Apr
19th
2021
Re: my profile changes. · 3:44am Apr 19th, 2021
https://twitter.com/_Drummershy_/status/1383635567091453952
There's where you go.
If you don't have money, fair enough. I've been there, done that. If you do and don't care, fuck off.
This community harbored this. We knew it was here and most of us called it a joke and laughed it off. Aryanne is no big deal, swastika avatars are no big deal, nothing is a big deal until somebody fucking DIES and then it's all "oh, that's not what this fandom is about!" Yes it is. Yes. It. Is.
Own your fucking sins.
As for me, I should have been gone long ago, I'm definitely gone now. Those of you who give a shit know where to find me, the rest of you can sit on it and spin.
Well. . . shit.
I guess all I can say is this situation is shit, isn't it? Has been for a lot longer than we should have allowed it to be. While I don't necessarily resonate with how adamant you are about "owning sins" or "fucking off," I can't really disagree with you at this point either. It is beyond disheartening to see something like this fandom, one founded on the literal magic of friendship, devolve into what it has been these last years. People have overstepped, overburdened, and just outright gone over their own heads. Now people have killed. Now people have died (though that part isn't really new either).
It won't mean much, but I am sorry to see this happen to this community. I am especially sorry to see this happen to the families of all of those involved.
For what it is worth, you'll be missed around here, mate. Take care and stay safe.
I wasn't sure what you were getting at until I had an epiphany and searched "(shooter's name)" and "friendship is magic" just to check.
...
Well, that's depressing as fuck.
For the record, I don't think most of us have ever considered the small but repulsively toxic community of openly White nationalist bronies to be a joke, especially given how they recruit from our fandom. Most of us don't want those people in our spaces and have spoken out about it to the extent possible.
There needs to be a concerted effort by bronies to speak out loudly enough that the general public will know we stand united against this. I'm afraid if good people distance themselves from the fandom it will only get worse, but I fully understand why you've done what you have.
What happened? Who died and why?
This sounds like a veiled threat, I hope it's not leading to anything serious.
5501348
It's a response to it; FedEx shooter was from the fandom, shortest possible version.
5501343
Clinically depressed guy committed suicide-by-police, shooting up a FedEx to get their attention. He had made a Facebook post an hour beforehand about wanting to be with Applejack when he died. There's no evidence that he had any motive beyond suicidal depression, but people are connecting him to the far left or the far right depending on their own political leanings anyways and reacting accordingly, such as SPark, here, who thinks it was a politically motivated attack rather than a simple tragedy and so is attempting to distance themselves from the perceived alt-rightness of the fandom.
It's been a long time since I've seen that Nazi OC. Even when I did, it was only around for a few weeks. I was glad when it disappeared.
5501359
So, this kid does awful stuff for a dumb reason... And people are making it political? Wth...
Also, you don't get to Equestriaby being awful, it violates the magic rules. I hope he gets sent to someplace awful, like in the movie What Dreams May Come.
The guy's mom reported him as being mentally ill and wanting to commit "suicide by cop." The police searched his place and confiscated his shotgun but did not find him to be espousing a racially-motivated ideology. His laptop has been seized so hopefully we can learn more about his motivation. For now, we just know that he randomly shot people at his former place of work and then shot himself. I am not yet ready to ascribe this to a right-wing racist ideology, but that may change as the investigation continues.
This person's mental illness cost the lives of many innocents, and that is a terrible tragedy. He demonstrated the exact opposite of the main message of the show: embrace friendship of others.
I have made a donation to the fund but I refuse to take personal responsibility for the actions of one mentally ill person in the community. Sorry, SPark.
5501363
5501359
5501435
The shooting itself might not have been political in the shooter's mind, but SPark isn't pulling the far-right/Nazi connection out of their ass. As reported in the WSJ, one of the shooter's Facebook accounts was temp-suspended six months ago for a post suggesting Hitler was Jesus's reincarnation:
pbs.twimg.com/media/EzTSuA8VUAIOGvk?format=png&name=900x900
For some reason that ideology isn't making the news as much as the TV show he liked.
