(written 15.02.2025)
I can hardly believe it's been over 5 years now since Friendship is Magic ended in 2019... where does the time go?
As I get on in years, I more frequently feel like I am self-transcending in a way and changing what I am, and letting go of my former selves and of the past. A part of that is my identity as a My Little Pony fan - or a "brony", as the internet has taken to calling it. I now feel like that journey is ending - or perhaps, it has ended a while ago and I am only now beginning to recognise that. I wanted to recount my story before moving on.
Bronies have become a thing largely thanks to the internet. It's one of those primarily online subcultures that could not have emerged without it - it is (was?) too niche. I believe the fans of the show are too sparse for local communities to emerge. For context: I have been terminally online since at least 2006 or so, and had had many online-only interactions for years before that. I think it was inevitable that I would eventually run into MLP.
Around 2017 is where it started for me, but indeed I had been made aware of the show's existence way earlier. In fact, I saw discussions about this new show called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic as soon as October 2010, right as it premiered! I was exposed to some still frames from the show. I would be lying if I said I had not been immediately captivated by the striking art style and the pastel colours. It certainly stood out to me, even back then. And yet, I thought nothing of it and moved on. Or perhaps I only thought to myself: "gay LOL". I no longer remember.
Why did I choose not to investigate the show back then? Simply put, I was doing other things. I was not too interested in watching television shows or movies at the time. My internet vagrant's existence had caused me to drift into the japanophile subculture - the otakus, the wapanese, the weeaboos, whatever you wanna call them. Though unlike many in that sphere, I was not much into anime or manga. At the time I was in it mostly for the Touhou shoot-'em-up games. I remember watching only a couple of Japanese animes around that period: Samurai Champloo before it, Serial Experiments Lain at the tail end of it, around 2012 (my weeb phase did not last very long), and I was observing discussion about this cool new magical girl anime called Puella Magi Madoka Magica, or something like that. But I was not hanging out with people who I felt I could discuss shows and movies with, so I mostly did not bother. My primary hobby was video games - and Touhou was fun and new for me because that was my first encounter with extremely difficult video games. But I digress.
So, I skipped ponies when they were new. I would continue to hear about MLP as time went on. I eventually wandered onto 4chan, I think it was around 2013. I remember the big news of some new boards being added, some of which were /lgbt/ and yes, /mlp/. Bronies had become an internet phenomenon (or phenomena, if you like to confuse your foreign word plurals with singulars) by then. In fact, people say bronies originated on 4chan's /co/ (Comics & Cartoons) and /b/ (Random) boards. So it was only a matter of time until I would start getting exposure to them.
My adventure with 4chan is a story for another time. Suffice it to say I would keep hearing about bronies from time to time. I had been somewhat into furries (which is another tale I'd like to tell one day!), so my perception of them was neutral, despite many online making fun of them. I would mostly pay them no mind. Notice that I used the word for the fandom this time instead of the show - to reflect the internet presence and notoriety they had attained.
November 2016 was when I stumbled onto the show. I was babysitting my kid brother. I was not a good babysitter. Our idea of it included generous amounts of children's movies and television shows to keep him occupied. At the time we still had cable, or rather, satellite television - remember that? I know, nobody uses that anymore in times of broadband internet-enabled, Netflix-like subscription-based video-on-demand online streaming services. Good times. But yeah, ponies were airing on some children's TV station whose name I no longer remember.
Regrettably, I can't recall what was the very first MLP:FiM episode I watched. What I do recall, though, is that my first piece of pony media was actually an Equestria Girls movie. I tuned in on Equestria Girls: Legend of Everfree. I wasn't really interested in the concept of ponies as schoolgirls, much less ponies as humans, but it drew my attention to MLP being aired on that TV station. And the a marginally more mature setting than the main show's made me take LoZ seriously for long enough to keep watching, which allowed me a glimpse into what the ponies' personalities were like.
You can probably guess how it went from there. I was intrigued. Since I now had that show that spawned "that" notorious fandom readily available on hand, I watched a few episodes. The cartoon was pretty good, actually. I was once again drawn to the striking art style which I found appealing, particularly in the age of CGI-based animations, while MLP was going for a traditionally animated feel, which now felt nostalgic. I found the ponies cute with their enormous, glimmering jewel-like eyes and their pastel-coloured manes. I started looking forward to watch more episodes when they would come on. Even though I wasn't watching with the original dub (or was I? Satellite TV at the time definitely had the option to select audio tracks, and some TV stations offered multiple languages), my country's dub was good enough not to take away from the experience much.
