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is an animated children's television series produced by Hasbro that ran from 2010 to 2019 as part of the My Little Pony toy franchise. The series tied in with the 2010 relaunch of dolls, play sets and original programming for the American children's cable channel The Hub (later rebranded as Hub Network, and later, Discovery Family). Lauren Faust was selected as the creative developer and executive producer for the show based on her previous experience with other animated children's shows such as The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends on Cartoon Network. 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 girl" images, adding adventure and humorous elements to keep parents interested.
The series initially received widespread praise from both television critics and parental groups. It also found a large audience of adult Internet users in late 2010 and early 2011, forming a subculture. These fans, mostly consisting of adult men, were drawn to the show's main characters (collectively known as the Mane Six), stories, animation style and the influence of the show's propagation as an Internet meme. The fandom adopted the name bronies, a portmanteau of Bro culture and pony. The term pegasister, a portmanteau of pegasus and sister, is sometimes used to describe female fans of the series, though the majority of female fans prefer to identify themselves as bronies and reject the label of pegasister. Though initially considered to propagate the humorous and ironic concept of adults enjoying a show intended for young girls, the fandom gradually showed over time a deeper, genuine appreciation for the show far beyond this concept, a trend that has come to be known as "new sincerity". Fans have created in , , , gaming and video based on the show, and fan conventions for the show and have around the show and those that create it. However, the fandom has from the media and who have derided the older demographic's embrace of a television series marketed towards young girls as well as mass amounts of fan-produced pornographic artwork and literature by bronies.
The appreciation of the show by an older audience came as a surprise to Hasbro, Faust, and others involved with its development, but they have embraced the older fans while also staying focused on the show's intended audience. Such reciprocity has included participation in fan conventions by the show's voice actors and producers, recognition of the brony fandom in official promotional material, and incorporating background characters popularized by the fans (such as the fandom-named "Derpy Hooves") into in-jokes within the show. As a result of these efforts in part, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has become a major commercial success with the series becoming the highest rated original production in Hub Network's broadcast history.
The number of Friendship Is Magic posts drew attention on the site. Fans of the show defended it against various trolling attacks from other 4chan boards, leading to a temporary ban on the discussion of anything related to ponies. Christopher Poole, the founder of 4chan, briefly acknowledged the popularity of the show on the site at the 2011 South by Southwest festival. On February 16, 2012, Poole created /mlp/, a dedicated board for discussion of the show and its fandom. Though the discussion of the show continued at 4chan, fans created other venues to discuss it, and the fandom spread to other Internet forums.
Two informal surveys of 2,300 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 survey with over 21,000 respondents showed similar numbers, and highlighted that the majority of fans were in the 15–30 age range, with the average age between 19 and 20, and over 65% were heterosexual. Further, using the Jungian personality test, the survey revealed that the largest fraction of respondents (approximately 27%) fell into the "INTJ" classification, which normally only occurs in 1–3% of the population, according to the surveyors. Many in the fandom who had difficulty in meeting others or being treated fairly by others found the fandom as a way to meet people with similar interests and become more social. Hub Network's CEO and President Margaret Loesch, who was the executive producer of the 1980s and 1990s animated My Little Pony television shows, noted that there were male fans of those past shows, but there are considerably more for Friendship Is Magic due to the quality of the show and the influence of social media and the Internet.
A fan-conducted "herd census" suggested that, , there were between 7 and 12.4 million people in the United States that would identify themselves as bronies. A more detailed study, "The Brony Study", was being conducted in 2012 by Dr. Patrick Edwards, a psychology professor at Wofford College with his neuropsychologist associate Dr. Redden. The two had initially compiled one of the aforementioned informal surveys and Edwards has presented the results at the ongoing brony conventions. Edwards noted that the brony culture provided "the opportunity to study a fan phenomenon from its inception", and planned to continue the survey to watch the evolution of the culture. Professor emeritus Bill Ellis of Penn State University has compared the brony culture to that of otaku, fans of Japanese anime. Ellis, speaking at the 2012 AnimeNEXT convention, considered that both bronies and otaku fans are "psychologically and developmentally normal" and are simply "non-majoritarian" in their choice of active interests. Ellis noted that fans of both groups often are ridiculed for their interest in media targeted for the opposite gender.
