The Last Bronycon: a fandom autopsy

-So, some of you may know that I like My Little Pony. I'm very subtle about it. As a long-time horse lover, she played virtually indiscriminately with all types of horse toys. Grand Champions, Breyers, and a few My Little Ponies thrown in for good measure. But when I was around 11 years old, I discovered the online fan communities around My Little Pony. I was so intrigued by the older ponies they made before I was born. They made a mistake that was only amplified by their extremely humble presence on the Internet. All the fan sites were Angelfire and Geocities pages, and then to get to the next one you would have to try to navigate the web ring at the bottom.

The network rings still existed. I was simply chained from one to the other and felt like an archaeologist exploring a lost culture. So I became a full-blown pony fan. Not the normal level of a kid who likes My Little Pony, but the level of the nerdy freak type. I was into it. I went to forums, scoured the New York Toy Fair posts every year to try to find everything I could about upcoming ponies. Most of the other collectors at the time were in their 20s and 30s, so I considered them old and maternal age. Depressing, but somewhat appropriate, because the early

fandom

was a very tender place.

It was very PG, very friendly, almost exclusively women. In the end, I even went to a couple of real-life fan meetings, accompanied by my mother, because she was a minor. I know, I'm really cool. In those days, pony conventions were a single rented ballroom in a hotel or convention center. They would have folding tables set up everywhere and about 200 attendees would quietly sell vintage ponies, maybe hold a raffle. Since then a very different

fandom

has emerged. The Bronies, the adult male fans of My Little Pony. And in August 2019, I attended the

last

BronyCon, the

last

one they will ever have, an event that some saw as the death of the Brony fandom as a whole.

So today I'm going to break down the entire Brony fandom. It's birth, life, death, I'm going to make you feel like you're there. I'm going to make you feel like you gave birth to it, lived it, and killed it yourself. I don't know what I mean by that. I feel like there's a lot to unpack here, so I thought I'd organize this into an internet-friendly numbered list. Part one, how did the Bronies come about? I'll try to make this super abbreviated. The My Little Pony brand has been around for decades, but in that time, about every 10 years, they will reboot the series and redesign all the toys to keep it fresh.

This also means rebooting the related cartoons. For the fourth generation of My Little Pony, animator Lauren Faust was in charge of the creative vision. This new series was called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and debuted on October 10, 2010 on The Hub Network. If you haven't heard of The Hub, it's because it no longer exists. It was a joint venture between Discovery Channel and Hasbro to rebrand Discovery Kids Channel as a new programming block that largely featured cartoons tied to Hasbro's toy line. This included Littlest Pet Shop, Pound Puppies and My Little Pony. The network's launch inspired an angry op-ed on the animation site Cartoon Brew titled The End of the Creator-Driven Era in Television Animation.

The writer detailed his disappointment that a creative lady like Lauren Faust had degraded herself by taking on a bland toy business project for little girls. This is an unfair assessment, I guess you could call it a misinterpretation. The fact that Lauren Faust was the creative director of the show meant that she was building the world from scratch with her own concepts. It's true that people are tired of reboots and it's nice to see original ideas getting financial backing, but if they really have their hearts set on making a new My Little Pony cartoon, if anything I take that as a good sign that The network is willing to pay for an established creator with good credentials, and it's not like they forced it to accept the project.

She had some ideas that she wanted to do. Anyway, this article made the rounds. He mentioned several shows that were going to be on The Hub, but My Little Pony was the standout, probably because its full title is My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, which is so painfully trite and adorable. This article appeared just nine days after My Little Pony premiered and brought some adults' attention to the show. People wanted to see it for themselves, some were looking to defend it because they were angry with the tone of the article, and others were excited to roast it, I guess.

But the important thing here is that you have a whole demographic of people who wouldn't otherwise watch a My Little Pony cartoon who are now tuning in to see what all the fuss is about, and by people, I mean 4chan. I think a lot of people try to sweep that under the rug, that the Brony fandom came from 4chan, but it did. So here we have 4Channers watching My Little Pony with probably pretty low expectations. My Little Pony has fun characters and cute animation. It's also got some good, fun writing, but I wouldn't necessarily say in a particularly notable way.

There were a lot of solid cartoons that aired back then, and they had catchy songs and jokes for parents to enjoy. Phineas and Ferb is one of the biggest ones that comes to mind. But My Little Pony is the one that 4chan was watching, and they came in with their own expectations and I think that really reframed the way they watched the show. And I'm not a 4chan native, but I think any Millennial or Gen Z-er or whatever we call the next one can understand the concept of ironic fandom and the path it followed. A group of people decided to watch in real time, together as an activity, something they wouldn't normally engage with.

The thing isn't as bad as their lowest expectations, and ironically they enjoy some parts of it, so now they can revel in how unexpected it is to like this. 4Channer users already seem to have this image of themselves as, I don't know, the rebellious hacker kids from Shadow the Hedgehog, so for them, it's doubly fun to see how this plays out. (laughs) But we are 4chan, the most cynical bad boys on the Internet! We should post about racism or anime, but are we pony fans? How novel! How intriguing! There's a picture of Twilight Sparkle making an angry face like she's going to go into battle, but instead of the text saying something angry, she threatens to love and tolerate you.

This meme spread so much that the phrase love and tolerate became a catchphrase of sorts for the Brony fandom, with some claiming it was the show's motto, but they never say that on the show. At least they didn't say it in previous seasons. The later seasons incorporated a lot of Brony jokes and memes and as a result were much worse and I didn't watch them. It's entirely possible they said love and tolerate in one of those, and then Pinkie Pie rubbed herself or something. But the whole meme, the whole catchphrase, is really just a remnant of the fandom that comes from 4chan, because if you're a big, edgy Internet kid, Shadow the Hedgehog, I can't remember what I called them, that makes it really funny.

If you threaten to love and tolerate someone, because one would expect you to say something mean and unpleasant, but instead you don't. How novel! How funny! That's the culture of irony, and that sums up the entire 4chan phase of the fandom. The term Brony was coined, again presumably with some level of irony. It's no wonder it's caught on, because honestly, it's an inherently funny word. Gold star for whoever came up with it. We will never know, because it is anonymous. Brothers who like ponies, this is obviously a self-deprecating and intentionally silly word. A joke name for a joke fandom, right?

Then the pony memes started to completely take over the board. Everyone wanted to talk about ponies, wanted to repost screenshots from the show, or contribute their own art. For people who had seen the show and been on those original pony-watching threads and were in on the joke, I'm sure this whole thing was extremely funny. For everyone who wasn't, it was very annoying, and the mods quickly banned posting ponies. Even just saying the word pony was forbidden. But there was too much energy behind this, and all that energy had to go somewhere. Second part, the growth of the fandom.

A 4chan user using the online alias Sethisto responded to the ban by creating his own Brony website called Equestria Daily. The site officially launched in January 2011 and visually it basically looked like a Wordpress blog, but every time there was some pony news, Seth reliably posted it. Most importantly, every time a new episode came out, Equestria Daily put together links on where to watch it online. Hub Network didn't come with all cable packages and the show hadn't yet struck a deal with iTunes, so it was very difficult for Bronies to watch the show legally, even if they wanted to pay for it.

But they knew that every week, if they went to Equestria Daily, there would be a post at the top of the website with a Dailymotion link. This really cemented the website's place in the fandom, because so many fans depended on it. Even if they didn't check it every day, they at least came back once a week, making Equestria Daily a very effective platform for fan content. Anyone, or, sorry, any Brony, could draw fan art of a pony or cut footage from a show into a music video and then email their work to EQD. If you are chosen for a feature, you are guaranteed that hundreds, perhaps thousands of eyes will immediately be on your work.

