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Is My Little Pony a Menace to Society?

Does liking certain TV shows prove you're a horrible person?

Did you know that there are now many thousands of adult fans of My Little Pony (which like the Trekkies or Gleek has their own fan name: "bronies")? On average, people don't know or care, but there are some people who have become anti-brony zealots with a ferocity and intensity that is both odd and surprising.

But maybe they have a point.

It could be said that some shows actually damage people and our society in tangible ways. That push boundaries that shouldn't be pushed. Shows that are mean in spirit, exploitative, or glorify the bad guys in ways that could be argued make us worse people for watching them. But is My Little Pony one of them?

Below I've gathered all the arguments I've heard to date for why there's something wrong with adults who like My Little Pony.

#1 – "Adults who like little kid's shows are creepy"

The truth of this statement depends on what you mean. Toy Story is a little kids show and so is Dora the Explorer. But Disney animations have been enjoyed by adult audiences for almost a century and Japanese kid's shows (called anime) have been popular in the states for decades. So clearly adults can enjoy "kid shows" if they're good enough.

So while it's true that shows like Dora and Backyardigans are hard for anyone over the age of five to watch (little kid shows), and many other cartoons would be hard to watch for people over 10 (age-restricted shows), quite a few animations are enjoyable by people of all ages (family shows).

No one is going to try to convince you that the My Little Pony of the past didn't fall squarely into the first two categories. However, the 2010 reboot was specifically designed to appeal to all ages. With smooth Flash animation, top-notch voice acting, great characterization, an unprecedented level of art and lore along with a a plethora of adult gags and references, My Little Pony has transcended it's legacy and become something unexpected: not just watchable by any age or sex, but genuinely enjoyable.

Verdict: FALSE. There is nothing creepy about adults watching shows that were designed for them to enjoy.

#2 – "But it's a girl's show!"

Lauren Faust is working to change the idea that girl characters have to all be vain, weak, and stupid. [Source]

First, when you say "girl's show" you're talking about a HUGE range. There's the brainless giggle-fest nonsense like Strawberry Shortcake and then there's action and humor packed shows like Kim Possible. There are even in-between things like the newer Barbie animations that have great animation and design, but are still quite girly overall… but that's only if you're one of those people who equates "girly" with froo-froo worthless nonsense.

Lauren Faust (the show's artistic creator, and season 1 executive producer) always hated the stereotyped girls portrayed in cartoons. Through her career, she has fought this trend by introducing and strong and interesting characters like the ones in The Powerpuff Girls, The Kids Next Door, and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Not brainless. Not weak. Not stupid. And a decided lack of makeovers and so-called "girly things".

She made this show to feature a variety of girl types and show that each can be great in their own way. In doing so, she's trying to sever the link between "girly" and worthless… and she's succeeding.

Verdict: TRUE. It IS a show targeted towards girls.

#3 – "But there's something seriously wrong with guys who like girl shows!"

So guys should only watch shows like this where the main character abuses his kids and has no respect for his wife? One who violently hates anyone who thinks differently than he does? Where extreme and continual cruelty is mistaken for comedy?

The stereotype says that women like stories, romance, and drama while guys like violence and punching. Both have a fair degree of truth, but where they fall down is in the overlap. Take for instance Naruto. Unlike a lot of "boys cartoons", Naruto includes a deep and detailed story plot that progresses through the series. The cast is huge and each character has their own issues, goals, dreams, and problems. Take away the Ninja powers and fight scenes and you essentially have what people might consider a "girl's" show.

Everyone knows that guys appreciate a good story too. We care about personal issues, we want the guy to get his girl or the girl to get her man. We cringe when they make embarrassing mistakes, we root for them to defeat the bully. Heck, most guys will admit to fighting tears during that one scene in Toy Story 3 or Futurama (you know the ones I mean).

Lots of "girl shows" include real issues, violence, humor, suspence, and consequences… stuff that guys can still relate to or at least enjoy watching play out. Desperate Housewives, many Japanese anime, Sabrina the Teen Witch, and iCarly are just a few examples.

Funny and creative
Kick-butt awesome
Intense drama

Saying that a guy can't enjoy a show only because the target audience is female is as ludicrous as saying my wife can't enjoy The Big Bang Theory or my daughter shouldn't watch Avatar: The Last Airbender just because they were made for guys.

Verdict: FALSE. Things that for girls by design can, and often are, liked by perfectly normal guys (here are several examples. NOTE: The linked article has strong language!).

#4 – "Only someone super creepy would dress up like a pony!"

MLP fans in suits at Brony-con[Source]

Out of context, seeing a picture like this might really make you wonder about the people in the costume, but consider other places you might see someone in costume:

Dress up and put on an act? Sports fans do it too... frequently [Source and more examples]

Some Bronies dress up in relevant costumes when they go to brony events just like fans of other things do when going to a special movie, a party, or sporting event. Pretty much everyone would agree that someone wearing paint and a cheesehead in the grocery store is a little odd, but there's a statistically insignificant number of people who dress up outside of relevant events.

And if, for whatever reason, you felt that dressing up is still "creepy" even for appropriate occasions, that still has nothing to do with the majority of fans who don't ever dress up.

Verdict: FALSE. Fans dressing appropriately for fan events is not something to get worked up over.

#5 – "They're just fat neck-beards who will forever live in their mother's basement"

What do you know about this guy just from the picture?

So let's agree that there are fans among the bronies who are less aware of social norms or just don't care. And let's agree that you're welcome to feel however you want about that. But how do you justify assuming so much about them?

Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve; one of the most successful and populer PC gaming companies in history... and a fan of My Little Pony: Frienship is Magic [Proof]

There are thousands and thousands of bronies and only some of them live at home or have social or medical differences from the norm. We have fans among the military, webcomic authors, animators, musicians and artists. If anything, the common denominator among most brony fans seems to be people with a lot of talent and creativity.

As for the insulting physical description, any group photo of brony gatherings or conventions shows the same thing:

An average group of people at Brony-con

It's a bunch of people varying in age with an almost equal distribution of guys and girls. They look like average college students to me, though based on other pictures I found, there are plenty of bronies above college-age as well.

Verdict: FALSE. Brony fans are across the spectrum of age, sex, and physical characteristics.

#6 – "Bronies are pushy and treat it like a religion! As if they're special for ironically watching a kid's cartoon"

Well, first we already know it's not a kid's-only cartoon any more than Kung Fu Panda is. But that aside, some bronies can be very excited about sharing the show with others. Of course, people were the same when Gangnam Style was a huge hit (ex. "Hey have you watched this!? You HAVE to see it").

Showing your friends something you found online is not new, but I would be foolish to pretend there aren't people who take it too far. That said, consider this chart:

On the far right, we have brony extremists. People who consider bronyism a "lifestyle", who spend hours a day looking for an commenting on MLP content. People who make death threats to other fans who expressed negative opinions about the show (this happened). These are extreme fans and everyone knows it. However, this is not really unusual:

And the concept of extreme fans making people hate ALL fans isn't new either. Just ask fans of the Twilight saga how they were treated. Or fans of Anime what people said about them in the 80's and 90's when it was still new. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons or live-action roleplay. Even people who listen to Heavy Metal music! Extreme elements in every group were easier to see and make fun of and the media was only too happy to reinforce the stereotypes for as long as it got ratings.

Metal fans. Just a bunch of Satan-worshiping losers right? [Source]

But just like those other groups, the vast majority of fans are happy to goof around, chat, create art/music/writing or whatever they want to do. It doesn't affect or involve anyone else so well-adjusted people know to live and let live.

However, extremism among bronies isn't limited to fans. There's a new group of people who actively spend time during their day, looking for brony videos and stories to make fun of. They devote themselves in a cult-like fashion to making their hate and displeasure known. When presented with information that contradicts everything they say, they continue to mock and bully because they're not really interested in facts or logic. They are the nega-bronies.

Now, some of the nega-bronies are just misguided. They make snap judgments based on bad information and don't bother to research it before forming and sharing their opinions. For example:

Kurt Schlichter, a LA-based lawyer and columnist wrote a vicious hate-filled article attacking bronies where he described the fans as "perma-virgins" with a "disgusting obsession" while stating that womanizing characters like Captain Kirk are a far better male role-models.

The funny part is how he contrasted bronies on one end of the spectrum with people in the military; not realizing that there are a lot of military bronies.

To his credit, when military bronies challenged him to wear a My Little Pony hoodie in public for charity, he agreed. I'm sure he was disgusted with the whole ordeal and it probably didn't change his opinions much, but at least he learned that you can be a defender of the USA AND a fan of a cartoon… even if the cartoon is one he thinks he doesn't like.

Believe it or not, there are actually groups and websites completely dedicated to insulting and sometimes cyber-bullying bronies. In an extreme case, a group of 40 or more continuously encouraged one brony to commit suicide.

If there was ever such a focused anti-fan group for Trekkies, Whoovians, or any other fan group, I've never heard of it. Still, people hate what they fear and don't understand and it's a crying shame that so many people are still so eager to attack those different from them in entirely inconsequential ways.

Verdict: FALSE. Every fandom has extremes who are loud, obnoxious, and socially awkward. It doesn't mean anything in regards to the rest of the fans.

Take the challenge!

Above you see the most often used and repeated arguments for why My Little Pony and it's fans are a menace to society and why each is weak to downright silly. But maybe you have something to offer that I haven't thought of before. Some reason why it's truly wrong for an adult male to enjoy watching this great show. I guarantee you that if you can point to some actual harm or problem that has resulted from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I will reconsider being a fan.

Until then, Here's my personal theory: Lauren Faust is right that My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic is making our society better by causing a lot of people to question their assumptions not only about "girls" entertainment, but the attitude they have towards people who watch it:

But whatever you think about it, just remember this:


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134 Comments to “Is My Little Pony a Menace to Society?”

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Awesome article. It covers all the bases as to why some people tend to hate bronies, or at least the arguments that are rational enough to warrant a response! I’d be interested in seeing if anyone can come up with an argument that they feel is good enough to make a comment here.

I don’t understand why do haters hate stuff so much.. Okay, they don’t like it, but why do they go to every single video and article and argue with everyone and show their hate? I hate many things, starting from today’s music and ending with ..ugh.. way too many to choose, but I don’t annoy people with my hate, it’s their choice if they watch it, I don’t care.

If haters keep showing their hate and keep arguing all the time, their nervous system will be fu*ked up after 10-20 years.

I don’t watch MLP, neither I hate it, neither I like it, im neutral about it, but I must say, some videos and pictures I have seen around internet really makes me want to see it..

    What do you have to lose by watching an episode? Or at least a fan-animated video? I could suggest a few.

    Don’t worry friend. Maybe it’s not for you. But I can say that if you like high-quality animations like Anime and Avatar and especially if you can tolerate “girls shows” (like a lot of good anime is), then you’d probably like ponies.

      You were right 😀 After watching alot of Fanart and MLP videos, I gave a chance and watched some episodes.. Now I have seen all the MLP episodes and can’t wait for S3 😀 MLP is AWESOME!

