Whew boy, I step out for a while and the anti-bronies come out in force!
I especially love that Bahumat guy, who, whiling insulting others for "messing up" the English language, proceeds to make not one but SEVERAL mistakes in his own post.
Consistency? What's that!?
Lol, see, I'm not a very nice, happy go lucky individual like most of the other Bronies (with all that "love and tolerate" stuff, which is cute, but not internet-proof) so allow ME to call it like I see it:
I don't think this has to do with anyone's misplaced concepts of masculinity. Quite the opposite, most of these people who constantly rail against bronies are too petulant and childish to even understand what masculine gender dynamics would LOOK like; plus their, hehe, "scathing" insults (like "Go to the REALWORLD, which I spelled as one word because screw you grammar!") scream anything BUT macho to me.
What I do see however, is this concept of what is and isn't for "little girls" and frequent mentions of how its "a kid's cartoon" and "about friendship" and therefore not deep and engrossing enough for big strong grown ups--and there we have it, now don't we. This is about very childish people trying to reinforce their perceived adulthood by lashing out at things they consider to be childish or kiddy. And the impotent flailings just get worse every time.
This isn't about these people hating bronies, we're just the most obvious target because we watch a TV show ostensibly directed towards young children, which also happens to be a meme-factory for adults. This isn't even about that, this is about SOME PEOPLE trying to look big and grown up when they aren't. If I had to guess, I'd figure a lot of the resentment comes from this perceived notion that ANYTHING ostensibly for children MUST be solely for children and that any adult who is part of that group must, in some way, be defective because obviously all adults want to be big strong grown ups and not little kids, right? RIGHT!??
I find it both refreshing and insightful that Cracked was far more genteel and realistic, if still satirical, in their assessment of it than many anti-bronies. They handled it in an adult manner, actually with adult concepts like exploring why, precisely, the fanbase exists. Far more adult than the anti-bronies, who just scream at the top of their lungs like, ironically, the petulant children they're so eager to distance themselves from. Which is doubly ironic when you consider just how childish that desire is, and really quite overcompensatory. That must be embarrassing, getting out-grown uped by a website that runs on fart jokes and Back To the Future references. And frankly, anti-bronies, I'm embarrassed for you even if you're not...
You're not, by the way, looking very grown up. Barging into threads you CLAIM you have no interest in, insulting people for no logical reason, and then openly declaring your hatred for an entire group of people based on their enjoyment of a TV show is not adult...that's a lot of things (bigoted, stupid, infantile, etc) but not a sign of emotional or mental maturity. And the question, why come here, to threads like this, if you hate them so much is a valid one that you people brush off with incredulity. The answer of course--assuming you function with any logical at all, which is perhaps me just being too naive--is that you do it because you believe it is the grown up thing to do: to lash out at childishness and hate that which you associate with childhood, so that you may prove to the other grown ups how damn grown up you are, like some tribal rite of passage.
So if I may offer some advice to those who hate people like me, unsolicited advice but its still free advice so go for it, since MLP is too "childish" for you I would like to quote one of the most famous and well known fantasy authors of the 20th century:
?Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.?
That's C.S. Lewis, by the way. Not that you'll care because Narnia (the multibillion dollar multimedia empire) is far too kiddy a series for big strong grown up peoples like you!