Citation Needed - Bronies

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is an animated television series produced by Hasbro as part of the My Little Pony toy franchise, which is tied in with the 2010 relaunch of dolls and play sets and original programming for the American children's cable channel Discovery Family (formerly Hub Network). Lauren Faust was selected as the creative developer and executive producer for the show based on her previous animation experience with other animated shows such as Cartoon Network's The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Under Hasbro's guidance, Faust developed the show to appeal to the target demographic of young girls, but created characters and settings that challenged formerly stereotypical norms of "girly" images and added adventure and humorous elements in order to keep parents interested.

Ruh? Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ruh- Oh my God, we are really eyes! Yeah, they're pretty big now. You gotta be careful. As to the how, it turns out that the cloning machine works perfectly well when you can- Oh, you don't want it to turn to a matter of- I just, oh wait, whatever you did, put it back. Can you get us back into our regular bodies? Oh, I wish I could blow up, but on the upside, this is definitely gonna be the way we get famous. We go on adventures, we can do a musical episode, not to mention the cartoon shenanigans,

like this, Cecil Patch! Buh! Eli, this is a bomb! Oh! Oh, okay, so Wicner, we can all still die, so everyone, be careful with your cartoon bodies, I guess. The Red Bulls rules. Really glad there's such an official medium.

Just everywhere. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed Podcasts where you choose to subject for a single article about unwikipedia and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. Hi kids, I'm Captain Frumpy, and I'm joined by our super fun comedy army, introducing Lieutenant Grumpy, Sergeant Lumpy, and Private Stumpy Noah Eliantom. Well, so long as I outrank these motherfuckers,

I'm sorry, I'm not Lumpy, I'm folded smooth like meringue. Okay. Okay, and for the last time, I'm folded smooth like meringue. Okay. Okay. And for the last time, I told you my penis nickname in confidence. Bring it up on air. No. It's a thing. Hey kids, do you know where mommy's credit card is? If so, you can join our super secret club of patrons and you get all kinds of extra

goodies and mommy will never ever know. And if you'd like to sign up for that super secret mission, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And with that in a way, tell us, Tom, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event, or place on the internet? Will you talk about today? Bronies? It's a place on the for a whole episode really.

Yeah, it was this that we let him talk about Ben Johnson. So, Bronies, you say, Bronies, Bronies it was. And Eli, you found a way to get your latest Twitter squabbles into our show again. You're ready to quote tweet to your hearts delight. You may mute my life, but you will never mute my for it. So Eli, tell us what? What are brownies? They are broadly speaking, the older male fans of the show, my little pony, friendship is magic for For a whole episode, just a whole thing. But they are also the name like this, it goes so bad. But they are also a symbol, a symbol of the power of the internet, both for good and evil. For to ask what a brony is, is to ask what the internet is. Brony's bring joy to

dying children and cancer words. They raise money for charity. They get infiltrated by Nazis and inspire a mass shooting because wait, what? This is the internet and that's how it works now. Is there any chance you just lay out some nerds for us to make fun of on our comedy podcast without disappearing entirely up our own ass, Eli? None whatsoever.

Season. All whatsoever. Season. All right. Cool. You've heard his essays were cool. Cool. I was worried for a second. We'd write too funny upon the episode. Glad that's going to get sort of go down sort of the gravitas.

It deserves here. The look on the bright side. See, so we haven't reached the part where you're expected to make mass shooting jokes yet So enjoy yeah, I mean, I'm gonna pass on that Throw some pony puns in there, but first a little backstory You know the restaurant chain big boy. Well in 1998 toy collector Mike Becker couldn't find one of their popular bobblehead piggy banks for love or money So he decided to buy the license and make his own.

At a little company he would call Fun Co. with a K. And while the big boys didn't sell particularly well, he licensed a few other well-known pop culture characters at the same time and put out their bobbleheads which sold incredibly well and a new business was born. Yeah, great. I'm already completely lost. I've never thought, oh man, I can't find that toy based on an extremely weird corporate

mascot for mediocre food chain. I guess I'll spend even one second of my life's precious time solving that problem. What? What? So is it just me or have we already straight irrevocably off the earth? I know. From you Noah, from straight irrevocably off from you?

