The Last BronyCon: A Fandom Autopsy

Video Essay
Title:	The Last BronyCon: a fandom autopsy
Creator:	Jenny Nicholson
Date(s):	21 July 2020
Medium:	YouTube video
Length:	1 hour 11 minutes
Footage:	no canon footage
Fandom:	My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Topic:	BronyCon and fandom history
External Links:	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fVOF2PiHnc
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The Last BronyCon: a fandom autopsy is a 2020 video essay by Jenny Nicholson. Utilizing the final BronyCon in 2019 as a launchpad for discussion, Jenny discusses the origins of the Brony fandom and the community surrounding the animated series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. In addition Jenny discussed her role as a prominent creator in the fandom (she was one of the creators of the popular abridged series My Little Pony: Friendship is Witchcraft) as well as her experience as woman who had experience as a fan of prior incarnations of the franchise.

Content Discussed

• My Little Pony fandom prior to the 4th Generation of the franchise
• The launch of Friendship is Magic and the origins of the Brony phenomenon on 4Chan along with early fannish platforms such as Equestria Daily
• Overlap of My Little Pony fans and the furry fandom
• The origins of BronyCon as a fan meet-up group based in NYC that eventually grew into a full-scale convention
• The concept of becoming "horse famous" as the fandom elevated prominent fan creators along with show staff, who were popular staples of the conventions scene.
  • Also discussed: Jenny Nicholson's role in the abridged series Friendship is Witchcraft and her own experiences with being horse famous
• The culture of brony conventions at large
• The documentary Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony
• The dark side of bronies:
  • Misogyny-- ie gatekeeping against female fans
  • Claiming the show was for them and not the original target audience
  • The widespread hatred of earlier versions of the franchise
  • Claiming the show was for the brony audience and not the target demographic; homophobia)
• Jenny's experience in the fandom and recounting her own experience at the final BronyCon in 2019.

Reception

Positive

From the Fandom

An overall good video. It reminded me of the things I love about this fandom; the energy, the endless ability to laugh or be inspired to create. The bit about how there was already fan-art of the Bronycon fire when people got back into the con or that people would turn "Please don't jump" into a chant, that's what the fandom is to me. Just so quick on the draw for creativity, laughter and having fun.

That said, I'd have to find my Reddit comment where I cited the actual statistics for this, but according to an EQD poll, about 25% of bronies clop. A good portion, but not a majority like she made it out to be.

A good portion of the fandom is gay though, from what I've seen. Forgot the stat, but an adult MLP fan with a boyfriend is more likely to be a gay male than a straight woman.

Speaking of women, that gate-keeping story made me facepalm. Like, WTF with someone acting like that?

Brony gatekeeping is weird because in other contexts, it's the older, original fans that usually gate keep. Bronies are the ones jumping on the show when the franchise is 30 years old.

Crocoshark, 2020 https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/hv3qyb/comment/fytfwjr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

This is the best, most even-handed analysis of the brony phenomenon I've ever seen. Found it hilarious that she waited until halfway through the video to casually drop how horse famous she was (FiW is imo by far the best work the fandom ever produced)

bbctol, 2020 https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/hv3qyb/the_last_bronycon_a_fandom_autopsy_jenny_nicholson/

This was definitely the best documentary / coverage of the community that I've seen. It's fun to say that the community's still alive, but it's dwindling, and I've largely disconnected from it. The video had a critical tone, but emotions were flooding back to me when she was describing stuff like the "no jumping" incident, memories that I didn't even know that I had any more. I was getting surprisingly emotional. More than that, while she did talk about the bad, she also harped on the good, and seeing something balanced and realistic was nice. Also, holy shit, I had no idea that she was part of Friendship is Witchcraft, this changes everything.

SageWaterDragon, 2020 https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/hv3qyb/comment/fytnrpn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

As a woman who was part of the brony fandom from 2011- around 2016ish her video was 100% accurate. The gatekeeping, the horniness, the edge lords, the massive amount of fan content, the pedo stuff, the Tankies and Nazis, so many OCs. It was one of the craziest fandoms I've ever been a part of but there was also a sense of comradery that I've not seen in to many places. I don't regret being a part of the fandom, I still have some good friends I've meet through the brony community.

