In 2012, a message board called /mlp/ was set up because My Little Pony conversation was taking up too much space on boards for TV and comics. The fandom was born on 4chan, the largest den of chaos and toxic beliefs available on the internet. The abrupt reckoning has raised an existential question for internet spaces large and small: If you’ve gone online to live in a fantasy space, can you avoid taking responsibility when the real world finds its way in?Įven a quick glance at the history of My Little Pony fandom serves as a valuable template for how not to build an online community. Following a new wave of Black Lives Matter protests across the United States, the fandom is in an all-out civil war, forced to either confront or deny what it’s let go on for so long. The community has sorted itself largely into two camps: those who think anything goes as long as someone finds it funny, and those who would rather ignore toxic elements than admit that not everything is perfect.
In supposed deference to principles of free speech and openness on the internet, the presence of self-described Nazis within a fandom that idolizes compassion-oriented cartoon characters has become a coolly accepted fact.
Derpibooru even lists “racist” as a searchable category, and more than 900 pieces of art are tagged as such.įor years, this has been the status quo in the world of My Little Pony. An image that I recently viewed on the site depicts a My Little Pony character presiding over three lynchings and one beheading of cartoons drawn to represent various marginalized groups. But a substantial number of them are extremely, jarringly violent. Derpibooru hosts millions of My Little Pony artworks, plenty of which are simple tributes to magic, friendship, and magical friendship. The most popular of these sites is called Derpibooru, a combination of a character’s name and a common term for image boards. My Little Pony fans primarily express their enthusiasm for the show by sharing their own cartoon drawings of the main characters, which they usually upload to the image boards. To them, it’s edgy and provocative to be an adult obsessed with cartoon ponies. Others, however, delight in the irony of their fandom. Many of the show’s adult fans genuinely enjoy My Little Pony and the wholesome escapism it provides. They hold well-attended fan conventions they’ve been the stars of multiple documentaries. Even so, bronies have long captured the world’s attention. The brony subculture is about as niche as they come, born in internet forums in the early 2010s, an era when hyper-specific interests were the organizing principle of social media.
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