Though the initial growth of the fandom may have come from 4chan participants enjoying the ironic nature of grown men enjoying a show for girls, the fandom continued to grow based on sincere appreciation of the work. Robert Thompson, a professor of media studies at Syracuse University, stated that "It's one thing for guys to like motorcycles and muscle cars and soccer. For a guy to like My Little Pony, it's so out there that it becomes almost avant garde. It has a hip quality to it." According to Angela Watchcutter of Wired, the fandom is an example of New Sincerity, where these older viewers watch the show "un-ironically" and "without guilt" breaking gender stereotypes, furthermore creating new material around it. Prof. Roberta Pearson of the University of Nottingham in film and television studies stated that "This is a level of fan devotion I've not seen before", while Prof. Charles Soukup of the University of Northern Colorado in communication studies suggested that this effort is an indication of the "ultra-cult era" that bronies exhibit, where "media consumers discover extremely unexpected and obscure media texts to cultivate uniqueness and distinctiveness for their mediated identities". Jessica Klein, writing for Salon, noted that the fandom was an especially welcoming space for female fans in comparison to other male-dominated fandoms.
/mlp/, the My Little Pony board on 4chan, was created in 2012 following the growing popularity of pony-related content on 4chan. Derpibooru, the largest imageboard for My Little Pony fan art, (2019). 9781476663715, McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers. ISBN 9781476663715 hosts over 3.2 million images as of September 2025. Fimfiction is the largest repository for My Little Pony fan fiction and hosts over 155,000 published stories . Ponychan (which shut down in January 2024) was one of the earliest dedicated imageboards for the brony fandom that was created as a response to the backlash and resentment from non-brony 4chan users. Multiple are dedicated to My Little Pony, with r/mylittlepony serving as the main community hub. YouTube hosts numerous My Little Pony-focused channels dedicated to analysis, reviews, animations, and music.
Other brony conventions include Everfree Northwest in Seattle, Washington, Midwestria in Chicago, Illinois, Canterlot Gardens in Cleveland, Ohio, Equestria LA in Los Angeles, BABSCon in Burlingame, California, Ponycon NY in the metropolitan New York City region, BronyCAN in British Columbia, Canada, GalaCon in Ludwigsburg, Germany, BUCK in Manchester, United Kingdom, PonyCon AU in Sydney, Australia, Crystal Mountain Pony Con in Salt Lake City, Utah and Pacific PonyCon in San Diego, California. Nearly a dozen brony conventions were planned in 2012. In addition, established My Little Pony conventions prior to the Friendship Is Magic show, such as the My Little Pony Fair and UK PonyCon, saw increases in their numbers due to the attendance of bronies. A long-running annual art show, the "My Little Pony Project", where artists re-imagine My Little Pony figurines and toys into works of art, also saw additional attendance and contributions from the brony community.
In January 2014, 11-year-old Michael Morones of North Carolina attempted suicide after being bullied by his schoolmates for watching the show. His subsequent hospitalization spurred a significant response from the brony community, including members of the show's cast and crew. They launched a charity drive to assist with medical expenses and establish a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting bullying. Within a week, these efforts raised over $48,000, and exceeded $72,000 within a month. Morones, whose suicide attempt left him in a vegetative state, died on October 27, 2021, at the age of 19.
tend to be non-profit organizations with a heavy focus on charity. In 2015, BronyCon's charity auction raised $30,645 for CureSearch for Children's Cancer.