      Mlp and High Quality- Animation does not belong in the same sentence. = D

Muffins, bro. says:

Nobody will ever have a solid foundation for a reason to not watch a Television program.

    Well, I can think of a lot of reasons to not watch some shows, but those are reasons why >I< wouldn't want to watch them. It would be a tough sell to tell someone else they can't watch it.

ActionScripter9109 says:

Great article. These are all fair points.

In my experience online, it seems like the most common motivator for anti-bronies is the need to hate *something*. If it wasn’t bronies, it would be another group or phenomenon. In this case, bronies are an easy target, because there are plenty of instances of downright embarrassing behavior/images associated with the fandom. The internet tough guy types love taking those and waving them around, saying “SEE? SEE? This is the kind of autistic faggotry these people are reveling in!”

Meanwhile, the quiet majority is composed of normal people who happen to like the show. We watch it, have a good chuckle, and move on with our lives.

Speaking as a Brony here, I would make the argument that a lot of “haters” feel that bronies are trying to shove it down people’s throats, and are therefore super annoying.

On any website (or game, for that matter) you WILL run into ponies inevitably. It’s got a massive fandom, so there’s going to be a lot of fans who like to talk about it/advertise it. It’s great if you like MLP, not so great if you don’t.

Obviously it’s an over-generalization to say that all bronies are pushing the show, but rational haters view those of us who DO push it like religious fanatics who are constantly trying to spread their mantra of “it’s not just for kids”, etc etc.

The other thing that seems to annoy the rational “haters” is that people make it out to be more than what it is: a TV show.

It’s become a way of life for some people, and it can be argued that it’s damaging, just as any addiction is.

There are undeniably bronies who have made MLP their addiction, and it can be argued that it is damaging their ability to be productive, or make friends. Whether they would have simply chosen something else to be addicted to had it not been for MLP can be argued, but it certainly can’t be tested.

Anyway, that’s my thoughts, taking the challenge as a long-time Brony.

    I know what you’re saying, though I don’t really see it as any different than the Star Wars or Star Trek fandom honestly. So they write stories and dress up. No one cares.

    Until they start having support groups like the Avatar fans, I’m not going to worry too much 🙂

      MLP may be no different than other fandoms, but it’s the prevalent fandom at the moment, (and one that seems to defy logic and surprise people) so it’s definitely under a lot of scrutiny. Also the whole target audience being different than the fandom is what makes it look different to outsiders. Individuals like to be able to classify things, and to see adult men to come out in support of what’s perceived as “a little girls cartoon” makes people care/react. They will then jump to conclusions, and characterize the group so that things still are classified correctly and no longer defy logic.

      I would certainly not be surprised if there were brony support groups, the fandom seems to already support each other in the various communities. There’s frequently threads about “coming out as a brony” to friends and family (really poor choice of lingo if you ask me).

      The way I see it, it’s not a big deal if you don’t make it out to be one. The problem is, a lot of people make it out to be a HUGE deal (when admitting they like the show to friends and family), so the reaction they get is equally huge. Casually mentioned, it would be passed over with relatively little scrutiny and shock to the average, reasonable person.

      In conclusion, I love this fandom (and I love the show even more), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t criticisms that have some degree of validity. We aren’t above or immune to criticism, and we shouldn’t be. It’s how we establish norms on how to behave appropriately.

    Its hype backlash. Same thing happens with a lot of people on the internet when it comes to Homestuck. Let me tell you about Homestuck or welcome to the herd, same thing different fandom.

Nearly the entire crew of Mojang are bronies too!

I’m a brony, and I have to say this is a wonderfully written article. I have it bookmarked, and I may have to show my friends this article when I have the chance.

Thank you for posting.

This was a really good article. I enjoyed it. I’m a brony (or ‘pegasister’ if you will) and absolutely adore the show. I love how objective you’ve made the article and the video at the end made me laugh. It’s so catchy! Hehe.

I can understand if people don’t like the show, but we shouldn’t get so much unnecessary hate for it. And I think the notion that all bronies are ‘creepy’ (and i’ve heard the following word thrown around a lot in regards to bronies) ‘neckbeards’ is completely false. I’m in a group of bronies from Melbourne Australia and most of us are fairly normal looking and act quite normally in public(apart from our general… quirkiness…. hehe). Not all bronies are ugly, my boyfriend and many other people think I’m rather attractive. Does that mean I can’t be a brony? Of course not.

Anyway, overall a great article.

LOVE AND TOLERATE *brohoof* /) (\

    Yup. The idea was to provide a good article for people who are skeptical, buy reasonable to read to give them an idea of why these arguments really don’t hold up.

Pretty cool article, thanks for this!

I was a little dismayed that you would apparently consider costumes, fursuits and cosplay to be “extreme” (in a negative sense), or a sign that someone doesn’t care about social norms.

When I see a costume (this applies more generally than MLP:FiM, but I’ll stick with that example), I primarily see appreciation: a celebration of the the show, gratitude that it exists, and that it’s as neat and cool as it is. I see joy: someone enjoying themselves (let’s face it, dressing up is *fun*), doing something that they like, and that hopefully others will like, too. And I see creativity: a costume that a lot of thought and work has gone into, that somebody built from scratch, designed from scratch even. In a very real sense, a costume is a work of art, the same way that pictures, animations and videos, music, stories and novels, plushies, sculptures, woodcuttings and so on are.

Some people may be uncomfortable around costume wearers, sure. That’s their prerogative, but I wish you’d made it a little more clear that the issue’s on their side, not on the costumer’s.

And when you talk about how it’s “maybe just the guys who you find unattractive”, I think that makes it obvious you know it’s just bias. So I really think you should’ve made this clearer.

There is such a thing as a rabid, militant fan; someone who insists that others MUST give the show a try (and like i)t, that one must NEVER say anything about it that isn’t the highest praise, and so on. But there is also such a thing as a dedicated fan, someone who merely appreciates and enjoys the show a lot: and not just the show but also the associated fandom.

These are two very, very different things. Please don’t conflate them.

Unfortunately, most “haters” hate because they want to, not because they think they have valid reasons. I talked to someone a month ago about it, and they admitted to hating things without any reason whatsoever but still refused to stop. It’s pretty pathetic, but what can you do?

    Nothing really, except be sure that they’re haters and not actually reasonable people in disguise (which this article is good for) and then ignore them if they’re dedicated to hate.

      No its because you wouldn’t have liked when you was little, maybe disliked girls who liked it and wanted to kill the ponies. Oh and if you did like it you would’ve been laughed at and that’s not hate its before Bronies existed.

Great defense of the Bronies! 🙂 We need more people like you who are willing to look at both sides and create a discussion articulately. …but honestly, I was way more excited that you mentioned Kim Possible. You rock.

You got something about long fanfics?

As a bookworm on par with my lovely Twi-chan, I can tell you there are plenty of good ones out there.

About the most hateful stuff I’ve witnessed is the paedophilia accusations. The characters are all young adults probably between 19 and 25! I feel no shame in having developed a crush on them.

@That crazy lady who said she didn’t want us going near her kids, Human children are annoying, repulsive creatures, thankyouverymuch. I’d rather be standing alongside a cute, but incredibly powerful badass unicorn girl in the defence of Canterlot against hoards of lovecraftian horrors than be within 50 meters of your brats.

(That said, I’d be honoured to take the CMCs as apprentices.)

Great article but I came to see the Brony of Happiness!
Im glad to say I personally know him :>

Ion Storm the Northern Lights Pony says:

I can sympathize with those Avatar fans.

Many of us feel the same way about Equestria.

Wow, this is one of the most sensible arguments I’ve seen on the brony fandom. This guy uses counter-argument very well.

Thi article is very true about bronies,I should know I’m part of the fandom(although I am female,or a pegasister).
Mlp is a cute show and if other people don’t like it,fine. It is a harmless childrens show.

Mind you,I am not very happy that some pony fans are doing shipping(gay)ponies,but o well,who cares?

There is no reason to dislike this show

Wow, you said everything I felt like saying in this article! You even used many of the examples I would bring up.

Anyway, the only possible argument I think you needed to address in this is the one the anti-bronies use: “Why do people feel the need to spread MLP around so much? Why does it end up everywhere I go?”

This is probably the only somewhat rational argument I’ve seen brony haters use, but it has a rather easy explanation and counter to it that another person in the comments already gave: “So what?” If people can deal with annoying trolls all the time on the internet, they can deal with an even easier to get rid of ‘ponyfag’.

The reason behind the extremist fans or ‘ponyfags’ is due to it’s rapid fan growth and it’s history with the /b/ side of the internet. I did some research on this, questioning and surveying bronies I deemed ponyfags and found most of them to range within 11-14 years old (with a few ranking between 15-16). This actually makes a lot of sense to me (especially now that I remember my friend mentioning how many seem to be ‘young guns’).

    Interesting! At first I was thinking “rabid” covered that, but I think there is a nuance difference there that I could address. Thank you!

      Yeah, I always found it kind of strange some fans are just so rabid over things like FiM. With further investigation, it appeared to be related to age (or at least that’s what my studies had shown).

      I then found comparisons in RL such as:

      A kid I know that I babysit loves certain games I’m not totally into. He’s such a fan of these games and will try to make me play them with him. If I tell him I don’t like them, he gets angry and can’t seem to understand other people like other things than him.

      Does the behavior sound familiar? It should. ‘Ponyfags’ or extremist MLP fans who act very immaturely, are mostly composed of a younger age group.

      I’m actually very surprised not many people research the cause of this. People just assume “rabid, awkward nerds” and completely ignore that age is a main contributing factor in all of this. It’s a way overlooked issue that answers a very important question for the fandom.

The show is nothing evil in itself , its a cartoon and a well made one by a awesome woman name lauran faust , she had good idea for the show and unfortunally its the fandom , well one percentage of it that made it bad, too much sexual inuendo and explicit material offer to the young and impressionable on a daily , id say hourly basis, a lot of artist only went toward this to make good art while the rest went to express sexual tendency and there furryness to the rest of the world turning innocent mind toward sexual deviation, i personal like the show and tumblr for its story telling content but the constant stream of porn tend to corrupt minds on the long run, its uther madness , but we live in a free country , so , its up to the viewer to decide what he wants to rant on,

    I would point out though that there’s no direct link from My Little Pony to anything explicit. Those are fans that do what those fans do. They do the same with any other cartoon or TV show… Smut happens.

Mohammad Lutfor says:

I’m sure you made a typo, in the second paragraph under the graph, it should say “moving to the right” not “moving to the left”. Because a creator of content would need some knowledge of the show.

