Opened this immediately. Your brony articles were some of the first I read, so it was exciting to see one in the inbox.
Your breakdown of the 4-chan mlp history specifics was really helpful. It's interesting that you brought up Reddit as the alt migration - it doesn't seem to have a lasting impact on there the way that 4chan did, or at least, it seems barely active on Reddit today. Also didn't realize until this post that Equestria Daily was founded by someone from 4chan, but compared to what you described, it was definitely a more family friendly platform for a show that really should have always been family friendly.
Your current stance (if I'm reading correctly) is that the 4chan base and unsavory tendencies retained their undercurrent throughout the fandom, which led to the extremist connections today. It sounds like you're going into a mini-arc in this brony analysis/history saga, which I'm excited to follow.
I'm wondering if you'll explore at all how/if Equestria Daily and the fandom eventually growing on more "moderated" platforms like Youtube helped to stave off the dark side's dominance for a time. I remember that after the third season ended (2013), some of the casual fandom stopped watching and many others joined, meaning they hadn't been there for the 4chan cacophony. There was also a year-long hiatus in the show from 2014-2015, during which Rainbow Rocks (the best of the anthropomorphized mlp movies) released, and season 4 and 5 (which released before and after the hiatus) were some of the most highly regarded for fandom and series significance. I don't know how much that would have affected the culture, but it had to have affected it in some way. And yet the fandom began to break off and get more toxic in later seasons despite the intense community camaraderie of that middle period. An ebb and flow experience where the dark side receded enough to make it arguable for a time that it "gave the community a bad name" instead of being the dominant culture.
Side note, but would you ever feel inclined to dedicate an article to homestuck? Its digital footprint is vast but in a way that seems distinct from what mlp was doing, and it's difficult for me to get to a concrete explanation to what it "was" because it also seems to be based on a version of the internet that just doesn't exist any more.
Funny you should ask - I began a deep dive into Homestuck just the other week, the series being titled, "The Internet's Ulysses". The next part will be out next week, but overall it's going to be one that's going to be released sporadically since... well, if it tells you just how "vast" Homestuck's digital footprint is, I'm at six parts and I still don't think I've covered the half of it. Mostly because, to even understand what happened, a lot of primer is required for the necessary conquest. It's shaping up to be a behemoth. To say the least, though, you're right that Homestuck was an entirely different beast from the Bronies, though they were roughly concurrent, and it was very much a product of the internet of the time; if there's any major overlap between Homestuck and Bronies aside from the time period, it's that I do not think the circumstances that brought them to be exist on the internet of today, and I'm skeptical they ever will again. The early 2010's internet was effectively a different world from that of today and I don't ever see the unique supernova of creativity that came from that era replicating, at least not for the foreseeable future.
You're partially right in your assessment; while the genesis of the community on 4chan stained the fandom for the entirety of its existence (especially the sheer glut of pornographic content), I see the founding of EQ as a demarcating point where it largely diverged into two distinct sub-cultures beneath the same banner. One that's more accessible and less raucous, and the other just being the Bronies steeped in imageboard culture, which would give rise to the ideological bent that side of the fandom would take. Interestingly, another parallel between Homestuck and the Bronies is the fact that, similarly, the Homestuck fandom fomented on Tumblr, and just as 4chan's culture shaped the Brony community, so too did Tumblr's hyper-progressive, left-slanted political culture shape Homestuck's fandom in much the same way.
Going off what you said about the different eras of brony culture, it seems like the "turn over" circa 2013 was really the turning point. I was a detached observer by that time, since the 4chan drama had quieted down, so I'm not entirely sure what happened in the wider brony subculture around that time (though I have seen in my research similar sentiments to your own that there was a certain "golden age" around the middle that preceded a precipitous decline). I think that "turn over" may have been those who adopted the show during the 4chan-era and moved on, while the newer influx of members into the fandom stemmed from less anarchic and more politically neutral places like Reddit (if I had to guess I'd reckon the reason the presence isn't felt on Reddit is because A) it's a highly policed platform and B) it's substantially larger than 4chan). This fresh blood flushed out the more radical old guard, who left the fandom entirely or kept the /mlp/ on 4chan. We'll see what the evidence bears out with future research.
