Meghan T.

MinecraftSkins.com, also known as The Skindex, is an online archive made for -- what else? -- Minecraft skins. Without an account, you can only download skins from the website, but WITH an account, you can vote skins up or down, comment on them, add them to your Wardrobe (i. E. save them for later), and, my personal favourite feature, use the site's built-in skin editor to make your own and upload them onto the site. There's not much I have to say about this site, so let's just split the review up into Pros and Cons:

Cons:
Trust me, there aren't many. The first con that comes to mind is the extreme lack of user-to-user communication. It's EXTREMELY difficult to get more than one or two votes at all on your skins, and actual comments are even rarer. Even then, the OP rarely responds to you. I'm the type who's a total loner, offline and online, so I don't particularly mind, but to each their own.

My second complaint is the somewhat difficult-to-use Skin Editor. Its UI is fairly simple and straightforward, but the buttons to the left (Undo/Redo, Eraser, etc.) are VERY unresponsive, at least for me. And the Undo button undoes your error(s) one. Pixel. At a time. If you want to undo a big chunk of your skin but not reset it completely, then expect to be there for a while, especially thanks to the fact that the Undo button is prone to being unresponsive as I mentioned prior. I don't know if it's an error on my end or not, but the "Mirror" setting tends to turn itself off at random. It's difficult to explain what it does out-of-context, but I find it to be necessary if you want to finish your skin in less than half an hour.

The "Fill" setting is also a pain if the arse to use. It's pretty straightforward, it fills entire sections at a time instead of one pixel at a time, but if you've already drawn on a section and use the Fill tool on it, intentionally or otherwise, then it will cover up everything you've already drawn on it with that single colour instead of just the pixels that haven't been coloured-in yet. And, when Undoing that, I've had it glitch out and pretend the use of the Fill tool never happened at all (i. E. it refuses to reset it, so I have to redraw EVERYTHING).

My final complaint, more of a nitpick really, regarding the Editor is the fact that there's no way to know which side of your skin is the front and which is the back. It's a 3D render and you can turn it around to draw on the sides, back, bottom, top, etc., but, on more than one occasion, I've had to reset an entire skin that I put my blood, sweat, and tears into because I drew everything that was supposed to be on the front on the back. If I had a penny for everytime I've seen someone upload a backwards skin to the website, I'd be the richest person on Earth.

Now then, onto Pros...

Pros:
Well, let's see... there're a lot of high-quality Minecraft skins on the website, all of the skins on the website are completely free to download, you can download and/or upload as many skins as you want, the entire website has a simplified design but it's very user-friendly, the site's community seems pretty friendly whenever they're not ignoring each other completely, and, my personal favourite, there aren't any features locked behind a paywall. I'm sure you've seen 'em before: the websites with "Premium" accounts, where they lock half of the site's features and blatantly restrict what you can do behind a monthly paywall (it's NEVER a one-off payment). DeviantART and LiveJournal are two examples (IIRC). Luckily, Skindex isn't one of them.

All of these Pro's are pretty self-explanatory I think, so I won't go into depth with 'em. Howeer, there is one feature I would call a... Pron? Cro? It's the ability for any user to edit the skin(s) you upload and upload it themselves. I've never done it, so I don't know if there's a "Originally Made By____" somewhere to prevent the user from claiming it as their own, but yeah, it feels... dangerous. On one hand, it allows you to fix an error for somebody, make it look better, and generally help them improve it. On another hand, however, people could easily claim it as their own since there doesn't appear to be a "Date Uploaded" anywhere, or they could edit it slightly and claim the "new" one as your own without giving you any credit for 90% of the work.

Don't let the aforementioned feature scare you away, though, this is mostly hypothetical. I've seen friends editing each others' skins, people asking prior to doing it, people blatantly telling people in the description NOT to edit their skin(s), and the complete opposite (people encouraging others to edit theirs). So, if there's been skin robbery occurring on the website, I haven't seen it yet.

I'm giving four stars instead of five because of the Skin Editor that is in DIRE need of improvement; if that's fixed, then I might change it to five, but otherwise, the site's pretty cool. I may (or may not) review Planet Minecraft, a more popular MC skin website that also hosts mods for the game, later, but until then, just thought I'd give the Skindex a fair review. They deserve it. Thanks for reading!

