My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

About

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a Canadian/American flash cartoon series, produced by Studio B Productions, based on the My Little Pony universe. It was developed for television by Lauren Faust, who also did major work on both The Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Since its on-air debut in October 2010, the series became a popular subject of threads, reaction images and image macros on 4chan.

Fans outside the show’s demographic, especially teen and adult male fans, have come to be known as “bronies”, and occasionally use ponies to derail threads. Although fans are generally known as bronies all across the internet, on 4chan, bronies who post ponies mainly on /co/ have been called “colts”. Also, female fans of the show have been referred to as “pegasisters” on occasion, though this isn’t as popular as the term brony.

Origin

On October 10, 2010, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was aired as part of the debut of the new television network, The Hub, which replaced Discovery Kids. On October 19, 2010, Cartoon Brew^[1] wrote an article about the show titled “The End of the Creator-Driven Era in TV Animation”, which had an oddly alarmist tone to it. Threads on 4chan’s comic and cartoon board, /co/, attacked and made fun of the article for this reason. The article and the threads generated /co/’s initial interest in the show, causing several members to go and watch the first episode. After the second episode aired on October 22nd, threads about the ponies started to boom even more, gaining the show fans outside of its target demographic.

The Plot

From Wikipedia

The series stars a unicorn pony named Twilight Sparkle, who has been known to be a pupil of the world’s ruler, Princess Celestia. Seeing the young pony buried in books, the princess gives her the task of making friends, sending her, and a young dragon named Spike, to Ponyville. There, they meet some interesting ponies, including tomboyish Rainbow Dash, glamorous Rarity, hard-working Applejack, timid Fluttershy, and hyperactive Pinkie Pie. Together, they explore the ins and outs of the town, solve various problems, and make even more friends. Every day is a lesson for Twilight, but none as important as the magic of friendship. At the end of each episode, Twilight relays a report to her mentor Celestia, telling her what friendship has taught her.

Spread

4chan’s /co/

From October 2010 to February 2011, single-topic blog Equestria Daily^[2] monitored the census & frequency of Pony-related posts on 4chan’s /co/ (cartoon) board, publishing a series of statistical graphs showing the growing trend of My Little Pony on 4chan.

Elsewhere on 4chan

While /co/ initially loved the series because of the artwork and animation, fans on /b/ seemed to enjoy the plot and characters more. The “cute and cuddly” nature of this show is the opposite of what members of /b/ like to think of themselves as.

It didn’t take long for the show to cross over with other memes, such as “Post ending in x will y”, nor did it take long for threads with over 200+ posts about the show to become common, as shown here.

YouTube and Elsewhere online

Episodes can be easily found on YouTube, and more often than not in HD. Many users have posted the whole first season and parts of the second on their account (such as MASTERLINKX^[3], XYRO,^[35] and MenloMarseilles^[4]). For this reason MAST3RLINKX, and many others, have had their channels taken down many times by “Hasbro.Inc” and “Habsro” claiming copyright infringement. Originally thought to have been a mass trolling do to the misspellings and overwhelming support of the brony community by the MLP staff, the take-downs were confirmed to be legitimate by numerous Cease and Desist^[34] e-mails sent out by Hasbro’s legal department in late 2010.^[36] The decision made over the take-down of many youtube channels and video download sites such as ponyarchive.org left many fans of the show with a bitter taste in their mouth as much of the fanbase used these sites to access the episodes at whim. The website Ponyarchive.org^[37] was set to redirect to the official iTunes website for My Little Pony FiM Season 2 downloads.

Many of the comments on youtube videos of the series show genuine appreciation for the show:

…but then there are those that outright poke fun at the people who enjoy it:

Many members of the fandom have taken to the habit of referring to each other the same way that the ponies do as well, using words like “somepony”, “anypony”, and “everypony”.

YouTube user MrYaridovich^[5], in addition to contributing much to the Brony community via his videos, runs a 24/7 synchtube^[6] stream dedicated to playing episodes of the show. Other members of the fandom also have set up livestreams and websites dedicated to airing the episodes on new episode days.

Meme Generator^[8] currently also has several generators related to ponies.

My Little Pony, having also flourished in the artscene, fanart appearing on the frontpage of Deviantart. A slurry of pony fan animations have warranted a dedicated collection for Newgrounds.