No, I'm not my expected it from you. It's amazing how this starts with a grown man obsessed with toy. Yeah. No, okay. Full circle. In 2011, Funko began selling their pop exclamation point vinyl line of figurines. These were based on the bobble heads of popular franchises that had already been licensed,

but they were designed in the Chibi art style with large eyes and simplified features, and they were made of vinyl instead of hard plastic. People went nuts for them. People collect these things by the hundreds. They became as part of popular culture as Naruto and body pillows. By which I mean, very important to some people and entirely unheard of by, um,

okay, I've heard of pillows. Figurines just sound warmer on vinyl. It's just why you want to live. To give you an idea of the scope of this, by 2012, Funko had sold more than $20 million worth of merchandise. You know, Eli, you're not instilling me with any confidence whatsoever, by opening your S.I. with an entirely unrelated, it seemed dumb at the time,

but trust us, it turned out well, and it didn't. I'm weaving a tapestry. I'm weaving a tapestry. Oh, okay. So let's put a pin in my Funko thread for a moment and hop with me to the world of children's entertainment. So for most of television history, there were two categories of children's entertainment. Publicly funded PBS content whose school was education. This is shows like Mr. Roger, Sesame Street,

Teletubbies. The second category, literally all other children's television, was toy commercials of varying lights. It's very true. So I got to ask a question though, other than teaching your kids stark, raving fear, what educational purposes do the teletope serve? I cannot figure it out. Okay, I don't know that a show has to have two purposes. That's true. That's true.

Also, typically are those 30 minute commercials disguised as programs where illegal until the Reagan administration. I just, apologies for the factual interjection into an Elias adj. Oh, the crazy trick of the day's free of. You see, children have very little choice over their lives. They don't choose what clothes to buy. They might choose what kind of food they eat,

but certainly not the brand. But if you're gonna sell shit to kids, you pretty much can only sell them the things they do get to choose. They're toys, they're fast food, and they're cereal. And thus, entire television shows have been born, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Power Rangers, and of course, the original My Little Pony TV shows

are all barely disguised TV commercials, formulately written with the appropriate balance of violent and jingoistic messaging, expected for all television written for United States audience. Okay, I think you're skipping over the very high quality PSAs, which taught me to avoid the seemingly ubiquitous issue of downed power lines, then to find my childhood fear escape. You know, the A-mails. Oh, God, don't remind me, Tom. I'm still traumatized by those lies. They told us about how a bill could pass through the Senate Lying

So back to the toy companies in 2009 Hasbro decides to put out a line of Funko pop Esk theme toys from their popular franchise my Little Pony. And with the new toy line, they needed a TV show to push it. And thus, My Little Pony friendship is magic was born. But this toy pushing show was different. I'd like to formally make a request that we don't talk about where anatomically people were pushing these toys. We're a question. Oh, fuck it.

Damn, the whole second half of the essay. Damn it. So, you're a lot of things. That explains the photo call. All right, and we don't normally get a photo board. Oh, God, not a photo board. Oh, okay. There are a lot of things that make my little pony friendship is magic or as it's known

in the community MLP FIS special. Yeah, that's easier. Yeah, right. Right. Right. But I think two especially led to the creation of the bronies. The first is like Sesame Street, Rocco's modern life and loony tunes before it. It has jokes and themes that work for both adults and kids.

And secondly, it doesn't suck. See, Eli, I feel like you were about to imply that the 1984 Transformers cartoon sucked until you thought, better, I'm not gonna lie. And legal reason is not to besmirch that show. Exactly, right, yeah. So it's MLP FIS is how you refer to it instead. Is there like a my little pony special victims you hit later that

we're gonna talk about again spoilers for the second. All right, that's fair. See, those other kids shows, G.I. Joe Power Rangers, they're unwatchable by adults who aren't already fans because of nostalgia, but creative director Lauren Faust aimed higher and created a deep lore and complex characters for the show, which children still enjoyed, because, you know, ponies, but it invited adult fans in as well. And thus, the brony was born. But what motivates the brony?

What makes them tick? Well, surprisingly, several experts have weighed in, according to Wikipedia, quote, Dr. Patrick Edwards, who performed several brony studies to survey and analyze the fandom, observed that brony fandom, unlike most other fandoms, which quote, aren't welcoming to people who are different, and quote,

promotes the show's message of love and tolerance. In other words, a lot of people become brony's because the brony world is nice. It's welcoming. I mean, it's a show about because the brony world is nice. It's welcoming. I mean, it's a show about ponies called Friendship is Magic. How dickish can their fans be? Okay, this is both from the internet and on citation needed.

So I'm pretty sure that answer is gonna be really, really fucking dickish. That's right. So I feel like the phrase dickish has making Cecil nervous. He is, thank you. Thank you. I know what I'm saying. Thank you. It is very nervous.

