Bronies: The Ultimate Hipsters
Come on, you can't tell me these guys actually enjoy my little pony. They just want to be ironic.
shareSome are, and some aren't.
There was literally an animated musical montage in the movie explaining this.
MovieChat Forums > Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony (2013) Discussion > Bronies: The Ultimate Hipsters
Well, there is people who genuinely enjoy stuff like Twilight, Jersey Shore and Fifty Shades of Grey...
share
I'm a Brony, and I have been since 2011. I enjoy the show, and irony has nothing to do with it. I wanted to watch something positive, upbeat; something that lacked the cynicism and dark edge that so many television shows have. Most children's programming is vacuous and unintelligent, but MLP:FIM (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic) is surprisingly intelligent, and funny. It helps that the main person behind the show, Lauren Faust, was also a big part of other shows like Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and The Powerpuff Girls. Like those shows, MLP:FIM has references to keep older viewers interested, while keeping younger viewers entertained. It's win/win.
In my case, a friend got me to watch an episode, and I liked it. From there, I became a fan.
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-= J =-
as the documentary follows a fan with asbergers syndrome, I thought to myself, I wonder how many other my little pony fans have aspergers. They seem to not be able to identify that the show is not particularly well written, and is way more violent than a "kids" show should be. Maybe violence passes for intelligent or funny in some cultures.
sharewow really? you just called bronies 'aspergers'. Thing is, that to use an ad hominem argument potentially shows a huge lack of knowledge of bias and logical fallacies which some claim shows a lack of intelligence in and of itself. I think it is just ignorance thought. But now you know so you don't have an excuse for next time. Or does it show a lot of intelligence but a real nasty false empathetic, false compassionate, pretence that so characterises the liberal argument. Sadly too, as it taints us libertarians. This statement can be backed up by empirical research. Read Haidt or Pinker. Among other psychologists they point out that liberals tend to lack certain virtues in thinking rather than gain them over their conservative counterparts. Sad I know.
shareHey now, I totally agree with you that it was wrong of the previous poster to claim that all Bronies must have Asperger's just because s/he doesn't happen to think it's a well written cartoon...but by the same token, it's not right to make a sweeping generalization that all liberals "tend to lack certain virtues in thinking". Come on, now. Didn't we just watch a whole documentary about embracing individual differences and tolerance for all kinds of people? Don't liberals deserve the same consideration as bronies??
Of course not! They're the enemy and must be exterminated!
(Alondro embraces Dalek philosophy...)
EXTERMINATE!! EXTERMINAAAAAAATE!!!
;D
Way more violent than a kids show should be?
Dude, the original 1984 Tirek from "Escape from Midnight Castle" kept a pulsating bag of evil around his neck which he stroked all creeptastically while sitting on his throne and used this dark power to turn little pastel ponies into giant fanged dragon monsters to pull his chariot of darkness from which he planned to spread darkness across the entire land.
And he outright threatened to have his henchman's little baby dragon, Spike, beheaded if he failed again.
So... yeah. Kid's shows weren't all pastel douchebaggery even 30+ years ago.
And don't get me started on the stuff they edit out of anime shown in the US.
Good for you. I love so many male/boy oriented shows and yet females like me don't get this kind of negative attention from either sexes. Don't worry about the other guys - they probably are missing out.
shareThanks! :D
I'm a "love what you love" person. It always fascinates me the things that set people off. It's completely subjective. There are people who don't seem to realize that colors are neither masculine or feminine, and that liking pink doesn't make you effeminate. If this were 1930, that pink color would be associated with boys, not girls, but so many believe in the concept of "it has always been this way", when it really hasn't. Hell, the color switch was a marketing gimmick in the first place!
I wonder if these same people realize that the same founding fathers of the United States who carried muskets, created declarations, and went to war, also wore powdered wigs, ribbons, makeup, and tights?
I believe in removing gender barriers. "Boys only" and "girls only" when applied to things like toys, and TV shows, are labels that limit growth and development.
When I was 6 years old, and staying at my aunt's house, my cousin would sit with me on Saturday morning, and we would watch G.I. Joe, Transformers, Thundercats, and Silverhawks (I'm old). I loved them, *she* loved them.
Of course, then Strawberry Shortcake, and My Little Pony would come on, and I'd sit there and watch them with her, because I liked them, too! It was fun to watch them sing songs, and dance, and make rainbows, and such. My imagination accepted all of it. It's a shame that today we see so many people too concerned about image to let their imaginations run free.
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-= J =-
Ignore the time wasters and ignorants can only be dealt at certain times... If you understand the last sentiment...
People are strange... and a lot of people who have not ventured out or met a lot of people or expended their crowd are conditioned within themselves by themselves. In other words, these types of people are soo comfortable in their own space that beyond that is just a paper-thin picture (caricature) of the world painted for them by hear-says, read or seen depicted for them on popular TV.
