Fans of LW and fans of MLP both tend to be males ages 18-35 who spend a lot of time on the internet.
But why would these people be fans of MLP? MLP, as I understand it, is made for teaching social skills to little girls. Do males ages 18-35 who spend a lot of time on the internet watch it because they are especially in need of remedial education on the subject? Is that actually the hidden agenda of the makers?
I’ve speculated on this in the past. I was reading a book and it mentioned that one of the things used to help autism spectrum people learn social skills is something called Social Stories (TM); read through the article and some of the linked materials or look at Google hits, and tell me that MLP doesn’t sound a lot like how one might design a maximally-appealing ‘Advanced Social Stories’...
Despite searching on PubMed using iPubMed from UC Irvine and browsing around using “Related Links”, I can’t find anything about Social Stories and teenagers, young adults, or adults. Someone with journal access can take a look at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22284800 to confirm/disprove my suspicion.
The stuff I could find is quite uncertain about how helpful Social Stories are but there are no reports of harm so if a TV show can sneak in Autism Spectrum Disorder treatment, even if it isn’t super effective, that’s terrific. It can be difficult for older people to get a diagnosis and good evidence-based treatment; if My Little Pony can help that population for low to little cost, I’m all for it.
I’m quite surprised to run across that topic on Less Wrong. I heard about it at a medical conference regarding autism but only in the context of children. I guess it’s time to take another look with regards to older people.
I could be reading this completely wrong, but it makes me think of something that might be worth posting in open thread (or not, depending on how much it’s just me whining); that is, I’ve read stories that give me a picture of what’s normal and how social interaction is supposed to work, and when I wonder if there are any lessons there to apply to my own life, I quite quickly conclude that they aren’t applicable. Of course, free range children is a general assumption of 99% of everything I’ve read. And, in fact, if anyone ever advises me to do anything, it most always assumes more freedoms than I actually have.
(I’m mostly concerned that I can’t generalize this to something not incredibly specific to my situation. I think I’ve veered quite far from the original point as it is.)
Hypothesis / speculation based on personal observation only:
MLP is similar to anime.
For various reasons, this demographic tends to be overrepresented among anime fans in western developed countries, partially (I speculate) based on the facts that watching anime requires 1) learning about it and being interested in this esoteric, nonconventional form of entertainment (this demographic tends to be more adoptive of nonconventional entertainment), 2) finding information about the anime shows to watch, which implies spending quite a bit of time on the internet for the vast majority of cases, and 3) actually finding versions of the anime shows one can watch, because for the vast majority of anime, if you don’t speak japanese, you need to find a borderline-or-sometimes-outright-illegal version of it that was modified to add “fansubs”, or fan-made subtitles translated in another language (e.g. english).
Most of the above is stuff that involves delving deep into the less-mainstream corners of the internet, or at least having a modicum of google-fu and the patience to learn the basic vocabulary of the genre.
Just that right there should tilt the numbers so that the base viewership contains a disproportionate amount of this demographic, and thus even if they were no more or less likely to enjoy it than other demographics, they would be much more numerous in its fandom.
And who shows up to these anime clubs? Fans of anime, or people specifically selected by their friends who are already also fans of anime (and thus tend to be in similar demographics), and very rarely random people who are not scared off by the esoteric and by the genre (again, primarily young people and somewhat slanted towards young males).
Also, respectable Anime Clubs point you to Crunchyroll nowadays, because that’s more respectable and entirely less legally-murky ;)
But yes, it’s not that hard nowadays, mostly trivial inconveniences. Most anime fans that are relevant here would have started watching anime years ago, though. The first five websites I used to find and watch anime do not exist anymore.
Or you google the name of the anime and find sites where you can just stream episodes like Watchcartoononline or Crunchyroll. Also, Youtube and Hulu have a decent selection between them. I haven’t felt the need to torrent a show in years.
True, but try doing that six years ago. Six years ago (plus or minus 1-3 years? bad memory with timelines), googling “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” did not return the throng of convenient streaming websites and wiki pages and databases that it currently does.