Hello, Jeremy. Strong article! You said very well about definition of “girly” cartoons. First of all, let’s mention that all the views are subjective and there’s no real definition of “wrong” and “right” in our world. There will always be your point of view and a point of view that differs from yours. But many men are guided by stereotypes. That’s bad. Stereotypes kills personality, new points of view and self-development. People close themselves in social frames and judge reasonably. That’s why there are haters who call all the bronies gays, faggots, sick and crazy people or something. I think that is a real problem of our sociaty! Not the men, who watch the show about ponies, but stereotypes that spoils the perception of others. But there is always a “dark side” of every community… I wanted to quote famous russian proverb, by don’t know how exactly it is translated. It sounds like “in every family there always the ugly one”. Hope you understood) For example, there are bronies, whose behaviour is worst than haters’. I notice the real problem of bronies… They have a dangerous kind of sexual deviation: they masturbate on pony characters of MLP show and lose the interest to women. I’m serious and, by the way, I’ve met such people. Yes, it’s their choice. But it is really bad in demographic and social points of view. What do you think about this phenomenon?
P.S: Forgive me, if I made mistakes. It’s hard for me to express my thoughts in English. I speak only Ukrainian and Russian.

    No, no, no.. Cloppers are the one who masturbate to ponies. I am a brony and I dislike people touching their selves to images of my favourite ponies :/

    I agree with most of what you said, but when it comes to sex, it’s a fact that there is some segment of the population that sexualizes characters in tv shows regardless of their age, gender, or even species. I don’t really want to get into that discussion, but I will say that regardless of what those people chose to do, it’s something they’d do whether or not they watch this particular show.

    My point being, My Little Pony itself does not lead to any kind of extreme behavior.

Let’s admit the obvious–straight men watch MLP:FIM for the ‘plot’:

[link blocked]

Seriously, though, men are as attracted to personalities as physical attributes, and the Mane Six represent a broad spectrum of desirable personality types: intellectual, tomboy gamine, party gal, earthy country gal, haughty beauty, and meek wallflower. And the cute, girly imagery is far more appealing to the straight male viewer than, say, shows like South Park, with their endless scatological and sodomy humour, and ugly animation. This is also why shows like Pretty Little Liars and 2 Broke Girls are popular with male viewers.

i really really hate MLP im tired of seeing it all over but i guess you got a valid point there and like you where saying about the girly stuff. well i watch lots of anime that kinda like stuff for lets say about around teenage girls for example lucky star, k-on Defiantly not any stuff about boys or anything. but yes i am a boy

Sonic Raptra says:

Just wanted to say, thanks so much for writing this and your other articles like it. You approach these topics so logically and thoroughly and yet concisely. It’s a great resource that when people have questions I can just say hey, read this thing then you’ll get it.

    Thank you for the feedback! I do enjoy making these articles so I can avoid having to say the same things over and over, but if other people can use them as a resource as well, that’s a huge bonus 🙂

I think the only reason there were not any hate sites dedicated to Trek or Who is because there were no “social” media sites at the time of their origin. Should be called “anti-social” media, if you ask me. These sites, and the web, have given a freedom these hate-mongers have used to spout their vitrol with no accountability. I doubt very much they would say half of what they write if they were face to face with the ones they are abusing.
It’s just a show; they are just people watching a show. Give it a rest, and get a life.

Mick The Knife says:

Ironically, the popularity of MLP:FIM was sparked by a negative opinion of the show.

From http://www.knowyourmeme.com:

“On October 10, 2010, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was aired as part of the debut of the new television network, The Hub, which replaced Discovery Kids. On October 19, 2010, Cartoon Brew wrote an article about the show titled “The End of the Creator-Driven Era in TV Animation”, which had an alarmist tone. Threads on 4chan‘s comics and cartoon board, /co/, attacked the article for this reason. The article and related threads generated /co/’s initial interest in the show, spurring several members to watch the first episode. After the second episode aired on October 22nd, threads about ponies started to boom on 4chan, gaining the show fans outside of its target demographic. Since then, the fandom has exploded across the internet.”

An interesting bit of Brony history.

I know this is old, but I just happened to stumble across it and it pissed me off.

You want to know why I hate bronies? Because of they themselves. They’re extremely annoying and infest seemingly the entire Internet with their show. I’m sick of seeing My Little Pony stuff everywhere I turn. Also, every single brony who posts something like this or argues for the sake of MLP sounds exactly the same. They overly acknowledge the fact that the show is intended for girls, as if that’s even the issue! They act like the problem is that the show is feminine and guys won’t watch it because it emasculates them, I mean how many people worth a damn are even like that anymore? They also ALWAYS bring up how other fanbases are the same and have their own abnormalities and such (like you did 100 times), but that’s not even why it’s an issue. The issue is that it’s everywhere and people are tired of looking at it! I know I am. I don’t see shit from other fanbases in every single google image search I make, after single YouTube video I watch, on every single forum I go to, etc. I absolutely love Adventure Time but I don’t make it my avatar or put it into any completely unrelated shit I can find!

The funny thing is, I actually have watched the show before, and I honestly loved it. I thought it was cute, funny, and more adult than it appeared. However, I can’t bring myself to watch it because of its extremely annoying fanbase.

    “They’re extremely annoying and infest seemingly the entire Internet with their show”

    You’re not the first to point out the fairly valid point that it’s so saturated that it’s annoying, but please understand that it’s a personal problem. It’s like a guy sitting on a park bench yelling at the kids for being too loud: “Stop having fun! It’s annoying!”.

    The fanbase isn’t annoying, you’re annoyed by it. There’s a very important difference in this wording.

      We are not annoyed at Bronies.
      My Little Pony is for little girls.
      Social media invented Bronies the unexpected fandom and then loads of blokes jumped on the bandwagon.

        That’s a myth. People don’t become fans because it’s “ironic”. People become fans and stay fans because they like it.

        Clearly not true. There are many my little pony/brony sites that you have listed here on this blog thing or that others that have listed from only a couple years ago that are now leading to “404” or are basically dead links. Why would that be if they stayed fans?

        You can talk to most bronies and even “anti” bronies on most social media websites and they will confirm the fandom is dying. Sure, it won’t fully die out until it is nothing, but the “Fans” of the show that was a fan from back when you first made this post until now are leaving the fandom.

        A good way to look at the brony fandom would be to compare it to something I hear about when people speak of sponge bob. The majority of people that liked/love sponge bob say “it was good for its first three seasons”. I think that is a fallacy. I think they only believed it was a good show for its first three seasons before they grew up and started to realize the show wasn’t what they had made themselves believe what the show actually is. Because I have seen a “first season” episode and I have seen a “new” (as of 2018) episode and I really don’t see all that much difference.

        So the same goes for mlp. People saw the first season and saw the hype and jumped on the brony bandwagon claiming to be fans of a show that was “made for them”, but those same “fans” are now looking back at that show after 8 years (and some movies) and are seeing that it is and always was a stupid show that wasn’t ever really worth their time or money (if they bought merch).

        Again, that isn’t going to be every brony as you can still find bronies here and there, but it is clearly a lot more than what you seem to believe.

        I don’t even think the joke in The CW show DC’s Legends of Tomorrow was really even meant for bronies. It was just a throwaway joke made at a dying fandom. (I am talking about when the Legends went to woodstock and the unicorn was there and they said “twilight sparkle come to life” and “brony bros” or something like that.

        I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make based on the fact that some sites have gone stale and died in the past 8 years. Fandoms wane, sure. Did I say otherwise?

        Your supposition about fans and age is a theory, but what are you using to support it. I’m guessing you’re not a fan, in the fandom, or very aware of it. I doubt you’ve done any research. Am I wrong? And if I’m not, what is your basis?

    I saw alot of MLP art/stuff before I became a brony, I really didn’t care, I saw many other cartoon fanart/stuff too, yet I still didn’t care.. Do you get annoyed by all things that are popular or mainstream?

      No, but many people do when they can’t escape it or if there are extreme fans that the media likes to constantly point to. Consider how much hate there is for the Twilight series or Justin Beiber. It’s completely and entirely unjustified hatred. It’s only their popularity that makes people that way.

As a grown women in her 30ties,who sometimes watches “kids shows”, I don’t get Bronies. Even after having watched every episode I still don’t get Bronies. I will say it’s okay, it doesn’t patronize its audience, and I guess the writing is fair but beyond that I don’t see what the big deal is. I don’t get how this show merits the level of obsession it generates, when there are better, more original shows out there.
I don’t hate Bronies, I just don’t get them.

    There’s certainly nothing wrong with that. I still don’t get why people like King of the Hill 🙂

    I can certainly give you reasons for why I like the show: http://www.thegeekprofessor.com/ponies/why-i-am-a-brony-a-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-fan/

    Though in the end, it’s a “big deal” to fans of the show because they’re fans of the show. Just like fans of anything; books, tv, sports, etc.

      for me, it was the positivism and ‘randomism’. Second thing – Community… When I got to know community of bronies, I started to love MLP even more.. They all are so friendly and positive… It’s like the show. I was smiling/laughing all the time when watching MLP. I can’t call myself a fan, but I do enjoy the show and I believe it’s really a matter of opinion.

    You’ve watched every episode, but you’re not a brony? That’s impressive.

      I’m not sure why you’d say that. For a time I didn’t use the term, but when I found out that all it meant was “non-traditional fan”, I’ve used it ever since. That’s why if you search Google for “why i am a brony” I’m in the top ten.

      My apologies, I was actually replying to Lis.

Person Pattersun says:

“Verdict: FALSE. Every fandom has extremes who are loud, obnoxious, and socially awkward. It doesn’t mean anything in regards to the rest of the fans.”

This is true, but the MLP fandom or “Bronies” aren’t your normal fandom that has its normal “extremes”.

First off if you are going to compare fandoms to each other then you have to go all the way. The brony fandom, unlike others, likes to make sure you know about it in every way possible. This is proven by the fact that bronies have actually paid for a commerical that did air on Hub. I am pretty sure I have never seen a Star trek/wars/Whoovian/whatever commerical air on any netowrk at all. The other fandoms have extremes but they are far less quiet when compared to the bronies. More proof is the whole “star appeal”. Bronies seem to try to seek and and even gain approval of their fandom from top tier people. This is again proven with Steven Colbert’s shoutout to the bronies. Both times on his show he has gave the bronies a shoutout, but he has mentioned that he doesn’t know what one is. I have either read or heard some where that the only reason for him giving the bronies a shout out is because someone on his staff or team asked him to do so. Gaben is also proof of this. He wasn’t asked he came out on his own, but the reason for him doing this was because he though the bronies needed some help from a big name game developer.

The point is as I have previously stated is the the bronies take the “EXTREME” to the extreme. If they aren’t inserting themselves into every little thing (google something not in any way related to bronies you will find at the very least one result that is connected to bronies or G4 My little pony: e.g. Lil wayne’s – mirrors) they are doing their best to do so.

“Verdict: FALSE. Things that for girls by design can, and often are, liked by perfectly normal guys (here are several examples. NOTE: The linked article has strong language!).”

While again your FALSE findings is true the areas that you are claiming to be “girls show by design” are wrong. I can’t say much about “Desprate Housewives” because I never have/nor seen the show for the fact that it is “intense drama, but Kim possible and Icarly aren’t aimed specifically at girls just because they have a “girl” as the main character or star. ICarly was about a web show (a very unrealistic one, but a webshow none-the-less)that just had two girls that hosted said web show and said web show was ment to be aimed at everyone since it was supposed to be a comedy web show.