I remember feeling keenly the dissonance of a grown-ass man (or "-ahh", if you wanna talk like the kids today and self-censor) watching a cartoon for little girls. I must have thought to myself at the time: oh no, I am now like those manchildren who the internet makes fun of! The horror.
Then came 2017. It was a significant year for me for a number of reasons. I was moving out of my mother's house and getting a new job. With no friends besides a dwindling number of online acquaintances from hobby websites of old and no real-life contacts in my new place of residence to speak of, I was feeling quite lonely. And I think I have made it quite clear by now that I was fascinated by the bronies themselves. Those two factors made me seek out pony fans online. So naturally, I finally bit the bullet and went on /mlp/ - the only place I had known. The board full of general threads which I largely ignored, and focused on MLP General, where I was able to find MLP episodes to watch. There I also learned that we were currently in a break between show seasons, with Season 7 starting soon. There was also an actual MLP FiM movie coming to cinemas that September-October.
Around February of 2017, I made my first online friend through pony. He had a hand-drawn Fluttershy in his profile picture on Steam, so I added him. I think by then my understanding of bronies was through the lens of so-called "New Sincerity" movement and unironic enjoyment. I certainly felt that way about the show itself, even if the irony of somebody like me watching the cartoon was never lost on me.
I cannot possibly hope to tell you the complete story with all the details here, and I surely have forgotten many important moments. But by that time I had already gone to a few conventions. Those were generic fantasy conventions held in Poland. I remember an episode where I went to some large Polish con like Pyrkon in 2017, and spotted some MLP comics by IDW on sale at some Polish publisher's booth. I ended up buying a few and started reading them on the train home. I was in a compartment with a bunch of high school or college-age girls who were also visibly coming home from the convention. That was when I most acutely felt the irony of a man like me indulging in pony shit. It was so palpable and delectable. It was funny. I couldn't help giggling to myself under my nose. As you know, suppressing laughter only makes it harder to fight. As I tried to continue reading and not take my eyes off the comic, I continued to giggle quietly to myself, unable to keep it in, knowing the girls were probably watching. It was embarrassing. I must have been red in the face. A grown man, reduced to being bashful like this... How delectably ironically amusing. It was a self-sustaining reaction.
As I watched all the seasons of Friendship is Magic, I explored the fandom alongside the show. I had learned of the image board Derpibooru, the blog Equestria Daily, the bronies' suspected place of origin on /co/, the pony conventions that existed out there, the /pone/ board on 8chan, may it rest in peace, as well as the now-defunct Polish board, Flutterchan (/flutter/ on 8chan and a backup on fluttershy.pl)... I watched every new episode of Season 7 as it premiered on Discovery Family, at little streaming parties on CyTube, organised and hosted by anons, for anons. It was nice and really felt special to me. There were also annual CyTube marathon watch parties around MLP's anniversary on 10 October. I attended some of them. It was exhausting and overwhelming, certainly interesting.
I looked to get more involved in the life of the fandom. Because I tend to pick one thing and just stick to it for a long time, I ended up getting interested in the Pixelcanvas thread, which was an anarchy free-for-all pixel drawing board, with a cooldown between each placed pixel. Factions emerged on there, one of which was MLP. I followed the bot user dramas and served as an archivist of the development of the MLP-controlled part of the canvas for about a year until I lost interest. It was ultimately frustrating for me because I despised the politics of different factions and always having to fend off harassment, and the endless shitposting in the Pixelcanvas general was getting to me, but getting to dabble in bot development to automate pixel placement and snapshot taking was a valuable exerise.
I was also curious about the pony conventions. In the latter half of 2017 I think, I saw someone on /pone/ looking for somebody to go to conventions with. I was very withdrawn at the time but I thought, "what the hell," and contacted him. We decided to go to GalaCon in 2018, the biggest pony convention in Europe, held in Ludwigsburg, Germany. The prospect terrified me. It was the first time I was going to travel abroad alone, and with an online stranger to boot.
And so begins the saga of the /pone/ anon. Whoo boy... this one is a doozy. It lasted a couple of years.
