My Little Pony's Argument for a Racist Colonialist Monarchy
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Summary
The My Little Pony fandom was one of the predecessors to the modern online right-wing culture, and in the early days, it had a lot of rightwing fans. It was a show that explicitly advocated racism, racial segregation, colonialism, and anti-communism.
Transcript
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hello simone i'm excited to be with you today a lot of people find it pretty humorous that the
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my little pony fandom was one of the predecessors to the modern online right culture and a lot of
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people look at this show superficially and even in the early days it had a lot of right-wing
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fans right and they're like but how and i want to turn this around on you how can anyone watch the
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my little pony show and not seeing that it's a show that explicitly advocate advocates for racism
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racial segregation or at least what leftists would call racism not what rightists would call racism
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monarchism colonialism and and anti-communism that communism is evil as well as anti-technological
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progress progress so we're going to go into all of these the my little pony show and its political
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theming is far to the right of a thinker like munchess mulba i i might even argue that my little
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pony is far to the right of nick fuentes um wow and so we're gonna go like like it's it's so far right
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it makes me uncomfortable but it built an entire generation of right-wing extremists by incepting
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them through a kids show like no someone like you might think i'm exaggerating we're gonna go over one
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episode here where the villain and this is like a core big bad villain of the show and this is a
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two-part arc so it's like a big show okay everybody has like their inborn proficiencies which are
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represented by their cutie marks the things they are naturally good at yeah this is the little the
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little like logo that ends up on yeah that says i am uniquely good at x sort of a task yeah it's kind of
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like i don't know with hogwarts like you you don't find out what house you're in or what your special
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skill is until you're you're older so right but it is it is clearly like genetic in this world
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for example it's mentioned that in one part they're talking about like what apple jack's sister little
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sister is going to have and they go well it's probably going to be something to do with apples
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because in our family it's always something to do with apples and she removes them all and replaces
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them with an equal sign literally like you know the one the progressives use in like pro-gay
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protests and stuff like that and then they all march around the town in what is clearly supposed
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i'm sorry i'm just having a hard time understanding different talents lead to different opinions which
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lead to bitterness and misery and so we'll get into that in a second but i want to start less than
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that so let's look at how does it handle colonialism right surely this like i'm gonna read you this
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episode you're gonna be like how did somebody write this and then how is this conceivably approved
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okay so the conflict arises between settler ponies of appalucia a joke on the apple jacks who are a
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country scene the pony being an appellation but anyway plant an apple orchard on the buffalo's
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traditional stampeding grounds without their permission now the buffalo are a different species
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that dress up like native americans oh my gosh okay clearly making it clear that in the my little pony
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universe species as well as the different cast of ponies are allegories for race blocking a path
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central to their heritage the buffalo led by chief thunder hooves demands the tree's removal viewing
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the land as sacred we have a long and winding stampede trail that we run upon for many generations
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the ponies refuse citing the investment in the land for food and survival the resolution comes mid
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battle mid battle so you may say how did these ponies battle the the indians so they they battle them
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by throwing apple pies at their faces so they bring apple pies as as weapons so keep in mind in this
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allegory apple pies are weapons okay industrially produced weapons the resolution comes mid battle
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after chief thunder hoof tastes an apple pie thrown at him as a weapon and proposes a deal where the ponies
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keep the orchard but uproot some trees to create a clear path for the buffalo stampede in exchange the
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buffalo receive a share of the apple pies so they trade the allegory for guns industrially produced
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without making any like major concessions in terms of their industrialization plans
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it's basically saying oh you people who are being colonized you'll change your mind about this
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when you understand all of the great things you'll get from industrialization like guns
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there isn't really another way and this isn't done as like a shaky compromise or something like this
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effing pinky pie does a whole song about how great this is so for viewers who don't know the show
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the pony the country themed pony that you're about to see talk
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is the world's avatar of honesty like she is a magically chosen pony once for generation
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for being like the most honest a pony could possibly be and she defends colonization
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they busted their rumps here and now they're supposed to bust their rumps again just because
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some buffalo won't stampede someplace else the buffalo had it first the settler ponies needed to
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land come on applejack you're being unreasonable can you like just simone you writer's room
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they're like let's handle colonization okay they didn't have to make an episode about colonization
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they didn't have to make an episode where they dressed up a different species like native americans
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no they didn't have to make them childish and stampede pointlessly from one place to another
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they did not they did not but they set all this up clearly because they're like let's do a a colonizer
