princess twilight butt

the framerateee

@Cirrus Light  
Well I’m glad we’ve figured that one out :3

@Background Pony #118C  
lol, I thought maybe something like that was the case, but was a bit too prideful by the time came to admit it that I didn’t want to admit it. But the admission is that I really don’t know much about how psychology is actually taught :q
 
But that’s pretty much it.

@Cirrus Light  
In retrospect, it all seems like a big misunderstanding. Probably on my part. Now I can see that you just didn’t know how things were and was just saying what you thought was be right. But I was looking at it assuming that you knew that there is a lot of neurology in psychology already and that you were pushing for even more of it, or, more specifically, for only neurology. I apologise for the weirdness my misunderstanding has created, but I think you can see what I was trying to say, knowing where I was comming from. It’s been awhile since I’ve talked to someone without any psychological background about neurology. So, sorry for starting on a wrong foot here.

@Cirrus Light  
I didn’t comment on that because you’re preaching to a choir here. It’s ridiculous to even suggest it not to be the case. Neurology is not a supplement, it’s a part of psychology. I mean, you might not know that, since it isn’t your major, but it’s not like psychology and neurology exist each in their own camp, they are all intertwined. There is no line where psychology ends and neurology begins (look up behaviorism for example, and tell me which one is it). You can’t simply study psychology while avoiding neurology. It’s like studying medicine while avoiding anatomy. It’s ridiculous. You’d have to go out of your way to do so, and even then it’s probably impossible.
 
It is possible to learn neurology as part of machine learning without learning psychology though. Since it’s all about AI and not about fixing broken human brains. So that might be what gave you the impression that these two things are separate.

@Background Pony #118C  
That’s not at all what I said, though. I was saying psychologists should have a basic understanding of neurology to supplement their knowledge in the same way chemists have at least a basic understanding of the relevant physics. Their main course should still be psychology, a chemist’s main course is still chemistry, but with some of the underlying knowledge of the other field that grants valuable insights into theirs.

@Cirrus Light  
I’m kinda disappointed, by friend. It seems that you’re more adamant about winning some kind of an argument then having a discussion. I never said I was against neurology, you don’t have to defend it in front of me. I was just trying to balance your opinion, since it seems like you are ready to throw out everything out of the window and only keep neuroscience. And, you know, if that’s what you want - sure, you do you, but that’s not a debate I’m interested in having, so, I’m out.

@Background Pony #118C  
Well you cite data that doesn’t exist. Bring me real data on how many people are stimulated by a foot message, claim to be foot fetishists, or like rubbing feet around sexual activity vs how many people engage in a range of other fetishes (though there’s more than one way to stimulate things in the brain, so your comparison technique assumes other fetishes don’t have similar wiring basis), and then we can even talk.
 
But among that talking would be more firmly establishing what predictions that theory makes so as to establish what falsifies it and what doesn’t. It doesn’t claim, for example, that no other fetishes have such predispositions.
 
I think I’ve already stated why I think it should be emphasized, more, though. I think a mental picture of how neural networks combine and interact could shed a lot of light on psychological theories.
 
I cited Freud’s tiers of the brain and how neural networks can be nested and have “groups”, or how referred pain is actually known to work (which warrants the question of why wouldn’t you be able to refer pleasure?).
 
I could further add Pavlovian association and how acting on obsessions reinforces their pathways as examples of things that are actually somewhat understood on a neurological level and one where neurology actually provides insights.
 
You can, in fact, overcome obsessive compulsive tendencies by not acting on them, at least sometimes. At least I know a friend is one case of this happening in childhood. And Neurology helps us with this insight. And if we’d known it earlier, it could’ve told us about training and Pavlovian association, too. So it’s a very powerful tool.
 
Sure by itself neurons don’t mean much, but they can be a powerful model when understood as the building blocks of the human brain.
 
Many of the worst failures in psychoanalytic history came from failing to distinguish in what ways the brain is rational and what ways it isn’t. Neural insight provides answers to that.
 

 
@SuperSupermario24  
From what I’ve read, gaining an attraction for something is way easier than losing one. But traumatic experiences can sure do it. That’s all I know about losing them.

@Cirrus Light  
I’m… not really sure where my zoophilia came from, really. I’m sure at least some part of it is just those feelings being reinforced after looking at literally thousands of feral pictures over the past couple years, but I’m pretty sure the feelings were there well before I knew what sexual attraction, or even sex in general, was.
 
