Men who love ‘My Little Pony’
By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - 33 Comments
Don’t mess with guys who want to talk about Pinkie Pie and pretty pony tea parties
Corus Entertainment
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic seems to confirm adults’ worst fears about kids’ cartoons. The show, about female ponies with names like Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie, is produced by Hasbro to convince kids to buy the line of toys it’s based on, just like the company’s Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Brite cartoons. But some adults don’t have time to object to Friendship is Magic: they’re too busy watching it and writing pony fan fiction. On the Hub in the U.S. and Treehouse in Canada, My Little Pony has become one of the most popular cartoons among grown-ups, for viewing and online discussion. A mostly older audience (male fans call themselves “Bronies”) has given 10 million over 35 million views to a fan website, Equestria Daily. The founder of the site, who goes by the name “Sethisto,” told Maclean’s that the show “accidentally targeted the Internet culture.”
On Know Your Meme, a site that keeps track of pop culture phrases that have become popular online, there are more entries for My Little Pony than for almost any other show. The wide-eyed character designs, from series creator Lauren Faust, are used as the basis for fan art and games, often involving pony-based catchphrases like “anypony” and “nopony.” 4Chan, a website known for flooding the Internet with nasty jokes, erupted in a “civil war” when a moderator tried to ban pony discussion; eventually the site gave up and had to allow its members to talk about Princess Celestia and the pretty pony tea parties. “4chan once took on the FBI and won,” a Brony told the New York Observer, “so you might say that My Little Pony is more powerful than the FBI.” Fans have even taken to creating pony memes based on other cartoons, like an instantly famous cartoon of an old Looney Tunes character screaming, “Confound those ponies! They drive me to drink!”
Yet unlike other cartoons with grown-up fans, My Little Pony makes almost no concessions to them. Shows like Rocky and Bullwinkle had pop culture jokes that kids weren’t supposed to understand, while Avatar: The Last Airbender was an adult phenomenon for its complex plotting. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has fewer topical jokes than Hasbro’s first My Little Pony cartoon from the ’80s (which once had moonwalking ponies). Stories, Sethisto says, are “simple and easy to follow.” Every episode ends with a moral, like: “If you try to please everypony, you oftentimes end up pleasing nopony.” Even Sesame Street, which parodies shows like Mad Men, tries harder to please adults.
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That's not funny!
By Alex Shimo - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 2:20 PM - 47 Comments
The website behind those cute cat photos has a darker side
In December 2007, Chris Forcand was arrested in his Toronto apartment and charged with luring an underage girl, possessing a dangerous weapon and other related offences. Forcand, then 53, had posted nude photos of himself in Internet chat rooms and tried to proposition young girls. After some of those lurid conversations were sent to members of his church, Toronto police’s Child Exploitation Section was called in. Forcand was later sentenced to 12 months. The cyber-vigilantes who uncovered his activities and brought about the arrest did not reveal their identities. But subsequent reports linked them to the Internet group Anonymous, which grew out of a message board site, 4chan.org, that is arguably one of the odder places you’ll find online.If you’ve never heard of 4chan, you’re probably still aware of some of its actions. Its users have created some of today’s most popular Internet memes, such as Rickrolling, which blasts people’s computer screens with a link to the Rick Astley song Never Gonna Give You Up, and lolcats, those photos of cutesy felines accompanied by broken English captions like “I can has Cheezburger?” (itself an irritating slang called lolspeak). Remember the buzz about the Chocolate Rain song, by Tay Zonday? Its popularity partly stemmed from a joke—channers decided to boost its ratings because of its absurd lyrics and melody; it was eventually covered by John Mayer and others. With more than 300 million page views per month, 4chan can create news simply on the basis of size. When something becomes a trend on the site, it will likely hit your computer screen soon, explains Tim Hwang, a research associate at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
