My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a Canadian/American flash cartoon series, produced by Studio B Productions, based on the My Little Pony universe. It was developed for television by Lauren Faust, who also did major work on both The Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Since its on-air debut in October 2010, the series has become extremely popular across the Internet. Fans outside the show’s target demographic, especially teen and adult male fans, have come to be known as “bronies”. Female fans of the show may also be referred to as “pegasisters”.
History: On October 10, 2010, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was aired as part of the debut of the new television network, The Hub, which replaced Discovery Kids. On October 19, 2010, Cartoon Brew wrote an article about the show titled “The End of the Creator-Driven Era in TV Animation”, which had an alarmist tone. Threads on 4chan‘s comics and cartoon board, /co/, attacked the article for this reason. The article and related threads generated /co/’s initial interest in the show, spurring several members to watch the first episode. After the second episode aired on October 22nd, threads about ponies started to boom on 4chan, gaining the show fans outside of its target demographic. Since then, the fandom has exploded all over the Internet.
Spread:The sudden and overwhelming influx of MLP-related media on 4chan soon led to an internal division between bronies and those who disapproved of the fandom, which in turn gave rise to the expansion of the fandom outside of the imageboard. Among the first MLP hub sites to emerge were Ponychan, a spin-off imageboard dedicated to hosting MLP-related media, and Equestria Daily, a portal news site for all things related to the fandom, from artworks and fanfiction to news, episode reviews, and interviews. Created in January 2011 by 23-year-old college student Shaun Scotellaro, Equestria Daily receives more than 175,000 visits a day.
Meanwhile, the fandom also spread to major social networking, microblogging, and aggregate news sites, most notably through single topic blogs on tumblr and on reddit, which is now home to over 50 subreddits dedicated toMLP. In response to the growing demand for MLP-related media, Cheezburger launched the Memebase spin-off site My Little Brony in July 2011.