The weird thing is, I don’t have any particular interest in animals at all beyond their physical characteristics. I don’t have a ton of experience with them, nor do I have any particular interest in working with or taking care of them. The only type of animal I’ve had an extensive amount of interaction with is cats, because our family has always had at least one as long as I’ve been alive, but cats are actually pretty far down the list in terms of the animals that turn me on (and I think me living with them is a big part of why that is). On the flipside, I’ve always had a sort of phobia of dogs, but those are pretty high on the list for me.
 
And yeah, I’m not into humans at all– in fact, outside of the very specific case of “human male on feral”, porn involving them actively turns me off. But there’s nothing about an animal-like state of intelligence that turns me on; in fact, my single greatest fantasy is to be able to be with someone with human intelligence, but an animal or animal-like body. There are, admittedly, a number of fictional characters that meet those criteria that I’ve had quite the crush on, but I’ve not once ever felt that way about an actual person before. Maybe I just haven’t met the right person yet. It’s hard to say.
 
Of course, it probably wouldn’t be impossible for me to somehow develop an attraction to humans, but I’m honestly kind of reluctant to try and do so, since… well, I’ll just let the fact that there are 646 images in my Derpi faves tagged “foalcon”, and that an analogous search on e621 returns 325 results, speak for itself there.
 
Sigh… Can’t I just be asexual instead? It’d make everything so much easier.
 
Sorry if it feels like I’m trying to derail the discussion or just make it about me or anything like that. It’s just that this is something I think about a lot, and I like to talk about it and get other people’s takes on it when I can, which isn’t often.

@Cirrus Light  
Well, your theory would suggest that foot fetish is “naturally wired” into the brain, since those two sensory inputs are close together in our brains. Which suggests that our brains should be all somewhat foot fetishistic or very prone to it at least. That’s the same as to suggest that we all have oedipus complex, as Freud did back in a day. Foot fetish isn’t any more common than any other fetish that doesn’t has it inputs close to genetal ones (it might seem like foot fetish is common, but it’s only because foot fetishists are very active nowadays. back in a day you would see more bdsm then foot fetish), so who’s really indulging in an armchair method here?
 
I really don’t think that neuroscience is at the level when it could make such claims and theories and be right about it. Current models of neural networks aren’t even on the level when they can emmulate a brain of a simple animal. Machine learning is great and all, but it’s way way too far from being a realistic model for diagnosis of real psychological problems.
 
And I’m not saying that neurology is useless. Different problems call for different methods (I wouldn’t even know what I could do for a person with a Parkinson’s disease, but a neurologist would). I’m just saying you’re overreaching a bit here, my friend. At some point in future maybe we will be able to plot out the whole structure of a brain of a specific person and use it solve every issue that person has, but we aren’t anywhere close to being able to do that right now. And currently theories that are comming out of neuroscience aren’t any less prone to errors than a psychological ones.

@Background Pony #118C  
Well neurology could help someone with anxiety and such - not saying it’d replace psychology, but that it provides very useful insights - again in the same way a simple atomic model in physics makes chemistry so much easier.
 
For example, this would mean something like working associatively with problems instead of assuming the brain is logical. A lot of old psychoanalysts assumed the brain was logical and ended up with rather flawed models because of it.
 
For example, a psychology-only approach might say a foot fetish comes because of some repressed childhood memory or because of the role walking played in brain development or something like that. That’s definitely the sort of thing a lot of old psychoanalytics might say. Or an even newer psychologist might look at cultural and environmental factors on someone’s view of feet.
 
A neurology-only approach might say it’s just the physical proximity in the brain of the neurons that correspond to sensory input from the foot and the neurons that correspond to the sensory input from the genitals. They’re right next to each other, so a signal in one may bleed into the other.
 
This has some solid grounding in what’s well known to occur in medicine called referred pain, where pain from neurons being tripped in one location causes the pain signal to trip in another location.
 
Because although they’re not linked at the first layer (raw sensory input), they’re linked at a higher layer (let’s call it layer 1), so the signal can propagate/branch out across layer 1, and when that enters human consciousness at a very high layer, human consciousness may not be linked directly to layer 0 but only to layer 1, so you consciously feel pain at the referred location even though layer 0 inputs aren’t being tripped there.
 
So in that case, it makes extremely simple sense that “referred pleasure” may be just as possible as “referred pain”, due to how the neural system works.
 
Those are very different explanations. Psychology is absolutely necessary in the same way that engineering is necessary to apply physics, but engineers also need a grounding in physics to be successful. I think most psychology degrees do require some neuroscience courses, though? They better :q but that’s basically all it comes down to. I think psychology degrees should require a solid grounding in neuroscience in addition to the main course of psychology. Then they can compare notes and get a lot of useful information out of that.
 

