When the Jolly Heretic met the Bronies

 

Edward Dutton finally takes on a jolly topic. Yes, in 2022, he actually posted a clip about - wait for it - Bronies! I commented this peculiar American (and to some extent European) subculture before. It consists of adults who like the children´s show "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" (MLP:FIM). I didn´t know it was still a thing, though.

Unsurprisingly, Dutton reaches the conclusion that many Bronies are autistic and have a strong nostalgia for childhood, when everything was more black-and-white, innocent and predictable. Or so autists tend to think.

Dutton believes that in reality, the Bronies might have had traumatic experiences in childhood and become "stuck" in the pre-trauma phase. He also notes that a very high percentage of MLP:FIM fans claim to be transsexual. And yes, the suspicion that Bronies are really paedophiles is never far away in this presentation... 

Still, a fun diversion on a dark Sunday evening!    

Bronies with fedoras

 

What is a "fedatheist"? See here:

Fedatheist

Note the reference to "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic"! Must have been a popular TV show, LOL. 

Plural positivity

“Tulpamancy: Myths and Facts” is a presentation given at the 2019 Plural Positivity World Conference. Tulpamancy is a form of (purported) magic popular within a peculiar subculture dominated by teenagers and very young adults, a subculture known as tulpamancers. Very little outside information on this phenomenon seems to exist. In this context, a “tulpa” is defined as a “deliberately created system-mate”. I guess a more advanced occultist would call it a thought-form. Skeptics would argue that the “tulpa” is really an imaginary friend many of us had as children (I didn´t), but in this case, the imaginary friend is imagined to be very real indeed! The presentation argues that tulpamancy isn´t a form of mental illness, but many would indeed see it that way, perhaps as schizophrenia. (Just wait until you learn what “plural positivity” means!)

The term tulpa was apparently popularized in the West by Alexandra David-Néel, a Belgian-French explorer who made several visits to Tibet and in 1929 published a book titled “Magic and Mystery in Tibet”. However, the lecturer admits that few people in the tulpamancy milieu ever read the book (he hasn´t read it himself) and there is very little influence on the subculture from Tibetan Buddhism, except the word “tulpa” itself (and even that is spelled differently in David-Néel´s book). The real beginning of the tulpamancy community, at least in the United States, was in 2011 at the 4Chan message board, more specifically the Creepypasta community. Some people start claiming that tulpas are real and the phenomenon starts growing. In 2012, the 4Chan moderators banned tulpamancy as a topic from the Creepypasta forums, at which the new subculture simply migrated to the Brony community. Yes, at this point there was a considerable overlap between tulpamancers and Bronies, the latter being fans of the animated series “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”. The lecturer says that he at one point hosted a forum where at least 20 people claimed to be tulpas of Twilight Sparkle, a character from “My Little Pony”! In 2013, the community became more open and diverse, which includes openness to other forms of “plurality”. (Tulpamancy isn´t the only slightly schizophrenic youth subculture in American cyberspace.) Many in the US tulpamancy community consider themselves to be transgendered, and there is an overlap with plurality. Interestingly, Japan and Eastern Europe (including Russia) have even larger tulpamancy communities than the United States. The exact character of these communities is unknown to the lecturer.

I admit that I´m extremely skeptical to this movement. Even if we assume that tulpas can be “created” one way or another, the tulpamancers still look unserious. The lecturer points out that when tulpamancy was a new thing, it took months or even years to “create” a tulpa. Remember, a tulpa is an imaginary friend that nevertheless looks and acts as if “real”, perhaps like a character from a lucid or hypnagogic dream. Nowadays, people create tulpas in a matter of weeks or even days. Nor does it involve any complex rituals or meditation techniques. Just “talk to someone in your head until they talk back”. Compare this to Therian Otherkin, teenagers who claim to be animals (sic) without bothering to act like their chosen animal. I get the impression that American teenagers have simplified, perhaps even profaned, ancient magical and shamanistic techniques and turned them into commodified subcultures.

What´s the point of creating tulpas? The lecturer admits that most “hosts” create tulpas of the opposite gender from themselves. Girls create boy tulpas, and boys create girl tulpas (of course, this is inapplicable in the case of transgendered individuals). About 50% of the “hosts” have a “relationship” with their tulpa, presumably of a romantic or erotic nature. A survey of how many of these teenagers and young adults are autistic and/or incels might be interesting, perhaps. Originally, the host (the creator of the tulpa) was in charge of his creation, today tulpas are seen as equal with their hosts, while hosts increasingly have their own fantasy identity when they interact with the tulpa. This also sounds as if the entire exercise is literally “all in the mind”, rather than a magically created thought-form “out here” (if you believe such things are possible). Most tulpamancers only create one tulpa, but “systems” of two or more do exist. The lecturer once met a “system” of 60 tulpas (or perhaps 59 tulpas and one host).