Videos that incorporate footage from the show, including music videos, parodies and remakes of movie and video game trailers, are posted regularly on YouTube. One early video that caught media attention was made by high school student Stephen Thomas, using science to dissect some of the physical impossibilities on My Little Pony as part of a class presentation; it was later featured on the Tosh.0 website. Remixed versions of professional works using Friendship Is Magic footage have been noticed by their creators; filmmaker Edgar Wright noted My Little Pony versions of the trailers for his films Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Hot Fuzz. Top Gears UK blog team and the UK edition of the Top Gear magazine noted a video using clips of their show featuring pony characters. A fan-made Friendship Is Magic version of South Korean rapper Psy's "Gangnam Style" music video incorporating an "invisible horse dance" has been highlighted by media outlets as one of the top takes on the video. One fan, Zachary Rich, created a full-length Flash-based fan film, "Double Rainboom", as part of his college coursework at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Pony-based videos of "Weird Al" Yankovic's songs that Yankovic had highlighted in his Twitter feed led to discussions between the musician and the show directors, and eventually guest appearances in the show in the fourth season episode "Pinkie Pride" and the ninth season episode "The Last Laugh" as the character Cheese Sandwich.
Some fans have created video games based on Friendship Is Magic, such as the fighting game My Little Pony: Fighting Is Magic (which eventually became Them's Fightin' Herds), modifications of existing games like Team Fortress 2 and , Hearts of Iron IV, or crossover artwork between the animated show and video game settings, including "Turnabout Storm", a crossover with the Ace Attorney series. Flash-based applications allow fans to create their own pony characters in the artistic style of the show.
In the 2020s, Friendship Is Magic fan music continues to attract critical and mainstream attention.
Faust noted the cynicism about the brony fandom, and commented that in considering the idea of grown men watching a show for little girls, "They think there's something wrong with that, something devious about it"; she noted that it was "upsetting to me that people jump to those conclusions". Faust believes that her future animated shows aimed at girls will be easier to sell considering the male adult fandom of Friendship Is Magic, and that the type of programming is not as great a risk as is perceived. After Hasbro issued a cease and desist to the Fighting Is Magic project over the use of copyrighted and trademarked characters, Faust offered to provide the developers with original character arts to allow them to continue to develop the game without copyright issues.
The internet groups surrounding the fandom have enabled the show's producers to quickly assess their work; director and producer Jayson Thiessen stated "As soon as the episode airs, I can go online and see people's responses in real time". Many of the creative staff are on various social media services and directly interact with the fandom, including doing questions-and-answer sessions live during the broadcast of new episodes. Daniel Ingram, who writes and composes some of the , was pleased with the fan's reaction to the series' music but said, "I never forget about the original demographic of our show, which is six-year-old girls. Just because it's for kids... I don't think that influences me in terms of how sophisticated I want to make the music."
The voice actors also showed appreciation for the adult and male fans. Andrea Libman, who voices Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy, found that more people wanted to meet her as a result of the show and commented that among the fan community, "there's some really talented artists doing really amazing stuff". Tara Strong, who voices Twilight Sparkle, used Twitter to interact with fans and started a "Twilightlicious" meme trend. Ashleigh Ball, who voices Rainbow Dash and , attributes increased attention her band Hey Ocean! has received to the brony community. Michelle Creber, who voices Apple Bloom and provided the singing voice for Sweetie Belle, has collaborated with fan musicians in order to create new works.
John de Lancie was enthralled by the sudden surge in fandom from the brony community after the broadcast of the two-part second season premiere featuring his voice work as the main antagonist Discord (which Faust had created after a character previously played by de Lancie, Q from ), and has embraced the attention. He compared the male fandom of a girl-oriented show to the large number of female fans of the original Star Trek series, and the parallels of what the fans did to support the respective shows. De Lancie helped to make a Kickstarter-funded documentary at the fourth BronyCon convention about the growing fandom, . Faust, de Lancie and Strong were credited as executive producers on the project. The funding drive ended with over $320,000 in pledges, making it the second most funded film project on Kickstarter at the time. After its release, the project has announced plans to remake the documentary to incorporate additional footage taken at European fandom gatherings. This has been shown at film festivals in 2013 and released for home media distribution.
Similarly, Ball's surprise at the appreciation of the fandom led her to participate in another documentary, A Brony Tale, directed by Brent Hodge, recording her participation at the January 2012 BronyCon event in New York City, as well as discussions with members of the fandom. The film, which was picked up for distribution by Morgan Spurlock, debuted to critical praise at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, and reached theatrical and home media markets in July 2014.