(And something weird to think about there: To me the term "brony" conjures up people like, well, me -- dudes in their 20s when FIM was taking off. Hell, I'm in my mid-30s now, ten-plus years on. But this shooter was just 19, which means he was only around eight years old when FIM premiered... right in the prime demo age bracket.)
5501363
5501359
There's a bit of a Rashomon thing going on here, but my exposure to this story was through the following news article, which is a pretty clean bit of reporting. For context, this is a news hub catering primarily to investors - they're reporting on the shooting since it happened at FedEx, meaning it's had an impact on the company. That's probably as unbiased a news source as you're going to find on the subject.
Relevant bits:
So he was interviewed in April 2020 by the FBI (which is when his mother warned police that there was a possibility of his becoming violent), then six months later one of his accounts is blocked by Facebook for literally posting nazi shit. The connections here aren't being made up out of nowhere and this isn't a shooting being "made political". Even assuming this man's motives were entirely based on his depression, most folks with depression don't commit mass murder even when they commit self-destructive acts. The article also mentions that of the eight identified victims of the shooting four were members of the local Sikh community, which isn't direct evidence that the shooting was motivated entirely by racial bias, but taken together with the Hitler cartoon I really wouldn't be in a rush to say "this is all being pushed as a political agenda".
Shockingly given I'm very, very self-admitted far-left, I actually agree that it's too early to confirm all of the shooter's motivations. Brandon Hole could have been a committed white nationalist, or he could be someone who fell down a depression hole and got "blackpilled", and he is definitely an example of an unstable person. But the thing is, this kind of violence is pretty often linked with racial motivations and there are connections that exist here.
Incidentally:
I do love that people tend to focus on the "no clear indication those were motivations in the shooting" miss the bit right before that where our fandom's nazi problem is bad enough that the cops were noting it internal communication. Brandon Hole could've shot those eight people because he hated Mondays and I'd still point to this as evidence that things around here are pretty fucked.
5501435
Literally nobody was asking you to take direct responsibility for the actions of a murderer. Might want to take a good hard look at the fact that your first response to this kind of disgust is to be defensive, though.
5501475
Scarlet,
Thanks for posting all this relevant information that we know so far. I had not heard about the Hitler angle and it certainly leans things towards racism being his motive.
As to “Literally nobody was asking you to take direct responsibility for the actions of a murderer.” That’s exactly how I interpreted SPark’s remark “Own your fucking sins.”
Maybe no one else perceived it that way, but everyone interprets what they read according to their own filters, and that’s how I took it.
No, it didn't. I seem to recall multiple shitstorms around this specific topic, and attempts to smear free speech loving people as Nazis and so on. There is a difference between fiction and reality, and if you don't like something, then grow a pair and don't read it.
Because it ISN'T a big deal, and it IS a joke, no matter how you try to twist the narrative the bottom line is that it's a joke. Aryanne, an Earth pony, the unicorn supremacist who hates Earth ponies. That's like saying African American white supremacist or Jewish Nazi. Your inability to recognize humor does not negate the presence of the joke, and your attempt to associate MLP with Nazis and murderers is pathetic.
Unless you were part of the target demographic in the last years of the show, you should be an adult by now. Grow up.
You can repeat yourself as many times as you like, that doesn't make it true.
Seems to me you're the only one advocating that this is what the fandom is about, m8. If you want to claim partial responsibility for the actions of a mass murdering nutter, be my guest. As for me and the other adults in the room, we'll discuss mental illness and other factors, mourn as needed, and get on with our lives, because we know we're not responsible and aren't going to pretend we are for the sake of virtue points.
If this is how you act around a tragedy, then good fucking riddance.
5501544
Depending on when you got here, yes, the community did harbor this. It wasn't until the last couple years that people started pulling their heads out of their asses and going "hey, wait, that's not really funny" and even more so when the Atlantic ran an article on the fandom. The response, by and large, can be summed up in your comment about Aryanne - "it's a joke, grow up" like this is some high brow intellectual humor when, in reality, it's scraping the bottom of the barrel in the same vein that sticking Stalin's mustache on Starlight Glimmer and throwing her on Soviet Russia like posters is comedic. The imagery is "just a joke". Just like Applejack running a Zebra plantation in one piece of artwork, or the entire shitstorm recently of there being a word that ends in a hard R for Zebras was a thing. These were all "just jokes" too. Or at least, that's how they were defended.
