Proof that MLP's Fandom Declined Exactly when FiM's Old Writers Left

[Lone Traveler 91]

In my view the decline in quality of MLP is clearly measurable. It's simple. The great Seasons 1-4 were written by the OG writers (MA Larson, Meghan McCarthy, Amy Keating Rogers, etc) and the mediocre Seasons 6-9 were written by the new writers (Josh Haber, Michael P. Fox, Micheal Vogel, etc), with Season 5 being the good-but-not-great transition between the two. Seasons 6-9 objectively lack the spirit of the original show, because it lacks the writers. The decline of the online popularity of the show reflects this perfectly.

According to this google trends graph, MLP was at its peak of popularity in Season 4 and the first half of Season 5, with the popularity declining after the first half of S5 aired and taking a nosedive into 2016, never recovering. This completely matches with how I felt the show declined in quality as Season 5 went (but still remained good with mainly og writers, though the season got worse as it went and the new writers and flaws crept up more and more) and took a nosedive in quality in Season 6 and never recovered. I find it cool how this graph showed the popularity declining exactly the way the show's quality declined imo, it makes me proud of how many people abandoned MLP at what I saw as the proper time to abandon it.

By season 6 the show lost its initial charm in the eyes of most fans and was worse. Despite the flaws and story features creeping in that would doom the later seasons, Season 5 felt like a last hurrah for the fandom, with episodes such as Slice of Life and Amending Fences getting fans truly excited. Once the Starlight redemption happened and Season 6 turned out to be mediocre and charmless for many people, a lot of people lost interest. I personally stopped watching about this time (Though I finished the show years later). This is why I wish the show had ended with an altered version of Season 5 where more loose ends were wrapped up and Cutie Re-mark was replaced with a series finale, then the show would of had all good seasons and an entirely strong legacy instead of being a show that declined and lost most of its fan-base halfway through. In my mind Seasons 1-4 is essential canon, Season 5 is a flawed but overall good addition to the show (except for the finale, that was the clear start of Haber Era), and Seasons 6-9 are mediocre and felt like a different show due to the almost entirely different staff.

I understand some people strongly prefer Seasons 1-2 over 3-4 and feel that Faust leaving or Twilicorn ruined the show instead of Haber, but the the evidence clearly supports that those things did not correlate with the fandom's decline, rather Season 6 and the staff turnover did.

Note: Google Trends Graph can be viewed in detail here: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2011-08-01 2017-07-01&q=%2Fm%2F0czdsgs,my little pony,mlp

[Courageous Thunder Dash 7,824]

For me, I think Season 6 was a weak one, especially since it didn't start with the usual 2-parter. Then you had an up and down of good and bad episodes, with Newbie Dash being the worst of all. Continuity was what made FIM so special, and towards the end, it started to die down, but they did try to bring it back in Seasons 8 and 9. I liked the Student 6 but I wish we got to see more individual character episodes other than the Mane 6 and CMC. 

[Misty Shadow 7,867]

4 hours ago, Lone Traveler said:

I understand some people strongly prefer Seasons 1-2 over 3-4 and feel that Faust leaving or Twilicorn ruined the show instead of Haber, but the the evidence clearly supports that those things did not correlate with the fandom's decline, rather Season 6 and the staff turnover did.

Although I'm not surprised to see evidence of interest in the show declining around this point, one thing that needs to be factored in here is franchise fatigue, which is even common among fans who still believe that the quality of the franchise they're a fan of is good. Even if it's not coincidence that interest in the show was declining around that time with more new writers writing new episodes, it needs to be pointed out that regardless of circumstance, the primary cause of people losing interest in a franchise and moving onto something else is a simple case of burnout. 

[Splashee 28,564]

For a fan like me, I have to say nothing of that really mattered in the end. I am still here, even if I was part of that Google trend curve.

I think it has to do with the general Internet’s interest in something. The more popularity, the more good content. When people leave, eventually the quality drops.

Hasbro’s decisions dictated what the show’s main plot was, as well as keeping writers from taking ideas from fans (for legal reasons). The writers couldn’t or didn’t really do much, other than following the rules. The ones who read what the fans liked, left the show when they started to follow what the fans wanted… Let me rephrase that: Got fired by Hasbro.

 

If you were a writer for the show, and you just loved to read what the internet had to say about it (and trust me, you would, getting feedback from your work, especially on something extremely popular at the time), you would get ideas how to make the show even better for the fans. You would try, and you would end up getting fired for doing so.
The ones who didn’t get fired, some of them made quite good decisions in Season 7 and a few crazy good ones in Season 8 and 9. That is an achievement!

[Spidey10 846]

Maybe it's because of me joining the fandom closer to the show's end (2018), but I didn't think the show had a major decline in quality. Sure there were some poor episodes in the later seasons, but IMO seasons 6-9 also had some big winners such as The Perfect Pear,  Best Gift Ever, Discordant Harmony, To Where And Back Again, The Sounds Of Silence, Parental Glidance, Forever Filly, Uncommon Bond, The Last Problem, etc.

