Author's Note

I appreciate you taking the time to try this story out.

How I Got There (Part 1)

I looked at a rude Youtube comment under some stupid video that I didn’t even enjoy was watching. “Die in hell,” it said in response to my finely crafted sentence about how people should do whatever the hell they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt others.

The video in question was about hentai, where you could say the girls were a little bit…questionable about their age. But they were never real! I swear, some people just go on the internet to yell at anything that makes them uncomfortable without understanding the true consequences behind them, which in some cases, don’t exist.

As much as I wanted to send a very angrily worded comment in response to this twat’s poorly worded, inconsiderate post, I figured listening to Pinkie Pie’s smile song would be a more productive alternative. That guy could be a bloody troll for crying out loud.

Oh, while I’m writing about my experiences I might as well let you know, if you hadn’t guessed already, that I’m a brony, as it’s going to become very important in future chapters where I describe my experiences of the past few months, starting with that particular repulsive Youtube commenter.

So, trying to ignore the quote-on-quote hater, I went onto Dailymotion, hit up that awesome video from AstrumSpark, sat back, and let my emotions play off of the pure, diabetes-inducing, glory that is Pinkie Pie singing about smiles.

It all was going so well until I noticed something odd about Pinkie’s smiles. They seemed to reflect more as grimaces through my poorly lit screen, which I kept on the lowest brightness setting to save my eyes a bit of pain after hours of staring at it. I remembered reading a bit about how sleep deprivation can play tricks on the brain to make somewhat genial expressions appear defensive or even angry towards the person in question.

I passed it off and opened up a Facebook tab for the millionth time today, absorbing the song from the background as my heart leapt with joy upon seeing eight new notifications…they were all game notifications.

Normally, this would have devastated me, but the Pinkie Pie song in the background made it a little better. That is until I heard, “Get a fucking life you pervert.”

Alarm bells went ringing through my head at hearing these words. At first I thought it was one of the Facebook videos that insta-play when you scroll over them (which should be muted automatically mind you), but after scrolling for minutes up and down the feed, there wasn’t a video to be seen. Not even an ad was playing on the Facebook page, which shouldn’t have even be there because I had adblock on. The only two tabs I had open were Facebook and DailyMotion. People who keep more than twenty tabs open are crazy and don’t deserve remorse.

No way, I thought. Did AstrumSpark re-upload that video or something? Maybe an ad slipped through adblock on DailyMotion. I clicked the DailyMotion tab.

Not an ad to be seen. The video I’d been listening to had already made it through and was displaying recommended videos. Top Recommendation: Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up. Damn you rick-rollers.

Still I was really confused about who said that. I knew the voice in question was high and bubbly, as if Pinkie Pie herself, at the very end of the video, had said it. I replayed the video one more time.

Pinkie Pie’s smiles seemed to be on point again at least, and no cussing was involved. Somewhat disturbed, I continued on with my regularly scheduled evening, surfing the internet and waiting for welfare checks. Welfare checks…I know it’s kinda scummy to just rely on those, but I’m trying to find a job, kinda.

Believe it or not though, I actually have a little bit in savings. My parent gave me about 1k as a kind of sorry-for-kicking-you-out penance, so I’m letting it build up while I just live my life away exploring all there is to explore on the internet.

The neighborhood I’m living in is shitty due to money constraints, but it doesn’t really make a difference as long as I have running water, electricity for my computer, and food. While the crime over here is rampant, everyone knows I’m a shut-in, so no one really tries to rob me, which is a plus I guess.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, so enough with that pity party.

I was going about my regularly scheduled day, surfing the Reddit karma wave when a tab to YouTube opened. It was to that stupid Rick Astley video. “Dammit!”

I tried to shut it off, but ten more popped up in its place. Thinking quickly, I closed the entire browser as quickly as I could. The Rick Astley stopped, but now my desktop background changed. I can’t help but think what hella virus I’d just been infected with.

Looking at my desktop background, I noticed that it was actually a gif, of Pinkie Pie no less. She looked at me, I looked at her, she screamed in terror, and I couldn’t help but give a bemused chuckle. It was hard not to appreciate the immaculate animation that must’ve taken place to make such a life-like impression of Pinkie Pie, well, as life-like as you can make an imaginary, pastel-colored, talking horse.

I sat there and let the gif play out, just to see what the animator had done with the rest of the gif. After screaming in terror, Pinkie Pie looked at the screen curiously, the shift in her emotion abrupt. Out of nowhere, she decided to run at the screen, only to bonk loudly against that invisible wall between us. I could’ve sworn I saw my computer shake a little bit.

As the gif played on for ten, twenty, now thirty minutes, I was head over heels amazed at how much work this would’ve taken. If you take into account that many films contain 27 frames per second of footage, the animator must’ve completed at least 48,600 hand-crafted frames of beautiful animation to create this, and sent it to me in virus format no less. I’m still not sure if the internet browser problem went away or not.

What kind of crazy person would do that?

To the right of my computer, my alarm clock read 2:01 AM. The rest of this Pinkie Pie gif could wait until tomorrow.

Before going to sleep, I took a quick shower in lukewarm water, dried off, got dressed, and finally plopped onto bed.

The last thought that crossed my mind as I fell asleep was that gifs didn’t have sound effects.