 
@SuperSupermario24  
Humans are not higher creatures with some animal characteristics. We are chimps with an intelligent layer stuck on top. Just like you can train a chimp to do about anything, I think fetishes arise from the fact you can train a human to do about anything.
 
Basically I’m going to take a guess that if you started clopping to animals and focused on animal features, that would train your brain to associate animal features with sexual pleasure. Contrawise, if you were to focus on anthro to more and more human and focus on the human features, you might could train yourself to like humans. But if you force yourself past some disgust reaction, then that’d make it a negative experience and have the reverse effect. So I’d suggest focusing on the features you like about the thing you want to be attracted to, even if they’re not things you like in a sexual way, they can certainly become sexual. One thing that struck me is it seems people can grow a fetish for anything, but losing attraction to something typically requires a very bad experience.
 
But that’s just a shot in the dark guess. It’s a lot easier to figure out what’s going on a little bit than it is to figure out how to engineer with it. That requires a more complete understanding I certainly lack.
 
I mean, maybe you aren’t interested in changing your preference - I’m not sure exactly what you’re referring to when you say you want to know what I think.
 
How it happened? If your first attraction was to animals, I don’t know, other than obviously whatever first triggers the first sexual response in a human was triggered by the critter. But I can only guess as to what that would be.
 
If you learned it over time, Google or Wiki some info on Pavlov’s dogs. In a nutshell, a scientist had some dogs and rang a bell every time he fed them. Eventually, they started salivating from the bell sound itself, not just the food or the smell of food. So the brain is very associative.
 
I guess my complaint with psychology is they often seem to come up with complex, difficult to disprove theories or over-emphasize high level abstractions. It’s very obvious the dogs just formed an association.
 
It’s very tempting to want to think there’s some deeper reason a human does something like this, but I don’t think there is. But there probably are certainly insights to be gained on why it happens to some people at times but not others.
 
I don’t mean to rag on psychology so much, though… like, they figured out associative learning and training long before neuroscience even existed. So there’s lots of excellent psychological work. I just think they don’t emphasize that enough, and emphasize the more flimsy guesses too much.
 
But also that’s based on a very limited understanding, so they probably - at least hopefully - do refer to neuroscience more than I realize/give them credit for.
 
But there’s a lot of fascinating interplay - like, Freud proposed the brain had 3 levels (Id, Ego, Super-Ego) long before neurology discovered the brain has layers. And I think he was right in how the brain has what can almost be described as multiple “voices” within it, and that even makes sense from a neural net perspective if the brain has different interconnected neural networks.
 
Ie, groups with high interconnectivity to other neurons within the cluster, but lower connectivity to neurons outside the cluster - like if you pick any neuron at random in a group, there’s a 100% chance it’s connected to some other neuron in the group (by definition of a group), but only a 15% chance it connects to neurons outside the group. That would be like a little neural net, and you could nest groups like these inside each other.

@Cirrus Light  
What about someone like me, who rejects the idea of human companionship not because of some infatuation with a fictional character (well, mostly not that), but because, for one reason or another, my brain seems to be wired to only feel those types of attraction toward those with animal-like physical characteristics?
 
In other words, exclusive zoophilia, basically.
 
I’m mostly asking because I’m curious about what you have to say, because your responses here have been genuinely intriguing to me.

@Cryosite  
@Cirrus Light
 
And on the topic of “weirdness” vs “normality”, I’m always forgetting about this.  
Weirdos might be briliant minds that just think differently (*insert a portrait of Pinkie Pie here*). Weirdness itself might be a new knowledge that we need to understand and accept in our lives to improve them.
 
“Two roads diverged in the wood and I took the one less travaled by. And that has made all the difference.”  
*slow zoom on Twilight’s butt*  

@Cirrus Light  
Well, I think we’ve reached a somewhat of a dead end here. Since I have nothing to add to the topic other then ask my questions over and over again (which I can continue to do elsewhere).
 