Kim possible was about a girl who was a spy, but was also a highschooler. This has themes aimed at girls such as love and drama, but still has enough non-girl themes to keep it enjoyable for audience that aren’t girls.
The same can be said about a some what recent Nick show called “House of anubis”. I enjoy mysteries this show was one big suspense and mystery. I hated the whole “fabina” whatever BS that went on between the mysteries and suspense, but it wasn’t hardcore enough to keep me away from the show. It was also balanced out by having some comedic relief by ways of a character named Alfie.

    “the MLP fandom or “Bronies” aren’t your normal fandom that has its normal “extremes”.”

    Citation needed.

    “This is proven by the fact that bronies have actually paid for a commerical that did air on Hub”

    How many were involved with that? What is that number as a percentage of the fandom?

    “google something not in any way related to bronies you will find at the very least one result that is connected to bronies or G4 My little pony: e.g. Lil wayne’s – mirrors”

    I’m a little lost on how you’re taking the fact that ponies are currently popular and have a lot of crossover to being proof that bronies have some kind of militant “take over the Internet” agenda.

    “Kim possible and Icarly aren’t aimed specifically at girls just because they have a “girl” as the main character or star”

    Perhaps you’re right. But the point is that people make a lot of assumptions about shows based on appearances don’t they?

    “This has themes aimed at girls such as love and drama, but still has enough non-girl themes to keep it enjoyable for audience that aren’t girls”

    Well, in the end, it sounds like you understand bronies after all 🙂

      Person pattersun says:

      “Citation needed.”

      I really can’t give a citation to something that isn’t really logged but is pretty apparent among at the very least 90% of the fans. If you need more proof though then I can probably bring up the whole obsession with naming background characters. Every show out there has them, whether it is live action or animated. Yet Bronies are the only ones dedicated to naming non-important characters. When I first heard about MLP and bronies I didn’t start hating as you might believe. I did my homework on the show first. You know what I originally thought based on my research of the show? I had yet to see a episode, but the thing I had notice was a lot of bronies talking about a character named “Derpy” or “Derpy hooves” and how she was such a great character. They also mentioned she was some sort of “mail pony”. When I did start to watch the show I noticed that the “spike” handled all of twilight’s mailing problems, so I came to this conclusion:

      “Oh I bet spike gets sick in one episode and they have to go to the post office where they meet this Derpy character and the whole episode would revolve around her and her crazy antics all while Twilight was trying to mail off her letter.”

      Twenty-six episodes later and I didn’t see anything like that. I did a bit more research to find out if I missed a episode or something only to find out she was in fact a background character who had no speaking role and had only popped up a few times during certain episodes. She isn’t the only character that has a following though. There are plenty of background characters in the show who have said a few words if any and have done nothing really important that just about every brony has a liking for. May it be “Lyra” or “Octavia”. These are characters that upon a quick glance into the brony fandom on would think these characters have had some sort of major role or importance on the show or at the very least have some sort of established character other than “background”.

      “How many were involved with that? What is that number as a percentage of the fandom?”

      I can honestly say I don’t know that answer to that, but realistically that is irrelevant. Here is what I do know. The thing for the commercial made over its needed amount. They donated the rest of the money to charity from what I remember. My point is how many other fandoms have done the same thing? How many star trek fan sponsored commercials have there been in the past 20 years? How many star wars? How many Harry potter or sponge bob commercials have there been? The answer is none. The fact is that there must have been quite a bit to actually pay for an official commercial to air on a official cable network.

      “I’m a little lost on how you’re taking the fact that ponies are currently popular and have a lot of crossover to being proof that bronies have some kind of militant “take over the Internet” agenda.”

      I don’t know how you are lost I spelled it out to you as clear as day. I again ask you the question of how many times have you gone to google and typed in some random thing that had nothing to do with (insert fandom here) and got a result relating to said fandom?

      “Well, in the end, it sounds like you understand bronies after all”

      No not really. Bronies are blinding themselves to the truth. You seem like you might be the same way.

        90%? Again, citation needed. You seem to be painting with an extremely broad brush. I doubt anyone has any idea of just how many bronies are out there nor what percentage of them are “annoying”.

        The fact that there is pony art out there and you can find it on Google obviously proves nothing about anything other than that it is popular.

        I’m starting to think you’re trolling me.

      Person pattersun says:

      “90%? Again, citation needed. You seem to be painting with an extremely broad brush. I doubt anyone has any idea of just how many bronies are out there nor what percentage of them are “annoying”.”

      True no one knows the exact number of bronies. One site gave a evaluation of 7 to 12 million which I doubt there is even that many on the whole earth.

      As for the citation need I already told you I can’t cite something that is clearly evident. Go to any brony con. I can almost guarantee most of the cos-players will be as characters that have no official name. The closest I can give to a a citation though would be the mlp wikia site. Which does name every character that has been shown thus far.

      “The fact that there is pony art out there and you can find it on Google obviously proves nothing about anything other than that it is popular.”

      No it proves that bronies do try to insert themselves into all aspects. I remember a discussion on the one brony ask site where a call of duty fan had mentioned being banned from the forum because the admin had become a brony and made it so that anyone that talked bad about MLP got banned. That is just once instance though. I am sure there are others.

      “I’m starting to think you’re trolling me”

      Wow how very brony of you. “He doesn’t agree…He is a troll!”.
      This must be some of that famous “love and tolerate” I have heard so much about.

      On a more serious note though believe want you want to believe. If I really wanted to troll you I would just be cussing you out and going with the usual “Hurr durr your a homo/pedo/zoophile because you watch a girls show hurr durr”.

      @Person pattersun You seem to have experienced more bad things than I, while being a brony for one year.. There were of course wierd people and incidents with them, but majority I knew was normal persons, having good life and not abusive/annoying at all. I became a close friend with one of the bronies, but he rarely talks about MLP anymore, as I rarely watch it. And art is just art.. That’s the ways fans express and have always expressed for all kind of communities. One thing I noticed – Bronies, who act weird, go to cons, ‘push their shit to non-bronies’ and so on, are also (50/50) supporting R34 (Pony porn), but same people also support fedoras and many other wierd things, so I could say it’s in their blood, not that MLP made them love that dirty stuff..

      I enjoyed watching art, some episodes time by time and listen to some fan music, but I didn’t collect toys, buy anything or do anything..

      “True no one knows the exact number of bronies. One site gave a evaluation of 7 to 12 million which I doubt there is even that many on the whole earth.”
      Seeing the amount of video views for brony vids, I could agree (considering not all of them watches fan videos).

      @Person Pattersun,

      I know you probably don’t care, since this has been quiet for a few months, but I just wanted to talk about the show I adore. MLP: FiM has been around since 2010, but I didn’t get into it until just over a year ago, after the third season ended. What drove me to it? Well, my brother had been telling me to watch it for years. He’s three years older than me, and he likes most of the same shows/movies that I do, so I generally trust his judgement.

      Oddly enough, though, that didn’t carry over into MLP very quickly. My first thoughts were just like some other guys, “It’s a show for girls, about colorful talking ponies. What could POSSIBLY be good about it?”

      I wrote him off, thinking that he was just being weird or trolling me. Then a little while later, a few webcomic artists that I followed on Deviantart started posting pictures of these same colorful ponies. Again, I thought it was strange and just ignored them, instead wondering why these artists would waste time on colorful ponies, instead of updating their really awesome comics for several months straight.

      In 2011, I joined the military, which was the best decision of my life. Not everything is wonderful, but it’s helped add structure, camaraderie,and a good paycheck to my life. One Friday night in 2013, after finishing watching Yu Yu Hakusho (stereotypical boy’s show), for the second time on Netflix, I was looking for something else to watch. On the main screen, MLP: FiM popped up. Well, I’d been hearing so much about it, and I had nothing else to watch, so I figured I’d watch an episode. Why not.

      I watched all three seasons in that weekend. The saying is that time flies when you’re having fun. Time most assuredly flew, because I had tons of fun. In fact, I have never enjoyed a TV show like I enjoyed MLP: FiM. The only one that even comes CLOSE is Avatar: The Last Airbender. They’re currently fighting over first place on my list of favorite shows (and Avatar is lagging behind).

      That’s weird, though, because Avatar came first, and I enjoyed it immensely, even when I had to wait for new episodes. It also has great art, wonderful stories, engaging characters, strong female characters, and lots of martial arts. So why is it almost unquestionably second to MLP?

      Quite frankly, not even I know for sure, but I think it is because of the morals and the vast differences between character personalities. I can see parts of myself and my friends in all the MLP characters, and when I see those characters overcome their faults to do whatever it is they need to do in an episode, I feel good. No, good doesn’t go far enough. I feel AWESOME.

      The difficulties these characters face in each episode doesn’t always have to do with some villain. Many times, it is the differences between the ponies themselves that cause the conflict, and that is a LOT more relatable to people on a day-by-day and person-by-person basis.

      So, we’ve established that I like the show. Well, the next day I made no endeavor to hide it. The people I work with aren’t really the bookish type. They spend their time off at the gym working out or hanging out at bars, and when I started talking about the show, they started making fun of me about it. I never let that bother me, though, and took all the names and jokes in stride.

      Pretty soon, the jokes and taunts calmed down, and they’ve accepted me for who I still am. I’ve even gotten at least one person to give it a chance. He didn’t like it, but I’m not sure if it’s because he was totally smashed at the time, or just wasn’t paying that much attention, or if it just wasn’t for him, but at least he gave the show a chance.

      I agree that some people get obsessed with the show (you can even say that about myself, though I don’t think “obsession” goes far enough for me.) Soon after getting into the show itself, I got into the comics, the figures, bought a bunch of T-Shirts, and I’m not afraid to talk about the show. In fact, I just got back from a 6.5 month deployment, and during a Commander’s Call while deployed, a Colonel asked if anyone knew what a “Brony” was, and my hand shot straight up.

      Everyone in my unit knows I love the show, and so nobody was surprised when I stood next to the Colonel and explained what a Brony is. She didn’t understand it either, but she commended me on standing up in front of people to talk about it.

      So there I’ve talked about myself and how I got into it, now for your issues. You’re upset that almost every MLP character has a name? That’s a bad thing? No, most of them aren’t central to the show, but that doesn’t stop them from being important.

      To quote the Doctor, “You know that in nine hundred years of time and space and I’ve never met anybody who wasn’t important before.” So, they may not be important to the show, but that doesn’t mean they’re NOT important. Just like every PONY, every PERSON is important. And just like every PERSON, every PONY has a story. It may be strange to you, but we tell those stories. And we LOVE telling those stories.

      So, the Bronies raised a lot of money for a collectively shared cause. I think that’s pretty awesome. Crowd funding is only a couple of years old, but it’s taking off fast. But aside for that commercial that I’m not even sure I’ve seen, do you know what ELSE Bronies have raised money for? Charity. And LOTS of it.

