The End of PonySquare

"The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow."

          ~Bill Gates

In the magical land of Equestria, a new revolutionary invention has been made available to the general pony public: the internet. Nopony truly  knew exactly who truly created it, but it was an instant hit, and ponies all over the world were buying a computer to use this "internet", the glorious, limitless source of information and entertainment. (Twilight, however, refused to buy a computer, saying she "needed to take care of her beloved books"). But almost everypony else was now using the internet; even Fluttershy got her own computer! (There is no need to worry about Fluttershy's innocence and the sensitivity of the internet our our world, however, as the Equestrian internet is influenced by the ponies of it's universe, and therefore does not have the offensive, hurtful, inappropriate, and just plain gruesome content that our own internet unfortunately has). There were videos, news, information, shopping, blogs, and... social networking. Social networking was the most popular thing the vast world of the internet had to offer. So many possibilities! Ponies could share funny pictures with their friends, tell others what they were doing at the exact moment they were doing it, comment on another pony's post, and so much more. One site in particular was very popular. "PonySquare", it was called. Ponies who joined could make new friends, roleplay with other ponies to do anything that came to their imagination, and create quizzes and polls for other ponies to take.

In this internet, unlike ours, ponies who used it were actually mentally transported to a completely different world until they willingly logged off. a complete physical material world formed around their conscious mind, allowing them to interact with the other users on a face-to-face scale similar to the real world outside of the internet. while their body was left behind, their mind was completely wrapped into a different dimension of time and space. This is the result of very power unicorn magic incorporated into the Equestrian internet system as a whole, giving its users a more real-life experience. PonySquare itself was a very intriguing place, as it was quite identical to Equestria; however, the residents who lived there were very much different than most ponies in the real world. Ponies who lived in PonySquare could control what they looked like, which gave many ponies a little too much creative freedom. Many alicorn stallions were strewn about the world, many more than just the royal princesses. For some still unexplained reason, most of these alicorns were either black, red, or even both. Also, since Twilight Sparkle and her friends were so popular in the real world from saving Equestria multiple times, quite a few ponies actually made themselves look identical to them, hoping to live a heroic and amazing life like them. This applied to other ponies, too. The Wonderbolts, the Princesses, and even the Cutie Mark Crusaders had clones of them wandering about PonySquare.

There were many other species in PonySquare as well, even ones that didn't exist in the original Equestria. There were occasionally griffons and zebras here and there, but there were also humans, which were only myths and legends in Equestria. There were demons, Vamponies, hybrid creatures, dragons, foals, and even inatimate objects had a "profile" in PonySquare. Yes, it was quite a magnificent world, even more so than Equestria.

There are many ponies lives in PonySquare that we could follow, but let's follow the story of a specific pony. Her name is Default. She is a maroon red mare with a short, wavy purple mane and a short purple tail. The day she created her account was admittedly one of the most exciting days of her young life. She had never seen something so magnificent as the internet before, and PonySquare was cream of the crop. She decided to make her profile match who she was in real life, so she could be herself and make new friends. She finished her account and finally logged in.

Username: Default_

Password: ***********

Suddenly Default began to feel lightheaded, and as she looked on at the computer screen, it started to feel like it was getting closer. Soon the screen covered her entire vision as her conscious mind fell into the physical world of PonySquare. She eventually fainted as digital binary code surrounded her mind.

She woke up later in a beautiful sunny meadow outside of a fake Ponyville. The sun was gorgeous and a light breeze was blowing softly all around her, she could hear the birds chirping and friendly voices coming from Ponyville. She sat up slowly and suddenly found another pony standing at her side, looking down at her with a wide smile. "Welcome to PonySquare!" the yellow and blue pegasus colt shouted down at her. "I hope we can be friends!" Default smiled back kindly, frankly shocked and surprised that somepony had found her so quickly. "Thanks for the welcome!" She replied. The blue colt simply looked at her with a broad smile for several moments before replying back, "Just let me know if you need help with anything, Default!"

"Thanks! Wait, how did you know... ?" Default asked, slightly concerned that she might have a stalker. "Your name?" He replied as he pointed above her head. She then looked up, confused as to what he was pointing at, when she noticed that she had the name "Default" written above her as a form of identification. She looked back at the colt and noticed that he had one too just like hers. "Blue Blaze" the name said. She opted against asking whether it was his real name or not. It was already too obvious, as nopony's name would ever be "Blue Blaze". That's just too generic.

She simply smiled and held her hoof out to shake his hoof, but as suddenly as he showed up, he disappeared. She literally saw him vanish out of thin air. "Hm?" She thought to herself. "Oh well, I guess that's just something ponies do here in PonySquare. They just disappear!" She laughed to herself and walked towards Ponyville. When she got there, the first thing she noticed was that its inhabitants were very.... strange. There were mostly ponies, of course, but there was also a five-headed dragon, several humans, griffons, and a very strange tall faceless white man in a black business suit, just to name a few of the oddities. The were also an unnatural amount of alicorns. Pink ones, white ones, green ones, and a lot of black and red ones. She didn't question it, however, as she could understand why so many ponies would want to be alicorns. She noticed a large board in the center of town; it was a large cork board filled with news, notifications, polls, quizzes, photos, and the like. She took several sheets of paper off of it and decided to fill out several polls and quizzes.

"Who is best pony?"

"If I left, would you be sad?"

"How much do you know about Iron Heart?"

Default turned in her results and took a walk around the town, looking for any other different features. She noticed a section of town called "Chatrooms", filled with identical looking buildings with different names, some of which were changing randomly or getting erased entirely. There was a digital sign by the doors of each building that said how many ponies were in the rooms. She casually walked into the Truth or Dare room. What Default found, however, was not at all what she expected. Some ponies were getting into a dramatic argument, others were making out on the couch, and some were just sitting in the corner and doing absolutely nothing. She backed out of the room slowly, hardly giving the ponies the time to acknowledge the fact that she had entered at all.

She kept walking and found a section of Ponyville called "Groups". She looked around for a group she might like and found a "Pony RP Group", where ponies could pretend to have adventures of all kinds, almost similar to a recreational center, but with more foal-like enthusiasm. She thought it sounded pretty good, so she joined promptly. Ponies could come whenever they wanted to and play around with other ponies as long as they wanted to. She decided to start right then, joining a group of five other ponies and pretending to solve conspiracy theories and cleverly avoiding danger. Something she did not expect when she joined was that it felt very real; she could see, hear, smell, and feel everything going on around her in the role-play. They all survived of course, but in the end she felt a bit uneasy from how real it felt, so she decided to take a break from roleplaying for a while so she could get more used to it. It was evening now; Default took a walk until she saw a small house suddenly appear in front of her. Confused, she looked at a sign that was hanging on the outside wall.

"Default's House"

She shrugged and walked in, looking around at all the things inside before going upstairs and collapsing on the bed. "This", she thought a she drifted off to sleep, "was a fun day."

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Default woke up sitting in front of her computer; she logged out and turned the computer off, getting into her bed once more and falling asleep.