Tulpamancers frequently use a weird terminology all their own, which gives the milieu a slightly cultic feel. “Switching”, “possession”, “wonderlands”, “fronting” and “imposition” are examples. The lecturer admits that the meaning of many of these words is actually unclear. The main point here seems to be that the tulpa can temporarily posses the body of the host, and that the soul of the host sometimes leaves its body. A “wonderland” is a fantasy world inhabited by the tulpa when it doesn´t appear in our world, and the soul of the host can travel there, too. While this does sound like an out-of-body experience or astral travel, I suspect that this too is simply a vivid fantasy picture in the mind of the tulpamancer.

Overall, a relatively good presentation and introduction to this weird little corner of suburbia…  

My little headmate

I admit I never heard of “tulpamancers” before I accidentally read about them in a book about the Slender Man. There, they were described as a subset of the already quite strange Bronie subculture. Bronies are adult fans of the children show “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”, and the tulpamancers are said to visualize characters inspired by this particular cartoon. That in itself is, well, weird, but it seems that tulpamancy is a much broader phenomenon.

It reminds me of Otherkin. The difference is that while Otherkin claim to be imaginary characters, tulpamancers “only” pretend to bring imaginary characters to life by using various meditation and visualization techniques. Essentially, tulpamancy is about creating your very own imaginary friends, which then lives inside your mind. An occultist would call the “tulpas” formed in this way “thought-forms”. Another, and more disturbing, interpretation is also possible: tulpamancy is a way to actively create your own delusions. In other words, to induce a schizotypal personality disorder.

“The Tulpamancer's Toolbox” is a short e-book, essentially pitching a longer work by the same author, “Tulpa Creation Guide” (which I haven't read). It's interesting to note that the author writes that the tulpas, once created, cannot be undone. They are always with you, inside your head. They are also independent and often do unexpected things. Issues not discussed by the writer include whether tulpas can leave their creator's mind, posses the creator, or harm him/her in some fashion. They are “vocal”, so presumably you really do hear voices in your head if you follow the guidelines in the author's other book…

My criticism isn't that this doesn't work. My fear is that it might. So let's just hope that none of this is real, and that tulpamancy simply gives you a headache or two…

What would a pony do?

Lauren Faust, creator of MLP

“Bronies” are one of the more peculiar U.S. subcultures. It consists of teenagers and adults who like “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” (MLP for short), an animated cartoon directed at little girls. It's also one of the most derided subcultures on the web, perhaps because most bronies are male. Males watching a show for girls make many people think of homosexuality or pedophilia. Another common anti-brony stereotype is “the 40 year old basement dweller with Asperger's syndrome”. It's also been said that the creators of MLP oppose the brony fandom.

“Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony” is pro-brony and attempts to dispel the prejudices. It succeeds in some ways, but not in others. The documentary follows bronies in several countries as they attend fan conventions known as BronyCons. It turns out that MLP's creator Lauren Faust and voice actors Tara Strong and John de Lancie (Q in Star Trek) do support the brony fandom. Indeed, all three are listed as executive producers of the documentary. A statistical survey shows that the average age of a brony is 20. And no, they don't live in basements.

However, most of the bronies interviewed for the documentary are socially awkward, and one is explicitly diagnosed with Asperger's. Many fans claim to get moral guidance or social skills from watching the animated characters interact with one another. The BronyCons are dominated by males, are mostly White and (presumably) middle class, since these teenagers can afford traveling to a convention in another part of the country, spend a lot of money on souvenirs, etc. The “effeminate” angle is also rather obvious, despite the presence of a group of bronies enrolled in the U.S. military!

The documentary is well-meaning, but if the persons interviewed are representative of this subculture, it's difficult to resist the conclusion that we're dealing with some pretty strange characters! But then, did we really expect anything else? I mean, we're talking about teens and adults who ask what an animated multicolor pony would do…

20% Cool Aid, or why ISIS will defeat Amerika

“A Brony Tale” is a documentary about the weird subculture or fandom known as bronies. It features Ashleigh Ball, a voice-over actor from “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” as she attends a BronyCon, a fan convention of said bronies. “A Brony Tale” is less interesting than “Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony”, another documentary about the fandom featuring Lauren Faust and John de Lancie.

