The media recently have been covering a series of mutilations within the brony community. They headlined it as a new fad, another set of lines and borders the brony community would be willing to break to express their love of My little pony: Friendship is magic. Interviews with these individuals express their joy and happiness for their predicament as their hands have been shown to have been cleanly chopped off, and by their claims, overnight, healed over to form these supposed "hooves" as the bronies liked to call them.
Of course the media are quick to call these people crazy and deluded, lost in their own world and that every brony in the world should seek help for their affliction. Hasbro got a lot of flack from overly concerned parents that were quick to blame the toy company and it's related franchise. Families and friends of the "victims" have also banded together under an anti-brony flag and have spoken of the suffering the show has caused them. New episodes tried to pop up addressing the issue, various PSAs were released in all media Hasbro could get their hands on, even government propaganda against people looking at things outside of their recommended age range had begun to pop-up in reaction to this social uproar. Every older man and woman who expressed a love of a show for little girls, were not only seen as merely weird now but scary too. The bronies had quickly come from a figure to be ostracized, to a figure and "movement" to be afraid of,
But the involved people, truly involved, knew better, the collective anonymous of /mlp/ knew better. The world might call them crazy but they knew that this was beyond something as easily explained as a few pockets of spaghetti within the fandom. This was not the affliction of autistic ponyfags, gone mad with their love of ponies. And they've seen some shit to know this with certainty.
Bronies knew these people, these loud and proud bronies that would fight to the end for their right to collect toys, show off body pillows and dance terribly to terrible terrible brony music. We all knew these faggots were stupid, that was for certain. But they didn't come off as crazy by any measure of the word, besides utter retardedness.
One of the first signs was this sudden rise in popularity of a certain mint coloured unicorn mare who at this point had fairly fallen into old meme, yet still generally loved. Her inability to sit properly caused a plethora of memedom that made her known as the anthropologist we all know, and interest had spontaneously reignited as if overnight. Threads in /mlp/ became swamped with these Lyra threads. Posts, hundreds, thousands of them every second and everyday to such an extent that /mlp/ ceased to function with its usual business of tulpas, draw threads, humanised art and clop. Any attempts to the contrary of Lyra were hijacked, overwhelmed and very quickly forgotten in the sea of hands and hooves. Everything was Lyra lyra lyra, and thats spread through the bandwagon sites like Equestria daily, down playing it as just another trend within the fandom of my little pony.
Very quickly Lyra was viral once more, and everypony thought it innocent enough.
And then the news reports came. Pictures, videos and photos were posted of these strange Lyra fans. Over and over pictures they would post, thousands of them, never the same one.
Never, the same ones.
"Lyra is best pony hands down." Would be said in every single post, with posts alternating from a picture of Lyra holding and playing with a real pair of severed human hands and then a post of a human being time stamping pictures of their hooves as they clumsily hold the paper signs to their chests. Men and women and even children were in these pictures, all their faces plain to be seen.
In reaction to this overwhelming opposition, anonymous were forced out of their home. The denizens of /mlp/ forced to be refugees with their hated brother ponychan. The ponyfags at the time didn't realise it, but /mlp/, for the first time, knew that that they would find a common enemy in these "Lyrafags."
The ponyfags were generally in the party of blaming this as some sort of orchestrated prank from /mlp/ to further make the fandom impure. To finally extinguish the positive notoriety they'd been working so hard to build. /mlp/ for once didn't take the chance to troll the idiotic claim. Bronies needed to stick together and hopefully they'd weather this storm.
Somehow, it would surely all just die down and go away.
Pretty soon Ponychan was taken too and soon the "survivors" splintered off into smaller communities. Everyday now communities would pop up and then vanish, as they continued to be hijacked by "them."
Like all bronies do, they began to discuss what was going on in whatever way they could. Skype, IRC, all the various ways of communication where nothing is public but to a select few.
With this self imposed segregation, the fandom had now fallen to hard times, rumours and claims were all the facts that could be gathered. Rumours and claims and theories of knowing the people in the pictures were being made all over, apparently. None of these bronies were quite well known to be Lyra fans, in fact the majority were known to be within the ranks of the various mane 6 factions of the ongoing best pony debate. Others being within factions of various OCs and background ponies. Lyra was just another popular pony in a sea of popular pony characters.
As the discussion grew many variations of the same story kept popping up. These particular bronies had been known to last being seen as being quite their autistic selves, causing a shit storm over who best pony was. They were commonly associated with such threads as they fiercely fought for their best pony, in youtube, 4chan, equestria daily, bronysquare, all over the brony community.
And then one day they picked a fight with a user named Lyra Heartstrings. All over the fandom they fought. hundreds of fags of every spectrum of the best pony factions, repeatedly over and over, the phrase "hands down" being repeated between them over and over.
At some point that brony would just bow out of the fight, abruptly, as if his tantrum had been suddenly cut short one night. And then this brony would appear on the news the day after, with his hands missing and smiling and crying tears of joy as he stares at his hooves.
This is a message and warning to you bronies. From all that we've discussed we can only come to a few theorised conclusions and think up a few measures. These are by no means certain to help, but its either that or lose yourself to the madness.
If you see a user named Lyra or Heartstring or Lyra Heart strings, do not respond, no matter how tempting. Don't even draw her attention to you.
Never say "hands down" in a discussion about best ponies.
Sleep with your hands tied to your back and sleep on your back.
Do not open your eyes if you hear anything at night. Ignore it, it was probably the wind.
Do not look at any strange lights. Run away from it and close your eyes.
Do not answer when you are called out at night.
Turn off your computer before you go to sleep.
Never say her name in type or speech.
Sleep until you can't sleep anymore.