4chan Reaction: Cancer

As the fanbase of My Little Pony grew on 4chan’s /b/ board, a counter “hatedom”^[9] culture arose as well. Soon, angry anons would try to “sage” threads into submission. Due to the high comment volume the threads already received, this plan did not work. They tried spamming gore images and porn in an attempt to dissuade people from posting, however, the bronies did not reply negatively, instead saying that even if those people spam gore, that that is okay. Eventually, some fans of the show, in order to stop inconveniencing people who disliked it, decided to start an image board of their own, Ponychan.^[10]

On February 26, 2011, moderators on 4chan’s /b/ and /co/ boards started to sage pony threads and ban users who posted in them. The mods’ reasoning behind this was “endless pony threads with no actual content other than reaction images. Go start your own pony imageboard.”

The massive bans on users only created a flame war between fans of the show and those who claim it to be cancer. Those claiming that My Little Pony threads were cancer and didn’t generate any original content likened the phenomena to that of Boxxy spammers from 2009. Ponies quickly became the subject of “MODS ARE ASLEEP” threads.

On February 27, 2011, a stickied thread appeared on /co/’s front page with a list of rules for pony threads. They have since been taken down, and were listed as followed:

Current rules for MLP threads:

Do:
-Keep all MLP related content within the current largest MLP thread
-Actually discuss the show
-Ignore any threads speaking negatively about the show

Do NOT:
-Post any MLP material in any thread not explicitly about MLP (reaction images, avatars, macros, quotes, phrases such as everypony/brony/etc)
-Post threads to speak negatively about MLP or reply to threads speaking negatively about MLP
-Post any MLP material on other boards
-Bump MLP threads just to keep them bumped
-Report MLP threads where users are staying in one thread

These rules are in place for the meantime and we’ll make adjustments as we see how everything goes. Abuse will result in bans.

On March 1, 2011, the MLP imageboard, Ponychan, was raided by some members of /b/, the raid possibly being organized or provoked by a moderator. However, the imageboard was restored and moved to a new server later in the day. On the same day, the pony ban on /b/ was lifted.

March 20, 2011, moot trolled channers, replacing headers with “Once Upon a Pony: Everypony Welcome!” and posting ponies under the anime/manga board, but the headers were soon changed back.

4chan’s New Board, /MLP/

During a thread discussion on /a/, a suggestion for the adding of a board for MLP:FiM. The result was that on February 16th, 2012, moot created the /mlp/ board, otherwise known as Pony,^[38] on 4chan with an acknowledgement that it was time that they had their backs turned to “one of the biggest subcultures in 4chan history” and that they were “giving the ponies the home they deserved from day one”.

This was also accompanied with a set of rules in place for the new board.

Although many bronies have been using the new board, many were also hesitant about using it. Showing doubt in moot’s arguments and thinking it’s a trap, seeing the board as a joke to ban all the people posting on it. A reason for for /mlp/ being a “ban trap” was because of 2005’s “April Fur’s Day” massacre.^[39]

Opinions on the board itself vary a lot. Some think it to be unnecessary, while others have stated that a new pony board is a terrible idea, afraid that mixing the /b/ and /co/ bronies together will cause spam posts and “hugboxing”. Moot has also addressed to the fear many bronies show.

Memetic Usage

Common Phrases

Within the community, a complete vocabulary of slang phrases has been created. These terms and phrases have been picked up within the fanbase and became a common online usage. It has become a jargon of sorts and has evolved immensely. To find out more about these terms and phrases, visit the Bronyspeak page.

MLP on YouTube / “Ponification”

MLP proved to be a sensation on YouTube, with many YTPs, PMVs, and My Little Parodies being made.

There is also an ever-growing fad of taking the audio from famous movie trailers, shows, or video game trailers, and pasting the audio on top of clips from the show that match the audio.

Other Media

• Fan art in the community is mainly posted on DeviantArt, with various groups dedicated to the show such as #MLPFriendshipIsMagic^[41]. It’s popularity has also spread through Equestria Daily’s Drawfriend posts.^[42] These showcase the recent fanart from the last 1-3 days. Various Art Fads also appear in these commonly. Brony image board Ponibooru^[45] also contains over 100,000 images as of December 17th, 2011.^[31]
• Musicians often post on the music forum site My Little Remix.^[40] Radio site Ponify.me^[43] streams music 24/7 and contains profiles for many My Little Pony inspired musicians.
• Fan-Fiction has an archive on Equestria Daily spanning over 1,500 post as of May 2012.^[44] Many fans submit their own works to Equestria Daily, who has a team reading and judging these.

Mods and Games

Fans have created numerous small flash games for the series, such as the Luna Game and Story of the Blanks. But various skins and mods for excisting games have also been created. So can numerous skins be found for Valve’s Team Fortress 2. A series of character models based on the ponies in the show was also created for Garry’s Mod. ^[32] The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim also has various skins and mods created by the fans, changing the player, objects, and even monsters.