Despite our commonality in coming from image boards, that guy and I did not get along well at all. He was very mean and disrespectful, and I was not equipped to deal with that. The friendship lessons in the show certainly did not prepare me for that either, lol. But because I had very little real-world experience socialising and barely anyone to ask for counsel, I did not know how to proceed. I grit my teeth and kept him around despite constantly getting into arguments with him and feeling misunderstood and abused. He was also a decade younger than me, which made it harder for me to relate with him and would often make me embarrassed having all the extra years with none of the wisdom that normally comes with it.
The /pone/ anon was very active and I had trouble keeping up with him. We ended up playing a bunch of online games together, none of which I really enjoyed because I simply couldn't stand him. Nearly all those games were his suggestions. That was probably the most different games I'd play in a short time span, I usually try out no more than a new game or two a year. Our games would often devolve into him bullying me for fun, and me taking offense and rapidly escalating into a conflict leading to use of host powers to get back at him or me outright quitting the game. He certainly had initiative that I lacked. He was the one who largely organised our trip together, and I followed.
Time for a tangent. During that time, around October 2017, MLP the Movie had come out. I watched it in the cinema two times. It was interesting how on the premiere there were quite a few of obvious bronies in the hall with me. I did not dare to approach them. They were wearing pony merchandise and accessories, while I had none. I might have had a Trixie print T-shirt that I had ordered from Redbubble by then, I don't remember. But I definitely did not consider myself to be of the same caliber as them. I was like a poser compared to them. A newfag.
Well, the movie was just okay. The plot was weak and generic. I once again liked the art style (somewhat polished for the movie), though not the CGI backgrounds that were used. The songs were nice, as usual for Daniel Ingram. I was forced to watch with the Polish dub in the cinema.
When I went again for a rewatch a few days later, the bronies were gone. This time it was just little girls with their parents. It was quite embarrassing and a stark change compared to the premiere.
I don't normally rewatch movies, but this one felt special enough for me to warrant doing so. It was also the only instance where I stayed through the credits until the end. The 2017 MLP movie has a little post-credits animation with Celestia as your reward, yay.
I watched that movie quite a few more times. One more time with the /pone/ anon, I think? Another time or two during the MLP Anniversary stream. Once I made my own CyTube channel and streamed it to the Fluttershy profile pic friend and his little group of Discord friends.
Back to the /pone/ anon saga. Multiple times over the course of my relationship I considered just giving up and not coming to GalaCon 2018 at all. But eventually, the fated day had come and we met IRL for the first time at the Stuttgart Airport.
It was extremely awkward and uncomfortable. To the surprise of absolutely no one, I did not enjoy his company any more IRL that I did online. The convention itself was overshadowed by his presence that I wanted to get away from. I tend to fixate narrowly on certain aspects and he dominated most of our trip to Ludwigsburg.
GalaCon was an overwhelming experience, much like the fantasy cons before it, even though it was considerably smaller. It attracted, what, over 2000 attendees? It was either that or over 1000. But they were all crowded together in and around the rather small Forum am Schlosspark. It was qutie anxiety-inducing. I had absolutely no plan for what to do at the con. I felt lost. Drifting through the corridors I found myself unable to muster the courage to talk to anyone. There was also a pre-party and an afterparty, both of which /pone/ anon wanted to attend, so I came with. He had an easier time socialising than me. It helped that he was from Czechia and it turned out that country had a sizable brony contingent calling themselves CZ/SK Bronies. He found them and was able to chat with them, despite claiming to also suffer from social issues. Sadly, there was no equivalent of PL Bronies for me. In hindsight, I badly wished to have come with someone nice who I could latch on to and socialise through them, with their encouragement.
I had one problem I was starting to notice while there that I did not fully realise until much later: I had great difficulty hearing others over the background noise. At the time I thought it was just /pone/ anon because he was mumbling under his nose a little, but over time it had become quite apparent that it's some neurological issue I have. It makes it extremely difficult for me to talk to others because I have to constantly ask them to repeat themselves. It definitely takes a lot of enjoyment out of socialising IRL.
One crazy thing about GalaCon is the namesake attraction, the Galloping Gala Ball. (I don't remember anymore if the "Galloping" part is officially in the name, or if I'm confusing it with the Grand Galloping Gala from the FiM Season 1 finale episode.) It enforces a strict dress code, and /pone/ anon and I both went and packed suits for it. I even splurged out on a new fitted suit because I did not have one. It was so not worth it. Barely anyone bothered with that and our reward was being allowed to stand around in the hall while having drinks and listening to, I think it was 4everfreeBrony, giving us a small concert. This experience alone made me irrationally biased against 4eB, even though he's actually a good musician.