But at the end I would like to somewhat disagree with your last statement about the importance of neuroscience for everyone.  
The one big problem with neurology at the moment is that it’s hard to take the knowledge that neuroscience has and devise a solution to a specific problem - say a person has a long running depression and a recuring anxiety. It’s hard to find a solution that will work for that person based exclusively on neuroscience. Psychology and neurology are working on the same problems, but from different ends of it - psychology looks at the problem at it’s largest scale and then slowing works it’s way down to smaller and smaller elements, and neurology takes the smallest element possible (neuron) and builds from it to larger and larger structures (at least that’s the part of neurology that you’re talking about, cause there’s also the one that deals with brain and nerve system, both healthy and damaged). At some point in future these two methods will meet, but at the moment I think it’s a bit unfair to say that one is more important then the other. And based on what you said, I probably have to remind you that psychology also has to work with empirical data, do experiments and prove it’s theories. It’s not just a pure armchair method.  
At the end of a day it’s good to be aware of both psychology and neurology, but if someone wants to focus on one and not the other, I think it’s a totally valid choice. And that’s why I’m totally cool with you being so passionate about neurology (even if you’re going a bit too far with it) :3
 
P.S.: Yes. That what brings the minds together :3  

@Background Pony #118C  
Well, yeah, different cultures will call different things ordinary, but there’s reasons for it. It’s not arbitrary, either, and I think you can find out why in full context, though there’s surely more than one way to describe it.
 
One thing I feel like people rarely appreciate enough is that “normal” is kind of an encoded set of principles to live by for a society to succeed. Every society is undergoing natural selection processes, and it’s more than coincidence when one set of values helps a society succeed where others failed.
 

 
As for waifus, butts and what’s healthy - well what’s the unhealthy part?  
Rejection of reality.  
Refusal to overcome one’s agonizing loneliness - which only makes the loneliness more extreme as they pull away from interacting with others and taking the measures to amend their loneliness.
 
So where do those issues begin, on that scale of “that’s a nice butt” to “I’m taking my plush to dinner because it’s inhabited by the soul of Twilight Sparkle”?
 
Well, for one, imaginary friends are only imaginary. So obviously “the spirit of the character…” nonsense crosses that line.
 
As for the others, those issues have continuums, themselves, so there probably isn’t a line. But it’s a dangerous area that’s perhaps best avoided as much as possible.
 
Ultimately, the best way to minimize risk would be to avoid seeking to be aroused people you can’t have a relationship with, or even images at all.
 
A picture can satisfy the immediate desires, but the deeper longing for companionship isn’t satisfied. But your immediate motivations that drive your action are satisfied so now they’re not driving you to solve the issue your deeper self has. This is probably fuel for a lot of depression, and higher rates of porn accessibility with the internet may be in some way related to the depression epidemic.
 

 
But I’m reluctant about higher conceptual models - psychology in general, when divorced from direct relation to empirical data. They’re too difficult to use reliably and thus to falsify, making them less reliable in a twofold way. But direct data with little suppositions is very hard to go wrong with.
 
As for neuroscience, I think a neurological approach is the future for a more consistent, reliable field of psychology. At the very least, anyone seriously studying the topic should become familiar with the basics of a neural net, because of how radically enlightening it is to the very thing that makes up the brain.
 
Doing psychology without grounding it in neurology seems like trying to do chemistry without an atomic theory (theory of atoms and molecules). You may learn about taltrations, acids, bases, and combustion, but to really master the field and get to the psychological equivalent of advanced metallurgy takes the deeper understanding that can only be had by a neurological approach.
 
I think the neuroscience side of AI research will revolutionize the field. After all, the ultimate way to prove you know something and push your understanding of it is to rebuild it from scratch.
 
All that being said, it’s not my specialty, but it’s just a bit frustrating to see how low the success rates of psychotherapy are, the reproducibility crisis, ideological biases try to inject themselves into a field of science, and a lot of theory that’s often too divorced from empirical data. But seeing things in AI research gives me hope that the field may really blossom in my lifetime. I’m glad to see neurology is referred to as often as it is, though even then sometimes I question the rigor of the methodology in its incorporation.
 
 
Now let’s take a moment to appreciate the fact we’re having this conversation to this image:
 

@Cirrus Light  
Well, “weirdness” is an orbitrary thing and completely depends on the type of society you’re in, it’s norms and what breakes those norms. “General public” is a society with one set of norms, “general internet” is a society with another set, fandoms and the brony fandom specifically is also a society in and of itself. And here we don’t look at being attracted to ponies as weird, but the general public does, and every the internet in general does, and even people from some other fandoms do. And I’m saying that it’s orbitrary, because social norms aren’t the truth in it’s last incarnation, it’s just what people are used to, what they’ve learned and understood and were acclimated to. People think that being attracted to cartoon ponies is weird, because that’s a new idea that isn’t yet explained in an accessible way to big enough audience. And as you’ve said, people generally feel that there is an assosiation with pedophily and bestiality, but they don’t understand the details of it, because generally people just don’t think about these kinds of attractions, and inability to parse what’s happening makes people jump to the worst scenarios and conclusions. And I hope that people will learn that it’s not actually anything dangerous and they shouldn’t be so aggresive about it.  
As a sidenote, there is another side to “normality” which is a “normalisation of the abnormal”. In ancient Greese pedophily was okay, as it was in pre 20th century Japan. Slavory was once normal, and I’m not even gonna go into nazi Germany. So, as I said, if you really want to dig deep into this - “weirdness” and “normality” are orbitrary and they only mean what people are and aren’t used to.
 
