Is the fanbase smaller?

[CastletonSnob 3,074]

Would you say the fandom is smaller now than it used to be?

[Rosetta Spring 21]

Yes a lot of people jumped ship after Twicorn then more jumped out after EQG. 

[shy0wl 484]

I'm not sure honestly.  But I would say that we are not as vocal anymore, and nobody talks about bronies nearly as much as they used to. We've kind of stepped into the shadows.

Edited April 16, 2017 by shy0wl

[glim 11]

54 minutes ago, shy0wl said:

I'm not sure honestly.  But I would say that we are not as vocal anymore, and nobody talks about bronies nearly as much as they used to. We've kind of stepped into the shadows.

Unfortunately despite this fact, you still can get insulted for being a brony, like Youtube comment sections 

[LunarShadow 397]

4 minutes ago, glim said:

Unfortunately despite this fact, you still can get insulted for being a brony, like Youtube comment sections 

That is true but it is not surprising. Youtube comments sections are universally cancerous. All walks of life get shit on there.  

Edited April 16, 2017 by DayShadow

[LeafFerret 3,382]

1 hour ago, shy0wl said:

I'm not sure honestly.  But I would say that we are not as vocal anymore, and nobody talks about bronies nearly as much as they used to. We've kind of stepped into the shadows.

Because we're not as popular as we used to, I think after 2013, the hype of us sort of died down and most people started talking about other stuff instead, while the bronies continued following the show.

[Scrubbed user 3,416]

5 minutes ago, glim said:

Unfortunately despite this fact, you still can get insulted for being a brony, like Youtube comment sections 

This is exactly why I changed my profile pic on Youtube back in 2014, from one I had since 2011.

[Them's Seeing Ponies 282]

Consider it this way: way back yonder in 2012, the brony fandom was essentially a colossal tour de force with a memetic status to match. Ultimately, this was diluted by a number of factors (although this was more gradual than expected), these being the perceived 'weakness' of the third season (which for the life of me I still cannot understand why it is so ill-regarded? Was it simply due to shorter length? The number of changes made to the status quo (regardless of whether or not they made any difference overall)? The purple, winged, horned elephant in the room?), the alicorn Twilight controversy (which I have already said my part on) and the overrated abomination(s) that is/are Equestria Girls (of which I despise every film except maybe the second). Either way, these diluted the brony fandom heavily, which was further diluted by the divisive nature of the fourth season (which certainly felt different from the first two seasons, which were more reminiscent of 'The Powerpuff Girls'), leading to a smaller and less memetic fandom. Either way though, topics such as this have been appearing since 2012 (I remember one thread where users were critiquing the second season as not being as good as the first).

[Goat-kun 2,527]

Despite Bronies' constant attempts at painting themselves as social pariahs, people have always liked these sorts of things. They haven't checked out of sugar, spice, and everything nice. They've checked out of MLP. Food for thought.

 

 

The reason? I blame whims of mankind. H-Bro too is to blame. They haven't been striking the iron while it was still hot. Now it's cold and hard, maladapted to the stagnant yet ever-changing world.

[Kivil 1,721]

The time are a changeling. So yes there are other fandoms that have shunned us into darkness. Like K-Pop, Homestuck, Undertale, Hamilton, etc. Plus not to mention Twilight becoming an alicorn and EGQ and mishaps in the show 

[Denim&Venöm 18,748]

You also have to consider one other factor: Hiatuses. With only what amounted to a half season, the gap between S3 & S4 was 9 months. People were bound to tune out. And if not during that time, then during the gap between 4 and 5, which was almost a year between seasons. You can't really keep the attention of a fan-base for that time with no offerings other than the annual spin off movie. 

[碇 シンジン 27,431]

I wouldnt say it is smaller but I see where you are coming from since  the longer you been part of the fandom usually it seems to get smaller since the people you are introduced to when you join usually at least some of them wont stick for long and as such your perception of the people you know in the fandom is getting smaller unless you actively go and search for new people which i'ver noticed not lot of people are willing to do.

As for my own perspective i would say that the fandom is growing but in the end it really depends on what would you define a fandom is it all people who enjoy the show, is it all people who watch the show or is it all the people who participate in the internet and discuss about it.

