Derpy Hooves incident

Derpy Hooves incident
General information
Date	Between sometime around August 15 – 20, 2012
Location	This video
Outcome	Teardrop's elimination votes is rigged Teardrop is eliminated
Individuals	Derpy Hooves Michael Huang Bronies
Type	Elimination rigging
Cronology
Previous	AnimationEpic hacking
Next	AnimationArea's exposure

During the voting of "Insectophobe's Nightmare 3" from Battle for Dream Island's second season, a user, known as Derpy Hooves which is named after the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon pegasus pony of the same name, made several viewers (in this case, bronies) dislike the voting video for Teardrop, causing her to get the most likes and dislikes in the next episode, "Zeeky Boogy Doog", resulting in her elimination.

After months of accusations by Michael Huang, Adam Katz came out as the responsible behind the incident. Though it was still remembered as a controversy, the unfair elimination for the victim wasn't over.

Context

The main face of the individual behind the incident was using the name and character of Derpy Hooves. The character is one of the most beloved and fan favorite ponies from the cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which it's community is populated by bronies (a name given to the portion of male fans of the show).

Prelude

One infamous controversy which might have been the cause of the incident as a whole was something called "Derpygate". For context, fans were enraged that parents talked to Hasbro (the company behind the My Little Pony toy franchise) about how the character Derpy was depicted as a disabled character. This caused the company to censor a lot of things relating to the episode from season two that happened, "The Last Roundup" (aired on January 21, 2012), specifically on the beginning.

Many fans decided to honor Derpy with videos and animations like "Save Derpy". Adam Katz, the individual behind the incident, created a whole YouTube channel dedicated to the character on April 5, 2012 and began activity just two days later. Note that this was around the time Inanimate Insanity premiered. During this time, the channel now has over 48,000 subscribers and had thousands of views at the time of the incident.

Incident

According to CorpsePrime, he told that there was a theory during "Insectophobe's Nightmare 3" where the person behind the Derpy Hooves channel, in this case Adam Katz, used the subscribers he had to manipulate Teardrop's votes, because Coiny had the most, between August 15 to 20, 2012 through a video, now deleted. Battle for Dream Island Again used the voting through video ratings strategy probably to make things rather unique than repetitive. To make things matter worse, much of the bronies around the time didn't even knew what BFDI or the Object Show Community (which the term wasn't coined until 2013) even was at the time because it was 2012 and the popularity of the show was extremely small. Yet they still decided to vote for Teardrop regardless.

At the premiere of "Zeeky Boogy Doog", Teardrop received the most likes with 502 and her prize was the Hand-powered Recovery center on her choice. But later, she was eliminated with 440 dislikes at the same time, thanks to the bronies. When this was discovered, fans were confused. During production, Michael and Cary Huang were just as confused until they connected the dots and yet they decided to leave her eliminate due to the deaths of the contestants in the previous episodes.

Aftermath and investigation

Immediately after the incident, the video which Derpy Hooves requested to dislike was deleted by the original Teardrop video remained. Michael Huang accused Adam Katz of being behind the Derpy Hooves account. He knew that it was Derpy Hooves due to a comment left on Teardrop's elimination video, thanking the bronies for disliking the video. This comment is nowhere to be seen today.

In response, AnimationEpic responded that it was his cousin's fault because she loved My Little Pony. But according to his now-deactivated DeviantArt account, he confirmed that he was a brony but stopped being one after losing interest in the toy franchise. One of the biggest pieces of evidence is that both Katz and the account used Anime Studio, and had a similar voice. The only setback against this was that Katz's animation style in the first videos were good but in II, it was lazy.

See also

• Voting war