As you might have guessed, bronies are obsessed with the animated cartoon “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”. What makes the fandom weird and widely derided is that most bronies aren't little girls – the show's intended demographic – but teenagers or adults, and mostly male! “A Brony Tale” presents a survey of the subculture, showing that 85% are male, 35% are in high school while a whooping 62% are in or have completed college. The average age is 21. Most women in the fandom have brony boyfriends, making the researchers question whether the “pegasisters” are real bronies at all. More surprisingly, perhaps, was the finding that only 1.5% of the bronies described themselves as homosexual, while 84% claimed to be straight. 10% defined themselves as bisexual, while circa 3% were asexual. The survey was conducted by two psychologists, one of whom has a teenage son who is a brony...

The statistics clearly disprove the usual brony stereotype of a 40+ male pervert living in a basement with his plush sex toys, or the parallel prejudice according to which all bronies simply must be gay. That being said, it's pretty obvious from “A Brony Tale” (note the pun on “a pony tail”) that many of these high school or college kids are confused and socially awkward. It's also clear that they have an effeminate ideal, which helps explains why bronies have become part of the “culture wars” around everything from same-sex marriage to Gamergate. They are, of course, “liberal”. So am I, but I wonder if these bros can fight a real war against, say, ISIS or North Korea?

I admit that I don't really like the heavy promotion this kind of phenomena have received lately. To be blunt, we need more “alphas” and less “gammas”, more “viragos” and less…well, bronies.

20% cooler

After watching two documentaries about “bronies”, I decided to grab the pony by its mane and watch a few episodes of the series itself, “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” (MLP:FIM for short, sort of).

I admit that it's well produced. It's completely free of cynicism and sarcasm (except in characters explicitly said to be negative), which is a refreshing contrast with the rest of pop culture (LOTR is the only other example of a “serious” and morally “pure” pop culture franchise I'm aware of). These days, even programs geared to a younger demographic can be filled with irony and sarcasm. I also noted that MLP:FIM is too sophisticated for its intended audience of small kids, mostly girls. Apparently, the creator of the series, Lauren Faust, wants parents to watch the episodes together with their children, interpreting the message for them. An intriguing combination of “feminism” (most of the characters in the series are strong females) and “family values”.

The moral message of MLP:FIM revolves around the value of friendship. Two of the episodes in season five promote individualism and attack collectivism. The equestrian heroes visit a village where all horses are equal, but one turns out to be more equal than the others, and runs the place like a cult or Stalinist police state. In another episode, we get to meet griffins who symbolize self-destructive people who refuse to get helped. Destructive guilt feelings are explored and criticized in the episode featuring Princess Luna and the Tantabus. And so on!

While “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” is really too complex for small children (or perhaps just right, if the kids are precocious), it's message should be trivial for college students, so the brony subculture still comes across as very, very weird. Judging by the two documentaries mentioned above, many of the bronies are typical “outsiders”, for good or for worse. It's also intriguing to note that many bronies are males who want to emphasize their “feminine” side, since most of the female characters in the actual series have "boyish" traits, such as leadership roles, nerdy study habits and supernatural powers. Perhaps the cultic following of MLP:FIM see them as androgynous?

Not sure how to rate this little piece of magic, but to create some commotion around here, I hereby award it…four stars.

Among bronies and pirates

Bronies are a peculiar subculture which originated in the United States (where else?) and then spread internationally. Bronies are – wait for it – adult male fans of the animated TV series “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”, which is really intended for little girls! Each year, the bronies gather at fan fests known as BronyCons. The subculture is subject to much debate and derision on the web, including YouTube.

I've previously reviewed the documentary “Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony”. This DVD, “Bronies 2: More Unexpected Fans of My Little Pony”, contains additional material which didn't make it onto the documentary. It's not particularly interesting for the general viewer, mostly being a compilation of interviews with attendees and organizers of BronyCon 2014. The creator of “My Little Pony”, Lauren Faust is featured, together with voice-over actor John de Lancie. On a more comic note, a guy dressed like Spiderman participated in the BronyCon cosplay contest?!

Since I'm Swedish, I found the interviews with the German Pirate Party of some interest, the Pirate Party originally being a Swedish idea. It seems that the German version is teeming with bronies, and the activists often watch “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” to calm down after heated political discussions! Why are we not surprised? Full disclosure: I hate the “Pirates” and consider it a disgrace to Sweden that some of them were elected to the European Parliament! So they are into bronydom as well, hmmm….

Most material contained on this DVD has also been posted free of charge on YouTube by the producers, BronyDoc Studios, so I suppose the physical DVD is intended as some kind of memento from the fan convention. But, as I said, it's probably not very fun to watch unless you're actually a brony yourself.