But that's not all we know about the elusive brony. Again, from Wikipedia, quote, one contributor to the brony study, Dr. Marsha Redden, said that adult fans are, quote, a reaction to the US having been engrossed in terrorism for the past 10 years. In a manner similar to the Cold War, and we are, quote, tired of being afraid, tired of angst and animosity, the show and its fandom are outlets from those strife. She compared the Brony fandom to that of the Bohemian

and the Beatniks after World War II, and of the hippies after the Vietnam War. And quote, it's like a little pony and a black beret, black outfit, cigarette stuck in between his hoof there. Trying desperately to snap their hooves instead of clapping. Right. Yeah. It just winds up waving it up and down. So nothing's happening.

We're really made for clapping. Why are we the try and stats? The article continues quote, in a similar vein, Amy Keating Rogers, one of the show's writers, believes that the fans have come to like friendship is magic due to the, quote, so much cynicism and negativity out there in so many other shows, while the show has such a positive message that counters this, end quote. Okay, is it just me or are these the frenzied conclusions of people who desperately needed justify how much of the budget they just spent studying? I don't know, is that?

I don't know, is that? Yep, that is a possibility. But whoops! Tooms are the brony. Whoops. How old are they? What be their color and their sex? Again, this has been studied.

Whoa, two informal studies of 2,30 and 9,000 participants respectively revealed that the average age of adult fans is around 21. That approximately 86% were male, and that 63% were currently pursuing a college degree or higher qualification. A subsequent 2013 study, with over 21,000 respondents, showed similar numbers, and highlighted that the majority of fans were in the 15-30 age with the average age being between 19 and 20 and over 65% were at a row. Sexual.

Guys, hold on. If you listen really closely, you can hear Tucker Carlson sharpening his pencil for the next campus craziness segment. The fandom has spawned websites such as Equestria Daily and Ponychan, which see hundreds of thousands of visits a day. In 2012, there were over 500,000 pieces of my little pony fan art on the website, Deviant Art, only some of which were pornographic, but pin in that for later. Yeah, I'm guessing all that joy and positivity begins to decline right about the same time

that someone decided that his drawing of a magical pony getting analie fisted should really be both made public and then the public agreed. There are even conventions. The final Bronicon, which took place in August of 2019 had 10,215 attendees. At these conventions, there are speakers from the show. People dress up as the characters, share their fan art, get autographs, participate in talkbacks, and much, much more. I have no evidence, but my hunch, but I feel like much, much more is a big fan of

the Xandarin. I was literally wondering, yeah, name one more. What else would it be? Like, do you not? Two sandwiches later. I was literally wondering, yeah, name one more. What else would it be? Like, do you have sandwiches later? What more? Fuck each other dressed as ponies, Tom. Oh, yeah.

That's right. That's certainly the case. Or also extremely active in their charitable and fundraising efforts. The Brony Thank You Fund was originally created to raise money to create a fan-funded Thank You Spot on the hub network. But has since been used to raise money for toys for tots and in 2013 donated $50,000 to endown animation scholarship at the California Institute for the Arts. Pretty great. A group called Brony's For Good did blood drives across the country and raised $60,000 in

2012 for charities like Children's Cancer Association, Room to Read and Cure Search. Side note, here's the most brutal sentence ever written on the website Wikipedia. Jesus Christ. Voice actress Tara Strong has gained help from the fandom for her geeky's cancer fund to help the daughter of a close friend would have been diagnosed with a brain tumor. And it stated that the child wouldn't be alive today without the My Little Phony fan. But so great. Raising 100,000 to help.

However, this direct vote for Wikipedia, however the girl subsequently died of her illness. Jesus, fucking Christ. We had the citation. Someone was like, I don't know, just fucking wait, she died. She did die though. This is this is classic American medical system. Someone was like, I don't know, just fucking wait. She died. She did die though. This is this is classic American medical system, even with the aid of magical cartoon ponies

helping you to crowdsource your medical bills. You're still shit out of the book. Yeah, I hate it. But perhaps most famously of all, when 11 year old Michael Moronay's attempted suicide after being bullied at school for his enjoyment of the show, the bromine community raised over $72,000 for his medical bills, and helped start an anti-bullying non-profit for kids like Michael.

