{"id":13611,"date":"2014-01-14T20:28:21","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T03:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=13611"},"modified":"2014-01-14T20:34:02","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T03:34:02","slug":"my-little-pony-and-its-fanbase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2014\/01\/14\/my-little-pony-and-its-fanbase\/","title":{"rendered":"my little pony and its fanbase of male geeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Little Pony has a male fanbase<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Makes some sense.\u00c2\u00a0 Supposedly the GI Joe was created by a man who feared little boys were secretly playing with their sister’s Barbie Dolls.<\/p>\n

Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s get this out of the way first: Bronies are not gay. One might be hard-pressed, sure, when seeing college-age guys wearing pink wigs and furry faux tails walking into a convention center\u00e2\u20ac\u201das this writer saw, outside what turned out to be BronyCon 2013 in Baltimore, an event that drew over 12,000 people\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnot to look for some LGBT connection. But the vast majority of them are indeed heterosexual, according to scientific studies of the fandom. (Yes, there are major Brony studies, but more on that later.)<\/em><\/p>\n

The gay thing would be easier to take for… this, I suppose…<\/p>\n

Some among the Internet mom squad reacted too, the mental juxtaposition of their six-year-olds sharing a giggly fondness for Princess Celestia\u00e2\u20ac\u201dAlicorn pony and co-ruler of the kingdom of Equestria\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwith an equally arduous 22-year-old bearded man being too weird to take.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Ponies?<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you just stripped the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMy Little\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 off it and just called it \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthe Ponies,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 it would be even more successful,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of like watching a Pixar movie, in that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got humor for adults, and morals in the stories that a kid can understand. And a lot of throwback to old movies like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcStar Wars\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

And three two one…<\/p>\n

Some say it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a trend toward \u00e2\u20ac\u0153neo-sincerity,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he observes\u00e2\u20ac\u201da post-ironical appreciation for things because of their purity, even sentimentality, because it feels good. In 1993, author David Foster Wallace described the ethos<\/a> in part as arising from those \u00e2\u20ac\u0153who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d MLP provides life-lessons, humor, and great animation. So just enjoy it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Can one ironically appreciate neo-sincerity?<\/p>\n

The comments section gets us into the problem of stunted adolescence and how this is works with Obamacare and (oddly enough, considering the nature of the magazine’s isolationist Conservatism) a lack of a military draft.<\/p>\n

Is the audience mostly male, or is it just that the hardcore interactive fandom is? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m certain that there are plenty of fans in the target demographic (5-11 year old girls), it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that kids that age do not usually create cross-country organized communities.<\/em><\/p>\n

Isn’t the Internet changing that?<\/p>\n

This is about the most extreme indication of the decline of Western Civilization that I can think of. I can only hope that the devotee who claims to be a Naval Officer, and the devotee who claims a Drill Sergeant is a fellow devotee, are both lying. Another depressing thing is that there are so few dissenting voices in this thread; I think most of the few conservatives around here were so repulsed by this article that they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to associate with it to the extent of even clicking on it.n<\/em><\/p>\n

And…<\/p>\n

What is truly odd, troubling and creepy is the small-c conservative fandom surrounding Ayn Rand: a hateful shrew who was a militantly anti-Christian atheist, died a lonely woman, and was buried in a casket emblazoned with a dollar sign. Yet no so much fanlove for C.S. Lewis\u00e2\u20ac\u201ca devout Christian and writer of many fine \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcchildren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 books, who penned these oft-misquoted words:<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes.\u00c2\u00a0 My Little Pony is the new CS Lewis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Little Pony has a male fanbase. Makes some sense.\u00c2\u00a0 Supposedly the GI Joe was created by a man who feared little boys were secretly playing with their sister’s Barbie Dolls. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s get this out of the way first: Bronies are not gay. One might be hard-pressed, sure, when seeing college-age guys wearing pink wigs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13611"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13615,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13611\/revisions\/13615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}