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What does everypony think of me comparing our fanbase to that of shows like the Powerpuff girls? What other shows' fanbases migth be similar to our own? (I ask because I'm hoping to find related research about online fan cultures.)
Friday, 09-Mar-12 08:46:47 UTC from web-
@pony What kind of research are you looking for, out of interest?
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@pony There've been a few high-profile surveys done by professionals which you may want to source for some of your data.
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@ceruleanspark Any research that can shed some light on how and why fan communities form and what impact those cultures have on society in general and on the fans themselves.
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@toksyuryel I'll be using the BronyStudy's research. Hopefully they've got it updated by now.. Can you recommend any others?
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@pony xP agh.. it's still not updated: http://www.bronystudy.com/id1.html
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@pony That's the only one I'm really familiar with off-hoof, but I remember there were a few more out there. I don't really remember which ones they were though. They're buried in old EqD posts *somewhere*…
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@toksyuryel hmm.. maybe google can help me sift through and find those. Thanks
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@pony Society itself is evidence that by and large, fan cultures do not have a noteworthy impact on society at large.
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@ceruleanspark Sports terminology, especially baseball terminology, has managed to make itself a strong part of our every day vocabulary. Some fandoms have contributed similarly, such as the term "redshirt" from Star Trek. So at least in one sense, there is some noteworthy impact. The effects are largely subtle though, making it difficult to really pin down, especially taken in the context of just how many people there are in the world.
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@toksyuryel When you say "Baseball Terminology", what do you mean? I can't think of an example I've actually heard. (Other than people parodying business idiots by overusing "touch base")
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@ceruleanspark There is so much of it that an entire wikipedia article exists to catalog all of it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_English-language_idioms_derived_from_baseball
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@toksyuryel OK I seriously never hear anyone say any of those things. Is it because I'm british?
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@ceruleanspark By and large I agree. I think that MLP's fandom comes close if it doesn't actually make some sort of dent in western culture though. I'm undecided still, but the response we've had from news shows (and now South Park), and the amount of traffic seen on brony sites or brony Youtube channels leads me to believe we have more of an impact than many other popular shows.
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@ceruleanspark These are probably americanisms, so that's a likely reason. Some of them I've never heard myself but at least half of them I hear constantly. We even have a political tv show called "Hardball" (Chris Matthews, decently entertaining guy who refuses to let anyone he interviews get two sentences out before he interrupts them). "left field", "ballpark", and "out of the park" are the most common day-to-day phrases that I hear.
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@pony Do you have a reliable source on that South Park thing? Last I heard it was just yet another hoax.
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@pony Of course we're still very young as a fanbase so I have to draw on other examples, but I can't really think of anything that compares.
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@pony "Being a target of ridicule" is hardly "making a dent in western culture". Furries have been doing /that/ for decades.
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@toksyuryel I've only seen screencaps of show listings. It will supposedly air next week.. i think.. so I'll have confirmed it as a source well in time to use it in my paper if I desire. Sorry I can't give you a definite yes.
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@pony That is very likely the same hoax that was run before. I'm not going to believe it until it actually airs (or the creators of the show say it's real).
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@toksyuryel fair enough. yeah, it would be interesting if it turned out to be true
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@ceruleanspark Would you say that furries have made a dent in our cultures? I might be able to look at them as an example.
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@pony Not at all. Hardly anyone really knows what a furry is, and those who DO know, have an almost entirely negative impression of them.
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@ponydude Yeah those little girls are gonna totally..something?
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@ceruleanspark I am in the interesting position of knowing exactly what furries are in a non-negative light and I STILL managed to come away with a negative impression of the fandom. This is after hanging out with them on a nearly constant basis for the past 5-6 years or so, and paying attention to various things posted by prominent individuals.
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@ceruleanspark I guess I need a better understanding of what does or doesn't affect mainstream culture.. what "makes a dent". I don't know how often furries have been mentioned on the news or referenced by the media in general, but most anime fans know them (at least that's my experience), and pretty much everypony knows about anime (stop me if you think i'm wrong). So can't it be said that furries have at least some impact on society at large even if it's not visible to most of us?
