Not enough swastikas for the brony crowd these days. 
Has the brony fandom become overly toxic? Thatâs sad⌠my daughterâs first big fandom was MLP. I have sooooo many drawings she did of ponies, including Barack Obama as a pony and the cast of the A-Team as ponies!
The biggest fandom image board Is currently experiencing an enormous explosion of Free Speech Absolutists and right-wing ideologies arguing that censoring Nazi imagery is actually the real fascism and what about ACAB and communism and refusing to comprehend that an open and friendly community based around a childrenâs television show is possible without having to tolerate the presence of Nazis whether theyâre âironicâ or not. All thanks to an article in The Atlantic that called out that this has been an ongoing problem.
Itâs fucking exhausting.
hereâs the atlantic article
and if you donât like the atlantic
and rt stirs the shit
ive run into this argument in recent weeks⌠about taking down nazi shit as âcensorshipâ. I donât buy it. you can speak all day but no one owes you a platform on a privately owned website, bot even one as ubiquitous as facebook.
Iâm confused. How does Hasbro combining My Little Pony and Ghostbusters reject Paul Feigâs wonderful remake? If anything, it seems more geared toward the remake since MLP is a franchise targeted at young girls.
Because white dudes canât stand anything cool that isnât for them?
Not at all. I just meant that my understanding is that Bonnie Zacherle geared the franchise to be of benefit to young women, which seems like a good thing but certainly doesnât mean the rest of us canât enjoy it too. While I probably donât qualify as a Brony since Iâm not involved in the fandom, I am a fan. I introduced my sister to it and she didnât get it, but my niece did.
Iâm not involved in the fandom, but I know thereâs been a toxic troll problem plaguing Brony fandom for a while that needs to sock it to the Nazis a la the 80sâ punk scene.
I just wasnât sure how this mash-up from Hasbro catered to those trolls. MLP and 2016 Ghostbusters seem like an empowering combination to me, but itâs entirely possible Iâm missing some subtext to it.
WTH is wrong with people? Itâs a cleverly written and well-animated show about ponies and the magic of friendship. Thereâs a special circle in hell for people who hijack with fascism and toxic masculinity. Liking cuteness isnât creepy, but policing kids and adults into traditional gender norms definitely is.
Man, even through the Cold War I thought âNazis suck!â would always remain one of the few things the United States and Russia could always agree on.
I apologize for giving the impression thatâs what I meant. I only meant that my (possibly misinformed) understanding is that the creator of MLP intended to create a show to empower young women and that, while I very much like the show, I as a white male donât want to appropriate it. But I absolutely think anyone can and should feel free to enjoy it.
Anyway, hopefully that better explains what I meant than my previous flubbed reply yesterday.
The showâs definitely aimed first and foremost at young girls, sure. But the makers have been very clear that theyâre happy to have boys watching it, as well as parents (there are a lot of jokes and references that the target audience is going to miss), and basically anyone whoâs interested.
So does the pony fandom have a Nazi problem? In a way, yes; these days you get Nazis in any sufficiently big online fandom, trying to recruit vulnerable people and being generally shitty. Are they a big problem? No, theyâre a tiny and toxic minority that most of the fandom has no time for.
The big problem, such as it is, are all the dudes (and itâs almost entirely men, as usual) with the shallow and entitled libertarian-absolutist ideas of free speech, who get all angry when people try to get rid of Nazis, because they think the right to spew hate is more important than the right to not be exposed to that kind of shit. They are, again, a minority, but theyâre much bigger one than the out-and-out Nazis and such.
Personally, I just canât figure out how the hell you can be a fan of MLP:FiM, even at a remove, and a white supremacist / Nazi. The show is explicit about diversity being not just morally correct but a source of strength, about equality not meaning enforced sameness, about the importance of coming together, and so on. But people, Iâve noticed, are all too good at Doing It Wrong.
Aye, it seems to be a deliberate effort to poison the fandom well.
And hasnât the creator said as much? I agree art is for everyone; I just donât want to appropriate something merely because Iâm a fan. Possibly Iâm being overly cautious, but a sense of entitlement seems to run through a lot of the privileged toxicity in fandoms.
The swastika crowdâs strategy is to take over innocuous things - the okay sign, Hawaiian shirts etc.
Itâs to slip past people and make their vileness seem less revolting - if only for a short while. And to chortle about displaying themselves publicly while having deniability for a while.
Yeah, it happens. But some of those guys are just dense motherfuckers who are incapable of introspection or nuance, and donât realize they donât make any sense, and Twilight Sparkle would shoot a rainbow laser of friendship into their faces five minutes after meeting them. (Itâs better than what Starlight Glimmer would do, but probably not as hilarious for the audience.)
Again, yeah, thereâs shitty entitlement going about, but thatâs sadly part and parcel of fandoms. Personally, I donât think you can appropriate something like My Little Pony, but being concerned about that kind of stuff is understandable, especially these days when bad people seem to be crawling out of woodwork to celebrate their badness.
No, I know. Iâm saying that they are stamping their feet and demanding that mass media be about and for them, rather than other groups.
Yes. Itâs not others who arenât young girls watching it thatâs the problem. Itâs grown men demanding that the show be for them primarily and acting in shitty ways towards the demographic the show was intended for.
And itâs often shaped by misogyny and racism. White men have been told for so long that our cultural industries are for and about them, that when there is a push to diversify, some inevitable melt down.
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