[J.J 923]

I like to call the over exaggerated/over hyped delusion that season 1 is somehow "great and of better material quality bc of something I call "Faust googles", Nightmare Moon is by far one of the WORST villains ever made for the series, she's some jealous wanna be that makes some illusions and yells a few times before getting tore up by a friendship rainbow beam, by ponies who have yet to have any real major character development or progress, "oh don't blast me, I hate moon, I am the sister, can I come home and generate a ridiculous unwarranted amount of fan attention based off the fact that I am a literal image of nostalgia and hipster culture and LITERALLY bring NO SUBSTANCE to the show AT ALL, but you can change my mane and make it shine to, now I'm Celestia 2, only I suck and don't do anything important or that clearly couldn't already be done without me." In some ways even Sombra is arguably a better villain, but for some reason we criticize villains that actually have DEPTH, and substance, and their story is deeper than "I'm jealous sister, feel my wrath, I'm spooky." No later plots include manipulation, distrust, control/power dynamics influenced by culture and social reason, insecurity, purpose, freedom, and we see all this while building relationships with new ponies witnessing their strengths and weaknesses and doing so without the necessary use of an all powerful rainbow laser... Delusional hipster brony: "the show got worse now that they started elaborating on forgiveness/purpose/teamwork, everyone knows that friendship = magical uncontested lasers, not actual teamwork and examples of real thorough progress in our relationships and the evolution of our capabilities through a combined effort and tactical thinking... No we want to see the ponies we have loved now for 5 seasons continue to do what they have been doing... Twilight ultimately needed a pupil to continue, everyone pretends that Starlight wanted to end the world and not just a friendship, the hate for Starlight, it's like "Faust googles" can have you believing crazy things, like a shows success is forever in the hands of an overrated writer thats been gone for years, it's like she didn't give birth to the franchise of my little pony, a franchise that's as old or older than she is. Bronies: "I love fimfiction, I love fanfiction, I love role play, I have a million hypothetical situations, but if anything that hurts my head canons comes out by a new writer, or if we start exploring the possibilities of a character we haven't juiced for multiple seasons, if we want to introduce characters unlike Luna, you know ones with depth and substance that actually add something to the plot, than screw you, where are my laserz?"

[Megas 27,625]

The difference in quality between S5 and S6 was pretty staggering. The S6 Premiere was one of the most unremarkable season premieres yet, even moreso than S3's and a was just followed with a string of incredibly mediocre to some of the most genuinely awful episodes in the entire show.  Newbie Dash is always the episode I point to as a sign of the show's decline and the direction the show was heading. An episode capitalizing on the show's oldest character arc where they finally accomplish their goals should have been impossible to mess up(like, you had to try to fuck it up), yet the entire episode is spent treating both the character and their goals as a complete joke, and 100% would never have happened under the show's old leadership. Other things like the show trying so desperately to push a new character into the spotlight without really earning it often at the expense of the main cast didn't really sit well with a lot of people and other plot threads like a baby alicorn was dropped entirely without any elaboration and payoff despite being treated like a big deal at reveal. Not to say there weren't good episodes because there obviously were, but they were few and far in between and generally never reached the heights of past seasons. S8 and S9 shared all the same problems as S6 such as introducing a plethora of new characters and doing a very poor job at building them and often came at the expense of the main characters, poorly thought out ideas with very poor payoff such as the school of friendship and Grogar that brought down everything they were trying to do.

S7 despite a few missteps stood out as a significant improvement over S6 with better quality episodes, delivering on a lot of ideas people have been wanting to see for the longest time, even doing a better job with handling the new character S6 failed at(I think people would have been more accepting of Starlight if the direction they put her in on S7 was how she was handled from the start). Unsurprisingly S7 also had different leadership for most of it's run as opposed to S6, 8 and 9 and it really shows

[Luna the Great of all the Russias 2,984]

At the time, I did not notice any notable change in quality. By the time season 6 was airing, I think my interest in the series has already been waning from the high of the first years of the series. But I thought this was more because the novelty wore off simply because years have passed by. But I do wonder if I would think differently about the series if I were to rewatch it entirely again.

[Ashen Pathfinder 16,161]

The thing to note is that correlation does not always equal causation. If anything, I'd say general fatigue is as likely a culprit as any subjective decline in quality. What do I mean by fatigue?

1. Interest in other shows eventually eclipses their interest in MLP. Look at shows like Steven Universe, Gravity falls, Star vs. The Forces of Evil, and the like! There was plenty of crossover between the brony community and the fandom of those shows. Add in later shows like Owl House, Hilda, and Amphibia and I think you can see why interest dipped in the longterm.

2. Likewise you have to consider MLP's length. While the average MLP fan might still enjoy later seasons of FiM, the number of seasons & episodes can wear some people out. Bringing in new fans around seasons 6 or 7 can likewise prove difficult if they feel they have so much backlog to catch up on (even worse if they feel they 'have' to read the comics).

So yeah; a decline in quality can be suspect, but I feel that's more a subjective thing in the end.

[EpicEnergy 23,218]

Like others have said, there could be other factors that cause the decline. It is difficult to say for certain which factor is the primary cause based on a graph. What the graph says is that there was a decline in the fandom, what it doesn't say is what the cause of that decline is, and as such, we can only speculate the cause.