably more likely to actively seek out discussions and ways to be involved in something.
Sabsarr has a good point - the average age group is 16-22, highschool and college, all that hormones and stress BS.
I however am an incredibly content person, before ponies not so much, but sure as hell am now.
Personally I'm not sad. I have stuff to be sad about but I mean you get shit on eventually in life. Wallowing in sadness over it is like choosing to stand under the damn bird to see if more drops out. I prefer to focus on enjoying the things that make me happy. Still shoveling shit but whistling while I work. Which is why I don't read sadfics.
I have a clinical reason for depression, personally, but I take meds so I don't count toward the sad demographic.
In general, I think that the brony fandom isn't sadder than any other, but perhaps people feel more comfortable expressing themselves that way than in other fandoms. I'll admit I feel much more comfortable talking about real life issues in this fandom than any other I've been in, so maybe that's it.
I'll also point out that when you have any group of people willing to dedicate the amount of time to a fandom that most of us are (writing takes time, reading takes time, watching the show to know what you're writing or reading takes time, talking about fics with people takes time, etc.) you're going to find a lot of people who are filling that time with ponies because they're missing something else; they might be unemployed, not have many RL friends, not be close with their family, etc.
I don't know if those people are naturally sadder people, but they come to fanfic writing during a downswing in their lives, and often leave or become less active when they fill the void with something other than pony words. So, that's going to make a demographic more prone to depression than average. Add to that what other folks have said about emotional young people, and what you pointed out about the mask of pseudonyms, and you're going to have a population with a lot of openly sad people in it.
1387546 I agree! There is really no point in whining about how hard life is, but that wasn't the point of my ramble. The point I was trying to get across was that since a large chunk of the fandom are older people, at least in terms of the target demo being young kids, there will of course be those who write with more adult themes. I was trying, and perhaps failing, to say that since they're older, of course a fair bit of their stories will contain more depressing themes than what most younger people may be accustomed to.
Granted there will still be members of the same group that will write uplifting stories, however, personally I tend to find more of the darker ones sometimes, but that might just be my preferences in stories.
1387375
That's not necessarily true, at least not always. A lot of people do NOT talk about their problems, or how depressed they are, not until it has reached a certain critical mass, and even then may hold a lot of it back. This tends to be caused by a) Not wanting be seen as a "whiner", and b) a sort of "other people's problems are valid, my own are not" mentality.
The problem is, until that dam bursts, these people tend to come off as generally cheerful and upbeat. It's not uncommon for people to be surprised to learn when an individual suffers from depression, for instance.
Check out all these "just so" stories being given in explanation... where's the empirical data? You aren't gonna get any truth coming at the question like this.
1387697
Depends on the person, but it is actually a well-known phenomenon that people who are unhappy are more likely to vocalize unhappiness than the reverse and, likewise, that we are more likely to remember people being negative than the reverse - many times more likely, in fact.
No, there are just as many depressed people in every other community in the world.
1387727 Here's the only empirical data Google gives me today:
BronyStudy.com:
d) It is important to note that the Bronies displayed a lower level of Neuroticism, which means that they are likely to report generally lower levels of anxiety and stress in their lives. This result when added to the lack of any differences on the PAQ-Emotional Vulnerability scale would appear to directly challenge the validity of the often repeated myth about Bronies displaying problematic levels of mental health problems (like depression and anxiety). Whether this score relates to their general optimistic nature and/or is in part a positive reaction to being a Brony is unclear at this time!
On the other hand,
8) Dating: 22.4% of the Bronies had No Interest in dating, 60.9% were interested but not dating, 10.5% occasionally dated, and 6.3% frequently dated.
Usually I don't like to draw attention to that study, because they refuse to release their data, which is scientific misconduct IMHO. I don't like that they ask me to fill out a survey & then won't let me see the data.
I'm wondering if you, Bad Horse, are just in the sadder threads. As you pointed out in your last blog, you tend to read and write sad stories, and sad stories do tend to attract sad people...
