Why Bronies (and Pretty Much Everyone) Should Hate the Brony Documentary

[Dangit2019]

TL;DR at end.

So, while my peers were out Saturday night dancing and having sex with pretty girls, I decided that my priorities lied more with criticizing a stupid documentary based on fellow people who like the same cartoon as I do. These are the results.

Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Fans of My Little Pony, formerly known as BronyCon: The Documentary is absolute and pure propaganda, and not even a good one at that.

To save the small details, the movie doesn't know what the hell its purpose is at all. It flip flops from showing non-bronies the psychology and reasons people like the show so much to extensive streams of behind the scenes footage of content creators and other things that only bronies following the fandom somewhat would enjoy.

Sadly, lack of purpose isn't the biggest way in which the documentary fails. It's the total and utter positive bias which keeps this mildly enjoyable film from ever achieving anything beyond mindless fan-pandering and a series of vapid "look at how great we are" speeches.

Now, this shouldn't come as too big of a surprise, as the filmmakers are ALL bronies, and they explicitly said they wanted to make a movie just to show how fuckin' AWESOME us bronies are.

So, if you see this movie, don't expect a single mention of any of the following: fighting within the fandom, sexualization of MLP characters in any way shape or form by the Internet, overexposure of MLP memes on non-brony sites, threats from more militant bronies to critics of the show, the "pegasisters" debate/whatever, etc.

Look, I realize why you would want to stay clear of these topics, but these are just facts of life, or more accurately, the Internet. Completely ignoring them and instead padding out the runtime by having various people say "THE CHARACTERS, ANIMATION, AND WRITING ARE SO FREAKING GOOD" over and over again just makes the whole thing lose authenticity, which is one of the greatest positive assets of the show itself.

Adding to this lack of authenticity is the film's overall attitude towards the movement. You know how some people feel that bronies have a neverending layer of irony towards their love for the show? That we all are just doing it because we want to show how "crazy and quirky" we are for liking a show meant for small children, mostly girls? Well, while most of the time that's not true, the creators of this movie have the worst case of it.

Constantly you are reminded over and over "LOOK AT US WE LIKE THIS SHOW EVEN THOUGH IT'S FOR GUUUUUUUURLLLLLLLLS" as if anyone's going to forget it. It's almost hypocritical to say that you're "breaking down the regular zeitgeist of masculinity itself" and then come back and say "this show should only be for girls, but we don't care because we're so amazing and quirky". It sounds immature, it sounds non-authentic, and most of all, it sounds STUPID.

TL;DR: Bronies: The Extremely Pretentious and Long Subtitle to a Shorter and Better Title got on my nerves. A lot. While I like and follow a lot of the people who were involved (Living Tombstone, VA cast, etc.), they're time on screen was ruined by the documentary being handled by a bunch of vapid, non-professional, fanboys who couldn't bring themselves to mention anything considerably non-cool about the fandom.

With this in mind, do you plan on watching it? And if you already have, what were your thoughts on it?

 

[Dangit2019]

So it's basically the ponified version of Glee: The 3D Concert Movie? Well that sucks
Not even any stories about becoming a brony?

They are there, but they're absolutely caked in the aforementioned "lol we watch a girl's show" nonsense I mentioned earlier. I liked the 2 main guys that they focused on, and they almost turned the movie into something deeper with stories of bullying and harassment, but again the handling of the topic by the filmmakers ruined it.

 

[Dangit2019]

From what I can gather, the reason they barely touched on the 'clopping' aspect of the fandom (aside from the obvious), is because Rule 34 is a fact of the internet.

Any documentary about a piece of entertainment, and fans thereof, could potentially have a Rule 34 component.
But because documentaries generally don't go there, the makers of *this* documentary didn't see the need to go there either.

It wasn't so much the lack of mentioning R34 that bothered me, it's that they don't mention any of the negative parts of the fandom. Maybe if this was a promotional disc they gave out to people at the convention, then it wouldn't annoy me; but they're treating this like a legitimate documentary, and documentaries are supposed to show both sides of the story, not just worship one side and ignore the other.

 

[SilkySkyKitten]

Doesn't surprise me at all, to be honest. This fandom really goes out of it's way to hide anything that portrays itself in a bad light, especially since these days it really is just another silly fandom with massive mounts of fandumb. So truly, it's nothing special at all anymore. Nothing that requires a documentary.

I mean, these days I'd say the Brony fandom is no different or special than any other major fandom. At all.

 

[Giftfromme]

I personally think this will be the best documentary of all time, bar none. Simple as that.

 

[Silvanus]

I watched something I think was connected to this; some little animation with a pony professor telling me all about the different kinds of bronies.


I'm not one myself, and was somewhat bemused. My primary thought was, 'what's the message, what's the point'? The video spent its time explaining that bronies could be 'moderates, creatives or hipsters', but, can't anyone?