Thank you for reading and your insightful comment. If you have any more you'd like to share on the topic, since it sounds like you have first hand experience, I'd be happy to hear it in my DMs. Like I'm doing with my Homestuck retrospective, I welcome anyone's experience with the fandom that I might integrate into my research. Even with Homestuck, though I was very much present and active, I'm always curious to see what other people remember from the time. It helps immensely in forming a broader, more objective picture of the time.
Thank you for such a detailed response! I will have to get to "The Internet's Ulysses" - I opened it a few days ago, got jumpscared by MatPat, and decided to shelve it for another day when I had more time to actually read through it. Hearing it also gets into Homestuck just makes it more intriguing.
The Tumblr/Reddit divide when considering Homestuck and Mlp's respective cultures is really interesting. I wonder how the convention overlap for cosplayers between mlp, homestuck, and furries breaks down.
Very glad to see this series continue! As one of those Brony-to-right-wing-extremist-pipeline people, I'm finally feeling seen after all these years.
I think I first heard of all these things a little after /mlp/ was created, but my first exposure to "brony" content was the pony.mov videos (I still find some things from them funny to this day).
Highlights of my brony career include getting in on the ground floor of the first edition print of Fallout Equestria and the summer of love that was /mlpol/, a period I have no doubt you'll be visiting for this series.
Elsewhere you and a commenter drew out a comparison with Homestuck, essentially with the bronies deviating right due to their origin on 4chan and the homies (homestuckers?) deviating left due to their origin on Tumblr. I wonder if this is really any surprise- if 4chan itself attracted right-inclined people and Tumblr left-inclined (and mostly all neurodivergent to boot), then the paths taken by respective members of each fandom seem to track with the destiny of their site of origin - 4chan into a rightist mono/pol/ly and Tumblr as its transed reflection. Therefore, we also have the rare Right Homestucker and the (probably far less rare) trans brony. I attribute the latter almost exclusively to furries who radicalized from sexual paraphilia due to pure goonerism (and demonic influence, but nobody's ready for that conversation).
Ah, yes - /mlpol/ is something that will be touched on. That was the highwater mark of 4chan, that April Fool's. It never got better than that. On that note, as someone with experience in this niche, would you say that /mlpol/ was the genesis of Bronies and /pol/ coming together? I was always dully aware that there was some connection between the two but I'd be interested in knowing if that was the moment it kind of took off or if it was always as big as I remember.
That being said, the fates of both Homestuck, Bronies, Tumblr, and 4chan are no surprise at all. I'm glad you brought up the furries, though; they'll be important later. I remember at the time people on 4chan drawing direct lines between furries and the bronies, and the former drifting into the latter camp. In my own research it feels as if a lot of former bronies point to the trickle of furries into the brony community as what supercharged the sexual deviancy that I recall being so profuse. Would you say that's a fair assessment?
Well, it's hard to say. /mlpol/ strikes me as a chicken/egg situation. Obviously the idea for combining them was that /mlp/ and /pol/ were contending for Most Hated Board for a long time, not to mention that their members were at least percieved as basically incompatible, if not total opposites.
I would guess that there was already some kind of cross pollination from the raiding communities that sprung up, which you mentioned, as both communities had the same tendency to spam other boards (or at least people using their imagery), hence their being broadly hated. Generally though, I don't remember any intentional cross over or mutual affection prior to /mlpol/, and I think most people were surprised at how friendly they were. I'm pretty sure there was an /mlpol/ board made on 8chan after the April Fools event ended for people who wanted to keep it going, not to mention the new /mlpol/ threads that went around for a while. I think there's something to what another commenter said, forming a community around liking something socially unacceptable: the nor/mlp/eople and /pol/iticians really seem to fit this description.
Regarding the deviancy, yes furries are heavily, disproportionately to blame, as with most things they touch, although it can't all be blamed on them. Hard to really quantify what they're responsible for, it's not like the average 4chan user was a moral paragon. Bearing in mind, arguably the "greatest" work of the early Brony community, Fallout Equestria, shipped with a whole chapter that was just a lesbian sex scene (not written by the original author, but approved and canonized). I think it's fair to say there was almost always a sexual element, and furries just accelerated it.
