>>36830768I know you've admitted that you don't really care about whether things should be objectively good, as long as a certain demographic wants the audience, but let me give you another perspective. Smartphones are for going on the internet. What do you think pony internet will be like? Will it be well-developed nexus that contributes to the telling of a story about a group of horsey friends? What's the payoff that the audience gets from characters looking at their phones? Will we be interested in what they are looking at? No, we won't. It's a completely vacuous universe within a universe that I predict won't even be fleshed out enough to have more than a go-to Twitter clone and some references to games like Angry Birds and Among Us.
To make a curious comparison, Twilight Sparkle had an interest in books. We hardly ever got to know what exactly she liked: non-specific magic theory, Starswirl the Bearded and Daring Do is pretty much the extent of it. We never looked over her shoulder, and if we did, it would be pretty boring viewing material. But in her case the reclusiveness was part of a character (whereas Pipp seems pretty cheerful all the time), books fit the setting, and she wasn't constantly carrying them around in her pocket. Ponies don't even have pockets, so where is she supposed to put it if she needs to use her hooves, say, for walking? Smartphones don't fit neither from the perspective of storytelling, nor within the setting.