Which you did by trying to show how separate he or she could be from the fandom. You say you are only talking about individuals, yet you continuously act like you and the OP are not a part of "the fandom", and that the fandom itself is somehow the bad guy. You keep referring to the fandom like you aren't a part of it, you say "it", "itself", "they", and "the fandom", but never "we", like it's some sort of goal to displace yourself from it.
Your entire first paragraph was hyper-opinionated trite that you couldn't push on anyone with at least a ounce of self-thinking. Why in the world is is so bad for us to criticize the show, but you can criticize the fandom all do-long day? Why is criticism even bad at all? It means people care about the show enough to point out it's flaws. I also noticed you failed to state the amount of threads about "favorite episode" or "favorite pony" that do literally nothing but praise the best parts of the show, the very thing you claim to be non-existent in "the fandom". It seems to me that your just upset the original people who joined the fandom, the "I'll-join-because-its-cool" people left, and now just the actual fans are staying behind. The ones who are willing to sit through a few sh*tter episodes to get to the good stuff.
That is the mindset on which the entire fandom is based against. Why the h*ll does it matter that the show is intended for children? By society's rules, that just means that it isn't worth anybodies times, right? That it's a sub-par show by default, and not live-action Hollywood drama. Those are what's meant to be taken seriously.
Needlessly critical, huh? Critique is never ever needless. Again, we can just spout out "Oh, its a children's show", right? It's not even worth the time to try and fix with critique. I'd like you to tell that to any artist who you think is not worth the time to be critical. My Little Pony is an art form, no matter what you say. That is objective fact. And being an art form, it is always worthy of useful critiques that may help it become better in the future.
This is my favorite part of your entire little essay, where you pretty much say to my face that I'm right.
Why are you being critical of the fandom... If you don't think it can be fixed? That means there is literally no reason to your critiques, which are really just insults you hide behind a nicer word. The only thing you intend to do here is insult the fandom. If there is truly no hope for the fandom, why even bother trying to critique it? You just want to insult the fandom, because you haven't gotten the experience you want. If you can't enjoy the fandom for what it is, you might as well tell everybody else why they can't either. You add fuel to the fire because you can, not because you think it will help in any way.
But you're right on one front. All the people who like the show at face value, all the people who hopped on the bandwagon, all the people who felt they were watching a children's show and nothing more... left years ago, and the only difference between them and you, is that for some reason, you didn't go with them.