The title of this post is, first of all, a quote from Stephen Colbert, back when he acknowledged his brony brethren on his show back in August. Second, it’s a title suggestion from my boss, who encouraged me to blog about my latest high-traffic story. And third, it’s a thank you to everyone who read my story and proved there’s still a (big) audience for fact-driven reporting.
Fandom is a tricky topic. It’s full of detailed minutia, inside jokes and memes, fanart and fanfiction that delves so far away from canon that even the original creators might not understand it. Frankly, it’s a lot for an outsider to handle, and a reporter’s job is to inform even somebody who is hearing about the group for the first time.
As a result, a lot of fandom stories follow simplified themes, dumbing down or even misconstruing what the culture is actually about. It’s usually well intentioned, but still kind of difficult to read for somebody who’s embedded deeply in the fandom.
When I wrote Researchers strive to understand brony culture for the Daily Dot, my goal was to write a story that informed outsiders without dumbing the culture down. Something both my mom and Mister Spectre could read, in which they would each find something of value.
After my editor ran it over, I knew it was outsider-perfect, but I wasn’t sure what bronies would think. Everything in this story is either a quote from one of the researchers or a sourced fact. There’s no flattery or pandering to the fandom. If they did find it, I knew it’d have to be based on its informational merit.
For two days, they didn’t find it. And then I sent it to Sethisto, the webmaster of Equestria Daily. For the uninformed, that’s the brony community’s most highly trafficked news hub. Seth’s verbatim response to my email: “SCIENCE! Totally postin!” It spread from there.
The blog post with my story in it has 140 comments and counting, and I’m going to try to read them all (brony comments are much, MUCH more pleasant than comments in virtually any other community). It’s not just because I’m happy to have a hit. It’s that it’s more proof of my belief that fandom reporting doesn’t have to be opinionated to get clicks. It’s already interesting enough on its own.