So, while Spark wasn't sitting here saying YOUUUUUUUU INDIVIDUAL USER NUMBER 13546546513246546547657654354654 ARE RESPONSIBLE, he is not wrong to point out that the community harbored this.
You just did by saying the flagrant Nazi pony is a joke in, word for word, exactly the same style that the same people who have been shrieking their heads off about "oh em jeeezus the chuds are
in the housein our fandom!!!!!1one" the last two years did when I pointed out six goddamned years ago "hey, isn't having a pony who parrots Nazi dogma ... kinda sketch guys?"But hey. Just lighten up. Spark telling the fandom to own its sins is just a joke.
The punchline is that the people here all think their shit doesn't stink.
Cue the laughtrack.
5501593
Let me get this straight: An online community based on a cartoon horse program harbored art of a nazi horse that made a depressed and suicidal/delusional teenager who was infatuated with a DIFFERENT horse go to his previous workplace and murder his coworkers. And Democrats stole the US 2020 election and corporations are turning the frogs gay. Next you're going to tell me Bush did 9/11 and a cabal of Jews secretly control the world.
Pull the other leg.
So... humor is subjective and some people joke about things you find distasteful? That's the big brain take, here? Or does telling dead baby jokes contribute to infanticide? Do video games cause violence, then? Do you honestly believe that people can't make rational decisions about fiction vs reality? That merely the existence of a satirical nazi horse can somehow make someone turn from a rational human being into a goose-stepping genocidal maniac? Really?
Not even going to get into the fact the guy was into Applejack, not Aryanne, and trying to conflate these things for moral signaling is next-level disgusting. But hey, you do you.
Mmmm. Fortunately, I don't believe in our so-called collective responsibility. No one here is in any way responsible for what a depressed/suicidal/delusional nutjob chose to do. You're not responsible, I'm not responsible, those so-called "Nazis" aren't responsible. Pretending otherwise for the sake of moralistically declaring the outgroup sinful and bad for ingroup good boy points doesn't interest me.
Translation: "I don't like joke, therefore those who tell joke are responsible for the actions of someone they've never met, in a state they've never visited, for a cause they wouldn't support. And YOU just did the same thing! You must be a member of that dirty, filthy outgroup I don't like! For shame!"
Ah, yes, quite. "It's YOUR GUYS' fault, not mine. I didn't tell those jokes, so I'm not responsible for the dead! I'm the only moral one here, all you other people who believe in freedom of speech and responsibility are the ones who made this happen. Me and Sparkplug are the only two saints, all the rest of you are sinners and alt-right neo-nazi fascists for making fun of nazis using a cartoon horse. How dare you!"
Done. The funniest thing to me is that the Nazis you guys are so desperately trying to imply contributed to this have probably done more good in this world than you have. Their edgy humor raised tens of thousands of dollars for abused horses. What have you done? Moral posturing over a tragedy so you can pat yourselves on the back and say, "Man, I'm so glad I belong to ingroup! I'm such a moral person, unlike those outgroup members who are partly responsible for these murders."
5501475
See, when I saw that bit, I figured people would focus on the former. It makes it sound like white nationalism is becoming a feature of the brony fandom, rather than being a feature of a few rare individuals who happen to be bronies. And that's what scares me: I don't know how much the people writing that memo assumed we were all becoming Nazis, but I do believe that the regular reader will start making assumptions in that direction based on the wording of that memo.
This is where I see SPark's words ringing entirely true: one bad apple ruins the bunch. The shooter turned out to be a bad apple; we are the bunch. How this plays out will depend on us now.
Because, after all, as much as Aryanne is intended as satire, as per 5501593 's comment, we who allow that satire have to be very mindful of the thin line its meant to walk. We absolutely need to puch back when that satire runs its course out, or when someone carries it beyond the bounds of satire. Once again, how that plays out depends on us, the main body of bronies.
When I read that article, my first thought - and something I posted to friends on Discord - was "them's fightin' words." Because this is a battle for the heart and appearance of the fandom. I love the fandom, and I'm not willing to let the mere existence of people like that shooter drag us down into something we'll all hate.