At times, portions of the brony fandom have reacted passionately to changes in the direction of the show, such as in the change to "" involving the character Derpy Hooves. Similarly, the Season 3 finale episode "Magical Mystery Cure" ended with main character Twilight Sparkle transforming into a winged unicorn (alicorn) and being named a princess. This change was revealed prior to the episode's airing and a portion of the fandom were critical of the change, referring to it as a "jump the shark" moment for the series while others considered that it was a significant change of one of the show's more popular characters that most of the brony fandom could relate with. The showrunners stated in response that while Twilight's physical appearance would change, this would not otherwise alter her personality or the general concept of the show. On the announcement of the feature-length animated film, in which the pony characters are re-envisioned as human teenage girls attending high school, a large fraction of the adult fandom reacted negatively towards the premise. Several fans stated that this was a corporate play by Hasbro and veered away from the direction that Faust had envisioned for the show at its onset, while others commented on the clichéd aspect of a high school comedy, the overly thin appearance of the human characters, and other factors. The fan site Equestria Daily had issued a caution to its readers to not lash out at the show's creators who had also worked on the film, and other more predominant figures of the fandom urged others to continue to support the staff. Equestria Daily's Shaun Scotellaro considered the fandom's behavior to be "your typical overreaction to something changing in your favorite series".
In the first episode, a background gray Pegasus pony is shown in one scene with a cross-eyed stare, which was the result of an overlooked animator's joke. The 4chan boards quickly dubbed the character "Derpy Hooves" (based on the Internet slang word "") and created a more detailed personality for her, despite having minimal screen time. Faust responded to the fans, and the production team has kept the "Derpy" character with the cross-eyed look starting with "Feeling Pinkie Keen", where the team incorporated her into a slapstick Visual gag. The character has since become a mascot of the fandom. According to supervising director Jayson Thiessen, the teams considered the character "like a little Easter egg for people to catch".
At the conclusion of the first season, one of the show's animators confirmed that "Derpy" would be a scripted background character in the second season, and was a part of several sight gags. In the original broadcast of the second season episode "The Last Roundup" as well as on the home media release The Friendship Express, "Derpy" was called out by name by Rainbow Dash and was given lines (as voiced by St. Germain) and klutzy mannerisms as a direct call-out to the brony fandom. Though many fans appreciated the inclusion, some viewers had a negative response to the character, believing her portrayal insulted the mentally handicapped. Hasbro subsequently modified these scenes and while "Derpy" is still present in subsequent broadcast and digital versions of the episode, she is unnamed and a different voice is used. According to Hasbro's Nicole Agnello, "Some viewers felt that aspects of the episode 'The Last Roundup' did not stay true to the core message of friendship which is the heart and soul of the series. Hasbro Studios decided to make slight audio alterations to this single episode." Despite Hasbro's intentions, some members of the brony community were disappointed to which they made efforts to restore the original voice. "Derpy" remained in background cameos throughout other episodes in season 2 and 3. Within season 4, Derpy was re-introduced, remaining silent and unnamed but with her original wall-eyed look, as a side character in the main story of "". The appearance was planned as a big reveal for the brony fans, according to co-director Jim Miller, and that "she is here to stay" according to Hasbro's vice president for entertainment Mike Vogel. The Derpy character is used often on Hasbro's marketing of the show. For example, Hasbro's exclusive pony toy at San Diego Comic-Con and My Little Pony Fair in 2012 was based on "Derpy", and has the same cross-eye look.
Other non-speaking background characters that caught the attention of the fandom also had expanded roles. For example, a silent female unicorn pony character sporting neon colors and sunglasses and manning a DJ mixer that briefly appeared in "Suited for Success", was given the stage name "DJ P0N-3" in an online poll held by Equestria Daily. This name was reused in the "Equestria Girls" advertisement. The character also appeared as a DJ in the season 2 finale "A Canterlot Wedding – Part 2" and became part of the new release of My Little Pony toys in late 2012, as well as the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con exclusive figurine. The character additionally had an expanded yet also non-speaking role in the second film .
