The Bard

I might be...cognitively impaired...when I get there.

That's even worse than Muse usually are.

Holy shit, I've been eyeballing that for ages. That is most excellent, finally it'll give me something to play on my Vita.

The framerate is absolutely atrocious, but yeah, it's a bit of a trip to be able to play the HD and Fury tracks on a portable device.

Dude, there's only one response when someone asks if you're gay or "accuses" you of such. And that's to say, fuck yeah, I'm not only gay, but I'm the most flamingest buttfucking arse junkie you'll ever know, and I'll put my pulsating doom cock through every orifice in your quivering, homophobic body.

Super excite: Wipeout 2048 HD DLC out tomorrow.

Going down to London tomorrow to stay at a friends. My best friends girlfriend's birthday thing is tomorrow, and that promises to be uncontrollably fucked up. After that going to toke some fat J's and play videogames for a few days. Excite.

That list has two people missing that I know of. Goron_3 is coming, and I'll be turning up at some point in the afternoon.

I think you'll find that fan is actually an abbreviation. Anyway, semantics. I already conceded that not all people who watch the show are fanatical, with the obvious corollary that there are in fact, certain crazies that have formed a sort of hippie commune around it.

Actually, I'm not a fan of anything. I like Street Fighter, but not to the extremes of fandom. I don't obsessively buy cloth wall scrolls of Chun Li doing a spinning bird kick. I don't purchase every game associated with the franchise, or action figures, or go to signings, or hound reviewers on the comments sections of enthusiast websites when they dole out a tough review. I don't immediately assume I can associate or be friends with someone because they also like Street Fighter. In that same way, people who label themselves, often tend to be obsessive. Not always; sometimes it's said in a lighthearted fashion, but more often than not, people who identify as Trekkies or Juggalos are hardcore about it.

There's a difference between association with a subculture, and considering oneself part of it. To paraphrase Judith Butler, saying you are this or that connotes a provisional totalisation of that self, so I can only interpret you calling yourself a "bronie," as a statement of self. In social identity theory, our self is fashioned in an exclusionary manner by way of what one labels oneself. Saying you are this or that, is an act of implicating that others are not this or that, and therefore exempt from your little social fiefdom. The fact that certain people do this through My Little Pony, provides me with extreme mirth. You have to be dull as fuck not to find it funny. I didn't quite have time, nor patience enough to holistically address every aspect of bronie culture -largely because I don't care - instead choosing to focus on the fringe aspects that are interesting to me, which through various accounts and evidence are fairly widespread. Sure, there are ordinary, everyday people who watch the show, but the subculture seems to be something of a magnet for the sort of people you see lurking on deviantart commenting on sexualised interpretations of my little pony characters. That is the part of the phenomena that I find interesting and bizarre. It's probably harmless, but it's still funny, and the cornerstone of of humour is exaggeration and judgement. I find your assumption that I lump all people who watch the show in to the same category to be profoundly obtuse, if not caused by willful misunderstanding of what I was getting at or poking fun towards.

How we Decide is a fantastic book. Starts by debunking longstanding philosophical attitudes towards the "rationality/emotionality" dichotomy, complicating it, and instead showing, through really interesting anecdotes as divergent as the Gulf War and American football for example, that humans are largely intuitive beings. It's fairly informative about the anatomy too, which would probably be more familiar to you than it is to me; a lot about the orbitofrontal cortex's function in decision making, the relationship between the dorsolateral pfc and the anterior cingulate cortex etc. Love his writing, would highly recommend.

Calling one's self a bronie is a statement of identity. Care to elaborate, genius?

I never said I was trolling ironically. I'm trolling with absolute sincerity, because I find Bronies pretty funny. I was telling Dannyboy to take it easy because he's never going to react well to anything that's the least bit cutting.

The actual idea that there's a subculture based on the fandom of a decidedly dumb kids show is baffling to me. It's like it's no longer enough to say, yes I like to watch this thing, and occasionally engage in conversation about the latest episode. Instead you have to obsess over it and say "no, this show gives me an uncontrollable viagra hard-on for days, I cannot get enough." I mean, I like cartoons. I really like adventure time, for example, but there's a distinction between liking something and saying "a big part of my identity is constituted through this show." You have to be a little crazy, I'm just saying. Yes. That's sort of my thing. I like to troll and grief, and generally take the piss where I know people aren't going to take kindly to it. How many years has it been, how is it possible that you don't take shit I say with a fistful of salt? Maybe I should put a handy after everything

1. Indefinitely reserving judgement makes you a bland person. 2. It's nothing to do with gender, it's more to do with weird cultish fetishism. I don't understand what it is about the show that causes people to want to label themselves "bronies," or get my little pony tattoos, or fashion hand puppets for undoubtedly nefarious sexual purposes . More than that, it's the same thing which causes me to be baffled by Trekkies (or Trekkors...it's like the protestants vs catholics of Star Trek fans)...when you're wearing your Trek uniform and phaser to a senate hearing, it's undoubtedly time to assess your life and figure out why this soap opera causes you to want to fashion an identity around it. I kind of just want to diagnose them all with aspergers. And hell, it's fine and great to be absorbed by something, but the majority of the time, the sort of people that go to conferences based on the nerd subculture of their choice, approach their interest without any sense of humour. That's pretty much where I draw my own imaginary line of judgement; if you're so into something like this that you can't handle someone taking the piss out of you for it, then you're a little too deep down the rabbit hole.

This guy sounds like a lobotomised bonobo, why is it that you like him again?

Currently reading: Generation X - Douglas Coupland, In The First Circle - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Which is very well written and humourous, but it's so densely packed with characters that it's almost impossible to keep track of them all), Just read through the second book of Paradise Lost, some of which is lost on me, since I don't really have the patience to look up all the various references to Greek and Biblical mythology, numerous as they are. Reading Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide again, just as a precursor to picking up his new book on the neuroscience of creativity, Imagine Oh yeah, and just finished JLA: Tower of Babel. Was quite good as far as superhero comics tend to go.

Dude, Flink, I was a better man before I asked those same questions. RUN YOUNG SQUIRE!

Yeah, that's the worrying thing. The historical fact with social identity is that people often find one point of identification with each other and from social groups based upon that particular attribute, which through further contact begins to develop into a culture or a creed, and becomes exclusionary. Since the internet though, you get a huge variety of these bizarre little social microcosms that are founded on so many tiny and specific similarities that the idea of any outsider even being able to fathom it, or have some sort of discernible entry point is impossible. Although maybe it's the other way around; people need to self identify as members of a tribe as a way of forming a sense of self, and since their assimilation into the tribe of choice requires them to yield to all the finer points that constitute membership to the group, they go ahead and imbibe it wholesale. Like, how does a cult develop around what is ostensibly a children's show about ponies? Star Trek is the same way, it's just a soap opera set on the bridge of a spaceship, although I suppose it rode on the back of the space race. But yeah, weird shit all around. 5 mins into that American Juggalos thing, and I'm hooked.

I love documentaries about the freaks that inhabit the fringes of society (Trekkies and Darkon being two awesome examples). Although bronies are grown dudes that willingly give their time to watching a dumb show about ponies, so you don't have to convince me that they have some trouble in the outside world.

That's more heroin hobo chic. There's a subtle yet distinct difference.

Nobody can pull off hobo beard chic like Paj.

The creative director on this had a similar position at Retro studios when they were working on the Prime games. Figures. Personally, this is the first Halo I've been interested/ excited in since the first.

Dead Space: Lost Planet.