• anthropicprincipal [any]
    hexagon
    ·
    4 years ago

    "Brony online culture has displayed elements of far-right and white nationalist extremism," an internal memo from Facebook read, the Wall Street Journal reported.

    There was a post timestamped less than an hour before the shooting that read, "I hope that I can be with Applejack in the afterlife, my life has no meaning without her," and it featured an image of the cartoon pony Applejack.

    Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

      • ssjmarx [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        There was also the guy who shot up a grocery store who was really into Danny Phantom.

    • ssjmarx [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Brony online culture has displayed elements of far-right and white nationalist extremism

      Did the bronies have a Ponygate at some point that I missed? Last I checked I thought they were pretty lib.

        • Grimble [he/him,they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Reminds me of that "which way, brony" meme where there's a forked path, and one side says "become trans" and the other says "become a white supremacist"

        • crispyhexagon [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          :what-the-hell:

          how does the cartoon horse fanclub do that?

          the only mlp fan i ever met was a lib guy that had recently realized he was bi. cant imagine he wouldve flipped to become a neocon nazi, cause he was super pro-planned parenthood and stuff

            • crispyhexagon [none/use name]
              ·
              edit-2
              4 years ago

              they become accounting-firm middle management, learn to play alto sax, and buy recumbent bicycles?

              :bean-think:

              edit: no, wait, its neonazis isnt it? fuck, i always get that wrong

              • AlephNull [she/her]
                ·
                4 years ago

                So all i have to do is get a recumbent bicycle and get rid of all this nazi memorabilia to make the switch? Deradicalising has never been so fun

                • crispyhexagon [none/use name]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  middle managers at accounting firms that are interested in recumbent bicycles, obviously.

                  smh my head, its like you didnt even read my cobbled together descriptive text, i swear.

      • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        bronies started as a 4chan thing. before the show's premiere a bunch of dipshits on /co/ and /b/ started spamming ironic threads because it was a reliable way to troll, then when it came out some of them actually ended up enjoying it, the fandom grew from there and, like everything that's popular enough for long enough on 4chan, it leaked onto reddit and mainstream fandom culture.

        actually ya know what it's all stupid no matter how you cut it. just check out fluffy ponies (severe general trigger warning)

        • ssjmarx [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          fluffy ponies (severe general trigger warning)

          Well that was a life scarring experience, though I gotta say some of the extreme fetish stuff I've seen on the fringes of that community is worse.

    • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      There was a post timestamped less than an hour before the shooting that read, “I hope that I can be with Applejack in the afterlife, my life has no meaning without her,” and it featured an image of the cartoon pony Applejack.

      what

      • Sacred_Excrement [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I've kind of been blacking in and out of reality ever since that picture of the Jan 6th capitol shenanigans with a vendor setting up shop out front

          • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Backwards kulak pony.

            There's an episode where the entire town provides free labor to stop AJ's family from losing the farm to some capitalists with machinery.

            At no point did the ponies ask why they were paying the Apple family for the cider they themselves produced, or whether the cider would be cheaper if the capitalists could develop the means of production.

      • drhead [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        IIRC the whole brony trend started on 4chan. Someone wrote an article about the show being "an admission of defeat" for the animation industry. People on 4chan's /co/ (comics and cartoons) board criticized the article. Some people watched the show and decided it was good, and posted about it, and then it gained a fanbase of teen and adult men who were not the target audience. The problem, of course, being that it picked up this fanbase on 4chan. So it started with a fanbase with a lot of diet nazis. This of course isn't an indictment of every brony since it obviously spread to places that aren't 4chan with varying levels of assimilation. There's a lot of shared spaces with the furry fandom, for example (the only example I'm familiar with), which is largely left-leaning and notably isn't allowed on 4chan, but largely furries and bronies keep somewhat separate in those spaces. I'd be comfortable saying that most furries consider bronies to be kind of weird.

      • Bakuphoon [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        There's definitely a subset of alt psychos in the mlp fandom. The initial fandom found it's start in 4chan after all. I'm pretty sure it's not super prevalent but I tend to curate my mlp fandom experience very tightly because of those weirdos. There was an incident a while back where a popular booru decided to ban nazi/alt right content and a bunch of people got pissy, citing it violated their free speech or whatever bs.

        I just can't comprehend someone liking cutesy-wootsy ponies and being a nazi, what goes on in they're heads...