But there is also the combination of factors 1387531 pointed out leading to bronies on pony site being much more open about their feelings. Which I actually think is a good thing in some ways. We can actually tell people who need it that they need professional help. I follow one person with a sometime rather worrying blog, but when he get really down, a large community comes out of the woodwork to say to him 'things will get better.'
Imagine a suicidal person posting their note online, and then getting flooded with literally hundreds of messages telling him not to do it.
I like to think we some good here.
It was mentionned above, but every community has depressed people.
This one in particular is very vocal about it, however, because they sorta feel safe in this environment of "love and tolerance", if that even is the case anymore (which it isn't)
So yeah. Umm... that's a shame about your friends. I hope you're helping them seek help and get through the bad parts of their days.
I'd guess that most of us are desperately lonely, and once the initial rush of the fandom wears off it starts to ring hollow. I don't have any really evidence for this, just a lot of lurking and observing, but it is really how I see most people here.
1388212
Seems awfully close to home.
1388234 Sorry, my self-projection may be showing. I do think it fits a lot of folks around here, though.
When I began writing here, when I began watching MLP, it made me happy. It was the happiest year I can remember. I felt part of a great community of writers, and I had a program that just plain made me feel joyful.
Then the attacks, bullying, and abuse came, as trolls from other sites moved in to attack my group, me, and my family. Little to nothing was done to protect or prevent any of it.
Now, I just feel sad. I can't watch certain videos about the show. Writing is difficult. I am depressed much of the time.
Bronies and Pony fandom are not the issue. They are wonderful things.
It is internet assholes and bullies and abusers that are the problem - that, and the lack of hardcoded protection or proper moderation here. Ponies are fun.
Internet fuckwads and indifference ruin lives.
I wouldn't have thought so originally, but now I am not so sure. The more bronies I meet the more sadness I see
2 subparts to this.
1. things that apply to any fantasy fandom/ collection of fanfic writers.
2. Things that seem innate to Bronies.
1. Fanfiction writers in fantasy settings, are almost by definition, prone to be people who are seeking escape from their day to day lives. Thusly they are people who are likely to be unhappy , to some degree, with their lives. Take me for example, and I am hardly the worst offender. In about a month I shall turn 30. By this point in my life, ten years ago, i was certain I would be 5 years into a rewarding and prestigious career, probably clearing 6 figures, and most definitely the owner of my own house.
I took steps to reach these goals, i worked hard in UG, i absolutely obliterated the LSAT ( to the point that i was subsequently hired as an LSAT tutor / instructor by one of the major test prep companies) and went on to attend a Law School that is consistently ranked amongst the top 15-20 law schools in the United States..only to graduate at the exact moment the economy collapsed, reducing the amount of new attorney jobs available by 2/3rds.
Instead I have to live with a roommate, I have a job where I barely clear 3k a month, and i see no way to pay off my 190k in student loans, let alone get married anytime in the foreseeable future. Owning my own house? at this point i would put the chances of ever doing that in the USA at less than 10%.
I am sure i should be doing something to produce more money, instead I waste time reading stories about magical talking cartoon horses. so it goes.
And this is the norm not the exception I am sure. People with full active social lives who have fulfilling careers dont usually have the kind of itch that writing fanfic fulfills. No shame in this. After all... had J.K Rowling not been dealing with severe clinical depression triggered by being an unemployed single mother who had just lost her own mother to Cancer there would be no Harry Potter.
2. The Bronies.
It is no secret that this show , with its charachters who have enormously emotive faces and always express their emotions in loud obvious ways, appeals to a lot of people for whom reading Human emotions in the real world is often painfully difficult. I am sure many of us remember the NYTimes article from a year or so back about the Autistic couple who watched MLP;FIM and found it useful in helping to read the emotions of each other and people in general.
