My Little Pony
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a children’s cartoon, aimed at young girls, that for some reason has a cult-like following from grown men and teenaged boys everywhere. There are many questions as to why this happened and the internet is always buzzing about the phenomenon that is, bronies.
Most of the brony population is made up of older men, teenaged boys, and girls of the same age range speckled in between. The cartoon budded on 4chan, a popular forum, introducing a large amount of people to the show. From there, they were hooked. Why? Some fans say that they can relate to the show, others say they stay for the smooth animation, delightfully composed jingles and silly jokes. Quickly, MLP:FiM became a show known for its fan base.
The people behind the show know about bronies. Multiple conventions solely dedicated to the show exist where voice actors, directors and producers come out to meet their fans. Even John de Lancie, the voice of Discord, produced a documentary on bronies. (You can watch this on Netflix!)
Non-bronies across the web look at the multicolored horses and it leaves a bad taste in their mouths. Bronies are unfortunately typically labeled as creeps. While the brony population consists of many talented musicians, animators, fan-artists and people in general, the group is labeled as disgusting due to the large amount of…well, porn of these magical horses online.
You read that right. Porn. While there are fans that produce beautiful age appropriate content, there are also a group of “bad seeds” that draw, animate and write sexual activity happening between the characters of the show. Though stupid cartoon porn exists for everything on the Internet, (and I mean EVERYTHING,) the MLP:FiM porn is a problem mainly because artists weren’t flagging their posts. Because of this not-safe-for-work images of ponies were seeping through Google Images, where young girls are looking up pictures of their favorite characters.
While the bronies are to blame for this, it wouldn’t be fair to say that it isn’t the fault of the parents of the child. Internet usage should be monitored (and limited) until they’re a certain age, but the artists should be tagging their NSFW images as well.
People often give the bronies flack for making the show all about themselves, rather than the audience it’s aimed at. In addition to this, people get upset that the bronies horde the newly released toys that should be going to kids who want them, rather than an adult collector. (Though it is ridiculous to blame bronies for; adult collectors exist for everything! Barbies, Hot Wheels cars, Lala Loopsies, etc…)
Despite this, don’t think the brony community is horrible. Twice a month, there’s an effort to clean up Google Images and other commonly searched websites from the NSFW images. They’ve raised thousands of dollars for charity and donated many of their pony goods to people in need. Earlier this year, 11-year-old and MLP fan Michael Morones, attempted suicide and was in a comatose state. Eager to help, many bronies raised thousands of dollars by creating special goods to sell as well as selling off collections of figures, toys and other memorabilia to donate money to Morones’ family.
It’s important to remember that there are bad seeds in every group of fans. Homestuck had them. Attack on Titan has them. Naruto has them. Star Trek has them. While there are bronies that create problems, it’s important to know that they’re not all despicable beings, like the Internet portrays them as.
If you’re not persuaded that the bronies are an incredible fanbase, maybe you should just see how talented they can be.
Have you been personally victimized by a brony? Or maybe you are one and you want to talk about your favorite episode? Comment below or e-mail dahrae@terpmail.umd.edu.
