Oh my Lord. 

Maybe they'd be challenging masculinity, y'know, if they didn't intentionally pick a masculine name for themselves and build up a subculture wall around themselves.  If they were challenging gender roles, then they'd just be guys who like this show and if people challenged them they'd said "whatever, I'll like what I like".  Bronies didn't do this though.  They essentially build an entire group around reasserting their masculinity over the show instead of really believing that the show isn't a threat to their masculinity.  Bronies are also frequently misogynist and get upset when the show doesn't cater to them (the adult male audience).  They call for the creators to reinstate a character that was hurting the feelings of actual children by being a negative portrayal of people with mental disabilities.  There's nothing wrong with an adult man liking this show, but the identity of Brony is poisonous as heck and I'm really sick of seeing them pretend like they're some sort of anti-gender role crusaders when they spend the bulk of their time reinforcing gender roles.

They could try redefining masculinity in a way that didn't involve taking over a rare show aimed at providing positive role models for young girls and making it all about adult males. As if there wasn't already enough media aimed at their demographic. Not only that but a huge number of 'bronies' openly and proudly talk about masturbating to ponies (which they refer to as 'clopping') and drawing really disturbing porn of the characters (many of whom are literally portrayed as babies and toddlers.) They're not redefining masculinity, they're just proving the negative stereotype that men love to barge in and take over everything while simultaneously jacking off over it. 

No, they're still perpetuating the same male nerd bullshit with the added bonus of sexualizing animated ponies. 

Bronies = MRAs

The whole brony thing comes from places like 4chan and reddit and as such is filled with misogyny and racism.  It's pretty common for bronies to complain about the lack of male main characters, and they flipped out when the show named a "retarded" pony something other than Derpy.

Why is it that when men "change the definition of masculinity" they take things from children instead of adult women?

 Not every "brony" is creating or consuming pony porn. Not every man or boy who watches My Little Pony uses 4chan or even calls them selves a "brony". The fact is though that 4chan and reddit are popular sites and as such become cultural barometers and trend setters, but they're not the world of men, not even the online world of men.

 My little pony is popular with adults (male and female) and boys, who would normally stay clear, because it has high production values, from the design to the scripting. It's fast paced and funny and thinks outside it's core demographic (kids) to appeal to older children and (crucially) parents, unlike its predecessor which traded on bright colours and twee jokes alone. 

 Now if the Fems and the MRAs want to hiss and posture like the Jets and Sharks to gain control of the basketball court that is the internet, then why bother even trying to mitigate it, but does anyone else want to talk about how this trend is uplifting for us all?

Hella binary.

Saying, "Hey we're totes menly menz (hence "bros"), even when we watch shows with ponies and rainbows" isn't really challenging masculinity. It's more pushing home the point that masculine = things men do = cool.  And so feminine = things women do = uncool. 

If this was really the challenge to gender roles that the video claims it was, the brony community wouldn't be obsessed with how there are STRAIGHT MEN loving MLP and there would be a word for just ADULT fans of the show. 

This is possibly the worst thing about the bronies, they think they're on the forefront of challenging gender norms and won't fucking shut up about their persecution. Call me when you're getting beaten and murdered regularly or have a standoff with the cops.

A shitload of guys enjoyed the hell of Powerpuff Girls but there was not yet enough critical mass of insular internet petri dishes to build up the brony's distinguishing insufferable persecution complex.

What's cool though is that they also co-opt the entire cartoon to be a thing for their explicitly male culture, so that the rare and occasional grown woman who enjoys the show is the transgressive "girl brony"

"People think they must be sexual deviants, but they're not. they're mostly heterosexual men in their twenties." Great, that's just, that's just great. Jesus christ. 

It's also "really cool" that he makes like zero reference to challenges to gender norms occurring within the last 80 years, and keeps referring to the binary as "little girls/adult men" totally unaware that "adult women" exist.

Coming from a manga/ anime nerd perspective, this is old hat. There are plenty of series in the "magical girl" genre whose intended audience is 30 year old male otakus rather than 12 year old girls (say, the über famous "Nanoha", or "Lucky Star",  or "K-ON!", or "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" or "Black Rock Shooter"), and conversely, there are plenty of manga series in the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine who are geared towards a very important secondary female fandom (the biggest recent example have been "Prince of Tennis" and "Katekyo Hitman Reborn", but the tendence started when older series like "Captain Tsubasa" and "Rurouni Kenshin" gained an unexpected estrogen brigade).