 

[Dangit2019]

Okay so you want a documentary about gays to say how gays molest kids, worship Satan, and have violent psychotic tendencies? Because "we have to show both sides of the story?"

Wonderful straw man you got there.

Look, if you watch an actual documentary on gay people, they actually will show what the other side's (ie conservative groups and others) reasoning is. They'll show people making their arguments to counter the one shown previously in the movie, even if the filmmakers agree with the gay people in this instance.

This documentary had none of that shit. It's just an hour and a half of saying "bronies are good" over and over hoping for false justification of what I and a lot of other people enjoy, even though we don't need any justification at all to enjoy it.

All they had to do to make this authentic was show 5 minutes of somebody who didn't like the fandom to voice their opinions, and have the bronies give their counter arguments to them. That's all. I'm not asking for vilification, I'm asking for lack of bias.

 

[Dangit2019]

I watched something I think was connected to this; some little animation with a pony professor telling me all about the different kinds of bronies.


I'm not one myself, and was somewhat bemused. My primary thought was, 'what's the message, what's the point'? The video spent its time explaining that bronies could be , but, 'moderates, creatives or hipsters' can't anyone?

It was an animation included in the movie. It was a bit pleasant, although I had never previously heard of the 'moderates, creatives or hipsters' thing before in the fandom. Weird.

 

[Dangit2019]

Even you failed to give an example of the "dark side of bronyism."

Equestria After Dark. Princess Molestia. Zoophiles. Death threats related to criticism of the show. I could go on.

 

[Bashfluff]

I wouldn't expect a Pokemon documentary to comment on the pornography either. Indeed, people should look down on viewing sexual expression as a negative thing if they're not into it, because this sexually repressive and dumb attitude that marginalizes other is...dumb. and stupid.

Same thing with death threats and dumb fandom drama. Everyone knows it exists, because it exists everywhere. A documentary is not a debate with a set topic to discuss and provide arguments for and against, it's supposed to tell you about something, to inform you. It's supposed to be as impartial as you can make it. You can talk about the more questionable sides by talking about just how varied the amount of fan content is in regards to media and tone without being "OH MY GOD LOOK AT ALL THIS SMUT IT'S SO BAAAAD," which isn't a healthy attitude to have in your head or a tone in your documentary. That's not to say you can't say negative shit, you just have to prioritize and find...shit that's actually bad and not just weird.

Talk about Hasbro and our love-hate relationship with them, or how EQD has been pandering to them nowadays. Talk about the mixed reception to different seasons by fans. We're a very reactionary community. Not without reason (TWICORN*COUGH*SHITTY THIRD SEASON*COUGH* TERRIBLE CHARACTERIZATION IN SEASON 2*COUGH*), but we can be mixed in reception and vitriol.

It shouldn't be a hour long fandom handjob, and it should exist for a reason, but if you're going to bring up negative shit, don't do it for its own sake.

 

[ejb626]

Agreed, OP another gripe I have is refusal to acknowledge the fandom's origin on 4chan, in fact if you want to be educated about bronies don't watch this documentary. It doesn't in any way sell the fandom to people who are unfamiliar with it, one of its intended purposes, it just goes on and on about how bronies are God's gift to mankind.

 

[Dangit2019]

Even you failed to give an example of the "dark side of bronyism."

Equestria After Dark. Princess Molestia. Zoophiles. Death threats related to criticism of the show. I could go on.

1. rule 34, whoop de god damn doo. Looks like bronies are special after all, oh wait rule 34 applies to all shows ever.

2. Oh look another rule 34 joke that wasn't meant to be serious and has no sex in it.

3. Zoophiles? You mean those 4chan threads? Those are running memes. They weren't meant to serious. If you take them seriously, you must see Steven Colbert to be a raging republican. If you mean the real zoophiles, beastiality fetishists have existed long before ponies became popular, dude.

4. Death threats? Oh you mean the thing a lot of big fandoms do? Like how Bioware fans sent death threats, and how simcity fans sent death threats over SC: societies? With many other fanbases having something like that?

You know, just because these things aren't specific to just this fandom doesn't make them any less negative. Terrorists don't get away with it just because other people commit murder too.

 

[Ishal]

Even you failed to give an example of the "dark side of bronyism."

Equestria After Dark. Princess Molestia. Zoophiles. Death threats related to criticism of the show. I could go on.

Don't take this the wrong way, I'm not trying to be inflammatory. But I think you need to cool your jets a bit.

I'll agree with you on many of those points, but I just don't see how talking about all those things doe anyone any good. All you would need is some westboro-esque moron there to call the bronies "just a bunch of gay-manchildren who masturbate to colored cartoon ponies" and then to have counter arguments to that. I agree lack of bias would not have hurt the doc in the slightest but I don't feel like it was needed nearly as much as you seem to think it was. I did think it was pretentious to a point... but then, really... I'm not a brony who feels the need to announce my presence to the world. I'm not one of those evangelicals that they mentioned in the doc... but clearly the ones behind this project are. Most of the world outside the internet and geek culture does not know or care about us.. and the bronydoc, the one that was released or the one that we think could have been better still won't change that.

