/ 27 March 2013

A PONY! Click! You know you wanna …

A Pony! Click! You Know You Wanna ...

How have I survived so long in my abysmal ignorance. Here's the definition from Urban Dictionary:

"Brony. A name typically given to the male viewers/fans (whether they are straight, gay, bisexual, etc.) of the My Little Pony show or franchise. They typically do not give in to the hype that males aren't allowed to enjoy things that may be intended for females."

"The age of bronies ranges from 14 to 57, with the average age being 21 years old. The term "brony" applies to both the male and female fans of the show, although the term "pegasister" is occasionally used to identify the female fans. There is a large misconception in the sexual orientation of bronies as many non-bronies and anti-bronies claim that bronies are gay. The truth is that, according to BronyStudy, approximately 84% of bronies described themselves as heterosexual, 1.7% described themselves as homosexual, 10.3% described themselves as bisexual and 3.8% as asexual."

Some startling information here, not least of which is that there is something called a BronyStudy. It is apparently a pretty reputable study too, and I can tell you it was greeted with some acclaim at BronyCon in New York last year. Brony sympathisers display a strange insistence that male adults have as much right as female adults to worship little cartoon ponies. They might better spend their energies on asking themselves why any adult would feel that My Little Pony was the mythopoetic structure they want to build their lives around. And am I the only one to get a whiff of paedophilia here? Or perdophilia, as Afrikaans bronies probably call it. I mean, we are talking My Little Pony here, not My Mature Horse.

But hey, I am not here to ride the brony bandwagon. The reason I was prompted to do all this research ("About 9 750 000 results in 0.42 seconds" worth of research) was a weird story that's doing the rounds on the interwebs. In its most popular incarnation, the story's headline is: "The Internet finally reaches its apex as man marrying My Little Pony character writes angry email to erotic pony artist".

You have to read the story for yourself, but to summarise: a man claiming to be the fiancé of My Little Pony character Twilight Sparkle mailed a user of online community DeviantArt to demand he stop drawing sexual pictures of his imaginary pony-bride-to-be. Sample text: "To you, I'm sure Twilight Sparkle is just a cartoon character you think is really hot, so I imagine you wouldn't think anything of having your friends draw sexually explicit art of her … And hey, I think she's really attractive too so I get where you're coming from there … But to me she's more than a cartoon character who's sexually attractive, she's my fiancee who I love with all my heart and soon to be my wife."

Now I'm not writing this to break the news to you that the interwebs is full of crazy people. You probably already picked that up. I'm writing about Brony love because this story (which I am blithely assuming is true – a real journalist would obviously phone up Twilight Sparkle and get her side of the story) reminded me of a talk I went to a couple of weeks ago.

It was delivered by Jonah Peretti, the very cool and clever founder of Buzzfeed. For those of you not in the know, Buzzfeed is a website that has over 40-million visitors a month and its success is largely built on creating content that people want to share. Classic stuff like "Pictures of 33 animals who are severely disappointed in you",  "The 30 Most Hilarious Autocorrect Struggles Ever",  "7 GIFs Of Adorable Fainting Goats",  and "McCain To Endorse Romney Tomorrow". 

Yes, that last story does seem a little out of place. But it turns out that Buzzfeed is not just a site for bored people to find pictures of cute animals to share. It also does a fair amount of serious news, especially since the recent hiring of a reputable political journalist. Not unreasonably, you are probably asking yourself: why would a site like Buzzfeed start doing news?

Peretti explained it using an archetypal Parisian café as an analogy. Someone sitting in a café reading a serious philosophical tome might spot a cute dog at the next table, smile and reach over to pat it, and then return to his philosophy. It does not make him stupid because he liked the cute dog. It is a bit of a stretch as analogies go, but the main point is sound: readers are multi-faceted beings, capable of consuming serious journalism at the same time as smiling at videos of "Goats yelling like humans" (currently with over 14-million views on YouTube!) 

Peretti also made the point that people would not share smutty stuff. They might click on naked pictures of Scarlett Johansson (his example), but they would not share the link. But they would happily Facebook and tweet a link to "12 Questions Disney Forgot To Answer About Beauty And The Beast".

Will they share pornographic pictures of Twilight Sparkle? Probably not, so that is one instance where cute animals do not do the trick. Sadly for humanity, they WILL share pics of Twilight Sparkle with her hooves chastely together. I am not sure that is not as sick as ones of her in harness, so to speak.

Chris Roper is the editor of the Mail & Guardian Online. Follow him on Twitter @chrisroper