Mini-rant on something Mr Khan reminded me of.
This fandom is too focused on itself. By which I mean, "community figures" get too much respect and following on things irrelevant to their actual skill.
Let's look at the positives. We have a great show. We have great musicians, artists and writers. And we have a good variety of sites where people can read and discuss pony related news. And when any of these people speak about their work, it's insightful. I love reading about how a particular song came about, watching an artist stream, or reading Mane6's rationales on game design.
But there are a small number of people who are "pony famous" above and beyond their actual contrbution, and anything they say or do is put up for all to read on EqD and the comments around the web are filled with love confessions and hundreds of upvotes. I'll give some examples: Sethisto, Mandopony, Mic the Microphone, This is not appropriate or constructive, it means these people are distracted from what they are good at with fluff projects; Sethisto's cycle of interviews and convention trips preventing him from updating the blog, Mandopony's collabs with Michelle Creber covering /non-pony/ pop songs for an unrelated charity and Mic streaming himself playing random video games. It means that these people's opinions on various subjects they have no expertise in are worshipped. And it means that content of genuine interest made by people that are actually trying never makes the front page of EqD.
At no time is this more exaggerated than during a convention. These personalities are put on "panels" and given the limelight for hours to talk about their life, their favourite breakfast cereal and what their favourite pony is. Watching this stuff, at no point are serious questions about the person's work put to them, not even on the voice actor or show musician panels where it's the only opportunity you'd ever get to do so. The opportunity of a convention streaming to tens of thousands of people to show off projects no one has seen before is largely wasted.
The worst offenders are podcast hosts. They don't even havemuch talent as presenters, they come across as overly excited average people. When interviewing someone important, they ask dumb questions from the top of their heads that embarass them or seriously undervalue the person's time. Not only are they wasting opportunities but they are turning off these people from ever being interviewed again because the experience is no different to being jumped on by a thousand rabid anime fans.
Something similar applies to the EqD staff - I looked up Sethisto's post history from before EqD. He was a furry that posted inane things on message boards. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time to make EqD what it is and now with ad and T-shirt revenue he's probably getting $100k/year from how popular EqD is. I'd have no problem with that if he'd stop expressing his opinion like he was in charge of all bronies. XyroTR1 was taken on simply to post up the stream, and then he started making "random" posts of Luna in socks to be funny, and now he's being flown out to conventions as a guest of honour.
We have a great example to follow. The show's staff have played this perfectly. They spend most of their lives distant from the community, making the content that we watch. When they show up to something for us, they always act humbled that so many people appreciate their work, and they try to speak about the parts of their work they can share and avoid showing their private lives to us or trying to get our attention all the time.
What we can do:
- Stop obsessively following "pony famous" people's every action
- Stop unconditionally liking everything everyone does in this fandom. Constructive criticism keeps people grounded
- When an interview with show staff happens, ask them about their work and for any small details about the show we may not know
- It's just a show, not a lifestyle