Pony Tumblrs

Fans have taken to the microblogging site Tumblr and have begun posting blogs under the names of various characters form the show, as well as original characters created by the fandom. These blogs often take the Ask X Anything format, with names like “Ask Pinkamina Diane Pie”^[23] or “Ask Surprise!”^[24]. The first known pony Tumblr was “Ask Applebloom,” which started in July of 2011, and has since shut down completely. Other notable Tumblrs include Ask My Little Chubbies,^[25] Ask Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie,^[26] Ask Maplejack,^[27] and Ask Lyra.^[28]

The Tumblr accounts tend to follow the same format. Other users ask questions and the account holder answers these questions in-character through a short comic. It is very rare for a Tumblr to give text-only answers. Many of the blogs are run by accomplished fan-artists, and each one has a unique art style. The Tumblr users NeuroAster^[29] and Redge^[33] have created lists of active pony Tumblr accounts. There is also a list^[30] on Google Docs, but it requires a Google account to view.

Creator Response

Lauren Faust is well-aware of the show’s older demographic, as shown in comments to fans on her deviantArt^[11] page, and she seems rather pleased by it. She is constantly interacting with fans on both deviantArt, and occasionally 4chan’s /co/ board.

Others who have worked on MLP have also responded to fans, and expressed their delight about the popularity of the show.

One of the most notable is a layout designer who goes by the name “FlashinthePan”. He occasionally replies to and answers questions on 4chan’s comics and cartoons board, /co/.

Supervising director Jayson Thiessen even stopped by for an impromptu Q & A session on Ponychan.^[12]

On May 27, the Hub released an extended edition of Equestria Girls, a ponified version of Katy Perry’s California Girls, exclusively for Equestria Daily, to recognize the site’s dedication to the community, show, and to ponies in general.^[15] The video itself explicitly gives a shout-out to bronies, and additionally recognizes the name they have given DJ P0N-3, pronouncing it “Pon-three” to emphasize the spelling.

The voice actress of the main character Twilight Sparkle, Tara Strong, occasionally gives shout-outs to the bronies on her Twitter account. One of the more popular shout-outs was a tweet on March 7th, 2012, where she acted as Twilight performing a short free-style rap, ending the tweet with the term “Twilightlicious”.^[46] This was followed two days later by a VocalTweet where she sang the lyrics from the tweet in the voice of Twilight Sparkle.^[47] Both the term Twilightlicious and the VocalTweet resulted in various amounts of fanart and fanvids.

NPR Quiz on MLP with Bill Clinton

On June 25, 2011, President Bill Clinton appeared on Nation Public Radio’s weekly quiz segment, titled Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, in which each guest is challenged with a trivia question outside of their expertise areas. During the 10-minute long interview hosted by Peter Sagal and Carl Kasell, President Clinton was asked three questions about the characters of “My Little Pony”. The audio and full transcript can be found on the NPR website.^[13] The show was reblogged by The Daily What^[14] on June 26, 2011.

The Colbert Report Brony Shoutout

Bronies have been mentioned numerous times in the media. While sometimes they’re praised for their loyalty to the show, other times they’re attacked for their fandom.^[16]

The most popular mentioning of bronies was probably on August 1, 2011, during The Colbert Report. At the start of the show Stephen Colbert gives a shoutout to every brony that might be watching.^[17]

Season 2

Release Hype

After much speculation, the second season of the series was confirmed to air on September 17th.^[18] Equestria Daily uploaded a countdown timer for Season 2.^[19] The timer was created by DeviantArt user Gig-Mendecil.^[20] Similarly, the single serving site ponycountdown^[21] was updated with a countdown clock and several site easter eggs such as a Roaming Rarity. The site was created back in season one and gives a countdown for when the next episode of MLP is to air.^[21]

Premiere

The first episode of the second season, The Return of Harmony, aired on September 17th, 2011. The show was the first in a two-part series, and featured chocolate milk rain clouds, a magical hedge maze and the Draconequus Discord (the former ruler of Equestria). The premiere was reviewed by the web blog We Got This Covered^[22], and received a positive review.

Now that the show is aware of its more mature audience, it isn’t afraid to cater to them. Pinkie Pie makes a “Chocolate Rain” joke and there are some moments in the episode that are just plain scary – even for adults. Psychotic laughing balloons and evil soul-sucking butterflies? That’s just not okay.

Search Insights

Search queries for “my little pony friendship is magic” have risen steadily since October 2010 when the show was released.

External References

Related Links