TwitterPonies: How It Works

What are the rules of TwitterPonies? What are the policies? What's acceptable and unacceptable? What gets enforced and how? How can I be a happy, productive, accepted participant in TwitterPonies? Here's all you need to know.

The Rules

There are only two rules in all of TwitterPony. Here they are:

HAVE FUN! To do it, Follow any account you want, Don't follow any account you don't want, Ignore any post you want, Respond to any post you want, Block anyone who annoys you.
Follow the @mlp_Mod account
Not a rule, but to be a happy participant in TwitterPonies, Follow The Formula (see below).

That's it. Those are the only rules.

Enforcing the Rules

These rules are completely unenforceable. Obey them if you want.

Who's In Charge?

No one is in charge. There is no council, no committee, no God or Wizard, no Princess or "mane character" in charge. There is no governing body, no clique, no secret communication.

There is no one to "appeal" to if someone is blocking you, harassing you, breaking the Guidelines, etc. Not even @mlp_Mod can make someone unblock you, or force someone to obey the spirit or letter of a Guideline. All you can do is block any offending account from your own Twitter feed, or Ignore them. That's it.

However, a lot of players have put tremendous effort into TwitterPonies over the past year, are around a lot, have given of themselves in every possible way, and also play some of the most beloved and popular accounts we have, including but by no means limited to the "Mane 6" and the Royals and other show characters. They've kept true to the letter and spirit of the Guidelines and more, they've been darn entertaining, hilarious, inventive, supported other players' RP, and much more.

Such players have build up tremendous reserves of Trust. This has made them de facto leaders, inasmuch as folks will often follow their lead. If they join or support an RP, it's very likely others will jump in too, or see it as "TwitterPonies Canon" (see Differences Between Twitterponies and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.), or otherwise commit to it, even if that means simply acknowledging that it's happening. If such a "leader" were to OOC ask everyone to do something, it might happen. If everyone does what you say, after all, then you're in charge.

Please remember, however, this is always everyone's choice. You don't even have to follow such accounts, let alone do as they ask. Part of the reason these accounts are so trusted is that they almost never "cash in" that trust, and never ask everyone to join in lock-step and simply do or block or ignore or change the world or other accounts.

What Are the Official Accounts?

There is only one official account: @mlp_Mod, please follow it. No one else. Not @mlp_Twilight, not @mlp_Celestia, nothing, no one is "endorsed" or "our official Twilight Sparkle" or anything like that.

How Does It Work?

TwitterPonies is nothing more than a set of Twitter accounts you decide to follow. Therefore, everyone's TwitterPonies experience is unique to them. You have the power to tailor your experience to your tastes and tolerances, simply by following those accounts that amuse you and not following accounts you don't enjoy. And if someone really bugs you, all you can do is Ignore them or, if they're harrassing, Block them. That's it.

How Does It REALLY Work?

Of course there are Guidelines and policies. They're not rules, they're ways to help you integrate into the society. Everyone has a loosely defined shared expectation of what kind of world TwitterPonies ought to look like, and what's appropriate or inappropriate for it. Like any set of loose, uncodifiable, unenforceable expectations, it's not precisely the same for everyone and it's not going to always match.

Some things just about everyone agrees on. We wrote them down, they're our Guidelines. Follow the Guidelines, you're basically keeping your actions and activities close to that shared expecation, and it's very likely you'll get followed and people will respond to you. The further you drift from the Guidelines, the harder it will be to integrate into our society.

Like any society, there's give-and-take, compromise and flexibility. For example:

We have a character, Twibot, under the account @mlp_Twibot, with its own Player. Everyone agrees that there are no "equipomorphic robots" in MLP:FIM the show, and since one of the things we all tacitly agreed and featured in our Guidelines is, "Keep TwitterPonies as close to the show as possible," there's no question that Twibot is beyond the pale. For some people, it's TOO far beyond, and they don't follow the @mlp_Twibot account. For others, it's like a stick in their eye, they can't stand it, so they Block the @mlp_Twibot account. Okay, these two groups of Players are going to miss whatever Twibot does, but that's fine, they have the right to tailor their TwitterPonies experience however they want. A much larger group of Players are comfortable simply Following the @mlp_Twibot account, or even interacting with them, enjoying the "exception" for other, intangible reasons (they love how the Player plays them, all their friends follow the account, so they feel they have to follow as well, to stay abreast of the action, and it doesn't bug them too much).

What level of compromise is okay with you? Only you can answer that. For example:

Maybe you love TwitterPonies but there's some character who really, really grates on you, for some reason. Let's randomly choose @mlp_Spike. You just can't stand the way his Player plays him. You don't have to follow him, even though he's a very central character, both to the MLP:FIM show and TwitterPonies. You have that right! Perhaps you even want to make your own Spike. You can't have the account @mlp_Spike, of course, unless the owner is willing to share or relinquish it, but you can make @mlp_Spikester or @mlp_SpikeDragon or some Twitter account not yet taken, and go play Spike the way you want to play him. Maybe you'll do such a great job of it you get treated as Spike by others.

All of this brings us to The Formula.

The Formula for Success

The basic formula for success in TwitterPonies: The closer you adhere to the spirit and letter and play your character accounts within the letter and spirit of the following guidelines, the more likely you are to get Followers, avoid Blockers, be Included in conversations and adventures and have fun.

The converse is true also: the further you stray from the formula, the fewer followers you'll get, the less involved you'll be in conversations or adventures, and you might get blocked.