That's so awesome. All right Eli, sounds like we have some fans of a show. They're nice, they do nice things. God, I'm surprised. I thought that this was gonna go in a darker side to Brownies, like the internet. It's going to involve a whole lot of porn Nazis and a mass shooting. Ah, there it is.

Well, while Eli remages around the dark web for some pony porn, we're going to take a quick break for a little something we like to call apropony. I'm not a pro pony. I'm not a pony. I'm not a pony. Hi, I'm Eli Bosnick. And I'm Cecil, something Italian. Here to present you with our newest product, Safe Internet Time Suck. That's right Cecil, in today's busy world of unending negativity and evil, giving your brain the slightest rest from the unrelenting onslaught of horror isn't just fun, it's the only way to survive.

That's right Eli, each episode of Safe Internet Time Suck is funny without being racist, friendly without being sacrient, and 237 hours long, so you can commute to it. You could fall asleep to it. Or just let the sound wash over you while you're at work, so you can make it just one more day at that terrible... Guys, guys, guys. No, we're in the middle of our... Yeah, that's an ad. We're doing an ad.

You're in an update. No, I get it, you're doing a bit where we come up with a product based on the show. But like what you're talking about is our show. What's, no, the thing we're talking about is, it's called Safe Internet Time Suck. No, it's different. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, dude, that's what podcasts are for most people.

They're just a safe internet time slot. You mean, our show isn't a complex projection of my comedic genius woven into our podcast diverse? No, dude. Like, people mostly just fall asleep to it. Oh. Do they, do they like it? No.

No. Oh. It's going to get a lot worse, but let me ask you a question that I should have easily predicted. I was going to ask you and we decided to take turns writing assays for the show. Eli, what is the darker side of bronies? Oh, that's not a question. I mean, you should be able to even say, I know. I mean, like a 100% after writing it. Yeah, right. I was like, no, I, when we talked about the creation of the

show, it should have come to one of us, right? It was, it was a matter of when we wrote the song. When we said, when we said no to stealing incredulous, we knew it was going to be about bronies. So that's what I wanted. So in order to understand the darker side of the bronies, we need to talk about the clue-clux plan in the 1990s. When we say need, it's need to run.

I need to talk about the KKK in the 1990s. See, by the 90s, things were not going great for the KKK. For what was arguably the first time in US history, government agencies were taking the threat they posed seriously. For the first time, they were being investigated agencies were taking the threat they posed seriously. For the first time, they were being investigated and arrested like the terrorists they were, and planning bad guy KKK stuff was getting dangerous. So in 1992, one of their leaders, a guy named Louis Beam, who had just barely escaped

a sedition charge, and actually only escaped it due to the fact that he had an all-white jury, wrote an article called Leaderless resistance that is pretty much dictated white supremacist policy ever since. Oh, so it was a white paper. And they actually kept their membership roster and little black books until they had that racist. Oh, moment. Oh, man. Yeah, man. You hate to see it. You hate to see it. So here's the thing. KKK members and racists, they don't want anything. I mean, they say they want things, they want the white man to rise up and beat history class or whatever they're on this week. I don't really believe it's going to happen.

So their goal, especially the goal of their leadership, is victimization and terror. So in the old days, that was easy. Everybody dressed up like a ghost. You murdered some people. You've brought some people. Everybody goes home. You're a senator.

But like I said, cops, we're starting to arrest people for doing and planning that stuff. So Beams radical solution was just to stop having leaders altogether. No more grand wizards, no more king poobas. Instead, you just insinuate your ideas into a community and wait for so-called lone wolves to kill and threaten people. Same results, no need for a spreadsheet. And coincidentally, the 90s were also the birth of the internet.

Okay, all right, but just to be clear, that strategy, it's called losing. That's the word. But they were a cultural movement that lost because their ideas were rejected by this society. Factioning off in a literless subgroups of one each, that's called disbanding. Right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, one each that's called disbanding. I literally have no idea how to wrap that shit.

That makes it seem a lot less ominous and scary than you realize they were just like, I've decided shitting my pants is called the Jack Dino Fecalization. So the other thing about KKK members and really committed racists is that they don't have Nazi TV, okay? These people watch Tucker Carlson

and are disgusted by his far left ideas. The only place these people have to find people who agree with them is the internet. And they spend a tremendous amount of time there and they always have. Study after study, survey after survey of white supremacists, Nazis and other bigots, they spend significantly more time and have way bigger presences online than you or me.