And I agree with the gender barriers. Very detrimental. Part of my culture and a strong one of my parents', is that women ought to stay in the kitchen. Guess what? Because I so adversely didn't believe in that, since I was a kid I rebelled against it to the point that if you ask me to cook you something, I'd decline for fear of poisoning you. I'm that terrible of a cook. That's an actual example, one of, how these gender barriers could be detrimental... I can't cook a delicious intricate meal and that's a very bad thing. And I also hate the kitchen.
Anyways, I digress... I also loved G.I. Joes, Tranformers and a little bit later Swat Katz, He-Man, Gargoyles, etc. Oh, and Power Rangers haha.
It's funny... I don't know why in this respect women are soooo accepted when it comes to liking shows marketed primarily for men. (Oh yeah, aside from me, I know a lot of girls who love Crows Zero for example)
However, when it comes to males liking a girl's program... their masculinity is questioned? It's so weird.
My own two nieces are getting brain-washed by this stupid set of rules. I can't help feel a bit disappointed.
Like I said, people are weird. In most cases, people love things that aren't things that are directly harmful towards other beings. So, why such negative reaction towards these people, I don't understand... Baffles me.
Some men really need to get a grip on their dicks! It's not going to fly away or de-masculine them if they like something popularly regarded as a women's thing i.e. Pink.
Oh and btw, did you know Basket Ball was formerly a women's sports and Net Ball a men's sports. But somewhere down the line, I can't remember the exact reason, it switched.
I did not know that about basketball. I looked it up, and sure enough, the year after netball was created, "basketball for women" was started, and was popular in all female colleges, until it was finally co-opted with men's netball and combined and we got what is modern basketball. Fascinating!
Also, thank you for expressing your thoughts about gender roles. I'm glad to see barriers brought down. I think when you limit a child, you bring harm to their creativity, their imaginations, telling them that those imaginations have limits. It's a terrible thing to do to a child, and it's wrong to do it to an adult as well. Our minds are the only place where we are truly free to explore however we wish.
Recently, Toys R Us began a campaign to convert all of their "boy" aisles and "girl" aisles into just unisex toy aisles, which is awesome. Now a boy can look at G.I. Joes and Barbies, and girls can look at Transformers and My Little Ponies. More freedom of choice, more creativity. It's win/win.
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-= J =-
Not a fan of that idea they have. I prefer both sides of things to be split in their preferred sections at toy world as this helps me find what I'm after. I dont want to trawl through every isle to find where the He-Man figures are hiding or the Disney princess line pushed in some strange area. Politically correct ideas need to stay away from how things are placed in order at stores.
shareYou'll find action figures in the aisle marked "action figures." I'm not sure it gets any more convenient than that.
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-= J =-
You missed the point. Also majority stores dont label their isles. If I go in search for GI Joes or Thundercats or Transformers, they're usually in the same isle. The entire isle will not be action figures. But once you start inserting barbies or bratz or very annoying one direction dolls into areas where theres usually just ninja turtles, star wars, and marvel figures, stuff tends to get more spaced out and spread across 'wherever'. I dont see the point in merging it when you can walk into the store and clearly see action figures and robots on this side, and dolls over on that side. You just walk straight to where you want to go. None of this snaking around rubbish if everything was merged.
shareIt's being changed because it's inaccurate. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles aren't just "boy" toys, and Barbies aren't just "girl" toys, and Toys R Us, the toy store making this shift, does label their aisles. There's really no reason to divide toys by gender, because toys don't have gender.
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-= J =-
Toys are marketted to a certain demographic. Transformers are not designed in mind with girls since majority of girls will not buy them even if they were in the girls toy section. Same goes with One Direction dolls and Bratz dolls for boys. So I'd disagree with you on toys not being divided by gender. Thats like saying dont split the clothing section between sex since girls frequently wear boys clothes.
shareYou accept it because to you it is normal. You've grown up with the notion that pink is for girls, blue is for boys, and so on. The truth is that it doesn't matter. When I was a kid I played with G.I. Joes, Transformers, Lego, and Barbies. My favorite colors are pink, and purple. Color has no gender, toys have no gender. They are what you make of them, filtered through your lens, the cultural lens that you grew up accepting, and that's fine, but you're going to have to adjust to the knowledge that not everyone feels that way, and in an effort to open up new worlds to kids, and adults alike, many labels are being abandoned because they no longer serve purpose, and really never did.