GizmoSled, c. 2022 https://www.reddit.com/r/JennyNicholson/comments/tn7kxh/comment/i1zvasy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Outside the Fandom

The Brony fandom being SUCH a big deal feels like a very early 2010’s thing to me. The culture of the modern social internet was in its infancy enough, that idea of teenagers/adults watching a children’s cartoon was national news! I know it was amplified by the fandom being based around an established “girly” brand, but still. Shows like Steven Universe or especially Star Vs The Forces of Evil on their face are equally “girly”, but no one really cares?

Hell, She-Ra is based around an 80’s girl toy brand, a lot of people love it, and it’s not a big deal at all. Bronies totally became “a thing” because they were in the right place at the right time.

Also, I was never fully in the fandom, but I did end up seeing a lot the fan content was at its height, and I remember Jenny’s parody! I love how a small portion of the video was her casually showing that her video series made a massive impact at one point.

Ethlandiaify, 2020 https://www.reddit.com/r/JennyNicholson/comments/hv3oee/comment/fyrt8oa/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

As another non-brony I had a similar viewing experience. I think this story really hits home because it kinda feels like a summation of 2010s pop culture in its entirety.

I'm just sitting here thinking about how "nerd culture" in general really swept the nation around the same time that bronies showed up. We really entered this new era where many of the things typically thought to be uncool and childish, such as cartoons and comics, were suddenly becoming embraced by adults in the mainstream. It really felt like the world was just rapidly becoming a more loving and less judgmental place.

And now fast forward to today... Everything "nerdy" has just been commercialized to death and milked totally dry. The Star Wars fandom has cannibalized itself. The MCU kinda feels "over" now that Endgame happened. We have a ridiculous oversaturation of "nerd culture" influencers. We have political extremist messaging creeping into basically every fan community for some reason.

Much like brony culture, the general culture that really dominated the 2010s has evolved from a pure and refreshingly positive phenomenon into something really tainted with negativity and bad intentions.

IAmATroyMcClure, 2020 https://www.reddit.com/r/JennyNicholson/comments/hv3oee/comment/fyu96fp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

The Bronycon video is truly remarkable

So I’m sure the Bronycon video has been praised to the moon and back already, but recently after randomly coming across the some of the music Jenny made for her fan series, I went back to watch it again and found a whole new appreciation for it.

Now, I have never seen MLP and just remember hearing about Bronies back in like 2015-2016, so I don’t have any other perspective on the fandom. But the fact that Jenny made such a fun and relatively in-depth exploration of the fandom and its history from her “horse famous” experience in the whole phenomenon is really a gift. Like perhaps a complete outsider could make something comparable with some research, but it just wouldn’t have the same earnestness and heart. I’m struggling to think of an adequate comparison that would make sense, and I guess that’s part of what makes this special.

UnitedSquids, c. 2022 https://www.reddit.com/r/JennyNicholson/comments/tn7kxh/the_bronycon_video_is_truly_remarkable/

Negative

I don't honestly think she knows what she's talking about, she left the fandom years ago, comes back for ONE convention and this is all like "yep lol the fandom will be dead after this one con ends and no cons will be coming back after corona lol" like excuse me? Lady do you even realize that this years Trotcon had completely sold out TWO hotels? The amount of online cons this year also proves that cons aren't dying and so far they all plan on returning in 2021, her failure to realize that the fandom is bigger than just Bronycon proves her ignorance. 

Also it appears later on in the video that she blames Bronies for Hasbro changing what ponies are released and how the ponies are made, which literally isn't true at all, I know that because I sat in on the Ex-Con Chair of Nightmare Nights Dallas and he said that he used to go to every single quarterly Hasbro stock meeting to hear how the franchise is doing, and he learned by sitting in on these meetings that money from Bronies only make up 2%-5% of the MLP franchise's profit. That amount is a tiny drop in the bucket because all the other money that the franchise makes comes from little girls or their parents. Bronies are essentially non-existent when it comes to the financial success of MLP. There's no way that Hasbro was making all sorts of production changes because the Bronies were demanding so, that's just fake news....

