Originally Posted by Wikipedia
Internet following
Despite the target demographic of young girls and their mothers,[48] My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has become an Internet phenomenon with many fans of the show being males 14 to 35.[55] The response from the Internet is traced to cartoon and animation fans on the Internet board 4chan,[48] responding to Cartoon Brew's Amidi's negative essay on the show and state of current animation trends.[56][54][57] The members of the cartoon, or /co/, board of 4chan, having not yet seen the show, considered the alarmist nature of the essay and began watching the show, and quickly warmed up to the series for plot, characters, and animation style.[56][58] This reaction soon spread to the other boards of 4chan, where elements of the show quickly caught on as recurring jokes and memes on the site.[56] The number of Friendship Is Magic posts, counter to the usual attitudes and image of 4chan, caused a large stir on the site, with fans of the show unrelenting against various trolling attacks from other 4chan boards, leading to a temporary ban on anything pony-related, which was soon overturned.[58][59] Christopher Poole, the founder of 4chan, briefly acknowledged the popularity of the show on 4chan at the 2011 South by Southwest festival.[58][60]
Though the discussion of the show would continue at 4chan, many fans of the show created other venues to discuss the show, leading to its spread onto other forums and the rest of the Internet.[58] Sites such as "Equestria Daily" and "Ponychan" have been created to share artwork, stories, and news about the show, receiving upwards of 500,000 visits a day,[61][62] and many artists use art sites like deviantArt to display fan art based on existing and fan-created characters.[55] Fans have also started series of local meet-ups and small conventions, such as BroNYCon, which featured the show's supervising director Thiessen as its guest at its first gathering.[58][48] Most of these fans are themselves surprised by their fondness for the show. Shaun Scotellaro, operator of Equestria Daily, one of the main fan websites for the show, stated that "Honestly, if someone were to have told me I’d be writing a pony blog seven months ago, I would have called them insane."[55] He speculates that the spread across adult fans was accelerated by its presence in online gaming, which sparked further interest.[63]
The adult interest in the show is comparable to similar shows such as The Powerpuff Girls, Animaniacs, Yo Gabba Gabba!, Rocko's Modern Life, Phineas and Ferb, and SpongeBob SquarePants; a combination of jokes aimed at adult viewers, and a sense of nostalgia for older cartoons.[64][65][66] Many of the aforementioned shows had attracted college-aged fans that, at the time of Friendship Is Magic's airing, would be raising children of their own.[66] The show has made references to works that older viewers would recognize, such as The Benny Hill Show, X-Men, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Diamond Dogs, and The Big Lebowski.[8][65][67] Two episodes, "Suited for Success" and "The Best Night Ever," feature lengthy musical numbers inspired by Stephen Sondheim, including the song "Putting it Together" from the musical Sunday in the Park with George.[68][69] Along with the interest of the older demographic, the show's viewership increase from 1.4 million per month on its premiere to 4 million viewers per month by the end of the first season,[63] making it the highest-rated show of any Hasbro offering at the time.[52] Advertising Age reports that the viewership of the show has since doubled between the first and the second season, alongside the online "viral" spread of the show.[67]
Older fans of the show have adopted the title "brony," a portmanteau of the words "bro" and "pony."[70][71] Though generally taken to refer to male fans, the term is often applied to any fan of the show outside the target demographic, regardless of gender.[58] Another term, "Pegasister," has been used to describe older female fans of the show.[48] In a promotional ad prepared by the Hub for the show, using a parody of Katy Perry's "California Gurls" entitled "Equestria Girls," the lyrics acknowledge the word "brony" as part of its lexicon.[55] The brony community has gained media attention through outlets such as Wired, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal.[72] During a phone interview on NPR's comedy radio show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! in June 2011, former President Bill Clinton successfully answered three multiple choice questions about Friendship Is Magic, leading at least one journalist to jokingly refer to him as a brony.[73][74] Lexicographer Grant Barrett listed "brony" as a memorial new word of 2011.[75] The brony fandom has been perceived negatively by others due to the strangeness of the older fans' dedication to the show, which has in turn overshadowed the show's critical success.[76] The FOX News comedy talk program, Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld, poked fun at the brony community considering the largely predominately male, young adult demographic.[77]
The brony community is considered to represent one aspect of New Sincerity, where these older viewers not only watch the show but participate in creating new material around it.[55] As such, a number of Internet memes have grown from the brony fandom. The community has adapted catchphrases from the show, such as using the words "anypony" and "everypony" as replacements for "anybody" and "everybody," while creating their own Internet meme-like statements, such as the phrase "Confound these ponies," inspired by the Merrie Melodies short The Dover Boys.[59] Numerous videos that incorporate footage from the show, including music videos, parodies and remakes of movie and video game trailers, and other mashups are posted on a daily basis to YouTube.[55][78][79][80] In one case, a video made by a high school student named Stephen, using science to dissect some of the physical impossibilities on My Little Pony as part of a class presentation, was highlighted by several news outlets[81][82] and featured on the Tosh.0 website.[55][83] Remixed media of professional works using Friendship Is Magic footage have been noticed by their respective creators, such as by Edgar Wright for the My Little Pony versions of the trailers for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Hot Fuzz, and the cast of Top Gear for a video setting clips of their show to the pony characters.[78][84] Numerous fan projects have created Friendship Is Magic-related video games, such as the brawler game My Little Pony: Fighting Is Magic, or modifications of existing games like Team Fortress 2.[85][86] An organized group of fans, calling themselves the "Humble Brony Bundle", has polled donations from its members towards the Humble Indie Bundle, a charitable indie video game sales drive for Child's Play and Red Cross, topping the contribution list for one sale while contributing the largest single donation of over $16,000 for a later sale after getting into a friendly competition with Minecraft developer Markus Persson (aka "Notch").[87][88]
Time named the brony fandom as the ninth best meme of 2011,[89] while the Internet meme research site, Know Your Meme, listed it among its top ten memes of 2011.[90] PC Magazine named the brony fandom as one of the top memes in 2011.[91]