Why this Fandom?

Why a show, that at its core was supposed to be a light-hearted series about teaching little girls about friendship, ended up with, in my perspective, the absolute, bottom of the barrel, worst fanbase I have ever seen.

There’s toxic communities, and I don’t mean that false use of the word toxic by the media to oppose anyone who doesn’t follow some backwards political agenda. I’m talking about real toxicity. The type of toxic to which fans have an almost cult-like obsession with a fictional show.

Everyone within this group has seen the negative side of the community, that of which nowadays makes up the vast majority of the fanbase as a whole. Every negative trait that has ever been associated with fandoms, this fanbase embody to its very essence. There's almost too many to list.

However the biggest one being their inability to handle criticism. This to me is the real deciding factor as to whether or not the fanbase is good or bad. Some fandoms can handle criticism very well, while others...not so much.

But even the other infamously toxic fandoms like Rick & Morty, Steven Universe, FNAF’s, Undertale, and even Sonic the Hedgehog. All these communities have shown the ability to criticize the product that they're fans of. Bronies, however, since the show’s inception, every bit of criticism has been met with nothing short of mental breakdowns. It could be petty inconsistencies, or massive plot holes, the end result will always be the same. 

It’s those bully tactics, passive-aggressive attitudes, and constant whining that drove away the actual good members of the community…that and the OBJECTIVE decrease in the show’s writing quality.

This is not even getting into the bigger, real world conflicts. From the sheer amount of pedo related incidents, multiple shootings…jaywalking, ect. It’s a hell of a lot more psychotic than a bunch of idiots demanding szechuan sauce from McDonald’s.

It’s almost mind boggling the sheer amount of controversies Bronies have managed to invoke over the course of one decade. Most other fandoms, even ones that have been around for thirty, forty years, are still not even a tenth as toxic as this one manages to be.

But beyond all that, it's simply depressing because of what this show was. As I said, My Little Pony was supposed to be a wholesome show for children...but between the fanbase and the writers, they managed to turn this previously sweet and charming show into an ugly, hollow cesspool of nothingness. By the time the show was over, it practically mirrored the fandom itself.

So I ask again. WHY…THIS…FANDOM!?

So I ask again. WHY…THIS…FANDOM!?

Simple. Aside from stereotypical online degeneracy enabled by anonymity, most of the adult fans early on were very unhappy people who turned to FiM for solace. And when the series became less than ideal in its quality, they embraced denial. The brony fandom is a textbook case of going to great lengths to stay happy by ignoring unpleasant realities and responding to acknowledgment of those failings with hostility.

7771626
Yup, that's similar to how I see it as well. Many "degenerates" for lack of a better word, more or less used this show as a safe space from reality, in which any and all criticism towards the show, in their mind, is a direct attack on them. A lot of fandoms are like that, however, this one in particular took their ignorance to an unhealthy level. In the end, that toxicity destroyed the fanbase as a whole.

To make a long story short, it's the combination of mental health problems and declining quality. The early fanbase was built on people who were caught off-guard by Faust's quality work, and that quality combined with the positive message led them to recommend it as a useful support for people with mental health problems. As the quality crashed and burned, most of those people couldn't accept that reality due to their preexisting mental health problems and psychological dependence on the show, so they turned into the wrecks we see today.

It's also important to remember that since the early fandom was mostly independent thinkers receptive to quality, they were very capable of criticizing the show with the backlash against the Mysterious Mare Do Well being the best example. That didn't initially cause problems for the mental health crew (except for a handful with a pathological hatred of Rainbow Dash) because they could rationalize the occasional mistake and the more discerning fans could back up their criticisms with examples where MLP did it right. Things changed when it became clear that it was no longer the occasional mistake and the show was now in a downward spiral because the crazies couldn't accept the discerning fans calling it out, so they went nuts, further driving the discerning fans out and turning the fandom into the cesspit we see today.

7771772
Sad that a fanbase with so much growth and potential eventually imploded.

7771961
Yeah, Faust could have turned MLP into a juggernaut on par with IPs like Star Wars (before Disney ruined it), but the idiotic execs killed the goose that laid the golden egg because they couldn't get their heads out of the toy commercial gutter.

7772006
Sad, but true.

Basically a LOT of copium from the fandom, so much that it became Super Copium Blue Evolution.

7771617
I think shitty people are just innately attracted to anything that flaunts itself as tolerant or virtuous. I see it all the time, and this show is an extremely good example of that, as it does leans into that sort of thing more than almost anything else I've seen. And it's not a recent thing, either, you could see this happening from the start. indeed, a lot of really shitty trends started because of that, see The Conversion Bureau, and all that misanthropic nonsense, which began within mere months of the show coming out. of course, it really kicked off when the show itself started to nosedive, as a lot of people that were decent fellows started being less active, leading to shitters becoming more dominant, leading to even more decent fellows shying away from the fanbase, and so on,

7772224
The thing to remember is that the original Conversion Bureau only turned out that way due to incompetence and inexperience on the writers part. It wasn’t until Chatoyance took the helm that it really gained the reputation it has today.

7772284
i mean, it was mainly incompetence, and that dumbass's stories were definitely several steps above when it comes to sheer hatred and spite, but I've read the original, hell i helped riff it, and there was definitely a generous helping of misanthropy already. much like a lot of the issues that would plague the fandom in the future, the seeds were already present from the start.

7772300
Do you think the show was doomed to end up with fandom like this?

7772331
not exactly. i mean, we were always doomed to have shitters like those in the fandom, given how early they turned up, but had the show not nosedived so hard in quality such people would be far less noticeable, and much more counterbalanced by healthier elements of the fanbase who drifted away due to the increasingly poor quality of the show, and in turn the fanbase.

7772224
Yes and no. Shitty people are an unavoidable fact of life. There will always be some in any large group no matter what, so their existence in the early fandom doesn't mean anything. What's more important is how the fandom as a whole behaves, and in the early days shitty people generally got called out effectively so it wasn't a problem. Things only went wrong when the show went down the toilet, and we've already discussed that here so I won't go into it again.

Also, you do need to be a bit more thoughtful regarding off-tone fan works. Turning things on their head can be very interesting, and a good artist will explore alternate possibilities. My mind immediately goes to classic science fiction novels, but you see it just about everywhere someone with real talent and intelligence has the opportunity to produce a diverse body of work, so you can't assume a fanfic author believes a certain way based on their work.

I would read a book about the brony phenomenon.

7772769
There’s a documentary about the brony phenomenon. Albeit outdated and not exactly unbiased.

7773390
If it's The Extremely Unexpected Fans or A Brony Tale or Saberspark's, I've watched it.

I found a chapter in a book, which did not shy away from addressing the sexual content.

7773390 7773552
One important thing to remember is that a full and proper discussion can only be done as a retrospective. It'll require full data about the fandom's reaction to G5 which can only be complete after that show's conclusion, as well as inside information from Hasbro about their perspective and plans for the IP's future which they may not be willing to provide, thus forcing another year or two of delays. Throw in another year to actually write, edit, publish, and distribute the book, and it's quite a ways out.