SPOKANE, Wash. — “You had one job. ONE JOB!” Benjamin Sacks shouts, teasing his buddy Caleb Grill from across the table.
Grill’s great sin? Sleeping through this week’s episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
These two men aren’t alone discussing the latest episode of the cartoonized revamp of the 1980s Hasbro toy. In fact, they’re seated at a table surrounded by 10 of their buddies.
Collectively, they call themselves the Bronies of Spokanterlot, and account for only a microscopic portion of the estimated 10 million bronies worldwide1.
Breaking Brony
Most members of the super fandom are drawn to the show because of the artwork. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (MLP) features Emmy award-winning artists who have worked on projects ranging from the original Powerpuff Girls (1998–2002) to the 2009 feature film Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.
Crowd-sourced portfolio sites, namely deviantart.com, engender the creation of MLP fan art, an essential characteristic of the fandom.
“I saw all these colorful little things and I was like, ‘what are these?’” said Sacks, the appointed ringleader of all Brony activity in the greater Spokane area. “They kind of intrigued me. I looked up what they were and found about the show, watched it and fell in love with it.”
Sacks has his own original portfolio of MLP art. Other Bronies’ portfolios, a common occurrence throughout the fandom, are often the subject of chatter at their monthly meet-ups. Many of the Bronies have spent upwards of $100 on commissioned drawings, prints and paintings.
This type of intense emotional commitment to the fandom is rivaled only by the Bronies’ financial commitment to it. Currently, there is no Herd (that’s what the entire Brony population calls itself) statistic on the average amount a Brony spends on MLP memorabilia, but the Spokanterlot bunch ranged between $500 and $5,000 in their lifetime investment.
“The most expensive thing I’ve bought was a 24 karat 3D-Printed Gold Spike statue,” said BTK (that is his name), who has been a brony since the show launched in 2010.
Many Bronies spend the majority of their MLP spending on wearable items. Every single member of the Spokanterlot group was wearing some form of MLP swag, including t-shirts, pony-ear hats and a few pieces of MLP-inspired jewelry. BTK had on a Spike hoodie, which he usually wears with the hood up.
Sometimes, members can even be seen sporting pony-tails poking out between their shirt hems and waistbands.
Fandom Family
“I like my least favorite Pony more than I like my most favorite person,” Caleb Grill, a fellow Spokanterlot Brony, said.
Even so, for a lot of Bronies, friendships are forged online.
Two of the Spokanterlot tribe met on a popular MLP news site called Equestriadaily.com where Michael Binder is a popular commentor.
“[Ben] knew me there before he knew me in person,” Binder said. “When we were at a meetup, he saw me commenting and I showed him my [user]name, and he was like ‘oh you’re that guy.’ It was awesome.”
The way the group interacts with one another really is, in a lot of ways, brotherly.
“We’re like bros,” said Sacks. “We go to eachother’s houses for almost every show or MLP thing that happens. We know secrets — we know each other’s stuff.”
They share inside jokes, deep knowledge of the fandom, and have even developed a vernacular of their own. Furthermore, each member has a nickname, in addition to his real name and his online Pony name, that is unique to the group. Cody Griffith, for example, goes by “Calamity Jane.”
“Much like a family, we all secretly hate each other,” Grill joked to his friends.
At one point during Saturday’s meet-up, Sacks reached into his briefcase and thumbed through a comic book, quickly, before handing it to Binder.
“It’s yours now,” he said to Binder, who took it with an aura of great appreciation.
Twice more throughout the meet-up, one member either traded or gave a plush toy, trading card or piece of artwork to another member.
It is typical of the Bronies — at least those in Spokane — to be extremely generous with each other. Often, their massive collections of MLP items are a community effort.
Public Perception
You can hear the buzzing hum of an industrial-sized refrigerator where the Bronies sit around the table, tucked in the corner of River Park Square’s food court. They are truly a sight to behold as they sit amid a mass of vibrant plush toys, each of them decked out head to toe in Pony gear.
It’s certainly not what you might expect from a group of guys whose average age barely reaches 19 years. But the Spokanterlot clan skews a bit younger than the Herd’s national average of 21 years, according to Dr. Patrick Edwards and Dr. Marsha Redden of The Brony Study.
Grill is 16. Dressed in all black, his pony t-shirt is a subtle, quirky accent to his otherwise run-of-the-mill attire. The shirt is almost hidden beneath a leather jacket.
“You’d never catch me wearing this stuff in public,” said Grill. “To normal people, it puts them off. I can understand that; a 16 year old boy wearing Pony things would put me off if I wasn’t aware of [Bronyhood].”
Not all perceptions of the Bronies are negative, however. Several members of Spokanterlot agreed that the public is generally apathetic towards them as a group.
Sacks recalls a time when his cell phone rang — to the tune of the MLP theme song — while he was shopping at a moving sale.
“One of the auction girls stood there laughing. I was just like ‘yeah, it’s my favorite show. I like it.’ And she totally was fine with it,” Sacks said.
Kirk Soapes, a long-term fan who constantly displays his love for MLP through his attire, disagrees.
“My parents, they don’t get it,” Soapes said. “They don’t understand the whole pony thing. People don’t mention [being a Brony] because other people might think they’re gay or bisexual.”
Other members of the Spokanterlot tribe agreed to the sexual identity stereotypes uninformed outsiders often associate with the Bronies as a group. In reality, only 12 percent of Bronies identify as homosexual, bisexual2. The largest percentage of Bronies, 84 percent, identify as heterosexual2.
“In a way,” Soapes said, “The show can change you, which sounds cheesy. But being around friends that you connect with from the show is one of the best feelings.”
Data from the Brony Study actually support Soapes’ sentiment; certainly it is shared by many other Bronies. Of the 1,600 Bronies surveyed, 58 percent reported an improvement in overall happiness, while 56 percent reported an improvement in depression symptoms. Another 50 percent reported a reduction in anxiety.
“It’s hard to look pessimistically on the magical world of ponies,” Grill said. “It’s impossible, really.”
1 Turner, J. (2014, February 15). 2014 State of the Herd Report. Herd Census and State of the Herd Report. Retrieved April 4, 2016, from www.herdcensus.com
2 Chadborn, Daniel; Edwards, Patrick; Griffith, Jan; Redden, Marsha H. (2014). Study Results. How the Fandom Changed My Life Data. Retrieved April 2, 2016, from www.bronystudy.com
4.12.16 Correction: An earlier version of the article cited “Michael Binder” as “Michael Clark.” Corrections have since been made