      May 3rd at 1200EST, a 24 hour live stream started called Kallisti IV. http://yoursiblings.org/portico/kallisti-iv by the end, Bronies raised 3,420 Euros. $4709 dollars. For charity. Surprised? Don’t be. It’s far from the first charity, and far from the last. Just peruse this page: http://actionmastermegatron.deviantart.com/journal/Brony-charity-Listings-334003658 to see more of our collective charitable donations. Yeah, Bronies are just TERRIBLE, AWFUL people! Oh, the humanity!

      Total $587,760.45, 59.5 litres of blood and 1000 litres of milk raised. But if you notice, that journal is from Oct, 2012. Months before I even joined. So this is by no means accurate anymore. It doesn’t include the Kallisti IV drive, or many other fandom created drives.

      So please, stop being so quick to judge us. We have our quirks just like everyone else, but we’re not bad people. We do good everywhere, but you won’t catch the media talking about our charity drives because it doesn’t suit their purpose, and frankly, they’re not as well-known as they should be. I donated 200 Euros (~$284) to Kallisti IV, and that was the FIRST charity drive I’ve known about. I can’t wait to find some more and help others who need it, and I hope others (Bronies or not) will jump in with us.

      Thank you, and have a great day. 🙂

        Person pattersun says:

        Been away working hard, but I am back. Time to hit up on some of your “answers” to my problems with the fandom/show.

        Let’s start at the beginning

        “That’s a bad thing? No, most of them aren’t central to the show, but that doesn’t stop them from being important. To quote the Doctor, “You know that in nine hundred years of time and space and I’ve never met anybody who wasn’t important before.”

        Actually it does keep them from being important. It does because these character’s still don’t effect the main story of the show. These character can be easily replaced or duplicated (as usually the case is) to just fit in wherever and whenever the show calls for a scene that needs a crowd. Also you are quoting a fictional character TO DEFEND your reason for why background characters WHO ARE ALSO FICTIONAL are important. I think that is a hat on a hat or something to that degree and makes no sense what-so-ever.

        “So, they may not be important to the show, but that doesn’t mean they’re NOT important. Just like every PONY, every PERSON is important. And just like every PERSON, every PONY has a story. It may be strange to you, but we tell those stories. And we LOVE telling those stories.”

        Again you are comparing REAL LIVE LIVING HUMAN BEING to UN-IMPORTANT FICTIONAL CHARACTERS who aren’t even IMPORTANT to the main story line of a show. Also there is something wrong when a FAN of a show has to tell the “stories” of imaginary characters WHO ONCE AGAIN AREN’T IMPORTANT TO THE MAIN STORY OF THE SHOW YOU ARE WATCHING!

        You mentioned watching Yu Yu Hakusho. During the dark tournament saga did you give stories and names to every demon watching the fights? I know I sure didn’t. Why didn’t you? Is it because most died off? Is it because most ARE NEVER SEEN AGAIN? What ever the reason I can probably say with 100% certainty that you didn’t and there was quite a few demons that had more designs and probably better stories than any single background pony character on MLP:FiM.

        “So, the Bronies raised a lot of money for a collectively shared cause. I think that’s pretty awesome. Crowd funding is only a couple of years old, but it’s taking off fast.”

        That isn’t the problem here. I have nothing against crowd funding. My problem was the REASON why they decided to do it and for the most part the reasons for pointless. There are tons of kick-starters for stupid reasons. The difference between them and the one I mentioned is THEY NEVER TAKE OFF.

        “But aside for that commercial that I’m not even sure I’ve seen, do you know what ELSE Bronies have raised money for? Charity. And LOTS of it.”

        Yes I know of this. Tell me how many other fandoms have raised money for charity? I am pretty sure there are a lot, BUT MOST DON’T BRAG ABOUT IT. I am not going to go to Goodwill give to them and then post it online as if I did something special. That is being human. If you have to flaunt doing nice for others there is something wrong WITH YOU.

        “Surprised? Don’t be. It’s far from the first charity, and far from the last.Just peruse this page: http://actionmastermegatron.deviantart.com/journal/Brony-charity-Listings-334003658 to see more of our collective charitable donations. Yeah, Bronies are just TERRIBLE, AWFUL people! Oh, the humanity!”

        Yeah no see this is what I am talking about. Why do bronies have to promote doing good for their community? This is something they should be doing WETHER OR WETHER THEY AREN’T BRONIES. Why are we hearing about them doing it now AS BRONIES? This tells me they sure as hell weren’t doing good things before because they want to bolster their fandoms “likeability” and make it so people like YOU can say “SEE BRONIES AREN’T BAD”. It is one thing to donate to charity and then someone finding out about it and thanking you for it. It is a COMPLETLEY DIFFERENT THING TO BRAG ABOUT DOING SOMETHING YOU SHOULD DO NOMRALLY AS A DECENT HUMAN BEING!

        “So please, stop being so quick to judge us. We have our quirks just like everyone else, but we’re not bad people.”

        As I just pointed out you are. Because if you have to brag about doing good that doesn’t make you any better than the person who doesn’t donate to charity at all. The tells me you are only doing good for you own benefit and the not the benefits of others. As I already mentioned I don’t brag or call a press conference every time I donate to charity and most decent people PREFER to donate anonymously UNLESS THEY FEEL THE NEED TO MAKE THEMSELVES LOOK BETTER. Which if bronies were good people they shouldn’t have to prove that they are good by alerting the non-bronies/hater that they are good people. They wouldn’t care about them because they would know that the yare doing good and wouldn’t have to throw it out there that they are doing good. They shouldn’t need to seek the public appeal of people if they are actually good people. Let others judge you by how you act and what you do and not how you do it or something.

        “We do good everywhere, but you won’t catch the media talking about our charity drives because it doesn’t suit their purpose, and frankly, they’re not as well-known as they should be.”

        That is because your just bragging online, the new people don’t usually look to the internet for their news stories.

        “I donated 200 Euros (~$284) to Kallisti IV, and that was the FIRST charity drive I’ve known about. I can’t wait to find some more and help others who need it, and I hope others (Bronies or not) will jump in with us.”

        I already went over this enough, so I just point out DOING GOOD AND BRAGGING ABOUT IT PROVES THE OPPOSITE.

        “Thank you, and have a great day”

        No thank you for just proving yourself wrong. Not that bronies need helping doing that, but thank you anyways.

        If you do not like this fandom just ignore instead of writing multi-paragraph tirades against a FICTIONAL TV SHOW. Its not a big deal and just because there are some obnoxious fans does not make it bad. It is none of your business if we like TV show that you do not like.

        In reality who gives fuck I mean bronies wouldn’t brag and be seen as selfish bastards if haters didn’t put peer pressure on us, and haters wouldn’t be seen as total douches who are “perfect” if they didn’t hate on bronies, it goes both ways, both sides are as equally gray as the next.

        This is the logical fallacy of “false equivalency”. I’m pretty sure Bronies never spend time trying to convince non-bronies to literally commit suicide.

      Oops, I forgot one more thing I wanted to say. I may have what some people would call an “unhealthy obsession” with the show. But really, what’s the problem with spending my money on stuff I like based on a show I love? There are lots of other, unhealthier activities people people enjoy doing. I could go to the bar every night and spend 30-40 dollars getting hammered. I could take up smoking, and smoke a pack a day, putting all of my money into physically harming my body. I could do any of a thousand other things that “average” people do every day that are WAY more unhealthy and dangerous than collecting figures, shirts, and toys about colorful ponies.

      Thank you, again. 🙂

        Sadly, drinking problems are considered more acceptable than watching the “wrong” cartoons.

        Person pattersun says:

        I will just point out here that all that money that you are wasting on pony merch you could be donating and then bragging about donating it to charity.

        So yeah your still a pretty bad person.

Abber the Gr8 says:

One question a lot of non-bronies have is “How do bronies ever get into this stuff?” I recently became a Pegasister–I told my friends for the first time yesterday. I think my story is a fairly good example. Well, I used to be kind of anti-brony. This had little to do with the fact that MLP is a little girls’ show, it was mainly because when I was 8 years old I found a coloring book based of off the first generation of MLP (before FIM), which SUCKS, and I thought to myself “This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen”. In 2012 my friend Ethan (I have a few friends who are guys) told me he was a brony. I was pretty shocked, because in other ways he tries to be very macho. Also, he is a very nice person (otherwise we wouldn’t be friends :-b) so that disproved some of the things people had said about all bronies being trolls. A few days later I saw part of an MLP episode on YouTube and I realized that the show wasn’t so bad. In the summer of 2013 I was bored and watched a few MLP episodes on Netflix and thought about becoming a Pegasister. I liked the show but thought watching it at my age would be a bit weird. (Some food for thought for Bronies is that it can be harder for Pegasisters because when you’re a girl there isn’t a gender issue so people outside of the fandom notice your age more and think you’re just being immature.) That year another one of my friends told me that she was a Pegasister. This very winter break (tonight would be the last night but we’re having a snow day tomorrow (-: ) I was bored of my usual TV shows and due to peer pressure by my 2 MLP-loving friends I decided to give MLP another go. After a few episodes I realized I was absolutely in love with the show. I’ve already made a pony on Pony Creator and picked my favorite ponies (mainly Rainbow Dash, but also Dr. Whooves and Twilight Sparkle (-: ) and everything. (Some more food for thought: joining a fandom is like joining a religion–there may be a group of extremists who give you a bad name and ruin things for everyone.)

    I’m glad to hear that you liked it, though it would be fine if you didn’t either… I’m just happy you didn’t let “what will others think” be the reason to not watch. Though perhaps we should say “SOME” people treat it like a religion and ruin it for the rest of us. Religious types get a little bent out of shape when you suggest this comparison normally 😛

Interesting article.

I suppose I am a brony (the male variant), I mainly only watch the show itself though. (I don’t go to conventions or post about my little pony on the internet) I don’t subscribe to the more hardcore part of the fandom.

Ultimately I watch it because it can make me laugh, I like the characters, it’s clever and I feel good after watching it. I don’t think I need a reason beyond that.

My Problem is not with the show itself , my problem is that my 13 year old was welcomed into a Brony heard by adults pretending to be 15 and 16 years old. At first I didn’t think much of it , after all they were in other states beside our own, but suddenly I saw a big change in his personality, He was proclaiming to be a bisexual BRONY in love with a stranger online,” His soul mate”.I demanded an ID immediately, His so called soul mate sent me one that turn out to be fake, We had to act immediately!. It is a shame, the show seams very sensitive and full of creativity, but it is a play ground for perverts, that take advantage of young naive boys that need a place to fit in. I just want other parents out there to be super Vigilant with the My Little Pony society, some of them are not who they say they are!!!

    I hesitantly approved your comment if only to show the kind of nonsense we have to put up with. There is nothing about any form of entertainment that I know of that encourages the people who watch it to have sexual tendencies towards the target audience of said entertainment. The very idea is ludicrous in the extreme.