I tried it, got frustrated, tried to hack myself a way to find good stuff by using image search instead, found guro porn instead, got terrified and assumed fetal position in a corner of my room. Gave up on that anime for a while, back then =P
Of course, most of that effect is that search has gotten a lot better over the years, I think.
I haven’t felt the need to torrent a show in years.
There’s no real need to, but it’s often orders of magnitude easier to find a high-quality torrent than a high-quality stream, and torrents offer the convenience of not dealing with buffers and unstable speeds and random connection errors and so on while watching, i.e. a smoother undisturbed experience.
This is obviously valid for all kinds of full downloads in general, it just happens that almost all full anime downloads are torrents.
I tried it, got frustrated, tried to hack myself a way to find good stuff by using image search instead, found guro porn instead, got terrified and assumed fetal position in a corner of my room.
But if you found images of the anime, why were you so unhappy?
Tentative hypothesis (I’ve only seen the first episode—watching more is moderately high on my watch list): Not only is the show good, it’s one of the few shows which isn’t grim.
David Brin has an essay about how fiction tends to depict society as unrealistically bad — full of incompetents, corruption, and general dumbshittery. Because society as a whole is holding the Idiot Ball, the heroes get to save it.
MLP doesn’t do that. Ponies are good at what they do, they cooperate with each other, and they even have both respectable and respectful authority figures. The heroes face problems originating with misunderstandings, personality conflicts, or external threats — not a society that is assumed to be broken. So there is a stark contrast with a lot of fiction, even fiction written for a children’s audience.
I’ve found a few stories where the menace is ended by the authorities stepping in.. Here are the two I remember, plus a spare: Jura Jr Jrer Erny ol Jvyyvnz Onegba (ynobe ynjf ner vzcebirq) naq Qnex Ybeq bs Qrexubyz ol Qvnan Jlaar Wbarf (gur rivy gbhevfz ohfvarff vf fuhg qbja). Cbr’f “Gur Cvg naq gur Craqhyhz” vf va n eryngrq pngrtbel—gur engvbanyvfg ureb whfg oneryl fgnlf nyvir hagvy uvf sevraqf fnir uvz.
Offhand, I think the premise that everything is corrupt (at least locally) came in with noir.
The climax of Shaun of the Dead ends with the surviving main characters rescued by the British Army.
The film version of The Mist has the U.S. Army fighting back the monsters that arrived with the titular mist… but they’re too late to save the main characters. Similarly, the monster in Cloverfield is indeed eventually taken down by the U.S. military as well—offscreen, after the fate of the main characters has already been determined.
And Lord of the Flies, of all things, also ends with the children being found and rescued just as things are at their worst… by, ironically enough, a military pilot who soon goes back to fighting a war.
I affirm, in all seriousness: watching cartoons has made me a better person. Does this seem so unlikely?
(Though I did wonder if—rather than the narrative content—it was due to some sort of premature activation, by sheer volume of cuteness, of the whole have-children-lower-testosterone-become-domesticated thing I read about on Gwern’s site somewhere.)
To generalize from one example, there’s also some people (probably, unless I’m alone) who feel a certain sense of glorious subversion when something mainstream meant for young children that is riddled with stereotypes and social conventions gets re-purposed into teaching unconventional ideologies and bleeding-edge fringe mental skills.
I’m working off observation, not theory. I’ve heard speculation on the subject, but nothing that sounds convincing and nothing that makes testable predictions.
Looking at the statistics here, it looks like the fandom is even more male-dominated than I had thought. The smof are pretty much all male; I can think of only one exception. The show’s writers are mostly female.
The average MLP fan is a good deal younger than the average LWer. Both are very likely to be white.
Demographics. Fans of LW and fans of MLP both tend to be males ages 18-35 who spend a lot of time on the internet.
