5 MILLION FAKE INTERNET POINTS WORTH OF SHITPOSTING

Man, it does not feel like nearly a decade has passed since I started this account! Today I crept past my 5 millionth fake internet point and, as always, my local bank refuses to let me convert them into pennies so I can throw them out of a crop duster. Dare to dream...

So, yeah! Pretty neat, and I thought I'd take part of my afternoon to put together a post highlighting some of the things I've done on Imgur that I'm proud of, embarrassed by, and all that good feely-feely stuff! Because why the hell not?

Onward!

Starting with my first post on this account, a grainy GIF of a horse flapping its tongue and a vibrator joke in the title. I knew what I was going for when I started, and some of you may have an inkling why that is! The elder Imgurians among you may remember that this isn't my first ElbowDeepInAHorse account, but my second shot at it.

I originally deleted my first account after about 50,000 upvotes, due to a combination of being unprepared for the attention I was starting to get and burning out from trying to cobble together new jokes for a limited pool of decent quality horse GIFs. Imgur didn't support sound back then either, which meant whatever you posted better be visually entertaining on its own. It was also a little challenging for me to navigate the feelings that came with being at the front of a lot of people's minds whenever a horse appeared in user sub. I've never been a social butterfly. o.o

After I deleted my EDIAH account and went back to using my main (yes, I had an older account, no I ain't telling you what one it was), I kept noticing @ElbowDeepInAHorse pings appearing on other horse posts, followed by disappointment when users started realizing I was gone. Then I saw someone mention that my username had been picked up by someone else, and they'd begun replying to those comments letting them know they were hanging onto it in case I ever came to ask for it back. After about a month, I caved and contacted them to see if they'd toss it my way, and they did.

I found out years later that @IPostDogs, Imgur's then-community manager, had been the one who kept it on hold for me. If you've ever had the good fortune to chat with Mike, you'll know how much of an encourager he is. He's an excellent example of the kind of soul Imgur used to have back when Sarah and Alan were at the helm. <3

Once I got my username back, I decided to start adding technicolor horses into the shitposting mix. This was... a challenge. Again, those of you who were on Imgur back in 2015 and prior will know how staunchly the denizens of Usersub Newest guarded the gates to Most Viral. Among the list of things that rarely, if ever, were allowed to sneak past their watch were selfies, ads, politics, reposts (so we claimed) and muthafuckin furries.

Back then, the quickest way to see a post dropkicked into oblivion was to post anything remotely to do with the furry fandom. The downvotes were swift and merciless regardless of quality or context. And the worst among the worst offender in that fandom were the PONIES.

Thing is, my brain don't work so good. So rather than see the writing on the wall and avoid running face first into a serrated hailstorm of downvotes, I closed my eyes, plugged my ears, started screaming "LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!" and hauled my happy ass into oblivion.

So, pretty much every cartoon horse I posted was shot straight to hell about as soon as it made usersub, but at the same time I started noticing users who would comment something positive or just say they got a laugh out of it despite their aversion to MLP in general.

To offset those early downvotes, I'd toss in a few regular horse memes and it basically eliminated any concern I had for getting red arrowed in the first place. Then @GBMaker started the first MLP taglist in which users who wanted to be alerted to a relevant post could be tagged by a bot he'd gotten running. Suddenly my posts weren't just vanishing after passing below -8 points, they were reappearing in usersub as taglist members began upvoting them back up out of oblivion!

Then a few started settling out with *positive* upvotes.

Then a few avoided oblivion altogether.

And after a while, as more normies started having positive interactions with me and the folks in the comments, I started to see my stupid pony posts only dip below 0 points briefly before climbing up into the double digits. And, extremely rarely, triple digits.

My first post containing technicolor horses to breach the front page was, as some of you may remember, a massive album of creatively censored pony lewds that took two tries before Mike cleared it with the rules. That post, along with my other related albums, got deleted during the Great NSFW Purge of whenever the hell it was. So in lieu of bodacious horse tatas, have this weird gif I found buried in my old uploads!

Speaking of GIFS...

Remember GIF Wars? Man, I remember GIF Wars. GIF Wars were great, even if I only participated briefly in two of them. Honestly, out of all the weird stuff I've been involved with on Imgur, GIF Wars are in the top three for best shit I've ever forced myself to try out.

This ---^ was not my first GIF. Scroll up to that Twilight poopin' thing a few images up. THAT was my first GIF. Made on a freeware site I don't remember. Meanwhile there were majestic beasts like @ih8mypp and @one1deuce going nuts with fancy software and high resolution. I never won a single one of those wars, but joining in was 99% of the fun to begin with. I got better over time, taught myself a lot of weird tricks in Adobe Premier that I've mostly forgotten now, and managed to get a few more of those colorful equines onto the front page in a few as well!

GIF Wars were freaking awesome.

...horse GIF montage time because I never post albums anymore and why the fuck not

My very first high-effort meta post. So much motion tracking.

Done by hand.

Keyframe by keyframe, because I'm stupid.

*cries in wasted hours*

I also started to figure out that Imgur was a little more forgiving of MLP memes if they could stand up on their own merit, rather than solely being an in-joke within the fandom.

Some of them were a little more rushed for the sake of cramming in as many horse puns as I could fit.

Aaand some just ran into the limitations Imgur imposed with its lack of audio support.

Some GIFs barely needed to be captioned at all!

And others were worth motion tracking the same captions three separate times :D

And then Imgur added AUDIO.