Tl; dr Version: The anonymous commenting/posting system is abused by trolls to the nth degree, people are frequently harassed and cyberbullied for stating their opinion or just venting at all, people are told to kill themselves all the time, a lot of the muttr's (the site's name for posts) are "off-topic" (they're not venting, just talking about their sex-life, attacking other users, etc.), it's impossible to hide potentially-triggering posts, people can still look at comments you've hidden on your posts, and the staff... well, there isn't any.
The single admin on the entire site has allowed the place to turn into a toxic cesspool full of trolls and a handful of people who just want help. It's like the people actually there to vent are goldfish in a pond full of sharks. It's... a little sad, to be honest.

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There's not much I can say that hasn't already been said by all the one-star (and two-star) comments down there, so I'll try and make this quick.

Don't have anybody to talk to in life? Afraid of getting attacked for letting something off your chest on social media? Well, that's what Muttr is here for! If there's something that's really been irking you lately and you just can't find a good place to vent for whatever reason, then Muttr allows one to make a "muttr", either anonymously or through a registered account. People can comment on it or just leave reactions with little emoticons, like on Facebook. You can disable comments too, if you'd like.

Is Muttr a good idea? Absolutely! That's why I went there in the first place; as a total loner and my parents having their own problems, I need a safe place to vent every once in a while, y'know? And Muttr.com sounded like just the place to do that... on paper, at least.

Is Muttr a good website, though? Hehehe... no. Absolutely f***ing not. Is this the worst website on the entire World Wide Web? Quite possibly, yes, and I will proceed to tell you why.

Like I said, there's not much I can say that hasn't already been said, but I'll say it anyway, just to get it off my chest. First of all, there are absolutely NO filters whatsoever. Filters for profanity? Yes, because the people curse there. A lot. Me included. Filters for the different topics? Yes, but nothing stops users from putting their muttr(s) in the wrong category (and it happens a lot from what I've seen). Filters for potentially triggering topics? Heh, nope.

On a website where the MAIN FRIKKIN' PAGE is filled to the brim with people talking about harming themselves, killing themselves (including one that was a few paragraphs of nothing but "PLEASE KILL ME"), or harming/killing others, the site is in dire need of a "potential trigger(s)" filtering system. As someone who has had suicidal ideations and severe urges to self-harm in the past, I cannot tolerate posts like that! All it does for me, and likely others too, is bring back extremely troubling memories, meaning I had to look away from the screen and scroll blindly a lot.

What I mean by a trigger-filter is the ability to hide certain posts so they don't show up, so that it's invisible to you, not the entire community. This way, I can hide triggering things without missing out on things that I might relate to and/or want to comment on. But alas, there is no such feature. Why don't I just suggest it to the staff? There is no staff, I'll talk about that soon.

Secondly, a lot of the muttr's are... off-topic? Is that the word? I mean, you can vent about anything you want there, but the muttrs aren't always vents. In fact, they very rarely are I've seen at least two muttr's talking about their sex lives (one of which went into explicit detail about it). I've seen COUNTLESS anonymous muttr's that are doing nothing but attacking someone, I think their username is "niblet"? I have yet to find a user of that name, however. It's likely the "ROTFLMAO" troll that someone below me mentioned, as every one of those posts ended with just that: "ROTFLMAO". Another anonymous person posted "kill yourself u lil b**** :)" , minus the censoring, thrice in a row so that it would remain at the top of the main page.

Since a lot of people come on there, talking about their suicidal thoughts and attempts, that post's existence could prove extremely detrimental. If someone who has lost the will to live goes on there, and THAT is the first thing that greets them, then... well, I think you can put two-and-two together. Luckily, the site gets a ton of new muttrs on a minutely (is that a word?) basis, so it was quickly drowned out by a bunch of new ones.

Thirdly, anonymous venting is a very good feature on the website and I applaud them for it. Anonymous commenting however? Not so much. I should also add the "upvote/downvote" system and the ability to see comments that an OP has hidden to my list of not-so-good choices. The anonymous posting/commenting is abused by trolls to the nth degree. Good luck reporting someone who's commenting on your muttr or profile, telling you to "kys" when you can't f***ing report them! You can report muttrs made by anons, but it's impossible to keep those anons AWAY when they're f***ing anonymous!

The fanfiction-sharing websites AO3 and FFnet have an anonymous commeting system as well, but how do they avoid having it abused by unreportable trolls? They give you the option to "Disable Anonymous Comments/Reviews". FFnet allows you to moderate them before they go public (AO3 allows you to mod all comments, registered and anon). This is yet another feature that Muttr so desperately needs, but alas, it does not.