Not a sequel I expected, but I'm happy to see it. Agreed that it's a weird and fascinating rabbit hole, and your theory that the whole thing was more about liking something socially unacceptable and forging a ragtag band of misfits, classic movie style. In fact, all this sounds like it would make for a surprisingly wholesome movie...at least if you scrub away the more unsavory elements. I grant that there's plenty of those, of course. Either way, I think your explanation of the Brony phenomenon makes a lot of sense, and I don't think I've seen it put that way elsewhere (but then again it's not a topic I've read much on). Also funny that these people managed to get so out of control in their trolling they even broke 4chan. I was mildly curious if that place actually had moderation at all, haha.
Since this part is more context and setup, I think the only little thing I have to add is that the "trans girl or white nationalist" meme made me think of JMG's off the wall theory that many of the more extreme people on the American social justice left will go down the latter path too in the coming years, after contemplating a certain mid-twentieth century German political movement so intensely for so long. (As well as some of them converting to conservative Islam.) I don't think I really buy it myself, as it seems a tad too outlandish, but it's an intriguing what-if to ponder.
As for the term "fascism" itself, I really think it should be retired. If I had my way no one would ever use it other than when talking about the actual historical events up to the end of WW2. At this point it's nothing but another way to say "I hate you" (as JMG also pointed out once).
The whole thing is very... archetypal, I guess you could say. Like, it's kind of almost the perfect "origin myth", with all the elements you would expect to see in such a story. I suppose those tropes exist for a reason, though. And, yes, 4chan does have a moderation staff that's notoriously understaffed, capricious, and kind of famous for not doing their jobs (the line "They do it for free" comes from an old 4chan meme about the "janitors", as they were called, referencing how they... well, do it for free).
As for JMG's theory, I think a lot of them are already there mentally, in all but name. I doubt they'll ever take that title for themselves but, ideologically, they're one or two steps removed from the actual idea of fascism, which, to butcher a very complicated ideology, is at its core a synthesis between state and private powers into one. If it sounds socialist, it's because it is; there's a reason the ideology appealed to Mussolini, who was one of Italy's most outspoken and prominent socialists before he adopted fascism. Also reminds me of the black metal guys who start out as unabashedly anti-Christian that end up converting because they study so much of it to figure out why they hate it, only to find that it's agreeable to them when they actually understand it. Funny how that works.
Also, in regards to the shout out, I went back and amended the verbiage; I am actually shocked to learn that you're a guy since - and I'm embarrassed to admit - I literally thought you were a female this whole time. I really should have known better since I was dimly aware that Kim is not an uncommon name for men in some European country's before, but I really do apologize for that mistake.
Back in time I was listening a shitton of black metal and it is really a peculiar scene. I even spoke with Attila Csihar(Mayhem vocal) once IRL and it just reinforced my interest in them. Seemingly they were completely insane...but they were not. (Except Dead of course. I think you already seen that famous album cover.)
Now I'm at the church almost every sunday. Lol.
Politically speaking, the word fascism did lose its meaning. I got into many arguments about this but the Duce himself has a really good quote that I always bring up.
"Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."
I think this describes the best how close they are to each other. And I know that this is trite, but...Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
Excellent article, though in your second one on this topic I’m surprised you didn’t mention Equestria At War the Hearts of Iron IV Mod, which I think is based off of My Little Pony.
It is - I remember a friend of mine stumbling across the very well-made Wiki for it and we spent a whole night in a voice call just marveling at the sheer scope of it. Truth be told I forgot it was a thing but I'll mention it in the next article.
Would you mind answering some questions for me in DMs? I'd like to get some first hand accounts to make sure I don't misrepresent anything, and also get a better handle on the finer details of the subject.
I appreciate that. I'll have to get them to you later since I'm about to leave the country for a bit and I'm overwhelmingly preoccupied, but when I return I'll reach out to you. Any insight you have or experiences you're willing to share would be greatly appreciated.
This was another trip back in time for me, even if I was only ever tangentially connected with them.
The others already made most of the points that I wanted to make from their origins or their infection with furries.
To be honest, I too partaked in the 4chan guerilla war, even if I never watched it myself. Why? I have a little story about that.