5501652 Bitch, I'm specifically making fun of the in group in this fandom because they sat on their thumbs for years and watched this shit fester. That group went the other end of the horseshoe theory curve and went for Puritan stan bullshit without any comprehension for it.
The funniest thing here is that you think I'm saying that Spark and I are saints. We're not.
It's just funny as fuck that as soon as someone points out that the far right fuckery is not a bug of this fandom, but a feature that has festered beneath the surface for pretty much its entire lifespan, we get some twat—in this case, yourself—who comes out and goes on about how the person calling the fandom out for harboring these people needs to grow up and that "oh yes, me and person X are saints and you should all just figure yourselves out."
In this case, no. Again, we're not. The two of us are, by and large, out of the fandom because we got tired of the bullshit - from the uber right twats to the Puritan pearl-clutchers, we found it to be maddeningly hypocritical and unwilling to do even the slightest bit of self-evaluation.
Or, in your case, you'd beat off about how there's irony that the Nazis have probably done more in their lives to better things for autistic folks than I have, because, yes, that totally justifies the dipshits spewing hateful bullshit so long as we donate to a few things. And watch the entire fucking point, that this fandom has a long history of giving these ideas a place to stay, go sailing right over your head.
And you will flagrantly ignore the reality that, every time someone has called out that the aforementioned far right twats recruit from here and have made a concentrated effort to do so, they will, invariably, get one of two responses:
"Noooooooo, it's just a small section of idiots. We know how to root them out" or "You need to grow up and just take a joke! It's all just satire, you just can't deal with it because [whatever asinine reason]."
5501702
It sounds like you and SPark have had a lot of exposure to far-right elements of pony fandom on this site. Would you mind sharing your experiences?
5501652
You ever stan for a shitty joke so hard you unironically imply that nazis do good for the world because they raised money for a horse charity?
Seriously you might want to walk this one back a bit.
5501652
5501822
A bit annoyed that the two of you are casually tossing around Nazi like the word has no meaning, but given it's 2021and Nazi has been horribly reduced to the idea of "I disagree with you, so you're a Nazi!" I guess it can't be helped.
A bit more annoyed at Scarlet for suggesting everyone who helped raise exactly $21132 for the horse charity can never be called good people. Makes me wonder if I should be less tolerate of evil people who hate horses.
media.discordapp.net/attachments/774026899126616095/820015871484493875/1615419025198.png?width=460&height=676
5501877
Right on time--someone talks about being sick of racists, and here you are to do eye-rolling sophomoric rhetorical handwringing about how emotional and over-reactive everyone's being about having to deal with folks that want them dead.
You don't even follow SPark, you're just here to defend racists. And you're gonna respond that you didn't outright say anything specifically racist, so how could I possibly claim you're aligned with them? As if we both didn't damn well know better. The way you insult the audience's intelligence is the second worst thing about seeing you chime in, after the perpetual interference-running for racists.
5501526
I'm only responding to this because you and I have had a positive relationship thus far, and I happened to see your comment while blocking a Nazi chud in my inbox (oh boy).
I say "own your sins." Are they YOUR sins? Did YOU dismiss Aryanne as a joke and the swastika avatars and the pro-hate groups on this site as no big deal? Then YES, I am calling you out.
If they're not your sins, if you did speak out, and opposed that, and reported the haters, and did what you could, then no, I'm not talking about you.
If this blog makes you feel guilty and uncomfortable, because you don't WANT to be aligned with Nazis but you can't in good conscience say you did anything to stop them... Then yes, own your fucking sins.
5501877
I literally never called those people nazis directly - the person defending them did. I just ran with the same language.
This to me says a lot about the actual priorities of people who get really defensive about shitty, racist jokes on this platform.
5501822
Their shitty joke did material, concrete good for the world. I'll take the so-called Nazis doing charitable works over the so-called moral people sitting and whining any day of the week. At least the wrong-thinkers are making the world a better place.
5501877
Pretty much hit the nail on the head. I'm abusing the overuse of Nazi as a label, true. At this point, every Tom, Dick, and Harry to the right of Mao is a Nazi, never you mind supporting free speech for wrong-thinkers.
