Thanks for Your Help and An Essay About Bronies

[shroommu 10]

Hey guys, this is Shroom, signing on probably for the last time. I just wanted to thank everyone who's taken the time to talk to me about being a brony and answered my dumb questions while I've been working on my final English 2010 paper. You've all been really nice and very, very helpful c:

 

A few people requested that I post my essay when I finished it, so... here it is. But I'm going to give you fair warning: I did not sugarcoat things, and though I didn't take a negative stance on your fandom, I didn't exactly take a positive stance, either. My position was taken purely from my experience here; I did my best to remove any bias I had from past experiences with bronies, but I'm not perfect.

 

This is my view of your community. It's my opinion, and you're welcome to agree or disagree or be offended or whatever you want. I hope at least someone will find it interesting and, um, that you won't all hate me forever.

 

But again, thanks for all your help. I really appreciate it, truly I do.

 

Brohoof, yo.

 

~Shroom

 

Bronies: Pleasant? Yes. Picked Upon? Maybe Not So Much.

 

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is just a fluffy, pink, little kid’s show, right? I’ve watched the first two seasons and the movie at the insistence of my 9- and 7-year-old sisters, and that was my experience through the whole show. I found it to be less annoying than Spongebob or Phineas and Ferb, though still not entirely enjoyable to watch, but that’s what you do when you watch TV with your younger siblings: you just kind of pretend to like whatever they’re watching and try your best to not actually watch the show. I had heard of bronies--grown men (and some women) who watch and enjoy My Little Pony--before, but I found it difficult to believe that they were an actual phenomenon. They seemed just as rare and magical as the unicorns and pegasi that pranced around singing annoying songs on the screen. Apparently I was missing something the entire time I watched the show, however, as my adventure into the brony culture has made clear.

 

I have to admit that joining a My Little Pony forum was sort of terrifying. I’ve actually encountered bronies in the past, in person rather than over the internet, and the experience was… bizarre. A friend at college, back when I attended Southern Utah University, once invited me to a My Little Pony Fan Club meeting. I really only went because she was a huge fan of the show and I wanted to support her (not because I liked the show or anything like that). When we arrived, the majority of the club members were exactly what I expected them to be: fedora-sporting neckbeards. Geeks. Nerds. Bronies.

 

I should mention that it says a lot about SUU that they have an official My Little Pony Fan Club. There were plenty of other things that set the school apart from all other schools, like the “Coming-Out Carnival” in which closet homosexuals were encouraged to reveal themselves in a safe, open environment, but that fan club in particular… Maybe it’s just me, but I found it more strange than most things the school supported. As the number of openly gay and lesbian students increased after the Carnival, so too did the size of the Pony Fan Club, according to my friend.

 

It was kind of a beautiful gathering to witness, all these hopeless nerds, these outcast misfits finally in a place where their strange obsession was revered instead of reviled. One particularly resplendent individual came in cosplay--that is to say, he was dressed up as his favorite pony, Rainbow Dash, and it was clear that plenty of time and effort had been put into his costume. His hoodie had wings, a tail, the face, the snout, the whole deal. He even had her cutie mark (that being the mark visible on a pony’s upper thigh/rump area which appears as a result of realizing one’s talent and personality and reaching maturity) embroidered onto the jacket situated right above his left buttock, true to his character’s design. The whole getup gave the impression that he had caught a wild Rainbow Dash, skinned her, and turned her pelt into a garment, and was now parading around in the dead pony’s skin to the applause of other fanatics. ...Maybe that’s a little dramatic, but I was, to be frank, completely weirded out. This was a large, grown man, probably about 23 or 24 years old, wearing a bright blue and rainbow… pony thing… with wings. It just didn’t seem right, but he was the star of the show. Everyone wanted to know where he had gotten the hoodie, and we were all were astounded when he informed them that he had actually made it himself. At that point even I was impressed; it was pretty expert seamstership, and that he had put so many hours into a fan project of that magnitude showed a level of dedication that I had never achieved.

 

Even so, at that point I had seen enough. I was done with bronies, and I left the meeting that night and never attended another, even though my friend begged and pleaded for me to give it another chance. But no; bronies were weird; it didn’t take much to see that, and I didn’t really want to be associated with them. However, with persistent pressure from other friends actively involved in the community, I was convinced, or rather, forced to give the bronies another chance. With great reluctance, I created an account on MLPForums.com and set about the task of reacquainting myself with the pony men.