Not that much before the described events I was spending a lot of time playing Guild Wars (and CS). For a time I was spamming the "N" word a lot there (it was not hard to get around the automated moderation).
Nowadays, some type of people would say that I was some raging racist, but as a kid in his early 10s, I had absolutely no knowing of the history of the word. I just loved to see people losing their shit on something that insignificant. Basically I was doing it because I shouldn't.
After that they fell off my map, until I got into university around 2014-ish. I got to know that the local citadel of bronies are in Miskolc (incidentally, the shittiest part of the country and not far from where my hometown is) but by then the infection already happened. That led me to the somewhat understandable misunderstanding that they were just furries/degenerates. The people I knew then surely were. It also didn't help that it was most popular among IT students...so lot of them were already socially maladjusted.
Well. I didn't really add anything so far, but maybe I can.
I think the /pol/ came up with the theory that you can't be a real nazi, until you saw the anime K-On. You can read after it, but what I want to hint on, Friendship is magic is really not that far off. It's not a serious point though because, just as you said, most of the community was much more into the scene than the comic.
My other point is a part of the 4chan/tumblr or MLP/Homestuck part. God know how much trannies these stuff produced, but I always noticed the patterns that the bronies mostly were associates with men(neckbeards, autists) while the others with maladjusted women. I don't exactly know what happened inside so it came to this.
Sure, it was peak escapism and that's perfectly alright. But in their core, there were some completely isolated groups that were in a way the most productive (Fallout Equestria is a good example of this almost religious constant inward framing) but also got stuck in a death spiral of self-projection.
From the terfs I learned a good technique how to identify if something was written by a trans. Basically if something sounds like how a man thinks a woman thinks...they're most likely it(and vice-versa).
Just as in Tumblr you could read many gay fantasies written by women, I don't think it is a coincidence that Fallout Equestria got that lesbian sex part. I think you get where I'm hinting at here.
Opened this immediately. Your brony articles were some of the first I read, so it was exciting to see one in the inbox.
Your breakdown of the 4-chan mlp history specifics was really helpful. It's interesting that you brought up Reddit as the alt migration - it doesn't seem to have a lasting impact on there the way that 4chan did, or at least, it seems barely active on Reddit today. Also didn't realize until this post that Equestria Daily was founded by someone from 4chan, but compared to what you described, it was definitely a more family friendly platform for a show that really should have always been family friendly.
Your current stance (if I'm reading correctly) is that the 4chan base and unsavory tendencies retained their undercurrent throughout the fandom, which led to the extremist connections today. It sounds like you're going into a mini-arc in this brony analysis/history saga, which I'm excited to follow.
I'm wondering if you'll explore at all how/if Equestria Daily and the fandom eventually growing on more "moderated" platforms like Youtube helped to stave off the dark side's dominance for a time. I remember that after the third season ended (2013), some of the casual fandom stopped watching and many others joined, meaning they hadn't been there for the 4chan cacophony. There was also a year-long hiatus in the show from 2014-2015, during which Rainbow Rocks (the best of the anthropomorphized mlp movies) released, and season 4 and 5 (which released before and after the hiatus) were some of the most highly regarded for fandom and series significance. I don't know how much that would have affected the culture, but it had to have affected it in some way. And yet the fandom began to break off and get more toxic in later seasons despite the intense community camaraderie of that middle period. An ebb and flow experience where the dark side receded enough to make it arguable for a time that it "gave the community a bad name" instead of being the dominant culture.
Side note, but would you ever feel inclined to dedicate an article to homestuck? Its digital footprint is vast but in a way that seems distinct from what mlp was doing, and it's difficult for me to get to a concrete explanation to what it "was" because it also seems to be based on a version of the internet that just doesn't exist any more.
Thanks for writing these!
Funny you should ask - I began a deep dive into Homestuck just the other week, the series being titled, "The Internet's Ulysses". The next part will be out next week, but overall it's going to be one that's going to be released sporadically since... well, if it tells you just how "vast" Homestuck's digital footprint is, I'm at six parts and I still don't think I've covered the half of it. Mostly because, to even understand what happened, a lot of primer is required for the necessary conquest. It's shaping up to be a behemoth. To say the least, though, you're right that Homestuck was an entirely different beast from the Bronies, though they were roughly concurrent, and it was very much a product of the internet of the time; if there's any major overlap between Homestuck and Bronies aside from the time period, it's that I do not think the circumstances that brought them to be exist on the internet of today, and I'm skeptical they ever will again. The early 2010's internet was effectively a different world from that of today and I don't ever see the unique supernova of creativity that came from that era replicating, at least not for the foreseeable future.