Allowing users to click and see a hidden comment! Then what's the point of hiding it? If the OP hid it, then they don't want people to f***ing see it, so why give them the option to click and see it anyway? This is just... stupid as Hell, that's all there is to it. The upvote/downvote system! If you've been on Reddit for a while, then you'll know that these things can get abused a lot, which is exactly why I dread FB ever getting a Dislike button. Also, for thin-skinned people like me, getting lots and lots of downvoting can hurt a bit, y'know? It shows that X number of people didn't like what you said and didn't even give you the time of day to say WHY, even if it was nothing but your opinion or something else you genuinely meant.

You're there to vent, not get mercilessly downvoted to Hell for what you have to say! And trust me, trolls will downvote people. A lot. Regardless of what those people say. You can't upvote/downvote unless you're a registered user, but that's the only good thing about it.

Fourthly, people go there to vent in a safe place where they won't get judged and whatnot, yet every post I dared check the comments on had at least one insulting the OP, telling them to kill themselves, and one who said told a child abuse survivor that "[their] parents didn't beat them hard enough". The OP talked about how they had suicidal attempts in the future because of the abuse they endured, by the way. Oh, and the last comment I mentioned? It was anonymous, meaning you can't report them.

And have I mentioned people using the anonymous posting system to attack people who have disabled their comments section? They'll make a muttr, anonymously, and attack you by (user)name, or copy-paste your post so you KNOW they're talking about you. If they get downvoted to Hell for it, then expect the main page to get spammed with muttr's mocking them for having the audacity to downvote them at all. Just a few minutes ago, there were five posts in a row that were nothing but that.

And finally, the grand finale (because "fifthly" sound weird): Mr. Muttrstaff does ABSOLUTELY F***ING NOTHING! *sigh* Sorry, I needed that. But in all seriousness, there is a user there, the single admin on the entire website. His name is muttrstaff. He is not the staff of the website as his name suggests. He is literally one f***ing person who expects to somehow manage MILLIONS of muttrs that come on there in a single day all by himself. Either that man is vain is all get-out or he just wasn't thinking when he made the site. Either way, he "manages" the website and the reports he's sent by blatantly ignoring them.

I don't have any experience with him myself, but I've seen people say below and even through muttrs on the website itself that that man is Goddamn useless! In the ten minutes I spent on that website, I got THIRTY-ONE NOTIFICATIONS of him doing nothing but "reacting" to various posts. Remember those reactions I mentioned earlier? The ones like on FB? Yeah, he will "heart" (or "love" as the site calls it) almost every Muttr on the site, likely without reading any of them because one of the muttr's he "loves" so much was complaining about how all he does is "react" to Muttr's and nothing else. According to people below me, he shrugs off reported muttr's with an indifferent, "Eh, sucks to be you." pretty much.

Oh, and according to his profile, he hasn't been on in two frikkin' days. This is the sole admin, people, yet he does nothing to clean up his POS website! I mean... it's a good idea, it really is, but to make and run an online community, you need to actually be there to run it. Otherwise, it's going to crash and burn, as Muttr clearly has. And until muttrstaff gets his sh** together, it's not going to get any better (hey, that rhymed!).

Pros? There... aren't any, to be honest. It has a nice UI, and, um... it has a profanity filter? Yay? I mean, that is a pretty good idea and all, but it may as well be nonexistent compared to all the other BS you can find on this site. Cons? Did you read my review at all? I know this phrase is overused and cliché, but I would genuinely give them 0 stars if possible.

Aaand this was supposed to be a short review, damnit. -.- That will be all.

Tl; dr Version: On this imageboard dedicated to My Little Pony, people fetishize rape, paedophilia, and necrophilia, relentlessly bully and harass their fellow members, there's an extremely popular original character that is a textbook Nazi (swastika cutie mark and all), and the rules are rarely enforced at all.

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Derpibooru, the domain name of the revived Ponibooru, is an imageboard (or imagebooru) dedicated entirely to MLP: FiM fanart. Screenshots from the show, fanart, croosover fanart, and even the dreaded pony-pron is allowed there. It's a place with MILLIONS of pony images, where users can upvote or downvote and comment on the pictures, and different images are sorted with an extremely in-depth tagging system. Seriously, there's a tag for everything under the Sun; if there's something under the Sun that doesn't have a tag for it, you can just make it yourself. And, if there are certain pictures you don't like, you can filter out the tags those types of images use so you don't see them anymore.

Sounds like a pretty good idea on paper, right? Yeeaaahh... no.

I have an account there myself, have for going on four years, but I have never posted anything; not a comment, not a picture, nothing. I'm just there to look at the pictures, vote them up or down at times, and just... spy on everybody.