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episode and the point of the episode could have been we're not so different or something no they
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literally made the key conflict of the episode the settlers taking their ancestral land and they
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literally made the resolution to that being everybody wants the fruits of civilization
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i mean aren't aren't the writers of this progressive though
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what's going on i don't know what no you will progressively see as you go down this i don't
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think they are i think they may be like secretly like super racist keep in mind this isn't like we
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we regularly see in the show is this just the the like progressive to racist horseshoe where
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when you remove the technical aesthetics of our reality you see their true philosophy just come
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through and how they actually feel about everything which actually is everyone will be the urban
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monoculture eventually racist and imperialist and classist i mean in the end the urban monoculture is all
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those things extreme it's the most imperialist it's the most classist it's the most racist no this this
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show and we'll get into themes it has that are anti-urban monoculture in the extreme oh okay so
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that's off my theory i guess although they they do hate themselves though so maybe not yeah this isn't
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the only time you know we see other instances because there are other species than ponies and we see
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this world like the ponies begin apparently the various races of ponies used to fight with each other
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and then they came together in sort of a class-based social structure based on their race which we'll
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get to in a second and they they then fought off because one of the classes the pegasus became the
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military branch initially so clearly they were fighting an outside force so we see other species that are
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on like the fringes of the equestrian world and and clearly we see how they're pushed back and we see that
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they are treated with racism within pony society so like a zebra lives in the woods outside of the
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main town called ponyville cora oh yeah reaction was there her isn't she like the sort of witch
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doctory one oh yeah no it's super racist the way she's depicted right she is a witch doctor who speaks
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in rhymes who is clearly supposed to be allegorical for black people like africans specifically so
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anyway she and and and tribalistic africans because she's very tribalistic even after they learn oh
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she's not that bad they don't like welcome her into the town until like the 22nd season of this show
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she still lives in a shack in the woods okay she is friends with like the literal princess of this land
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okay because one of the main characters becomes a princess and the princess can't even requisition
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her a house she still has to live in a wooden shack outside of town but no that is what is needed to
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maintain the friendship of harmony so wow at the heart of the society show you have three categories
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of ponies okay and and they're clearly allegorical for racial differences all right right there's
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there's unicorns that have the horn there's unicorns who can use magic yes pegasuses who can fly yes and
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then there's and then there's ponies earth ponies just they don't have anything that they just they're
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not a peg well i mean it said when they're talked about that they have a special connection to the land
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sure except we are seen through multiple scenes that this is categorically not true so they say
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they have a special connection to the animals and land and yet which of the ponies can talk to animals
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the freaking pegasus yeah it's the pegasus it's the only pony we know that can talk to animals that's
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okay for those wonders and then we learn in the second season like the the reboot of the show
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earth ponies are said to get magic for the first time and it is plant-based magic but it is it is
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stated that they didn't have this form of magic before which implies that they didn't have some
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special connection to plants moreover when their cutie marks are switched sorry i am i am getting
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feisty about this when their cutie marks are switched applejack's cutie mark is switched with
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pinky pie's cutie mark who is also an earth pony who tries to take over the farm and is unable to run
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it and everything is dying so even as an earth pony it's shown that it is not because applejack is an
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earth pony that she is good at this it's because applejack is applejack that she's good at this
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when another earth pony attempts to take over the farm she is unable to do it so you might be like oh
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so there's there's one class of ponies without any special skills right how is society maintained
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if that's the case and the answer is segregation and we'll get to how this is done but what you will
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notice is outside of the main town that the show takes place in most of the cities are segregated
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by ethnic group e.g by species with the pegasus uh living mostly in cloudsdale you can see well the
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other species can't live in cloudsdale except we know that's not true because twilight gives the rest
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a spell so that they can walk on the cloud of cloudsdale so that could happen to other ponies and
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then we see canterlot the main city is predominantly this would be like the capital where the aristocrats and
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wealthy and academics live is predominantly just unicorns very very few other ponies are there
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and so yeah it is it is a a class segregated society but more than being class segregated it
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is almost as if the earth ponies are genetically modified to be something of an underclass in that
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they are uniquely eager to please and affable and they seem to be a genetically inherited trait within
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them in the song about the character's flaws we see applejack the earth pony literally serve as a