5502224
I'd like to remind the jury that the latest backlash to shitty jokes about the racist horse happened after it turned out a popular and beloved author attacked a bunch of people protesting police murder with a fucking sword. Which means that these are people for whom, at least, the continued embrace of edgy, racist imagery is more important than forming a community welcoming to those who are subjected to police brutality.
Again, and I have to stress this, you introduced the association between those people and nazis without anyone else here needing to draw that connection for you. This doesn't necessarily say anything about the folks you're defending, but it says an awful lot about you and what your priorities are.
5501877
You know, when you start using the amount of money a group raised for charity as an argument defending that group's general moral goodness, it brings the sincerity of and ulterior motivation behind said charitable act into question a bit. Kinda sours the whole operation, actually, since the point of charity is to, y'know... be charitable, not to use it as a bulwark against criticism.
And while any charitable donation of any value is a net good in a vacuum of context, $21k isn't exactly a "paragon of virtue" amount either. BronyCon pulled in over $92,000 for CureSearch in 2019, for example, and Bronies for Good managed to get $29,000 USD at GalaCon 2019 even with total attendance under 1,200 people. So even if you cynically want to equate financial charity with moral righteousness, you don't really have the most righteous numbers to work with.
5502278
There also seems to be a marked black or white response to the charity situation among responses here. Either the charity was good because it wasn't actually run by Nazis, or it wasn't because it was. Both of which seem to presuppose that it can't possibly be Nazis doing genuinely good works outside the purview of their hatreds.
Most people aren't universally good or bad, though I think many lean distinctly one way or another. So, how do we react to the good things that are occasionally done by generally bad people?
I don't have an answer. I just don't want assume off the bat that it is one end of the spectrum or the other, because both approaches exclude common realities, and detract from our ability to react appropriately. (As shown by this conversation, in my opinion).
5502277
You're not seriously trying to pretend that an edgy cartoon horse and some edgy memes prompted a guy to go out with a sword during the riots, are you? Please tell me I'm misunderstanding this.
People have agency, you realize that, don't you? They're not all delicate flowers who will wilt and die at the first sign of an edgy meme. Some people are adults who realize that they don't have to consume content they don't like, or participate in discussions that they dislike. You can can just close the tab and walk away, or mute Aryanne on Derpi, or whatever. Grow up, grow a pair, and be an adult. Your comfort does not justify censorship and infringement on human rights.
Who looks at a tragedy like this and goes "I bet it was that dirty Nazi horse that caused this, rather than his obvious track record of mental illness and violence!"
Indeed, I referred to them as so-called Nazis because that's what people were referring to them as. Surely YOU of all people, politically plugged in as you are, remember all the pearl-clutching and whining about the Nazis and their edgy horse charity? But, yeah, eventually I just got lazy and shortened it to Nazis because I'm sure everyone here has the requisite pair of brain cells to rub together to figure out the value of the term Nazi in 2021.
I'm not the one objecting to the term Nazi, because I know it holds no value anymore. The ingroup will call the outgroup Nazis for their good boy points, etc. The outgroup and people with eyes will realize the pointlessness of the label Nazi thanks to its devaluing by the ingroup, and life goes on.
I'd honestly love to know what you think my priorities are. However, we've drifted far afield from the main topic at hand:
Brandon Asshole was a depressed, suicidal, delusional nutjob, who went out and killed a bunch of his former co-workers. Regardless of what Spark or anyone else says or tries to pretend, no one here or in this fandom is in anyway responsible for his actions. Liking/drawing/writing about/fapping to/etc. etc. an edgy cartoon horse doesn't make you culpable any more than the existence of that edgy Nazi Horse will make people into Nazis.
Anyone who pretends otherwise so that they can snobbishly proclaim that they're moral and their hands are clean for the sake of shaming the outgroup is a moralistic prick with no leg to stand on. As I stated before, weaponising a tragedy for the sake of ingroup good boy points doesn't interest me, but it tells me all I need to know about the people doing it.
