Boing Boing » bronies

My Little Pony fans successfully register a 501(c)3 charity for fannish good works

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:00:44 +0000

The Brony Thank You Fund spun out of a ~~Reddit forum~~ Indiegogo fundraiser for fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic ("bronies" and "pegasisters"). After raising money to run an ad thanking the show's creators for doing such a great job, the organizers donated the hefty excess balance to Toys for Tots. The project continued to gain momentum and it is now a registered 501(c)3 charitable organization through which fans of My Little Pony can make tax-free donations that will be funneled to worthy causes. They claim that they're the first media-related fandom to register as a charity -- I'm pretty sure that some science fiction conventions are run as 501(c)3s, though.

The Thank You Fund Enters a New Phase (via /.)

My Little Ponies humanized for movie

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:35:43 +0000

"Why?" The New York Times investigates:

“We are responding to the desire by our fans to experience the brand in more ways,” said John A. Frascotti, Hasbro’s chief marketing officer. “They imagined themselves as which pony they would be or which pony they identified with the most.” So Hasbro created Equestria Girls, a parallel world in which the My Little Pony characters were reconceived as teenage girls in high school.

Seriously, it's happening every day now, people coming up to us and saying "I want to experience your brand in more ways. Could you lose the hooves and snouts?"

Trailer mashup: My Little Trek Into Darkness

Jamie Frevele — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 21:09:51 +0000

(Video link) Bronies + Trekkies = Brekkies, and then geekdom exploded into sparkles and lasers! Happy New Year, everypony! Live long and prosper! (via Eric Kwun on Twitter)

Bronies and ultra-cult fandom

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 03:48:46 +0000

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.

Bronies’ TV Spot Shows Changing Face of My Little Pony Herd

Jerry Springer starts off on wrong hoof with Bronies

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:02:15 +0000

Adrian Chen writes that Bronies—adult male fans of girly TV show My Little Pony—have swiftly organized a united front against Jerry Springer's Brony casting call. [Gawker]

BronyCon

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:23:35 +0000

Bronies, gathered this weekend at BronyCon, are apparently getting a bad rap in the media: "Outside the convention center, young men danced and sang along with songs from My Little Pony cartoon that blasted from loud speakers as a video screen on a large truck showed the show's characters. One observer said it almost felt like a Grateful Dead concert." [AP]

Skinless My Little Pony made from bacon

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 26 May 2012 13:42:14 +0000

On Deviant Art, BAwesome-BAcon has crafted a pork-product pony to die for: "I have recently taken my love of My Little Pony and combined it with my love of bacon. The result, something that is borderline awesome with a hint of crazy and a smidget of cute."

Bacon Pony (via Neatorama)

Gathering of the Bronies

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:25:09 +0000

At The Awl, Kase Wickman covers the first major Brony convention, an "explosion of wild color ... the glitter, the rainbows, the homemade pony-mane hooded sweatshirts, all of it bright and sparkly enough to send any pop culture-aware preteen princess into spasms of jealousy."