Lucky for me, I hate both.

man up you lizard piece of shit

@Psyga315  
I’d like to see her face when she sees what the handwriting looks like(remember, RD wrote the letter with her mouth); hell, she probably can’t read it `cuz it’s nothing but scribbles!

@Digitalgame  
That might be true, yes.

@Starswirl  
I never said you had anything out for Dash and I’m more than willing to agree with you about how stupid she acted.
 
I’m just saying there were easier ways to handle the whole situation rather than resorting to making Mare-do-well.

@Digitalgame  
I’m not inclined to believe Rainbow would’ve seen even her friends as anything but competition. Maybe she wouldn’t, maybe she would. Perhaps it was stupid to put on a costume, I don’t even deny that. It’s also likely that Rainbow was so far gone nothing else worked.
 
As to the dam: Yes, at least Twilight and Fluttershy must’ve been close by. Not necessarily close enough to see what she was doing, though. Twilight saved her a little downstream, not right at the dam itself.
 
Plus, who could honestly expect such willful stupidity as Rainbow displayed? I know I sound like I have it in for her, but please believe, I do not.

@Starswirl  
Okay, I’ll give you that one though just one thing, would Rainbow have even felt it was necessary to do that if her friends had saved the Balloon pony first then tried to talk with her about it, instead of using Mare-do-well and making everyone else abandon Dash. Remember how big a deal that is to her, Rainbow hates being alone, she was at her lowest and probably felt that she would have to engineer a situation just to get noticed again. Probably didn’t plan on things getting out of hand like that, but that just sounds like I’m trying to make an excuse for her.
 
Also her friends would have had to have been watching her do this otherwise Twilight might not have been fast enough to save her, in which case why did they wait until it got to that point before doing something?

@Digitalgame  
Balloon pony is one example, another is the dam. It broke because Rainbow literally had to pat herself on the back. After making the leak worse, she couldn’t even keep still; she had to give herself some form of gratification.

@PonyPon  
Idiotic plans are somewhat of a staple, I’m afraid.
 
“We have a pest problem, what do?”  
“Mind warp the lot of ‘em!”
 
I’ll also confess my sympathy for Rainbow Dash was pretty low after she almost let somepony die because she was too busy signing autographs.

@Starswirl  
At what point was Rainbow Dash endangering others with her Showboating? The only example I can think of is the pony in the balloon? But by that token, why didn’t any other Pegasus or unicorn try to save her? It’s not like Dash is the only hero in town despite what the episode implies, I’m not excusing Dash because I agree that was inexcusable of her but at the same time I feel like it would have been the perfect time for her friends to step in and actually try to reach her by saving the pony without having to resort to Mare-do-well.

@Alel  
Granted, perhaps I am looking at this more from Rainbows perspective but only because I feel she is more sympathetic than her friends were. Of course they cared about other ponies lives, I never implied that they did not, only that it was secondary to their performing the role of an anonymous vigilante hero in a mask and not just playing the part of hero as themselves.
 
I mean at any time any one of them could have shown up at the disasters and helped as themselves, it certainly would have helped their case better instead of hiding behind a mask. It’s not like they themselves are any less guilty of not being humble, I mean Pinkie likes for eyerpony to know she is the number one party pony in ponyville, Rarity is always showing off her designs, and Applejack has just as much prode and a boastful nature as Rainbow dash, yet I have never seen the others pull this on anyone else to teach them a lesson about humility.
 
And on that subject, were they Baffled? Were they really confused? Perhaps they were, but at what, that rainbow would be upset with them for bragging about how great Mare-do-well is? Shouldn’t they have asked if their was a problem with it, it’s not like Dash was in another room, they could have clearly seen something was wrong with her. And at the end when they all reveal themselves that just implies that not only were they aware but that they were just doing it as a means to provoke dash, maybe to make her come out and say what was bothering her about the whole deal but even so it was still a bad move and did not work out the way they intended.
 
At the end of the Day I just see this episode as a lazy way to introduce a superhero character with pop-culture references that hamfists it’s own message to the viewer despite coming across as hypocritical from characters who are just as guilty.

@Digitalgame  
Rainbow is the one who stopped caring about helping ponies, not her friends. She made it a competition.
 
And the reason they kept their identity hidden might be pretty simple. Rainbow Dash claimed the following: “This way, I can stay focused on performing those acts of bravery that nopony else has the guts to perform.” So her friends get together to create a hero with a secret identity who doesn’t endanger lives with her showboating. So, they show her that a) there are other heroic ponies around and b) you don’t have to be a complete jerk about it.

@Alel  
Couldn’t they have saved ponies without the costumes and handled the praise correctly? So it didn’t seem exactly like some stranger repeatedly showing up Dash? So it actually seems like her friends helping her?
 
Because at this point I can only conclude their plan wasn’t malicious, but only somewhat idiotic, if they truly didn’t expect that kind of reaction from her.

