Online communities of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom

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Since the 2010 debut of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, numerous online communities have emerged to support the show's adult fandom (commonly known as bronies). These communities span dedicated websites, imageboards, social media platforms, and specialized repositories for creative content. Even after the conclusion of the television series in 2019, online spaces dedicated to Friendship Is Magic have remained active, with some experiencing increased engagement during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020.[1]

List of fan community websites

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This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Equestria Daily

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Main article: Equestria Daily
Jayson Thiessen (left) and Shaun Scotellaro ("Sethisto") at BroNYCon 2011

Established in January 2011 by Shaun Scotellaro (known online as "Sethisto"), Equestria Daily is one of the largest and most influential news sites in the brony community. The site aggregates fan artwork, fiction, videos, and music, while also reporting on official franchise announcements.[2] By 2014, the site had surpassed 500 million views.[3] In 2017, selected archives of Equestria Daily were included in the Library of Congress's "Web Cultures Web Archive Collection".[4]

/mlp/

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Main article: /mlp/

/mlp/ is the dedicated My Little Pony board on the anonymous imageboard 4chan, created by site founder Christopher "moot" Poole in February 2012 following the growing popularity of pony-related content on the site's "/co/" (comics and cartoons) board.[5][6] The anonymous nature of the board has fostered an transgressive subculture within the brony fandom, with users (referred to as "anons") often adopting self-deprecating terms like horsefuckers or ponyfags rather than "bronies."[7] Popular content formats include "Anon in Equestria" fan fiction where a generic human character is transported to the show's fictional world.[7] The board has hosted notable Q&A sessions with series creator Lauren Faust[8] and screenwriter M.A. Larson,[9] and has been the subject of academic research examining its distinct fan culture.[7]

Derpibooru

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Main article: Derpibooru

Founded in 2012, Derpibooru is the largest dedicated imageboard for My Little Pony fan art.[10][11][12] Named after the fan-created character Derpy Hooves and the suffix -booru (from Japanese, meaning "board"), the site hosts over 3.1 million images as of April 2025.[13] The site employs a user-driven tagging system and content rating categories ranging from "safe" to "explicit."[14] In June 2020, following controversies during the George Floyd protests, Derpibooru implemented policy changes banning racist content.[12][11]

FIMFiction

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Main article: FIMFiction

Launched in July 2011,[15] FIMFiction is the largest repository for My Little Pony fan fiction.[16] As of 2025, the site hosts over 155,000 published stories and has more than 624,000 registered users.[17] Unlike many fan fiction communities that trend female in participation, FIMFiction has a predominantly male audience.[18] The site features a comprehensive content rating system, specialized user groups for different genres and interests, and a "distributed mentoring" system where writers receive feedback from multiple community members.[19]

MLPForums

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Launched in February 2011,[5] MLPForums is the largest discussion forum for the brony community.[14] MLPForums features a traditional forum structure with registered usernames and profiles. The site includes specialized sections like the "Welcoming Plaza" where new members introduce themselves, art and creative sections, and areas for discussing episodes and characters.[5]

Pony Town

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Pony Town is a 2016 browser-based virtual world massively multiplayer online role-playing game in which players can customize pony original characters and ponysonas.[20][21]

Ponychan

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Founded in February 2011 following the temporary ban of pony content on 4chan,[5] Ponychan was one of the earliest dedicated imageboards for the brony fandom.[22] The rapid growth of pony-related content on 4chan, which increased from 200 to 6000 posts per day between October 2010 and February 2011, and the persistent backlash and resentment from non-brony 4chan users, contributed to the need for a dedicated space.[23][24] The site was created by former 4chan users seeking a space where they could freely discuss My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic without 4chan restrictions.[5] According to American essayist Bill Ellis writing in The Journal of American Folklore, despite its role as an early community hub, Ponychan developed a reputation for restrictive moderation policies and heavy censorship.[25] Despite this criticism, in 2011, Jill Morris noted that Ponychan fostered a positive community culture with the motto "love and tolerate" in response to conflict, and became a notable creative hub where some fan-created content was later incorporated into official show materials.[26]

