I think it's gotten better, at least in the sense that it's calmed down a lot. I believe that pretty much everyone who joined the fandom back during season 1 and even part of season 2 went through several stages of being a brony, which sorta painted an image of the fandom for awhile. Basically most people tended to initially stay pretty sheltered about it, trying not to let on to anyone that they watch the show, but then there's some point where all of a sudden they stop caring about what people think, and then they become the more louder and annoying fan who goes around speaking praises of the show, trying to get everyone to watch it. But by this point, most everyone seems to be calmer about it, even the people that find out about the show recently seem calmer, like a lot of news reports on the show are much more neutral now, and less "ew, guys are watching a girly show, how dare they"
And of course the weird parts of the fandom are still there, but I think we've passed the "asshole hill". I forget exactly where that's from, but it's basically a chart of a population against %assholes, and initially, the group is too small to have any significant assholes because they would be kicked out since they can be managed in such a small community, but as the community grows, it's harder to manage, and the asshole percentage rises, but then after a certain point, the asshole percentage drops again because the group is now large enough to more accurately reflect worldwide percentages. It's just that in this case, the "asshole percentage" is the "weird" and vocal parts of the fandom.
Plus the show has gotten better in many ways overall since it began. It's kinda funny how even though a lot of people, including myself, were brought in with the first 2 episodes, compared to the rest that are out now, the pilot tends to get ranked pretty low. Plus the animation has improved considerably, and so has the cast of both protagonists and villians. Although it does seem that the 3rd season is fairly polarizing, and not just because of the finale. Almost everyone I've seen talk about it has either loved or hated it, and I'm not sure why that is.
[random rant]
The one thing that does bug me though about the fandom is when people complain because the cannon just did something that ruins their fanon, and it annoys me even more when they go on to disregard the canon to maintain their fanon. Specific recent examples don't come to mind immediately, but like if someone wrote a fanfic about equestrian history, and then Hearths Warming's Eve comes out and has something else to say, you get what I mean. It's part of the reason I stray from the more fan-made part of the fandom, like fanfics in paticular. I know that good fanfics do in fact exist, even if it's rare, and that headcanon can improve your view of the show, but it should never alter your vision so much that you must exclude parts of the show that don't deserve it. I mean, I understand when someone does something completely stupid with a franchise, like Indy 4 or any Highlander past the first, sure, you can disregard that, but just because the show takes a different take on something you also had an idea on does not mean it is deemed unworthy of your perception. Although tbh, I think this tends to happen with background ponies and characters we just don't (or didn't) know much about, like Luna and so on. I know it seems minor, but it annoys me when people do that. when you make a hypothesis, which is basically what these people are doing in regards to the show, you don't change the results just to support it.
[/random rant]
ANYWAYS, woah, got a little sidetracked there. Oh yeah, another thing is that people have just realized that non-bronys don't like having ponies shoved down their throats, plus the fandom has gotten large enough that it can pretty much entertain itself on it's own, so a lot of people are getting their pony fix enough so as to not have to go around on forums making a million topics just to have a chance to discuss it. Between specialized forums, EQD, more bronies to meet irl, and imageboards people now have plenty of places to talk pony without intruding on other's annoyances. As a result of that alone I think that the opinion on the fandom would have increased since I think a lot of "haters" didn't really hate bronies as a whole, or even the idea of men watching it, but more were just hating on the annoying people who wouldn't stop buggin them about it. Once that stopped, I think people just revert back to a "well that's odd/interesting, but I really don't care" and forget about it naturally after a couple days.
Anyways, I think that this way way too long over a paragraph ago, so I'm just going to stop typing now.