The part where she rants on and on about how much she dislikes body pillows being displayed at cons was just fucking stupid, I felt like I lost some brain cells during that segment. As long as something isn't explicitly R-rated, it's fine to hang up. Just because your not a big fan of body pillows doesn't mean that they need to banned from being sold at all cons, also a VAST majority of con attendees aren't children to begin with. While there are children at Brony cons, they are a very small minority of the amount of con attendees that show up, and again, as long as a body pillow isn't R-rated, is there really any issue with hanging them up to be sold? The reason there's so many body pillows in the first place is because the Brony community has a lot of guys in it, and guys are more likely to want a body pillow compared to girls. Body pillows are also prominent in a lot of other communities too, such as the anime community, and you'll find them at those other types of cons too. She also seems to make the assumption that every person who buys one of those pillows is gonna do something sexual to it, which isn't the case. (That might be the case for the explicit body pillows but we're just talking the SFW ones like shown in the video) Most people who would buy a body pillow would get one because they can't afford a custom plush and they just want something to snuggle with at night, it doesn't mean that every single person who buys one is some creep who wants to have sex with the pony on it. Even LittleshyFIM has a few body pillows, and he hates sexual pony stuff.  

I don't honestly care what some random person who's been gone from the fandom for quite some time thinks about us now. She chose to leave, and what she thinks honestly doesn't matter. She can say that this fandom is dead until she's blue in the fucking face, it won't change the fact that we're not dead and that we're still constantly attracting new people. Just take a look at the new members that are always making new topics in the welcoming plaza right here on the forums. While it's true that the pony fandom isn't as big or quite as influential on the outside society as it used to be, that doesn't mean that we're just dead. I think she was being clouded by her past experiences in the early days of the fandom, and coming back now after so much time I suppose I could see how she would have a very pessimistic point of view for the future of this community. Ultimately though, it doesn't matter. You'll always have the neigh-sayers like her trying to make themselves feel better by tearing down others and communities that they've effectively washed their own hands of, and that's fine, let them be mad that we still exist. Pony until the end of time!        

King of Canterlot, 21 July 2020 https://mlpforums.com/topic/191691-the-last-bronycon-a-fandom-autopsy-video-by-jenny-nicholson/

Mixed

I just got done watching this documentary, and honestly? It's...a mixed bag.

I'll start with the positives:

Jenny did a fairly decent rundown of the fandom's origins and its subsequent growth. No real complaints there.

I feel like she had a (mostly) good take on the overall weakness of John De Lancie's "Bronies" documentary. That particular documentary always felt more like an advertisement for the fandom instead of a genuine attempt to look into it from an unbiased point of view.

She also had a pretty good rundown of how nasty many Bronies were towards female fans of the show when the fandom was on the rise. It was especially hostile towards those who were fans of the older MLP series.

Lastly, she had a (mostly) good take on a lot of the overt sexuality that the fandom has. While I have no problems with the more explicit material that the fandom puts out, I really wish we were better about keeping it out of sight from those who don't want to (or shouldn't) see it.

Now that that's out of the way, it's time to get to the parts of this doc that I weren't too fond of:

One of the biggest problems with this doc is Jenny's constant assertions that the fandom is dead, right down to the name of the video. This is 100% false and untrue. Look, I'm not saying that our fandom is as big and active as it used to be. We are clearly past our prime: pony sites don't generate the kind of traffic that they used to; conventions are generally smaller and more humble; and while things like animations, art, fanfiction and music are still produced, it's clearly not in the same quantity that it was back in the olden days. I'm not denying any of that. However, to say that the fandom is dead and gone is just flat-out wrong. We're still here, even if our numbers aren't as great as they used to be.

She goes on to claim that later seasons of the show were worse due to an influx of Brony-related memes and call outs. She is seriously exaggerating how often that kind of thing happened. Explicit fan memes almost never made it into the show, episode 100 notwithstanding (an episode she seemed to completely miss the point of, by the way). Also, she claims this despite not actually having seen many of the later seasons of the show. Not sure how that works.

