18 Comments

Thank you for shedding light on a subject I knew almost nothing about, but which seems to correlate highly with other phenomena swallowing up Western civilization. From what you've written so far, it strikes me that three phantoms -- bestiality, pedophilia and rainbow imagery -- hover over both bronies, furries and other fetishes under the ever expanding umbrella of perverse and self-destructive sexual identities.

That the pony designs conform to the rainbow anti-aesthetic is something I find especially instructive. I've been meaning to write about the roots of such symbols, and how they relate to our contemporary banners and expressions of transsexualism, racial essentialism and other forms of chaos disguised as order. Your work here has definitely helped me to broaden the scope a bit, while also giving me food for thought about how the depersonalization wave might be turned back and its victims cured.

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I greatly appreciate the kind words. I'm glad to offer any insights are inspire any thoughts on the matter, especially because, as I wrote this, and I continue to write the third part, the more I'm convinced there really was something to the whole brony phenomena, but there is... something. You can feel it, just as you could feel it on the worst offenders in their community when you'd encounter them back in the day. It sounds a bit schizo but it's almost something you can feel looking back at you from the other side of the screen when you look at it. Maybe I'm just looking too deep into it, but, whatever that "something" is, it really wasn't good. But, if you're looking to cure its victims and stem its tide, the only thing we really can do is figure out what it is and how to deal with it, I think.

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Fandoms are the retention ponds of the system, maintained to prevent dangerous flooding. This is a Hoover Dam-scale engineering project on the part of Neoliberalism, steering the creative energies of bright and energetic young men into a stagnant pool of perversion and degeneracy in order to tame what would otherwise be an uncontrollable natural force. Men who would otherwise be the motive force in perpetuating our culture and reviving traditional forms for a new age are rendered obese, sterile, addicted, and obsessed with trifles, their powers of thought and artistic enterprise locked into a prison of childish irrelevance and consumerism. The tr00ning is just the next logical step.

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This is definitely part of it. As a post from a certain Tibetan Shadow Puppet Forum once said so eloquently, "Some autist who would have spent his life cataloguing every species of beetle in the Appalachians a hundred years ago is currently in a basement somewhere trying to break the speedrunning record for Super Mario 64 by 2/10th's of a picosecond."

It makes me wonder how much potential has been squandered, how many of these people could have done something but had their ambitions strangled in infancy or beat out of them before they ever had time to materialize. Not a pleasant thought.

Also makes one consider what other "retention ponds" exist, both now and in the past. A particular hot take I've had that tends to get some people riled up is that the punk scene and the counter-culture scene were both similar "redirections" for their time. Not to say they didn't arise organically, but, especially with the counter-culture scene of the 60's, it seems as if it was co-opted by certain forces to redirect the anger and dissension of the youth into an ineffective, unorganized mess and dumb it down into a drug-addled stupor. I've dug less into the history of the punk scene but I feel as if looking at it in the broad strokes. Makes me think today's fandom scene is perhaps a more effective and efficient evolution of those earlier iterations,

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I think the main difference is that with earlier movements the system was content to divert energy. This time, they've actually managed to commodify it; not only do the fans not do anything productive or creative in their own interest, but they actually hand over money in return for being sold the illusion of accomplishment, a completed level or the final action figure in a set. Perhaps retention pond is not the right image- they are more like the reservoir of a hydroelectric dam, slowly providing energy for the system as they drain out.

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I know that it's somewhat passe to comment on substack posts after the first week or so, but after reading these two long essays, I had to.

Quick background: I fell down the pony hole early in the Pandemic year. Immensely bored after two weeks in lockdown, I misclicked on /mlp/, and morbid fascination soon turned into genuine appreciation. I felt a bit like a man exploring a great civilisation in an advanced state of decay; the golden years of 2012 were long past but there still remained all the old works that had been wrought in those years of fervour (not all of them awful). I had arrived at an interesting time in the fandom's history. The show had just ended, after several straight seasons of decline. The board, recoiling in on itself with the end of its raison d'etre, had begun to ferment all sorts of extraordinary things in its threads. AI voice programs (the PPP is, imo, 100% responsible for the explosion in AI voice technology seen over the last three years), online conventions, art, music, etc. This is likely the reason for the renaissance seen recently. 4chan is upstream of most of the internet, and small cultural shifts there can have tremendous reverberations further downstream.