Ponychan shut down in January 2024. The site administrators published a farewell statement announcing the closure and noting that archives of the website would remain accessible, with the administrators acknowledging that dedicated spaces for different forms of media and subcommunities had evolved beyond the imageboard format.[27]

Mainstream platforms

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DeviantArt

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Main article: DeviantArt

DeviantArt has been a major platform for My Little Pony fan artists since 2011. By June 2012, the site hosted more than 500,000 pieces of Friendship Is Magic artwork.[28] The brony community on DeviantArt organizes around themed groups, with some containing more than tens of thousands of members.[14]

Reddit

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Multiple subreddits are dedicated to My Little Pony, with r/mylittlepony serving as the main community hub.[29][5] Other specialized subreddits include r/MLPLounge for off-topic discussion and r/clopclop for pornography of the characters.[29]

YouTube

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YouTube hosts numerous My Little Pony-focused channels dedicated to analysis, reviews, animations, and music. The platform has been used for sharing fan-created "pony music videos" (PMVs) and animations.[30][31][32][33]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Moran, Joe (May 5, 2023). "Their little pony: The weird world of fandom". TLS. Times Literary Supplement (6266): 7. Retrieved April 12, 2025.
  2. ^ Weinman, Jaime (2011-09-07). "Ponies Do Sondheim". Maclean's. Retrieved 2011-09-23.
  3. ^ Sethisto (2014-06-15). "Half a Billion Celebration Time". Equestria Daily. Retrieved 2014-06-16.
  4. ^ Brogen, Jacob (September 4, 2017). "Memes Are the New Jump-Rope Songs". Slate. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Schimpf, Kaitlyn Elizabeth (October 2015). "Straight from the Horse's Mouth: A Case Study on the Adult Male Fans of My Little Pony". MacEwan University Student eJournal. 2 (1). doi:10.31542/j.muse.192.
  6. ^ LaMarche, Una (2011-08-03). "Pony Up Haters: How 4chan Gave Birth to the Bronies". The New York Observer. Archived from the original on March 12, 2014. Retrieved 2011-08-03.
  7. ^ a b c Bailey, John; Harvey, Brenna (2017). "'That pony is real sexy': My Little Pony fans, sexual abjection, and the politics of masculinity online". Sexualities. 22 (3): 325–342. doi:10.1177/1363460717731932.
  8. ^ Connelly, S. (2017). Ponyville Confidential: The History and Culture of My Little Pony, 1981-2016. McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers. p. 183. ISBN 9781476662091. LCCN 2016044897.
  9. ^ Scotellaro, Shaun (2020-10-11). "M.A. Larson Did a Q&A On 4chan, Revealing Cancelled Scripts, Early Show Discussion, and More!". Equestria Daily. Retrieved 2025-04-27.
  10. ^ Edwards, Patrick; Chadborn, Daniel P.; Plante, Courtney N.; Reysen, Stephen; Redden, Marsha Howze (September 11, 2019). Meet the Bronies: The Psychology of the Adult My Little Pony Fandom. United States: McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers. ISBN 9781476663715.
  11. ^ a b Alter, Rebecca (2020-06-23). "The Largest My Little Pony Fan Site Bans Your Horse-Crap Racist Fan Art". Vulture. Retrieved 2021-06-04.
  12. ^ a b Tiffany, Kaitlyn (2020-06-23). "'My Little Pony' Fans Are Ready to Admit They Have a Nazi Problem". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-06-04.
  13. ^ "Statistics". Derpibooru. Retrieved 2025-04-16.
