It's still amazing to me that this site is still somehow alive after a whopping 13 years. I remember back in 2011 when the first pony hiatus arrived, telling Cereal Velocity that it had been a good few months ridin' the pony meme and I'd be out job hunting after the finale. How completely wrong I was there... Instead of dying off as we lost weekly episodes, we simply flooded the internet with our own content instead. Luna went from 30 seconds of screentime to 500 something fanfics, the PMV was born and dominated youtube, and every single message board out there had pony avatars and signatures every few posts.
Obviously things have changed a lot since then. The concept of a dedicated fansite is largely being replaced by social media and "blogging" is sort of a funny millennial term you see in movies people would consider old now, but EQD trudges on. It's nowhere near what it was, but still a good resource for those that can't keep up with the flood elsewhere. Albeit with a slight moon pony, kirin, and bat bias.
With recent events, I think it's time I spam you all with a wall of text about it all again. Prepare to be dazzled by the inner workings of a My Little Pony spotlight website in 2024. Head on down below for it!
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Lets start with the one I bet most of you are interested in most! Calpain has been kickin' around here since the early days. A lot of people essentially grew up with his posts over the last decade, from the events and comic posts to the discussions. He had a huge impact on millions of people, and still continues it post-EQD. The guy is a social champion. He can make friends with anyone, and does that rare thing where he actually keeps those connections alive. He's extroverted, empathic, supportive, and loves building community with an amazing ability to be completely aware of what everyone in the fandom is doing at any given moment. That's where he always shined most.
He's going to go further than most people in life. It just comes completely naturally to him. I wouldn't be surprised if we are all voting for him in some major election in 20 years.
EQD won't be the same without him. There is no world at all where I'm going to ever match that. I'm the polar opposite. I'm an extreme introvert who can only keep connected with people if I'm gaming with them, and even then it's kind of up in the air. I'm pretty well known for being completely oblivious to what social issues are currently spiking in the fandom. Grinding through piles of emails, digging through fan content, compiling big posts, and spamming you all with ponies is about all I can really do. It's literally what I've done since my 4chan days. For general daily website tasks that's great, but for everything else... It's not the best. Unfortunately my slightly chaotic and cripplingly independent personality eventually clashed enough with his that I drove him nuts.
People can change though. This might just be the kick in the ass I needed. I'll never come anywhere near Calpain, but I'll do my best to be more available and less distant from now on. I learned a lot from him and taking some of his personality quirks might be good for both me personally, as well as EQD. The EQD Discord mods often joke that everyone is scared of me. That I'm completely unapproachable. That I never reply to people on Twitter, never visit other channels on Discord, never comment on people's pages. I didn't realize it until I noticed how meek people get when they want to @Sethisto me over there. @ away if you need me friends! I always enjoyed answering questions. I might take a bit to get to it, might lose it in the shuffle, or not have a ton of time to give a good reply, but I'll do my best!
No promises on the chaos though! One thing is for sure, I have severe ADHD (and the meds give me crazy heart palpitations,). Chaotically changing paths is just part of how my brain functions. It's a somewhat exploitable strength when I'm able to trigger that good ol' hyperfocus we ADHDers sometimes get and grind through some of the more insane tasks on the site, but the hyper part has about a 50% chance of targeting something stupid instead. I'll do my absolute best though, and have some very supportive friends that can help keep me on the path. Of course, feel free to join with them on shitting on me from time to time. That wake-up call helps a lot.
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Honestly it's a little tiring hearing the fandom is dying every day. It's really not. I mean, we aren't posting 50-80 drawings per drawfriend while simultaneously trying to find slots for the 20 songs, videos, and other Youtube things in the queue, but to call it dead is really silly. It's just... different.
In the early days EQD, Fimfiction, Youtube, and Derpibooru were it. Everyone found their pony on those platforms. If it wasn't submitted to one of the big four it was basically lost. That's not how it works anymore. We "juggernauts of pony" aren't nearly as influential as we used to be. The fandom is still rockin' it over on every social media platform out there. Instagram has a massive pony audience, Tiktok videos get millions of views, and even Twitter continues to grow at a ridiculous rate despite the chaos of it's transition to X. That's not to mention the rise in MLP Discord servers. There are so many of them with 10-20k people ponying away. Hell, even Second Life has quadrupled in ponies since the release of OpenPony. It's more lively than ever.
