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Answerman - Why Is Liking Kids' Stuff Such A Bad Thing?

The thing is, why should we care someone has a so called "odd social deviation"? Has such deviations triggered tragedies where people have lost their lives or source of income? Is there any chart about how said deviations affect the gross GDP of a nation?

Anyone that knows me a little knows I AM said odd social deviant. But I have no criminal record and somehow I am part of this mesh we call society. So why people should care what I see in the idiot box? Oh look, its kiddies stuff, don't make a sound and run for the nearest exist and when you are outside tell the world about what you saw. -_-;

Bronies, OTOH, were mostly high-school and college kids, at an age when finding identity is a big question, who felt....confused that they found a little-girl-marketed show entertaining--And instead of noting that it must have been a good show that did it, started forming a closed insular cult that they were Special Sensitive Snowflakes in seeing something different about the world, and learned to band together against a world that would "persecute" them for following their hearts. One group made the argument about the show, one made it about themselves.

The flawed reasoning is simply "if this person were 'normal,' they would be doing 'normal' activities like playing football or going shopping or working out. Since they are watching anime instead of doing something 'normal,' something must be 'wrong' with them." From there, it's really easy for someone without critical thinking skills to say "well, if they're watching Chinese cartoons starring little girls, that probably means they really like little girls, which means my child is in danger!"

In less extreme terms, a lot of it simply has to do with older generations frowning on newer activities they don't understand and making the judgment that they have less value than older activities. If, growing up, football was really important to your family, your school, your town, it can sometimes be hard to let go of that as an adult. That means you might want to keep attending football games, you might enjoy associating with other people who like football, and you might want your kids to play football too. So if your football-playing son is friends with this weird kid who doesn't like football for some unfathomable reason but watches anime, you might decide that anime is a bad influence on your future-Heisman-trophy-winner-and-totally-not-a-future-rapist-cop son (*coughdanielholtzclawcough*), which just leads to a poor impression of anime and a misattribution of "I don't like things that aren't football" into "anime is bad.".

I enjoy Blue's Clues myself.

Honestly it's just nice to slip back into a time when things weren't complicated and everything had easy solutions. Being an adult is hard, so escaping back into childhood can keep you sane.

As for how other people treat you for it, it's mostly an ego thing. We reassure ourselves that we're healthy and normal by singling out people we consider more "abnormal" than ourselves. "I might like Transformers, but at least I'm not a freak like those bronies!" Sadly when many people act that way towards a certain person, they'll lose confidence in themselves and start thinking it's wrong to like what they like.

What isn't okay is basically trying to take the fandom away from the intended audience. What drove me away from MLP:FiM was basically being introduced to some super-hardcore "bronies" who basically made the show their whole lives, and were particularly obsessed with the NSFW content, even posting it on sites where it really wasn't appropriate. There were also a few people who seriously expected very violent and raunchy fan-content to become canon. I told them, "These characters aren't human, they're underaged, and quite honestly, I don't want to see it," and was told that if I didn't want to see NSFW, then I was missing the point of the whole fandom. So I left, and I still haven't read the comics or watched the show since then. It still leaves kind of a bitter taste in my mouth.

To me this issue, and the actual specific topic, comes down to, here in America anyways, the fact that the label is what everyone is judging you by. These novels, or shows, are labeled as for kids. It does not matter what the actual depth of the material is. There are a lot of YA novels I have read that blow many of the currently popular urban fantasy adult novels out of the water in terms of depth. They just don't have the supernatural sex within. To me the same theory applies to anime or "kids shows." There are many with depth of plot that blow a lot of syndicated tv out of the water. Yes there's plenty of bad examples within each medium but you get my point. Yet because they are labeled as "for kids" you're seen as abnormal or immature for purposefully going out to see or enjoy these shows. Assuming you don't have a kid(s) of course as that would be like you're get out of jail free card in this situation. This is all just my own opinion of course but it comes from a lot of personal experiences. As I also said this is from an American POV and Japan is a completely different culture.

However, when we're talking Rick and Morty, Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, MLP even, it's a different area. While it's possible that these shows break the fourth wall, they usually cover story in a different way; characters can have different moral values without being evil (in the others, anyone except the villain have the same moral compass), most of the times the lessons are more abstract, hell, sometimes there isn't even only one lesson to learn from or they don't show any particular truth. The kid usually relates to a character because their specific personality, in the other type of show there isn't much to like except for their design or any joke they could make.

Not towards the author but towards people who are like this, "Adults who are bored to tears by endless tournament battles and power-up sequences would be absolutely mystified as to why any grown man or woman would watch Dragon Ball Z or Yū Yū Hakusho."

lol yea like reality TV shows are so much better. Let's watch Kim Kardashian figure out what to dress for the next day

I think the problem is that, as others have said, they tried to make their enjoyment of the show all about themselves, and rather than simply saying "Yes, this is a cartoon for girls, and there's nothing wrong with guys enjoying feminine things," they tried to act like MLP was something manly. The show, which actually is pretty great, was intended for all ages and genders to enjoy, but it's written with girls in mind. Bronies should have respected that, rather than try to make it "theirs."

It is pretty much within the brain of normal society that people should acted and dictate their actions based on their age, children should be childish and adult should be mature, while teenagers should always be rebelious (or kind and healthy as what their parent expected them to be.)