I would say based on my own experience that  it is rather difficult to actually say whether the fandom is growing or not or how fast is the growth  because being part of a fandom is always  kinda subjective i think  i mean  you can enjoy the show but you might not want to call yourself a fan or be a part of the fandom.

Though i think this fandom is in healthy shape since i am unable to see anything that would signal me otherwise

[Ashen Pathfinder 16,161]

@VG_Addict

Just letting you know that this topic was moved to Sugarcube as it's a fandom related question.

Thanks.

[Wingnut 6,988]

It's not an easy question to answer. There are several things you can look in an effort to reach a conclusion.  Are TV ratings readily available for review? And is the demographics of the viewers also provided? Also, is Equestria Daily still the go to site for fans? How has their web traffic been trending over time? 

Another thing to consider is convention attendance.  Turnout was down a bit for Bronycon in Baltimore last year and I'm not sure why.  But if the movie looks exciting they should do better this year.  

Finally, the whole Brony phenomenon has been around for what, six years now? It's not a new thing anymore. So even if the fan base hasn't declined, it's not going to get the extra publicity it did when it was something new and unusual. 

[weesh 690]

is there any way to know the actual size of the fandom?

we have stats for some of the conventions, but there is a tiny percentage of the fanbase.  
(for the most part, the conventions have been getting bigger and bigger, though bronycon spiked up really high, and then settled to a more modest level.)

I think it would be interesting to know what the size and COMPOSITION of the current fanbase is.

For instance, what if the people for whom MLP was a fad were artificially padding the numbers, and they've drifted away, leaving the more stable, but perhaps less boisterous core?

Personally, MLP is alive and well in my city, with many healthy groups meeting regularly, and a financially independent charity convention. But this is just an anecdote, and i'm sure many people can find anecdotes that suggest every part of the spectrum.  

[cmarston1 5,959]

I dunno, maybe, or maybe the fandom has just changed into something different than what it was when you joined.

[Cl0udChaser 3,006]

Probably people already knew the show, probably because of EQG, probably people lost interested.......there are many reasons to that question. The best years to have a blast was 2010 - 2013. After 2013, the popularity started to go down slowly. I use to have a lot fun talking about the show in Feb. 2013 but now I'm doing other things than the show.

[AuroraMLP 59]

Hmm... I don't have access to statistics, but I do think that if it has gotten smaller, it isn't by much.

 

Sure, people have left the fandom at Twilicorn, or EQG, or Season 6... but people have joined as well. Right now, I think the fandom is in kind of a lull in "new members," but I don't really think it's gotten significantly smaller. I mean, just in looking at Youtube comment avatars, I am seeing a lot more ponies, and the other commenters don't care.

 

Brony hate still exists quite a lot, but bronies in general are less "visible" to the outside world. The Brony fandom isn't dying, but it is losing its fad status. That means that yes, a lot of people are leaving, but it leaves behind the "true" fans - the ones that didn't come because it was popular, and the ones that didn't just become momentarily obsessed with the show. The ones remaining are the reviewers, the content creators, and the people that really just like ponies, no matter what direction the show takes.

 

For example, take Fimfiction, a site that I know the most about. The numbers of stories and authors writing them are going down steadily. But just in the past few years, there has been an increasing number of good stories. The ones that could have easily become novels or short stories in their own right, publishable if they had not been based on a copyrighted material.

 

Nopony can really judge the "quality" of a fan, but still, I think that there are more and more people who are really invested in MLP, even as the total number goes down.

 

And who knows? This next season could easily be good enough to attract more people. The show is far from dead.

 

Besides, while a lot of people panicked and left over Twilight's ascension, the show was praised heavily for breaking the mold of other cartoons that remained static, ultimately resulting in more fans than before. A "new generation" of post-ascension bronies.

This new character shift could do the same thing.

[K.Rool Addict 718]

Yes, the fandom IS smaller. Is this a bad thing? Hell to the no. The smaller the fanbase the BETTER the show's quality has gotten. The quality of the show only dropped when the writers were aware of the fanbase being massive.

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 41,352]

The fandom is most likely at least a tad smaller, but I think the more obvious thing is that the fandom simply isn't as vocal. Whereas in the peak of the fandom, you could see people everywhere that were in it, on the internet that, now I think it is a lot more subdued. Which is fine. There doesn't need to be crazy hype all the time or even most of the time.