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footstool for rarity the unicorn i can be a drama queen a bit stuck up it's true and i can be too eager
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to please we we see the two primary earth ponies characteristics being that they really want to
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like the pinky pie really wants to make people laugh and make people happy and rarity sorry not
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rarity applejack overwhelmingly wants to please people and is seen as very very eager to please
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we do see earth ponies without this trait like filthy rich but they are definitely the minority in
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earth pony society whereas within unicorn society the majority seem to be arrogant and intellectual
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and within pegasus society they appear to be very athletic militaristic and competitive yeah well
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though fluttershy is not hmm no of course there there there are you know outliers within this this
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system but basically what this show argues more broadly is you should take jobs and live in places
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that are aligned or coherent with your ethnic abilities and and and talents yeah if you are
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born a pegasus you know you should live among other pegasus but you know if your if your talents are
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needed in another town like an earth pony town like to maintain the weather within that town because you
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would need a pegasus to maintain the weather within every earth pony town you can go to that town and
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help them with the tasks that you are uniquely suited for you know if if you are a asian you know you
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should go be a doctor in a majority white settlement because they're just not going to be able to handle
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that task on their own if you're a jew you should go be a banker in a majority white settlement because
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they're just not going to be able to handle that on their own and you know if you're an earth pony
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if you look at like the way things are produced in this world the earth ponies manage this sort of
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underclass of ponies it's very obsequious essentially manages the production of everything
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other than luxury goods the the pegasus take on the job of military and controlling the weather which
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you know obviously they can use this to get the earth ponies to do whatever they want because the
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earth ponies can't grow anything without them and the unicorns seem to almost as a favor to the earth
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ponies segregate themselves and this is what's really interesting is it is the show portrays
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segregation as beneficial to the underclasses specifically equestrian geography and economy
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reinforce the de facto segregation implying the racist race-based divisions lead to smoother
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operation than forced multiculturalism if professions were integrated then resentment would brew
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why hire an earth pony baker when a unicorn could levitate ingredients faster the economy works because
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the racists quote-unquote know their place echoing arguments that racial hegemony in vocations reduces
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friction and boosts productivity that i find to be kind of cool because it could shy away from this right
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like it could not touch the fact that unicorns can do basically anything earth ponies can do but better
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than earth ponies right but no the show goes into this extremely hardcore there's an episode called a
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super speedy cider squeezy 6000 where the flim fram brothers a group of two unicorns
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create a machine that uses magic to automatically both pick and press cider
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meaning that they could create a near infinite amount and increase cider production significantly
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but it's framed as this very negative thing right the applejack family they're like well we'll take
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75 of the product profits as they should because they're basically removing all of the yearly work
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of the apple family i mean the apple family keeps 25 but they'll be able to produce more and faster and
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expand their land right but the apple family's having none of this they're like no progress is bad
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industrial progress is bad why would this world be so anti-industrial progress well it's because
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if unicorns just come out and do this and i note here you might be thinking is the machine defective
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in some way does it poison the cider in some way does it no the machine is shown to completely do
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everything they promise it can do it doesn't break and start making mistakes until to keep up because
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they do a competition where they're like well whoever is better you doing this on your own or us
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running the machine that's who wins the the rights to sell to apple this town okay yeah and applejack
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basically cheating just works really hard in a way that is obviously unsustainable and against the
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spirit of the competition and so the brothers remove the limiter the thing that's supposed to
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maintain the the maximum quality of the spider and it ends up including parts like bad apples it ends
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up including and stems it ends up including and everything like that which again that now they're
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end up being framed as like very bad because of this but i'd actually point out applejack broke the
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spirit of the competition more than they did the point of the competition was to find out which way in
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a sustainable fashion was a better way to do this you know that's the point of competing one thing
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against another thing if you work so hard that you die at the end like that famous case where the guy
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competed against the steam engine you haven't shown that humans are better you you've shown that
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pushing yourself to your absolute limit second they technically won the competition the competition
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was about how much you could produce not about the quality of what was produced true on on two fronts
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applejack cheated within this competition but what is shown from this is that the the segregation of this
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world you know unicorns not interfering in the tasks of earth ponies even though they can do them much
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better and at a much higher capacity is a good thing the unicorn self-segregating to the you know if