But why would these people be fans of MLP? MLP, as I understand it, is made for teaching social skills to little girls. Do males ages 18-35 who spend a lot of time on the internet watch it because they are especially in need of remedial education on the subject? Is that actually the hidden agenda of the makers?
I’ve speculated on this in the past. I was reading a book and it mentioned that one of the things used to help autism spectrum people learn social skills is something called Social Stories (TM); read through the article and some of the linked materials or look at Google hits, and tell me that MLP doesn’t sound a lot like how one might design a maximally-appealing ‘Advanced Social Stories’...
Despite searching on PubMed using iPubMed from UC Irvine and browsing around using “Related Links”, I can’t find anything about Social Stories and teenagers, young adults, or adults. Someone with journal access can take a look at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22284800 to confirm/disprove my suspicion.
The stuff I could find is quite uncertain about how helpful Social Stories are but there are no reports of harm so if a TV show can sneak in Autism Spectrum Disorder treatment, even if it isn’t super effective, that’s terrific. It can be difficult for older people to get a diagnosis and good evidence-based treatment; if My Little Pony can help that population for low to little cost, I’m all for it.
I’m quite surprised to run across that topic on Less Wrong. I heard about it at a medical conference regarding autism but only in the context of children. I guess it’s time to take another look with regards to older people.
Thank you for bringing it up, gwern.
I could be reading this completely wrong, but it makes me think of something that might be worth posting in open thread (or not, depending on how much it’s just me whining); that is, I’ve read stories that give me a picture of what’s normal and how social interaction is supposed to work, and when I wonder if there are any lessons there to apply to my own life, I quite quickly conclude that they aren’t applicable. Of course, free range children is a general assumption of 99% of everything I’ve read. And, in fact, if anyone ever advises me to do anything, it most always assumes more freedoms than I actually have.
(I’m mostly concerned that I can’t generalize this to something not incredibly specific to my situation. I think I’ve veered quite far from the original point as it is.)
Hypothesis / speculation based on personal observation only:
MLP is similar to anime.
For various reasons, this demographic tends to be overrepresented among anime fans in western developed countries, partially (I speculate) based on the facts that watching anime requires 1) learning about it and being interested in this esoteric, nonconventional form of entertainment (this demographic tends to be more adoptive of nonconventional entertainment), 2) finding information about the anime shows to watch, which implies spending quite a bit of time on the internet for the vast majority of cases, and 3) actually finding versions of the anime shows one can watch, because for the vast majority of anime, if you don’t speak japanese, you need to find a borderline-or-sometimes-outright-illegal version of it that was modified to add “fansubs”, or fan-made subtitles translated in another language (e.g. english).
Most of the above is stuff that involves delving deep into the less-mainstream corners of the internet, or at least having a modicum of google-fu and the patience to learn the basic vocabulary of the genre.
Just that right there should tilt the numbers so that the base viewership contains a disproportionate amount of this demographic, and thus even if they were no more or less likely to enjoy it than other demographics, they would be much more numerous in its fandom.
It’s not that hard to learn to find anime. You show up to one meeting of an anime club and five people will point you to AnimeSuki.
And who shows up to these anime clubs? Fans of anime, or people specifically selected by their friends who are already also fans of anime (and thus tend to be in similar demographics), and very rarely random people who are not scared off by the esoteric and by the genre (again, primarily young people and somewhat slanted towards young males).
Also, respectable Anime Clubs point you to Crunchyroll nowadays, because that’s more respectable and entirely less legally-murky ;)
But yes, it’s not that hard nowadays, mostly trivial inconveniences. Most anime fans that are relevant here would have started watching anime years ago, though. The first five websites I used to find and watch anime do not exist anymore.
Or you google the name of the anime and find sites where you can just stream episodes like Watchcartoononline or Crunchyroll. Also, Youtube and Hulu have a decent selection between them. I haven’t felt the need to torrent a show in years.
True, but try doing that six years ago. Six years ago (plus or minus 1-3 years? bad memory with timelines), googling “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” did not return the throng of convenient streaming websites and wiki pages and databases that it currently does.
