Bronies: A case study

Before I dive into the community, some background:

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic tells the story of the “mane six”, a group of ponies each with a unique personality as well as a magical element known as The Elements of Harmony

Bronies are adult men (largely) who watch and are active fans of the show My Little Pony. The term is a combination of the words bro + pony and though this generally refers to male fans, the term is often applied to fans of either gender. If you’re interested in the history of how Bronies came to be, I’ve included a section in the appendix that has a bit more detail.

In my work, I wanted to understand why Bronies so actively participate in their fandom / subcommunity, and what their participation said about gender / expressions of masculinity. My (somewhat academic) conclusion was as follows: Though Bronies preach “love and tolerance”, they construct a high barrier to entry to strengthen their tribe ties and bolster confidence, which necessitates active participation within the tribe. Bronies view themselves as sensitive outsiders who reject the masculine norms forced onto them by society, but often unknowingly reproduce masculinity to maintain their masculine privilege.

While the barrier to entry (watching a cartoon) is low, the Brony community is actually relatively difficult to break into compared to other subcommunities, and there are so many different mediums (websites, podcasts, fan art, fan fiction, facebook groups, 4chan, etc) to interact with the community that it’s all a bit overwhelming when you first interact with the community. My requests to join facebook groups were met with questions about actual events in the show as a form of proof that I wasn’t just a bully / troll to the group:

A few of my initial requests to join FB pages

Bronies transcend the online space and have in-person interactions, though these are rather rare. I like to think about them / compare them to a clubhouse built high up on a tree - anyone who wants to get to the treehouse must be in the know to even find the clubhouse; they must also have a password to access the ladder to climb up. Bronies need a high amount of knowledge to enter these spaces, and active participation to ensure acceptance—to miss out on an episode is to miss out on future discussion and memes and content creation. This has not been my experience with other Facebook groups (like Dog Spotting, college meme groups, Jason Derulo Fan club).

Images from various Brony-Cons, in person conventions for members

I believe Bronies often visually set themselves apart and create a high barrier to entry that reinforces their ideas of sensitive outsider—only this time, we know that it’s not all pushed onto them by society—they create a lot of these barriers, using ostracism as justification and inspiration/motivation. When I first began my research, I viewed Bronies with much more of a sympathetic lens, wondering why people were so mean to them. I thought that the fandom was simply about the show, and its fans were indeed misunderstood by society. My thoughts have shifted over time, due in large part to the videos I’ve watched of Bronies talking about their participation in the fandom and reacting to “hate”, forum posts and memes making jokes out of sexual assault, personal anecdotes of women who have been pushed out of the tribe, and the MLP pornographic content produced by members of the fandom.

For the sake of brevity, I will put more of my thoughts + extended thesis in the appendix , but ultimately my conclusion is that:

It’s difficult to continue to view a tribe as innocent admirers of a show meant for little girls when some of the most popular content consumed by its fans involve gifs and images of a human male sexually penetrating the MLP characters, fan fiction about incestual relations between characters, and degrading treatment of women on forums. Though I do not believe all Bronies participate in and actively seek out and create this media, the tribe is a whole is shaped by its production of overtly sexualized and grossly masculine elements. I initially thought this content was simply a wound of the tribe—however, it seems too far entrenched all aspects of the tribe to be just a wound. For example, so much inappropriate content appears in Facebook and Reddit groups that moderators and admins across media sites often plead with members to not post NSFW content, usually resorting to blocking members who do. This is evident across platform, and as noted in my analysis above, a gross display of hegemonic masculinity.