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you if you look at the unicorn characters at this show we know one is very academic from the twilight
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but if you if twilight's engaging with like any other intellectual in the show they're almost always a
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unicorn the other is is very high high society high status producing cultural goods rarity who owns
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a dress shop and when she's engaging with other high society ponies they are often unicorns so the
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unicorns it's basically like we let this group that is naturally better than us control the wealth
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predominantly and the status roles and the you know noble titles and in exchange they don't take
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the few jobs where we are still able to compete in any meaningful way
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yeah so it's more than just the standard argument of you know yes there are racial differences yes some
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people won't conform to those differences like fluttershy but broadly speaking you should lean into your
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differences and self-segregate and society will run do you see how right like they're this isn't me
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reading something that's not intended into the show like i mean but the friends i mean this is my little
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pony friendship is magic and the friends are from different groups there's two pegasuses two earth
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ponies no two unicorns and yeah two earth ponies so there's two there's two of each but they all fall into
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their groups racial stereotypes the the except for fluttershy fluttershy is the only one who doesn't
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fit her groups as no stereotype as as established by the show and note the show treats this as weird
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as having a group with a bunch of different races all friends with each other this is this is shown as
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being the not normal thing within this world i'd also note another thing about the show very not
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right wing is the world is very clearly matriarchal society oh yeah no yeah like super clearly men are
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100 accessories yeah men have virtually no positions of power in this world there's no male members of
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the monarchy there are no male elected officials that we see mayor mayor is a female the most powerful
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male i'm familiar with is either shining whatever his name is twilight's brother who ends up marrying
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into the monarchy but does not appear to become a king or a prince he's still a royal guard very much
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a woman's fantasy i get to be queen and married to a royal guard he doesn't change status he still
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walks around protecting me all tough and and the other one i would think of is filthy rich just another
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powerful male who achieved i guess wealth through mercantilism but this is there's a there's a
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series of fan fictions about this that really made me realize it called my little pony fallout equestria
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really like the series it's very good it takes place in the fallout equestria universe very dark i love
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mixing the the bright bubbliness of this with the dystopian of this in a way that highlights how
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actually dystopian everything was all along and in it in one of the vaults if you know the fallout
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universe they run different experiments in the various vaults one of the vaults of the experiment
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is what if we put males in positions of power and one of the characters grew up in this vault and is
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always making faux paws in the world and just doesn't understand why men should be seen as an underclass
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and it really puts this in stark contrast how much everyone else in pony society assumes that males
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should be seen as a as a rightful underclass without complaint and and no no nobody complains about
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this anywhere in the show if even even you can be like well what about like the more can like
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conservative even coded parts of this like the appellation coded applejack character and her
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family that's very much like a clan based family structure which is interesting i never thought about
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that but yeah they do a very good job of showing appellation culture but anyway no her family is
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clearly run by applejack the not even the oldest of the siblings her big brother big mac is basically
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treated as a workhorse oh yeah and doesn't really talk about he's almost the lurch of the family
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yeah even though he's older and bigger and does more work and the family is is is very obviously if
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you look at like the structure of a default run by the grandmother uh if not if not you know the the
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older sister who's still the younger of big mac so very dystopian in that and i just love that it was
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like they they just wrote it that way and they were just like balls out on the table yes women run this
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world men are basically their slaves deal with it the society is okay with this it works oh and yes
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racial groups exist they live in a segregated society i'm trying to figure out a way to steel man this i mean
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i'm wondering if they're just trying to look at this from like little girls perspectives where
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when they're playing with girly dolls that's the world that everyone lives in it's everything's run
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by princesses and most of their dolls are female so why wouldn't men i mean when you the problem is
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they had to flush this child's world this girl's little girl's world fantasy world doll world into
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a larger cohesive body of canon a universe with different groups and politics the problem is
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right is is if that was the case right why not have a prince right like because the girls don't have
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princes in their fantasies they effing do simone i have read enough female romance books little girls
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playing with dolls do not okay maybe maybe even my friends who treated barbies like throwing devices
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didn't have really ken dolls let's see if i can convince you further right okay say okay they have
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a monarchy because little girls like a monarchy so the society is ruled by a class called alicorns
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which are so in this world magic is clearly like an allegory for technology like the super spider
