I’ve recently discovered there is a fandom devoted to my little pony. This by itself isnt strange, but their demographic is- guys in their thirties.
So whats the appeal? And why does it seem like these fandoms take a creepy turn in 5 seconds flat? Deviant art and tumblr is choked with creepy, oversexualized fan art.
I’ve been wondering about that myself. It seems utterly counterintuitive.
There is a substantial fanbase for *Walter the Farting Dog *books among men in their twenties. That I can understand.
There was a bronie thread started a while back. I read the first few posts and thought:
a) There were typos.
b) All the posters were drunk.
c) It was referring to something that I had absolutely no prior knowledge of.
I suspect all three were correct.
It’s a SomethingAwful thing. I don’t find the fad any more incomprehensible than liking other shows with fictitious non-human characters (like Smurfs, or Gummi Bears).
It’s a good, well written show. And now the Internet is huge enough so that people can communicate their love of the show. I don’t think it’s the first show that seems like it should be for little kids that has garnered adult attention. The Powerpuff Girls (which Pony creator Lauren Faust also worked on) as I recall also had adult fans but Internet memes weren’t what they are now so I don’t think it caught on in quite the same way.
You gotta remember, tho, it’s not that all of a sudden dudes started liking a girls’ toy from the 80s.
What happened was that the lady who did Power Puff Girls got the rights to make a new cartoon based on these girls’ toys from the 80s and she did a nice job with the cartoon, making it a bit “hip” and “edgy” and something both kids and parents would like.
Remember, even though you and I are in our 30s (yeah? About to be?) and childless, a lot of dudes in their 30s have kids. And they watch kid shows. And some of those dudes have daughters and their daughters want to watch cartoons so the dudes say “Well what do little girls like? Uhhh…My Little Pony?” (cuz that’s what little girls liked when these 30-somethings were kids) and they see there’s a MLP cartoon on so they watch it with their daughters and it turns out the show is good so they become fans.
Or Bronies.
Also, hipsters without kids like the “irony” of being a bronie.
I’m not diregarding that the show is well made, but rather the obsessiveness of the fans. I dont knorr what it is about certain things that cause people to get crazy and weird about a subject.
For example, I’ve mer plenty of football fans. But none of them are 'shipping Tim Tebow, Joe Montana, and John Madden in a lemon fanfic and doodling graphic depictions of them having graphic gay sex on deviant art.
Ah, well I used to watch The Power Puff Girls with my kids and it actually was good!
Mojo Jojo!
I can understand watching it, I can understand liking it, but I can’t understand dressing up like magical rainbow ponies and going to conventions.
I actually enjoy the show but yeah, not obsessed. Those who ‘rule 34’ the show are a world apart from most ‘bronies’, I think.
It’s not just guys in their thirties; a lot of my friends of university age (early twenties) are bronies too.
ETA: I don’t think they dress up or do “Rule 34” stuff, but they’re certainly pretty obsessed with the show, and continually exchanging MLP meme images and the like on Facebook.
It’s mostly that it started on /co/ (4Chan) and moved to be, and gore and porn are the prevailing culture on /b/. Note that brony derived from /b/rony, hinting at its origins. Also there’s a lot of bronies like me who like the show fine without the disturbing gore fics and sex stuff. Also, bronies aren’t just in their 30s (not sure where that necessarily came from), my experience is that while 30yo males make up a large part of it, there’s a very large number of teenagers and twenty somethings too. Know Your Meme has a good breakdown of the history:
Powerpuff Girls was done by somebody (not a lady, I think)called Craig McCracken. (I know this because I had young daughters during the 1990s.) The prime mover behind My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic appears to be one Lauren Faust. From a quick glance at the respective Wikipedia pages, I do not see any common members of the two shows’ production teams.
I don’t get the Brony thing either. We didn’t have Puffies back in the ‘90s (so far as I am aware). I have seen it put down to mass unemployment - too many guys at home all day with nothing to do but watch kids’ TV - but I don’t know. It does not explain why they fixed on this show. Presumably there is a large dose of irony involved. (I certainly hope so!)
Lauren Faust is the wife of Craig McCracken and she is known to have had a very large part in the production of the Powerpuff Girls, I know this is common knowledge but I have no cite. She had more involvement on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends which is the other very good show that the new MLP derives influence from.
ETA: From Lauren’s Wikipedia article:
Why? What’s wrong with liking My Little Pony? I mean, yes, most bronies are self aware that it’s a show for little girls – but no, most of them don’t like the show ironically the way hipsters drink PBR and wear atrocious clothing ironically, most legitimately like the show.
I thought that “brony” was a portmanteau of “bro” or “brother” and “pony”. Deriving from /b/ would leave the ‘r’ unexplained.
And really, is it any weirder than, say, the Star Trek fandom (which also inspires cosplay at conventions and Rule 34)? There are a lot of fandoms comparable to this one. I think bronies just get more publicity for their oddities because people who aren’t familiar with the show consider the existence of a fandom for it to be an oddity in itself.
It does come form “bro” and “pony”, but originally it came from /b/rony, /b/ro, like /b/tard is a (perhaps less common) way of referring to people from /b/.
I blame Robot Unicorn Attack for making girly stuff manly.
I suspect the Venn diagrams of men who like My Little Pony and men who like anime with little girls overlaps a lot.
Perhaps, though it did start out on /co/, which is the part of 4chan which DOESN’T seem to like anime. But I mean, “anime with little girls” is sort of a broad genre…