As you can imagine, this inspired a lot of people to start creating fanworks at an incredible rate. It was totally symbiotic. People would get attention for the things they spent hours on and Equestria Daily would have endless content. Seth hired more moderators and they were able to post dozens of times a day. And then the more content they posted, the more often the Bronies revisited the site, because they knew there would be something new to see, and more content meant more competition, it was harder to get featured, and that meant people started stepping up their game. and the fan art began to be of increasingly higher quality.

Do you see how the cycle began to perpetuate itself? So with this increasing quality and quantity of fan content, it's no wonder that the people involved in this started thinking, hey, this thing that's happening right now, it could be really big. And guess how that feels. That feels exciting. And what do you do when you're excited? You create more content and better content, and keep going. Part Three, My Little Pony: Irony turns into sincerity. Get it? Sounds like the title of the show, more or less. So this is where it gets real. I'm like sweating. I'm sweating with excitement.

Because we all knew that all this couldn't stay on 4chan forever. People on other sites on the internet have obviously noticed this crazy influx of pony fan content and it's making them curious about the show. But the important thing about these new Bronies is that they are entering the fandom without the ironic context. They just watch the show because they heard it's good and they think, yeah, it's good. They love it in a totally simple way. So now the overwhelming vibe in the community is simply that people love the show unironically, and the fandom is even bigger and starting to establish an identity as a community, and in all cases, fandom begets fandom.

Some people become interested in fandoms in a way that is completely removed from the medium they are supposed to be fans of. Many people simply enjoy the feeling of belonging to a group. It's shorthand for making friends, and joining a fandom means inheriting references, inside jokes, and even physical social events without having to do the usual work. I'm not trying to say that the show didn't matter at all. I don't think this kind of fandom could have happened with any show, I think there were parts that resonated. But why My Little Pony, right? Many shows have online fandoms, but why did it grow to this scale?

Because think about it, how many fandoms can support their own dedicated, large-scale conventions? A couple of cultural giants like Harry Potter or Star Trek, but for the most part, the nerdy franchises are grouped together. Furry fandom covers an entire genre, and comics have become a catch-all for every type of genre fiction out there. So what is it about My Little Pony? Is it simply the best show ever? Of course not. My Little Pony, when you really examine it, is almost tailor-made to support a fandom, and you can see similarities between it and other big franchises. First of all, the character designs.

They're cute, but most importantly, they're very simple and all drawn from the same template. Variations in body type are not unknown,but they are very rare, most of the characters are differentiated by the shape of their eyes, hairstyle and color. So once you learn how to draw a pony, you will be able to draw all the ponies in the show. This definitely influenced the extremely high production rate of fan art. This character creation template format also made it really easy to create your own original character. This reminds me of Sonic fandom, or furry fandom in general, where you'll see all these different character designs, but they're all clearly unified by a common art style.

And this relates to the next point. The show has its own universe with a large cast of characters, different settings, and its own mythology. Many locations, villains, and magical concepts are mentioned only in passing. This sets the stage for a lot of speculative fanon and fanfiction, and also makes it extremely easy for people to imagine their own stories and characters existing in this world. And those kinds of circles go back to Harry Potter and Star Trek. People are fans of the characters and the plot, but the main component is the world building and having a fresh atmosphere that you can project yourself into.

Plus, artists and vendors love the Brony fandom. Like I said before, most conventions you see cover a wide swath of fandom, so imagine you're packing your merchandise to go to a convention and you're going to sell t-shirts, art prints, or shot glasses. What inventory are you going to prioritize? Anything you don't sell, you're out of money, but you also have to pay to ship it home. So, you're going to print like 100 Batman t-shirts, 150 Lord of the Rings t-shirts, maybe a couple hundred Harry Potter ones? Brony conventions are just ponies and the show has six main characters.

If you want to sell something about a supporting character, it's going to be someone's favorite. But if you want to play it safe, you can make hundreds of prints of each of the six main characters and you'll probably use up your stock. I mean, you might have some Applejacks left. It was, again, a kind of symbiotic phenomenon. Sellers make a profit by attending these Brony conventions, but for Bronys, having this huge smorgasbord of products at each convention made the fandom feel bigger, and then non-Bronys see people wearing t-shirts, hats and Brony plushies. and shot glasses, and the word spreads more and the fandom gets bigger.

Just continue. Fourth part. So is that something weird about sex? Just because. I'm kidding. A bit. It is undeniable that many people are attracted to these ponies. It's not just that there is dirty fan art out there if you look for it, it's like if you searched for My Little Pony, you would find dirty fan art even if you tried to avoid it. I imagine that initially, a lot of the edgier pony fan art was done ironically and posted like, LOL, I'm going to hell, yes, I went there! Deal with it! Oh! And then people were like, hahaha, we're so depraved, look at us!

Let's go to the sin bin, or whatever the fandoms talk about. In the early days of the fandom, openly admitting that you were attracted to ponies was actually pretty taboo, go figure. Remember, we're all cool internet kids here. We're just watching this show tongue-in-cheek and yeah, it's actually pretty good. Yes, it has some solid jokes and that music is catchy, you have to admit. But we are not weirdos, we are not monsters like furries. The problem is, as the fandom became larger and more common, many of the Bronies were simply furries. Active participants in the furry fandom heard about this new popular cartoon featuring anthropomorphic animals, wanted to watch it, and obviously liked what they saw, those monsters!

But during the first years everything was very secret. It was unthinkable to be a furry. There was racy fan art for sale at conventions, but it was largely sold under the table and you heard about it in a joking way, like, oh my god, I heard they're actually selling racy fan art of the ponies. . Who would do that? We're not furries, are we? Guy? Good? (nervous laughter) And it was just a joke, right? The guy who drew it and printed it was just joking. The guys who pay money for it are just kidding. You will be very surprised to know that that only lasted a couple of years.

Over time it came to light that most Bronies were furries. In fact, many of the fan artists, convention founders, and podcasters who had openly claimed to be anti-furry in the past were revealed to be furries. And I'm not just saying, hey, that guy looks like he's hairy. I'm saying, oh, here's a picture of that guy four years ago in a fur suit at a furry convention, and his last podcast was about furries. And so, over time, people stopped caring, because what else were they going to do? It was the whole fandom. The Bronies coined a term, clopping, which is, um...

It's, uh, when you... When you enjoy the edgiest pony art, you're clopping. And like the word Brony, this term was probably invented to be ironic and intentionally absurd, and no one is actually doing this, right, guys? But then, like Brony, he evolved far beyond the point of irony. So I imagine a lot of people liked this show for entirely non-sexual reasons, but if they were in the fandom, especially in the later years, they were probably in the minority. And I also think there might be a separate, very strange phenomenon at play. I think a lot of people started watching the show and were initially attracted to it because it was funny and well-paced, and yes, the art style is attractive.

It's not sexy, it's just attractive, the characters are well designed and endearing. And I speculate that perhaps, in a broad and general sense, men are not socialized to recognize simple, non-sexual affection for a female character. So they liked ponies for a while, and then their brain started working, but can I have sex with them? And if there were people in the fandom who were already furries and were already creating this type of content, that would push you over the edge. Let me chart how I think it all plays out. Maybe 30% of Bronies aren't attracted to ponies at all, and honestly, that seems like a generous number.