Then there's also the real-life moé of otaku supergroup AKB48, which has taken  over the otaku music fandom like you wouldn't believe, with songs like this.

Nowadays the prevalence of moé (cutesy female characters designed to appeal too older males as "big brother/ little sister" virtual relationships) is so big, it has become a cliché to complain that moé --the pandering to male otaku with cutesy frilly girly stuff-- is killing anime.

I know several adult male fans of the show, and I have met quite a few more at conventions. While I have made fun of them in the past, just because I tease my friends, I actually respect their love of the show. They have just as valid reasons for being fans of this show as any other comic or fiction available. In general my Bronie friends are kind, generous and fun men who believe that people are generally good.

Yes Hottob, I think they do need a name for themselves other than, My Little Pony Fans. Many fan clubs have names for themselves. Names such as The 501st Legion lets you know a person is a very particular kind of Star Wars fan. Browncoats are fans of the television show Firefly, but they are also more community service oriented than the casual fan. So, the fact that Bronies have taken that name distinguishes them very clearly from young female fans, or people who have become fans of the show by random exposure.

Quite fittingly, I feel Disqus needs a HerpDerp extension.

It should be mentioned that the brony community does not exclude women (some female fans refer to themselves as bronies, some prefer the feminized "pegasister"). There are plenty of females (myself included) on online pony forums and blogs, and in my experience they are not hassled because of their gender- an oddity in areas of the internet mainly populated with college-age guys. Male fans just recieve more attention from the media.

Kill all "bronies".

They're not redefining masculinity - they're just crowding into a traditionally female space while screaming "I'M A MAN! I'M A MALE! I HAVE A PENIS! LET'S MASCULINIZE EVERYTHING!" and it makes me sad. :( For instance, in FIM fanfiction, no one writes original female characters; they're ALL male. And there are standard, universally recognized and common male versions of the main characters that people use just like the canon characters (Dusk Shine, Elusive, Rainbow Blitz, etc). This is because, while loving something made to celebrate femininity and empower girls, the bronies are intensely insecure about their norm-breaking and have to pump in as much testosterone as possible to protect their male egos. And in the process, they're spilling super-concentrated misogyny, homophobia and racism EVERYWHERE. 

PS - brony is not gender neutral and referring to female fans by that term erases us. Stop insisting it applies to everyone.- an adult female fan

Meh.  No, it's the same definition of masculinity, but it's in reference to a "girl" thing.  This is no different than trying to market makeup and nail polish to men while calling it "war paint."  Men being more comfortable with "lady things" has been trendy for years (I remember being in middle school and "guyliner" being the quite popular), as long as everyone can change the name to something MANLY and make sure that everyone knows IT'S NOT FOR GURLZ.  Now if men sat down side by side with women and girls to watch MLP and didn't have to call themselves "bronies" or scramble over themselves to devalue the target demographic (girls under 12), that might challenge someone's definition of masculinity.  But IMO, if there's still such a struggle to prove that everything must be MANLY AND TUFF to be worthwhile, even if it's pastel sparkly ponies for children, there's not much of a challenge there.

No. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes interacting with a bunch of bronies know that they are the most disgusting (I mean this physically. They're often very ugly, unwashed, wear fedoras, wear ill-fitting clothes), often most sexist, racist, ableist pieces of trash the internet has to offer. Their obsessions with saying I'M A MAN I CAN LIKE PINK PONIES!!!!! doesn't mean that they're any less hypermasculine, or traditionally gendered. 

I wish they'd fall off the face of the earth. 

as a brony (i don't speak for us all we are individuals and as such have individual opinions) i don't care if you need to put a label on whether it's manly or not. before watching the show i might have felt shame but after "joining the herd" i realized that no matter what there was always someone to back me up even if i never met that person face to face. it's amazing how close this community is on top of that. when i meet someone who is a brony for the first time we become instant best friends, or if someone talks bad about a post on the web there are always dozens of people there to defend that pose in a matter of seconds. it's actually quite remarkable how close this community is, i think that if a nation were able to become half this close-knit that nation could fix any problems it had and become an unstoppable juggernaut over-night

They aren't challenging anything. The brony fandom is rife with rape apologists and hipster bigots. It's kind of sick how a small, vocal minority of fans, some rapists, others bigots, and still others pedophiles, are simultaneously praised and promoted and covered up in shame by the same fandom.