More on topic: As a man with an inside perspective, you've hit the nail on the head with your theory. The most remarkable part of the fandom has always been the fandom itself, not the show. The guiding principle of Love and Tolerance that so many banded about early on was always about accepting each other, no matter how revolting they were outside of their brony-ness. All the fringes of the internet who hadn't yet become furries ended up there, and they found community and a genuine connection with others. I don't think that it, in and of itself, primed society for the great advance of the Rainbow Coalition, but it'd be foolish to deny that most bronies were cut of the same cloth as the transsexuals and other deviants.

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Nothing too passe about it, actually. I greatly appreciate the input and insight - you describe the fandom scene in its twilight quite eloquently. It is always interesting to see the afterlife of a fandom in the wake of whatever media it may be's end, and how they seem to spiral in on themselves and contract in odd ways. You're absolutely right about 4chan, too. Even though I'm seeing this new content on sites like Twitter and Tumblr, posted by people who can safely be said probably have a very unpleasant opinion on 4chan, I do wonder if their own renewed interest in the series is some ripple effect of the spasms of the remaining brony culture on the site.

If you don't mind, I have two (or three) questions for you:

- I'm familiar with AI voice programs and their explosion in popularity, but what is the PPP?

- Do you think the new season will do anything to offer a shot in the arm to the community? Do you ever see it coming back in full force? From your language, it doesn't sound as if you're all that close to the fandom anymore, but I'd still be interested to hear your opinion since you were closer to it more recently than I was.

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No problem, and I'm glad you liked my rather rambling comment.

1: the Pony Preservation Project, or PPP, was a project that started on /mlp/ in early 2019 (first generalthread in April) with the goal of cataloguing and recording every aspect of the show for use in fan generated content. Inspired by the videos of crude voice models that were floating around at that time - like the Obama-Trump steamed hams video - they began by clipping, cleaning, and writing down every line of every major and secondary character in the show, then feeding those into every advanced voice model they could get their hands on. 15.ai (built by a local nerd genius) is the one that broke through into the mainstream and really started the craze, though it's not the most advanced the board has.

2: G5 at its best is mediocre; it lacks that sovl that really infuses G4. It hasn't been and won't be inspiring much of anything other than ridicule. Barring anything truly miraculous happening, the fandom will continue to slowly decline as enthusiasm for ponies becomes enthusiasm for things made by other pony fans becomes enthusiasm for other things. Average quality of fan content will probably keep rising, if past trends continue. I doubt there will ever be a true revival to the old glory days of 2012-13, too much has changed socially for that to happen. Even if the magic came back, those who could take it and do such impressive things with it are no longer there

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Interesting. That really goes to show the, er... passion the community has. I'd say it verges on mania, at times, but it's truly impressive nonetheless. For as scathing as I was in this article at times, I truly do find the brony community's output in both volume and quality to be admirable, in much manner as other fandoms from around that time. Supernatural, Dr. Who, Homestuck, among others - they may not have been my bag (well, the first two weren't, I was pretty deep into Homestuck), but again, the explosive creativity in those scenes is just something you don't see anymore. And, in a lot of ways, the internet is less interesting and probably lesser in general for it. It was all a bit ridiculous but there was, as you said, a certin sovl that seems to be missing. Not to say you don't see impressive works of fandom these days, but certainly not as much. I have my theories as to why but those will probably be saved for another day.

One more question for you, out of morbid curiosity - what's would you say an example of high quality the brony community has put out since the ending of the show? You say that the quality of fan content is increasing, and I'm largely working on what I remember from 2010 - 2015, so I'm curious to know if anything even coming close to Fallout: Equestria has come about since then.

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Probably the best example of higher quality fan content I can think of is Equestria at War, the HOI4 mod. Easily the best mod out there for the game, and leagues better than vanilla. Ponyfans have always had cursed luck around video games (see Fighting is Magic), so it's a surprising direct for a fandom which has historically had its talents elsewhere.

