When Did YOU Get Into Ponies? · 7:36am Apr 4th, 2013
When I was young, I used to watch ponies ^_^ Though, I remember watching the G2 ponies, which even before G4 came out, I looked back remembering the male ponies, and ponies wearing clothes....you know, because they could...and shaking my head in shame. BUT! I DID watch G1 ponies, too. (I THINK my favorite was Masquerade...that, or I had the doll. I don't know, ponies was never THAT big in my life. I was more of a Trolls kinda girl, anyway.) 
Oh, my God. Just seeing these brings back memories! I WANT ONE AGAIN! Oh, and funny thing is, my favorite troll doll was one with rainbow hair. My cousin had the matching doll, and we both named her Rainbow. Heehee.
Ahem, so, back to ponies.
Before looking up old clips, the only part of G1 I could remember were ponies stuck in a bee hive for some reason. And...yeah, I phrased that exactly that way because that was how I remembered it, and no, that's not an accident. (I actually looked up the episode...or six parter, as it were - The End of Flutter Valley.)
Anyways, I had fond memories of watching the show with my cousin, but no memories of the show itself, really.
So one day, I was looking on YouTube, and I was on a person's channel when someone asked her what she thought of Bronies. I was all, "Bronies? What's that? It kinda looks like brownie....but....who would ask someone's opinion of brownies?" So I looked up what Bronies were, and the "Know Your Meme" video was one of the first things to pop up. So I checked it out, and thought, "Oh, that looks like fun. Buuuuuut I don't wanna watch it and ruin the memories I had of my first My Little Pony show." And I said basically that on comments section, to which someone replied, "You really should watch! It's really great" or something along those lines. I was all, "eh, maybe later," and put it out of my mind.
ONE DAY LATER
I was having a terrible day, and I just needed something to take my mind off things. Then I remembered the whole thing about Bronies, so I decided to watch. I watched the first episode and thought, "Oh, GOD, this is so corny! Cute, made me giggle at times, but SO corny!" But as I learned from other fandoms I'd gotten into, I have to give a show at LEAST 6 episodes if I was at least intrigued by the first episode, because by then, I'd know if I liked it or not. (Didn't like Doctor Who the first episode, but it intrigued me. LOVE it now. But I learned about that AFTER ponies...well, BECAUSE of ponies.)
So I watched the second episode - still corny, almost stopped watching it. But I had nothing better to do with my night, so tried the next episode.
The third episode - not quite what I expected, and was kinda cute.
Fourth episode - Oh, that poor pony.
Fifth episode - I agreed with the griffon; I hate being pranked.
Sixth episode - That Ursa Major/Minor thing was pretty clever...
I knew I was hooked when I was dead tired, and I MADE myself stop watching after the eleventh episode because I needed to sleep. I think Winter Wrap Up will always be in my top faves because it was the episode that made me realize I loved the show ^_^
Anyways, I watched that entire weekend until I finished off at the newest episode - Season 2 Episode 2. And I was left going, "MOOOARRR!!!" And slowly, from there, I started getting into the fandom. Not necessarily because I wanted to...but because I was DYING for something to do waiting for the next episode to come out. And I remember being so surprised that people were obsessed over Luna - by that last episode, I had completely forgotten about her! I tried soooo hard not to be obsessed, but~~~~ yeah. ^_^ Sheesh, and when I found out about shipping in MLP...it didn't even OCCUR to me until I stumbled upon my first AppleDash art. And yes, AppleDash WAS my first shipping art that I saw. Which explains why I'm so obsessed with it. I never quite shipped them with anypony else.
So, yes, that is how I discovered ponies and came to be in this fandom. What's your story? ^_^
A friend (and fellow anime con staffer) started sharing pony memes and pics on his FB page. After a bit, I started following more several pony pages. I found myself drawn to them. Eventually, one told me of a story he wrote. I followed his link, and found fimfiction.net, and read a couple stories.
Being a writer, this seemed right up my alley, and I decided it was time to watch the show finally. I found the first episode on youtube, and by the end, I was hooked like a trout on a fly.
I suspect that even after the show finally comes to the eventual and inevitable end that happens with ALL television shows, I will continue to watch the shows, and continue reading and writing stories about pastel colored little horsies that talk, fly, do magic, and, at least in the sick minds of a good chink of us, do some twisted and hilarious shit!