Fans of the show also nicknamed a male pony character with a brown coat, messy brown mane and an hourglass cutie mark "Doctor Whooves" because of a purported likeness to David Tennant's portrayal of the Doctor from the long-running BBC television series Doctor Who. The character had a minor speaking role in the episode "Call of the Cutie" and a brief role as a time-keeper in the episode "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000". Other licensed media further carry the homage: Enterplay's trading card line associates the character, named "Time Turner", as dealing with "all things timey-wimey" around Ponyville, alluding to a famous quote from the episode "Blink", while one of the store-exclusive covers for the Friendship Is Magic comic set the Doctor Whooves character among many iconic Doctor Who elements. The character was openly named Doctor Hooves in The Elements of Harmony: The Official Guidebook, published by Little, Brown and Company. (2013). 9780316247542, Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 9780316247542 Professor Colin Burnett of Washington University in St. Louis considered the adoption of these fan names and characteristics within the show as demonstration of co-creative collaboration that can exist in modern media, emphasized by unexpected demographics of bronies that helped to bolster the creators' success with the work.
As a tribute to the older fandom as well as all other fans of the show, the milestone 100th episode "", which was first broadcast in 2015, featured several of the background characters that the fans had made popular, including Derpy (now named "Muffins"), Doctor Whooves and DJ P0N-3 among others.
Before the brony fandom arose, Hasbro had introduced new My Little Pony toys, including convention-exclusives, at San Diego Comic-Con. With a brony element in attendance, the convention-exclusive toys have reflected the brony culture; a large poster was published in 2011 that included several background characters that had attracted the fandom's interest. A toy of a pegasus pony character named Derpy Hooves was made available for both the convention and My Little Pony Fair in 2012. Toys "R" Us provided early, limited numbers of new toy based on the zebra character Zecora, due for release in late 2012 by Hasbro. Both Zecora and "Derpy" toys sold out within the first day of the convention. In 2014, Shapeways announced an association with Hasbro to create 3D printed versions of Friendship Is Magic characters, with fan artists creating and selling their designs under Hasbro's license and approval. Shapeways had previously published fan-financed and -created models without Hasbro's license before being asked to cease and desist such practice; the new approach with Hasbro's blessing has been seen as helping to break down the walls between content and fans in the age of social media.
Teenage and adult fans have shown interest in clothing with images from the show; Erin Comella, brand manager for My Little Pony, said that these fans are "literally dressed in the brand". Hasbro has been providing its licensed clothing vendors such as Hot Topic with My Little Pony-themed shirts and other apparel for all genders and multiple age groups. In part of the older fanbase, Hasbro has come to consider My Little Pony as a "lifestyle" brand, and , has arranged over 200 licenses across fifteen categories of products. According to Julie Duffy, Hasbro's vice president of global brand publicity, while their primary market is the young demographic, "Hasbro found ways to strike the right balance by working with licensees to offer their adult fans exciting merchandise geared just for them". Though Hasbro has not revealed how much of My Little Pony product sales are bolstered by the brony fandom, Caitlin Dewey of The Washington Post suggests that the continued success of the franchise four years after its introduction is tied in part to bronies' interest in the show and products, and Hasbro's williness to market products towards the adult audience.
Hasbro and Hub Network have used advertising parodying others' works that are more geared towards the adult fans. Hub Network used a promotional billboard in Los Angeles showing the pony characters parodying the films Bridesmaids and Poltergeist. Hub Network also made a parody of Apple's App Store, which included the phrase, "There's a pony for that." A promotional campaign leading up to the second season finale, "A Canterlot Wedding", in which Twilight's brother Shining Armor marries Princess Cadance, parodied elements of the 2011 British royal wedding, including the placement of an advertisement in the New York Times wedding announcement section.