You're partially right in your assessment; while the genesis of the community on 4chan stained the fandom for the entirety of its existence (especially the sheer glut of pornographic content), I see the founding of EQ as a demarcating point where it largely diverged into two distinct sub-cultures beneath the same banner. One that's more accessible and less raucous, and the other just being the Bronies steeped in imageboard culture, which would give rise to the ideological bent that side of the fandom would take. Interestingly, another parallel between Homestuck and the Bronies is the fact that, similarly, the Homestuck fandom fomented on Tumblr, and just as 4chan's culture shaped the Brony community, so too did Tumblr's hyper-progressive, left-slanted political culture shape Homestuck's fandom in much the same way.
Going off what you said about the different eras of brony culture, it seems like the "turn over" circa 2013 was really the turning point. I was a detached observer by that time, since the 4chan drama had quieted down, so I'm not entirely sure what happened in the wider brony subculture around that time (though I have seen in my research similar sentiments to your own that there was a certain "golden age" around the middle that preceded a precipitous decline). I think that "turn over" may have been those who adopted the show during the 4chan-era and moved on, while the newer influx of members into the fandom stemmed from less anarchic and more politically neutral places like Reddit (if I had to guess I'd reckon the reason the presence isn't felt on Reddit is because A) it's a highly policed platform and B) it's substantially larger than 4chan). This fresh blood flushed out the more radical old guard, who left the fandom entirely or kept the /mlp/ on 4chan. We'll see what the evidence bears out with future research.
Thank you for reading and your insightful comment. If you have any more you'd like to share on the topic, since it sounds like you have first hand experience, I'd be happy to hear it in my DMs. Like I'm doing with my Homestuck retrospective, I welcome anyone's experience with the fandom that I might integrate into my research. Even with Homestuck, though I was very much present and active, I'm always curious to see what other people remember from the time. It helps immensely in forming a broader, more objective picture of the time.
Thank you for such a detailed response! I will have to get to "The Internet's Ulysses" - I opened it a few days ago, got jumpscared by MatPat, and decided to shelve it for another day when I had more time to actually read through it. Hearing it also gets into Homestuck just makes it more intriguing.
The Tumblr/Reddit divide when considering Homestuck and Mlp's respective cultures is really interesting. I wonder how the convention overlap for cosplayers between mlp, homestuck, and furries breaks down.
Very glad to see this series continue! As one of those Brony-to-right-wing-extremist-pipeline people, I'm finally feeling seen after all these years.
I think I first heard of all these things a little after /mlp/ was created, but my first exposure to "brony" content was the pony.mov videos (I still find some things from them funny to this day).
Highlights of my brony career include getting in on the ground floor of the first edition print of Fallout Equestria and the summer of love that was /mlpol/, a period I have no doubt you'll be visiting for this series.
Elsewhere you and a commenter drew out a comparison with Homestuck, essentially with the bronies deviating right due to their origin on 4chan and the homies (homestuckers?) deviating left due to their origin on Tumblr. I wonder if this is really any surprise- if 4chan itself attracted right-inclined people and Tumblr left-inclined (and mostly all neurodivergent to boot), then the paths taken by respective members of each fandom seem to track with the destiny of their site of origin - 4chan into a rightist mono/pol/ly and Tumblr as its transed reflection. Therefore, we also have the rare Right Homestucker and the (probably far less rare) trans brony. I attribute the latter almost exclusively to furries who radicalized from sexual paraphilia due to pure goonerism (and demonic influence, but nobody's ready for that conversation).
Ah, yes - /mlpol/ is something that will be touched on. That was the highwater mark of 4chan, that April Fool's. It never got better than that. On that note, as someone with experience in this niche, would you say that /mlpol/ was the genesis of Bronies and /pol/ coming together? I was always dully aware that there was some connection between the two but I'd be interested in knowing if that was the moment it kind of took off or if it was always as big as I remember.