In those four years of lurking on Derpibooru, I can safely say that the website is little more than a cesspool for the MLP: FiM fandom's most toxic members. You know those fans you hear about that jack off to ponies? You know those fans you hear about that will tear apart someone over their opinion alone? You know those fans you hear about that will send death-threats to ya for disliking their favourite character?

Well, I've seen examples of the latter two in the comments sections of this website and the first one? Heh, all you have to do is put any character's name in the search bar with the mature content unfiltered. And God help you if you put the "toy" and "irl" tags into the search bar at the same time.

Some of the images on that website are so vile that I would get banned just for mentioning them here, but to sum them up as cleanly as I can: there are photographs of MLP: FiM merchandise covered in... ugh, I think you know what I'm getting at. And this sh** gets upvoted all the time! There are some characters in MLP: FiM that have the appearances, maturity, and personalities of 7-12 year old humans. These are called fillies and colts or, collectively, foals, and are children in every way that matters.

You wanna know something? There's pron of them too. Sometimes, it's having sex with other characters in the same age-group, sometimes they're sexing the adult characters from the show. I once saw someone call out an "artist" who draws this sort of art regularly, calling them a "paedophile". You wanna know what happened? About three people, on the side of the "foalcon artist", didn't even try to defend their "right" to draw it; they just told him to filter it and quit ruining everyone's fetishes.

And I think this is a good time to talk about the filtering system. The UI of the Filters page is so overcomplicated that I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around it, so anytime I'm browsing the art, I just have to downvote and move on with my life, unable to figure out how to filter it.

Anyway, back on topic. I've seen people commenting that their fetish is rape. I've seen people drawing pron of a character that is canonically LESS THAN A MONTH OLD. I've seen some absolutely stunning pictures of the canon characters and scenery from the show, such as an amazingly detailed picture of Canterlot (an in-show city situated on the side of a mountain). It has 366 upvotes and 270 favourites.

I looked up a "foalcon" picture on the site for comparison of votes; foalcon is the tag the site uses in an attempt to glorify paedophilia (they even define the tag as "for images of underage characters in a sexual context; human/anthro underage porn is not allowed."). You wanna know how many upvotes and favourites one of those foalcon pictures had? 626 and 463, respectively.

The fact that the amount of upvotes and faves is anywhere CLOSE to the amount on that scenery image is just appalling!

People there fetishize and glorify subjects like rape and necrophilia, abuse, and paedophilia by putting them under a different name and pretending they're different (yes, paedophilia and foalcon are two different tags; none of the images under the former are actually paedophiliac). You might say that they're cartoon horses, and that doesn't count as paedophilia, but tell me this: if these people can jack off to sexualized fictional children, then who's to say they wouldn't do the same with a real child? The same goes for the rape and necrophilia cases; you say you fetishize rape, you draw pictures of characters violently raping a dead body, how can we know you wouldn't rape a human being because "you get off to it"? How do we know you don't fantasize about raping a person to the point of death?

*sigh* I'm sorry. I needed to get that off of my chest because like Hell am I going to comment that on the website. I've seen other people try, it would be a waste of my time.

To sum up the rest of the website, people in the comments section start warring over the littlest of things and will. Not. Stop. Seriously, some arguments go on for pages and pages... The tagging system is used to harass and bully the artists of some pictures. For example, a mediocre image will get the tag "1000 hours in ms paint", if you make an opinionated picture or mention your opinion in the description or comments, you get called a "duck". "OP is a duck", "duckery in the description", "duckery in the comments", stuff like that when, half the time, it's nothing more than someone bringing up their genuine opinion on a subject.

There are user-specific tags, some which are complimenting, others of which are insulting. The most downvoted image on the entire website is, amidst a sea of the aforementioned things, a picture of the Mane Six (the six main characters of the show) fawning over Justin Beiber. With a grand total of 1,599 downvotes. You just cannot make this stuff up, y'know? And, if you're wondering, the most upvoted image is a gif of a pony character shaking her exposed (and unnecessarily detailed) clitoris at the "camera", and I couldn't go through one page of the comments section without feeling nauseous.

To sum it all up, Derpibooru is the home of the most toxic and troublesome slice of the fandom. Yes, people can have their fetishes, but when those fetishes glorify absolutely unforgivable crimes and subjects that have traumatized and killed real people, then it's going. Too. Far. Fetishize it all you want, but keep it to yourself.

If you have any decency or sanity at all whatsoever, then stay far, FAR away from Derpibooru. Trust me, it's for your own good. If you find those subjects that I mentioned up there totally fine and justifiable, then please leave and never ever come back into my life again. Thank you, and that will be all.