Another 30% would say they weren't furries when they entered the fandom, but then MLP turned them into furries. I guess they were very radicalized. And then the other 40% were just furries all the time. I guess it's mostly harmless and I don't care much. I mean, these ponies don't exist and there's nothing like them. None of these guys are attracted to real horses, because real horses don't have big anime eyes. The ponies are anthropomorphized to the point that they barely resemble horses. All the nightmarish features of a real horse have been totally cleaned up. The hard hooves that crush the skull have been replaced by these soft stumps that pick things up like hands.

The long, protruding snouts have been softened to look more like a cat's head. It's like when I see furries that think this is attractive, I don't think they're attracted to real wolves. So, you know, no animals were harmed, etcetera. Although I still think it's weird and I embarrass them. Oh, and you can also draw critical conclusions about people's personalities based on which of the six main ponies they like. It's like Hogwarts houses, but weirder. Part five, the birth of BronyCon. We already know why, now let's see how. The stage is set, the My Little Pony fandom exists, and with the online fandom growing more and more, people have finally started hosting their own local in-person Brony gatherings.

If you lived near a major city, there was probably a Brony hangout group. The New York chapter started being called BroNYCon, with New York City in the middle in capital letters, get it? His first meeting consisted of 30 people. Throughout 2011, the group continued to meet under the name BroNYCon, and over time, they started getting some of the show's actual staff to attend meetings and sign autographs and such. You have to understand that while the first season of My Little Pony was airing, the people working on the show had no idea this fandom was becoming what it was.

MLP was a children's cartoon on a new programming block on a channel most people had never heard of. There was virtually no behind-the-scenes content and most of the people working on the show also had no social media presence. This added a certain mystique to the entire production and put the Bronies into a greater frenzy to try and get close to the people responsible. So when a BroNYCon gathering in January 2012 announced that they would be hosting three of the show's voice actors and director, it quickly outgrew its space. Hundreds of Bronies lined up for hours in the hallways outside the meeting room, so organizers decided maybe it was time to start a real convention in a real convention center.

So they did, dropping the capitalized New York City in the name, becoming simply BronyCon, and moving to Baltimore to become a full-fledged convention. So what I'm saying is that the June 2012 BronyCon was essentially the first BronyCon. It was the first real scam, but I knew that if I didn't say any of that other stuff, all these Bronies would be in the comments like, "Actually, that wasn't the first BronyCon," and they'd call me a fake BronyCon fan. Anyway, the first real BronyCon of 2012 was a huge success. It was on many local news stations, featured showrunner Lauren Faust, most of the voice cast, and over 4,000 attendees.

So that's it, the era of the Brony convention had officially begun. And after BronyCon, there were imitators. Wow, there were imitators. There were a couple of big ones and then only a thousand little ones. It's like when you hear about the bubble economy. Like the real estate bubble. This was the BronyCon bubble. Part six, famous horse. I talked a little about the frenzy surrounding the show's staff, but I don't think I even painted a graphic enough picture. This fandom interest didn't just extend to the showrunner and announcer, but to everyone. If you worked on the show in any capacity, and I mean in any capacity, you were a celebrity in the Brony fandom.

To be honest, I find this really comforting. A lot of love goes into making children's animation, but these jobs tend to be very thankless, but not in the Brony fandom. Did you voice a secondary character in an episode? Well guess what, that's 100 Bronies' favorite character and they want you to sign the plush they commissioned. Are you one of 12 staff writers or a storyboarder? Well, all the Bronies know you by name and want to put you on a panel. When I worked for Screen Junkies, they knew I liked MLP, so they surprised me by sending me to the premiere of the My Little Pony movie, and I don't think they used this footage, but along the way, the producer was So you know enough about this show, TRUE?

Do you know the names of anyone who will be there? And I said, well, yeah. Yes of course! Andrea Libman is Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, Ashleigh Ball is Applejack and Rainbow Dash, Tara Strong is Twilight Sparkle, Cathy Weseluck, my favorite, is Spike the dragon. And they were kind of surprised! And it's like, guys, you don't get it. You don't know how far this goes. After the success of BronyCon, many other scams started popping up around the world, many of them smaller in scale but some as big as BronyCon, and this obsession of Brony with all the members of the show really helped, because they had a really big reservation. large of talents to try to invite all the smaller scams.

But they weren't even limited to just the show's staff. With all the fan art produced every day, there were many Bronies who were famous among Bronies just for being Bronies. There were famous fan artists, fanatic podcasters, fanatic animators, voice actors, but at the top of the pyramid were the Brony musicians. The Brony fan music scene started primarily with remixes of songs from the show, usually remixed to be dubstep or something. But before long, Bronies also began releasing his own original music inspired by the show, again, primarily dubstep. Brony's music was very popular. Even when the fandom was young, a popular Brony song could get hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, and a little later, it would grow to millions.

So with such large numbers, Brony musicians were celebrities in their own right. They were superstars on the cons. Brony fans swarmed them, asking for autographs, greeting them, and even holding large-scale live concerts in the evenings. This phenomenon received its own ironic label. If you were a famous Brony in the Brony fandom, you were a famous horse. The horse fame was extremely fun for me because it obviously created disproportionately large egos. Prominent guests at the convention woretheir sunglasses inside, security would rush them to the green room, they would hide in the green rooms behind the stage and complain about how hard it is to be surrounded by your fans.

It was absurd, because all these people had no fame during the other 360 days of the year. I'm not talking about everyone, a lot of famous horse people were just people who wanted to be creative online and were completely nice. But I can't even get mad at the people who acted like weird, arrogant rock stars, because isn't that exciting in itself? They added spice to the BronyCon experience, so you know what, good. Celebrity horses were also an important part of the scam ecosystem because they were another great group of guests to invite and use to promote your scam.

Not every scammer can get Tara Strong, but if you can get a storyboard and a minor voice actor from the show and five popular Brony musicians, that will be enough to attract a lot of people. Part seven, my dark double life of Brony. Well, this will be a fun story time. Buckle up. My visit to the last BronyCon was not my first BronyCon experience. Back when the fandom was new, my friend and I did a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic parody series called Friendship is Witchcraft, because it means the same thing but it sounds creepier, so it's funny.

We would take the existing footage from an episode and change it to be about something totally different, and the shots would be rearranged, there would be new animation, a totally new audio track, obviously, original songs, cool stuff like that. We wrote the scripts together and I did the voices for most of the ponies. I'll put it as a compilation. It's just that no one stands up to Twilight Sparkle. That gives what we've done a lot less moral ambiguity. My own special mission? Will I learn about magic and friendship? ♪ I will prepare a solution with the knowledge I have accumulated ♪ ♪ They say that one time in the kitchen saves nine, but I'm only saving two ♪ What?

But you just sold it to me for ten dollars! Oh! Applejack, how did you get so little? Hot Zigget! I'm finally beautiful on the outside! And what happened to your old torso? It's in the bag. ♪ I gave you my heart and then you turned around ♪ ♪ Romantic pony dreams, they never came to be ♪ ♪ I gave you my heart and then you turned around ♪ ♪ Twilight, please make this song end, we are a group of floating heads ♪ Well, apple hoedown barbecue! (Twilight Sparkle mumbles) (Rarity mumbles in similar cadence) It was most of them. And these videos made numbers. I can't even tell you how many issues they made because Hasbro regularly removed them and at this point only fan reloads of most of the episodes exist.

