It is known that the seeds of this wonderful fandom were planted when people saw memes about the first episode back in October of 2010 on the internet. The memes were probably just made as a joke, but people who were curious about the memes inspected the show, and genuinely enjoyed it, and the cycle continued with new pony memes making more people curious, and so the herd grew.
In many fanfics that I've read recently (which is a lot), when Spike is mentioned in a group, he is almost never referred to as one of Twilight's friends nor a member of her family.
I watched it on Netflix on instant view (cause I'm cheap like that, instead of spending money to watch it in theaters or download it, I just waited for it for free) with my little sister, and I am left with several questions: