• Member Since 11th Jul, 2012
  • offline last seen Last Friday

Lucky Seven


Abuse my love a thousand times, However hard I try, Heartbreaker; your time has come, Can't take your evil way ♫♫♫

More Blog Posts82

Feb
14th
2022

Echo Chamber Groups Are Pointless (or, how to touch grass) · 9:44pm Feb 14th, 2022

I've been on this site for a minute. Almost 10 years now, actually. During my time on it, I've seen quite a bit of drama and turmoil, which I still find pretty hilarious for a website devoted to MLP fanfiction. However, one thing has always stuck with me, and that is the existence of groups devoted to hating on specific characters or plot points in the show.

Today, I'll be going through what these groups represent, and ultimately, why none of them have had the impact on the fandom that they wish they could have.


Alright, so we'll be starting with a brief description of what I consider to be an echo chamber group. An echo chamber group is one that was created with the intent to disparage characters or moments in the show that a portion of the community didn't agree with. Things such as the season three finale, Starlight's redemption arc, Discord being reformed, the series finale, etc.

These are examples of moments in the show that have generated some ire from a portion of the community at large. Now, what I will say now is that everyone is perfectly within their right to dislike a character, an episode, a season, or even the entire show. We all have different tastes, and that's what makes us human. However, creating a group to push your cause on this website is not the win some people seem to think it is.

So now we move to the inherent problem with these groups: You're talking to yourself. That's it. Everyone who is in a group titled "Starlight Is Bad", for example, is going to agree with you. Anyone who disagrees will be downvoted and run out of the group for not holding that same belief. That is what makes these groups an echo chamber. They are choosing to stand for something they believe in, but due to the way the website is structured, nobody who disagrees with them is going to seeking out these groups unless they just want to do what I said, disagree. And that is few and far between.

Having looked through these groups, I have seen people as late as 2021 still making extremely long and detailed posts about why a character's redemption was bad, and how it could be improved. The main problem with this, of course, is that the show is over, and nothing is going to change. The other problem is that every single person in that group is in the group because they also believe the character is bad. Spending your time making a 2,000-word post about how terrible a character is entirely pointless when you're not convincing anyone except the people who already agree the character sucks anyways.

This obviously is not an endemic exclusive to Fimfiction, because all communities have different subsets of people who like and dislike different things. But on a website like this where you have to specifically seek out a group, join it, and then reply to a forum post to state why you disagree only to end up being downvoted, it doesn't accomplish anything. It's just a group of people screaming the same thing at each other and stroking their egos because obviously everyone there agrees with them, which is unhealthy behavior no matter how you shake it.

So, in conclusion, echo chambers go BRRRRRRRR and if you're still butthurt about a character from a show meant for children that ended two years ago, you need to touch grass and find a new hobby because nobody cares.

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Comments ( 8 )

I remember years back, a certain user who I shall not name (because HOPEFULLY he has indeed touched grass and moved on from this site at this point) made an anti-starlight group like the one you described. Me and a bunch of other people raided that group and got it locked down in a matter of hours just as it was made. This was back in….2016, I wanna say? I don’t know it’s fuzzy for me. But yea, my first years on this site where interesting to say the least.

Glad someone is pointing out how pointless and even dangerous these kinda groups can be for people.

This sword kinda cuts both ways for fan groups as well. Anyone who dislikes a character or something about the show is not going to seek out those groups unless they are looking to start fights. Positive echo chambers exist too (though I'd argue that they are less bad than negative ones).

The moral of the story is that its good to be challenged from time to time. Keeps you thinking

That's it. Everyone who is in a group titled "Starlight Is Bad", for example, is going to agree with you. Anyone who disagrees will be downvoted and run out of the group for not holding that same belief. That is what makes these groups an echo chamber.

You used a microcosm example but didn't run it all the way up to the real macrocosm. It's the inherent flaw in all discussion boards and websites that allow updoots and downdoots to have an effect, or even just to be visible; same for aggregated "post karma" or "reputation score". Anyone who disagrees even slightly with whatever the lowest common denominator being pushed by the specific platform is, is silenced. Fimfic is actually in the less-cancerous category of "still having cancer" in that ups and downs don't actually affect anything outside of story heat, but they're still visible and still have a proven psychological effect on discourse.
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That wouldn't happen to be the guy who regularly said he was leaving the site for the last five to six years and only just recently actually did, would it?

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I’m not naming names. But perhaps it is. Lol

Imagine not liking something, getting emotional over how bad that something is, and creating an online forum that will see a mass influx of people who agree with you, and the ones that don't you can ban Karl Marx style.

Fiction is fiction, and the writers who dictate that fiction are humans with the capacity to make mistakes from time to time. The biggest flaw in the expectation that a show should be perfect start to finish is that long-form storytelling almost always loses its original merit at some point because so many previous ideas have already been done. If anything, it's on the viewer for treating the writers as if they should be creatures of infinite creativity. If a show gets bad after a certain point, that's fine. All it's worth is a discussion about why it was bad and nothing else. Move on to something you'd enjoy and shut up. Go watch Owl House or some shit.

With that said, here are my reasons why the Cowboy Bebop live-action remake is better than the anime...

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I didn't want to name names either, so I get you, no need to preach ill of the dead after all. Although, reading that first post again and noting the emphasis, I'm pretty sure we're on the same wavelength.

> With that said, here are my reasons why the Cowboy Bebop live-action remake is better than the anime...

Oh thank god, someone else thinks this too. I thought I was literally the one human who did.

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