Interesting and enlightening thoughts, but when asked "Who are you?", the minority of the fandom would say "A brony."
I do consider being a brony among my top five or ten major traits that define me... and even though that very slightly disturbs me, I'm not trying to change that much though, because I like specializing in things and I do not enjoy new experiences.
You're right, at the end of the day, MLP exists to sell toys, but it's become a little more than that, and even though one might not be wise to center their life around it, people have invested a lot of time, money, and emotion into it.