At the onset of the fandom, Hasbro was generally tolerant of uploads of content and derivative works on sites such as YouTube. However, in late 2011, a fan-run website called "Ponyarchive" that was reposting for no cost the complete high-definition episodes that were being sold on iTunes closed down after receiving cease and desist letters from Hasbro. The otherwise "hands-off" policy has enabled the growth of the fandom. In another case, Hasbro was required to take legal action to protect the My Little Pony trademark against a group working on a massively multiplayer online game, MLP: Online, though the developers, after working with Hasbro's legal team, are seeking to develop a new Friendship Is Magic-related game without the trademark issues. Though many fan-created videos combine copyright footage of Friendship Is Magic with adult elements from films inappropriate for children like Inglourious Basterds or foul language from musical artists such as Wu-Tang Clan, Hasbro has not taken a stance against these videos and has recognized that the parodies and remixes form a culture of participation that has helped to draw larger attention to the show. In November 2012, Hasbro sent a cease-and-desist letter to MLP Online, and in February 2013, sent one to the producers of .
A monthly My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic comic began its run in November 2012 by IDW Publishing. The comic, like the show, is aimed to appeal to younger children with their parents, but includes various pop culture and fandom nods to draw in the older readers. IDW has reported that over 100,000 copies of the first issue were pre-ordered, outselling numerous other comic for that month, and making it the best selling issue in IDW's history, as well as one of the best selling single issue comics of 2012. IDW have made plans to reprint the first issue to meet further demand as well as republish the first set as a standalone volume early in 2013. The monthly comic and its separate "micro-series", featuring single-issue stories that focus on one character, have regularly been along the top 100 issues sold each month, one of the few non-DC Comics, non-Marvel Comics comics outside of The Walking Dead that appear in this list, and remain IDW's top-selling publication.
In addition to releasing official digital albums of songs from the show due to brony demand, Hasbro has worked with Lakeshore Records to create an album of EDM remixes of the show's songs, entitled DJPON3 Presents My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Remixed; the album is inspired by the numerous fan remixes.
Some media have been critical of the adult-oriented material created by fans. In some cases, these videos may appear in Internet searches that children may perform while looking for online copies of the program or while searching for images of characters from the show, forcing parents to have to discuss pornography and sex with their children. For example, the parody series PONY.MOV, animated by animator Max Gilardi in the style of John Kricfalusi, places the characters in explicit adult situations and was described by the web site io9 as "disgusting ... and most certainly NSFW".
A study found that "a particularly extreme subset" of the brony fandom shows characteristics of hegemonic masculinity, where male members strive to keep their majority in the numbers by purposely excluding and alienating females. In addition, Vice reported on alt-right attempts to infiltrate brony and furry fandoms, where edgy and politically incorrect memes proliferated. In Rolling Stone, journalist Lauren Orsini acknowledged that extremist subsets of the fandom had existed since at least the mid-2010s.
The adult fandom has gained media attention through outlets such as Wired, Fox News Channel and The Wall Street Journal. Stephen Colbert gave a shout-out to the brony fandom at least twice on his comedy news show, The Colbert Report, although since then his positive connection with the fan base has become questionable. Erin Burnett of CNN's Outfront reported on the 2012 Summer BronyCon, and ended the segment with a recolored character from the show representing the pony version of herself. The fans gave her some artwork of her character as a way of "welcoming her to the herd". NPR's comedy radio show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! highlighted the brony fandom in an episode in June 2011, and the following week quizzed former US President Bill Clinton about elements from the show during a telephone interview segment called "Not My Job"; Clinton correctly answered the three multiple choice questions, leading at least one journalist to jokingly refer to him as a brony. An episode of Hot in Cleveland dealing with fan conventions included references to the brony fandom.
Lexicographer Grant Barrett listed "brony" as a memorable new word of 2011. Time named "the bronies" as the ninth-best meme of 2011, the Internet meme research site Know Your Meme listed it among its top ten memes of 2011, and PC Magazine named it one of 2011's top memes.