In addition to that, though, there is another issue that I was not aware off until the one and only time I attended a Brony meetup: this show attracts a disproportionate share of men who lack any sort of shall we say female " comfort " in their lives... that is men for whom the only friendly and welcoming female voices they hear in their daily lives belong to ... magical talking cartoon horses. Now i know that fandoms in general have a reputation, wether it be well earned or just a stereotype, of attracting men who have problems interacting with the opposite sex, but, compared with the other 2 fandoms for which I have attended IRL meetups and fan events ( namely " Harry Potter" and " The Big Lebowski") the share was much larger among the Bronies who attended that particular meetup, as in quite clearly the overwhelming majority. So much so, in fact, that it made me never again go to a meeting or identify myself publicly as a brony to people i knew to be non bronies. I seriously was wondering whether these people owned a mirror, a shaving blade, or had any idea what a " gym" was.
Tied to the latter issue, It has been my experience that there is a disheartening amount of bronies who are Men's rights activists or otherwise really really embittered towards IRL women. At first this totally threw me for a loop, as I wondered what on earth attracted these people to a show whose main creative influence is a self described feminist and where 85% of the named charachters were female... but then as I remembered the Bronies I had met IRL, well the bitterness became more understandable .
There is one author here ( whose name I shall not reveal) of whom I used to be a HUGE fan ( as in , if you go on the TvTropes page for his main arc of stories as of today I am still responsible by myself for about 80% of the words on the page). I saw nothing off putting in his first couple of stories... but when he hit the bigtime (every new chapter update hitting the feature box) some odd political asides started creeping into the stories. Searching for an answer I began reading his blog posts which i had hitherto ignored..... and I was horrified. Turned out he was a religious fanatic who blamed feminism for all the world's ills. Like 2/3rds of his blog posts and of his comments on the comment sections of his stories where literally about how feminism was the single biggest threat to western civilization and how as men our main duty was to stand up to the feminists before they enacted their end game, which was the genocide of the entire male gender. Yes he seriously argued feminists wanted to exterminate all men. Right here on this very website. Anyone who dared to post a dissenting opinion challenging these statements got their comments instantly deleted by him.Finally I reached an " Orson Scott Card moment" and concluded i could not separate the art from the artist and had to stop reading him.
I was furious at him, deeply angry I felt downright betrayed ( despite being a straight male myself) how could such a hideous person like what I liked? How could he write so well and make me like his stories and then turn out to be a nutcase? what did that say about him? what did It say about me?.....
... and then i found out , by his own description, that he was morbidly obese ( 300+ pounds) had a severe heart condition, lived off disability on a trailer on his parents' property in Rural Ohio, and was a FortySomething year old Virgin. After that revelation, his hatred of women was no longer a mystery.Suddenly I felt nothing but Pity for him.
.Had I had to live his life, I would have some serious rage issues myself.
1388285
No, no, no need to be sorry. I meant it was awfully close to describing me (those parts I bolded at least).
1389794
What's wrong with that?
Think of the advantages:
).
Actually, I'm not sure that being a virgin is a necessity in the last one.
1. He can be bitten by a vampiress and turn into a full-fledged dracula, not just a mindless ghoul.
2. He can still ride a unicorn (well, at least the one able to carry 300+ pounds of sweaty flesh
3. He can convert to Islam, detonate himself in a catholic church and go to heaven where he will be worshiped by 77 virgins of the opposite sex.
Jelly much?
1390101 Well he has vocally advocated for the torture of all Muslims Detained by US Forces in the wars In Iraq and Afghanistan, assuming that by definition they are all guilty of being terrorists ( "due process" and " criminal procedure" terms dear to me as a lawyer, being apparently non existent in his thought processes) so I dont think he would be too interested in that last option.
A 300 pound vampire hurtling towards you atop his mighty unicorn steed
would be a sight to behold though....
Well then...
Remember that the emotion you attribute to bronies is a function of (1) the bronies you see and consider bronies, (2) your own perception of what they're saying, and (3) your memory of those perceptions. People here have provided possible derivatives of (1) that would lead to your conclusion, but we don't have enough information to determine whether (1) even matters much compared to (2) and (3).
My (1), (2), and (3) have led me to believe that bronies are typically happier than non-bronies.
Edit: As a side note, I've noticed that suicidal people are more likely to falsely believe that others are suicidal. It may be that this generalizes to other and/or less extreme mental states.