And since the internet is anonymous by default, you never know if the 11 people you're arguing with about white genocide on Twitter are just the same guy switching profiles. But when we've studied it, at least some of the time, that's what it is. They call 11 Twitter all to counts, a Faker's doesn't. And these Fakers does. Yeah, it makes sense. All those Twitter eggs are white.

So, Trader. Right. The internet also provides the cover of irony. You know, racist jokes, racist memes, racist comments There are always of putting hate group agenda out there, but when you get called on it Hey, it's just a joke and people who aren't KKK members will repeat and promote racist ideas because the joke makes people mad and making people mad who are mad at the KKK is funny, I guess, which brings me to

4chan and eventually backed my little pony. Oh, I'm so happy here you remember what this says. I was like, honestly, I was starting to think this whole thing was secretly about why you were to write in that last Twitter fight. One guy with a bunch of accounts anyway. Now, fortune probably deserves its own essay, but if you're not familiar, if the Christian devil were real, he'd want to distance himself as far as possible from fortune. It is perhaps the best example of innocuous places on the internet being overcome by evil and

white supremacy. And it is without question the birthplace of the Bronies. Okay. Well, now I'm picturing my little ponies and little KKK outfits. It's your fault and I'm not okay with it. Yeah, right. I have so many of those photos. I could get you so many of those photos.

No, I don't want you to describe it for the rest of the episode. So in October of 2010, right when the show came out, the website, Cartoon Brew, put out an article voicing concern that a veteran animation professional like Faust was making an animated toy commercial. Its author called the show quote, the end of creator driven era in TV animation. And whether it's because he had a foreign-sounding name or because people actually liked the show,

the post from Cartoon Brew received tremendous pushback on Forchan, and soon, loving my little pony was an ironic joke on the site. My little pony became so endemic that it even got its own section on the website. And like everything else on 4chan, that section was soon filled with literal Nazis. Yeah, I remember when irony was cool and didn't involve Nazis. Like there was a time. I'll take your word for it. So for many, being a brony was a joke, but for others, it wasn't. The difference, at least at first, didn't matter.

If you say, I'm a my little pony fan on the internet, you are. There's nothing that accompanies your post, but Kyle's actually full of shit. He doesn't like the show. He's just saying this to be ironic. And what better way to ironically celebrate your love of a pony show than drawing a bunch of edgy, my little pony themed porn about it. She's, I also remember when being edgy, didn't involve cartoon animal pornography,

like at all. Just, I do not remember that clearly. That was before my time. Now, you're just making stuff up Tom. We know, we know. So maybe you're thinking to yourself, come on Eli, how much pony porn can there be? Podcast listener?

So much pony porn. So fucking much pony porn guys. So much pony porn! There's so much porn! What happened to us as a culture? We did have to do it. There are some numbers. Okay. Okay.

The popular website, fan art website. No, I had 121,777 images are tagged sex. No, 126,401 images are tagged with Volvo. Wait, point. We have a on the bottom. No.

There's a now that I do 7,000 that are just not sexual or sexual Volvo. Yeah. 79,000.

There's like anatomical charts for dogs. Exactly. Medical information. It's like when you go to the doctor, 79,000 like anatomical charts for that exactly right medical information like when you go to the doctor you look on the wall and there's a arrow point you a thing and you're like oh yeah that's where my little pony ball is I didn't understand the anatomy before you can even be a good part Jesus Christ

79,676 posts are tagged come no ironically 73,000 images are tagged with magic on the fan art website. But magical ponies. They've got more come. The magic ones are they just pulling like hankies out of stuff for like, again, I can find it. I know I can find it. I know I can find it.

So if you're asking yourself, who looks at pony porn, it depends. People who want to be ponies, people want to fuck ponies, people who want to pretend they're a pony while someone fucks them. But also people think it's funny and shocking to make porn of a children's cartoon. Probably mostly what it is. And also probably want to put ponies. That's it. It's shocking. Condition of the community has grown more extreme over the years, defining themselves by fan art that includes ultraviolin sexual assault. And yes, genocide. What? Okay,

but on the bright side, this means that somebody has at some point had to patiently explain to someone else that, you know, I'm not one of those sexy pony Volvo cars. Yeah, different classy pony magic. As it always does, this scared a lot of people away from the community who just liked the show and like that finger thing we used to do in high school, milk, and Twitter. Suddenly, my little pony was a right wing rallying point. And whenever it's been called out,

it's defended not just by explicit racist, but by folks who don't understand why you're getting mad about some shit posts on a my little pony for them. And this culture has spilled over into the real world as well. Uh, I can't imagine how that would happen. How did they get past the literally nothing to stop that? Yeah. So at a convention in Seattle called Everglow, my little pony