    That said, your warning that people should be aware of who their kids connect with online is valid… even if it has nothing at all to do with bronies in general. Predators will use anything the kids like: bands, sports, movies, whatever.

      Albert Waydan says:

      The show itself doesn’t encourage it, and of course the internet is generally a dangerous place for kids, but the fact that it is a show for kids with a fandom consisting of mostly adult males provides special ground for that to happen, and it’s so large that the risk is quite serious. Apart from sexual predators, there are also all kinds of delusional ideologies represented whom children can easily be influenced by.

    Just because some perverts who were pretending to be bronys did this, does this make real bronys bad?

      No true Scotsman logical fallacy.

      How do you know they are “perverts pretending to be bronies”? That is pretty much saying that bronies can’t be perverts and there are plenty of brony perverts. They aren’t hard to find.

Person pattersun says:

You know I figured I was done with you after our last little debate. I thought I never would see you again. I was wrong. During my nights of research I came across this little infographic that I felt was biased. It was made by someone on DA and there didn’t seem to be any way to get in contact with this person unless I were to make a DA account. Which is something I will never do. It wasn’t until I did a little more digging that I found out that the DA account belonged to you.

As I just mentioned I feel that this infographic had a lot of wrong information and the role of ” Mr. Angry Dude” was biased because the person behind him was a brony. I think Mr. Angry Dude will have no problem allowing me to speak for him in this little appeal. While this probably won’t get as much views as your little infographic I still felt the need to do this and to help Mr. Angry Dude out a bit.

“She was given authority to remake the show and she did: crafting a new world with characters and lore that kids and parents could both enjoy”

Well that was until Hasbro realized that she was overstepping the guidelines they put in place for her and started “stifling her creativity”(words from Lauren Faust on why she left the show on the extended interviews selection of the documentary “Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony) . Hasbro wanted her to bring the girls back. Her getting “parents” was just to be the icing on the cake.

“So Mr. Angry Dude, you can certainly see that there’s no issue with adults who enjoy something that was specifically made for them to enjoy. right?”
You would be right but as I have stated to you before Faust was just to recreate the show. When she wanted to introduce subjects and ideas that would clearly separate My Little Pony from girls show to a “family show” they starting shooting down ideas. Hasbro still owns the show. They still call the shows and until they day they decide otherwise they still want MLP to be a girls show. Hasbro’s network “The Hub” may be a family network but they still believe in old fashioned values. This isn’t bad per say, but let’s face it. MLP come on in a block of what is considered to be “a girls hour” then they split off in to the “boy hours” with shows like Transformers and what not. Then they head out into show meant for much older kids such as Goosebumps, but are still considerably “family friendly”.

“No problem. Let’s look at a variety of animations and their fans”

OH THIS WILL BE GOOD!!!!

“First, “Snow White and the seven Dwarves”. Despite being a little girls’ cartoon who’s heroine was a princess trying to find a boyfriend while avoiding her vain and jealous mother, it was an iconic success. It paved the way for thousands of animated movies over the course of the next 80 years: “Boys” movies (The Iron Giant”. “girls” movies (the princess and the frog). and ones designed for both at once (finding Nemo). These G Rated movies did as intended: entertain view of any age of gender”

You do realize that most of these movies (the ones by Disney at least) weren’t original ideas? Right? Technically Snow white was a fairy tale from the olden days. In fact most the fairy tales that Disney remade were remade to be more kid friendly due to the violence that was in the original versions. Realistically Disney didn’t create these movies for just little girls or just little boys. Disney has always been a family company.

“Moving to Japan, you see a thriving TV animation industry with shows classified broadly as (shoujo/girl’s shows) or shounen/boy’s shows. For decades, American anime fans face ridicule for watching these “little kids shows”…..”

LET ME STOP YOU RIGHT THERE!!!! First off I would like proof of this said “decades of ridicule” for watching these “little kids shows. For decades anime was widely unknown. It wasn’t until the advent of pokemon that most Americans started to learn that anime even existed. I know that there were a few handful of anime fans here and there, but they weren’t big enough to be noticed and “ridiculed”. Next thing is you are also forgetting one huge important factor. JAPAN IS CULTURALLY DIFFERENT THAN AMERICA. What does this mean? Well that is simple to explain. Let’s look at Detective Conan. This is purely a little kids show by JAPANESE STANDARDS. Japan’s standards are lower than American standards meaning that a little kids show like Detective Conan has violence, blood, and even partial nudity. Something that no American made kids show has had or will ever have. I certainly don’t remember any episode of Blue’s Clues where Steve and Blue had to solve a murder. What I am trying to say is even if this said “ridicule” did exist it was stopped as soon as it started because if I wanted to make fun of you for watching something like “Sailor Moon” and then you point out nude girls I am going shut up pretty fast. Most if not all Japanese animations are pretty adult (even the kids shows) compared to any American shows.

“And finally here are American Cartoons. The best of which purposefully use a combination of animation, design, voicing, story, and imagination to draw in viewers of varying gender and age.
So here’s the question: Is it “wrong” for an adult to enjoy the adorable characters in Powerpuff Girls because it s primary audience is kids? Is it wrong for a girl to enjoy the dark struggle and violence of Samurai Jack because “that’s for boys”?

No it isn’t wrong, but here you are talking about a different demographics. These are shows that are gender neutral. They might have more “boy” or “girl” attributes, but in the end they are meant to be watched by all. Adults included. These are basically just stories that are animated.

“There are more than 100 different names for fans of books, music, tv, radio, theater, political personalities and more. Fans adopting a group name isn’t “freaky”, it’s entirely ordinary.”

Well I could argue that people that like rap music or like certain plays don’t actually call themselves anything, but that would be just stupid of me. I am personally okay with naming ones group so no real arguments here.

“Having a lot of figures or symbols of your hobby is what passes for unhealthy obsession now? Because last I checked, that was pretty ordinary too.”

That was ordinary last time you checked? Wow when was that? NEVER? While it is true that there are people out there with lots of “symbols” or “figures” from said hobbies. That doesn’t mean people need to get everything related to a hobby. Take me for an example I like many things, but the things I am most involved with I only have a few items for. I could buy more, but why? If you love something that usually doesn’t mean you have to go out and buy every single piece of merchandise that comes from said hobby. In some ways yes. Having an extreme amounts of “symbols” or “Figures” from a hobby does mean you have a pretty unhealthy obsession. That means you are wasting most of you money to purchase said items because I seriously you doubt you are getting these items for free. A lot of these “symbols” or “Figures” can cost a quite a bit. If you go on eBay some items can sell for hundreds of dollars or more. While it is your money, if you are working hard just spend just about every dollar on a item because it is related to your “hobby” then there might just be something wrong with you. Otakus in Japan aren’t considered to be the greatest of people and most of them usually have quite of bit of merchandise from a certain anime or animes. Where does it say that you aren’t a fan just because you only own a few items that symbolize your love for a certain hobby?

“This guy runs a comics blog for his job and/or hobby. There’s a very good chance he has a comic-themed ringtone and computer wallpaper, a few t-shirts, and screen names. Has he let it become a huge part of his life? Uh… Yes. that’s what jobs and hobbies ARE. A big part of your life”

HA HA NO! A job is usually something that you either have to do or want to do to get by in life. A job is a way of earning a living. If you are spending all of your paychecks on items that don’t benefit your life it might come to a fast end. Hobbies are also not considered a BIG part of one’s life. A hobby is something one does to pass the time or something a person takes up because they are interested in a certain subject, like bird watching. People usually don’t let hobbies take control of their lives. If they do that usually means there is something wrong because one should never let a hobby take control of their life. You can’t get by on your love for (insert whatever here) alone.

“This vet is proud of his service and want you to know it. Like anyone who’s passionate about their job/hobby/group, they’ll most likely talk your ear off if given the opportunity. Yes There are some who will bring it up for no reason and be obnoxious about it, but that doesn’t mean most or even many will”

I bet that Vet isn’t obnoxious about it unless you start dissing the military or something. I pretty much said most of what I needed to already. No point in continuing on.

“…..If they didn’t, could they even be considered a fan in the first place?”

I already answered this question. Yes they can. Just because you don’t “obsess” over your hobby or whatever doesn’t make you any less or more of a fan than someone who does. Some fans can be completely content with just enjoying their hobby and keeping it to themselves. I don’t normally talk about my hobbies, and as I previously stated I only own a few items from the subject that I am really involved in. At a glance you wouldn’t even know that I like these subjects unless you asked me. You can’t say that I am not a fan of whatever just because I don’t talk about it non-stop or have a shrine in my home dedicated to my hobby/ies.

“That’s the funny thing about events where fans gather, the odds increase that you’ll see “extreme” fans. Not that it’s extreme for some people to dress up (especially at conventions) but there’s ALWAYS a few outfits that make the fandom look bad”

This is true. No arguments really.

“…. In my line of work, we call this “Cyber Bulling”: An activity that has led to countless tears, trauma, and several causes of suicide.”

You started off strong and then you started going the “cyber bully” route. I don’t really feel like making a 10 page paper about how cyber bullies have no real power, so all I am going to say is this. If you are stupid enough to allow someone who you have never seen before, who you can block out with the simple push of a button or click of the mouse to cause you tears, trauma, or be a cause of suicide then you probably deserved it . Unlike real bullies, Cyber bullies are limited to the internet which you can turn off at any point in time. Unless you are really stupid and gave out your real information on the net in which case you then did truly deserve all that happened to you because most kids learn from their parents at a early age TO NOT TALK TO STANGERS! Just because you are on the internet doesn’t mean all of those rules and lessons your parents taught you can suddenly go out the window.

“Out of curiosity, do you know Erin Esurance? The sleek carton spy served as a company mascot for a little while, but was soon retired. Why? Because Esurance had apparently never heard of Rule 34, an absolute law of the internet which states: “If it exists, there’s porn of it”. Because she was only a mascot and had no tv show or comic, the only pictures of her online where Esurance issued and porn. Guess which came up first in any search results.”

You know what is funny about Rule 34? It actually isn’t as absolutes as everyone likes to think. I know of quite a few things that haven’t been “34’d” yet. Why haven’t they been hit but this so called “absolute” law of the net? Because Rule 34 survives on knowledge. To put it simply if it isn’t huge enough or well known enough Rule 34 can’t and won’t touch it. It also is smart to not go to random sites on the net and say “HEY THERE IS NO RULE 34 OF X SO YOUR RULE FAILS!” That is why Rule 35 of the net also exists. It states “if there no porn of X at the time it will be made”. Again it can only be made though if someone request for it to be made or claims that there is none because sometimes people will make 34 of stuff just to spite people and to keep Rule 34 “absolute”.

“Even obscure Characters have porn because it only takes one person with artistic skill to make Rule 34 content. But some shows strike people artistically and inspire more fanart than others (ex Pokemon, Gravity falls, Sonic the Hedgehog, and, yes, the new My little pony). The larger the number of artistically inclined fans there are for any show, the more fanart there is, and the more Rule 34 art there will be.”