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or with e6000 was made with magic so essentially they're genetically modified super speed being or
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genetically modified like god human basically is what they are they are larger than the other ponies
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they live almost forever they have both wings and a unicorn horn and presumably some tie to the
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flows in a weird way yes and their and their hair flows in a weird way and it's shown that you can
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both be born to this cast if you are born of an alicorn as happens with whatever her name's his kid
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or you can be transformed this way through essentially genetic engineering within this
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world because again magic is allegorical to technology again i don't know if i hate this
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you know maybe society should be ruled because you could modify somebody to be more pro-social to be
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more caring it seems kind of aristotelian doesn't it this idea of there being some noble leading
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class that sacrifices a lot and is somehow superior in various ways it's been a while since i've read
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i mean clearly you can be born into this class because we've seen like it's not just that people
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achieve it remember twilight's niece is born into this class from candace candace mary's shining armor
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oh yeah and she has a kid and the kid is born in alicorn so we know that it's not like based on merit
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only or something like that yeah and you could say well well twilight gets it through merit but
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again she's a unicorn and the merit appears to have something to do with magical ability
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although we see in the reboot that i think non-unicorns can have this happen to them as well
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so uh i think it happened to an earth pony in the reboot i haven't watched the reboot okay so potentially
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it could happen depends on if you consider the reboot canon but okay so you could say well that's why it's
00:27:07.080
a monarchy okay the problem is is that the show explicitly shows democratic processes on two
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occasions one was in the show and one was in the comic books and in both instances it's portrayed as
00:27:20.600
a bad way to operate society so in in in the town itself pipsqueak a humble working-class cult
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described derogatorily as a transplant from trottingham by the antagonist mother his platform
00:27:36.600
focuses on practical improvements like fixing a damaged playground equipment his campaign
00:27:41.160
managed by the cutie mark crusaders emphasizes positivity fairness and community needs diamond
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tiara a wealthy spoiled filly from a rich family backed by her elitist mother spoiled rich a school
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board member who presses her to win for status reasons diamond's tactics are overtly negative
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and manipulative she's a black male threatening to expose classmates secrets bribery implied through
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favors mudslinging and bullying including belittling her own supporters silver
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spoon do doing a sing-off debate and at times she is seen as potentially winning now this time
00:28:13.240
within the series pipsqueak wins but even after he wins diamond tiara still uses her money to sabotage
00:28:21.720
by exploiting budget issues to deny his playground problems goodness eventually going back on this but
00:28:27.080
basically the message of the episode is rich people manipulate politics to their own ends
00:28:34.520
what that's a very progressive well and conservative well well yes but keep in mind that typically was in
00:28:41.000
a progressive world communism is framed as the alternative which we will point out in my little
00:28:45.880
pony it is very not it's framed as pure evil not monarchism in this world the alternative to the democratic
00:28:53.000
process is monarchism now i'll note within the show itself there is a mayor named mayor mayor now if you
00:29:00.600
only take the show as canon this to me would mean that there are actually not elections and this is
00:29:06.280
an appointed position because i mean she's named mayor right it's we never see an election in the
00:29:12.920
show we never see another leader after you're talking about the i mean it's a it's a it's a play
00:29:18.120
on words right it's spelled like mayor is in a female horse right absolutely but like she's named the mayor
00:29:24.360
but anyway you have determinism i don't know but in in in the comic book spinoff we see that actually
00:29:31.720
this is an elected position so what happens in the comic books well the incumbent current administrator
00:29:37.720
is is forced to resign and then has to compete against philsey rich a very rich pony well philsey rich
00:29:45.880
unlike his daughter who competed in the other election also uses money this time without doing
00:29:51.560
underhanded tactics but he's clearly the less competent candidate so incompetent that he resigns
00:29:55.800
after winning to win oh my gosh to win and keep in mind you could be like well progressives complain
00:30:02.200
about how money corrupts election cycles right i agree but the alternative isn't typically monarchism
00:30:10.040
but in here monarchism is never questioned the the monarchs within this world are never shown as being
00:30:19.240
you know self-centered or flawed despite the fact that they live in giant palaces that presumably
00:30:25.880
they had other people build to them there is huge wealth and power disparity between the princesses and
00:30:31.480
the other people in this world for sure yeah no one is shown is able to question one of the princesses
00:30:37.640
the princesses make decisions to go to war unilaterally at multiple points in the show how to resolve wars is
00:30:44.680
handed unilaterally in the show and they are framed as like the perfect philosopher kings always on the
00:30:50.600
front battle always trying their best to do right for the people but with astronomical amounts of
00:30:56.840
power and i should note here that they're not just framed as like normal monarchs right
00:31:02.120
they're not like munchess mulberg no this show says not only should you have monarchs not only should they be
00:31:07.640
genetically modified super beings but they should be treated as gods by everyone else in the world
00:31:13.800
but their hair flows in a cool way of course obviously they are treated as i'm not wrong here
00:31:19.480
they're treated as literal gods in the show yeah and twilight like earns this status and is just
00:31:30.600
okay so now we're gonna go to the communist part oh no i did you ever see this episode this episode
00:31:39.640
is like shocking we should show it to our kids it's a good episode to teach kids about why communism is
00:31:43.880
evil oh my gosh i don't think i did a bunch of these episodes i remember a bunch i don't though
00:31:50.120
so as we've noted everypony gets a cutie mark this is basically the ways that we are genetically
00:31:56.440
different from other people are inbuilt proficiencies and it is shown very much in the
00:32:01.400
show follow your inbuilt proficiency don't try to be good at something that you don't have a natural
00:32:06.920
talent for this is i'm actually kind of surprised i don't think that there's a single episode of the
00:32:13.320
show where somebody's like but should i actually follow my cutie mark i don't want to live my entire
00:32:19.960
life by what i was interested in as a teenager but oh in the show you get your cutie mark and
00:32:25.640
everyone can see it too it's very much like in starship troopers when they show everybody's
00:32:31.080
scores on like the board yes yeah so everybody knows like this is what you're doing for the rest
