Again, my issue isn't with any of you. It doesn't have to be goodbye to the individuals here. It's just goodbye obsessing over technicolor ponies 24/7. It's not goodbye to watching them, it's goodbye to the fandom. I don't have the time to follow the thread religiously.
And it wasn't so much the creative criticism that's a problem. If someone has a good point, then I'll take that good point into consideration. What started souring me was when I spent two months of the story, posted it, and in the first day it felt like all of the critiques were along the lines of "this sucks," "you have jumped the shark," "I wanted to like this but it sucked" and the like. Better comments later didn't make up for that initial feeling of failure, and I've come to largely agree with the naysayers. Maybe I shouldn't, but it's just how I feel.
Then there was falling two threads behind after being gone a month, seeing how many pictures had accumulated in my deviantart box, much less realizing how many pages of Equestria Daily I missed, and saying to myself "Do I want to spend a week doing nothing but catching up on all of this?" And I said no. I burned myself out being a prereader and posting religiously on the thread and writing lengthy fanfictions all at the same time; I didn't want to resume that.
What did it for me was asking this question: Had I changed the fandom culture? Had I influenced anything? No, everything that irritated me in the fandom was still there in force. Was there an uptick in the things I liked? No, if anything there was less of it as I skimmed the fanart folders on deviant art. I had spent a few weeks in Honduras feeling isolated and alone, and feeling isolated and alone in the fandom wasn't an appealing prospect anymore.
So that's why I'm leaving. It's nothing you lot did, again. It's the realization that while I like the show and the characters and the animation, I was on an entirely different wavelength from even most of the posters around here. And that's a lonely, lonely feeling.
So I'll just watch it the same way I watch Phineas and Ferb: watch the episodes, enjoy them, make the occasional reference while chatting with my friends, and then be done with it.