TagAnon
@Coco
Admins, you have indeed had it rough this past week. And I appreciate the stands you’ve taken, the arguments you’ve had, and the patience you’ve come close to losing.
I don’t have the OP’s badge because I didn’t make an account immediately after the original Ponibooru shut down, but I remember Roboshi favoriting just about everything (I think he made an exception to G1 content) and the community coming up with names for newly appearing background ponies in the show (which carried over to here).
However, I find the OP disingenuous.
If the OP is as much an old fart as I am, then the OP’s vision of the fandom is narrow. This was the fandom that was birthed on 4chan’s /co/ and wormed its way into the diseased heart of the “internet hate machine” that was /b/ and thrived. Yes, the rest of 4chan hated our guts, you just had to have thicker skin and ignore the haters.
Yes, the fandom has always connected all manner of disparate people from all over the world. Brazilians, Austrians (anyone else remember Pori?), Dutch, Koreans, Russians, Poles, Japanese; long-lived general threads full of Spanish-speakers as a testament to its Latin American audience before it got banned for illegal posts. One of our earliest polls indicated more people identifying as trans than female among all the males. It’s cured people of depression and indeed forged new friendships out of fandom.
But to claim, “most of us don’t elect to participate in the forums or other community events because of the this website’s community’s reputation for being so hostile to people like us.”, sounds really off. Anons from /mlp/ frequently accused Derpibooru of being a mandatory hugbox, even as they continued to use it and annoy the mods. For every drama llama of questioned gender (ex: Purpletinker) brought up on this site, there have been based and socially upstanding trans contributors (ex: Jitterbugjive). As racially insensitive as Applejack’s Plantation was/is, the art community lampooned it several times over - a much healthier response than pure condemnation in my opinion.
And while the backlash to these recent racially-charged real-world crimes has impacted nearly all of us, and perhaps given some of us the courage to finally confront complacency, it has also motivated opportunists both IRL and online; least of all the moralizers so enamored with change with such shallow views of history.
We have a long-standing artist with a controversial name. TSP even uploaded some of the earliest images under that tag. Where are the concerns? What’s in a name?
There was another nazi artist who truly did make images in the vein of nazi propaganda. The early users made a game of ‘find the swastika’ that the artist would hide in their images. Everyone’s been myopically focused on the present Aryanne and her stereotyping, yet I haven’t seen these brought up once. Does it matter anymore though? The nazi motif and the swastikas are nowhere to be seen in the artist’s more recent uploads. Perhaps the artist grew up (I legit don’t know, never followed them up) and stopped being a nazi? Does that potential growth matter to the moralizers?
(As an aside) Per new site policy, this arist’s old stuff should be subject to review. I’m not sure if a hidden swastika counts. There are old edits that have removed the swastikas, so maybe keep those?
Based on the OP’s post history, the OP has little faith in free speech and dismisses the arguments that have supported it out of hand. 4chan is a cesspool, it always has been, “pissing into an ocean of piss”, as the old image macro went, but odd gems do emerge from it and it has always hosted the fandom’s contrarians from Derpibooru to Ponychan. For the OP to have claimed to be around so long and to have views so shallow, to have been “a part of the community” yet not participate (outside of a small niche), to find a place to call home while driving others out of it, I say be wary. Make new friends, but get to know them first.
Admins, you have indeed had it rough this past week. And I appreciate the stands you’ve taken, the arguments you’ve had, and the patience you’ve come close to losing.
I don’t have the OP’s badge because I didn’t make an account immediately after the original Ponibooru shut down, but I remember Roboshi favoriting just about everything (I think he made an exception to G1 content) and the community coming up with names for newly appearing background ponies in the show (which carried over to here).
However, I find the OP disingenuous.
If the OP is as much an old fart as I am, then the OP’s vision of the fandom is narrow. This was the fandom that was birthed on 4chan’s /co/ and wormed its way into the diseased heart of the “internet hate machine” that was /b/ and thrived. Yes, the rest of 4chan hated our guts, you just had to have thicker skin and ignore the haters.
Yes, the fandom has always connected all manner of disparate people from all over the world. Brazilians, Austrians (anyone else remember Pori?), Dutch, Koreans, Russians, Poles, Japanese; long-lived general threads full of Spanish-speakers as a testament to its Latin American audience before it got banned for illegal posts. One of our earliest polls indicated more people identifying as trans than female among all the males. It’s cured people of depression and indeed forged new friendships out of fandom.
But to claim, “most of us don’t elect to participate in the forums or other community events because of the this website’s community’s reputation for being so hostile to people like us.”, sounds really off. Anons from /mlp/ frequently accused Derpibooru of being a mandatory hugbox, even as they continued to use it and annoy the mods. For every drama llama of questioned gender (ex: Purpletinker) brought up on this site, there have been based and socially upstanding trans contributors (ex: Jitterbugjive). As racially insensitive as Applejack’s Plantation was/is, the art community lampooned it several times over - a much healthier response than pure condemnation in my opinion.
And while the backlash to these recent racially-charged real-world crimes has impacted nearly all of us, and perhaps given some of us the courage to finally confront complacency, it has also motivated opportunists both IRL and online; least of all the moralizers so enamored with change with such shallow views of history.
We have a long-standing artist with a controversial name. TSP even uploaded some of the earliest images under that tag. Where are the concerns? What’s in a name?
There was another nazi artist who truly did make images in the vein of nazi propaganda. The early users made a game of ‘find the swastika’ that the artist would hide in their images. Everyone’s been myopically focused on the present Aryanne and her stereotyping, yet I haven’t seen these brought up once. Does it matter anymore though? The nazi motif and the swastikas are nowhere to be seen in the artist’s more recent uploads. Perhaps the artist grew up (I legit don’t know, never followed them up) and stopped being a nazi? Does that potential growth matter to the moralizers?
(As an aside) Per new site policy, this arist’s old stuff should be subject to review. I’m not sure if a hidden swastika counts. There are old edits that have removed the swastikas, so maybe keep those?
Based on the OP’s post history, the OP has little faith in free speech and dismisses the arguments that have supported it out of hand. 4chan is a cesspool, it always has been, “pissing into an ocean of piss”, as the old image macro went, but odd gems do emerge from it and it has always hosted the fandom’s contrarians from Derpibooru to Ponychan. For the OP to have claimed to be around so long and to have views so shallow, to have been “a part of the community” yet not participate (outside of a small niche), to find a place to call home while driving others out of it, I say be wary. Make new friends, but get to know them first.