She goes on to claim that most Bronies these days are just furries. I won't deny that many Bronies are in fact furries, but to claim that the majority of Bronies are also furries is completely wrong, as was proven by the Brony Herd Census.

She claims that MLP fans that enjoy the porn that comes out of the community are in the majority. I think she claimed that only 30% of fans didn't indulge in NSFW work. I can almost forgive her for this take given how up-front many Bronies can be about NSFW material, but it's still false.

The biggest no-no Jenny committed here was filming vendors at BronyCon without their consent. As someone who was a staff member for BronyCon, I can assure you that filming the vendor hall without permission was very much against the con's rules, and those she filmed never asked to be half-shamed / trolled by her in video form. Many vendors, such as Ruef n Beeb and Techycutie, have since complained about this on Twitter.

A more minor complaint, but she claims that the show itself made fun of older MLP series, much like Bronies did when they first began to pop up. In reality, FiM took more than its fair share of unironic inspiration from the older series (G1 in particular) on more than a few occasions. Everything from main characters like Applejack and Spike on to villains like the Smooze and Tirek.

She claims that Bronies were the ones responsible for the lessened quality of the G4 toys. I find this to be a very dubious claim as she doesn't really present any proof of this.

She claims that the good Brony conventions are all being organized by furries now. Again, I find this to be a pretty weak claim, and one that has already been refuted by con chairs such as Simul of Everfree Northwest.

I had a few more complaints, but I'd say these were the biggest ones I had. Overall, I can't say that this was one of the better fandom documentaries I've seen. However, I also read (as someone who doesn't follow Jenny's work) that she uses these kinds of sardonic exaggerations in most of what she does, so maybe I'm just taking all of this too seriously.

ShokBox, 2020 https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/hv3qyb/comment/fytn5ft/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Some things in this that rubbed me the wrong way, but there are some stuff with some admitted truth to it

- I wouldn't call the fandom dead, no fandom really dies, but it doesn't have anywhere near the presence it used to have in it's heyday

- Let's be honest here, the fandom did have an effect on the show, including several pandering moments in the show, as well as entire bloody episodes dedicated to them. Heck they even had a couple of toylines aimed more at the fandom.....I'd say it wasn't worth it for Hasbro

- I agree that the show got significantly worse as it went on, which I'd honestly argue played a part in the fandom was losing presence. Heck I was once a staunch defender of the show, and barring some bullshit moments in the first five seasons, I was always one of those people who mocked the analysis community, often with insults like ANALysts and felt like some people were taking the show way too seriously. Season 6 then came and you could pinpoint the exact moment when I began to turn on the show. Around that same time you had many prominent fans publicly distancing themselves from the show

- As for body pillows, I don't see an issue with them as long as they aren't underage characters or explicit. Ultimately dakis are just part of nerd and con-culture in general, and they were obviously innocent enough for the staff to poke fun at it on the show itself(whether this was good or not is up to debate because it proves that the fandom did have an effect on the show)

- Some people are very vocal about appearing on the doc without their permission, and I do think some are very well justified especially if they feel they weren't being put in a good light. At the very least she could have blurred out their faces

- There's tons of fans who still take offense to the show being "for little girls", and I honestly think that's worse. Like they like to talk about how they break gender norms only to go on and act like they're ashamed for liking the show, and would defend themselves being all "NO IT'S GENDER NEUTRAL! DON'T INSULT ME!". Like damn, at least be consistent

- There's some real piece of shit people in the fandom, let's not deny it

- I like to joke about how bronies are just "furries in denial", and I know there are people in the fandom who don't identify as furries, but seriously now there's some noticeably large overlap

- De Lancie's Brony Documentary was garbage and really made him look bad. The staff were clearly invested with him as they really wanted to bring him back with his character, but between that doc, his supposedly dismissal at the fandom, Discord playing a big part in some of the show's lowest points, and the fact that he really didn't seem interested and just wanted the paycheck, I really don't think it was worth it

Megas, 23 July 2020 https://mlpforums.com/topic/191691-the-last-bronycon-a-fandom-autopsy-video-by-jenny-nicholson/page/2/