It's kind of very similar to a lot of other cultures
that were repressed in the past.
I mean if you go back to gay people or black people,
the only thing that really defined them is one thing.
Like whether they were in to the same sex
or whether they had a particular skin tone respectively.
That's all there really was to it.
People often attach stigmatisms to it.
So really the main way that we combat that
is just by basically putting ourselves out there
as normal citizens of society.
Hold on a second -
are you one of those bronies?
She is the best flower in ponyville!
In ponyville?!?
A brony is someone who appreciates the show
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
It's a person who has thrown away gender stereotypes
of men liking men things
and girls liking girly things.
What I love about ponies is
they're relatable.
And they each go through their own struggles,
their own stages of life.
And a lot of that mirrors most of our own lives.
Being a 20-something dude
addicted to a rainbow-coloured cartoon
that's aimed at little girls is one thing.
But travelling around the world to
nuzzle noses or 'bro-hoof'
with tens of thousands of like- minded fans
is a whole different story.
So what the buck are we talking about?
Well, saddle up and let us take you
to Bronyville.
When I'm sitting there watching the show at home
it's exciting - I know that around the world
there are literally thousands of others
like myself, who are watching it at the same time.
It's like being part of something bigger than yourself.
I'm ecstatic, at that point.
Just that huge community of people -
I can just walk through university wearing
one of these style of shirts,
and someone will just go,
you're a brony! And we'll fist-bump or bro-hoof,
which sort of goes like this
and we'll instantly start talking and get along.
It's better than just rooting for the same sports team,
it's a more global type appreciation.
Pretty much any country that My Little Pony has aired in
has its own forum as well.
Everyone has their own group to go to chat,
compare notes, talk online,
there are musicians in this fandom who
draw upon the show for inspiration to create music.
We have a lot of those musicians.
One of them is a rapper.
I would never have gotten in to rap
if it weren't for this guy.
He's rapping about ponies.
That's pretty cool!
24 hours a day we stream across the internet.
It's all brony music.
It can be electronic, dubstep, acoustic -
as long as it references ponies, it's allowed in there.
One problem - she cleans them with... wubs.
As the fandom grows, it's hard to say
exactly how many bronies are out there.
But Equastria Daily, which is basically
the central hub of ponydom online,
tells us there's almost three million worldwide.
Half of those are in the US,
the rest spread across the UK, Canada, and Australia.
But it's not all rainbows and friendship songs -
the subculture cops loads of flak with accusations
of these guys being, well, a bit creepy.
There's one story I like telling about that,
which is is when I went out to my parents
and they said, what are bronies?
AndI just went through the whole thing of,
well remember how My Little Pony,
yeah, the show my sister watched,
that thing - yeah, that's what it is.
It's just a bunch of guys watching My Little Pony.
Sort of aged 20 to 30 - it's a weird demographic.
And they're just sitting there going,
why can't you do drugs like a regular kid your age?
Bronies!
I'm not going to treat it as, this is a mark of me
being a brony,
I'm going to treat it as,
this is a mark of the friends I made along the way.
This is a mark of the culture I got in to
when I got in to it.
No matter what changes happen,
no matter how everyone moves on,
at whatever stage in life they go through,
I will always be able to look at this and go,
I was a brony when it was fun to be a brony.
I was a brony when we did things
that made differences.