The Pirate Party Germany's parliamentary group in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin (the Berlin Landtag) has insisted on the inclusion of a break called "pony time", in which an episode from the series is shown, during their meetings at their parliamentary office, which displeased many other members in the Berlin parliament. The internet activist group Anonymous used the character Rainbow Dash to deface the website of the Social Democratic Party of Austria in 2011 and 2012. A teenage white hat hacker used the name "Pinkie Pie" for anonymity and a Fan art of the character wielding an axe as part of a successful entry in an early 2012 contest sponsored by Google Chrome to break the security of the web browser; the same user also was the first to break the security in a second contest held later in 2012, and found an important security flaw in the Linux kernel. A May 2013 update to Google Hangouts included an easter egg that would have Friendship Is Magic-inspired ponies run across the chat window. A similar update in August 2013 as part of YouTube's "Geek Week" added two easter eggs, one that would cause ponies to cross the screen on searching for "bronies", and a second that, if searching on a number of different pony names like "Twilight Sparkle", would change the site's title bar to a representative color of that pony.
An article that appeared in the New York Times on December 26, 2011, "Navigating Love and Autism" by Amy Harmon, described how a young woman with Asperger syndrome used My Little Pony characters to relieve stress. She visualized the character Twilight Sparkle whenever she "found herself in a bad-mood rut". The story misidentified Twilight Sparkle as Fluttershy on initial publication and the paper issued a correction, which some journalists have jokingly considered as "the best New York Times correction ever", though others saw it as a sign of the journalistic integrity of the Times. Harmon was contacted by fans about the mistake, and said, "I hate to get anything wrong, but I confess to some enjoyment in finding the right way to phrase this one." In 2015, the New York Times reported that Dylann Roof, the sole perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting, was a fan of My Little Pony, but later corrected itself after recognizing it had been duped in an experiment run by a blogger who had faked the claim but made it as credible as possible as to test how little fact checking major news sources were doing on a high-interest topic.
Lena Hall, a Broadway actress and singer, stated she watches the show as it makes her feel "super happy" and appreciates the lessons the show teaches, and considers herself a pegasister. In winning the 2014 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, Hall ended her acceptance speech mentioning the television show's subtitle, "Friendship Is Magic". Over four months after her shout-out at the Tony Award, Hall announced on her Twitter that she would be a guest star in the show's fifth season, and soon appeared in the episode "The Mane Attraction" as Coloratura/Rara. Upon the episode's premiere, Hall live streamed her reaction to the episode with her niece on Periscope and letting viewers ask questions during the commercial breaks, she went into detail about her experiences behind the scenes of the production of the episode and her history with the show itself, admitting to binge-watching the first three seasons of the show when she first started to watch it.
After a call-out to bronies on Twitter by fellow professional wrestler Dolph Ziggler, Xavier Woods publicly identified as a brony in March 2015. 2K Tournament of Champions: Xavier Woods 6 March 2015 (wearing a BRONY shirt) "Xavier Woods here, reigning and defending 2K champion. This year at WrestleMania, people are gonna come and try to take my title, take my championship. That cannot be done, you ban't neat me! Brony: don't care, what up? Step up, and get bought!" Woods and his fellow members of The New Day, a wrestling stable who were WWE Raw Tag Team Champions at the time (and would go on to become the longest reigning team in WWE history), subsequently added unicorn imagery as a part of their gimmick, even claiming to possess "unicorn magic" to help them in their matches. They also named one of their signature moves the Unicorn Stampede.
Actor Billy Bob Thornton admitted to watching the show during a 2016 interview with GQ. He and his daughter Bella used to watch My Little Pony, which she eventually grew out of, and when searching for the series to watch again, came across Friendship Is Magic and started watching it with her. He also liked the show's positive messages about how the world works, pointing to "The Cutie Map" as an example. On an episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers, Thornton also claimed that while his daughter's favorite character is Twilight Sparkle, his favorites were Fluttershy (who he said was his favorite because "she talks like Marilyn Monroe") and Rainbow Dash.
William Shatner confirmed himself to be a brony through his personal Twitter, and had been a guest star in the show's 's episode "The Perfect Pear", along with Felicia Day, who appeared in the very same episode.
The CEO of Valve, Gabe Newell, has stated on multiple occasions that he is a fan of the show and is indeed a brony.
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