This unfortunately has the unintended side effect of spreading everything out and making it lot harder to get noticed. Incredible stuff gets barely any views on Youtube sometimes, and it can be pretty depressing. Do your best and toss a creator a comment if you can. The algorithms are a nightmare. Youtube is already beyond notorious, but the Twitter algo that artists rely on now is probably the most convoluted mess out there with the changes Elon keeps implementing. Slap them with a follow, give a like, toss a comment. Everything helps.
Of course, there's also the issue of the current fuel to our fire in the form of official content. There's some great stuff if you give it a shot, but it ain't G4. G5 definitely has a much more kid-focused approach to it. Opaline was basically ripped right from 90's cartoons in her goofy, straight-forward, "I'm bad" style, and most episodes are simple problems that aren't as appealing to adult fans. It also doesn't help at all that our current content is tiny 5 minute shorts 2 times a month.
I don't know what Hasbro plans for the future of pony. It's possible G5 will just keep truckin along as TYT, but it's also very possible that this isn't delivering the numbers they want and we see another revamp in the near future. Either way, the fandom will keep cartoon horses alive, just like we always have.
Have I lost you yet? Yeah, this got long~
I'll be honest. EQD hasn't really been sustainable as a full time gig for me for a few years now. I was lucky enough to get to run it exclusively for a crazy amount of time, but I've supplemented a lot of things in my life with other mini-businesses. This has obviously had a negative effect on the site. I haven't been able to give it or the fandom my full attention, and I probably won't be able to in the future. Lots of Discord messages have gone unanswered or forgotten because I'm buried in other things when they come in and forget to get back to them.
That being said, the good thing about that ADHD I mentioned up there is we tend to be the jack-of-all-trades type. I've done everything from draw for other fandoms (while ironically being too scared to keep drawing for pony because the pressure is immense), to buying and selling everything ever. I keep this place going by hustling elsewhere.
It's tiring and I'm heading into my late 30's though, so it might be sooner rather than later that I just find regular job for a bit. In the end, this site doesn't cost a lot of money to run, but it does cost a ton of time, and it's every single day with no breaks, with loads of stuff breaking or needing to be posted at any given hour. Even when I am on a trip somewhere, mornings and nights are still EQD
with lots of Adderall fueled grinding and all the heart palpitations
that come with it in the week leading up to prepare. You may have noticed Tell Your Tale posts going up late. Stuff like that is just me needing to favor my health over waking up at 4AM and destroying my sleep schedule every other week.
I could grab a bunch of volunteers to help balance things out, but feel like a dick asking people do things if I can't pay them for it. My personality type is much more likely to just do it myself rather and accept the consequences of being up til 3am rather than bother anyone. That's one thing I've never been able to get over. Luckily EQD is filled with volunteers that hop on and do things without my command, and I'm forever grateful for that, but this also makes some of them feel a little directionless and promotes quick burnout.
Anyway, talks of slowing to a crawl won't happen for another year a tleast, and who knows? Something might swoop in and change things again. Life brings good with bad after all. Launching Patreon saved EQD the first time I was in this situation, then bringing an ad company on and optimizing the ads did it the second time even if they are an absolute nightmare now. I'd rant about ads and how I never wanted the site to EVER look like this, but they are a necessary annoyance and I apologize for them. In the end, that's what the internet chose as the best way to fund things, and they really did drag this site from the brink.
EQD will always be here in some capacity regardless. I might not be able to give it the TLC it needs to be as wild as it was back in the 2010's, and we might end up being less daily and more weekly, but I don't think I'd ever abandon it unless something awful happened. I still love my poni, and every once in a while a project like OpenPony or some big animation comes along and throws a whole bunch of coal on the fire to keep me motivated to continue. And as I mentioned above, I've always had this weird quirk of desperately needing to share everything I'm into at any given moment to an obsessive degree. I was pretty damn notorious over on 4chan for that despite the site being anonymous.
Anyway, if you made it this far, hopefully you've got a better picture of everything from the perspective of one of the fandom's old guard. Keep on loving ponies and building friendships. That's what we all came here for anyway isn't it?