But what makes me personally say that this kind of attraction might be “weird” in a sense that it might not be healthy for the person, is the question of attraction to something that isn’t real. A relationship with an imaginary character. And I’m not talking about looking at some r34 and thinking it’s hot, I’m talking about people living with body pillows of their waifus and seriously acting as if they have a relationship with that character. It’s a lot more common in anime, but there are examples of this in a lot of cartoon based fandoms, our included. And so far I’m convinced that it’s unhealthy or at least is a symptom of a problem that a person has. There’s a lot of questions about it that I have, but one of them that feels very relavant here is - where is the line between this kind of unhealthy behaviour and us just going “nice butt” over here? Are these two things one and the same, and people just looking at pony butts and enjoying r34 are acting out of the the same unhealthy principals and desires but just aren’t taking it as far as those who are “committed to their waifus”, or is it two different things, and if so then what’s the difference?  
And on that note - what gives us confidence to say that we aren’t just normalizing an unhealthy behaviour here (similarly to examples I gave earlier)? I personally think that we aren’t, at least I would like to believe that we aren’t, but I don’t know. And these are just some of the questions that I have about this. The questions that keep me up at night :3
 
And as to all the neuroscience you brought up - I’m glad that it fascinates you. More people interested in any facet of psychology is always a good thing in my book. I personally deal more with feelings and belives than neurons and brain sections, but hey, it’s all just different parts of the same elephant :3

@SuperSupermario24  
But all the fun is in asking why. And even breaking it down to a neurological level.
 
This is why I think I’d get along with Twilight _{And why I want a nerdy gf IRL} - because that’s what I call fun :P
 
>>1606113t

I’d just argue that “being attracted to things that aren’t adult humans” is weird, but also that being weird isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

@Background Pony #118C  
This is actually kind of interesting - I think this is kind of revealing by what people mean when they say, for example,  
“You [yay] to ponies? That’s weird.”
 
Because how does a psychological explanation make it not weird? Well, people put forth arguments that things that make sense for evolution to drive humans towards being attracted to, are traits ponies have. This seems rather effective as an argument that bronies aren’t “weird”.
 
So how is that an argument that bronies aren’t weird? Well, the statement that “being attracted to ponies is within what a healthy psyche is attracted to” contradicts a few statements, and one of those is “being attracted to ponies is NOT within what a healthy psyche is attracted to”.
 
So what is a healthy psyche attracted to? Well, there’s some solid-sounding (at least - they probably collaborate with data pretty well, though) psychological theories that normal humans are attracted to features X, Y, and Z. Which means you do not need some fundamentally weird attraction in your head to be attracted to someone with features X and Y, such as high bilateral symmetry and an aesthetically pleasing appearance (perfectly smooth skin).
 
That, and intuition would also tell you there’s an implicit “…there must be something wrong with you”, sometimes, when people say something like “you [yay] to ponies?”. Perhaps fairly often, even.
 
But intuition is often misguided, so it’s kinda fun to break down an argument and see what the underlying assumptions are, and what people mean by things like “weird”.
 
Though in all honesty, there may be some logical component, but probably what happens is a quick “us vs them” check - and someone thinks they would never, ever be attracted to cartoon horses, so they quickly use the unrelatable characteristic to draw an “us vs them” line.
 
That, and people are horrified by pedophiles (it’s kind of entertaining how they’re our culture’s version of “witches” or monsters. They’re the thing people love to hate - more than murderers, even, which is kinda funny), and pedophiles are “People who are attracted to X”, where “X” is children. Except because of how the brain works, “children” is a huge mash of different little neural clusters that fire in response to certain sensory stimuli or other clusters firing - ie, “children” is a big pile of traits of things the human brain associates with children.
 
One of those things is often colorful cartoon animals. So that sets off the “they’re pedophiles” reaction since the brain recognizes bronies as “people who are attracted to X”, where X is the huge pile of things associated with children, and is set off because “colorful cartoon animals” is in that pile.
 