But even those fan reloads seem to have millions of views. I can't tell you how many times someone watched my new videos, said I sounded familiar, and realized much later that it was because I sound like Twilight Sparkle from the pony parody. That's right, I was a famous horse. Did I reveal it when I was saying how people act in greenhouses, because I knew it because I was in them sometimes? Not all the time, they were pretty boring. Honestly, at every convention, all the fun stuff wasn't in the green room, but on the convention floor. And to be clear, no money was made from this, or very little money.

The songs were monetizable, but the episodes weren't, and we had a Patreon near the end, but after three or four years of doing this, I think we probably only raised like $5,000, and that's split between two people. , so what I'm trying to say is that this was very much a labor of love. I'm not suggesting you go watch this series. I don't think it will last. There are individual jokes that I like, but most of them seem really embarrassing to try to watch now. But if you are determined to watch an episode, watch the wedding episode, it's the best.

But worst of all, we had this whole meta-joke where we included a bunch of references to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. We put entire Hunchback song lyrics into the songs, quotes from the dialogue, and one of the ponies was literally Frollo. I think our original reasoning was that there's a breed of horse called... And The Hunchback of Notre Dame is about social tensions with... So we had a character that was supposed to be like Esmeralda's character, and it was really like present throughout the entire series and as a large part of the character's arc. It was in two of the best-known songs, and even in the title of one of them.

I don't know, if you haven't figured it out, the reason I don't say the word in question is because it's actually considered an insult to the Roma population. We thought it was a neutral word and it turns out it's not. Also, I don't think this has caught on yet in North America, but apparently there is a movement to change the name of this horse breed to a tinker horse, which is very adorable. But anyway, our silly Disney nostalgia didn't realize we shouldn't say this word until too late in the game. We stopped them saying it in later episodes, but everything from before was still there.

And you're probably thinking, well, Bronies is over and no one watches those episodes anymore anyway, right? So it's not like you have much scope with this. Well, one would think. ♪ When you're plagued by devastation, there's a simple explanation ♪ ♪ You're a toymaker's creation trapped inside a crystal ball ♪ It turns out that many of the songs on Friendship is Witchcraft have had recent viral success on TikTok, because they're cheerful character voices singing about dark things that you can get excited about, and that's exactly what TikTok loves. So now there are a lot of teenagers who have never seen Friendship is Witchcraft happily dancing and lip-syncing to these songs that have insults in them, and that's my legacy.

Is not it wonderful? I mean, it's not the TikTokkers' fault, they didn't make the songs, and it seems like there are also a lot of TikToks of people, like, talking about why they shouldn't make TikToks over the songs while dancing. the songs. TikTok has many layers, it is very interesting. Anyway, that was a tangent. My point is that Friendship is Witchcraft was popular and we were invited to many conventions. It was crazy, there were so many Bronies that you would be doing a panel for a room the size of a Comic-Con, like thousands of people. I even had an impersonator at a convention.

Most people didn't know what he looked like because he did voiceovers. - You know I do the voice, right? - Yes I know. - I do the voices for Friendship is Witchcraft. My name is Ellie Mint and I do the voices for Friendship is Witchcraft. (crowd applauds) - So she showed up and was on panels and stuff and then I had to tweet like, hey, that's not me, I'm not at this convention, and then she ran away into the night, a mystery. for this day. My first BronyCon was in June 2012, the first real BronyCon, and my last BronyCon was in 2019, the last BronyCon.

In total, I think I went to at least 10 cons over the years, so I really got a taste of the fandom. A great taste of Brony flavor, which I think is a unique position, so let's see how it went. Part eight, the anatomy of a Brony convention. Each BronyCon had its own location and its own vibe, but they were all basically cut from the same cloth. You would have a super large panel space, which would house any panels with show staff or any of the more popular fan panels, then you would have hallways to smaller panel rooms for community guests.

I always looked for the small panels because they had much stranger themes. Some of them were a no-brainer. There would be like an art advice panel, a panel of fanfic authors, but then you'd read the show and see, for example, psychology for your OC, Brony's stand-up comedy, the guide to Tumblr trivia blogs. So those things were my problem. The panels were also great for people watching, because everyone stood still, so you could just look at the crowd. You see a fair amount of skinsuits at Brony conventions, and a bit of cosplay as well, but it's more common among female attendees.

Male fans are more likely to accessorize, so you'll see a t-shirt with a meme on it or something like a crazy cape or hat. I remember at my first BronyCon someone was selling these wool hats that looked like the top half of a pony's head, like they had ears and a mane and big, cute eyes, and they were everywhere at this convention. I remember loving the panels because I could look over the crowd and see those big unblinking pony faces. I felt so nostalgic remembering these hats that I wanted to wear one for this video, and I looked on eBay to see if any old Bronies were selling them, but no luck.

I guess that's another special thing about these Brony conventions, though. The person who made those hats probably only made them for two years, and then stopped making them, so it was just a strange product of its time and now no one can get it anymore. It only exists in my memory and probably in the back of some Brony's closet. Bronies also like to carry things, like a sign or prop, and of course, stuffed animals are huge, figuratively and literally. In the early days of the program, there were no official bonuses available. When Hasbro finally started rolling them out, they were somewhat oddly proportioned and didn't really look like the show.

I still thought they were cute, just, you know, a big, lumpy stuffed pony, but I guess if you want them to look like the show because you're attracted to Fluttershy, this is a problem. Then fans began making and selling their own plushies, but not only were they a high-skill handmade item, they were also in extremely high demand. So if you had a nice stuffed animal, you could assume it would cost you between $300 and $700. This made the stuffed pony essentially become a status symbol at these conventions, which I find extremely charming. The Bronies wanted to transport them all weekend, which is even more fun considering how big they often were.

In case you don't know, I am a stuffed animal loving person and as such, I fully support this stuffed animal culture of influence. Cutting through the scam, came the dealer room. Lots of fan art and body pillows are sold. These are, um, some pony pillowcases. Lots of body pillows. Some more body pillows. Oh look, a body pillow. This is perhaps the largest selection of body pillows. Here are more body pillows. Oh, body pillows. Move from one stall selling body pillows to the next one where they also sell body pillows. Oh, body pillows. Well. Oh, more body pillows.

Oh look, body pillows. Oh, over there? Body pillows and body pillows. Let's get some body pillows! They're going to run out of body pillows before I can get one! But there were also some rare treasures to be discovered. Probably the most popular Brony fanfic of all time was the Fallout: Equestria series. It was exactly what it sounds like. They were original pony characters who lived adventures in the world of the Fallout video game. I don't know how necessary it was for them to be ponies for this story to be told. I never tried to read it, but it had a lot of followers.

In the early days of the fandom, Bronies were commonly seen against their hardcover copies of Fallout: Equestria, but the fanfic was very long and then had spin-offs, so these things were the size of encyclopedias and were distributed in several volumes. Fans spent hundreds of dollars to complete this set of books. I guess maybe this practice of physical fanfic became popular, because at BronyCon 2019 there was an entire table dedicated to a Brony vanity press with a huge display of Brony books, including a book that was like a Brony replica of a book Choose your own adventure. I was so upset it was sold out before I came across this stand, I really wanted it.

One thing I did note was this. This is an unlicensed, factory-made, mass-produced plush of a character from Fallout: Equestria. Because how could I not, right? I want to say this is the strangest thing I've got, but let's be real, it's not even the strangest thing that's framed right now. You can look around these vendor rooms and find pony soaps, pony candles, and pony jewelry. You also tend to see Bronies booths advertising their upcoming Brony conventions. This was even the case at the last BronyCon, because many of the smaller scammers are still trying to hold on. I would have been a little surprised if any of Brony's downsides had gone much further than 2020, but I'm pretty sure the coronavirus pandemic will be a much more definitive end to many of them.