Yes exactly. This is what I pretty much just said. Rule 34 only applies as long as a certain subject has a big following and as you stated “artistically inclined” people. Remember art is hard and therefore not every subject has people that are artistically inclined. Let’s go a little deeper though into this subject. While you can easily say that rule 34 is a (bad) part of every fandom that doesn’t mean you have to accept or be okay with this aspect. In fact most fandom’s don’t condone the Rule 34 side of the fandom. Then there is Bronies. They do. That there is the problem. You bronies might not have control over Rule 34, but that doesn’t mean you have to be okay with or condone the bronies that make the stuff. Yet you do. Tara strong is has pretty much given the thumbs up to “cloppers” on numerous occasions. When Howard Stern did some interviews with some cloppers at a brony con instead being embarrassed or ashamed of those fans Tara strong just slapped the cloppers on the their wrist by saying “don’t talk to Howard Stern” as if HE was the bad guy there and what the cloppers were doing was completely normal and fine. Then there is the brony documentary “Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony”. A well known “Clop artist” by the name of John Joseco was interviewed. While I am not saying they should have put him in the documentary as a “target” or some sort object that bronies need to attack. They also shouldn’t have allowed someone like him (especially since I am pretty sure there are plenty of brony artist that don’t make porn) to be interviewed. That was the same as basically giving him a thumbs up or a high five FOR MAKING RULE 34. You don’t give praise to these people just because they are “in the fandom”. You don’t have to attack them, but acting like what they do is okay makes you (and your fandom) look guilty by association.

I think I am done here because if you don’t want to listen any more that makes YOU the bad guy. Why? because you are refusing to listen to logic and are instead crying “persecution” or “Discrimination” when me and Mr. Angry dude are just trying to prove our points. Mr. Angry dude might be a little ignorant, but everyone starts out that way. You as a brony have a job to try to educate just as much as I have a job to also educate, but on the other side of the coin.

It is funny these little encounters feel like that one book that was based off some real life event. I can’t for the life of me remember what the book was called but I remember it was about the old south in small hardcore Christian town. A teacher came in and started to teach evolution. This was a great upset to the town folk and the teacher was arrested and put on trial. The prosecutor was this big time Reverend. The defense lawyer was this hardcore atheist. The story was mostly about the trial. Due to the town being so Christian you would think everyone was in favor of the Reverend to win. It even seemed like he would win. When the defense started though all bets where out. In the end the teaching of ” Evilution ” (evolution) was allowed and the Reverend lost to most people’s surprise. Then if memory serves the Reverend died from a heart attack (from the great shock to his loss) and in a added twist it turned out that the defense lawyer wasn’t a atheist but actually a very devout Christian man himself.

The only difference here is there is no twist with me.

    Well… This is a really long comment and I do like to give proper attention to comments, but you do realize that you’re critiquing an old version of my infographic right?

    I’d rather not go into a detailed defense of an argument I’m no longer trying to make, but if you want to have any in-depth discussion, I can be found on http://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony fairly easily.

    If you don’t have an account there either and you really feel like you need to debate this issue, we can discuss a better platform (a blog comment doesn’t lend itself well to threaded conversations)

    Here’s the new one for your review:
    http://nimaru.deviantart.com/art/The-Problem-With-Being-A-Brony-372768705

      Person Pattersun says:

      Okay. How do I find you on that site. While I consider myself “internet savvy” that site seems a bit confusing.

      Person Pattersun says:

      Also you should probably take down that old infographic if you no longer believe in those arguments.

      As for you new one it is better, but on points #4,#6, and #7 my point still stands or at least somewhat stands since they didn’t change that much from your orginal. It especially still stands on #7. Yeah Rule 34 exist on just about everything, but that doesn’t mean the bronies should embrace it and accept it like they do. None of the ofther fandoms say “rule 34 exists on X?!?!? ALRIGHT!!! I love those people that make that stuff!!!!!!”

      Where in a lot of bronies case they do. Yeah you don’t have leave a fandom because this stuff is around, but accepting should never be a option. I found another blogger not to long ago proving this point as well. He said cloppers still be considered bronies. He gave some valid points on why they should be, but to make a long story short there is more cons to accept the people that make RULE 34 than there is PROs.

      Person pattersun says:

      “Rule 34 folks are a small part of any fandom. Bronies included.”

      Haha wow. Are you really that clueless? You right that they are a “small part” of just about every fandom BUT the brony fandom.

      Bronies DO embrace Rule 34 more so than every other fandom or did you miss the self proclaimed “brony queen” tweet AKA Tara Strong.
      She is a BIG NAME some what famous VA who voice THE MAIN CHARACTER of Twilight Sparkle on the show has she is FOR CLOPPERS. That means she is embracing Rule 34. Rule 34 isn’t a small part of the brony community. Especially when you have your very on VA supporting Rule 34, not once but on 3 separate occasions.

      The website that sell brony themed t-shirts supports Rule 34 artist.

      Your very own Brony documentary not only has a part were they recognize cloppers (rule 34 basically), but there is even a part where one rule 34 artist is interviewed. He is chosen over the who knows how many brony artist there are out there that probably don’t promote or make Rule 34 art. This Documentary was paid for by the Brony community in a kick start project. That means bronies were completely okay with who or what went into this documentary.

      Don’t tell mean Rule 34 is a “small part” of the brony community when no other community embraces rule 34/cloppers as much as the brony community does.

      Unless you have some evidence of Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford or one of the actors from star trek series saying “I love you rule 34 artist!!!”

        There’s no need to call me names just because I disagree. Maybe I could agree there’s a lot of R34 stuff, but the brony fandom is enormous, thus, percentage-wise, I don’t see that r34 is any more prevalant than any other fandom. If you disagree, I’d be curious what your logic is. A single voice actor, a website that sells it, and a documentary that mentions it is not evidence of anything other than that it exists.

        Person pattersun says:

        I didn’t call you a name unless asking if you are “clueless” is insulting now in which case. I am sorry?

        “A single voice actor,”

        Umm a single VA that is important to the show. She isn’t just some random nobody. She actually voices a lot of kid show characters as well. As show she has a certain public rep that she had to up hold. You don’t see other VAs of kids show promoting R34 or even bringing it up. They know that the people that look up to them and the networks/show they represent are at steak. It would be different if Tara strong was just some random VA that only showed up on the show once. Except she isn’t she voice many POPULAR cartoon characters and has even stated that she is against “Porn” and would never do it. Then she goes and start giving R34 the thumbs up. Yeah your not making the show, network, or yourself look good when you start acting this way.

        Take Miley Cyrus for an example. Look at the way she has been acting lately. Disney won’t ever acknowledge her again from the moment she started to act the way she has been. Back when she was Hanna Montana Disney wanted to be affiliated with her. Now that she is who she is you won’t ever see Disney’s name any near her.

        “A website that sells it,”

        Again a popular website. You keep missing the fact that these aren’t just little small things they are big things that everyone KIDS and ADULTS know about. You aren’t separating yourself from the bad if you selling or promote the bad.

        “and a documentary that mentions it is not evidence of anything other than that it exists.”

        For the document you might have me there because the I have heard two things about the documentary. While the documentary was SUPPOSED to be created for the average person who knows NOTHING about bronies I have seen a lot of people say it was created for the sole purpose ego rubbing for bronies themselves. If that is the case then you are right.

        BUT

        If the documentary was created for the average person who knows nothing about bronies and want to learn about them. Talking about the bad parts of your fandom and then promoting something who is affiliated with the bad parts of the fandom is a way to bring people to your side. I am not going to make a documentary about the wonders and joys of X religion and then have Nazis or Grand Wizard of the KKK talk about how great my god is or whatever. You don’t say your good by using bad.

      I was a brony for a year or two.. I noticed a lot of Rule 34 too, but most of it was coming out from 4chan and tumblr’s. I did not support Rule 34 in any way, neither I know a brony-friend (have many) who supports it. It seems like Rule34-fandom is small but very loud. I’m actually seeing more furries (if that’s what they’re called, not sure where did they come from) R34 than Brony’s R34..

      Also, it seems like you’re seeing what you want to see. Tara Strong does not support cloppers, she already told them to keep their fantasies in closet and stop sharing/talking about it.
      Websites selling t-shirts doesn’t discriminate and explore the artist’s history, they just sell what others might buy. I haven’t seen a t-shirt shop selling R34 shirts.
      Brony documentary mentioned the rule 34, but nothing more.. Only that it exists, just like in any other fandom. Bronies had no idea what’s going to be in documentary, they just knew that the documentary is going to be made by one of the VA (Discord). It’s a documentary, obviously they should mention such things, but it’s good they didn’t bother explaining more.
      About which artist are you talking? Does he really made so much R34 that the title of him is “R34 Artist” and was the interview about it? Or maybe he’s a famous artist/video maker of community with some hidden r34 pictures on tumblr? I don’t see why not interview him because of that.. Should everyone ignore and abuse you because you had thoughts about having sex with your sister?
      Also, as far as I noticed, bronies disliked the Brony Documentary.

      You’re seriously overreacting and seeing what you want to see.
      “Cloppers” make up an insignificant, yet very loud and obnoxious, minority of the fanbase which sticks out because people and media like to talk about them.

        Person pattersun says:

        “Also, it seems like you’re seeing what you want to see.”

        No I am seeing the what I am seeing. I don’t want to see this. This is just want I am finding simply, but just doing normal research that any person can do. I am not specifically looking for this stuff. This is just what pops up when going to brony websites and reading their discussions.

        A good example of this is a recent one based off a character from a season 4 episode. Apparently some dying teen got the make-a-wish foundation to get Hasbro to put either him or his OC on an actual episode. Nothing wrong there. Where the discussion got interesting is what happened next. His mother posted a simple request that the fandom not doing anything “dirty” with her son’s character that was in the episode. Again a simple valid request. I wouldn’t want my dying kids stuff perverted. Instead of just it just ending there it continued by talking about how the kid actually posted that his mom was in the wrong for making such a request and gave the fandom the “okay” to do whatever they wanted.
        The mother even apologized for making the original request.

        Now I really can’t so to much about this because this is one possibly seriously messed up dying kid, but at the same this is just more proof a brony perversion and certainly doesn’t show up as a positive on the brony fandom. To any outsider that finds out about this will see this as “wow even dying bronies that have their dreams come true are completely sick and disgusting”.

        “Tara Strong does not support cloppers, she already told them to keep their fantasies in closet and stop sharing/talking about it.”

        Your wrong there. All tweets weren’t negative towards cloppers. They were all a sort of “just keep it to yourself”. Just like when Howard Stern talked to them. She should have responded with either – A. No response or B. something along the lines of what you just said and that she doesn’t support cloppers. Instead she responded with “keep quiet”. Yeah that doesn’t sound like she doesn’t “support” them to me. That sounds like she is all for them, but would prefer that they just not be so “open” about it.