So I mean, you can almost think of it as a little spark gap in the brain. It’s a switch that’s set off when the brain recognizes there’s some person or group is sexually attracted to children, and it triggers a disgust and combative response because, well that’s a perfectly reasonable response to child molesters.
 
But it’s wired to “children”, which means it’s often wired directly or indirectly to a bunch of different neurons that are set off by things associated with children. If enough of them are wired to neurons associated with pastel colored ponies, then the “child” part will be triggered. Thus “child” and “attracted to” at the same time triggers the pedophile disgust response, even if they’re clearly, logically, not attracted to children.
 
It’s just the brain works by association and neural clusters, not logic.
 
So seeing someone sexually attracted to something that’s normally associated with children, even if not children themselves, will set off that switch.
 
If you’re really a psychologist as you claim, (nothing more than the usual doubt that’s due when someone anonymous claims a respectable honor, such as being a scientist) then maybe you’ll appreciate all that.
 
Man, it gets a lot more interesting when you think in terms of neurology and how neural nets work. Best video I’ve ever seen, I think, was one on “how deep learning [AI] works” (by simulating neurons).
 
Deep learning and how neural nets behave in general (both AI and biological ones) is so incredibly fascinating I’ve passingly considered switching my major to CS or Neuroscience or something…
 
And yes, the video is kinda funny and ironic in that people are now unironically enjoying pony butts from the video poking fun at people who like pony butts :p

||@Cryosite  

I would see that as an argument if the animator was making mlp videos frequently. Then, sure, it could’ve been just “hey, I’m just ponifiying that Robo Chicken skit”. I feel like the fact that someone on the outside of the fandom makes that connection (between that RC skit and bronies) is already enough to say that they are poking fun at bronies. The whole joke of that video was “look at those guys starring at pony butts”. I’m not saying it was mean spirited, but it was a joke on us, bronies. You have to be blind or very naive to not see that.
 
And I’m well aware that it goes beyond simple “attraction”. I’m here since 2012, I’ve seen everything :3  

Depends on your defenition of “weird”, but I honestly wouldn’t go into “word wars” about that, since I only used “weird” as “peculiar” kind of weird and not as “breaking a taboo” kind of weird.  

Oh, is it well understood? Because as a psychologist I would love to hear that well understood theory. As for “normal”, it’s normal in a sense that it isn’t a sexual deviation in a classical definition of it, but the dynamics behind it work very differently from those of normal relationships and, no matter what you say, they aren’t really well understood. This kind of attraction counts as “normal” in specific pockets of the fandom or internet in general, but is far from having a definitive scientific explanation that would prove it’s normality.||
 
But really, I was just making a joke. The joke was that there is a joke to be made about this ironic situation we find ourselves in - enjoying equine butts from a video that makes fun of us specifically for enjoying equine butts.

@Background Pony #118C  
It was actually a parody of a Robot Chicken faux commercial. The premise of the “commercial” was that centaurs were having trouble with their population, and it required human males to breed with mares. The “commercial was to try to encourage that to happen. It was just one of many random things Robot Chicken does with no additional context.
 
The animator didn’t exactly do this to make fun of bronies. They parodied that video (and even directly used the soundtrack from it).
 
If you do insist that it was made to mock bronies, I don’t personally see it as something of “opposite of expectations” when a person A enjoys something, person B mocks them for it, and person A ignores person B and continues to enjoy what they enjoy. I imagine an argument could be made for it still, but I’m not seeing it.
 
As for the attraction being “weird,” that’s a complicated topic that has been hashed out over the years many times. It isn’t weird. The psychology behind it and the aesthetics/artistic theory behind it are well-understood and normal. That’s even setting aside the people who like fictional characters like Twilight Sparkle for their personality first, then admire their form whatever it may be.
 
And, lastly, the extent of enthusiasm for these cartoon characters doesn’t merely border on sexual. It goes well past that, and there are mountains of evidence to that effect. Not all fans, not to the furthest extent, but your cautious language that suggests none go past the border is simply false.
 
So, yeah. If there is a joke, I think you’re going to have to make it. There doesn’t appear to be one if you do more than merely glance at the situation.

I feels that there’s a joke about irony here somewhere. The video it was taken from was making fun of bronies for the fact that they are weirdly (borderline sexually) attracted to cartoon horses, and here we are - unironically enjoying cartoon horse posterior from that exact video.

Horses are sexy.