And around the same time, I cracked the one million mark and celebrated by making a GIF that took an entire damned day and was worth every stupid second of it. (@sarah pls)

It was also about this point when I realized I'd hit a point where I would either have to invest in professional software and some education to get better at making GIFs, or I could take that time I was spending on my pirated copy of Premier and dedicate it to something else I wanted to do.

So... yeah. Eleven years after I went to college to improve my creative writing skills, I started writing again.

Was it serious fiction? Not really. Was it rewarding, cathartic, and utterly enjoyable for the entirety of the time I was doing it? You bet your sweet horsey bean it was. I came super late to the Fallout: Equestria genre, and it took writing several chapters before I even began to sort out my narrative voice, but that's the thing about having a hobby. You don't do it to pay your mortgage, you do it to enrich your free time.

Fallout Equestria: Renewal took four years and over one million words to finish. It was my first major project this account helped inspire that took place outside of Imgur, and I'm fucking proud of having completed it.

And, since the end of last year, I've begun working on Renewal's sequel. It's incomplete, actively eating up the bulk of my free time, and giving me the same if not more joy as my first book.

Shameless plug, but if you want to read either of them, they can be found here: https://www.fimfiction.net/user/345256/ElbowDeepInAHorse/stories

On the topic of hobbies, Imgur quickly became the place I felt most comfortable sharing my growing obsession with typewriters. It began with a random find of an Underwood No.5 at the local thrift store, which I paid way too much for, and quickly evolved into a deeper interest beyond just decorative set pieces.

I wanted to know more about how they worked, how different models were designed differently, and how to get them from dusty and crusty to a state where they functioned as well as they could in a way that didn't degrade the machine. Basically, I fell in love with restoration.

The thing about typewriters is they're extremely affordable, extremely easy to find, and extremely quick to clutter the house of a single cat lady who isn't realizing that she's burying herself. :P

Plus, selling restored typewriters is an excellent way to make less than what you paid! I couldn't keep buying typewriter after typewriter anyway, I was running out of room. So I started to look around for other affordable antiques that made my brain tingle.

I started playing with other things like this candy scale, which was my first foray into a full quote-unquote restoration. I took it apart, shined up the screws, sanded and repainted it with some good enamel, and polished the copper pan with I think barkeeper's friend and one of my good dish rags. I still have it, too! Not bad for twenty bucks and change. :D

I even got up the courage to do a complete top to bottom restoration on a typewriter that had been beyond saving. I bought this old Woodstock with the intention of putting my full ass into making it beautiful again, with an Imgur themed twist as it was going to my Secret Santa, @UnicornCock. It was the first time I'd ever spent multiple weeks working on a single project, and it was worth every minute of experience.

Shipping this thing was the most nerve-wracking event of that freaking year, but it survived the trip!

And then I found THIS thing.

This big, horrible machine.

This beast, which wrenched me away from my typewriter obsession and into the magical, addictive world of SHINY METAL.

I spent $250 on this cash register, my first cash register, and it was absolutely terrifying. I had no idea how it worked. No idea if I'd just been ripped off. I didn't even realize the black plastic shelf was a cheap replacement for the marble someone had broken and thrown away. Hell, I barely had any tools at the time! I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING.

And yet somehow, I ended up with this by the end of it. It wasn't perfect. There are a lot of things I see in this picture that wouldn't pass muster with me knowing what I know now, but I had the wherewithal to take it apart, polish it as best I could, and replace that silly plastic shelf with one that's proper marble.

I ended up selling that register to a local business who wanted decoration for their new storefront. I didn't make much of a profit, certainly not if you add in all the time I spent sweating over this poor machine, but I made more than I paid for it and that was the first time I realized this was a hobby that could potentially stand up on its own four legs. I just needed the time and experience to get better at it.

And I did! I had to take some risks, like driving two hours one way to buy this beautiful thing for the same three digits I write on my mortgage payment every month, but I learned better ways to approach these machines and more effective methods to disassemble them, track my steps, and finish each project.

And in doing so I was able to buy more of the tools I needed, including this rotary tool I use to clean up the scrollwork after I'm finished washing off the excess polish.

And thanks to the Imgurians who chipped in on my Kofi, I was able to buy my first proper tool chest to make this hobby much more organized. :)

All the while, I'm still finding time to make Imgur weird with horses...

...and making Imgur feel weird with ponies...

...sharing my personal struggles...

...and my victories over grief and loss...

...there's always been a core group of you who have been grudgingly tolerant of my brand of horsey bullshit.

Really tolerant.

Sometimes I wonder about you people.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it's been a great run that I don't plan on stopping anytime soon! I know 5,000,000 points might not look like much compared to the digits racked up by folks who figured out how to use the API to automate posting, but I'm still pretty dang proud of what I've been able to accomplish over the last eight or nine years through shitposting and chatting with all of you weirdos.

Thanks to everyone who continues to follow my shenanigans, support me in my hobbies, and who have encouraged me to keep being genuine to myself on this stupid website. And of course, thank you to the haters for pushing me to find new and interesting ways to bother you. <3

Until the next milestone:

And lastly, a rare list of relevant links of other places you can find me:
KoFi: https://ko-fi.com/elbowdeepinahorse/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/elbowdeepinahorse.bsky.social
FIMFiction: https://www.fimfiction.net/user/345256/ElbowDeepInAHorse
Discord: https://discord.gg/elbowdeepinahorse