It was a pretty good children’s tv show aimed at young girls.
Some terminally online dudes, probably due to the over-the-top girlie nature of the show, start to watch it so they can make fun of it. Then some of the terminally online dudes realize that it is halfway decent - but more importantly, realize they can get a funnier reaction by trolling the haters with the show’s strong points. This attracts more dudes who arent necessarily trolls, so much as they have a deeply seated need to be contrarian - the fact that this show was very clearly not made for them drives them to want to watch it, and they find community with the other pathologically contrarian online dudes who also watch it for the same reason.
Hence, there are two parallel fandom/hatedoms. The primary - little girls and terminally online dudes hating on a tv show made for little girls. And then the bronies and brony-haters. The existance of brony-haters being completely unsurprising because that was the point of watching the show in the first place - after all, there are other tv shows. There are better tv shows. And there is always the option to simply watch a tv show you like and then not make fanfic art about it and not bring it up in conversation in your college dorm room. The underlying motivation of the brony was never to simply enjoy watching a tv show, but to watch a tv show that other people didn’t want them to enjoy, and therefore to piss people off by enjoying it. And so the existance of the brony haters isnt so much a bug of the brony community, nor a feature, but the whole point.
Back when it got momentum, I was one of the idiots who got sucked into it because of “lol, let’s hate watch it” and actually enjoyed it up to a point (S5, I think? First season after Twilight became princess). Season openings and finales were usually the best episodes, taking the cast out of slice of life situations and dropping them into dangerous adventures.
I wrote some fanfiction that never saw the light of day - thankfully for me and anyone who would end up reading it
I watched a lot of them with my kids. As far as kids shows go, there are definitely worse ones out there, but I went in knowing that bronies exist, and expected to find some deeper artistic value, but no, it’s just a kids show about magic pony friends.
Same here. My kids were super into it and I had the theme song seared into my brain, but I guess I didn’t pay enough attention to get the nuance that people seem to enjoy.
I don’t know, maybe My Little Pony? Are Bronies still a thing?
Maybe I’m falling into an unfamiliarity trap, but I never really understood why My Little Pony was seen as worthy of such adulation.
It was a pretty good children’s tv show aimed at young girls.
Some terminally online dudes, probably due to the over-the-top girlie nature of the show, start to watch it so they can make fun of it. Then some of the terminally online dudes realize that it is halfway decent - but more importantly, realize they can get a funnier reaction by trolling the haters with the show’s strong points. This attracts more dudes who arent necessarily trolls, so much as they have a deeply seated need to be contrarian - the fact that this show was very clearly not made for them drives them to want to watch it, and they find community with the other pathologically contrarian online dudes who also watch it for the same reason.
Hence, there are two parallel fandom/hatedoms. The primary - little girls and terminally online dudes hating on a tv show made for little girls. And then the bronies and brony-haters. The existance of brony-haters being completely unsurprising because that was the point of watching the show in the first place - after all, there are other tv shows. There are better tv shows. And there is always the option to simply watch a tv show you like and then not make fanfic art about it and not bring it up in conversation in your college dorm room. The underlying motivation of the brony was never to simply enjoy watching a tv show, but to watch a tv show that other people didn’t want them to enjoy, and therefore to piss people off by enjoying it. And so the existance of the brony haters isnt so much a bug of the brony community, nor a feature, but the whole point.
Back when it got momentum, I was one of the idiots who got sucked into it because of “lol, let’s hate watch it” and actually enjoyed it up to a point (S5, I think? First season after Twilight became princess). Season openings and finales were usually the best episodes, taking the cast out of slice of life situations and dropping them into dangerous adventures.
I wrote some fanfiction that never saw the light of day - thankfully for me and anyone who would end up reading it
I watched a lot of them with my kids. As far as kids shows go, there are definitely worse ones out there, but I went in knowing that bronies exist, and expected to find some deeper artistic value, but no, it’s just a kids show about magic pony friends.
Same here. My kids were super into it and I had the theme song seared into my brain, but I guess I didn’t pay enough attention to get the nuance that people seem to enjoy.