@PonyPon  
Sure, why not? That doesn’t automatically mean they were conspiring against her or anything.  
Rainbow Dash became a celebrity after saving a few ponies as herself, it makes far more sense that the others didn’t care about becoming famous the same way, and just wanted to help Rainbow Dash while showing her how she could be a hero herself so they didn’t need to keep helping her.  
Some people just already have their mindsets on defending Rainbow Dash and antagonizing the others.
 
 
@Digitalgame  
You are passing Rainbow Dash’s reaction as the others’ intention.  
There is no reason to think the others didn’t care about saving ponies and only wanted to “teach Rainbow Dash a lesson”, the episode clearly shows otherwise, with them only focusing on saving ponies and not humilliating Rainbow Dash or preventing her from saving ponies or anything, just Rainbow Dash reacting the way she did.  
And when the others finally get on Rainbow Dash’s nerves at SC and she explodes and flies away… they are baffled, confused at this. This is not speculation, the episode flat-out shows in hindsight that the others didn’t intend Rainbow Dash to react the way she did.  
Some people (I’m not neccesarily including you, I’m talking in general) only care about Rainbow Dash and therefore judge the characters around Rainbow Dash’s benefit, and have been so insistent about it over the years that it has catched on.

@Alel  
I acknowledge that Rainbow’s ego was huge in that episode, she did let it go to her head, bbut your generalizing, I never put her on a pedestal.
 
I would agree with you that they were just in it to help Rainbow dash except during the sugercube scene they spent the majority of it basically boasting about their own talents they used while wearing the costume while Ranbow dash was not five feet away, they were doing that purposefully whether it was to drive home the lesson or not is just speculation on the veiwers part, and it only succeeded in pissing her off.
 
Flyby or no, this comes after Twilight had already fixed the dam, that just makes it feel like they were hammering the idea that Mare-do-well was better, and if it was just a flyby why did she need to knock rainbow dash into a spin to do it?
 
Mare-do-well cares about others? So does Rainbow and at least she was upfront about it unlike her friends who created a faux identity and went behind her back not with the idea that they were some caring vigilante who wanted to do good but because they wanted to teach Dash a lesson, saving others was just the means by which they accomplished that objective, it seemed that saving others was a secondary objective, else they would not have needed to hide in the first place. But they did, because they did not want Dash to know it was them for some reason I cannot fathom unless they just thought it would be cool to do so.

@Alel  
And they/she had to have the costume on while they/she did that?

@Digitalgame  
People put Rainbow Dash in such a huge pedestal, thinking it’s all about her and how she feels, taking her reactions as fact even though she’s clearly over-reacting. There is no reason to think the others weren’t simply helping her as the hero she wanted to be, after noticing she was growing careless, not expecting her to take it the way she did; some people just want her to be on the top of the situation so badly.
 
@Digitalgame  
She was doing a flyBY, she uses that exact word at the end, making sure everything was alright from above, that’s why she talks about MDW caring about everybody at SC the same way Twilight talks about studying and Rarity about dresses; Rainbow Dash just happened to be there flying on her way.

@Starswirl  
True, the closest thing I can consider humiliating is right after the dam scene when Rainbow says that Mare-do-mell cannot fly and get’s some of her confidence back, only for fluttershy dressed up to fly past her and do circles around a group of cheering ponies.
 
That doesn’t mean it is, but I do feel it was done on purpose.

@Digitalgame  
The hypocricy charge has some merit; though I see it more as a turnabout of Rainbow’s earlier claim that nopony else could possibly be a hero.
 
But! I’ve seen numerous people accuse them over and over of trying to deliberately humiliate Rainbow, and that is simply not true.

Okay, granted that MMDW wasn’t nearly as extreme as depicted, but can we at the least concede the point that her friends tried to make was a mite heavy-handed and needlessly deceptive?

@Starswirl  
It isn’t so much that they did anything horrible, just hypocritical and nonsensical. Okay, they wanted to teach dash a lesson about humility and bragging too much, especially when she lets it go to her head.
 
So their solution is to dress up, to hide their identities from dash because it probably sounded cool, and play the part of a hero in a town that has a low casuality rate. Then when Ranbow is feeling down and goes to sugercube corner they congratulate themselves, not each other but themselves, and brag about how great they are. Essentially doing the same thing dash was doing earlier in the episode. Especially not when each of them is guilty of bragging in other episodes yet no one thought to do this, even when it ended up hurting others.

@Alel  
Agreed. What did Rainbow’s friends do that was so horrible? They dressed up and helped ponies. The fiends! Only Rainbow Dash deserved to be a hero!
 
Anyone who claims they “humiliated” her doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

@Background Pony #4C38  
Neither does TMMDW say or imply any of the shit its detractors acusse it of. This comic is quite apropiate.

@Kamazeustra  
Yeah, Spike never said or even implied any of the shit he says here.

There is the episode, and then there is the fanfiction its detractors have been passing as the episode all this time. It would be one thing if people used this “teach her a lesson/humilliate her” nonsense to point out how the episode could be interpreted because it wasn’t as focused as it should and stuff, but it’s ridiculous to say the least how people to this day actually want to believe that was the real thing.