Beyond the scam booths, there are other booths that have just been occupied by Bronies who want to show people something cool thatthey made. Some people promote their Tumblr blogs or YouTube videos. I saw this cool booth where these guys had built a real working Sweetie Belle robot. Oh! Honey Bot, Oh my God! Which is a reference to a joke in Friendship is Witchcraft, where Sweetie Belle is a robot. and it kind of became a meme in the fandom. So this booth was just to demo their cool robot for everyone and explain how it works. A unique element of the Brony convention is the aforementioned rock concert by musician Brony. (crowd cheering) BronyCon!

BronyCon! This tradition began at BronyCon and has become an expected component of every convention, large or small. Some of the popular musicians even spent an entire year touring together and attending various conventions. It's really impressive how far these guys went to put on proper, professional concerts, and the fan music was so big in the fandom that everyone knew the lyrics and was singing along. ♪ Discord, I'm howling at the moon ♪ ♪ And sleeping in the middle of a summer afternoon ♪ It would be so surreal to be at what on the surface looks like any rock concert until you look to your left and someone sends up their three-foot Pinkie.

A multitude of stuffed Pie sailing alongside you. Another nice thing about BronyCons is that everything became a meme at the speed of light, so it is very common to be on the second day of a convention and start seeing cosplays, fan art, and signs that make memes of things that They happened before at that same convention. At BronyCon 2012, a light fixture exploded in the ceiling and set off a fire alarm. - The ceiling lights, one of the lights has caught fire. - Please, everyone exit through the emergency exit! - Everything was fine, but they had to clean the building until the fire department could check it, and when everyone came back later, there were literally dealers in the vendor room crossing out fan art from the BronyCon fire.

Another convict held his Brony's rock concert in a ballroom on the second floor of a hotel, and so many Bronies were jumping to the music that hotel management feared the floor would collapse. - For your own safety, for the safety of the team and for the safety of the musicians who will be performing tonight, we ask that you refrain from jumping. - So "don't jump" became a meme. Between songs, when people wanted to cheer, they just sang, "Please don't jump." - Please don't jump! Please don't jump! - Please don't jump! (laughs) - They love to sing, friend, you were right. - That's amazing, holy... - Please don't jump!

Please don't jump! - Very good, guys. - It's also a staple of Brony conventions which always have a charity auction. Fan artists donate some of their products to the convention, or attendees donate highly sought-after pony products. Any show staff members who appear on the panels sign items to increase their value or offer services such as voice acting lessons or meet and greets. A combination of Brony-mania and peer pressure leads the Bronys to spend huge amounts of cash on these auction items. And you know what, well. Everyone wins in this situation. BronyCon's latest charity auction raised $80,000 for childhood cancer research in a three-hour auction.

It's another tradition that started at the first BronyCon and has become an expected component of every subsequent convention, and that's great. For me, the most interesting part of a Brony convention was always the hallways. The panels are interesting and there are things to see in the dealer room, but whenever I get homesick, I think about walking through the spaces between panel rooms, or in hotel lobbies, or even in the elevator. That was always the best way to stumble upon weird, organic things happening, like the Bronies would bring musical instruments, sit in a circle and have jam sessions, or you'd see a pony skin suit chilling with its head cut off.

I just liked that, the juxtaposition between a Hilton check-in desk and a man wearing a bulbous paper-mache Fluttershy head. Part 9, Brony propaganda. If you'll allow me to go on a bit of a tangent here, I have an interesting story for you. In fact, an entire documentary has been produced about Bronies and specifically BronyCon. It came to Netflix and everything. I don't think Netflix was releasing trailers, but still, I'd say being on Netflix makes it at least a little mainstream. So for a lot of people, I imagine this is where their understanding of Bronies begins and ends, which is bad, because it doesn't really try to explain anything.

I feel like anyone who wants to see the Brony document deserves to have their printer spit out a little fact sheet detailing the circumstances under which it was made. You see, John de Lancie, an actor best known for his role as Q on Star Trek, made a cameo in the final episode of the second season of My Little Pony. - I came in, left it and completely forgot about it. -But soon his agent started receiving requests for John to appear at Brony conventions. John looked into all this and seems to have come to one conclusion: The Bronies have money to spend.

So John decided to produce a Brony documentary and sell it directly to Bronies. He got Tara Strong on board as a co-producer because Tara was the voice of Twilight Sparkle and she was also making money from her appearances in scams of hers. I met Tara and John in the halls of these conventions, and heard the way they both talk to and about their fans, both in front of the audience and when they're not, and Tara really loves her fans. She's been working in cartoons for a long, long time and many of her fans are neurodivergent children and adults and the way she interacts with them is extremely warm and kind.

John is the toughest actor I've ever met. He hates Bronies and hates doing fan conventions, and at least as of 2013 he still hadn't seen a single episode of the show. So, at least for him, this documentary is clearly a very money-motivated endeavor. Brony's doctor sent out press releases to Equestria Daily and promoted it at Brony conventions. It was funded through Bronies' Kickstarter and was supposedly made primarily with cheap labor from Bronies within the fandom. That's important when you're watching this. This documentary was made by Bronies, for Bronies. It's not really approached from the angle of trying to explain Bronies to the uninitiated.

Their goal is to paint a flattering picture of Bronies to sell back to those Bronies. This really didn't work at all. One thing the producers didn't really take into account is that the entire base of the Brony fandom was a group of computer-savvy nerds passing around file-sharing links to the show. Obviously, as soon as the first version of the Brony doc was sent to Kicktarter backers, within 30 minutes, it was all over the file-sharing websites and had been illegally viewed by the entire fandom. The producers were so angry that they announced that they would not continue working on the project.

They released what they had at film festivals and streaming sites, and claimed that this version was the product they had always envisioned, but there were reportedly hundreds of hours of content that will never see the light of day. And remember what I said about the use of cheap labor within the Brony fandom? Well, the production update specifically mentioned that they had deferred some of the traditional salaries that would be paid from post-release sales, which seems to imply that they were saying that post-release piracy within the fandom was being used as a justification for why labor was being done. little paid.

So overall, the project was a failure and ended on a rather sour note, but the circumstances of its production make it an extremely interesting cultural artifact, at least to me. They wanted to make money off of the Bronies, so the movie had to be super clean and super celebratory of the Brony fandom, but in doing so, they infantilized the Bronies in a way that I can't imagine anyone would find flattering. ♪ Magic completes everything ♪ ♪ My Little Pony ♪ ♪ You know you're my best friends ♪ The documentary obviously can't talk about 4chan or sex or anything that warrants critical examination.

So how do you explain Bronies in your great Brony documentary? So they decided that the Bronies are a group of neurodivergent men who are so stupid that they need a show for four-year-olds to teach them genuine lessons about friendship, and that's beautiful, right? I'm not going to claim that there aren't tons of Bronies on the autism spectrum, but what a strange and reductionist way to examine that. I don't think people with Asperger's like the show because they're mentally young kids who need to watch a pink pony bake cakes to learn about the world, and I'm surprised they found a psychologist willing to sit in front of the camera and hint. that. - It has also fulfilled an indicative function, because cartoons are small parables and we have started to call this WWPD factor, what would a pony do? - You know, maybe they just like the show.

