http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/brony-ing-up/Content?oid=2500061
quote:
Ingrid Nilson, the voice of the My Little Pony character Maud Pie, is going to be at DerpyCon South this year. That sentence may not mean much to you in fact, it even may not make sense but for an entire subculture of geekdom, those words are as magical as Rainbow Dash, Applejack and all the other ponies living in the fantasy world of Equestria. Next weekend, New Orleans will host its second annual DerpyCon South, a convention dedicated to fans of the children's cartoon show My Little Pony Friendship is Magic (the franchise's fourth generation, often abbreviated simply as MLP). The fans, though, won't be little girls in pink tutus and pigtails. They will be men, possibly dressed in pink tutus (though more likely dressed as their favorite animated horses), talking about the show's themes, the art it inspires and other grownup topics centered on a subject many will ridicule them for having any interest in at all. They call themselves bronies.According to Brendan Moore, a New Orleans brony who moved here from Ohio to pursue a Ph.D in philosophy at Tulane University, there are about 56 My Little Pony (MLP) conventions across the U.S. each year. BronyCon, one of the biggest MLP conventions, is held in Baltimore. More than 10,000 people attended this year. DerpyCon, the New Orleans convention, will feature discussions with Nilson. There also will be panels with artists who sketch the show's characters, and there will be a marketplace for fans to sell the artwork that's the result of the show's inspiration. Moore runs the local New Orleans brony Meetup group, which has 31 active members. When he talks about that number, he says "only," and when I say that 31 seems like a lot, he replies that most brony Meetups, such as the one he was in when he lived in Cincinnati, have between 1,000 and 2,000 members. Moore has degrees in philosophy, psychology and pre-law, and he has the equivalent of two masters in philosophy. He teaches at Ohio University online. "Sixty-five or 70 percent of bronies are college graduates, or are just about to graduate," he says.What does it mean to be an adult male fan of the show? It's not the same thing as being an adult male fan of Lost. You don't just DVR My Little Pony and bring up the latest episode over a beer with a random friend later in the week, and then move on with your life until the next episode. To be a brony means dressing up as a brony.quote:
There are an estimated 12 million My Little Pony Friendship is Magic fans in the U.S., according to the 2014 documentary A Brony Tale.
