Now, I know that in asking this question, I run the risk of being lambasted on a scale unheard of in the world outside of DLP, but I'm genuinely curious...

What is the appeal of MLP? I'd heard that the whole series got a heavy revamping recently, but I had just assumed that it was still just what it appears to the outsider: a fulfilment of the fantasies of little girls who's parents will never buy them that pony they've been begging for since learning to talk. However, I've noticed that recently there has been an influx of crossover stories pairing MLP with everything-under-the-sun, and the vicious, hardened, animals that dwell around here eating the stuff up; asking for more, even.

Is there some hidden badassery to a pony named Sparkle hiding under the seizure-inducing spash of colors and saccharin? Does she learn she was destined to become the Pale Horse of Death? Or is the story just well-written and compelling in a way that requires the modest exposure I have yet to experience?

Not to knock it, I just want to know.

What's cool about the show?

 

I second this question.

 

The show just resonates with people. I'm not a massive fan (only watched like 10 episodes), so I can't really say why it's created such a huge following, but my best guess is some people just like the underpinning themes of the thing (specifically, friendship and all it entails is yay), most likely due to the warm fuzzies such themes tend to generate.

There's not really any hidden badassery as you imply here, simply a handful of characters doing random things that stress the importance and value of various positive qualities.

To put it simply, the show is the distilled essence of positive feelings being injected straight into your brain. People liking it really isn't that surprising.

You'll have to watch it yourself and decide if it's something you enjoy.

Also, MLP has a tendency to treat their storylines in a very "Pixar" style. What I mean by that is while the storylines tend to be simplistic and "feel good-y" for the primary audience, there's undertones and subtleties to almost all of them that produce enough depth for adults to find them interesting.

 

I had thought that it was the internet's most succesful trolling attempt ever. I first got introduced to it through 4chan, and was amazed when the word filters came, and then went again. The amount of OC made (and the complete divergence from 'normal' behaviour in the brony threads) really confused me, and then memebase made a brony page.

And I saw someone had posted a long picture, mainly text, where they'd thought the same as me, and then they watched it and enjoyed the show.

Again, I thought this could be a troll, but I thought it might be worth a go at least.

I'm still on season one, but I feel I've gotten 20% cooler since I started watching.

As Agayek said, it is just feelgood injected straight to the brain.

Also, to those who don't know of it yet, I heartily recommend Friendship is Dragons. Told as if MLP wasn't real, but was a group of DnDers playing through canon, similar to Darths and Droids.

 

Agayek nailed a big part of the show's appeal; it's got the combination of all the nice feel-good elements of children's show, while keeping things deep enough to be engaging and slipping in plenty of references that will keep the adult audience entertained (I don't think any other children's cartoon has referenced everything from The Big Lebowski to Benny Hill).

Also, I've always been of the opinion that the core components of good storytelling aren't very restricted by demographics. Good characters with depth and consistency, engaging stories, and the ability to effectively convey emotional impact are all things that any good story needs, regardless of the target audience.

 

Like others have said, it's basically a feelgood. That said, it isn't overly saccharine or sappy - the storytelling is genuinely well done so that the moral comes out decently well without being in your face. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but the characters are open-ended and likeable, not one-dimensional and the story isn't obviously twisted to go a certain way. Many kids' cartoons have stupid characters who are basically there to shoehorn a plot - in MLP, you can actually grow to like the characters involved, even some of the background ones, quite easily.

Essentially, like Chengar Qordath said, it's about good storytelling with depth and consistency. Can't beat that.

 

This is awesome.

 

I think others have summed it up well enough. I appreciate its positivity, as a contrast to some of the other fandoms I frequent. And there's a lot of work put into it -- there's such an unbelievable disparity between the toys supposedly based on the show and the show itself, it's pretty clear that it's a lot more than just a "commercial" for them.

The show's not for everyone though, and forcing it down the throats of people who are clearly uninterested doesn't help anything. Thankfully that's been toned down a great deal since roughly this time last year.

 

Yeah, the fandom does have its occasional issues with people being way too forceful. Probably because a lot of the adult fans start off feeling a little defensive about the whole "how can you like a cartoon made for little girls" thing, and overcompensate by trying to force everyone around them to love ponies.

The terrifying thing is, compared to the other fandoms spawned by Hasbro products, the bronies are pretty reasonable. Transformers fandom is one of the more infamous unpleasable fanbases; they're the ones who coined the whole screamed "Ruined FOREVER!" any time anything happened thing.

 

The show is cute and humorous, and it's something I can bond with my little sister over.

A lot of the shows catering to her age group go for stupid or gross out humor, this show is different from that.

As far as the fandom explosion and crossover appeal - I'll leave that to others to explain. I haven't ventured there because I want my enjoyment of the show untainted by the knowledge of how it has been interpreted by some.

 

The popularity started primarily due to this article that negatively got the attention of 4Chan's /co/. Since MLP: FiM was mentioned multiple times in the article, many members gave it shot as a big 'fuck you' to the author and legitimately liked it (due to reasons mentioned above). Being focused on 4chan, naturally the board exploded with tons of memes and funny images related to the show that quickly spread across the internet like wildfire.

It was only fueled when Lauren Faust, the creator, embraced her show's internet popularity and have made accounts on Youtube, 4chan, and Reddit to interact with these fans.

Not only that, but Faust is also married to Craig McCraken and was head writer for both the Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, which are both shows that also resonated well with audiences above their intended demographic.

 

As a bonus note to all the aforementioned points, the show's creators are also very aware and appreciative of their fans. Quite a few times already, they've adopted fan-created names for their ponies, like Vinyl Scratch/DJ Pon3 and Derpy Hooves.