Fanart and fanfics also seems to be improving in average quality, even if there still are a lot of shlock and plain bad shit still there. I can dig up some examples off of Fimfic and the Boorus if you need them - I understand how you might not want to going digging around in those yourself. Music is still of decent quality, with a shockingly high amount of it still coming out

As for the question in your other reply, sure! Although the promise to give credit almost sounds like a threat, what with the topic and all

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Haha, I promise, it isn't. I just want to give credit where it's due. I've actually seen Equestria at War recently. My friend posted it in our group chat and we spent a night boggling at the complexity of it all. Said friend is also a fighting game guy and loves Fighting Herds, which I think is what happened to Fighting is Magic (do correct me if I'm wrong). If you have any examples of fanfics worth at least a quick skim, I'm curious, if you want to share them. I did, back in the day, read the first Fallout Equestria, and revisiting it briefly for the purposes of these articles, I can't say it holds up in terms of quality like I feel like I remember, but, at the same time, it's still competently written.

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FiM did eventually become Them's Fighting Herds, and iirc they got Lauren Faust involved on the creative side of it at some point.

As for fanfics, I can't trust my own taste in the matter, but I can direct you to the old and new /fimfic/ general's recommended reading lists: New Starter Kit - http://mlpficreviews.org.uk/starter/

Old Starter Kit - http://i.imgur.com/vuTA7EN.png

A few favourites of mine off of those lists are Lost Cities, Through the Well of Pirene, Good Trooper Gilda, and Whom the Princesses Would First Destroy

Very busy lately, sorry for not replying to this sooner

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I'd DM you about this if I could, but since I can't, I want to ask - would you be alright if I used a piece of this comment in the follow-up piece to this article? Like I said, you describe the faded glory of the community quite nicely, and I'd like to use it to make a point. With proper credit given, of course.

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I just stumbled upon your Substack but I have been immensely enjoying all of your posts so far. As someone who was closer to the main expected audience demographic when bronies were big and who followed brony stuff pretty heavily back then, I am eagerly awaiting your third installment to the brony series. I wasn't sure whether to put this comment on this or your later 'All the Pestilent Horses' since you made me think of some comments for both...I'll just stick it here and hope you don't mind. I also apologize for the quality of the writing on this comment; it will not be well organized.

I hope this isn't too critical - I do really like your write-ups - but I guess I wanted to defend the very fond memories I had of when the fandom was at its peak. I will say that I don't agree with all of the aspects you've been focusing on - I mean, you're absolutely right about the skeezier side of brony fandom, but the fandom was huge and it was pretty easy to find other passionate, well-made, non-creepy fanworks if you knew where to look. I never frequented 4chan though (probably because I linked it to that skeezier reputation), and I know that's where a lot of the fandom originated, so I was probably blinded to some of its facets as well. But for every terrible Celestia meme there were so many other memes, enough that the show itself made an episode dedicated to the fandom and its inside jokes (and then another episode making fun of the complaints from the fandom about the show). Something like Rainbow Factory would also inspire an original song based on Rainbow factory, which someone else would turn into an animated video, which probably made fans out of people who hadn't read the fanfic in the first place...like you said, it was weird but a source for wild creativity. I also wanted to add a comment on "All the Pestilent Horses" here, but I'll finish comments on this current post and then put all the "All the Pestilent Horses" thoughts at the end. I hope that's not obnoxious.

I think it's funny that you bring up Brony alanysis, because I couldn't STAND those people (with a few exceptions). I found them boring and - like you pointed out - not really focusing on the show, or only really making surface-level comments. (I saw the ringleader of the analysts, DR Wolf, once at a convention. I overheard him speak and was so freaked out that he seemed the same in real life as the persona and voice he had on screen that I left the lobby as fast as I could.) I much preferred 'Bronies React,' which was much more pony-based and more serious about dealing with or making jokes/connections out of the material, and which seemed more genuine. Out of the analysts, the two I enjoyed (ILoveKimPossibleAlot and SilverQuill) were the ones who functioned more along those lines - connecting pony to sources outside of pony, but still treating the source material as something in-depth with some degree of self-awareness. SilverQuill in particular. He treated MLP like something to make legitimate critical connections out of (come to think of it, channels like his probably prolonged the idea of MLP being a mature show). One of my main introductions to modern Marvel comic interest came about because on an analysis video for "Tanks for the memories," he brought up Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America #4.