 

MLPForums.com, a subsidiary of Poniverse, is a neat, well-designed forum. The background art depicts a quaint, thatched roof town and the castle of the queen in the show off in the distance, in an artistic style that reflects the show very nicely. The background colors change to reflect the time of day, which I thought was nice attention to detail, and useful to visually gauge how long one had been chatting on the site. The banner at the top of the page, reading “MLP Forums,” is made by a forum member and is changed monthly (my informant, Rascal61, made the banner for May). The forum itself is divided into five categories. There is the MLP Forum section, which is reserved for the welcome boards, news posts, and troubleshooting threads. The next section is the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic subforum, which houses discussion about the show itself, brony culture, and Equestria Girls, the spin-off movie in which the pony characters are transformed into humans and inhabit a high school. This was the area in which I spent most of my time, in a subforum called Sugarcube Corner, which was designated as the place to discuss anything My Little Pony but not directly related to Friendship is Magic. Next is Octavia’s Hall, which is where members can display any artwork they’ve made, pony-related or not, search for commissioners, purchase custom pony merchandise, or plan collaborative projects. After that comes the Roleplay World, a subforum in which members can create their own ponies and subsequently collaborate on stories using these characters, sometimes in pairs and other times in large groups. The last subforum, Beyond Equestria, is reserved for topics that don’t involve My Little Pony at all, such as politics and life advice, and forum games.

 

Bronies are shy creatures by nature; most of them are difficult to spot, though there are a few that parade about decked out in full My Little Pony gear and proudly proclaiming the fandom’s mantra of “Love and Tolerance,” proud of and confident in their peculiarity. According to the 2014 “State of the Herd” Report, a statistical study on bronies produced by a team of brony statisticians, 75% of bronies identify as introverts. As one forum member by the name of Miaq_the_Truthful put it, “I am not what you would call a ‘flag waving brony.’ I do not climb to the heights of Mount Rainier and proclaim my love for Rainbow Dash.” So when I posted my new member thread explaining the nature of my study and my desire to understand and get to know some bronies, I wasn’t expecting much of a response at all. Within a few minutes, however, I had at least five users message me offering to act as my guide through the brony culture, and around twenty or thrity users in total offered up their experiences as bronies for me to use however I liked. I had expected them to be standoffish; as I was told, a lot of the inquiries they receive from the “outside world” are not exactly friendly. Perhaps due to this, many bronies go so far as to compare coming out as a brony to coming out as a homosexual--this act is known as “coming out of the stable,” To hear them describe it, it is an act that is supposed to be met with as much hatred and disdain as coming out of the closet.

 

That was the strange thing, though. In looking through some threads discussing the issue of brony haters, I found a lot of hyperbole, similar to the comparing of coming out of the stable to coming out as a homsexual. My favorite was the user who compared the “war” between bronies and “anti-bronies” to Hitler and the Jews. There were also plenty of my interviewees who claimed to have heard of brony haters, but there was only one user I encountered out of the many that I interviewed who actually had a firsthand experience with a My Little Pony dissenter after coming out of the stable. Boy5400 recounted his experience like this: “When I ‘came out’ [of the stable] I told everyone. I was just so excited. But there was this one kid who I will not name who was just a complete ass. Beside the normal just calling me ‘gay’ and a ‘fag’ he also went went as far as taking my school binder that I had ‘ponified’ (by putting pony stickers all over it). He ripped all of its contents out and threw it into a puddle, completely destroying not only the binder but all of my school work that was in it. When I attempted to tell the administrator she completely blew it off as if it was my fault because I put pony stuff on it, so no action was taken against the student.” After explaining this to me, Boy apologized that his story wasn’t as dramatic as all the other stories he’d heard, saying that it “is my most extreme story that I have, so sorry if it is not what you are looking for.” This made me wonder… I was inclined to believe this user was telling the truth; his story was within the bounds of reason, unlike most of the tales I’d heard secondhand, which usually ended in some form of violence. To me, it seemed as though much of the supposed hatred towards bronies was fictional, created to unite the community against a common enemy. Of course, I didn’t dare mention this to any of my interviewees; that, to them, might have been like suggesting the Holocaust never happened.

