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Or as I like to call it: Fakebook University

Flim Flam brothers - realized that from the flyer, even before seeing the two podiums. Well, who else could it have been anyway?

This was a bit hard to watch because I despise this corruption so much. They take something authentic and then pervert it. And there's no hope for them at friendship school. They like what they're doing too much.
And people are deceived so easily by fancy facades, because there's a core of corruption in them, too, that connects to these things.
Why do the two still not have a widespread reputation though?!

The moment they said accredited, I knew Neighsay was involved.
And Starswirl's appearance at this place was of course announced in the intro.
Neighsay would surely be informed about the scam that went on, but he won't take issue. He has a personal agenda. This might escalate during the next ten episodes or so.

Twi is really bad at rhetorics, as usual. She still DOES have her difficulties with friendship though, so that might be why. She's certainly not a knight in shining armor when it comes to that.
But this was basically following a standard storytelling pattern. They do not have the power to deviate from the script. ... Well, Pinkie maybe, heheh.

BTW, buttwings.

Uhm, the guy probably just doesn't know Twilight, or is COMPLETELY DENSE because that's obviously an ALICORN before him!
Couldn't the writers/animators have put at least a little bit of believability into it?
Although this would explain how so many ponies are still falling for Film-Flam scams. They must be horribly backwards there.

Twi violated a most basic rule of poking around: Always have someone stand guard.
Also, by now they should know how to deal with Flim and Flam - document THEIR revelation to her. But again, wait for it. This is standard formula storytelling.
By the way, to make it a bit less formulaic, she could have turned their phoniness against them and point out how THEY are not practicing friendship towards her either. That would have been interesting.

Oh mare, she could just incinerate the photo or something! I mean, they're already playing dirty, after all, and Twi only has some serious alicorn magic at her disposal! This is so cringey.

And here we see a portrayal of special promo deals with cooperative/willing/naive celebrities.
I must say, Flim-Flam episodes provide a valuable awareness-raising service to society. ... Well, if it's not just flying over people's heads like it so often does.

LOL, no, you DON'T have something on her, because she was right! To the contrary, this is even more rep for her and her friendship-powered instinct, so to speak.
I don't know why she still says she's OK if her rep is ruined.

Standing up for what you know is true is not only tricky, but can be so much harder in real-life. ... Especially when you're not fooling yourself with that belief. Speaking truth can be a revolutionary act, and the more you're suffering for it, the more it is usually a signal you're on the right path. I say it's tricky, because you can take the Flim-Flam episode itself as an indication how people can deceive themselves in their belief about what's true, too.