loading . . . Community Soapbox: The Brony Phenomenon / What's Next for MLP / Streaming Rights for MLP
Soapbox time, where the fandom expresses its opinions! As always, we are open for submissions on these. If you'd like to submit your own soapbox, hit up this post for infos.
As always, **these are the opinions of fandom members, not us here at EQD**.
Have some headlines:
* Why Bronies Exist — The Brony Phenomenon: An Ultimate Explanation
* What's next for My Little Pony in 2026
* My Little Pony's streaming rights need a new home
 And go read them below!
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Why Bronies Exist — The Brony Phenomenon: An Ultimate Explanation
By: ProjectManhatan
How did a pastel pony toy show for little girls created a global fandom for thousands of socially anxious, internet-native young men that filled forums, spawned tens of thousands of convention-goers, and produced mountains of fan art, music, and fiction?
The short answer from the research: the internet’s culture of ironic transgression collided with a show radiating simple warmth. For many — disproportionately neurodivergent, anxious, and socially marginalized — My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010–2019) became both a safe emotional anchor and a taboo badge. What started as trolling mutated into community, creativity, and, for a many, sexual or romantic fixation. Fandom was built less around the show’s narrative and more around community, creativity, and the recovery of something innocent.
The early 2010s were Web-2.0’s fertile ground: cheap devices, YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr and 4chan. That environment amplified memes, irony and obsession. On imageboards like 4chan’s /co/ and /b/, posting ponies was deliberately “wrong” — a form of rebellion and trolling. Chance met timing: there was no dominant fandom to crowd out ponies, and memetic momentum turned a joke into a movement. That memetic luck — chance timing plus participatory platforms — is the first reason the phenomenon exploded.
Surveys show Bronies were overrepresented by people reporting autistic traits, depression and social anxiety. For many, the show’s steady warmth offered a para-social friend and an emotional anchor — something consistent and nonjudgmental where real-world connection was hard to find. In short, Bronies were often people seeking safe connection, and the fandom provided it.
Research clusters Brony motivations into overlapping groups:
Community & Therapy (30–40%) — belonging, affirmation, conventions and online safe spaces.
Creativity & Fixation (30–40%) — fanart, fanfic, music and obsessive engagement with characters.
Sexual/Sensual Engagement (20–30%) — erotic fan content (“clop”) and romantic identification were present but usually mixed with other motives.
Irony & Meme Culture (20–30%) — many entered ironically; for a portion, irony blurred into sincerity.
Only a minority (roughly 10–20%) were primarily fans of the show as a children’s series — for most, the show was the spark, not the whole fire.
The show's artstyle and ponies design (rounded, simple “toyetic” aesthetics) and the fact that the Mane Six are all mares made them easy muses for art, OCs and para-social bonds. Mares served as emotional anchors, creative prompts, and, in many cases, sexual objects.
Bronies emerged where internet irony met a modestly effective, innocent show. For a generation of socially anxious, neurodivergent or alienated young men, the ponies offered a paradox — purity that could be transgressed, a joke that became real, and a community that healed and fixed simultaneously. For most, the cartoon was a gateway — not the destination.
Bronies weren’t made by MLP:FiM. They were made by the internet plus a generation of outsiders who found in a modest, wholesome show the raw materials for belonging, creativity, and personal repair. The cartoon was the spark; the people built the fire.
Read the full paper here,
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What's next for My Little Pony in 2026
By SayionDash456
Right now, things are looking bleak for My Little Pony. The abrupt cancellation of TYT signaled the end of G5, and It has obviously upsetted many in the fandom. What was once a promising generation had fallen flat on its face and was hated on with a blinding fury by the fandom and suffocated by Hasbro, Netflix and Warner Bros Discovery.
Nevertheless, I made this to talk about my predictions and expectations for next year. Because I truly believe Hasbro will be doing something in 2026, I'm not believing anything that is not from Hasbro themselves (looking at you IMG licensing and Amazon MGM). I also made this to above all, spread hope.The death of G5 has many in the fandom worried about the future of it and pessimism is spreading like wildfire across it. But It may not look like everything is as hopeless as it seems.
Despite every bad thing that happened, the G5 main characters still managed to get their spots as important characters to the brand. Which is a fate so much better than being forgotten about and left in the dust like G2/G3 characters and tbh, they're all that Hasbro has left. Most of the G1 characters are in the public domain with some already having been reimagined in G4/5.
The official youtube music channel had its banner changed to feature the G5 main characters.
This is proof that Hasbro isn't pretending to forget them. Generation 5 may be over, but these guys aren't going anywhere, they will be back. That is what the "Total Brand Evolution" is about. Hasbro is replacing the G4 main six with them, since they're still under their wing. It will soon happen with the MLP banner as well. We are witnessing the gradual phase-out of G4 and it will now just be a legacy brand. If G6 comes out next year, then it will have them as main characters again, they may get changed to fit with it or they'll stick with their old personalities. Either way, they are not going anywhere anytime soon.
So, hope for the best!
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My Little Pony's streaming rights need a new home
By: FirePuppy (Tadashi Satoru)
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure YouTube is any longer the best place for the streaming rights of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or the Equestria Girls movies, especially internationally. You see, in recent years, YouTube has been completely infected with AI, so that episodes -- especially Wild Manes and Tell Your Tale -- would often take a really long time to be made available, and in other times, they would release the same thing on the same channel over and over again (which is illegal for us to do), or upload the wrong episode without even fixing their mistake. Not only that, the channels have even privated a lot of older videos that clearly didn't deserve to be in that state.
Seriously, Hasbro Entertainment needs to do something about the future of its older content distribution, as part of its evolving strategy. With the decline of traditional cable and the growth of streaming, the company should be exploring new ways to redistribute its content worldwide to a service that isn't infected with AI (unlike YouTube), rather than being completely lazy and giving us nothing at all -- well, other than shoving just the first four seasons of Friendship is Magic back on Netflix (but leaving everything else out), and refusing to sell its remaining 40% stake of Discovery Family Channel to Warner Bros. Discovery, which is all they did this entire calendar year. I mean, yeah, everything is on Tubi and The Roku Channel right now, but only in the United States. I'm talking about the whole world.
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