There is a lot to unpack. I saw this movie and I can't help but assume that it would be completely incomprehensible to anyone other than Brony. They commissioned a popular fan animator to make these little musical interludes where John de Lancie sings about Bronies. ♪ From music to stories to artwork to clopping ♪ - Oh, my. - And these segments are almost entirely jokes for Bronies. ♪ As I counted down the days from season one to season two ♪ ♪ The musicians wrote funky little songs like Pinkie's Brew ♪ How is this going to sound to the festival crowd? What the hell is Pinkie's Brew?

Are you going to explain that? Oh how silly of me, it's a Friendship is Witchcraft song I sang. Anyway, I'd say don't watch this if you want to learn something, but watch it if you're intrigued by the idea of ​​watching cynical Brony propaganda. Which, like, why wouldn't you be? -I've watched every episode of My Little Pony in part because when I interact with Bronies, I like to know what they mean by terms like 20% cooler. Part ten, the dark side of Bronies. So what was Brony's propaganda trying to hide? Brony conventions are largely jovial and accepting spaces, aren't they?

The media discourse about Bronies is always horrible because it's always like, isn't it weird that men like something that's pink? They go out and film the Brony conventions, and it's like the men are wearing weird homemade costumes and holding stuffed animals and singing songs, and it's like, wow, that's weird, right? And yes, it's weird. It's quite fun. But it's not worth disdain, it's just people having a good time. It's pretty embarrassing, but so are most fun things. If a group of grown men want to dance to My Little Pony music, who are we to envy them that activity?

I myself live in a glass house, an adult who wears Lightning McQueen light-up Crocs. But there are a lot of things in Brony culture that are weird. Everyone is too lazy to investigate and find out that stuff, so they just make fun of the men in pink like they're some 80s cartoon bully. Well, okay, I'll do the legwork for you. You're welcome, media outlets and podcasters. I'll start with my smallest point. It pales in comparison to everything else, but I'll at least give it a mention. There was a lot of control by Bronies over female fans, which I know is a much discussed topic in all spaces of the fandom, but doesn't it have that extra touch of bitter irony when it comes to My Little Pony?

I had been an avid fan of this for years when the Brony fandom emerged, and suddenly I was faced with all this scrutiny from Bronies who thought I was just jumping on the bandwagon to, I don't know, get dates. With Bronies? When I went to my first BronyCon in 2012, I remember our plane landed the night before, so we went out to the courtyard between all the convention hotels in front of the convention center, because all these Bronys were congregating and they liked to talk to each other and stuff and there was a group of Bronies standing around talking, and one guy was holding up a very large, expensive looking personalized stuffed pony.

Obviously he was an original character, so I said, "Wow, he's a really cute plushie. Who is this pony?" And he turned to the rest of the group and said, "Wow, she hasn't heard of my OC. You know, there are real fans, and then there's this." And I just walked away embarrassed because I didn't want to talk to them anymore. That was my first moment at BronyCon. The Bronies also had a great disdain for female fans who liked ponies before them. You know, it used to be okay to like ponies. And they also generally hated all previous incarnations of My Little Pony.

There were a lot of fan memes about how ugly the old ponies were because they were chubby, horse-like, and unsexy, how dare they, and how unwatchable the old shows were. This isIt became such an accepted attitude that the show even began making fun of the old ponies. - I bet you can't make a crazier face than this! -And yes, those eras of My Little Pony were definitely less appealing to grown men, but I don't think that was the audience they were trying to court. Doctor Brony did it too in his little song, he just said it like it was a fact, that the old My Little Pony cartoons were trash. ♪ Let me first summarize the previous generations of ponies ♪ ♪ The first generation appeared on television in the 80s ♪ ♪ It was made to sell toys, the plots did not carry much weight ♪ ♪ And the second generation, I don't mean to complain or complain ♪ ♪ But these characters fell directly into female stereotypes ♪ What did they mean by female stereotypes?

I mean, for all the things you could say about My Little Pony Tales, I don't think it's one of them. One of them is an environmentalist, another is a skater, another wants to be a teacher, another wants to be a circus clown. I didn't know these were female stereotypes. - To the volcano, little pony! - No! - My Little Pony Tales isn't even the second generation. It was rerun a lot in the '90s when G2 was in stores, which is why I watched it a lot as a kid, but it was produced during G1. It even had a UK exclusive toy line that was G1 style and it's a bit strange that it was only in the UK because the series didn't even air in the UK.

Some VHS releases of the series had a G2 cover. but the show's animation looked a lot like G1. Hire a fact checker, John! Yes, that's right, if they're going to watch me, I'm going to watch John de Lancie. Previous generations of My Little Pony toys had been very attractive for their collectible nature. Many pony characters would be released only once or twice and each product release would introduce a whole new cast of characters for kids to collect and imagine, but the Bronies hated that, because they only wanted to buy toys of the characters from the show.

Hasbro responded to this, and the toy line went on to produce generally only reissues of the same six main characters from the show. Bronies hated brushable hair, a hallmark of My Little Pony, because little girls like to comb and braid it. They didn't like it because they didn't know how to design it and it didn't look accurate enough on their shelves. Hasbro began focusing on sculpted, display-accurate minifigures and Funko display figures, which were heavy and had sharp corners. They even launched a product line called Guardians of Harmony, which swapped out the pink and purple packaging for a blue and white color palette, and featured hairless, articulated action figures of the ponies that came with missile launchers and angry expressions. .

In the early days of the fandom, the narrative around the show seemed to be to give the show a chance. I know it's for kids, but it's actually really good. They're really trying and there are some jokes in the background for parents and other adults to enjoy. The longer the fandom lasted, the more the narrative became, give the show a chance. I know you think it's for kids, but it's actually made for adults. The kids see it, but it's for us. And the more the show staff put Brony memes on the show, the more they encouraged this way of thinking.

The hundredth episode of My Little Pony was a celebration of the Brony fandom. It was divided into several segments and canonized various fan interpretations of the characters. Like a pony was Doctor Who, because the Bronies like Doctor Who and decided it looked like him, and there's a long sequence where one of the ponies is blasting dubstep, because the Bronies like the dubstep and decided that this pony likes dubstep. There's a fine line between a popular show having a positive relationship with its fandom and allowing the fandom to take over the show, and this episode is all you have to point to to say that My Little Pony was the latter.

But it's made even worse by the fact that this show wasn't for adults to begin with. At first, when I heard about Bronies I thought, how nice to see men celebrating and elevating something made for little girls, a franchise that so many people just dismiss, unseen. But the more Brony culture took over the show, the less I saw it as a celebration of who it was and the more I saw it as something that took away from what it was. - The fans, now it kind of belongs to them. - Anyway, we have more important things to do here.

I feel the need to mention the homophobia within the Brony fandom. The biggest fear of many Bronies was being perceived as gay for liking My Little Pony. Obviously, it's narrow-minded to assume that anyone who likes traditionally female media is gay. It would be very unfair for people to assume that. But someone really needs to explain to Bronies that "gay" isn't the worst thing a person can be. ♪ Swagberg, though NotACleverPony on the track ♪ ♪ Who says Faust ever put on a crazy show? ♪ ♪ Or peeping at MLP makes you Harvey for Lactose ♪ ♪ But I can't say we'd ever be short of those ♪ Even like the Bronies were. being extremely vocal about loving and tolerating everyone, being an accepting fandom, they are the first in line to say, no, wow, we're not gay though, no homo.

We just like ponies, we're not weird, weird gay guys. This was a very, very important part of Brony's documentary, seemingly unaware of himself. - Oh, you like the girls' show. Oh, well, you know, you have to be, you know, feminine or gay or whatever. You will suddenly become gay. Are you going to catch the gay guy watching this show? - I think I asked if they were gay. - Suddenly you may be homosexual and then it will be a reason to hate you. - You might be thinking I'm gay. - That they are actually a group of heterosexual men with a high level of education. - The Bronies you interview constantly affirm their manhood.

