Recently, adult male fans of Hasbro’s “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic”, (MLP:FIM) colloquially referred to as “Bronies”, and their female equivalents, known as “Pegasisters”, have garnered the interest and attention of the media, or at the very least the internet. As I was reading the various articles about the phenomenon, I found myself fascinated at how the residents of 4Chan, generally agreed upon as the worst people on the internet, had become enthralled by a cartoon about ponies aimed at pre-teen girls.
Several months ago, I set out to answer that question. These are my dispatches from Ponyville.
To begin, let me talk a little about myself.
I’m no stranger to the phenomenon of adult fans of cartoons aimed at children. I watch “Transformers: Prime”, “TRON Uprising”, and a handful of other cartoons. Hell, I still DVR the 90s-era Batman and Superman cartoons. But those, at the very least, are aimed at boys, and are licensed properties I’ve been a fan of since I was a kid. There’s a connection there that makes the transition to adult fan understandable. So, absent that connection, how do otherwise normal adult males, who presumably had little to no exposure to earlier iterations of My Little Pony, become enamored with the show and become Bronies?
To answer that question, I decided that the best way to start was to sit down and watch the cartoon for myself. I had no exposure to it prior to watching it, beyond what I had read on the various websites exploring the phenomenon. To be honest, I expected to get a few episodes in, go “This is stupid, and these guys are weirdos.” and be able to churn out a pageview-generating “Look at the man-child Bronies! What a bunch of losers!” article for everyone’s enjoyment. I’ve previously written about how I thought Bronies were weird, even by my admittedly lax standards. I mean, come on; adult male fans of a cartoon aimed at little girls? It just feels instinctively weird. But, let it never be said that I’m not willing to challenge my own preconceptions.
As I began watching the show, I found myself becoming more and more invested in it the more I watched. One episode turned into three, which turned into a season, which turned into two more seasons. I had inexplicably watched the entire series without realizing it. Contrary to my preconceived notions, the show was very well made. The animation was vivid and well done, the plots and stories were riddled with “adult” references that a younger audience would have missed, the voice acting work was good, and the characters were compelling and well-developed.
When I sat down to begin writing this article, having newly immersed myself in MLP:FIM, I came back to my original question: how did the worst people on the internet fall in love with a bunch of cartoon ponies?
I pondered this question, and delved further into Brony-dom. I unleashed my inner Jane Goodall and visited Reddit’s r/MLP board and the Equestria Daily message boards, and observed the Bronies in their natural habitat. In some cases, if you did a copy-replace of “Twilight Sparkle” and “Fluttershy” with two sports teams, they wouldn’t be that dissimilar from the comments at Deadspin or ESPN.
It was then that I came to my conclusion. The residents of 4Chan are probably the most deeply cynical people to have ever existed on the planet Earth, especially the notorious /b/ board, which is where the Bronies first came to prominence. MLP:FIM is possibly the least cynical thing on television. It’s a show about ponies discovering the magic of friendship. Somehow, these animated fillies had pranced their way into the empty places inside the cold, dark hearts of 4Chan’s /b/tards, and warmed them ever so slightly.
As I came to this realization, I realized that I had developed a grudging respect for the Bronies. We live in a deeply cynical age, and there’s something to be said for watching a decidedly un-cynical children’s cartoon as a form of escapism from a bleak and unrelenting world. The idea in concept of adult males enjoying a television show aimed a pre-pubescent girls strikes us all as creepy, and rightly so. But when you stop looking at the abstract concept and start looking at why they like it and what they get out of it, it becomes almost endearing in its sincerity.
In the end, who am I to decide how someone else makes it through the day? To the Bronies I once mocked; Godspeed, you magnificent bastards.
Image via Wikipedia.