/pone/ anon also got me to come with him to a couple more events closer to him: Czequestria and the Winter Karaoke Party, both held in Prague, where he lived, and hosted by the CZ/SK bronies. I even came to Prague once just to tour it with him. We did some sightseeing.
Why did I keep interacting with him instead of cutting him loose? I was just desperate. After all, I was a friendless loser. Our relationship continued to deteriorate rapidly. He simply couldn't accept that I wouldn't take his "banter" - either in video games or in our chats - and did not like it. So he kept doubling down and rationalising it to me. I was sick of it.
In the meanwhile, I managed to befriend another Czech person at one of the pony Discord servers I ended up on, and used him as a kind of rebound to continue going to some more pony events instead of /pone/ anon. That friendship did not last as he simply wasn't very interested in continuing it, and I did not show much interest in that person either, so I would eventually end up going to events alone. The arguments continued and eventually he found a new friend group and we would gradually stop talking.
It was an interesting and tumultuous experience, that whole relationship with /pone/ anon. It taught me a lot. It made me more intolerant of people giving me attitude. If he and I were to meet today, I would drop him immediately after the first time he insulted me. I do not miss him at all.
My interest in the show and the fandom caused me to meet some other new people. I then turned to focus more on the Fluttershy PFP guy. He was extremely shy and withdrawn. I guess I could relate to that. If he and I were to meet today, the relationship would not have survived, because he simply did not show me much interest. I spent a whole year starting a chat with him every month or so. I was always the one to initiate. That would not be acceptable to me today. It eventually developed into much more, and we remain friends to this day, but as you can probably guess, it was an immature, mutually hurtful relationship driven by desperation. He is a saga of its own in my life that I shan't give more than a footnote, for the sake of brevity.
Through Fluttershy PFP guy, I met another brony, this time from the US. We played Borderlands 2 together. He was nice, but I was kind of a self-absorbed prick and he was depressed. One time, he was looking to vent to me, and I was extremely bad at handling that, so I stuck my foot in my mouth in a big way - like, I did it so hard and with so much force, I did it with a somersault. Him dropping me practically on the spot came to me as a shock and taught me a thing about mistreating other people, either deliberately or through ignorance. I miss that guy, because I was clearly in the wrong. What also shocked me about that event was, it was a mistake I could not recover from. He went 100% no contact and I'm sure I shall never be able to speak to him again. I wish I could have acted differently, but it was meant to happen. I was simply another person back then.
There were a few more online relationships I got into through ponies. It was all huge for me, because I am ordinarily more reclusive. I have to admit, MLP did end up teaching me a lot about friendship - even if it merely served as a catalyst to go out and meet people.
I could keep recounting every individual pony event I had been to, but that would be boring. I am still interested in those to this day. Somehow, they keep going even after Friendship is Magic ended, and they survived the pandemic, too. I suppose it helps that Hasbro made Generation 5 of pony, but I watched the introductory movie (My Little Pony: A New Generation) in 2021 and felt only so-so about it. A huge part of what made ponies special wasn't there for me anymore, like the characters I had grown attached to, and the simple but unique and appealing art style, sacrificed in favour of CGI. (And yes, speaking of art style, I know about Pony Life and Tell Your Tale, and I despise those charmless, CalArts-style deformed abominations.) Even the subsequent show, Make Your Mark, would go directly to Netflix, so I think the weekly /mlp/ CyTube watch parties were no more.
There were some nice things I got out of the conventions. The fanmade and official merch never interested me much, but I discovered that I greatly enjoyed pony karaoke, which got me interested in the My Little Karaoke project, and to a lesser degree UltraStar. In 2019, I went to Kucykon in Poland, where I discovered TrotMania, which is, generally speaking, pony DDR, and to be more precise it's an MLP theme and song pack for StepMania, which is an open-source DDR simulator, much like what UltraStar is to SingStar. TrotMania in particular got me interested in the Dance Dance Revolution community, which led me to discover the In The Groove community (I even wrote a blog post shitting on their game!) and got me to attend anime conventions with rhythm games sections and participate in their tournaments, both offline and online. It was all a lot of fun.
So, in the end, it all circled back to video games - albeit these games get people to sing and exercise.