That being said, the fates of both Homestuck, Bronies, Tumblr, and 4chan are no surprise at all. I'm glad you brought up the furries, though; they'll be important later. I remember at the time people on 4chan drawing direct lines between furries and the bronies, and the former drifting into the latter camp. In my own research it feels as if a lot of former bronies point to the trickle of furries into the brony community as what supercharged the sexual deviancy that I recall being so profuse. Would you say that's a fair assessment?
Well, it's hard to say. /mlpol/ strikes me as a chicken/egg situation. Obviously the idea for combining them was that /mlp/ and /pol/ were contending for Most Hated Board for a long time, not to mention that their members were at least percieved as basically incompatible, if not total opposites.
I would guess that there was already some kind of cross pollination from the raiding communities that sprung up, which you mentioned, as both communities had the same tendency to spam other boards (or at least people using their imagery), hence their being broadly hated. Generally though, I don't remember any intentional cross over or mutual affection prior to /mlpol/, and I think most people were surprised at how friendly they were. I'm pretty sure there was an /mlpol/ board made on 8chan after the April Fools event ended for people who wanted to keep it going, not to mention the new /mlpol/ threads that went around for a while. I think there's something to what another commenter said, forming a community around liking something socially unacceptable: the nor/mlp/eople and /pol/iticians really seem to fit this description.
Regarding the deviancy, yes furries are heavily, disproportionately to blame, as with most things they touch, although it can't all be blamed on them. Hard to really quantify what they're responsible for, it's not like the average 4chan user was a moral paragon. Bearing in mind, arguably the "greatest" work of the early Brony community, Fallout Equestria, shipped with a whole chapter that was just a lesbian sex scene (not written by the original author, but approved and canonized). I think it's fair to say there was almost always a sexual element, and furries just accelerated it.
Not a sequel I expected, but I'm happy to see it. Agreed that it's a weird and fascinating rabbit hole, and your theory that the whole thing was more about liking something socially unacceptable and forging a ragtag band of misfits, classic movie style. In fact, all this sounds like it would make for a surprisingly wholesome movie...at least if you scrub away the more unsavory elements. I grant that there's plenty of those, of course. Either way, I think your explanation of the Brony phenomenon makes a lot of sense, and I don't think I've seen it put that way elsewhere (but then again it's not a topic I've read much on). Also funny that these people managed to get so out of control in their trolling they even broke 4chan. I was mildly curious if that place actually had moderation at all, haha.
Since this part is more context and setup, I think the only little thing I have to add is that the "trans girl or white nationalist" meme made me think of JMG's off the wall theory that many of the more extreme people on the American social justice left will go down the latter path too in the coming years, after contemplating a certain mid-twentieth century German political movement so intensely for so long. (As well as some of them converting to conservative Islam.) I don't think I really buy it myself, as it seems a tad too outlandish, but it's an intriguing what-if to ponder.
As for the term "fascism" itself, I really think it should be retired. If I had my way no one would ever use it other than when talking about the actual historical events up to the end of WW2. At this point it's nothing but another way to say "I hate you" (as JMG also pointed out once).
Anyway, looking forward to the continuation!
The whole thing is very... archetypal, I guess you could say. Like, it's kind of almost the perfect "origin myth", with all the elements you would expect to see in such a story. I suppose those tropes exist for a reason, though. And, yes, 4chan does have a moderation staff that's notoriously understaffed, capricious, and kind of famous for not doing their jobs (the line "They do it for free" comes from an old 4chan meme about the "janitors", as they were called, referencing how they... well, do it for free).
As for JMG's theory, I think a lot of them are already there mentally, in all but name. I doubt they'll ever take that title for themselves but, ideologically, they're one or two steps removed from the actual idea of fascism, which, to butcher a very complicated ideology, is at its core a synthesis between state and private powers into one. If it sounds socialist, it's because it is; there's a reason the ideology appealed to Mussolini, who was one of Italy's most outspoken and prominent socialists before he adopted fascism. Also reminds me of the black metal guys who start out as unabashedly anti-Christian that end up converting because they study so much of it to figure out why they hate it, only to find that it's agreeable to them when they actually understand it. Funny how that works.