I tried it, got frustrated, tried to hack myself a way to find good stuff by using image search instead, found guro porn instead, got terrified and assumed fetal position in a corner of my room. Gave up on that anime for a while, back then =P
Of course, most of that effect is that search has gotten a lot better over the years, I think.
There’s no real need to, but it’s often orders of magnitude easier to find a high-quality torrent than a high-quality stream, and torrents offer the convenience of not dealing with buffers and unstable speeds and random connection errors and so on while watching, i.e. a smoother undisturbed experience.
This is obviously valid for all kinds of full downloads in general, it just happens that almost all full anime downloads are torrents.
But if you found images of the anime, why were you so unhappy?
I see what you did there =3
4chan. The story is documented on KnowYourMeme.
The show is honestly quite good.
Periphery Demographic (TVTropes warning) is not all that rare a phenomenon.
Early on Hasbro made the wise decision not to take down episodes when they appeared on Youtube.
Tentative hypothesis (I’ve only seen the first episode—watching more is moderately high on my watch list): Not only is the show good, it’s one of the few shows which isn’t grim.
David Brin has an essay about how fiction tends to depict society as unrealistically bad — full of incompetents, corruption, and general dumbshittery. Because society as a whole is holding the Idiot Ball, the heroes get to save it.
MLP doesn’t do that. Ponies are good at what they do, they cooperate with each other, and they even have both respectable and respectful authority figures. The heroes face problems originating with misunderstandings, personality conflicts, or external threats — not a society that is assumed to be broken. So there is a stark contrast with a lot of fiction, even fiction written for a children’s audience.
I agree with Brin on that point.
I’ve found a few stories where the menace is ended by the authorities stepping in.. Here are the two I remember, plus a spare: Jura Jr Jrer Erny ol Jvyyvnz Onegba (ynobe ynjf ner vzcebirq) naq Qnex Ybeq bs Qrexubyz ol Qvnan Jlaar Wbarf (gur rivy gbhevfz ohfvarff vf fuhg qbja). Cbr’f “Gur Cvg naq gur Craqhyhz” vf va n eryngrq pngrtbel—gur engvbanyvfg ureb whfg oneryl fgnlf nyvir hagvy uvf sevraqf fnir uvz.
Offhand, I think the premise that everything is corrupt (at least locally) came in with noir.
Me too.
The climax of Shaun of the Dead ends with the surviving main characters rescued by the British Army.
The film version of The Mist has the U.S. Army fighting back the monsters that arrived with the titular mist… but they’re too late to save the main characters. Similarly, the monster in Cloverfield is indeed eventually taken down by the U.S. military as well—offscreen, after the fate of the main characters has already been determined.
And Lord of the Flies, of all things, also ends with the children being found and rescued just as things are at their worst… by, ironically enough, a military pilot who soon goes back to fighting a war.
I affirm, in all seriousness: watching cartoons has made me a better person. Does this seem so unlikely?
(Though I did wonder if—rather than the narrative content—it was due to some sort of premature activation, by sheer volume of cuteness, of the whole have-children-lower-testosterone-become-domesticated thing I read about on Gwern’s site somewhere.)
Also, its art does not lean on its intended virtuousness.
To generalize from one example, there’s also some people (probably, unless I’m alone) who feel a certain sense of glorious subversion when something mainstream meant for young children that is riddled with stereotypes and social conventions gets re-purposed into teaching unconventional ideologies and bleeding-edge fringe mental skills.
Assuming you’re right about the demographics, I’m curious about theories about why adult women aren’t as likely to be fans of MLP.
I’m working off observation, not theory. I’ve heard speculation on the subject, but nothing that sounds convincing and nothing that makes testable predictions.
Looking at the statistics here, it looks like the fandom is even more male-dominated than I had thought. The smof are pretty much all male; I can think of only one exception. The show’s writers are mostly female.
The average MLP fan is a good deal younger than the average LWer. Both are very likely to be white.