 

It was at this point that the impression of bronies that I’d gotten so far--that of the misunderstood, picked-upon misfit--didn’t seem to fit anymore. One of my interviewees, a fan of My Little Pony who insisted that he not be designated a brony, had actually warned me about this. According to Krosp I, “There's the sort of denigration of the LGBT [pony] fanbase by positing that ‘coming out of the stable’ is somehow equal or greater to the stigma of coming out of the closet. [bronies] talk about how watching a cartoon is a life struggle they have to keep secret. That ‘Bronies are just like any other fandom’ is BS. They're the most whiny, entitled, arrogant, loud and insensitive group of people ever collected around an interest.” After taking this perspective into account, I noticed that there seemed to be just as many posts complaining about how many “haters” there were as there were posts about the actual show. It appeared that these fans spent just as much time pouting about how put upon they were as they did discussing the thing that brought them together in the first place. Maybe it was My Little Pony that brought them together in the first place, but it may be the sense of being outcasts that keeps them together.

 

Even after all this research, I’m still not sure what to think of bronies. I no longer see them all as prancing neckbeards, but I’m not entirely sure I buy the bronys’ projected image of the put-upon outcast just trying to be accepted into a world of “love and tolerance.” That may be their mantra, but in exploring the forum I saw plenty of things contrary to it. Though I don’t entirely buy the idea that bronies are as hated as they claim to be, I will admit that they’re misunderstood, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone to give them a chance. They’re pretty nice people on the whole, and I enjoyed the time I spent getting to know them.

Edited May 6, 2014 by shroommu

[Andaasonsan 3,205]

After taking this perspective into account, I noticed that there seemed to be just as many posts complaining about how many “haters” there were as there were posts about the actual show. It appeared that these fans spent just as much time pouting about how put upon they were as they did discussing the thing that brought them together in the first place. Maybe it was My Little Pony that brought them together in the first place, but it may be the sense of being outcasts that keeps them together.

 

No way man, haters is serious business. They say mean things on youtube. That's like murder or something

[shroommu 10]

No way man, haters is serious business. They say mean things on youtube. That's like murder or something

I will never get over the comparison of haters to Hitler. Never. It's just too beautiful xD

[Andaasonsan 3,205]

I will never get over the comparison of haters to Hitler. Never. It's just too beautiful xD

One thing to keep in mind: my general observation is that it seems to be mostly the grade school and high school age bronies who are the most dramatic about the "haters". Which actually kind of makes sense, since other kids can be really, really mean.

 

Stories like that of Michael Morones (the kid who hanged himself over the teasing) and Grayson (I can't remember his full name off the top of my head, but he's the kid who was told not to bring his Rainbow Dash backpack to school.) show that it can be a problem, but it's probably more that we have a really bad problem with bullying in our schools in general than anything else.

[shroommu 10]

One thing to keep in mind: my general observation is that it seems to be mostly the grade school and high school age bronies who are the most dramatic about the "haters". Which actually kind of makes sense, since other kids can be really, really mean.

 

Stories like that of Michael Morones (the kid who hanged himself over the teasing) and Grayson (I can't remember his full name off the top of my head, but he's the kid who was told not to bring his Rainbow Dash backpack to school.) show that it can be a problem, but it's probably more that we have a really bad problem with bullying in our schools in general than anything else.

hit the nail on the head.

 

children are brutal. i work in childcare, i know this firsthand. I see it every day. If it's not MLP, it's anything and everything else.

[ghostfacekiller39 23,860]

One thing to keep in mind: my general observation is that it seems to be mostly the grade school and high school age bronies who are the most dramatic about the "haters". Which actually kind of makes sense, since other kids can be really, really mean.e.

Aye. The younger side of the fandom (whether I be on it or not) are usually the ones responsible for that sort of behavior; I've noticed that as well. It doesn't usually apply to the 20+ side

 

Just something I think should be made clear

[shroommu 10]

Aye. The younger side of the fandom (whether I be on it or not) are usually the ones responsible for that sort of behavior; I've noticed that as well. It doesn't usually apply to the 20+ side

 

Just something I think should be made clear

 

ah, but this is difficult to see when ages are not easily determined. that knowledge when i started my paper might have changed my perspective. or it may not have, who knows.

[Thespian 78]

As a 21 year old brony it becomes increasingly hard to be apart of this fandom because of how some of the members act. Being a young kid and exploring new things is alright, and with time your behavior will be forgiven. But when you see people your own age running around acting irrational because of the actions of a tv show aimed for little kids, it makes you question yourself. I don't want to sound like an elitist, but these members in particular are why I will most likely never reveal to society at large that I am a Brony. I like being a brony because the show brings me happiness, but I would rather not deal with the scorn and hate that is thrown our way.