Look, this guy has a big, manly mustache, a novel concept because of how ungay he is. - I made a video and uploaded it to YouTube, and it's called The Manliest Brony in the World. - Look, these Bronies are in the army, the least gay you can be. The most heartbreaking thing is this common thread about the boy named Lyle. I would dare say that this is the main plot of the film. Lyle wants to go to BronyCon, but he's afraid to tell his conservative father that he's a Brony. -He is conservative. I guess that's the main word I would use to describe my husband, conservative. -His father was very conservative. - My dad is very conservative. -Lyle's biggest fear is that his father thinks he is gay. -He was very nervous that my dad would find out.

He might be thinking I'm gay. -And the implication of this is that his father will be angry, think less of him, or generally not support him if Lyle is gay. The documentary follows Lyle and his family as they visit BronyCon. John de Lancie welcomes Lyle's father in the lobby before entering, in a scene that seems to say: Don't worry, I'm a figurehead for these Bronies and I'm a cool grown man who dresses well and not gay in absolute. The producers pair him up to talk to another dad who is there with his son Brony, and this dad seems like a lovely guy.

He seems to give little thought to his son being a Brony. - My son has never been one to follow the crowd. You know, that's something I always like about him, he's an individual, which is hard for him sometimes. - And then, in the most tragic moment of all, this genius dad says, "We should be flattered that our kids trust us enough to tell us they like this show and not fear our judgment." - The fact that my son came to me and trusted me and felt comfortable saying that, I think that's a good thing, and I think you should take it as a good thing that your son has that relationship where, you know. , he took the risk. - And Lyle's dad says, "Well, Lyle didn't tell me." - I found out through my wife.

My son was hesitant to tell me himself. - And the scene just ends there, which initially, to me, seemed like a great ending to the scene. In a fictional film, one would assume that Lyle's father would internalize that conversation. One could imagine that this scene leaves Lyle's father character adrift, thinking about the ways in which he has failed as a father. -Maybe he'll watch the show when he gets home. -But that's the end of his story. -I feel great sympathy for Lyle's father, because his 16-year-old son watches a cartoon for girls. -I really felt like we needed a final scene where Lyle had a heart-to-heart with his dad or something, but we don't get it, maybe it was in the hundreds of hours of footage that got cut because everyone pirated. the movie.

We are later told in a mid-credits text that Lyle has been sent to boarding school. This is framed as positive because he says that he told all of his roommates that he is a Brony, but we never saw him resolve his story and the idea of ​​boarding school was never mentioned in the narrative. And I know that boarding school is considered a sign of privilege in many countries, but if you're not American, I have to explain that here, in movies and things like that, boarding school is usually presented as something unusual and a threat or punishment for children. disobedient If you don't fix yourself, I'll send you away.

The villain from The Parent Trap threatens him. - I make the first change in that house and she goes to boarding school in Switzerland. -So, to a viewer who hasn't received any resolution and hasn't been prepared at all with the idea of ​​boarding school, the text seems to imply that Lyle's father sent him away in shame. That's probably not what happened. Many children love boarding school, it makes them feel like a boy wizard. I never met Lyle or his family, I only saw the brief part of his life that this documentary showed me, but I'm just trying to point out the ways in which this documentary really fails its audience. - As a woman, do you feel in a minority here? - I feel like I'm part of a minority, but I also don't feel like that's where most minorities feel repressed.

It's like, oh, there are less of us? But it's not bad at all. - So, are you investigating any guys? - I suppose the film at least has value because it unintentionally shows this ugly side of fandom in a supportive and uncritical way. And now we are going to fry a really big fish. These large fish can hardly fit on the griddle. I don't eat fish, I have no idea how to cook it. I said before that being attracted to ponies is a victimless crime, but that has some caveats. The longer the fandom existed, the more and more kids began attending Brony conventions.

Some scammers were inclined to embrace this community, recognizing that they were the target audience to begin with. Many convicts had children-only activity rooms and gatherings, reserved the front rows of panels for younger guests, and placed more restrictions on the display of fanart for adults, either by having separate hours for dealers late into the night and panels for more than 18 people or by requiring that all adult fan art be sold only under the table and upon request. So the standard type and the subversive one. Oh my God. - Yes, they said we can sell the rear ones as long as they are... - As long as they are covered initially?

But an equal number of scammers simply didn't care, or put rules like that on their site but didn't enforce them. Additionally, there is a lot of content that is not explicitly rated R but that I definitely wouldn't consider kid-friendly. Like body pillows! Some body pillows are simply art of a pony, lying down, printed on a pillow. This was hands down the highest PG rated deal I could find. I have videos to keep monetized. By the way, I think this pillow cost like $60, so I hope you have a lot of fun. Body pillows just ramp up the sexuality from there.

Some are completely pornographic, but I haven't seen any openly displayed at scams, I think Bronies get them online. It is more common to see ponies looking a little sultry. They have bedroom eyes and look a little flushed. Her legs are arranged suggestively. Sometimes they're in lingerie or have drooling mouths, it's like furry art. But the ponies aren't drawn with genitals, so it's actually okay. It's not sexual. Why are you making it sexual, you sick lunatic? My horny drawing of Twilight Sparkle is presented on this long pillow in complete neutrality. By some strange loophole, I suppose it's okay to hang them like a banner in a children's dealer room, and many art prints get by on this exact kind of technicality.

My next and most important point of discussion is that many fan artists also make, display, and sell sexual fan art of the show's child characters. Now, the thing about these characters is that canonically they are like 10 years old. - Oh, that's so cute! - Oh, he liked it. And I just don't think there's any way to justify that as notIt was creepy. You don't select child characters for your fantasies because of their personalities. We all know that Apple Bloom is underage Applejack. This is really weird, but I feel like this is the part of my video that I'm going to get roasted for above everything else.

Angry artists on Twitter are going to mock me for my pearl-clutching stance, posting sexual art of fictional children for real children to see is bad, maybe. I'm so sorry, hairy Twitter. You're going to have to cancel me and take me to jail for my bad shot, just handcuff me. But try not to do it in a perverted way. It really bothers me when people create this kind of content and then try to act coy and stupid about it. They, like, put on a little charade like we're LARPing in a universe where this is normal. That? That?

Sexual? That girl is lying on her back because she is sleepy. I printed it on a hug pillow. And then they smugly cross their arms because I can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it is sexual content. And okay, yeah, I can't prove to a jury in a court of law that your kid's cartoon pony body pillow art is sexual, but I'm not trying to do that either. This isn't Judge Judy, this is a social environment where people can observe your actions and judge your intentions, and I'm going to go ahead and bang my gavel and judge you creepy.

I condemn you to something not sexy, like the salt mines. Part 11, the last BronyCon. So here we are, it's time to talk about the latest BronyCon. The swan song, the end of an era. In case you don't know, the idea of ​​the last BronyCon happening was less the point of this video and more the framework it's in, but it's still interesting so I want to talk about it. It was held at the Baltimore Convention Center, which always surprises me with its grandeur. It seems crazy that a Brony convention could justify such a large space, but I guess it did, because the last seven BronyCons have been held in this space.

