What were you doing before MLP?

[Tteok 16]

Watching Adventure Time and random anime (only like one a year, unfortunately), and playing GTA4 and Zelda. Oh yeah, and school.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Tteok

[Akemi Homura 7,680]

There....there was a before MLP?

 

Why yes, apparently so. Equestrian scientists are still currently attempting to understand and acknowledge a time, in fact.

[Tteok 16]

I'm not much different before than I am now(I do tend to be a bit nicer on the internet now though), but I do recall finishing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword pretty much the same time I started watching MLP at the end of November, and let me tell ya that it was a great experience going from one great piece of entertainment to another like that...

 

You finished SS that quickly? Edited April 18, 2012 by Tteok

[Guest]

I was the shriveled white kid who never talked but reacted like a dumbass ****head whenever someone said or attempted something remotely funny. Now, I just let people know what I really think. More often then not, I put them in their place.

 

Basically, My Little Pony made me a man.

[Zoop 8,384]

Mm. Helped run a community full of hardcore gaming dudes (eugh), and did a lot of general griefing, trolling, and other sorts of undesirable things. Wasn't a terribly nice guy in general, moreso the further back you go.

 

That said, I have a great deal of gratitude for the friends I've made here, who have done more than they are likely aware to keep my half-broken moral compass properly aligned.

[Radiance64 7,053]

You finished SS that quickly?

Yep, I played it for hours for about 10 days! Loved it, did most of the side stuff too,

I even got the Hylian Shield!

[Daring Do 195]

Before I came across My Little Pony, I didn't really do much except play video games. I hardly even used my internet browser. Just day by day... playing games on Steam and the Wii... Afterwards, not much really changed! I just went on the internet a lot more to come to places like this... I bought some pony merchandise... I started drawing!

[TheRichardSplash 2]

I spent far too much time on my xbox, which was basically just passing the time between getting hame and going to sleep. but now i have something to look forward to

[Harebrained 39]

Precisely the same things I do now, only I've carved out a little bit of time for me and some friends to engage in secret pony time.

[Gone for good 1,593]

I was doing oh so many terrible things with my life. Then ponies came along, which as strange as this sounds kind of helped me realize "whoa, I am making some big mistakes here" and then one thing led to another and now I consider myself a decent person again.

Edited April 18, 2012 by lordbababa

[LowfatEnvelope 335]

Video games, video games, video games.... Ya that was about it (and good gracious it got old sometimes. But i was to lazy to find something better to do )

[KakeiTheWolf 652]

Hm... I wrote poetry, books, stories, a play, and music. That's virtually everything.

[Nohbdy 4,108]

What was life like before you became a brony? How did you see bronies? Was your attitude toward life different?

 

I know there's some overlap between this thread and the thread about how MLP affected your life, but I think there's enough difference to warrant a separate thread.

 

Personally, I was pretty different before becoming a brony. I held a much more cynical attitude toward friendship and life in general. Friends were people you hung out with and respected, but were people who had their own agendas in the end. Life was just school, work, sleep, rinse, and repeat.

 

In fact, that was why I initially scoffed at the whole "Friendship is Magic" business that bronies were obsessed with. I didn't understand why ponies covered every corner of the Internet. I didn't understand why these men liked this show so much. I didn't understand friendship.

 

That was all less than a year ago.

 

Experiencing a children's show revived my inner child, and for that, I am grateful.

[Homura Akemi 974]

I thought the show had to be good for some reason. I thought the Internet was going through a small phase at first. I had one less interest in life. That was about it.

[Gone Airbourne 21,977]

Not really all that much different.... I actually never knew what a brony was until last july! I just liked rock n' roll and hanging with my friends and such! Busy with life and all. But becoming a brony def. has changed me a bit for the better.

[Dimitri Hammer 3,645]

I was suicidal and constantly depressed and angry.

 

I ignored the show and anything related to it for I just was focused on working and trying not to kill myself.

 

I got in fights constantly and I was just a mess. I'm pretty sure that if I never watched this show I'd have killed myself. I almost did just a couple weeks before watching it. The bullet was a dud, miraculously it didn't go off. I'd be dead now if not for some strange miracle. Whether it be God or just pure luck.

[Lightning Fluttershy 1,844]

Before:

 

An antisocial, self loathing, teenager with no direction in life whatsoever. My grades were failing and I was constantly fighting with my family.

 

After:

 

I'm still antisocial but I no longer loath myself and I know where I want to go with my life. My grades are up to the top of my class however my relations with my family are still a little shaky... However much of these things I don't owe to the show, I owe to the fandom itself! You guys are all awesome!