        “Websites selling t-shirts doesn’t discriminate and explore the artist’s history, they just sell what others might buy.”

        yeah and they need to check that out incase you have r34 artist on your site. I don’t see to many sites that are legit selling items from artist or creators that are in the “porn” or “R34” fields. This is a legit site and ignorance isn’t a excuse for selling merch from r34 artist. It is their responsibility to as a legitimate business to make sure that everything they sell is on the up and up. Otherwise I should have no problem seeing nothing but x-rated items on their site. Clearly they do some sort of background check or quality assurance so that when some one signs up with them they don’t instantly approve sex wares and the like.

        “I haven’t seen a t-shirt shop selling R34 shirts.”

        Exactly they aren’t selling r34 shirts, but for some reason they are selling shirts by r34 artist. They either know what they are doing this and don’t care or they don’t know what they are doing and hoping for the best. Either way they are in the wrong as a legitimate site that caters to both kids and adults.

        “Brony documentary mentioned the rule 34, but nothing more.. Only that it exists, just like in any other fandom.”

        Yeah they didn’t need to do this. If you notice it was forced. It wasn’t like they said “now lets bring up some of the dark points of the fandom that we don’t like BUT have to deal with”.

        “Bronies had no idea what’s going to be in documentary, they just knew that the documentary is going to be made by one of the VA (Discord). It’s a documentary, obviously they should mention such things, but it’s good they didn’t bother explaining more.”

        No not really because again.

        A. It represents them. If they had no control over this and knew that how would they know that the documentary wasn’t secretly some sort of troll thing that was only going to talk about the bad?

        B. By not explaining more you are going to have people who NOW HAVE QUESTION wanting to find out more. These people are going to find these answer on the net most likely meaning they are going to see what a clopper is or what they do and you just turned you “great nice fandom” into something perverted. Especially since they do mentioned it and not talk about how they don’t want anything to do with it. If I had no clue what a brony was, watched the documentary, and heard about a clopper my first reaction is going to go to Google. The first thing I am going to see is most likely the urban dictionary definition for what a clopper is. Now Google results change all the time, but if that is the first result I am not going to know about “pony erotica”. Doing more research I am going to find out how a bunch of 15-40+ year old pleasure themselves to cartoon ponies that were designed for little girls. I don’t know about you but know matter how I read what I just wrote that doesn’t come off as a positive. By not acknowledging that they were against in the documentary and promoting a clop artist I am only going to come to the conclusion that cloppers are accepted and loved in the fandom. Again this doesn’t make the fandom look good at all.

        “About which artist are you talking? Does he really made so much R34 that the title of him is “R34 Artist” and was the interview about it? Or maybe he’s a famous artist/video maker of community with some hidden r34 pictures on tumblr?”

        Well if you have seen the documentary you would know of whom I was talking about but for the sake of argument I will say his name. It is John Joseco or something like. He is famous for many r34 pictures as well as a the (now defunct) princess molestia tumblr. The only reason why that tumblr is defunct is because the story goes that some hardcore feminist blew the whistle on him to Hasbro. Again most the fandom seemed to react more against the whistle blower than the guy who was creating a blog that was pretty much about rape and from the few images I have seen I was pretty graphic.

        Again those this goes back to my original point. You don’t want some one WHO DRAWS PERVERTED pictures of kids shows representing your fandom. While he does or did draw SFW stuff he was mostly known for his NSFW art and this tumblr about a cartoon pony “molesting” other characters in the show.

        Hell I think I even remember reading that another of the shows VA’s took a picture from this guys tumblr and posted it on their twitter for Thanksgiving. The difference between this VA and Tara Strong is they had no clue about the guy and once they were alerted to this guys perverted ways and the actual meaning behind the picture she posted she took it down right away and said nothing more about it.

        “I don’t see why not interview him because of that.. Should everyone ignore and abuse you because you had thoughts about having sex with your sister?”

        Again the difference there is I am not telling everyone about my “thoughts” about having a incestuous relationship with my sister. I am not BTW and don’t know where that example came from but whatever.

        “Also, as far as I noticed, bronies disliked the Brony Documentary.”

        And yet the funded it and it isn’t all bronies. I have seen mixed reviews. Some love it and other hated it. I heard there is also a sequel in the works.

        “You’re seriously overreacting and seeing what you want to see.”

        No I am only seeing what I AM SEEING. Like I said nothing I have said here in my reply to your or in my previous reply is hard to find. This is all common and easy to find in the brony community if you only spend a couple of minutes there.

        ““Cloppers” make up an insignificant, yet very loud and obnoxious, minority of the fanbase which sticks out because people and media like to talk about them”

        Not really and if this was the actual case as I mentioned before it shouldn’t be hard to for the bronies that aren’t cloppers (who claim they are the majority) to speak up against cloppers if they were truly the majority.

        There are plenty of fandoms out there. Why is that only the brony community seems to have a more prevalent r34 community when most other fandoms are either as big or even bigger than the brony community? I don’t see or hear anything about Star wars r34 community. If anything the only news I have been seeing in the Starwars community is the collective excitement to the name episode 7 “the force awakens”. Same for marvel. I hear plenty of people talking about the shows/movies or soon to be movies. I don’t here people talking about all the great porn that will soon be made from said marvel movies.

Fjord Prefect says:

I have plenty of familiarity with the show as I have two girls, 5 and 8, who love MLPFIM and I’ve watched more than my share of the program just as I have with Dora, Blues Clues, et. al. But I just don’t get the brony thing. There are plenty of kids shows that I do enjoy that are probably deserving of some geek love, Phineas and Ferb or SpongeBob, for example. But MLP isn’t even that good or funny or clever, certainly not enough to somehow justify masses of adult male fans. But what’s most odd is that there aren’t really any adult FEMALE fans of the show, at least not enough to coin a name like “bronies.” Maybe “shonies?” And it isn’t a nostalgia thing either. I personally love the 80s D&D kids’ cartoon and even own the boxed set, but I grew up with it. It was my favorite cartoon when I was 9 or 10. But bronies seem to be people who discovered the show for the first time as adults. I have nothing against these people as I myself am into tons of stupid things, I just don’t get the appeal of MLPFIM. When my kids pop the ponies on the TV, that’s my signal to go do something else, like catch up on some Strawberry Shortcake. Just kidding.

    Well I certainly see why you’d feel that way, though you’ve very, very wrong about the lack of female bronies and if it weren’t funny or clever, there wouldn’t BE bronies, right? You’re right about Phineas and Ferb though… That show is absolute genius.

    Person Pattersun says:

    FYI you are about half right there. There is certainly more male fans than female fans, but female fans do exist and call themselves “pegasisters” usually. Although I have read where some don’t like that name and do still take on the name of “brony/ies”.

[…] Another crazy article has popped up defending our pony obsession! Find it here. […]

Well, hey I’ve been a brony for a while and I’m super popular, don’t let anypony put you down for your beliefs!

From Lauren’s Faust response to Constitutional:

“Every single fandom has an unsavory faction within it. There are creepy sci-fi, scary sports fans and people who think it’s fun to defile anything that is important to someone else.”

Note that last one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r6HamSoz2w

Okay, I got the point of this article, but there was one HUGE mistake. Backyardigans is NOT, and let me repeat NOT, a “fluff & stuff” kiddie show. It’s just as misunderstood as MLP! Watch “International Super Spy,” where Uniqua captures and ties up Tasha just so Pablo will come over with chocolate milk. Or “Robin Hood the Clean,” when Austin locks up the others’ belongings and fights Pablo for the items (by throwing objects, not bloody). I recommend you watch an episode so that BackyardiFans like me aren’t offended – we’re going through the same trauma as misunderstood Bronies go through when we hear this kind of thing! Sheesh.

    I went by look and the bits I’ve seen so maybe I misjudged it. Sorry about that 🙁

      Dec Browne says:

      There’s also a small older cult following for Thomas, another one of your ‘baby show’ examples. Check out The Railfan Brony Blog or Scratchpad Wiki.

1. We all know that the show is fucking trash… Say that they put in jokes only adult would understand is retarded, almost 90% pf all childen tv shows have jokes and themes only adults would understand. And they do this because the creators are bord, so they make jokes that they find funny. 2. The only reason you say you like it, is so you can fit in somewhere, most bronies are fat, ugly, neckbearded, retards, who have daddy issus, grow the fuck up, start losing weight, start going to the gym. Get yourself a motorbike and be a fucking man, when you do this fucking faggot shit you’ll never get laid! Grow some balls kids.

Dec Browne says:

Thomas as a small older crowd too.

Stephenson’s Rocket, one of history’s first locomotives has appeared on Thomas. Call that fluff?

Number 6 wasn’t really an answer.
And Bronies will always be weirdos I remember being made fun of when I was little by boys “My Little Pony, Skinny and Bony”. Did you know the first My Little Pony was called My Pretty Pony, what if they kept it to that name instead of My Little Pony. Would the internet start Bronies?

The world has changed.

Just remember the world has changed and you would’ve been teased in the past for liking it. Bronies didn’t exist before Friendship is Magic.

Wow, so this article has been around for a good long while, and still applies quite nicely. I think I’ll be keeping the link with me for times I get attacked.

I love the way people keep going with the oversaturation argument. “I can’t go anywhere without seeing it!” They say. Funny. I can’t go to work without hearing about “Game of Thrones”. I can’t open CNN’s website, or Facebook, or… just about anyplace I go, without hearing about it. It is something I hate to no end. I hate the sheer hopelessness and darkness it brings about.

And yet, I would never, WOULD NEVER attack another person for liking it, no matter how annoying they became about it (and many a person has tested that patience).

I got into MLP because it gave me a bright light to focus on when I was feeling down and depressed. I stayed for everything else.

Thomas? Fluff? This ought to change your mind!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aRjd-kWaTOg

Well first off Thomas and Friends is way better than MLP. It isn’t one of those fluffy kids shows or whatever you people think it is. Just look at the classic series. Second off I would have to admit the MLP fandom is really bad. It’s basically a typical fandom but kinda worse. :/

GordonNumberFour says:

If Thomas is babyish, explain this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXeu8kjI0W8

Dec Browne says:

The saddest part is that the ‘cringe’ our fandom gets isn’t limited to fully malicious people. I have a friend in my French class who is usually very friendly and we often greet each other in the language. Yesterday, we had a lesson on ‘les stéréotypes de genre’ (gender stereotypes), I mentioned how I discovered Bronies and became one back in 2014, and she wasn’t acting like a 10-year-old boy about it (‘Hey nerd, that’s a BABY SHOW!’), but she did seem to be finding the topic rather awkward. It turned out it was from a previous experience she’d had with some NSFW MLP fanart that had been stolen by a Reddit user in what she thinks may have been r/MakeMeSuffer. My friend apologised, but it still shows what this whole culture of hatred can do to otherwise decent people.

You should update this article to It “WAS” a menace but now it is just a bad memory in people’s past. In most cases, literally, as even people that hated mlp have forgotten about it and people that love it have also forgotten about it. It was just a dream that ended back in 2019 when the show finally ended. The con ended I think a year or two before the show proving how well the tweet by “bronycon” about how they will go on for 10+ years aged very VERY badly.

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