00:32:36.840
of your life except you effectively have the score tattooed on your forehead
00:32:42.840
and that's effectively what the universe is yeah the magic decides that you're good at something at a
00:32:48.600
certain age that gets tattooed on you for the rest of your life and if you go against it you're just
00:32:53.640
being an idiot and you're gonna fail because this is an episode where their cutie marks are switched
00:32:57.320
up and they try things that aren't their talent and they they their lives are shown as miserable
00:33:02.600
so i love that that's so anti-urban monoculture that is we are born different with different genetic
00:33:08.920
proficiencies lean into what you're good at people can be different and still be friends yeah that's true
00:33:14.920
it really does run against blank slate ism that's pretty radical yeah look just because pegasus have
00:33:20.840
talents that that and abilities that unicorns don't or unicorns have talents and abilities that
00:33:26.120
earth's ponies don't doesn't mean they can't get along and be friends it's just you know they they
00:33:32.200
should only live in a non-segregated society when absolutely necessary um you know just mostly
00:33:38.440
segregate unless you really want to you know be different so anyway in the cutie map the main six
00:33:45.080
are summoned by twilight sparkles magical cutie map to a remote village where ponies live under the
00:33:49.720
rule of starlight glimmer the villagers have had their cutie marks unique symbols representing each
00:33:55.080
pony's innate talents passions and often racial traits magically removed and replaced with identical
00:34:00.360
equal signs this enforces a philosophy of absolute equality no one is allowed to excel or differ in
00:34:07.400
skills appearance or abilities the result is a gray monotonous uh utopian term dystopia where baking
00:34:15.080
produces bland muffins instead of delicious treats denying culinary talent construction yields shoddy
00:34:21.080
houses suppressing building expertise everyone smiles forcibly but is secretly miserable with dissenters
00:34:27.640
locked into re-education rooms blasting propaganda like in sameness there is peace exceptionalism is a lie
00:34:37.400
in sameness there is peace exceptionalism is a lie free yourself from your cutie mark
00:34:58.520
this door shut tighter than a summer of uh piglets and shoot i can't even make countryisms no more good morning
00:35:14.760
i trust you had a pleasant night this way please there are some friends who would like to see you
00:35:22.280
we have a welcome ceremony for new friends the whole village joins together to build you your own
00:35:32.440
cottage not interested now to to really go against all of this starlight preaches that differences cause
00:35:39.560
conflict and that true friendship comes from sataness but she's a hypocrite she secretly maintains her own
00:35:50.360
very napoleon this is very much you know equality some people are more equal than others it's the
00:35:56.120
progressive and the pig from animal farm not napoleon bonaparte because we do not separate ourselves by
00:36:05.960
more than men right yeah this is not something that would naturally emerge from scenarios of a girl
00:36:25.000
playing with a bunch of girly toys this is yeah this is this is something very clearly an allegory for
00:36:30.440
for communism and not just communism monoculture more specifically denying that humans are born
00:36:37.240
different from each other and with unique traits i can't deny that my gosh within a context that the
00:36:44.360
character is treated as supremely villainous as as threatening as any evil villain that they see in in
00:36:53.960
throughout the entire show and i have to say i always really like the different characters reaction
00:37:01.480
to this because you see like if i look at the racial coding of the various characters it's pretty
00:37:07.080
clear what it is the applejack is racially coded as appellation like sort of american redneck rarity
00:37:14.520
is clearly coded as a wasp white anglo-saxon protestant uh pinky pie is very clearly coded as jewish
00:37:21.640
i'm so surprised she is a comedian with fluffy hair who is incredibly gregarious and always hosting
00:37:32.680
parties simone she's jewish to the core we often point out that jews are far more gregarious than
00:37:40.280
other ethnic groups in terms of the size of the friend networks they keep you want to see our episode
00:37:44.120
on this you can look at our why did jews have friends episode because it's just born out in the data
00:37:48.280
and come on the comedian what's a more classically jewish job than comedian then you have rainbow dash
00:37:56.280
the one with rainbow hair that people often think is gay coded when not at all she's very coded as
00:38:03.320
americana tomboy like like very competitive very like i'm the best i'm the greatest i can do better than
00:38:10.280
what anyone else can do and then you have fluttershy who i've always taken as coded twilight's obviously just
00:38:16.360
autistic who i've always taken to be coded as either muslim or catholic very timid woman and what's
00:38:22.840
funny about this is the way that this timid sort of muslim catholic coded character when they're all
00:38:28.200
thinking about how everyone's better when they're equal and they take away the way that everyone is
00:38:31.080
different is getting really into it and kind of likes the idea which i think sort of aligns with
00:38:36.760
the weird muslim progressive alliance that we've seen or you could say the the you know catholic majority
00:38:42.360
areas are still dominantly progressive voting if you look at massive overlap where catholic
00:38:46.920
concentrations are in the united states and progressive voting patterns whereas the jewish
00:38:52.280
coded character is giving her a very angry look we don't complicate when you learn to simplify
00:39:01.880
and and the americana coded character is like from the beginning it's so funny that like
00:39:07.320
it it's it's coded like the other ponies or some of the ponies might accidentally go along with this
00:39:14.280
or think that this makes sense and the americana coded is like this is a joke right like immediately
00:39:19.320
after they do their big song just not having it at all
00:39:22.920
you're kidding right give up our cutie marks no way rainbow dash like you guys can't be serious
00:39:36.680
the world would be better if we didn't lean into our our uh unique genetic profiles and talents
00:39:43.720
and i'll note here where you can be like well this isn't aligning with the the ethnic background thing
00:39:48.680
i mean it's like well not exactly most cutie marks are in some way tied to the ethnic coding
00:39:54.280
i.e earth pony pegasus or unicorn of the uh pony that has it for example twilight's cutie mark could
00:40:02.920
only be had by a unicorn because it's tied to magic rainbow dash's cutie mark is tied to flying it could
00:40:07.400
only be had by a pony of of her ethnic affiliation
00:40:11.400
explain to you how my little pony brainwashed an entire generation of youth into being uh uh
00:40:25.000
being okay with ethnic differences and accepting that we can have ethnic differences and still get
00:40:30.280
along with each other and that you should lean into your ethnic differences and admit them otherwise
00:40:34.440
your life will be horrible and that communism is terrible and evil and that monarchism is clearly
00:40:39.480
better than democracy and that colonialism was actually good and that natives just needed to
00:40:45.880
take some time to learn that they actually like this stuff and that in in truth it is the less
00:40:53.640
privileged ethnic groups like the earth ponies that benefit the most from segregation and segregated
00:41:00.040
wait how well remember the only reason that the apple family is able to make money with their
00:41:05.640
orchard instead of the unicorns using magic is because the unicorns are essentially not allowed to
00:41:10.360
participate in industries that produce basic goods like lumber or apples or food production which seems to
00:41:18.680
be basically by cultural norms within this universe exclusive to the lower cast of earth ponies
00:41:25.240
i can't wait there is like a military race in this the pegasus are said to be specifically
00:41:34.120
the military race there are earth ponies in the military but we are seeing when their society is
00:41:40.520
divided out in the hearth-swarming eve episode that the the pegasi are explicitly assigned a military
00:41:48.440
