I just went and watched (half of) the video you just linked to. As someone who has heard of My Little Pony but never actually watched any of it, I can say that while I knew that this was not real, and knowing that I could see how it was not real, I see how without that I would not have been able to tell. While I am sure you can tell the differences at a glance, it is not obvious to someone who has not watched it. In other words, the Illusion of Transparency is kicking in.
With all that said, I think this post just got me to try watching My Little Pony. I have heard nothing but good about it in the past, and this post gives me just that little push that might get me to actually watch it. When I do watch it, if I like it, (which I most likely will, given the fanbase it has here on Less Wrong), please accept my thanks for finally pushing me to watch this (presumably) great show.
You’re welcome, but about half the episodes are bad. The season openers are the worst. YMMV. I recommend “Look before you sleep”, “Green isn’t your color”, “Sisterhooves Social”, “Hearts and Hooves Day”, “Read it and Weep”, “MMMystery on the Friendship Express”, or “Sweet and Elite”. Avoid “Feeling Pinkie Keen”, “Over a Barrel”, and “Canterlot Wedding”.
I can’t believe I just wrote that.
The show’s writers are often sloppy about consistency—characters, history, apparent time period, etc., change wildly from episode to episode. There’s a lot of fridge horror in things that the writers threw in without thinking through the implications. There are a number of episodes with stupid (as in, possibly harmful) “morals”.
What the show has is a certain attitude that’s generally been lacking in entertainment (niceness, basically), and it’s the only show I can think of at the moment where the characters are grown-ups. In pretty much every other show on TV, there are a bunch of characters who come together for one specific purpose or reason (to run a news show, fight vampires, get off the island, hunt aliens, run a hospital, talk with each other in a bar, whatever). Then they go back to whatever it is they do when they aren’t together, which isn’t important. In MLP, the characters all have their own lives, and there is no one thing they all get together for. The lives they are having offstage aren’t irrelevant; they’re often the ultimate causes of the conflicts that cause them to get together.
Maybe Lost was similar in that way. I didn’t see enough of it to judge.
I still think people should realize their model is broken when a children’s program contains ritual sacrifice to demons.
That’s a good question, but it would take too long to answer.
Since I wrote that, MLP had an actual episode in which they magically produced dozens of clones of Pinkie, and Twilight’s solution was, “I’ll just try to figure out which ones are the clones, and kill them all!” Now ritual sacrifice doesn’t seem very far off.
Thank you for the information. Getting information about exactly which episodes of a show are good is not so simple, and this gives me a good starting base.
Thank you for your opinion. One nice thing about Less Wrong is that people are willing to give their opinions whatever they are, and even if a majority like something, the rest feel free to give their opinion, and are not harried by groupthink. Well, I am planning to watch a couple of episodes, and we will see which side of the question I come out on.
I just went and watched (half of) the video you just linked to. As someone who has heard of My Little Pony but never actually watched any of it, I can say that while I knew that this was not real, and knowing that I could see how it was not real, I see how without that I would not have been able to tell. While I am sure you can tell the differences at a glance, it is not obvious to someone who has not watched it. In other words, the Illusion of Transparency is kicking in.
With all that said, I think this post just got me to try watching My Little Pony. I have heard nothing but good about it in the past, and this post gives me just that little push that might get me to actually watch it. When I do watch it, if I like it, (which I most likely will, given the fanbase it has here on Less Wrong), please accept my thanks for finally pushing me to watch this (presumably) great show.
You’re welcome, but about half the episodes are bad. The season openers are the worst. YMMV. I recommend “Look before you sleep”, “Green isn’t your color”, “Sisterhooves Social”, “Hearts and Hooves Day”, “Read it and Weep”, “MMMystery on the Friendship Express”, or “Sweet and Elite”. Avoid “Feeling Pinkie Keen”, “Over a Barrel”, and “Canterlot Wedding”.
I can’t believe I just wrote that.
The show’s writers are often sloppy about consistency—characters, history, apparent time period, etc., change wildly from episode to episode. There’s a lot of fridge horror in things that the writers threw in without thinking through the implications. There are a number of episodes with stupid (as in, possibly harmful) “morals”.
What the show has is a certain attitude that’s generally been lacking in entertainment (niceness, basically), and it’s the only show I can think of at the moment where the characters are grown-ups. In pretty much every other show on TV, there are a bunch of characters who come together for one specific purpose or reason (to run a news show, fight vampires, get off the island, hunt aliens, run a hospital, talk with each other in a bar, whatever). Then they go back to whatever it is they do when they aren’t together, which isn’t important. In MLP, the characters all have their own lives, and there is no one thing they all get together for. The lives they are having offstage aren’t irrelevant; they’re often the ultimate causes of the conflicts that cause them to get together.
Maybe Lost was similar in that way. I didn’t see enough of it to judge.
I still think people should realize their model is broken when a children’s program contains ritual sacrifice to demons.
Note that the actual children’s program includes plague and famine, more famine, slavery, mind control, plague again, more mind control, recreational infanticide, and slavery again.
What’s actually your model of children’s programmes? That is, how do you tell whether a programme is for children or not? (Not a rhetorical question.)
That’s a good question, but it would take too long to answer.
Since I wrote that, MLP had an actual episode in which they magically produced dozens of clones of Pinkie, and Twilight’s solution was, “I’ll just try to figure out which ones are the clones, and kill them all!” Now ritual sacrifice doesn’t seem very far off.
Thank you for the information. Getting information about exactly which episodes of a show are good is not so simple, and this gives me a good starting base.
If you’d like a countervailing anecdote, I was amused by the parody but I can’t stand the actual show.
Thank you for your opinion. One nice thing about Less Wrong is that people are willing to give their opinions whatever they are, and even if a majority like something, the rest feel free to give their opinion, and are not harried by groupthink. Well, I am planning to watch a couple of episodes, and we will see which side of the question I come out on.
72% probability of welcoming you to the herd
Care to record that on predictionbook?
yes actually