Oh, and in my early brony days, I got myself a dakimakura, which is a Japanese word for a body pillow. That's cringe, right? I know, I only did so ironically. What a waste of space it is. It's okay to sleep on, but I prefer normal pillows. I bought a couple of Trixie pillow cases for my daki. She's a good hoers.
I tried some stereotypically brony stuff that I couldn't get into. I tried to obtain a "waifu", but I couldn't take it seriously, and it didn't amuse me as a shitpost, so I simply have a favourite pony. I tried getting into the seedy underbelly of the fandom and look at the rule 34 art. It was weirding me out. I also tried writing pony fan fiction, after all FimFiction exists, plus /mlp/ is a blue board, meaning no 18+ images are allowed. A lot of anons deal with that by writing smut instead. I tried my hand at it, and I wrote I think, about 3 or 4 short erotic vignettes. They felt forced, so I dropped that. Plus, I wasn't enjoying the default genre of human on pony, which brings me to the topic of the modern smut genre of HMoFA (Human Male on Female Anthro), which I am not a fan of, which I am willing to write about at length some other time.
In the end, I only stuck around on /mlp/ the board for about a year. The various different generals did not interest me. The most interesting thing it introduced me to was the 4chan Cup, which was a wild ride. I feel like that's yet another topic that deserves its own dedicated post.
I felt at odds with the fandom and like I never truly fit in there, so nowadays I don't see myself as a brony anymore. The board culture on /mlp/ wasn't for me. I disliked that apparently a lot of people originally got into MLP ironically, for the "grown men watching stuff for little girls" aspect - especially since that led to creation of many fan works whose main thing is injection of grimdark into the otherwise saccharine world of ponies, a trope that I don't enjoy. I tried reading those fan-fics, like Background Pony, or Fallout Equestria, or an assortment of long greentext stories published on /mlp/. I did not like them much.
This is something I felt conflicted about for a very long time: if I don't contribute to the fandom, how can I call myself a part of it? Ultimately, I believe myself to have been just a fan of the fandom: I was more interested in the fruits of fan labour than anything else. Friendship Is Magic is overall quite "mid", even though it had its moments of greatness. It was a cartoon that kept going for too long and drastically overstayed its welcome and lost track of what it was trying to do multiple timmes. Fans of the show who were there longer than me will even tell you how distasteful it felt to them that the amount of brony pandering in the show steadily went up over time.
I would also be remiss not to mention Fighting is Magic, which later became Them's Fightin' Herds after a cease & desist letter (C&D) from Hasbro. TFH is probably my favourite thing to come out of the fandom, even though it ended up dead in obscurity, mercy-killed by its publisher after only releasing a single chapter of its story mode and development slowing to a crawl.
These days, the fandom is still going. /mlp/ started hosting its own convention, called Mare Fair, in the US. I feel apprehension at the mere thought of going there, because I really rather dislike chan culture despite having spent so much of my time browsing 4chan, lol. I don't really feel like I belong there, especially since they insist on differentiating themselves from regular bronies, calling themselves "horsefuckers". There are multiple interesting-looking projects out there. The Pony Preservation Project is a great cause. There have been efforts to produce pony-oriented AI. It's suddenly a good thing the show went on for so long, because it gives people more training data for their neural networks. Who knows, maybe one day we will see fanmade episodes mass-produced with the help of AI generation.
Yes, I know there was Double Raiboom. Funnily enough, it's one of those famous brony-made things I never watched. It was enough for me to learn that it's some sort of Powerpuff Girls crossover. Sounds shit.
And yeah, fanmade episodes are a bit of a pipe dream, because of the way copyright works today, Hasbro will not allow it until they are forced to let their IPs go into public domain, many decades from now if at all. One of the first things I have ever learned at pony conventions was an announcement from this great animator, Jan Animations, who was making animations that were very faithful to the show's style. He announced that he'd no longer be making pony animations because of a C&D from Hasbro. I think there was something similar going on with the Mentally Advanced Series, if that's what it's called, and Rainbow Dash Presents, because it looked to close to the show's style. That was just depressing. But maybe one day...
If you're still out there, poni poning, participating in the community and making and attending events, I tip my manchild fedora to you. May the Ride continue eternal. For me, it more or less stopped with FiM, in 2019, but I shall not forget.
Will you remember them?
The friendships that they found?
Will you know the words and sing along,
twenty years from now?
Or will you still be here,
screaming every word?
I know I'm not going anywhere,
I'll die with the herd.