[AutumnSprinkles 10]

Well, although I have a few friends that I know would be there for life, I went through the majority of my school life just telling myself that most of these people will move away and do their own things in life and that i'll never seen them again anyways so what's the point? "Friends" would move away and I didn't even feel like I could miss them because I didn't let myself attach to them. It was all just another routine until they left. Hang out, gossip, each lunch together, etc. Then once they were gone, there was always another to replace them. And more lately in the recent year, even my college friends began graduating from our program at different paces depending on when we all started. And again, once they walk the stage, they're gone. I thought it'd be just a highschool thing, that I'd meet my real lifelong friends in college, but even then, we don't talk anymore, so then I began thinking real friendship will matter in the work world when new coworkers are gained. But after watching MLP, it gave new light. I shouldn't have to assume friendship can wait, and I shouldn't have to assume it'll just come to me. I should be making my own effort to take initiative to see my friends, contact them even if they're long distance, and to just let that connection grow. Even if it means I might get hurt if we move apart in our lives. It would be better knowing u have friends to come back to someday.

[DoctorWhovian1902 596]

Prior to MLP: FiM, I was looking around for something that would become my next "big interest", I looked around a lot and became a huge fan of memes and Minecraft. After a while, I heard a bit about the show and was interested, fairly sure that I would like the show if I saw it, being that there was a large following after it, but I would never admit it. Actually, for a while I hesitated, I didn't want to watch the show because that, in my mind at least, would mean that I was a "brony", and I was worried how others would react. But that's a different story, one I actually wrote out a while ago (http://mlpforums.com/topic/34765-how-i-became-a-brony/).

 

So overally, I was pretty indifferent to bronies and show as a whole before becoming a brony. Now, I working on converting my friends...

[Lost Profile 644]

Before: depressed, board, lame, sonic hedgehog fan, suisidle... And one fucking bully...

 

After: depressed lighten, less board, lame, mobian brony, less suisidle... And still a fucking bully, who is a brony.... L o l

[GuillermoGage 246]

Since early 2009, I have only spoken to a small handful of non-family members my own age about anything conversational.

 

That is to say, that because I don't go to a physical school where I converse with students regularly, or have a job (which can make me converse with co-workers), and because I don't have money or a schedule or designated to go out socializing, (I mean I literally don't have bus transportation). I literally have no real life friends as a temporary circumstance.

 

 

 

That being said, I had the common decency to not over-examine the fandom or so-called Know-Your-Meme-"memes" of a show that in itself might actually be good, before my cousin's girlfriend showed me the 2-part pilot and The Ticket Master on YouTube around July of 2011. She claimed that the phrase "trolling" was spoken on the show and that made me feel a little uneasy. Like the show was gonna pander to the current generation like Fairly OddParents did. I didn't watch any more episodes even though I liked those episodes because I... I dunno. thought they weren't gonna be staying on YouTube very long.

 

I don't remember when exactly I first heard about it, only that by December of 2011 I was looking on On Demand stuff on Comcast and recognized The Hub as the TV network, and was completely sold on the show from Winter Wrap-Up and Hearth's Warming Eve.

 

So, basically, being a fan hasn't automatically solved my life's problems.

 

My life before it was one in which I only anticipated the next season of American Idol when it comes to TV.

 

Basically I was never a full-blown skeptic.

[The Mane-iac 1,648]

Well I'll basically sum it up like this...

 

Before: Bored, depressed, suicidal, felt like I was lost in life. Got into this mess because of a bad breakup several years ago and college not working out like I wanted.

 

Now: Not bored as often, depression is basically gone, no longer suicidal or feeling of being lost. I almost want to say I'm happy again, but I know how I feel now can't compete with how I felt while I was in that relationship so I'll just say I'm better.

 

I know for a fact that FiM and this fandom is the reasoning behind this change. The show is so much fun to watch and I find reality just slips away while watching. I thoroughly enjoy myself while sitting back, relaxing, and watching my technicolor ponies. The fan music that has been produced because of this show is another part I really enjoy. I sit around and listen to the same pony playlist over and over quite often.

[Jammo 986]

Before: Generally nice, rational guy not really looking for anything to change.

After: Generally nice, rational guy not really looking for anything to change, but now I watch ponies.

[DusK 1,264]

I'll be honest, I thought it looked like the stupidest Internet fad I had ever seen. Like breaded cats, or planking.

 

But then my girlfriend made me watch the show, and now I'm sitting here with my guitar covering the show's freakin' music and walking around my campus in shirts with ponies on them.

[Dtox 128]

It gave me quite a bit to chew on in terms of perspective.

 

Before I was sort of short with people, and would also be someone who would jump on the bashing train of various things (you know, the "stop liking what I don't like" sort of thing).

 

getting into MLP really changed that about myself, being that I've made greater effort to understand other people's interests and quirks, and to make myself go "meh" at mundane crap.