980009 Awww!! Ponies got me back into writing and drawing, too! I even told Lauren Faust that when I met her at BronyCon ^_^ I, of course, didn't mention the clop writing I do (LOL). But really, how bad could that be when the guy behind me was the guy who wrote Cupcakes?
Anyways! I think ponies will definitely have an everlasting effect - it's made writers and artists and musicians out of so many people! It really is a wonderful little show ^_^
To answer the question of when my awareness of MLP begin it was sometime after season 1 ended. I saw a pony image macro on a forum. That lead to cheeseburgers. Which lead to finding out it was an actual show. A quick trip to Demonoid (RIP) and I had season 1 which I promptly watched over the next week.
Bonus weirdness
As we all know Rainbow Dash is best pony. On that apparently completely related note the only contact with ponies I had before MLP was Rainbow Brite. I never watched the show, and I honestly don't even remember where I saw it. But your post made me think about what my first pony exposure might have been so I googled Rainbow Brite and yep it turned up the radicalness of a rainbow maned equine.
The bottom line is I was apparently waiting for this show to come out featuring rainbow maned goodness for a very long time.
980017 Isn't that sooo weird?! When I first saw Rainbow Dash, the first thing I thought of was Rainbow Bright! Rainbows kinda rock...
That was heartwarming. If you really want to know.
I started watching ponies because a local anime convention had a panel on it. I didn't go to the panel, but I was surprised when someone left in the middle of the GIANT MECHA panel to go the little pony panel. I watched the first two episodes and remember thinking that it was a pretty neat set-up, and then I kinda forgot about it for a week. I went back a week later and remember thinking that the ticket master was such a cliched story, but at least the characters involved were interesting.
Then Applebuck Season happened. I remember being so amazed by Applejack's abilities (despite being one of the normal ponies), And loving watching somepony that amazing reach her limit. That's when I knew that I would be watching every episode. I became obsessed when I saw Party of One. Seeing Pinkie's hair deflate, combined with the sad look on her face, made me want reach into my computer and tell her that everything was going to be okay. That's when I realized I was in waaay to deep, and I loved it.
(Wow, my story is a bit longer than I thought it would be)
980016 Wait... You've MET The Holy Faust IN PERSON?!?!?!!
*bows to his Queen*
What is thy bidding, my Mistress?
980022 Heehee. Ah, yes, party of one. I think that was when I realized how different the show was. But it's not such a memorable episode for me...probably because for the longest time, I wasn't really into Pinkie Pie. She kinda annoyed me. It wasn't until Baby Cakes I loved her to pieces!
980023 Haha, yeah, I met her at BronyCon. They had set up the autographs table, and I looked over there, and there was NO ONE THERE. I think people didn't know what was going on because there wasn't a crowd and it was the first autograph session they had. I kinda slinked into line because I didn't know if this was a thing or what, and got in line. And yeah, got to meet Lauren Faust! My voice was shaking - it was kinda funny, but she was so sweet. And I told her Ponies got me into writing and drawing again, and she was all encouraging me to continue with it. I took a picture with her. Awesome ~~ ^_^ And good thing I went during that one, because after that, there was no getting CLOSE to the voice actors and Lauren. I also met Peter New and the voice of Spike who's name slips my mind at the moment.
Hmmm, so this makes me your queen, huh? What can I have you do....Ooh! Go to Tcherny's blog and denounce him as God of AppleDash in my name ^_^
980036
Hmmm. I hear a lot of people don't like baby cakes (I'm not one of them). How did it change your opinion of pinkie? Also, your at least the God of Appledash clop.
I actually was aware of the show I think back in 2010 already, before it even aired. I always had a soft spot for animation, and it was listed in one of those wikipedia "List of 2010s animations" things or something. I looked at the MLP article, but at the time, the '6-8 year old girls' thing really threw me off (potential Dora territory, so let's not talk about that).
Aaaaaanyway, I quickly forgot about the thing, until somewhere in 2011, more and more of my YouTube subscriptions started posting pony YTP's. Still, I wasn't very interested, but at some point, I did get the first season from somewhere.
Skip forward to March 2012. It was evening, I was alone at home, and I was bored out of my mind. I didn't feel like catching up on other series, I never watch TV, and I was more or less like 'why the hell not.'
It was pretty good (I was expecting so much worse), and I watched one or two episodes each week from then. It took me until the beginning of August to watch all of season 1, but when I subsequently did season 2 in a couple of weeks, I knew I had to follow this.
