Rant about Bronies-
The Brony community is a fandom of often male fans who watch the newest iteration of the franchise. This community has grown and grown since it’s inception on 4Chan but it is beginning to die out to a degree. I got into the Brony community a few summers ago because my friends coerced me to watch the show. After watching it I realized the show was actually ok and after hitting episode 4 I realized how much fun the show was. I continued as a Brony for a year until I went back to JPL after a period of leaving. While I had problems with Bronies before coming back showed me the main problems with the fandom, and has over time made my interest in the show less then it used to be, and has made me completely lose interest in being in the fandom. The issues highlighted below are my personal biggest problems with the fandom.
Not willing to see faults in the show
The biggest problem I notice with the brony fandom is that unlike other fandoms, who can sometimes be TOO critical of things, the Brony fandom has the exact opposite problem. The show’s fandom often overlooks big problems with the show and it’s episodes. An example is the reaction to the Season 3 finale. This finale included the controversial decision to turn the main character, Twilight Sparkle, into an Alicorn. An Alicorn is a Pegasus/Unicorn hybrid who are basically gods. Up until this point we only had three, Princesses Celestia, Luna, and Cadance. The reaction to this was understandably negative. However many Bronies simply insisted to look past this when evidence pointed towards it being used to sell toys. Many bronies left the fandom over the negative reactions to their complaints. This leads into my second point. The reaction to complaints is often hostile and aggressive, with insults often used. This reaction creates a permanent bubble of happiness about the show that prohibits growth or constructive criticism.
Just love and tolerate
As expected the reaction to grown men watching a show intended for younger children created a negative response. This negative response lead to much flaming and arguing, and eventually the fandom came up with a phrase to troll haters. “Love and tolerate.” This phrase was used until it eventually got a new meaning. It came to mean “Love everyone and tolerate everyone.” This corruption of the phrase eventually replaced it’s original meaning. This meaning eventually was forced to mean the second definition and was often forced onto Bronies who didn’t want to follow this code of thought and is often used to belittle other Bronies and is often used as an insult, or as a way to make those who followed this, superior to those who didn’t.
My show is better then yours
On a forum of mine I got into a debate with a Brony over which villain was better. Discord or Joker. Discord was a villain introduced in the Season 2 opening two-parter and was played by guest star John DeLancie. The god of chaos and disharmony, Discord was a serious villain and nearly won. However being compared to Joker was simply ridiculous. The arguments made were even sillier. Such as “Discord doesn’t kill”. This made me realize how deluded the fandom was in how good the show was. With Joker being over 70 years old and being cemented in the public mind with such things like Mark Hamil’s various performances is Batman media, and Heath Ledger’s award winning performance in The Dark Knight. Compared to Discord who recently turned two years old it is simply silly to compare the other. No other fandom I’ve encountered have tried to do something as preposterous as this. Now while the above may seem opinionated and perhaps it is, it does show how much the Brony fandom thinks that their show is better then media that has been around long before it. This is very different from other fandoms who often respect things older then their show.
Corruption of something innocent
The final problem with the fandom, is corruption of something as innocent as the show and turning it into sexual, violent, or disturbing with such things like Smile Smile Smile HD where one of the main characters viciously kills her friends. This same character was also used in the infamous Cupcakes where she tortures another one of the main characters to death and then bakes her into a cupcake. For sexual content, while so called “Rule 34” is common in fandoms I have not seen it as prevalent as I have in the MLP community with Ponies often drawn with sexual organs or in sexual poses. While you can argue that anything can be corrupted what purpose is there, for something about colored ponies, to be turned into this.
