Let there be... Wut?

There are five primary reasons why MLP has had a surge of popularity in its male 'demographic'.

The first is that it's just very well written. It might have a simple approach, but it's done with intelligence. If you don't think that's rare, you haven't seen too many shows for girls or children. It's very clear that the writers are passionate about keeping their show fresh, interesting, and well-written, from the dialogue to the personalities to the recurring characters or themes and so on.

The second is that the adults who wrote it make no effort to hide the fact they're adults. Whether it's Blazing Saddles references ("What in the Wide Wide World of Equestria are you a-doin'?!") or a shot-by-shot remake/omage to the ending of A New Hope, these adults didn't turn off their pop culture or nostalgia when writing the show. This creates massive appeal for OTHER adults, including men. When a four-minute song and dance routine comes on in the style of early vaudeville, coming from two snake oil salesmen (salesponies?), girls might enjoy the singing, adults smile as they think of old timey stuff.

The third is luck. Effectively, someone pointed at MLP and said "Hey, let's look at that." and a bunch of guys did, and they discovered the first two reasons it's popular, so they stayed and started spreading the show around. It's the same with any meme or YouTube video or TV show: Seinfeld was unique at its time, but it was only due to it appearing at a certain timeslot and being mentioned by certain taste-makers that it became a smash hit. Rebecca Black's Friday only became popular because started pointing at it in a public context. Same with MLP:FiM.

The fourth is community. Not only do lonely internet guys have lots of time, and disposable income, they have lots of technical know-how. Wikis sprung up. MLP dolls were bought. Chatrooms were filled. But this community was spurred on by the show's creators, who often make nods at their male fandom in the show, and communicate with their fans online and at cons. In other words, this show wouldn't be nearly as popular without the content creators being so friendly with the men--and it wouldn't be so popular if it weren't so easy for guys to show their MLP-pride and share information with each other over the web.

The fifth is sexism. When a guy sits down to an extremely girly show, and gets out of it not only laughing or sniffling away tears or whatever, and the guys sitting next to him pat him on the back and accept his love of this new, yet girly, thing, a lot happens. The guy feels like it might be normal to enjoy something not masculine. And to an extent, it feels like every time you watch MLP, or every time you share MLP with someone who would never watch it because it's girly and they end up liking it, you feel like you're breaking down gender barriers. Men can like girly things. Girls can like manly things. Rejoice! Sexism is over! Okay, maybe it's not, but there's a certain point of pride. I wonder if it's a similar sort of pride for the first women who got degrees or men's jobs or wore pants. Maybe women's lib and men watching MLP is an extreme comparison, but 'bros' who watch MLP tend to find that they feel included in a girls-only club that they never knew they were being left out of.

There are probably a few other reasons. MLP explores emotions not often explored in manly programming. MLP harkens back to a simpler time of childhood when it didn't matter what you watched, so long as it didn't give you cooties. MLP has a smooth, pleasant art. MLP is distributed cleanly over the PC rather than requiring illegal rips and uploads. MLP has both masculine and feminine girls on the show, and barely any male characters, implying that your actual gender doesn't have to be connected to your personality, which is a freeing sentiment.

But I think those five reasons--well-written (I'm a writer, so, that's the first thing I notice. If you don't know enough about writing, you just have to trust me: if these writers turned their attentions to more serious adult-minded gender-neutral shows, they'd be just as successful), adult-jokes (think Shrek. Good for kids, but funny for adults), luck (all popular things which outstrip equally good but less popular things require luck), community and anti-sexism all have contributed to its wild success.

* * * *

Now, if the question is "Why do bronies push this so much?" I don't actually think they do. Or at least, not more than anyone else with anything else. Remember, just because a couple people are screaming at you to watch something, doesn't mean the majority are pushy about it. Vocal minority and all that. This is the Internet, after all--where we all must learn, sooner or later, that when people want to shout at you, no matter how small their group is, they will seem HUGE for the volume of their yelling.

Every brony I've ever met is quiet and will only mention it if you show an interest in the show or want to talk about it. He may pull up iTunes and offer to show you an episode, if you have time, if you really want to. But he won't push it. That's my experience.

He brings up some good points, a lot of which I can certainly agree with. A documentary should be unbiased, showing both the good and the bad, although at this point whatever direction the documentary decides to take is pretty much done and over with.

I can't agree that the documentary is completely pointless though, for the simple reason that the media doesn't treat anything out of the social norm very kindly. Considering bronies are outside the social norm, you get a lot of barely researched articles making their way out there, and those articles still influence the people that don't know any better. For example, many articles use pictures of the first generation show, which when combined with the words, gives the reader the idea that bronies are all raving about the first generation, which is waayyyy off the mark.

Simply put, the documentary could give a little PR boost, and if it misses the mark, it's not exactly like we'd be worse off, anyway. Guess we'll just have to wait around and see.

Let there be... Wut?

#81 Jacob Dieffenbach

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#83 Sesambrot

#84 Absit invidia

#85 Aresye

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#87 mechasword

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#89 mechasword

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