Some of the art and music made from the fandom is astounding, and I don't doubt that some of it was from people wanting to expand their base by turning it into ponies, but at least from what I remember of the sentiment at that time, a lot of it was also just people who were legitimately interested in colliding another fandom into the pony world and lore and seeing what came out of it (ex. the uncountable Doctor Whooves works). The art back then was also pretty passionately made. I don't want to downplay what you said about the modern fandom's maturity or groundedness - I don't have a good grasp on the current fandom, but if it has even a fraction less of 'clop,' as they called the more explicit pictures, I will be eternally grateful - but I still have art saved from the mid 2010s and it looks pretty similar to the quality of the image you showed.

I have noticed, like you mentioned, an mlp-to-trans shift and I think your comments are interesting to think about. The overlap between bronies and furries are...I don't know exactly what to do with it. There were two furries promoting a furrycon outside of the dealer's hall in that same convention where I saw DR Wolf, and I don't think they promoted to me in particular (because I was a kid), but the overlap was definitely there.

Okay. "All the Pestilent Horses" follow-up, mostly because I was interested in this one line:

"While not nearly as popular as Cupcakes or The Rainbow Factory upon release, years later, we can clearly see which of the three was ultimately the most influential..."

Again, I am not well-versed in modern fandom, but I hadn't heard of the AUs at all. I am curious to see whether the infection AUs will be remembered years from now or impact the fandom long-term, but I can't imagine it being more influential as Cupcakes, even if it is currently spawning active spin-offs. I don't use Tiktok, so I am pretty biased against it, but I just don't think Tiktok content will ever exceed other platforms. To me it feels like the 'fast fashion' of fandom content. It's meant for whatever's popular, but it also seems like people post there to get viewed more than actually care too much about the content they're putting on there. Again, I could be way off the mark. I just think about all the animated videos and comics that casually reference Cupcakes because it's that integrated to lore, or Rainbow Dash Presents, which made high quality parodies that were laughing with the fandom instead of at it, and I don't see that kind of quality, or at least not that kind of active unity, as much.

Your analysis that Pinkie Pie would survive the longest and Rainbow Dash would go first is absolutely spot on. Thank you for pointing out that she's easily overlooked and cares the most, and I think your point of how or why she gets so consistently warped is great. I will also point out, though, that the show contributed to the idea of her dark side first, even if the fandom took and ran with it far beyond the show's intentions. Way too far beyond the intentions...Cupcakes has its place, but I can somewhat acknowledge how it spawned some other works. I can't find anything in good taste concerning Smile HD, which was the other big initial contribution to Pinkie Pie = friendly = evil = gore.

One last comment: I saw someone in one of the comment threads mentioning Hasbro ignoring/distancing itself from the adult audience, and I just wanted to second that. The G4 episodes are currently available on Youtube by non-Hasbro channels, and instead of cracking down with C&Ds like the old days, Hasbro pretty much just monetized the ads to itself and let the episodes stay up. It didn't make season 9 into an official DVD, so the only available version of the season is from the Malaysia branch of Hasbro. Merch-wise, it's not banking on the old show (and related fans) as much. I was never interested in the dolls, and most of the dolls/plushies I know people were interested in didn't come from Hasbro, but I was really into the MLP comics produced by Hasbro, and I think that was a big merch source for the adult crowd because a lot of comic artists would come to pony conventions. The comics are still ongoing, but it's difficult to find the older ones because they aren't republished, so I think whatever value Hasbro placed in G4 has pivoted pretty firmly into supporting the new audience instead of catering to an old one.

TL;DR: Pony was def sketch but not every inch was touched by the sprawling seedy underbelly, and I'm enjoying your posts. I apologize for how long this is.

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Hi there. First of all, thank you for the thoughtful response - I always appreciate comments like yours. Secondly, I apologize for waiting so long to get back to you, but I've been busy and I didn't want to half-ass a reply. I prefer to repay like with like and if you take the time to leave a long, thoughtful comment, I want to show the same respect in my reply. And there's no need to apologize - I like long comments.

I appreciate your insight into the community at its peak, and I don't see it as overly critical by any means. I don't think there's anything wrong with defending the community's better aspects. I know I sound exceedingly negative in this article about the brony fandom and, for the most part, it's an easy target and a low-hanging fruit due to the sheer absurdity that it ever got as big as it did, but I do respect the passion and unity that the community brought, at least, for a time. In a world where community and brotherhood is increasingly scarce, I think it was rather admirable that the brony fandom was able to come together at all, and anyone who took anything positive away from it, I don't want to disparage. The creativity and sheer passion on display will always be as fascinating as it is commendable.

I find your comment about "Fast Fandom" intriguing. Doing research into the Plague AU phenomenon, I did get a very good idea of what the modern fandom/s surrounding MLP look like today (i.e. the remnants of the brony community and the "others", for a lack of a better term), and I will say that I did notice much of the people contributing to the Plague AU scene were not dedicated members of the fandom. I said as much about the bronies, but not so much the others. Don't get me wrong, the "others" are very present and active, but not so much in the Plague scene, and, as a whole, their numbers are much smaller than the brony community was even in its twilight era (pun intended).

I've noticed this with other flashes in the pan on TikTok, where IPs or franchises will suddenly spike in popularity due to a trend before settling back down, and that many of the concrete fandoms surrounding them, in terms of followings, are quite small. For instance, Dungeon Meshi is currently the biggest anime/manga property in the scene - or, at least, compared to the evergreen properties of Dragon Ball, One Piece, etc. that are always popular and have large followings - but Dungeon Meshi doesn't have a fandom in the same way, say, Attack on Titan or Love Live did when they were airing at peak popularity in the mid-2010's. There's no real community around the show despite all the people talking about it. I've seen the same with a lot of other games, shows, whatever that have gotten popular in the post-COVID epoch. All in all, it leads me to believe we, as a culture, are phasing out of the megalithic days of massive, cohesive fandoms and into more fast-and-loose, protean pop culture landscape where most people are not in "fandoms" like they used to be. This isn't to say that fandoms as a concept won't always exist - there will always be hardliners that forge a community around a certain brand, concept, or IP - but, perhaps going forward, these will become smaller, more tight-knit groups rather than the vast, sprawling networks of tens of thousands of fans that we've been used to throughout the 2010's. I think the shift to short-form content and the rise of platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and other such media is a main contributing factor for this, and the average person, rather than get deeply invested in a property and become a member of fandom, lacks the attention span and time to get truly invested and will instead flit between subcultures, fandoms, and what not rapidly, jumping on whatever bandwagon is hot at the time before departing to jump on the next big thing. It's an interesting shift in the pop culture zeitgeist I feel like I need to look more into, and I appreciate you giving me a word to associate it with. This is all to say that I don't think that fandoms like the Bronies, Homestuck, Hetalia, or even Attack on Titan, which all had their day in the limelight in the nerd culture scene of the 2010's, will ever make a comeback, and that the golden age of fandom is probably behind us. Is it good? Bad? I can't say, but it is disappointing, as, like I said, if there was anything about the bronies I found admirable it was their creative output and vivacious passion. To never see that again with another property would be a loss for the pop culture world.

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Thank you for such a thoughtful reply. I enjoyed reading through it, and you made great points.

The shift from fandoms to becoming ungrounded/fad-driven is really interesting to think about. I'd like to be optimistic that the declining golden age of fandom doesn't negate a potential comeback, but you're right - the 2010s was a weird period where fandom presence became so big that it straddled between minority culture and mainstream culture. Something about the early 2010s especially, because the YA dystopian books and movies were also in full swing. That period the only time I've experienced book sources being as equally as popular with general audiences as the movie adaptations.

I wonder if anything about fandom trajectory has to do with the internet transitioning from something that 'nerds are on a lot' to something that everyone started to use constantly, whether or not they knew about internet jokes because from my memory, memes also became popular in the early 2010s. That might be conflating too much correlation as causation, but your observations on fandom rise and fall and your note about post-COVID flitting between subcultures reminded me more of those times.

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Maybe you're too young to remember this, but it's tack-for-tack what happened to punk rock. Two things in particular: 1) the scene kids liked the music, but they didn't love it 2) the scene kids loved the scene, and being at the center of the scene, driving it, running it, etc. I often think the poor punk musicians themselves didn't realize that the thing they created to unleash all their misfit masculinity was stolen from them on day one by whoever was standing in the back, watching, tapping a foot, but not listening (see Malcolm McLaren for starters). In punk's case, as fun, vibrant and norm-shaking as it could be on its best days, it's a ridiculously limiting art form, so it's not like the musicians themselves could ever reassert control over it. They became a sideshow to their own community.

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