"Look at you filthy outgroup members! Your love of freedom of speech and standing against censorship contributed to the murders of multiple people and is making bronies go out with swords during riots! If you were moral and good like me and the rest of the ingroup, you wouldn't be culpable! You should be ashamed and agree to my ingroup's moral standards, and abandon your principles and hatred of censorship. Liking Aryanne contributed to these deaths, own your sins! This is what the fandom is about, except for me and my ingroup, because we're the only moral ones here! Also we're jumping ship so we don't get cancelled by association byyyyye."
Uh huh. Not interested.
5502278
Eh. Charity for abused horses remains, objectively, a greater good than whining on the internet about a Nazi Horse and pretending that Nazi Horse contributed to a nutter going out and murdering a bunch of people despite him loving an entirely DIFFERENT horse.
Actions speak louder than words, and going by Spark's blog versus the actions of those involved in Marenheit 451, I know who's done more good by comparison, regardless of how edgy/distasteful they might be.
Read through these, and tell me with a straight face they aren't the good guys Well, maybe not the good guys, but guys willing and able to do good. (Open in new tab for legibility, and yes, I de-nazified it)
s1.desu-usergeneratedcontent.xyz/mlp/image/1595/74/1595743452247.png
s1.desu-usergeneratedcontent.xyz/mlp/image/1621/12/1621127975793.png
s1.desu-usergeneratedcontent.xyz/mlp/image/1621/12/1621128049034.png
5502277
Out of curiosity, what incident was this?
5503067
I'm referring to Jetfire, author of "It's a Dangerous Business Going Out Your Door" who caught media attention last year during the original protests surrounding George Floyd. Cynewulf did a pretty good blog citing some of the news stories on it if you're interested. Was kind of bad times all around - he was one of Cyne's favorite authors of the early fandom and he got the racist brainworms very bad.
According to the FBI, the shooter was not motivated by racial violence, but by a desire to prove his masculinity and capacity to kill, and 'cause he wanted to see what it was like killing people.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/28/us/fedex-shooting-investigation-closed/index.html
https://6abc.com/fedex-shooter-shooting-indianapolis-brandon-scott-hole-motive/10914735/
Even if he was motivated by Nazi material, there's plenty of that on the internet and most of it has nothing to do with MLP. The alt-right pipeline starts on youtube, not Derpibooru.
You wanna know the connection between a brony and a mass shooter is? Depression.
One study of mass shooters showed that the two things they tended to have in common was that they were male and tended to be depressed.
And MLP also attracts a lot of depressed males. It's like an anti-depressant for some of them.
But anti-depressants don't work for everyone, especially when that anti-depressant is a children's cartoon.
And sometimes depressed people are also potentially violent and devoid of empathy. Just like some non-depressed people.
Sometimes people like war and idolize violence. Like this guy. He was obsessed with the military. He was role-playing it by eating MRE military meals.
Do Nazi memes in the fandom radicalize people? I don't know about that. Do they cater to people who are already Nazis? Maybe they do. But I also think violent video games cater to people who idolize war. But I don't think either *causes* these things.
People love quick explanation. The moment a mass shooting happens, people in arm chairs have already done all the forensic psychology and analysis they need. They know why this person they never met did the thing, based on the tidbits from the news. They were indoctrinated by this or by that. By video games where you hit people with bats. By these. By memes. By what they did for fun. At least the gun control advocates don't psychoanalyze anyone. It's amazing how people jump to people's hobbies as an explanation for violence.
There are warning signs for mass shootings. Violence. Threats of violence. Disproportionate anger and festering grievances against other people. Those things combined with an obsession with guns/weapons. A mass shooting is a peak on top of a mountain. And that mountain is violence and anger.
Did you know that like most violence, most mass shootings actually occur in the home rather than public places? And a little over half of them involved killing an intimate partner? (https://everytownresearch.org/maps/mass-shootings-in-america-2009-2019/)
But these are general facts about mass shooters, and I really wish people would stop scapegoating criminals with armchair deductions when the police and FBI have only just started investigating.
Big Oof.
Hugs, SPark.
5501714
Theres a far right element here? News to me.
So, Im late to this party, but it seemed that people don't like something cause some other thing happened so no things must occur with that thing even as for the lols because other things might occur at some point and somewhere along the line porn happened which helped a horse.
...
Seriously, I dare say my good Airy I have never once remotely ever encountered anything like this on the internet.
Soooo what happened?