For both the people that do and don't understand the appeal, the popularity of My Little Pony
and other large fandoms might be hard to grasp.
In this video I will be explaining what factors might have lead to MLP's fandom to reach the
level that it has, but I'm using MLP as a jumping-off point to explore other fandoms
and why they have reached such a level of attention in recent years.
Part 1: MLP history 2010
The /co/ board of 4chan is dedicated to enjoying western comics and cartoons, and the people
of /co/ obsess over them.
They watched the show and were excited for it for a number of reasons.
In the late 2000's, /co/ was having a dry spell.
Not many new or good cartoons came out around that time, and people were excited for anything
new or good.
This might not have been the case if MLP came out later.
MLP was created by a team in part responsible for their own fond childhood memories.
Lauren Faust and her husband worked on PowerPuff Girls and Dexter's Lab, not to mention members
of Faust's team worked on Samurai Jack.
The older generations of MLP, think of the stereotypical image you'd see before this
point, gave people low expectations for the show and people expected it to be bad and
overly girly, thus making this generation look much better by comparison.
/co/ watched the first few episodes with the intent to riff it and it simply ended up better
than expected.
Expecting something to be bad and then finding it to be good can make it seem a lot better
than it actually is.
And they make good reaction images.
Reaction images are important to 4chan culture.
So, show turns out ok, a general is created and most of /co/ likes to watch MLP or at
least give it attention.
2011 Keep in mind that 4chan is anti-furry and
some considered MLP to be furry.
The furry community has a very long history on the internet since the World Wide Web become
public in 1991, they their own conventions and a bad stigma, being made fun of on the
Animaniacs cartoon
and being blamed for why the Tiny Toons show ended with stories of creepy mail, stalkers
and similar public stunts of indecency.
April Furs Day was a 4chan event on April 1st 2005 when a new board was created for
furry content, and two days later anyone who posted there was banned.
This goes back even further to 2003 when a subforum on Something Awful was created called
the "furry concentration camp" where posters were labeled with a yellow star with "yiff"
on it, and they were eventually banned, this event being known as the "Lolocaust".
A group of people had a general thread on /b/ to talk about ponies so as to not bother
with /co/, who were getting pissed with the many pony threads.
The /b/ threads, or /b/reads, were known for being very kind and open, being more of a
chatroom to talk about nothing in particular.
This pissed off a lot of the /b/tards, whose culture was built on hostility and overly
offensive humor.
Some /b/tards, know how angry it makes the rest of /b/, and decided to use ponies as
troll ammo, for the purpose of creating disorder and making people angry, for humor's sake.
Flamebait.
Whether or not they enjoyed the show, they would still enjoy watching people fight over
something like ponies.
The thought of a little girls show being popular there was something a lot of people took issue
with as it clashed with 4chan's culture.
It was fun to be overly nice and always reference a girly show, and then see the angry reactions
of other people.
4chan was already desensitized to racism, pedophilia, gore and so on, but raiding and
trolling with ponies was more effective than any of those.
While the label 'brony' can be interpreted as bro + pony, some people would say it was
used to identify the trolls on /b/ in 2011, and meant to represent /b/ + pony (or /b/
+ bro + pony, whatever), while majority of the fans that stayed on /co/ didn't identify
as /b/rony (some preferred /co/lts).
"Love and tolerate" for example is never uttered in the show.
It was used by /co/ to mock people who shitposted the general, then used by /b/ for the same
reason, though much more often.
People start to get annoyed seeing colorful horses ALL OVER the site.
Any sign of pone would derail a thread, whether it be a trolling shitposting /b/rony, a non-shitposter
who enjoyed the show, or just the use of a reaction image.
Massive backlash has started and the moderators use their power to ban it from the site, driven
to quarantine it to a general on /co/.
The conflict between mods and the show's growing fanbase attracted attention and sparked up
debates across multiple boards.
Ponies quickly became a tool for trolling mods and those in the opposing camps, and
needless to say, it all became a complete clusterfuck.
Many remember a time when you could not get away from My Little Pony if you visited 4chan
at all.
One important actor is the website Know Your Meme.
/b/ created the KYM webpage on feb 6 2011, /b/ used this kym page as their personal gallery
and FILLED it with every single reaction pic they could find back then, and that is why
today the gallery has over 200,000 images.
When I originally looked into this in 2015, the KYM image gallery had a little over 800,000
images, so almost a quarter of the site is made up of images from one page, the MLP:FiM
page.
>The result was that it made "MLP:FIM" "trending" for an entire year.
That means it always appeared on the top bar as trending meme for that year.
Memebase even made a spin-off site, called My Little Brony, to hold all of KYM's content
of MLP in July 2011, just 5 months after the page was created.