Also, in regards to the shout out, I went back and amended the verbiage; I am actually shocked to learn that you're a guy since - and I'm embarrassed to admit - I literally thought you were a female this whole time. I really should have known better since I was dimly aware that Kim is not an uncommon name for men in some European country's before, but I really do apologize for that mistake.
Back in time I was listening a shitton of black metal and it is really a peculiar scene. I even spoke with Attila Csihar(Mayhem vocal) once IRL and it just reinforced my interest in them. Seemingly they were completely insane...but they were not. (Except Dead of course. I think you already seen that famous album cover.)
Now I'm at the church almost every sunday. Lol.
Politically speaking, the word fascism did lose its meaning. I got into many arguments about this but the Duce himself has a really good quote that I always bring up.
"Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."
I think this describes the best how close they are to each other. And I know that this is trite, but...Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
homestuck mentioned
Excellent article, though in your second one on this topic I’m surprised you didn’t mention Equestria At War the Hearts of Iron IV Mod, which I think is based off of My Little Pony.
It is - I remember a friend of mine stumbling across the very well-made Wiki for it and we spent a whole night in a voice call just marveling at the sheer scope of it. Truth be told I forgot it was a thing but I'll mention it in the next article.
I'm always amazed by mod creators in the Hoi4 community. Glad I could be of help. Peace ✌🏻 and keep up the great work. 👍
And thank you as always for reading, I'm glad you enjoyed.
I fondly remember the april first MLPol prank because for a glorious 24 hours shills and glowies shut the fuck up
I'm a former brony who went Folk Socialist (NatSoc).
Would you mind answering some questions for me in DMs? I'd like to get some first hand accounts to make sure I don't misrepresent anything, and also get a better handle on the finer details of the subject.
Sure!
I mean, I think your article was great.
I appreciate that. I'll have to get them to you later since I'm about to leave the country for a bit and I'm overwhelmingly preoccupied, but when I return I'll reach out to you. Any insight you have or experiences you're willing to share would be greatly appreciated.
This was another trip back in time for me, even if I was only ever tangentially connected with them.
The others already made most of the points that I wanted to make from their origins or their infection with furries.
To be honest, I too partaked in the 4chan guerilla war, even if I never watched it myself. Why? I have a little story about that.
Not that much before the described events I was spending a lot of time playing Guild Wars (and CS). For a time I was spamming the "N" word a lot there (it was not hard to get around the automated moderation).
Nowadays, some type of people would say that I was some raging racist, but as a kid in his early 10s, I had absolutely no knowing of the history of the word. I just loved to see people losing their shit on something that insignificant. Basically I was doing it because I shouldn't.
After that they fell off my map, until I got into university around 2014-ish. I got to know that the local citadel of bronies are in Miskolc (incidentally, the shittiest part of the country and not far from where my hometown is) but by then the infection already happened. That led me to the somewhat understandable misunderstanding that they were just furries/degenerates. The people I knew then surely were. It also didn't help that it was most popular among IT students...so lot of them were already socially maladjusted.
Well. I didn't really add anything so far, but maybe I can.
I think the /pol/ came up with the theory that you can't be a real nazi, until you saw the anime K-On. You can read after it, but what I want to hint on, Friendship is magic is really not that far off. It's not a serious point though because, just as you said, most of the community was much more into the scene than the comic.
My other point is a part of the 4chan/tumblr or MLP/Homestuck part. God know how much trannies these stuff produced, but I always noticed the patterns that the bronies mostly were associates with men(neckbeards, autists) while the others with maladjusted women. I don't exactly know what happened inside so it came to this.
Sure, it was peak escapism and that's perfectly alright. But in their core, there were some completely isolated groups that were in a way the most productive (Fallout Equestria is a good example of this almost religious constant inward framing) but also got stuck in a death spiral of self-projection.
From the terfs I learned a good technique how to identify if something was written by a trans. Basically if something sounds like how a man thinks a woman thinks...they're most likely it(and vice-versa).
Just as in Tumblr you could read many gay fantasies written by women, I don't think it is a coincidence that Fallout Equestria got that lesbian sex part. I think you get where I'm hinting at here.
That was a fun read.