convention goers endured racist and sexist talk from fellow my little pony fans. Good. When audience members shouted sexually inappropriate things at an underage, Chris and a back to Jesus Christ. The organizers apparently said there was nothing they could do because the crowd was too big. There's other stuff too, but a lot of it is internet drama or hearsay that I don't really understand, but it's fair to say that in recent years,

the Brody community has been firmly divided into people who enjoy the show and racists who now just use the show as a dog whistle and as a recruiting to it. Wow. Well, so I'm not saying we should get into it, but I am actually morbidly curious now at what elements of this story were to internet drama eve. I'm just saying I am. Volv's pony amery and people's personas, I don't want to get into it. A whole thing. I don't want you to get into it.

I want to say in defense of the bronies, the vast majority of bronies are not right wing. Right? Organization after organization within the fandom is condemned. Racism and sexism and unacceptable pony porn. But that's a problem when your community is online. You don't get to say who is and is not a member and you don't get to dedicate your entire presence in that community to talking about how the shitty folks in it are bad because then you're not a brony, you're a volunteer internet moderator. Yeah, as an ATS podcast, I actually can't relate to this in a lot of way. Yeah, as an ATS podcast, I actually can't relate to the semi-relead.

And all of this culminates, as I mentioned before, the break, in a literal mass shooting. On April 15th, a 19 year old self-described brony went on a racism-fueled mass shooting at his workplace that left 9 people dead, himself included. According to an internal Facebook memo about the shooter, most of his Facebook was dedicated to, quote, red pill brony culture. In his manifesto slash suicide note, he

included by saying, I hope I can be with Applejack. That's one of the ponies in the afterlife. My life has no meaning without her. If there's no afterlife, and she isn't real, then my life never mattered anyway." All right, Eli, if you had the summer as we learned in one sentence, so would it be? Applejack has merged with the far right. Okay. Are you ready for the quiz? Oh, I'm ready.

All right. I got one for you here. Eli, why did we choose to do this subject on the week that Heath was off? Hey, it's very triggering for reasons we're legally obligated not to elaborate on. We all know how much more time off he's going to need once he learns about my little pony from her. See, he's actually been screaming in defensive hardcore, brony porn this whole time, but Cecil cut it out.

Let's see. I barely got nowhere at the entire time. It's kind of obvious for us. I'm so much for the audience here. All right, Eli, I actually suggested that you do this topic because it seemed so insane and absurd. What do I feel now that I know more? A, a deep, profound desire to reread Walden and cry. That's it.

That's just, that's just, he heard, he heard trains in the distance and he could see it all coming in. He just was gonna happen. You know what was on those trains? Non-sexual poe volks. One train just goes right into the other train. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, goes right into the other train. That's a

man. I ran toward it. So we fucking ran. All right, Eli, what's the most popular board on Pony Chin? A pornographic image page, my little

baloney pony, B, a Nazi page, no horses of a different color, slash off to the master races. Amazing. Jesus Christ. page. No horses of a different color. Slash off to the master races. I'm a golden shower page. Don't swap horses midstream or D page of me screaming into the stark madness about this whole story. Shout yourself horse. I know our website is now. So I'm gonna go with D is it D? It is we are now horse whispers.

All right. Eli, you get to win this week. That's not a sling. Because I'm the one who read all the parts that do you have to say? I know what pony amorous means. All right, I want Tom to write an essay, Tom, and your job is not to let it slip into the death of a whole chair. Oh, yeah, no, we never have something to do.

I don't know. What's up with Sherry, Tom? Can you write something, Sherry for us? Give us a good five. Now we're going to be sharing something cheerier than this. It'll be about starving. It'll be cheering. Awesome.

All right, well, for Eli, Tom, Noah, and me, thank you for hanging out with us. We'll be back next week and bye then. Tom, we'll be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can listen to all of our other stuff. All you have to do is go to citationpot.com and all of our podcasts are listed there. If you'd like to help keep the show going, you can steal Mom's credit card and make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod. Or leave some advice or review everywhere you can.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes connecting to the social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citation pod.com. Hey, hey, wake up. The episode's over. I just wanted to make sure that you were playing us next. Otherwise, you might listen to a different show. So, uh, if you don't mind, just like go back to episode one and start from there. No, no, don't go back to sleep. Eli, what the hell are you doing? Nothing, nothing.