At the time, I started reading more from fanfiction.net and less paper books, but then I stumbled on this site (EQD was (still is) just overpopularized so I avoided that from the beginning), and judging by the blogs/stories, I wasn't the only one liking this show. Rest is kinda history I guess.
(this got kinda long...)
980038 I was so annoyed by Pinkie's...PINKIEness most of the time, though she had her cute moments. But it was her trying to be responsible that made her charming to me.
980039 eh, my own story ended up longer than I intended, too! And yeah, I'm the same way - rarely read books, but damn it if I don't read fanfiction alot ^_^
I was in the second wave of bronies I believe. Right after the pony plague broke free from /co/ and found its way onto /b/. It was lucky that I stumbled onto it actually, I had found myself frequenting that board less and less at the time.
The threads were disaster zones... which was good, because that's what drew me in. The first thread I saw was about three quarters spam and hate, and I believed that the ponyfags were just the most brilliant trolls in existence. I did not believe that the show would actually be any good.
For about a week or two I was coming to /b/ and quenching my thirst for the delicious tears of the butthurt anons that were in those threads. What the anons didn't realise was that the infection had come from within, so the threads they were spamming were almost completely immune. Most of the legitimate posters in those threads had spam filters to weed out the more annoying and repetitive spam posts, leaving only lolcows and trollbait for them to deal with. And deal with them they did, with their unrelenting policy of "love and tolerance".
People in this fandom always misinterpret that saying. I remember one anon was able to get through spam filters by just posting pictures of gore and mutilated bodies. The ponyfags immediately heaped praise upon him, one claiming he had been looking for one of his pictures for a long time after forgetting to save it the first time he saw it. Accompanying that guys post was a picture of pinkie and rarity capped from the show and captioned with rarity saying "oh look, they're spamming gore again..." and pinkie complaining "Aaaaw, I've already seen all these!"
It was pictures like that that convinced me to finally watch the show "for at least three episodes before you judge!" like the OP always asked. Deep in the early morning I realised I needed to stop watching ponies and sleep. The next day I had caught up to the latest episode, which I believe was winter wrap up at that point. I had fallen in love with the show and have been vigilantly keeping up with the episodes and the goings on within the fandom ever since.
980036 Don't know who that is...
But, if you wish, I will torture and kill Justin Beiber and and feed his chopped up body parts to monitor lizards
980066 You don't know who Tchernobog is? Aww. .... And yes, do that. ^_^
980073 lol... I bet you'd shit your pants if you woke in the morning and read in the paper that Beiber was brutally murdered... That someone went all crazy Rarity on him and used his skin to make a three piece suit. Single breasted, of course
I follow up with a lot of webcomics, and a lot of them have their own discussion boards where you can post reactions to updates, among other things.
About the time Season 2 came out, a poster had chosen to react on one of these boards with this video clip of Lily going "The horror! The horror!" I saw quite a few other pony memes on the boards as well--one poster had in fact changed his picture to Fluttershy's famous "yay."
My interest thus piqued, I decided I'd try and follow up on this, and pulled up the first episode of the show, telling myself, "This is a girl's cartoon we're talking about, here. One episode, just to see what all this is about, and that'll be the end of it."
By the time I'd finished "Dragonshy," I was hooked.
There isn't too much to say about my story really. I've always been kind of boring in that regard (I never have any good stories).
Anyways, I hadn't really heard of the whole "brony" thing or MLP FiM. I knew OF My Little Pony, but my experience with it from my childhood and glimpses on the television screen were from the generation-that-shall-not-be-named...so FiM didn't exactly have any attraction for me at the time. But one day just last July/August I was sitting at home at my computer watching videos on YouTube. I was watching the "Kids React To..." and "Teens React To..." series by TheFineBros, and I stumbled upon what I thought was probably the weirdest thing for teens to react to: My Little Pony Friendship is Magic.
Curious, I clicked on the video here and watched how the different "teens" (I use that term loosely) responded to the theme song featuring colourful ponies in a small rural looking village. That was when I first really heard of the "brony" fandom, and it took my a little by surprise. If you've watched the video, then you know most of the teens there say some pretty cruel and ignorant things. Even if I wasn't a brony (and didn't ever intend on being one at the time), I knew that wasn't fair of them to say. There is one guy on the video though who took the whole brony thing to heart and loved every second of it. This intrigued me.