When I first heard about the show. I heard two statements, know what they were? My little pony cartoon and 4chan.

Just hearing those two things. I immediately thought of the stuff that you mentioned above... I immediately jumped to the negative because I heard "4chan". What I'm saying is... I don't really believe you need to give a large amount of time to the negatives... All you need to do is talk about what bronies are and people will do the rest in terms of thinking of negative things.

I think it did a good job with convention scene and telling stories about the bronies, instead of just having generic brony 1, brony 2, brony 3 etc. I enjoyed how it talked about it just having the same social benefits as any other fandom, and it does. Talking about the charity thing was important. I did wish there was more on the psychology of the bronies, and there might be.. they shot a ton of other interviews and footage that could contain all the stuff we were mentioning, it just wasn't released to what we saw. Ir probably should have. Honestly there are lots of other things I could say, and I'll likely return here to say them at some pont... but I will say this...

REAL TALK: John DeLancie was the creative spearhead of the project, or at least one of them. Supposedly when asked on his view of the Star Trek fandom he said something along the lines of not really genuinely caring about it, and that the conventions and other fandom related things were just $$$ to him. Again, something that I heard and I admit I can't provide citation for this. But just think about it for a second, if that is true then the brony doc we got was something we could have expected.

 

[Dangit2019]

Don't take this the wrong way, I'm not trying to be inflammatory. But I think you need to cool your jets a bit.

Spoiler: Gotcha covered

I'll agree with you on many of those points, but I just don't see how talking about all those things doe anyone any good. All you would need is some westboro-esque moron there to call the bronies "just a bunch of gay-manchildren who masturbate to colored cartoon ponies" and then to have counter arguments to that. I agree lack of bias would not have hurt the doc in the slightest but I don't feel like it was needed nearly as much as you seem to think it was. I did think it was pretentious to a point... but then, really... I'm not a brony who feels the need to announce my presence to the world. I'm not one of those evangelicals that they mentioned in the doc... but clearly the ones behind this project are. Most of the world outside the internet and geek culture does not know or care about us.. and the bronydoc, the one that was released or the one that we think could have been better still won't change that.

I wouldn't want a Westboro type, but I think maybe somebody who just didn't appreciate the wide spread of the fandom would be enough. Ignorance shouldn't get a voice, but someone who personally and civilly disagrees with us spamming his forums (glass houses, I know) wouldn't do too much damage.

I as well am not the type to scream our name from the mountains. I'll bring it up if it's relevant, but I never felt that my love for the show was important enough to impose on others.

When I first heard about the show. I heard two statements, know what they were? My little pony cartoon and 4chan.

2 subjects that wouldn't be pleasant at the time, I understand.

Just hearing those two things. I immediately thought of the stuff that you mentioned above... I immediately jumped to the negative because I heard "4chan". What I'm saying is... I don't really believe you need to give a large amount of time to the negatives... All you need to do is talk about what bronies are and people will do the rest in terms of thinking of negative things.

Again, I didn't want a large amount of time. I wanted some sort of representation, or meaning, or depth. My main complaint with the film is how vapid and shallow it is in comparison the layered fandom. Some way of saying "this is the ugly, but this doesn't represent us as whole" instead of saying that we're perfect and having the unsuspecting viewer be blindsided the first time they see what the spoiler images on /mlp/ actually contain.

I think it did a good job with convention scene and telling stories about the bronies, instead of just having generic brony 1, brony 2, brony 3 etc. I enjoyed how it talked about it just having the same social benefits as any other fandom, and it does. Talking about the charity thing was important. I did wish there was more on the psychology of the bronies, and there might be.. they shot a ton of other interviews and footage that could contain all the stuff we were mentioning, it just wasn't released to what we saw. Ir probably should have. Honestly there are lots of other things I could say, and I'll likely return here to say them at some pont... but I will say this...

I agree with all of these good parts, and I'm glad they got mentioned. As for the bonus interviews, they cost $25 plus shipping, so I guess I'll be gleefully ignorant in that respect.

REAL TALK: John DeLancie was the creative spearhead of the project, or at least one of them. Supposedly when asked on his view of the Star Trek fandom he said something along the lines of not really genuinely caring about it, and that the conventions and other fandom related things were just $$$ to him. Again, something that I heard and I admit I can't provide citation for this. But just think about it for a second, if that is true then the brony doc we got was something we could have expected.

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt, as I'd rather believe he's not that kind of person and be gleefully ignorant than think that he did this all for money from a bunch of genuinely caring guys.