  14. ^ a b c Bajor, Jan (June 2015). Między bajką a perwersją – pornografia i erotyka fanowska w środowisku internetowym na przykładzie fandomu My Little Pony: Przyjaźń to Magia [Between fairy tale and perversion - fan pornography and erotica in the internet environment using the example of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom]. Institute of Sociology, Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology (Master's thesis) (in Polish). Warsaw: University of Warsaw.
  15. ^ "When was Fimfiction.net started?". FIMFiction.net. 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2025-04-12.
  16. ^ Domoney-Lyttle, Zanne; Welton, Rebekah (2024). Bibles in Popular Cultures. The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies. T&T Clark. ISBN 9780567702210.
  17. ^ "Site Statistics". FIMFiction.net. Retrieved 2025-04-12.
  18. ^ Campbell, Julie Ann; Aragon, Cecilia; Davis, Katie; Evans, Sarah; Evans, Abigail; Randall, David P. (2016). "Thousands of Positive Reviews: Distributed Mentoring in Online Fan Communities". CSCW '16: 691–704. arXiv:1510.01425. doi:10.1145/2818048.2819934.
  19. ^ Evans, Sarah; Davis, Katie; Evans, Abigail; Campbell, Julie Ann; Randall, David P.; Yin, Kodlee; Aragon, Cecilia (2017). "More Than Peer Production: Fanfiction Communities as Sites of Distributed Mentoring". CSCW '17: 259–272. arXiv:1611.01549. doi:10.1145/2998181.2998342.
  20. ^ "Pony Town". IGDB. Retrieved 2025-05-22.
  21. ^ Scotellaro, Shaun (2016-08-15). "Be a Pony in PONY TOWN". Equestria Daily. Retrieved 2025-05-22.
  22. ^ Mullis, Justin P (2015). Playing Ponies: A Critical Evaluation of Religious Elements and Gender Politics at Work in "Brony" Fandom. Religious Studies (MA thesis). Charlotte: University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
  23. ^ Jones, Bethan (2015). "My Little Pony, tolerance is magic: Gender policing and Brony anti-fandom". Journal of Popular Television. 3 (1): 119–125. doi:10.1386/jptv.3.1.119_1.
  24. ^ Cooper, Caren (December 20, 2016). Citizen Science: How Ordinary People are Changing the Face of Discovery. ABRAMS, Incorporated. p. 115. ISBN 9781468314144.
  25. ^ Ellis, Bill (2015). "What Bronies See When They Brohoof: Queering Animation on the Dark and Evil Internet". The Journal of American Folklore. 128 (509): 298–314. doi:10.5406/jamerfolk.128.509.0298.
  26. ^ Morris, Jill (2011). Gender and Race, Online Communities, and Composition Classrooms (PhD dissertation). Detroit: Wayne State University. pp. 170–173.
  27. ^ Scotellaro, Shaun (2024-01-08). "Ponychan Releases Final Statement as Doors Close". Equestria Daily. Retrieved 2025-05-19.
  28. ^ Wennemer, Rob (2012-06-29). "Pittsburgh guys profess love for My Little Pony". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 2012-06-29.
  29. ^ a b Mountford, J.B (2015). Creating Masculinities Online: Bronies and The Red Pill. School of Media, Film and Music (Master's thesis). University of Sussex.
  30. ^ Robertson, Venetia Laura Delano (January 2014). "Of ponies and men: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the Brony fandom". International Journal of Cultural Studies. 17 (1). SAGE Publishing: 21–37. doi:10.1177/1367877912464368. S2CID 146577717.
  31. ^ Jung, Soo keung (2014-05-10). Global Audience Participation in the Production and Consumption of Gangnam Style. Department of Communication (Thesis). Georgia State University. Retrieved 2025-04-10.{{cite thesis}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  32. ^ Berg, Peter (April 2013). "My Little Pony takes Internet by storm" (PDF). Young D.C. No. 1. p. 7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-12-09.
  33. ^ Crome, Andrew (2019). "Cosplay in the pulpit and ponies at prayer: Christian faith and lived religion in wider fan culture" (PDF). Culture and Religion. 20 (2): 19. doi:10.1080/14755610.2019.1624268.
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