Confessions of an Anti Brony
This is not part of the story
(A/N Okay I have been talking to a guy and he wanted me to read his story, I thought it was great his name on this site is Formal_Anti-Brony please follow him for this is his story)
I would like to make a full public confession. Perhaps it could be in a Senate committee hearing, where, in glare of a television lights, a jowly senator would ask me, "Are you now, or have you ever been, an anti-brony?" I would wave away my lawyer's attempt to plead the Fifth Amendment, stare up at my inquisitor, and sadly confess that indeed its all to true- I was once a card carrying anti-brony. Of course, I would have to admit this was during a period of pure ignorance and that I am no longer associated with anti-Brony movement. I would be expected to name names, as they say. This would not cause me any great pangs of conscience, since almost everyone who is not a brony is, in some sense, an anti-brony. In fact, I would probably accommodate the senators’ request with a random reading of names from the Parisian telephone directory. Presumably, the senators would quickly tire of this dull recitation and, wishing to regain the camera’s attention, thank me for my courage in coming forth to reveal this disturbing worldwide situation. After my confession, I would attend a press conference where the world press would closely question me. After all, it’s the worst-kept secret in the world bronies are almost universally disliked.
Before I explain what I mean, perhaps I should describe my credentials for speaking on this subject. I am an American who lives 30 miles from Lake Michigan. We normal people (I use that term loosely) know a great deal about the MLP series from the little girls we used to know and play with, now before you think I'm old id like to make clear I'm 22, exposure to the same life as the childhood friends made me well aware of the tv series created to only sell toys, and, of course, extensive social interaction between me and a rather girlish boy did help me quite a bit. Indeed, it is my experience that the average American would score well in any test of knowledge of MLP history (As I expect the test to be about a page long). On the other hand, it is a source of irritation to my fellow anti-bronies that the average Brony has great difficulty even distinguishing popular sport teams, shows, and almost anything else to do with social life (no offense intended). I can remember from my own ill-spent late teens of playing with the brony that I know (Before MLP FIM aired, 1 or 2 years before) and how many questions they asked me that betrayed profound ignorance of the freind they were visiting and his social life. I remember one particular Canadian cousin who stared out over the expanse of Lake Michigan while I got him a drink and inquired of me as to the name of that particular wide lake he saw before him. This lack of interest in anything but new anime shows and his die hard addiction to MLP, sharing the same continent as I and still wondering what the name of the lake is made me rather angry seeing as how he didnt even care about the world around him might have been responsible for the first stirrings of my dislike for these people called Bronies. For most normal "people", there are additional reasons for animosity.
Many non- otakus, bronies, and children, would find it sensitive to the problem, sometimes even bronies would camouflage their brony roots by naming themselves non-bronies and dis the show to satisfy non-bronies sensibilities. For example, While the first season of MLP FIM aired I caught my little brother watching MLP with my little sister ( who are twins by the way), and how when he saw me started to state that "The show is stupid!" and started to call his own sister "A childish runt" for watching this. At the time I only saw him as the child for the fact is my little sister is a girl and it is a girls show.
In Politically way, a non-brony has enormous latitude for expressing their anti-Brony feelings. I remember the smug satisfaction we anti-bronies felt during the time during the first season where if you went on 4 chan or any other website you'd see anti-bronies making their mark by getting multiple likes and attention for being anti-brony. As Bronies were getting more and more convulsed by dirty comments and sometime even racial slangs. For once, anti-bronies could feel completely morally and politically superior to their (growing) powerful internet enemies. We welcomed draft dodgers as men of moral courage who saw the error of their backward ways and, by inference, the superiority of the anti-brony way of life. We welcomed normality and saw bronies as a promoter of childish fantasies, and lovers of same new form of bestiality. Of course, none of this was ever expressed officially in person by ourselves; that would have been inconsistent with our best interests. So we could have the best of both worlds: we could express our anti-brony attitudes on the internet while enjoying the friendship brought by our brony friends (Even though we all soon abandoned our brony friends who refused to change). But I was soon to find that this hypocritical attitude is not an exclusively North American phenomenon.
When my 21th birthday came I decided to travel around Europe for 2 and 1/2 weeks (My present from my parents) I visited London during the late spring, I arrived with a particularly sophisticated form of anti-bronyism. I and other Americans knew the nuances of brony life because we shared them, as a Lithuanian might have a more solid basis for understanding the Soviet Union than, say, a Cuban would. By contrast, the British wing of the anti-brony movement betrayed an almost primitive understanding of the object of their enmity. It was in Britain that I first became a little embarrassed at being part of this movement. It became clear to me that the root of Britishers’ anti-bronyism attitudes was a group of people who despised anything that came out of the new world (especially America). They would do bad’imitations of New York accents, make of of American animations and, even worse, they made fun of the physical appearance of American tourists. Of course, people everywhere joke about national differences, but underlying Britishers’ jokes I sensed a sad bitterness.
Like everything else in Britain, anti-bronyism had two distinct accents, upper-class and working-class. The up- per class viewed bronies as slightly too American (It seemed every up-per class Britt whom was a anti-brony was also an anti-american). Indeed, they tended to regard Americans in much the same way they regarded their fellow citizens of the working class-and, for that matter, anyone who did not share the cultural com- forts of exclusive schools, cultivated accents, and privileges of position. For the first time in my life, I (along with Australians, New Zealanders, and Canadians) were grouped with Bronies, and experienced upper-class Britishers’ silly belief in superiority based on class. We “colonials,” as we were collectively called, had some difficulty relating to this form of prejudice. We generally shared the belief that a person’s worth is based on his efforts, not his forebears.