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@toksyuryel I actually fell away from the fandom mostly, (the core of it), you posssibly noticed that....the only furs i still spoke to, i spoke to back when i first chose to dive into the community in 2009, 4 years after being in the fandom it was. I have about ...15 fur friends, and they were my friends not because i was furry and stuff...the shallowness of the fandom, using "Being Furry" as a reason to be friends was one of the things that got to me....at least here, you arent insta-buddies cause you both watch MLP for example~
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@pony That's what I meant about it being subtle before. It's stuff that's really hard to notice and pin down as coming from any one source. This is because of just how many people there are. As something diffuses into the population, it quickly loses track of where it came from.
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@toksyuryel That's because, unfortunately, it's a fandom that self-selects for negative behaviours by driving out people like yourself, @cavatina and me.
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@cavatina I am beginning to extricate myself from it as well, which I think may be starting to improve my mental wellbeing (though it's hard to say since it took a massive hit from the hard drive failure that prompted me to do so in the first place).
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@ceruleanspark @ponydude that raises an interesting point in my mind.. Little girls are impacted by the show, and the show is supported by the fandom, so it might be said that we're having an indirect impact on girls who will one day become women leading our countries, businesses, and homes.
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@pony Only it's increasingly obvious that we don't actually effect the show.
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@toksyuryel Ah...
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@ceruleanspark Do you think that brony patrons of the show via iTunes and toy-buying doesn't help the show stay afloat?
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@ceruleanspark I don't imagine these would have ever happened without us http://i.imgur.com/a9Odt.png http://i.imgur.com/q8cVu.png but as for affecting anything that would be visible to the target audience, we've only managed that once and it was disastrous. Hopefully something like that won't happen again and they'll remember to keep the fandom nods in the background.
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@toksyuryel They're irrelevant to the actual content of the show though, really. They're not a way in which this fandom is actively influencing anyone. A little girl isn't going to see that and suddenly become a lesbian sweet maker.
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@yuri Their parents did, which is what led to the train wreck it turned into.
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@pony This again? No, I do not.
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@ceruleanspark That is the gist of what I went on to say following those image links, along with stating my belief that it should stay that way. We absolutely should not be influencing this show on that visible of a level.
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@toksyuryel It only turned into a trainwreck because this fandom is horrendously self-entitled. In any sane environment it would have just been "OK, I can see that the reason behind the edit was valid and that it had to be done. I will continue my patronage of these friendship equines unabated"
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@toksyuryel good point. If it affects the parents it will affect the children
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@ceruleanspark I'm not convinced that we don't contribute to the show's success at least a little. Are there really no other shows that have unexpectedly thrived due to fans outside of its target demographic?
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@ponydude I'd love to help you but I can't actually figure out which specific post this is replying to. The UI for that could use some work as it becomes very difficult to follow once a conversation grows large enough (yay StatusNet again!)
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@ceruleanspark yeah. fans can be such drama queens
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@pony You seem to have started with the flawed assertion that the show is NOT thriving because of success with its target demographic.
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@ponydude Ah- I was saying that there is evidence that we DO affect the show, but that except in the one instance that turned into a train wreck we don't affect anything that would be visible to the target audience. And expressing my hope that the creators learn from the derpy incident that it should stay this way.
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@ceruleanspark That's an error many of our prouder fans make, I admit, but that's not what i'm getting at. (Of course i want to believe we're important, but i have no need of Hasbro's acknowledgment to enjoy the show.) I think the show's success appealing to girls is high as well, but if none of those girls' parents (whom I'll argue might, in some cases, be considered bronies/pegasisters) supported the show, then I doubt nearly as many girls would be watching it, or at the very least they wouldn't want to buy related toys for their kids, and, consequently, MLP might not have even gotten a second season so that girls wouldn't be inspired by its message, etc.. Maybe you're right about our patronage not having much impact, and maybe not. Maybe I should look more at brony parents...
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@pony The target audience I keep referring to actually includes those parents- it's "young girls and their parents". This explains to a great degree how the Brony community was able to form in the first place, because being appealing to parents is a good way to be appealing to adults in general.
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