Other /b/ronies move to sites like ponychan, and begin spreading to deviantart and youtube,
where it reached a more popular, 'counterculture' stage of development.
It made the mainstream internet more 'sympathetic' for the 'brony' cause.
Normal people would defend liking MLP for your average "nothing wrong with breaking
gender roles", the media eats that stuff up.
Since, well, it is a kids show, ponies became popular with children and younger audiences,
who took the term 'brony' for themselves.
According to the brony research project, over 70% of self-identified 'bronies' today
are under 20 years old, and most of them are teens.
2012 By the time the mainstream, child friendly
'bronies' were reaching cable media awareness, the first Bronycon was being made.
Howard Stern used Bronycon to make all bronies look like sexual deviants that were creeps,
and as a result, John De Lancie (popular voice actor from the show) helped make a documentary
to defend the 'bronies' (and to make some extra cash, as the film was funded by bronies
on kickstarter).
By then the bronies were known by everyone, and the rest is history.
Part 2: Why like the show?
For the record, I'm listing a lot of different reasons for people joining into the brony
phenomenon, I'm not saying all these reasons apply to all individuals, but I'm throwing
as many as I can think of to cover as many different people as I can.
Community For a lot of people, the community itself
is what makes people become fans.
The optimistic hugbox community is appealing to children, as well as those who are socially
inept and depressed.
The 'feel good' nature can do wonders to those who may not be doing so well in life.
It is a community that will accept anyone and support them, be a home for those that
don't identify with a community.
This is especially true for kids and teenagers.
Children who have never played video games before will have minecraft, sonic or pokémon
as their first game, which all have a community to connect to.
And since they have never been apart of a community before, they take the feeling brotherly
love seriously and latch onto it.
Advertising People who want attention for their internet
content would jump on the bandwagon and make art, music animations and more for fans of
the show, allowing their work to become popular that wouldn't on its own.
Cuteness The cute ponies have been described as 'western
moe', but what is Moe?
It is the japanese character trait of cuteness exemplified by purity and innocence.
Some elements may also include submission, humility, selflessness, self-sacrifice and
dependence.
Anime influences also are clear in the composition of the show, such as the design of the eyes
of the characters, the neotenous facial construction of the Ponies, and typical anime stereotypes.
But what is cuteness?
An evolutionary theory suggests that cuteness is a survival mechanism to make features of
younger humans and animals aesthetically pleasing so that people will feel a need to protect
them.
This might also explain why sometimes, stupidity or weakness will be seen as cute,
These "cute" features include heads disproportionately larger than the rest of the body, large eyes
and small noses and so on.
In the same way the anime community loves cute girls, and people would look at cute
cat videos online that became viral, people like to look at cute ponies for the sake of
them being cute.
The comparisons to Pokémon and Sonic can be seen.
They have a unique aesthetic and atmosphere that makes it stand out from other media and
are easily recognizable A loop with a checkered pattern can be recognized as part of a sonic
level and its aesthetic, a Poké Ball can be recognized as part of Pokémon's design
and aesthetic.
Pokémon and Sonic also share with MLP a large amount of anthropomorphic creatures that allows
people to easily create 'OC's and the fun fantasy elements to these universes fuel
escapism, projection and the 'self-insert fanfiction'.
Anthropomorphism This is universal and has been known as the
most successful means of generating many character crosslinks for ages.
Disney, Dreamworks and nearly all the animation greats engage in it.
Not only does it give them fun characteristics to work with, such as tailswats and the use
of the mouth as a grabbing tool, but it creates direct behavior associations in humans.
See, we have animalian "emotions" keyed to our mental understandings.
We all know what a tailwagging dog means or a bristling cat or "shivering" with the head
lowered.
These come to us normally and are far more overt and obvious examples of emotional conveyance
than the incredibly subtle ones human characters use, unless the characters are abstracted
or Super-Deformed, which exaggerates their emotions.
Finally, it eliminates the problem of the Uncanny Valley.
As it turns out, we don't like things that appear human without appearing 100% human.
The phenomenon of the uncanny valley makes pseudo-humanity unappealing to us and forces
us to distrust it.
Those lanky, evil marionette-looking things you see in every horror movie are exploiting
this.
Simply, getting 100% away from human looks while keeping human appeal and emotions is
a surefire way to have a character design be successful.
The West's answer to this is anthropomorphic animals as characters.
counterculture A counterculture aspect to it makes people
want to rebel against social norms, as well as armchair activism.
People can think they are somehow fighting for an oppressed minority, as well as fighting
the oppressive age and gender roles.
People can finally be brave and special for admitting their love to the show in public.
It gives people attention and validation that in some cases can manifest into attention-whoring
behavior.
