What was your opinion on my little pony before you watched friendship is magic?

[Tao 7,290]

I had no idea they had remade the show at all!   I was snowed in my trailer and just thought to rewatch all the 80's mlp for something to do.  I kinda tripped and hit my knee on it when I saw links to a new MLP: Fim.  I started to watch it and found I really liked it! 

[dead account 2,710]

I always found them REALLY cute! Like, I saw these characters in player-created stories for Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I never saw something so cute and colorful before!!

At the time, there were many, many animators on YouTube and I tried to look up what this pony stuff is about. But I only saw weird and violent animations about the ponies. So...I thought that this pony-stuff is just one of these animation series one of the YouTubers came up with. I thought these weird animations are all there is to it and I was disappointed and didn't like it at all... I mean...it was so weird! Why are the 3D models and characters I saw in the horror game so cute and beautiful, when the "actual" animation series on YouTube is so completely different?!?

But then I was looking for "something new" in 2019 and I discovered Friendship is Magic. The real thing! And I immediately fell in love with it. And the characters looked exactly like the 3D models I saw. I could have become a brony a decade ago. But I only knew about these weird YouTube animations and I was scared away and never looked for more of it...

[Luna the Great of all the Russias 2,934]

I think the period of time when I was aware of MLPFIM but was not a fan was rather short; I would guess a maximum of about a month. I thought at least the majority of those who claimed to enjoy MLPFIM was more doing it to troll people who were not in on the joke, so to speak. I suppose this was true to an extent in the early days when 4chan users used MLPFIM as a means to troll others.

I do not think I ever hated MLPFIM. I always at least considered the art style to be visually pleasing. One of the earliest images about the show I remember is someone's signature image of Fluttershy holding her breath, but it was edited so that appeared as if she was eating the image.

Relatively speaking, there hardly any fan-made content of MLP:FIM at the time -- mid-2011 -- so they had no or very little role in convincing me that the praises for the show were genuine.