There are groups on Tumblr who chronicle their infantile misbehavior, which are updated daily with new content. The implication of people of color being involved in their fandom is met with disgust and then "countered" with scorn and mockery, gay/trans* bashing is rampant, and rape is basically a joke to them. The fandom claims that these are "bad fans," or "cloppers" (a derogatory term used to describe people who masturbate to pony porn, which was soon taken and made into a positive descriptor by cloppers themselves), but it's not- the rape culture and bigotry are just as integral to the brony fandom as the show itself. So many of the memes involving ponies are linked to sexualizing them (and it's not as if the show itself isn't racially problematic- ponies are seen as "white," while zebras and mules are "blacks," and buffalo are "native"- which, true to form, the fans were quick to pick up on to strengthen their beliefs in eugenics and segregation).

There are sane fans (a trait which I attribute to my brony friends), but the fandom is run in such a cult-like fashion that they can't even decry the bad ones out of solidarity - which I'm sure the bad fans are fully aware of, and they exploit the hell out of it.

I guess most fandoms are like this (?), but the brony fandom seems to be unique in how proud they are of it. Being a member of the brony fandom means never having to apologize for or take accountability for antisocial or horrid behavior. The fandom will protect them, invariably, and those who don't are seen as outliers or "not real bronies."

I don't like most bronies, but I think that goes without saying. I'm not too keen on fandoms, either. The sane fans need to step up their game and hold the rabid idiot bronies accountable for their inane, antisocial bullshit, and I think, instead of John de Lancie making a happy-dappy documentary about bronies, a candle needs to be held up to the horrible behavior so people are aware of it. Maybe once they're being scrutinized for their bullshit, the good fans will be more emboldened (or pressured) to address the scumbags.

I've included my name with this post so that, if they so wanted, the rabid fans can retaliate, which will prove to me, and everyone else, the points I've made.

why the hell do adults+teenagers spend their time worshipping a show, about lame cartoon ponies, which is clearly made for little girls? bronies must be little girls themselves.
oh, because it's a good thing to watch? there's better things such as Godzilla (which is and always will be greater than MLP imo) and Pokemon (same as Godzilla)

I say the following as a brony:

I am reminded of Butler's analysis of drag shows; while there might be fluidity between the categories, the categories are still reified.  Bronies are not automatically feminists or accepting of queerness.  Case in point: the Yamino controversy (see http://gawker.com/5889084/bronies-furious-after-minor-my-little-pony-character-is-changed-to-seem-less-mentally-disabled).  The are still mostly masculine men who reject "failed masculinity" (a la Pascoe) and are heteronormative. 

Speaking as, someone who is pretty representative of mainstream bornies, I have few observations:

- The term brony is anickname for the adults in the fandom, most adult female bronies prefer that term over "pegasister."

- I do not sexualize the characters whatsoever. I do not like the fact that there is subculture within the fandom that does so for multiple reasons. In addition to those deviant fans creating the impression that all bronies enjoy this thinly veiled pedophilia, I do not like how these rule 34ists/cloppers demean the idea that females can be lead characters for reasons beyond any sexual ones.

- I actually like the story telling and it speaks to how well crafted the show is that it is enjoyed, in a non-ironic fashion by adult men. Even though all of the main characters are female and are supposed to be girls/young women, we see how very high quality story telling and animation and art in general transcend labels that are created by sociologists, gender study professors and corporate marketing teams.

- I do not, nor have I thought that being a brony was some momentous or courageous act. I do get teased by friends and family, males and females but among males peers at least, teasing is just a part of life, especially if someone deviates from group norms in any way e.g. liking a video game of sports team that is not approved of by the group.

- The American definition of masculinity in the last hundred years or so has been fairly atypical when compared to much of the Western tradition of masculinity. Caring friendships, beauty in self expression, adoration of color in aesthetics and a zest for song and dance were, for the elite at least, hallmarks of masculinity and heterosexual masculinity at that and MLP:FiM is magic reflects that changing trend.