Harebrained

Not liking something and not understanding it would seem like the worst case scenario, with not liking it and understanding it being an improvement. Fair enough, though, I remember you posted a pretty big quote on the subject. I just don't think much of the mantra or the ideals brought up in this thread. I mean, here we have people getting huffy because someone expressed that they don't like clopping and did not express it well, meanwhile in Life Advice someone confesses a very strange and very personal problem that's most likely causing them some pretty serious hardships and people fill up the thread with jokes on the subject, so - What's this? The only one telling them to knock it off is staff, who are presumably the ones who deleted all the bear/cat jokes that used to be there? Where's the "love and tolerate" chorus? Better yet, where's the "don't derail an advice thread with jokes just because you find the problem strange or funny" chorus? The priorities seem pretty messed up.

I interpreted OP's reaction as shocked and confused, with about as much of an argument for why as the "shut up and tolerate" crowd that got here lickety-split. Those were the ones that irked me, really. As an argument their post is poor, but there are reasons it's still valid. If someone is shocked or upset by something the response should be to explain it to them and explore the topic unless they're doing nothing but screaming about how it's evil and refusing to listen - listen, not change their mind - on the topic, not to silence them. OP specifically asked for help understanding in one post and insinuated that they were having trouble understanding fetishes as a whole, but I saw precious little real response to that offered. Some people are poor at making arguments or are on a new topic where they haven't been able to formulate many of their own ideas yet or read much, and turn to other people for that. Lot of "love and tolerate" failure where people would rather whine about how people don't follow the same ideal than teach them to better understand others themselves.

Go right ahead. I still believe that being free to discuss things instead of having it shut down (because criticism and questioning things equals intolerance, clearly) is necessary. With no discussion on what is or isn't harmful and why, actual problems grow unchecked because people aren't in the habit of thinking about it and are scared to be shut down by everyone else - things much bigger than porn, too.

I'm actually on your side to an extent. I agree with the idea of tolerance and shared space but nothing's worse or more damaging in the long term than people who use it to try to shut down the worries or ethical concerns of others, because that gets us out of the habit of actually thinking about things and is more likely to allow true problems to grow without interference.

Centaurs are just inherently kind of creepy to me.

I've dreamt in C++, but I've never dreamt in ponies.

Questioning things is good, and neither that nor not liking something means that someone is a big fat meanie-head who just doesn't understand and needs to love and tolerate more, etc. Nothing is actually on such a high pedestal as to be something that can't be both understood and disliked, as much as some would like to believe it. I've seen what happens to fandoms where nobody is allowed to criticize and everybody is supposed to just ignore anything they don't like instead of talking about it. These people almost got kicked out of a coffeeshop for possibly having gay sex in the bathroom (two dudes go in together for like 30+ minutes, single-person), bringing in outside food and making a mess, and looking at porn on their laptops - and this is far from an isolated incident. Do you want to potentially wind up like these people, pony community?

Assuming this is for music, too:

He's more like a princess, really.

Your time would have been better spent turning these ideas into a clopfic and charging perverts to read.

Wasn't "brony" supposed to have something to do with "bro pony" or something? I think "pegasister" is just a play on words, too, and we already use gender-specific terms in everyday life such as he, she, man, woman, miss, mister, sir, ma'am, etc, and often not playfully either. Bro is a term that usually refers to a male and is suggestive of gender in itself, but as the fandom has kaboomed to include so many people outside of the target age range now I don't see why any specific names for non-specific factions should be required instead of using one big, familiar umbrella term. Seems silly to fuss over either.

Fads happen, and interests come and go. There's really no shame in it and happy, lasting memories and friendships can be made within. Most of the people who were into fads or had obsessive interests when I was younger have moved on with life just fine, and nobody really cares anymore. It's good nostalgia.

What if they weren't so cute IRL? What if they smell like regular horses (which includes the smell of poo sometimes) and not flowers and sunshine? What if they kick you with their hooves in the middle of the night?