After the initial shock, it struck most of us as hilariously funny that anyone could seriously expect to be judged on the basis of his lineage. Unfortunately, it was not quite so funny to those sons and daughters of the working class who were attempting to rise into the British professional classes. Nor was it particularly amusing to Pakistanis, Indians, and Jamaicans who had to stay and endure this stupidity or return to a poorer life at home. On the other hand, we Americans, Canadians, and Australians did have a choice in the matter, and most of us eventually chose to go home.
For the first time in my life, I experienced prejudice as its object. What’s more, I was being categorized with Bronies-the object of my own particular prejudice!
If the British upper class’s version of anti-Bronyism was based on presumed cultural superiority, the working- class version was more reasonable. Since the working class is the main constituency of the Internet users, which to me screamed a more reasonable hatred for anti-bronyism, one would not expect much sympathy for the bronies there. Interestingly, though, I found that working-class hostility rarely took the form of personal animosity toward bronies. Rather, it was expressed as a generalized belief in the struggle of normality against abnormality and since America is the principal bastion of worlds abnormality (or as they said.) and, in these circles, I was the enemy.
We “colonials” were most familiar with this type of anti-bronyism, which took the form of angered posts on websites which the anti-brony stated how he/she was normal and how bronies were not. These conspicuous displays of anti-bronyism received a great deal of attention in America for which we anti-bronies supported it. But an important point was consistently over looked: any protest against bronies and its actions in the world is animated by a profoundly irrational resentment to Americans as well. If I required any further confirmation of this fact, I found it during a brief residency in Paris. One thing can be said for my French ex-freinds in the anti- brony movement: they do not suffer from the hypocrisy of their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. Even the dullest American or brony, tourist from Wichita has experienced the full force of the Frenchman’s disdain. This admiration for Gallic honesty must be tempered, however. I once inquired of a Parisian taxi driver as to the source of this animosity toward bronies, mainly those from North America. He explained, with some pride, that Parisians are not merely anti-brony, they are simply against the entire human race. As an American, I can attest to this. Despite my qualms about associating with this somewhat primitive European wing of the anti-brony movement, I continued to persist in my belief that my anti-bronyism was based on an objective judgment. Whereas European anti- bronyism is founded on the envy of a people who no longer enjoy power in the world (so almost every anti-brony is also an anti-American), mine was founded on a substantiated critique of brony love policy in the world and at home, which they brony numerous times. Who could dispute the facts of 4-chan, Facebook, and the hate in FimFiction itself? Not even most bronies could defend their comrades sometimes stupid and cruel behavior. Indeed, bronies themselves provide the best ingredient for the meal that we “antis” devour every day.
Yet it is difficult to persist in a perpetual negative belief system, and I cast about for alternatives. Perhaps a glance at the other side of the world would prove instructive. What lessons could be learned in East Berlin, Prague, and Budapest?
I had never quite accepted all that “bestiality lover” business, so I journeyed to the once Communist world with a mind willing to believe the best. As a Westerner, I found myself being constantly accosted by people in restaurants and hotel lobbies who told me how terrible their lives were (as if I needed the confirmation of what my eyes showed me) under the old repressive system. They told me of how they envied the freedom to travel, to read what they want, and to say what they please. Their painful sadness was not economic, political or cultural; it was the personal anguish of not being able to live freely. A young woman on a train from Prague to Brno in Czechoslovakia stands out in my memory. An engineer, she described the pleasure of that brief spring of 1968 when she could travel freely to Vienna just to see a movie. She told me how the majority of her fellow citizens still hate the Russians for what they did and I replied at one point with a passing reference to Orwell, and she told me that his works were once forbidden in Czechoslovakia. There no one cared if you were a brony, black, or Hispanic they just didn't care because it is a free world.
I think sometimes about the callous, stupid brony in his large chair who doesn’t know anything about a lake in a country he cares nothing about, and that woman on the train who aches only to live life as she chooses, and I am embarrassed by my earlier lack of understanding of the difference. How petty is my resentment of the unlikely representative of brony rule compared to my anger over a very different system that stifles individuals’ purpose in lifesimply to live freely. Yes, we should criticize the bronies system, for freedom to criticize is part of our purpose, too. But we should not lose sight of what makes it possible for us to be anti-bronism the best of the brony tradition. I live in a Purdue campus house now I'm majoring in enginering. I can find new reasons for criticizing bronies. We who sit in a tavern in Bonn or a club in Norwich or a restaurant in Lyon or a cafe in Barcelona or a trattoria in Milan or a bar in Rio or anywhere where people can gather and complain and argue-we all know, don’t we? We anti-bronies, we complainers and critics of MLP, we all know that our words come from our resentment of these people. We resent these people who dare to reflect the imperfections of us all-these people who possess the most united power on the internet and yet use that power to leave us the freedom to criticize them bronies are the most united group on the internet, non of us can disagree to that, and yet you rarely see bronies get on atni-brony threads and disrespect my beliefs or the beliefs of other anit-bronies, That’s my confession of anti-bronyism. I suppose that as long as I’m not an brony, I’ll always be somewhat of an “anti.” Yet I know that if I decided to become an brony citizen tomorrow, my views would not differ greatly from the average brony, because dissent is their curse and their salvation. Long live MY LITTLE PONY!