caste structure and the elite groups within the military like the wonderbolts are all pegasus exclusive
00:41:55.240
man did you realize this when you were first watching it or did you just find yourself thinking
00:42:05.240
about it one day i don't know when this i mean it's something i remember thinking like this show is
00:42:11.240
great at teaching about ethnic and racial differences um and and getting kids just you know
00:42:17.960
some people are just born different and that's fine and i i i did not think about because i didn't
00:42:24.600
know about like all the comics and stuff like that the show would it never criticize the monarchy i
00:42:29.720
thought that it would have some at some point was in like the 22 seasons it got there would be some
00:42:35.480
episode where they're like hey having a god a genetically modified god king rule absolutely
00:42:41.400
is maybe not the best way to run a society nope never and and i didn't know that they every time
00:42:47.560
it never occurred to me until i was actually like going through this with an ai every time democracy is
00:42:51.800
brought up it's framed as corrupted by wealth the same family both times by the way so that's that's
00:42:58.920
also interesting i like the critique because at least it's it's a little different from others it's
00:43:03.960
like listen democracy day it just doesn't work because wealthy people get involved and ruin it which
00:43:09.080
is not normally the criticism i hear so that's interesting too yeah well i also find it to be actually a
00:43:15.560
fairly interesting like they don't just go into like surface level it's it's good to lean into your
00:43:23.240
natural born talents we are born different but that doesn't mean we can't be friends and it doesn't
00:43:27.800
mean that sometimes a pegasus can't be an animal person doesn't mean that sometimes you know an earth
00:43:35.000
pony can't be a fashionista it just means that normally they can't or shouldn't try to unless right
00:43:41.080
averages are averages something something yeah averages right i i thought that that's what it
00:43:46.600
would stop at but it doesn't stop at that it then is like and actually we should segregate society
00:43:52.520
because if we don't it's the earth ponies who are going to suffer the most oh my gosh i actually you
00:43:59.080
know if you if you look at segregation more broadly many times it actually is for the benefit
00:44:08.440
of the one that doesn't have an a an advantage within the field so an example here what is one
00:44:17.800
of the most segregated places of our existing society sports sports is highly sex segregated
00:44:23.800
sports is segregated for the benefit of women absolutely yeah if we were going to uh make sports
00:44:32.360
like more fair right like if you were going to say let's racially segregate the olympics right who would
00:44:38.360
benefit most from like racially segregating sprinting okay white people would benefit it is
00:44:45.560
the person who is in the back foot who often benefits from segregation segregation and here and
00:44:52.360
here what i'm pointing out here is some groups of of african genetics appear to just be dramatically
00:44:59.800
faster at a short sprinting than well it's running too so yeah also also distance running but i think they
00:45:06.440
have a bigger advantage in sprinting i don't remember where the bigger advantage is but they
00:45:09.560
have a bigger advantage of one or the other but if if you were to racially segregate that like
00:45:14.360
everyone could be like how dare you racially segregate that who are you helping you're helping
00:45:18.920
the whites and this is often true of racial segregation which is something that i think is just not
00:45:25.320
talked about in our society and now people can be like well it hasn't been used that way historically
00:45:29.720
and it's like well i mean it actually has with sex segregation in sports it has with sex segregation
00:45:36.840
of bathrooms sex segregation of bathrooms isn't done for the benefit of men it's done for the benefit
00:45:41.480
of women nobody could even argue that racial segregation in for example the united states did
00:45:49.400
lead to some really prosperous black communities like tulsa oklahoma right we went to that museum and
00:45:55.560
they talked about how there was this really like affluent wonderful community and then like
00:46:00.040
the white people who are just sitting out there like in the cold poor getting really resentful came
00:46:05.480
and like burned it down burned it down yeah like destroyed it because the the more segregated black
00:46:11.720
community was absolutely killing it they were doing fantastically actually you you make a point there
00:46:16.280
i haven't thought about this and i'm i may go into an ai because this could make a very interesting
00:46:19.720
other episode but i do remember that that the tulsa community wasn't unique there were a number of
00:46:24.840
areas in the united states if you go back to the 1950s where there were known to be extremely wealthy
00:46:30.600
black communities when contrasted with the neighboring groups and i am not familiar with in modern america
00:46:37.960
extremely wealthy segregated black communities they they well i feel like there are other maybe
00:46:43.320
examples of we'll say forced segregation like mormon communities where like within certain mormon
00:46:50.280
communities there are cycles like up cycles of wealth because they all kind of feed into each
00:46:54.920
other and collaborate more and and try to buy to sell to and buy from each other preferentially yeah
00:47:01.640
but i i i wonder if i mean that'd be very interesting it's certainly something you wouldn't learn in
00:47:06.360
school one of the things that we point out in some of our other episodes and i'll put the graph on
00:47:10.360
screen here because it shocked me when i saw this if you look at american black wealth from the 1950s to
00:47:16.360
today and then you adjust it by income level and you contrast it with how much white wealth that's
00:47:21.880
raised during this period contrasted with how much white wealth has gone up when you adjust for
00:47:26.200
inflation black wealth has gone up almost nothing since the 1950s again contrasted with how much white
00:47:31.480
wealth has gone up and this is a wall street journal graph here now there's different ways you can
00:47:35.000
measure this this is median household income i think that can give you different but like any way you
00:47:39.560
measure it you see a huge increase in white and a very very moderate to small increase in in and this
00:47:45.560
could be caused by the negative economic effects of desegregation which i've never thought about or
00:47:51.640
looked into before well and i'm also thinking about the episode that we did on ethnic cartels that that
00:47:57.800
sort of talked about you know why are certain sort of like random ethnic groups in certain areas they
00:48:03.080
just like own donut businesses or hotels or 7-elevens or something like that and like a big factor then
00:48:12.120
is also in-group favoring providing very affordable financing more efficient hiring because it's really
00:48:18.920
culturally compatible and there's more of an honor system where like hey i'm hiring your cousin you
00:48:23.400
better not screw up because now your whole family's on the line like yeah there there are a lot of things
00:48:28.200
that make me think if i think look at the lds community i look at racial or ethnic cartels and
00:48:32.920
then i look at wealthy and affluent black communities that existed pre the end of segregation
00:48:38.840
there's actually a secondary positive effect of segregation which which comes from these communities
00:48:44.600
which you're probably not thinking about so if you look at you go back to the 1950s or whatever
00:48:49.560
when a black individual or black american would become wealthy they would often continue to live
00:48:55.720
within a majority black community so they would have majority black culture but they would also
00:49:02.040
act as a role model for the other you know the black kids growing up in that community and bring
00:49:07.480
wealth to that community yeah you can achieve you saw this in like harlem and stuff like this in new
00:49:12.200
york it wasn't just like the theory if you go today when a black individual becomes wealthy they
00:49:18.280
just go and move in with a white community which means that the wealth that they have now and the positive
00:49:24.680
cultural you know effect that they could have for the community that they were born in is removed
00:49:29.960