A week or so later I'm bored again and I remember the teens react video. I remembered that one of the pony's names was Rainbow Dash, so I did a YouTube search for Rainbow Dash to see what would come up. I found a playlist of various Rainbow Dash videos/snipits/full episodes from the show and started watching. The first video was TheSlutFox's "You're Gonna Go Far Kid" PMV. I was almost entirely sold by that video alone. The next video was the first episode I ever watched: The Sonic Rainboom. From there I went back and watched the rest of the series and finished with only a few weeks/couple months to spare before Season 3
So on the same day I was introduced to MLP and to The Offspring at the same time. It was a good day. Still kicking myself though, because this was just after the Calgary Comic Con and Tara Strong came for a visit
That was way longer than it should have been. Sorry for wall of text.
I was sitting on my computer, procrastinating on, well, everything, back around the beginning of season 2. An idea suddenly came to me. I should put on some music. So, just because, I went on YouTube and searched "You're Gonna Go Far Kid", and the Rainbow Dash video was the first result. Now, I had seen pony memes and what-not all over the Internet, so I decided that I might as well check this video out, still not knowing fully what a "Brony" was.
So I watched it. And I watched it again. And again.
I watched the video so many times that I hate that song now, but it wasn't the music I was paying attention to. I was so... intrigued, I suppose, by the raw intensity of the animation. It was so smooth. So fluid. So... unbelievably cute.
Naturally, I had to find out what the hell it was that was interesting me so. I did research. I browsed every website, trying to find out everything I could about this "Brony" phenomenon.
I came to terms with the fact that I would have to bite the bullet and watch the actual show if I was to truly understand it, so I watched an episode. Then I watched another. And another. Before I knew it, I had watched the entire first season. I wanted more. I was hungry for more adorableness.
I made the mistake of gettin involved in the fandom, which now allots all of my time. I got obsessed with fan fiction, which, in turn, made me write some. It sucked, but I kept trying.
And that is basically the beginning of my pony adventure. I can honestly say that the brony fandom is the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Saw some art/story of Zecora; i forget what it was. So i looked up the first episode with her in it, just to know what she was like. I liked Applebloom in the same episode. then i started from the begining and watched til the last episode that was out at the time, Luna Eclipsed. I stayed for the fan stories; while i think the show is good, it's the fan stories that hook me in.
I first learned about ponies through the Fandom Wank blog. I have an interest in how fandoms work in general, so here I was reading about how some fans of the show Supernatural think the actors on it are in a secret gay relationships and get mad at their wives for messing it up, and up pops a post I couldn't believe: Ponies Broke 4Chan. I knew what 4chan was, I knew what ponies were (another G1/G2 vet here, though I was more into Care Bears) but that ponies would be the power that actually caused site-wide wank on 4chan was too awesome.
So I looked into this pony thing, and discovered two things: 1) This show was going to have everything I love in a show, and 2) I was going to ship AppleDash (I saw a demotivational poster with AJ and Dash that said "AppleDash: Not all tomboys are lesbians." and I was like "Hey, I love tomboy lesbians! That is my ship!")
So I didn't watch the show. I had to finish my novel, plus it had a character who, on the surface, seemed suspiciously like Applejack, and I didn't want to be influenced. (While they are very different characters- Maddy is more Dash like, actually- the character's big brother is totally Big Mac.)
Finally, I finished my novel around the same time my husband lost a bet with a brony friend, and started watching the episodes. He told me I had to watch it, and I had nothing better to do with my entire life, so I allowed myself to fall in love.
Autumn 2011:
Brony friend tries to get me to watch a video on Youtube with every season 1 episode. Needless to say, I was like "Ponies? Like, for real?"
Had a laugh and went on with my boring, normal life.
Spring 2012:
Said brony friend sent me a link to one episode, s2e3. I think that was the newest at the time. I decided to watch it, since I had twenty spare minutes. Also, I was really bored.
... I watched a majority of season 1 the day afterwards.
First encounter with the fandom was the music (Loyalty, AcoustiMandoBrony). I fell in love with it immediately. Not long afterwards I began reading fanfiction (AppleDash was an instant fav).
...that's pretty much it.
I had heard a bit about ponies on 4chan, but never gave it much thought. Then one day on Kotaku, I saw a video of ponies and the Star Craft 2 pre-release trailer audio. After watching it, it got me curious about a show with magical ponies and various monsters. Torrented a few of the episodes and got hooked. Before G4 I had watched the old G1 ponies a bit, actually have the DVD of the first movie with the Smooze. Now I buy blind bags, all the DVDs they release, and I want to get a bit more merch.