Nostalgia /co/ and animation nerds enjoyed it for artstyle
and animations, as nostalgia for simple animation and stories help them feel young and bring
out their inner child.
This cartoon is very reminiscent of the cartoons of the 80's and 90's, even its name and core
franchise are steeped with 80's and 90's nostalgia.
Nostalgia appeals to various people for different reasons, but the base of it is that they want
to escape their life and return to feeling the way they did as a child.
Objects that resonate with a person's childhood leave strong impressions on that child as
a grownup, either they'll long for the feeling of childhood or they'll recoil from something
that reminds them of a time they felt awkward and powerless.
The latter is the reason that the generation younger than the fandom is such a fan of attacking
it.
Another element is that the show has lots of characters with unique personalities.
This allows people to identify with one who is similar to them, as well as pick favorites.
Some other fandom examples, like Naruto and Sonic, have a lot, a lot of characters that
people can identify with and pick favorites, which also helps encourage shipping.
Even without an adult fanbase, MLP already would have a large presence in the media thanks
to being the Hasbro toy company's franchise of choice for little girls.
Everyone knew what MLP was because they were seen as the product for little girls since
the 80's.
In comparison to other fandoms, Lord of the Rings, Star trek and Star wars got a shitload
of merchandising and Sonic and pokémon are very big franchises for sega and nintendo
and were seen everywhere.
And finally, people are just different
This may be hard for some of you to comprehend but SOME people just have different tastes,
and enjoy different forms of media than the rest of society.
There are people who enjoy the Kardashians, Jersey Shore, Jerry Springer, Justin Bieber,
Michael Bay, and athletes tossing around balls on national television.
Enjoyment cannot always be rationally explained, and differs from person to person with their
different perspectives of media and the world.
I did my best to rationally explain the emotional reasons people might have for liking MLP in
this video, but if at this point you still don't get it and still expect there to be
some huge secret that would justify everything, it just won't happen.
Put yourself in the shoes of a brony.
Imagine if every time you mentioned you like Pokémon, people would say "How can you enjoy
a game for 10 year old boys?"
You give reasons for liking it that would normally be considered valid, such as many
unique Pokémon to choose from and encouraged customization, as well as the community and
cultural impact that came from it, but the person always says "That can't be it!
This isn't normal, there must be some hidden reason you are hiding that justifies this!"
Eventually you would realize that they will never accept any answer you give them except
for "I am insane" because it is "too strange" to be justifiable in their mind.
In short, there is no secret.
No one wants to play the 'what is the real reason' game and keep giving different reasons
only for the person to say "well that reason doesn't apply to me so that can't be it".
If you were in this position and had years of dealing with these types of people, your
instinct reaction to seeing another person asking "what is the appeal" might be along
the lines of " I just like Pokémon because I find it fun.
There is no secret, try playing it to see if you like it."
And no, I'm not covering pony porn or clopping, I already did that in my fetish video, so
check that out if you want to see it.
Part 3: Other fandoms So now let's cover some other specific fandoms
before I move on to explaining fandoms as a whole.
Pokémon had genius marketing that allowed it to sell two versions of a video game, a
card game and an anime.
The "Trading" element made Pokémon fans have more of a reason to hang out, as trading
and fighting Pokémon became a catalyst for social interaction.
This makes it have more importance to people and can lead to obsession and letting it define
a person.
It attracts the completionists and people who obsess over "catching them all", as well
as people who want customization and more escapist elements than in other games.
It makes a commitment to Pokémon last more than one generation of the game.
Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokémon, has Asperger's and an autistic fixation on bugs.
Sonic was made to compete against Mario, and was always marketed to be an artificial version
of what "cool" is.
With anime elements like chaos emeralds and super forms, Sonic was about a "safe rebellion"
that attracted teens.
Soundtracks from the 90's replicated New Jack Swing beats that were popular at the
time, not to mention Michael Jackson made music for sonic 3, and lyrical music beginning
with Sonic Adventure was made by a band with rock, metal and punk influences.
The music sounded like stuff you might hear on the radio from that time, when compared
to other video game music.
As Sonic was made to be a franchise that rivaled Mario, its media span across many games, shows
and comics that cast a wide net, to attract different people who are attracted to different
incarnations of sonic and his "cool" styles.
This net of stories and universes are so diverse that it is impossible to connect them into
one continuity, but it makes people obsess over the different incarnations of him and
make a complex fictional universe that can connect these different worlds together.
Lord of the Rings first came out in the 50's and had a very large and complex world with
multiple species and unique settings.
Star Trek in the 60's and Star Wars in the 70's also have multiple species and planets
with their own unique settings.
These fictional universes are expanded upon even more with books, comics, shows and other
media.
Star Wars was the first series where the producers realize how much money they could make with
this, and was the most mainstream of the three because of the expansive media with lots of
toys and other forms of entertainment.
J.R.R Tolkien studied languages and made the Elvish language as a hobby.
The other two followed with fictional languages for Klingons, Mandalorians and other species.
Since there was so much content, fans coming together meant a lot more and they had more
to talk about and build on.
If the series only had one or two species that weren't very unique, like three guys
on a planet of apes, it wouldn't have as much to work with, while these franchises
had an ecosystem where every part of the universe works together with one another.
And if we were to go further back before the 20th century to find the origins of this type
of fictional setting and universe, then the original fantasy world that is like this and
achieved great success even today would probably be the mythology of the Greeks and other ancient
cultures, with a lot of religions sharing concepts like this.
These fantasy universes, and if you want to be an edgy atheist we can say all religions,
are used for escapism.
But what is Escapism?
It is defined as seeking distraction and relief from unpleasant realities.
It does not necessarily mean that someone literally wants to escape from their lives,
just that they want to distract themselves.
Escapism is not defined by the behavior itself but the motivation behind it.
If you are like the 500 million people alive today who've logged at least 10,000 hours
in a single game, you might be doing it to distract yourself from reality.
If you play those games as a stress reliever or as a way to spend time with friends, then
it would not be escapism because the intention isn't to escape.
If you are merely trying to make negative feelings go away, and you do it reflexively,
you are practicing escapism.
If you use fantasy as an occasional means of taking a mental break or gain some insights
to bring back to reality, then it is fine, and escapism isn't defined as always a bad
thing.
Anything from sports, fashion, sex, celebrity worship and recreational drug use can become
escapist activities.
Means of this have become increasingly varied over the past few decades, but fascination
in details remains a popular one.
Fictional characters and Mary Sues are often the ideal version of the author or people
the author wants to be with.
Humor and tragedy rely on the suffering of others so people forget their troubles or
see it in a more positive perspective, and apocalyptic scenarios like zombies make people
feel like they are important enough to survive when many others are dead.
Part 4: Conclusion
The way I see it, the main factors of a fictional story that attract these type of people are:
People with obsessive elements like these tend to have the "containing" character
strategy: they do not feel welcome in the world they are from and tend to have awkward
social skills.
Often, spirituality and/or fantasy give them comfort, and allow them to fit in within a
community.
While these communities can help them to open up and be more social, it can also prevent
them from expanding past the community when they use it as a shield.
I believe that these people are becoming more common now than in the past because of three
factors:
After television was introduced to the home, families began to follow and imitate the families
on TV.
The "constant" of television brought many families together to bond and creates a community
of similar values, much like religion.
Religion helped bring people together who otherwise wouldn't have for centuries, and
has been an important component to community and society.
People would have a lot more of a connection with their neighbors if they met them at church
every Sunday and got together for "rituals" like holidays and funerals.
After a tragedy like 9/11, religion and patriotism were seen everywhere because it helped bring
people together, to comfort them.
TV, politics, sports and religion are common communities that people can obsess over, much
like franchises.
It is just that fandoms are a newer development and haven't completely been accepted by society
yet.
This is the concept of collective identity, an individual's sense of belonging to a group
or collective.
In human evolutionary history, collective identity was crucial for the physical survival
of early humans, as they were too weak and slow to survive predators on their own and
had to be very social and reliant on a group to survive.
Humans enter the altered state of consciousness where they do not feel fear and pain, do not
question the behavior of other members of their group, and are ready to sacrifice their
lives for evolution's more important super-ordinate goals.
There's a connection here to martyrdom, or people sacrificing themselves for a cult.
In contemporary times, identities are spread far and wide especially with the internet,
and people join communities for intellectual and emotional protection rather than physical
survival.
The human need to belong with a group makes fandoms exist for people who don't identify
with anything else as strongly and allows people to have a large group of identifiable
people larger than a friend group, a group large enough that you can run into a stranger
from a fandom and quickly relate to each other and become friends, a back to fall on for
emotional and intellectual support, support for artistic endeavors, with the internet
you can get all of this on demand, this is a culture that encourages people to divide
and seclude themselves and their interests more than ever before, forcing more and more
people to find a collective identity outside of the people they can physically access.
A need to fit in and prove one's devotion to their community for more acceptances can
manifest into attention whoring behavior when fanatics seek validation.
This leads to people embarrassing themselves or committing social suicide to show that
they don't care about any other community than that one, in hopes that it would weaken
their bond with other communities and strengthen their bond with one.
This is why people have unhealthy obsessions that can manifest in cringe.
This is ForestWhitakerTulpa, signing out.
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