To be fair, attendance had been drastically declining every year since 2016. Then, at BronyCon 2018, the con staff announced that 2019 would be the last year. - There is a reason why next year we will organize the party of our lives. As the curtain closes on this chapter of BronyCon, we are also choosing to end the event next year. - The numbers were not yet so low that they were forced to make this decision, but the writing on the wall was clear, and instead of letting their numbers continue to go down until they had to cancel it, they decided to go out with a bang, which I think it was the best option.

At this point I hadn't been involved in any part of the fandom in years, but when I heard it was my last one, I knew I had to get back, and I wasn't alone in this. The final BronyCon attracted 10,215 attendees, officially making it the busiest Brony convention of all time. For me the best part was probably during the closing ceremony. All of the weekend's guests gave a speech. These things at cons are usually just people thanking the con staff for doing a good job and saying goodbye, but this ceremony was really a farewell to the Brony fandom.

Everyone at the convention wanted to be there for the closing ceremony, but the room couldn't hold 10,000 people. Check out this line! So they set up an extra room in the outside waiting area with a live feed of the panel. The live stream had a slight delay, so every time someone told a joke during the ceremony, there was a three-second delay and then loud, delayed laughter could be heard from the other room. Head writer Mitch Larson takes the microphone. He's been coming to these things for 10 years and the Bronies treat him like a rock star. And you know, this is a man who works in children's television animation.

How wonderful that a guy with that job had this strange life for 10 years. Then Mitch starts thanking everyone and then waves to the other room. - Shout to the other room over there. - The audience applauds, there is a three-second delay and then loud applause is heard from the other room. (Audience applauds) Then everyone laughs at the delay, and then the whole crowd just starts singing... - That was great, guys. - Another room! - Another room! Another room! - Another room! Another room! Another room! - And Mitch says, I love it, I love it when you guys do that stuff, and that's when he starts to get excited. - I love those things, when you do those things. - And I understand why that excited him, because that's what I'll always remember about Brony conventions.

Everyone's energy was always very high at these things. Man, look what's going on here. Anything remotely funny would make the entire crowd lose their shit, every little thing would become a meme and something to celebrate and bond with. Bronies create memes out of things like a fire alarm going off or a hotel ballroom that looks like it's not up to code. A crowd could get really upset about stuff like that, but instead they just made memes. It's very extra and a little stupid, but it's also a little sad to get to the end and say, wow, I don't know if we'll ever see a community that captures this same level of stupid energy again.

Part 12, the death of Bronies. Some would say that the Brony fandom is not dying, it will continue forever and ever, and I think to some extent there will always be Bronies. I think there will continue to be small local meetings and an Internet presence. Maybe there will even be a brief resurgence when the next My Little Pony series, G5, comes out in about a year. You know, if it's good and if the ponies still have big anime eyes. But it's very clear that the fandom is past its prime for years. BronyCon, the largest and most definitive fan convention, is over.

Most famous horse creators have either started applying their talents to other fandoms or original projects or have disappeared from the internet completely. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the actual show, continued its run until the decline of the Brony fandom, but aired its final episode in October 2019, nine years after it began. That's an impressively long run for any kids show, most of which only produce like two and a half seasons and then repeat forever. The scam bubble that had existed for years has burst and many small conventions have been cancelled, some hastily after they failed to secure funding.

I had certainly stopped going to fan conventions before this point. I didn't even try to follow the show, and that's coming from someone who has watched every episode of My Little Pony and Friends and My Little Pony Tales except The Quest of the Princess Ponies, I could never find that. on DVD. But when I returned for the last BronyCon, what I experienced was a gentler, kinder, more festive kind of Brony fandom than I'd ever seen before. The online Brony fandom has reportedly been overrun by racists, and none of the popular sites' administrators are willing or able to make any effort to moderate any of this.

But Brony's online fandom is also over. If you go to the largest fan art site, Derpibooru, today's trending images have received less than 1000 votes. They are doing Neopets numbers. I don't even really know what that means. I'm not going to pretend that the things these guys post aren't a problem, but at least in this subculture, it's clear that they're constantly being unseated. The show is over, the fandom is over, and none of these people are leaving. The demographics you see in actual physical meetings are totally different. I mentioned homophobia in the Brony fandom. Well, that's not a big deal anymore, because in a way it can't be.

After the height of the fandom, most of the hateful Bronies left and graduated to joining real hate groups, hooray! In his absence, the Brony fandom was devoured, devoured, so to speak, by the loving embrace of the furry fandom. Maybe not all of the remaining Bronies are furries, but they exist very close to many furries. Let me take back my previous graph and correct it to reflect Brony's modern demographics. Anyone familiar with the furry fandom could probably tell you that furries are overwhelmingly, boldly, and unapologetically gay, and at the end of the fandom, it was the gay furries who organized all the good conventions using their years of furry experience.

Straight Bronies were outnumbered, and if they wanted to continue participating in the fandom, they would have to accept it. Furries are very used to being something of a cultural punching bag, so they are consequently an aggressively accepting community. If someone is LGBT or neurodivergent or part of a minority group or disabled or for any reason an outcast in any other community, they will probably feel quite comfortable among furries. And remember what I said about Bronies hating previous generations? There were a lot more women at this con selling their first generation ponies, and the Bronies were buying them.

I even saw Bronies with fan art and stuffed animals of My Little Pony Tales characters. Who's laughing now, John? I would definitely say the last BronyCon was the best I've ever attended. Maybe it was because everyone knew it was the last one that they felt like they had to celebrate even more, or maybe it was the changing demographic, or maybe it was just my Brony nostalgia. Honestly, it was probably all three. I'm not sad that the Brony fandom is over because it had a lot of problems and if we're being honest, it probably lasted a lot longer than it should have anyway.

But it was nice to be able to return to the Brony world and say goodbye to it for good. By the final BronyCon, there was no irony left, just serious gay fursuiters, horny fan art, and people sincerely there to make friends. There wasn't less energy like I expected, just different energy, but good energy. At the end of the day, the Brony fandom had its good parts and its bad parts, and now it's dead. He lived a long time and died of natural causes, so we don't have to feel bad about it. I think little pieces could continue as ghosts, if we continue with this analogy, and I hope they are the good parts.

I don't know how this video will make you feel about Bronies. For example, you'll say, oh, that sounds really fun, or you'll say, it sucks, I knew that! I don't even know what I'm trying to say. Maybe the Brony propaganda documentary was on the right track, because now that the Brony fandom is dead, we'll probably do what people always do with dead things, remember the good things and not critically examine them at all and be happy about it . confident that he will never return. Never again. (crowd applauding) - We will leave you with one last song to close the event. ♪ BronyCon, we say see you later ♪ ♪ BronyCon, we say see you later ♪ ♪ BronyCon, we say see you later ♪ ♪ BronyCon, we say see you later ♪ ♪ Back in 2011, BronyCon ♪ ♪ BronyCon ♪ ♪ Back in New York, we all had a little fun ♪ ♪ We had a little fun ♪ ♪ And in 2012, we came to Secaucus ♪ ♪ Secaucus ♪ ♪ There was a fire, you could say it caught fire that year ♪ ♪ The year caught fire ♪ ♪ And the fandom continued to expand, eventually ♪ ♪ We've been partying in Baltimore since 2013 ♪ ♪ BronyCon, we say see you later ♪ ♪ You've been fun and it's time to move on ♪ ♪ You were going strong, we'll miss you when you're gone ♪ (unintelligible) ♪ We'll remember BronyCon ♪ ♪ BronyCon, we say see you later ♪ ♪ BronyCon, we say see you later ♪ Ponies from the special?

It just came out about a week ago. It's already on a body pillow. That is fast. It's fast, they work fast.