from that community in a modern context yeah which didn't happen the halo effect that halo is being
00:49:36.680
moved and is now radiating onto a community that is not primarily black you're saying yeah yeah they're
00:49:42.760
they're removing whatever somebody becomes successful within the because like in our society wealthy people
00:49:49.080
aren't segregated poor people is still very much segregated like i go to a mexican neighborhood or
00:49:54.360
a filipino neighborhood or a white neighborhood or a black neighborhood if it's poor it's going to be
00:49:58.520
segregated very frequently it is the extremely wealthy communities that are non-segregated and that
00:50:04.360
actually has a really negative effect on non-white communities
00:50:08.600
yeah well i mean i mean even poor white communities probably would benefit from well i mean consider
00:50:18.600
because not every group does this if you look at jewish individuals right like we talk about why why
00:50:24.520
jewish exceptionalism could be one of the traits that leads to it when a jew becomes extremely wealthy
00:50:29.160
they do not move to live with a majority non-jewish community they stay yeah like with the lds church yeah
00:50:36.600
there's there's self-imposed segregation yeah when when like this is often true for asian communities
00:50:42.680
as well because i was friends was like wealthy you know japanese people they still went to the japanese
00:50:47.560
cultural events and stuff like that i've been friends with wealthy koreans they do the same they
00:50:51.160
often stay connected in terms of where they live and their friend network with the less wealthy members
00:50:59.560
of their community instead of creating communities that are mono wealth ethnic communities
00:51:07.240
yeah hmm oh boy oh boy my little pony this is good touches on some spicy tapings
00:51:17.480
well it's so funny because i don't know what's her name who did my little pony friendship is
00:51:22.440
witchcraft did sarah i don't know whatever anyway continue jenny jenny nicholson yeah she got she got in
00:51:30.520
so much hot water and wanted to distance herself from the entire community because she dared to
00:51:35.720
make some little sub joke in her in her plots about it was a gypsy community yeah it was the
00:51:40.920
gypsy character yeah gypsy magic no no she implied i think that pinky pie pinky pie with the gypsy
00:51:46.440
when you're right to devastation there's a simple explanation you're a toy maker's creation trapped
00:51:52.840
inside a crystal ball was a gypsy and then she caught heat from her urban monoculture followers about it
00:51:59.880
and then just kind of wanted to just throw up her hands and distance herself for the from the entire
00:52:04.920
my little pony community and here you are highlighting such incredibly more controversial
00:52:10.840
things that just the show unedited released yeah like yeah nothing she did was as controversial as like
00:52:19.880
just a colonialism episode yeah we thought white people were bad until we saw them shoot some of us with
00:52:27.720
guns then they realized they have things we want
00:52:31.560
just wow that that was enlightening not sure what i think of it yet but well you could be like okay
00:52:40.440
even though they were using the apple pies as a weapon they weren't really an allegory for guns they
00:52:44.360
were just an allegory for like some sort of food i mean yeah they treated beads and clothing too
00:52:52.280
what they could say is like look it's a food that white people make that native americans just
00:52:57.480
couldn't get enough of so much that they abandoned their ancestral tradition oh no is it an allegory
00:53:02.680
for alcohol like come on guys yeah anyway i'll go to the next episode i love you the spicy episode
00:53:12.040
right spicy episode spicier than you expected one of our yeah for for those who can like push through
00:53:17.960
and and get past the fact that they they have to come to terms with the reality that they're going to
00:53:24.920
listen to a podcast episode on my little pony friendship is magic the little girl show yeah
00:53:31.480
girl show all about how monarchy is good and we should live in a racially segregated society
00:53:40.200
yeah if if they if they you know can get past that and actually listen to it we'll see
00:53:46.840
we'll see but i love you too gorgeous um so how did the comments do in today's video
00:53:54.520
i just saw one comment that said that i wouldn't pass a turing test which is actually super true
00:54:00.520
because every time i have to do the one of those are you not a computer things i have to do it like
00:54:06.280
five times i don't pass but i say simone wouldn't pass the turing test yeah
00:54:16.280
i regularly it make teen pregnancy great again i don't know when that came up i don't think i mentioned
00:54:22.680
the fact that i like pathologically fail the captcha tests you do every time i'm like
00:54:31.960
yeah i can't i can't do it i think jack bt recently passed one so that's embarrassing but more on topic
00:54:40.760
today i'm wondering if you remember what you said to me on our first date when we were making out on the
00:54:47.960
floor of the four seasons hotel no which was so crazy to me because of course i'd never kissed
00:54:55.240
anyone but one other person before you and here i am first date making out with this basic stranger
00:55:01.400
and then what do you say to me but would you like to come to my house i have a jacuzzi bathtub and we
00:55:08.520
can watch my little pony i'm like yeah that's how you get a nerd to you were clearly fishing for nerd
00:55:20.840
culture stuff i i clearly was yeah it was it was obvious that they my whole profile was keyword
00:55:26.600
stuffed for online nerd references so yes 100 but then do you know today's also a very special anniversary
00:55:34.760
no but it is it is the 11 year or maybe 12 year anniversary of the day you proposed to me on reddit
00:55:48.280
with commissioned art and there was indeed a my little pony commission there was yes we have been
00:55:56.120
involved in the brony community for a long time where you made custom my little pony characters for each of
00:56:02.200
us with your pony character balancing a diamond ring on his head bowing down so i could see it this
00:56:09.880
in my pony form of course you've got a little wi-fi signal on your pony butt and i've got a little
00:56:16.600
check mark on mine i remember your my little pony name was net set i don't remember what mine was crystal
00:56:24.200
cog i remember that crystal cog so those were the days malcolm those were crazy crazy period in internet
00:56:35.480
history um thank you for your very romantic proposal i've actually seen a number of well yeah what was
00:56:42.520
it what magazine was that that early magazine that said it was one of the top 10 romantic moments of the
00:56:46.360
year oh yeah it was some like online it was like the main one it was like the daily dot wasn't it the
00:56:52.680
daily dot no no no no it wasn't it was bigger than the daily dot it started with like a b or something
00:56:56.920
we actually went to their offices at one point in manhattan but it's like irrelevant now but for a
00:57:01.240
while it like dominated internet culture yeah time flies now all the blogs are dead so it doesn't matter
00:57:10.200
anymore crazy it wasn't was it buzzfeed buzzfeed yeah it was buzzfeed oh my gosh i guess now now i
00:57:19.080
remember that yeah it was it was not in the first big roundup of of coverage of that no no at the end
00:57:24.760
of the year when they were ranking romantic events that had happened that year and yeah so that was
00:57:29.160
the progressives back then didn't know about us but well no they did i'm sure that you know both
00:57:34.840
people of all political spectrums saw your reddit posts saying i'm going to propose to my wife
00:57:39.880
with this art and with these advice animals and they're like okay let's watch this fail and this
00:57:45.160
was like way more politically neutral and because back then you know i i hung out on like tumblr and
00:57:51.960
action and fat people hate and stuff like that and there's this article like detailing my reddit post
00:57:57.160
somewhere i can't remember the yahoo article trying to be like and he laughed at a fat person because
00:58:01.800
they had to go to a zoo to get an mri and i'm like and i still laugh at that fat person i need to think
00:58:08.200
to think about having to show up at the zoo to get your mri and still it's still good
00:58:17.960
i mean i would laugh yeah i would laugh so i mean it myself if i were that all right here we go