Well, honestly I stumbled upon ponies late 2010. I had been really bored and depressed. I had just lost two friends to some dumbass shooting up the school I was going to. Anyway, I was depressed and bored so I was looking around on youtube for some good music to help me feel a little better. Music is my #3 lifeline. Well, I had been searching mainly dubstep and metal when I came across a little friend named MLP. I mean I couldn't find any reletiveness between metal and ponies, but curiousity got the better of me and at that point I didn't really give a damn...the first episode I watched was Applebuck Season. In just a few minutes I went from bored, hateful, a complete crying and pathetic mess to a laughing heap on the floor that was wanting to watch more of the pastel ponies that oddly enough made me so damn happy. Especially when most of them remind me of my own circle of friends.
That is the basic jist of it all. Good day and pony on.
~Ambro~
I’m a moderate brony I first became aware of MLP when all the pony stuff started to spill over into my usual part of the internet (the D&D, Warhammer) and it caught my attention, so I YouTube it and got a bunch of the Fan-made stuff Acoustic brony, Mandopony Princewhateverer all that and thought to myself “hey this stuff isn’t that bad, but these guys are fans so they probably are making it more awesome then it really is” So I decided to watch the first episode and it was the Rainbow/ Shadow bolt scene that won me over. I decided then Rainbow is my favorite pony wasn’t long after I came to fimfiction and found Appledash stories there’s just too much cute it works its way into the withered black thing that is my heart and makes me D’awww the whole show does.
980588 interesting ^_^
980519 LOL, another "one day later", except you had to watch an episode first, huh?
980339 Oh, my God, your story is kinda epic at the end ^_^ And your novel, huh? Awesome, you get it published?
980313 fan stories can be great - I've had a few fandoms where the fan stories outdid the show for me. This is becoming one of them...
980293 Best thing that ever happened to me, too ^_^ Literally changed my life!
980251 I should probably watch the "You're Gunna Go Far Kid" video, but YES, I watched the Teens React video. Ugh, that was not cool. And that was an interesting story ^_^
980124 I really did not go on the internet a lot before Ponies...I can't believe how many people were introduced to ponies via a meme! I had seen nothing of the likes for it!
980078 Okay, you've thought WAY too much about this >_<
980061 You used far too much internet slang in there for me to completely follow it, but okay ^_^; I didn't even know about 4chan and /b/ until ponies, and I...have no plans to ever return after the first time.
980042 "I even used to have a gay friend" >_< I hate when people say this or some version of it. Just cause it's like toting a badge of honor. "I'm not *insert word here*, look at this friend of mine!" I'm not saying you ARE or anything like that, just that phrase in and of itself irks me. Ahem, anyways, ponies! ^_^
980720 Awww. I know what you mean about being depressed about losing someone and ponies cheering you up. I'm sorry for your loss. It's amazing what ponies can do! I'm so glad I found ponies, it really did help me.
980723 Geesh, you liked Rainbow that early on? I don't think I started liking a particular pony aside from Twilight until much later...like, the second time I watched the show through.
980786 Indeed. Ponies do wonderful things to your self-esteem and morals. Especially these three:
Loyalty to your friends is a virtue I find extremely important I just got what Rainbow was about right away and I liked it
980772
Yup, the novel is with a small press, Oloris publishing. It's due out sometime in November or so.
981342 Oh, my gosh! That's so exciting ^_^ Congrats!
Sorry, a little late posting a comment to this, but I've been unable to access a computer all week
Anyway, I'd always been vaguely aware of My Little Pony, but I'd never taken the time to ever watch it, in any generation, and because of that (and the extremely girly toys) I never really wanted to know anything about it
Last year in October, I stumbled upon a video called 'So Many F#*king Wonders' by Yaplap (You may or may not have heard of him, but he is a pretty well known Brony for bringing out loud and obnoxious versions of the songs in the show), and after laughing for a while and rewatching, I found that beyond the humour, the song and the character Fluttershy actually intrigued me a little
I did some research on the gen 4 Ponies and found that as well as Lauren Faust being behind it all, Tara Strong (who has voiced heaps of great characters like batgirl from the original batman animation) voiced a character. So I decided to give it a shot and watch some episodes. I didn't watch episode 1 first, in fact I think the first episode I watched was 'Too Many Pinkie Pie's'
and I simply couldn't say a single negative thing about the episode. I then watched a few episodes that had interesting names like; 'The Mysterious Mare-Do Well' (which, despite what most people say, I thought was actually really good, though I do love Batman and I hadn't fallen in love with the characters yet, so seeing Rainbow Dash get cut down was kinda funny...PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!!!!
