Brony - Creation and Spread

Creation and Spread

One of the first critical reviews of the show, published shortly after the initial broadcast in October 2010, was written by Amid Amidi for the animation website Cartoon Brew. Amidi wrote that the show was a sign of "the end of the creator-driven era in TV animation". Amidi's essay expressed concern that assigning a talent like Faust to a toy-centric show was part of a trend towards a focus on profitable genres of animation, such as toy tie-ins, to deal with a fragmented viewing audience, and overall "an admission of defeat for the entire movement, a white flag-waving moment for the TV animation industry." Though the show had been discussed on 4chan's cartoon forum before the essay's publication, the alarmist nature of the essay led to more interest in the show, resulting in a positive response for the series for its plot, characters, and animation style. This reaction soon spread to the other boards of 4chan, where elements of the show quickly inspired recurring jokes and memes on the site. Some of these included adopting phrases from the show like "anypony", "everypony", and "nopony", instead of "anybody", "everybody", and "nobody", or jokingly stating that they watch the show for the "plot", a reference to the ponies' flanks.

The number of Friendship Is Magic posts drew attention on the site. Fans of the show defended it against various trolling attacks from other 4chan boards, leading to a temporary ban on the discussion of anything related to ponies. Christopher Poole, the founder of 4chan, briefly acknowledged the popularity of the show on the site at the 2011 South by Southwest festival. Poole has since created a dedicated board for discussion of the show and its fandom. Though the discussion of the show continued at 4chan, fans created other venues to discuss it, and the fandom spread to other Internet forums.

The adult interest in the show is comparable to that of The Powerpuff Girls, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Rocko's Modern Life, Phineas and Ferb, Yo Gabba Gabba!, and SpongeBob SquarePants: older audiences appreciate jokes aimed at adult viewers and a sense of nostalgia for older cartoons. Many of the aforementioned shows had attracted college-aged fans who, when Friendship Is Magic was airing, would be raising children of their own. The show references works that older viewers would recognize, such as I Love Lucy, The Benny Hill Show, X-Men, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Diamond Dogs, and The Big Lebowski. Most of these fans are surprised by their fondness for the show. Shaun Scotellaro, operator of Equestria Daily, one of the main fan websites for the show, said, "Honestly, if someone were to have told me I'd be writing a pony blog seven months ago, I would have called them insane." He commented that the spread among adults was accelerated by its presence in online gaming. Mike Fahey, an editor for the gaming website Kotaku, noted that the fandom was "building friendships among a diverse group of people that otherwise might have just sat on either side of the Internet, flinging insults at each other". Further interest came from the furry community, which includes a large number of animation fans. One contributor to "The Brony Study" (below), Dr. Marsha Redden said that the adult fans are "a reaction to the US having been engrossed in terrorism for past ten years" in a manner similar to the Cold War, and are "tired of being afraid, tired of angst and animosity"; the show and its fandom are outlets from those strifes. She compared the brony fandom to that of the bohemian and beatniks after World War II and of the hippies after the Vietnam War.