My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom

Under Hasbro's guidance, Faust developed the show to appeal to the target demographic of young girls, but created characters and settings that challenged formerly stereotypical norms of "girly" images, adding adventure and humorous elements to keep parents interested.

However, the fandom has drawn criticism from the media and pundits who have derided the older demographic's embrace of a television series marketed towards young girls as well as mass amounts of fan-produced pornographic artwork and literature and alleged misogyny by bronies.

As a result of these efforts in part, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has become a major commercial success with the series becoming the highest rated original production in Hub Network's broadcast history.

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.

[18] 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".

[40] Some bronies are enlisted personnel in various United States Armed Forces, who have included the various "cutie marks" symbols from the show as insignia on their uniforms or equipment, despite not being appropriate practice for most branches, or worn only during training operations.

[41][42][43] Margaret Loesch, the CEO and President of The Hub, noted from an email from a group of United States enlisted personnel in Afghanistan explained how they came by the show by way of their daughters, but found the emphasis on teamwork and covering each other's backs resonated with their military fellowship.

[53] The blog, which received more than 175,000 visits a day[49][54] and was fully funded by advertising revenue,[55] was established by 23-year-old college student Shaun Scotellaro for the purpose of collecting fan fiction and news specific to Friendship Is Magic.

[86][87] Similarly, a group called "Bronies for Good" ran blood drives and raised over $60,000 during 2012 for charities like the Children's Cancer Association, Room to Read, CureSearch, and Your Siblings.

[100][101] The documentary film, Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony, was funded several times over its requested Kickstarter amount, allowing the filmmakers to expand the scope of the project.

[17][106][107][108] One early video that caught media attention was made by high school student Stephen Thomas, using science to dissect some of the physical impossibilities on My Little Pony as part of a class presentation;[109][110] it was later featured on the Tosh.0 website.

[119][120] Another notable fan fiction list includes selected works by Bernard Doove, an author of adult-oriented furry stories; specifically mentionable are the House Path series and the Off The Mark trilogy, which have been published in online, printed and e-book form.

15.ai, a popular artificial intelligence text-to-speech web application created by an anonymous research scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, features the voices of a number of main, secondary, and supporting characters from Friendship Is Magic.

[144] Faust believes that her future animated shows aimed at girls will be easier to sell considering the male adult fandom of Friendship Is Magic, and that the type of programming is not as great a risk as is perceived.

Andrea Libman, who voices Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy, found that more people wanted to meet her as a result of the show and commented that among the fan community, "there's some really talented artists doing really amazing stuff".

Similarly, the Season 3 finale episode "Magical Mystery Cure" ended with main character Twilight Sparkle transforming into a winged unicorn (alicorn) and being named a princess.

Several fans stated that this was a corporate play by Hasbro and veered away from the direction that Faust had envisioned for the show at its onset, while others commented on the clichéd aspect of a high school comedy, the overly thin appearance of the human characters, and other factors.

The fan site Equestria Daily had issued a caution to its readers to not lash out at the show's creators who had also worked on the film, and other more predominant figures of the fandom urged others to continue to support the staff.

[160] In the original broadcast of the second season episode "The Last Roundup" as well as on the home media release The Friendship Express, "Derpy" was called out by name by Rainbow Dash and was given lines (as voiced by St. Germain) and klutzy mannerisms as a direct call-out to the brony fandom.

[174] Professor Colin Burnett of Washington University in St. Louis considered the adoption of these fan names and characteristics within the show as demonstration of co-creative collaboration that can exist in modern media, emphasized by unexpected demographics of bronies that helped to bolster the creators' success with the work.

However, in late 2011, a fan-run website called "Ponyarchive" that was reposting for no cost the complete high-definition episodes that were being sold on iTunes closed down after receiving cease and desist letters from Hasbro.

Another story that gained national attention was that of Grayson Bruce, a nine-year-old fan who was told to stop bringing a Rainbow Dash backpack to school to prevent bullying that he was receiving.

[209] Rebecca Angel, writing for Wired's Geekmom column, described some of the negative feedback from fellow writers about the mostly male brony culture that included accusations of pedophilia and immaturity.

[210] In a similar vein, an "Idea Channel" segment from the Public Broadcasting Service said that the ridicule received by the brony community is partly because the male appreciation for the show challenges preconceived notions of gender roles in the mass media.

[23][213][214] Fans acknowledge that such material is generated by a subset of the group, but consider it "an unavoidable part of any online fandom", as described by TV Guide's Sadie Gennis, and do not worry about this facet.

[40] A study performed by graduate students from the University of Connecticut found that "a particularly extreme subset" of the brony fandom shows characteristics of hegemonic masculinity, where male members strive to keep their majority in the numbers by purposely excluding and alienating females.

[218] Kaitlyn Tiffany, writing for The Atlantic described the popularity of fanart with racist or violent imagery and accounts who post extremist views on imageboards, particularly 4chan's "Politically Incorrect" and "My Little Pony" boards.

In 2016, during Donald Trump's campaign for President, images of My Little Pony characters wearing Make America Great Again hats, and Pit Viper sunglasses were commonly found on brony fan sites.

[251] An article that appeared in the New York Times on December 26, 2011, "Navigating Love and Autism" by Amy Harmon,[252] described how a young woman with Asperger syndrome used My Little Pony characters to relieve stress.

"[257] In 2015, the New York Times reported that Dylann Roof, the sole perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting, was a fan of My Little Pony, but later corrected itself after recognizing it had been duped in an experiment run by a blogger who had faked the claim but made it as credible as possible as to test how little fact checking major news sources were doing on a high-interest topic.