), and 'Ponyville Confidential' (which was my favourite episode until I heard Winter Wrap Up song 
)
Then I heard John Delancie voiced a character, and being a huge Star Trek fan, I immediately thought WHAT THE HELL!!!
and watched Discord go crazy with his powers.
The final thing that hooked me onto this series was... Fluttershy! OMG she is so cute and shy and... ahem, uh, I mean... she has a very good character type and... oh the hell with it Fluttershy is adorable, best pony ever!!
It was at this point that I started looking at all the fan works, (youtube videos, fimfiction stories and articles on Equestria daily) and I realised just how amazing the whole Pony fandom was, and all the amazing people who seemed to love it and spend so much effort and care creating these amazing works.
And I thought to myself, 'Wow, I really want to be a part of this'
So from then on I have called myself a Brony, watched every episode at least twice and read hundred of different fics.
And that is how I found out about Ponies. Wow that took a while, sorry about that
982599 well, it was a long journey to get here, it seems! =) It's probably better you watched The Mysterious Mare Do Well being new to the show. No expectations of characters acting a certain way! And hey, I just admitted I agreed with Gilda! And no one even commented on it! :-P I think you're safe.
Well About a year ago my new best friend was really into drawing and I saw her drawing Doctor Whooves and I asked why and she introduced me into MLP and the bronies but I didn't get deep into it until I found Saberspark's video about MLP!
Now I'm addicted to this almost as much as I am to pistachio ice cream....
I got into Ponies due to a combination of my personal self-imposed guidelines. Two in particular. One: always give a new show three episodes before making a decision. I find this to be the fairest way to see if a show can pull me in but not have it potentially waste too much of my time if it doesn't. Secondly, I never degrade someone without a general knowledge of the subject.
What happened was: I was spending some time on a message-board, and of course, ponies invaded a filled the board. Avatars, signatures, names, icons, there were ponies everywhere. They started a new thread for ponies only, and it skyrocketed in the posts faster than I could believe. I had to know, what could they be talking about so much that the pages just piled on. I walked in and was completely lost. Ponies had been out for several months, but I didn't encounter too much for a good while. But eventually it spread to my neck of the woods.
So I rolled up my sleeves and went into that pony thread to start laying the smack down on these pony loving weirdos. However, due to my no degrading rule, I had to watch it first. I knew if I didn't, the first question anyone on the thread would ask would be "well, have you ever watched it?" I'd be honest and say no, and any argument of mine would be groundless and disavowed. So I went to youtube and watched an episode. and it didn't suck. okay, I didn't love the first episode, but it wasn't garbage. The characters were varied, the animation decent, and it actually had a story.
I still didn't understand the hype though. It wasn't awful but it wasn't worthy of the worship it garnered. Then my other self-imposed rule came into play before I could go to the thread and speak my mind. 'Give a show three episodes before making a decision'. Curses, foiled by my own self-imposed rules! So I watched another episode, and then another. And I actually found myself laughing at some of it. It was the beginning of the end.
And that's how I started watching this cartoon. All because i wanted to poke fun at the bronies with a foundation of un-ignorant superiority. kinda backed fired. Oh well, no regrets here.
My mother was somewhat of a tomboy, and she didn't want to have a child who grew up wearing dresses and having tea parties and such. So she grew me up on Batman and Star Wars and the like, and that's pretty much what I grew up on, superheroes with a little bit of sci fi now and then.
Around the time I dropped out of college, my best friend was telling me about how he had just become a brony, and I couldn't stop teasing him for it. The one night I got curious and decided to watch, and I ended up loving it by episode 5, when I learned to hate Gilda for making Fluttershy cry (my heart actually hurt for a second hearing her sob).
I remember going to hang out with my friend and grabbing him by the shirt yelling "What have you done to me!?"
Can't thank him enough for it though, it's given me a lot of happiness in return
I actually started watching FIM only a couple of months ago. A friend in my speech and debate class had talked with me about the show several times and I always had dismissed it with the usual arguement "it's for grils". That was until one day I was on youtube and I saw the entire first session. I thought "what the hell why not. can't knock it tilll you try it." well that was a couple a months ago and now I have watched every episode twie and am emerced in fanfiction and artwork and youtube videos and everthing in between lol
im even working on my own sparity story 
And i will forever be a brony