Sociopath Community

Turncoat just wrote the E-true Hollywood story on My Little Ponies . Interesting read though, thanks!

I looked into Bronies for a time, so I'll shed some light on what's going on.

The series briefly involved Lauren Faust, who has worked on shows such as The Maxx, Powerpuff Girls, Codename Kids Next Door, Iron Giant, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and other projects. Now despite some of those titles, if you look into her work she's actually surprisingly good at making the most of some hard to swallow mediums. She was the only thing making My Little Pony even remotely tollerable, which becomes more than obvious when she leaves the show after a season or two. A common theme in her shows is repressed psychological damage in the characters that each have their breaking point spotlit for the audience to enjoy at least once per one. She's also quite good with comedic timing and some entertaining appropriations of comedy tropes.

The show's popularity sprung pretty hard with the help of 4chan. Whether ironically or literally enjoyed, they could not shut up about it. They ran away with it to the point of snagging background ponies the computer auto-generated and gave them fan-names, like Derpy Hooves who was known for a computer draw error that caused crossed eyes, and Lyra who was known for sitting upright in a scene with no lines, and occasionally a referential take such as "Dr Hooves" being a Dr Who parody. There's fanfic writings about background ponies all over the place from the fandom being so over the top that it inspired others to follow suit. Once the fandom had more college kids than children watching it, they began to cater to those fans instead, something that proved surprisingly easy to do since some of the writers are fairly internet savvy.

Inevitably the fandom began making names for themselves (Bronies, Pegasisters, etc), and from there we began to see more genre splicing of subcultures. This means it began to blend into crowds such as Furries in a more than obvious way. It was an easy to appropriate piece of pop culture that could feasibly blend with almost anything, so naturally certain types began to run their own direction with it like what's become of some of the darker corners of Sonic the Hedgehog fandom. Most fandom when it hits critical mass tends to go in some bizarre directions, My Little Pony simply sticks out because it's a girly children's show doing it with bright and gaudy color choices. Most of the fandom has passed, but the diehard crazies can't seem to let it go that their show's essentially been dead since a few episodes into season two at most.

My personal opinion on the show? The first season and a little of season two is somewhat tolerable if you ignore the baby-character arcs and zone out through the really hard to stomach songs. With company it's a little more tolerable as long as they don't fucking sing along with the damn songs, as it makes it easier to wait for the parts where the cast go insane. The little things like referring to "everybody" as "everypony", a town being called "Equestria", and the Mayor being named "Mayor Mare" start off a bit painful, but after the sheer oversaturation of pony puns it becomes B Movie level comedy where it borderlines on the absurd.

If you want an idea from a fairly well informed outsider, I reccomend watching the episode of Bob's Burgers titled The Equestrinauts. It sums up some elements of the fandom pretty well with parody by showing it through the perspective of a non-fan having to be a mole within an offshoot of Brony subculture.

The Lauren Faust portion explains how it could keep a hold of some more discerning people, while the 4chan fandom allowing it to mutate explains other portions of it.

Cartoons aren't just for kids anymore, and even ones that are these days often incorporate elements meant for the adults watching it to keep the parents onboard and draw in other types of fans. Beyond that, it went viral and created it's own sense of community through it, so much of what you're seeing is fairly independent of the show itself, using it more like a banner than anything.

There's also always Know Your Meme and many many articles attempting to understand what's going on without it being said in the perspective of the Bronies themselves, but it's really not any more complicated than other fandoms. It had an initial draw, the fans mutated it, subcultures grabbed onto it, it became what you see in front of you like many things before it (although Bronies became a bit louder from the notion seeming more absurd on the surface than Whovians or Trekkies).

Many of them embrace the loudness as a charm of it's own, but much of it's stuff carried over from the fans more than the show itself.

Interesting stuff and all Turn. You explained how people became fans, and interesting facts about the history, but the why is less explained. What exactly appeals to adult people about the show? Is it a need to feel like children again?

its "unique" and trendy,people want to feel different.and the lgbt community gives them a great platform to "express themselves"

by Alena

D:

I bet he wishes he were that somepony of their dreams.

So much cringe, and this is only the first season's worth:



I think it triggers some sort of weird primitive brain function in people, appeal to emotion, or something, as even people who'd normally have their wits about them I saw fall prey to it like some sort of sickness. I was stuck at points watching in horror as all of my roommates sang along with it... loudly. The transition from skeptic to braindead fan was like night and day, and seemed to strike them remarkably quickly.

Some sort of brainwash element is in the songs, I just can't find where it's hidden.

As a Brony, the short version is simply: it's a less-than-wholly-shitty tv show, and we're human beings.

People get fanatical about everything. Google it.
When some people get fanatical about a thing they like, they mix it with their sex life. There's even a "rule" about it. Google it.

It's not a special phenomena, it's just gotten special focus because of over-saturation:

1. We're moving into a social standard of living that is higher in tolerance and lower in conformity, so many males are more willing to look at things that don't have sharks and barbed wire painted on them.
2. Right now the primary driving force behind social everything is people aged teen - early thirties, this group is mostly made up of people who have 0 fucks to give about what society thinks of them or their interests, and care more about being happy than being liked. The first half of this group are from the "Look at me!" generation, so they've documented every single instance of deviancy better than any fandom before them.
3. The rest of the world is made up of either people who don't give a shit, or people who think everyone should conform to a specific standard of behavior, and all of these types seem to lose their shit over the idea of a grown-up man watching a show for not-grown-up girls.... because reasons. So they point at it and post it and say "Look!! Look at these weirdos!!!" until, with them combined with attention whores, everyone got sick of hearing about it.

"Is this similar to the pillow waifu thing?"