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-= J =-
Oh no you absolutely misunderstand. I may have grown up with those notions being told to me, but I never conformed to them nor did most people I know. While I may have transformers, He-Man, Alien toys and some DC/Marvel statues, I also have some collectable Little Mermaid statues (heaven help any friend who says Ariel is *beep* lol) and even a Sailor Mars figure. I watched Jem growing up and most He-Man fans will admit to watching She-Ra too. I really have no idea if that series was mainly aimed at females but I'm pretty sure 90% of viewers were guys. Like I mentioned before, its nothing to do with conforming or catching up a changing society. Its about a logical order in the store that helps you find things faster. The same way girls and boys clothes are separated, the same as bicycles are separated, the same as shoes are separated. It just makes things easier to find. Instead of me having to wade through 8+ isles just to find the specific toy I'm after, I can go to the one section I know its meant to be and find it quicker. From most stores I've been to, the girls side is far far larger. Merging everything together would just make it that much more frustrating to find things. Especially when the stores do their usual 'Lets move merchandise from that isle to another isle because no reason'. You approach the idea as having no gender in toys. I'm the more orderly minded person that catalogues and sorts things into sections for simplicity sake.
shareAh, okay. Yeah, I misunderstood what you meant. I do agree that it will take some adjustment, but I think it will be all for the best. I've always felt that forcing kids to choose the "correct" toys, or the "right" colors limited their imaginations. So there will be some growing pains with this change, but I think it will work. I may be wrong, and may end up going nuts trying to find a specific toy in a sea of blue and pink. Hopefully I'm wrong about that part.
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-= J =-
I doubt my orderly needy brain will adjust to it. It'll probably internally rage as I roam aimlessly looking for something lol. Though to be fair I rarely saw the forcing of choosing on kids. Maybe its different since I'm in Australia. The only forcing I ever saw was from teenagers hassling each other. Then again we were 15 year olds happily watching The Little Mermaid and never had any issues over it. Also slightly off topic, while I've not seen too much of the new Pony series since it doesnt really grab me, Twilight Sparkle is the best. She could suplex all of them.
shareWell, in the U.S. gender roles are a big deal, or at least they were. Now they're being questioned, which I think is a good thing. As for Twilight Sparkle, I can only agree with your conclusion. Twilight Sparkle suplexes are best suplexes.
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-= J =-
I watched the documentary last night, and to be hones it still find it weird. It is one thing for a guy to like a cartoon but dressing up like a My Little Pony is just to weird.
shareNever been to any comic-cons or seen a lot of cosplayers then huh? I've not been to comic-cons as big as the ones in the USA or in Japan, for example. But I've seen a couple of cosplays. Some of these are women or girls dressing up as men and yet, oddly, most viewers (particularly men) find them attractive (evident from my male friends and some male comments on various sites).
And like I posted on this thread, I happen to love a lot of shows and films that were probably initially set out as male oriented. But, I love them nonetheless and continue to watch these. Does that make me gay or a threat to my sex? No. Am I uncommon? No. So, why is different when it comes to guys?
Ok, I'm British, please illuminate me this concept called 'hipsters'? We don't have a term like that here, I mean the word is (rarely) used but to depict something else. When I met my American cousins for the first time, they're the ones who introduced us to this terminology and explained it to us. They told us that hipsters are generally people who do not fit in the main stream or have a specific style. They couldn't really elaborate and so to us they were vague.
Also... I'm currently watching this documentary for fun on Netflix. Honestly, I thought about why some people (men) would find this offensive, after the film touched on personal attacks towards individual fans. I think it's because it poses a kind of threat to the idea of masculinity and being a man. Funny... you don't get this kind of reception when it comes to anything that might threaten the idea of femininity - at least not to my knowledge. And this whole statement coming from someone who is far removed from the bra-burning feminists.
Here's the thing. I saw the show when I was a kid, I liked it as much as the other cartoons growing up, but it isn't a personal favourite. Any regard I have for the show is out of nostalgia and sentimentality. I honestly did not know about the current new version of this cartoon. That was interesting, at least to me...
But even now, at this age, I watch tons of TV and films that are generally marked as or set up to be marketed as boys/ male oriented, and I enjoy these immensely. TV shows or films (etc.) spanning from USA, UK, Japan, Korea and Philippines. Some specific examples, I love Batman, Gambit and Storm. They're my favourite comic book characters - two of them are male. Just because I'm a girl mean I can't like them? Screw you if you think I have no right to like them.
I love shonen (boys) anime/ manga as much as I love shoujo (girl) animes/ manga. I also play games and I particularly like RPGs and fighting games such as Tekken and Street Fighter. And I'm not alone in this. At the same time, I'm straight and fancy the pants off any men I find attractive. But I also enjoy kicking their ass in games like Tekken. Point is - this isn't an unusual thing. You don't see people making such a fuss over this. For a long time now there's been a growing surge of female comic book fans. Sure, occasionally you get the woman hating on other woman. But it's very rare...
So what's the difference? Like I said, I think it comes down to being seen as a threat to masculinity.
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This entire thread is cringeworthy.
Been watching Narcos, I'm feeling cocky