In a Wired report on the Brony Thank You Fund — a project of My Little Pony fans, AKA Bronies, that used a homemade commercial to raise money for toys for the children of military servicepeople — delves into the unlikely Brony fandom. It gets interesting when Wired's Angela Watercutter talks with an expert who describes Bronies as part of a new "ultra-cult" era:
Charles Soukup, associate professor of communication studies at the University of Northern Colorado, said that in today's cultural landscape — where heretofore "cult" topics like science fiction and comic books have become mainstream entertainment — brony-ing up might be the best option for creating a unique identity and nerding out.
"It appears we are moving toward the ultra-cult era in which media consumers discover extremely unexpected and obscure media texts to cultivate uniqueness and distinctiveness for their mediated identities," Soukup said in an email to Wired. "Bronies are a kind of perfect storm of this new ultra-cult media consumption as they combine an intense unexpectedness (adult male fans of television programs designed for little girls) with the status afforded arbiters discovering undiscovered or under-the-radar media products."
But My Little Pony fans likely won't stay under the radar much longer, and twenty-something female scientists might be the beginning.
