It's no secret that we've been pretty light on Soapbox entries since the show ended. Without much to discuss, people have been sending just about anything for it. Including that hyper political one in the last one.
The original intent of the Pony Community Soapbox was to allow people to express whatever opinion they had about any topic involving ponies, even if that opinion is contrary to what everyone else agrees with. I've always been a firm believer that bad ideas are eventually fixed with societal pressure rather than someone stepping in and blocking it, so rules on Soapbox have been incredibly lax. You don't change someone's mind by telling them they are horrible and everything about their idea is wrong. All that does is trigger a reactionary response and causes them to further retreat back into their bubble. In an era where there are bubbles for everything, that's not good for anyone. Opinions are changed over time and organically.
The soapbox was the last bastion of insanity here on EQD, combined with some genuinely awesome discussions, but the reality is we've kinda run out of things to discuss in them. There are only a handful of regular writers submitting soapboxes each week, and quality has fallen a lot because of that.
Pony Life drops some time in the future. Until then, consider the next Soapbox to be the last of this run. It will return again once we have a show to analyze and discuss. In honor of it being the last, word-count limits are being set to 1000 instead of 300 (though that was hardly enforced later on), and we will have as many as we get in the single post.
To submit a soapbox, fire an email to [email protected] with the subject line of SOAPBOX and the title, author name, and text in the post. Example:
In the email title:
SOAPBOX
In the email body:
Why Sweet Velvet is the Best Bat
By: Otsihtes
She has really nice wings. Also fangs. What an edgy bat. Red eyes a....(insert ~300-900 more words)
Follow that template exactly, attach an image to the email if you want one.
The Final Soapbox post will land Tuesday at 2:00 PM PST
