Quote Originally Posted by Nameless View Post
When the show came out, it got a lot of negative criticism, one article in particular "The end Of The Creative Drive Era in TV Animation" used MLP as one of it's main examples to argue it case. Another article claimed the show was racist and homophobic. These sparked an interest in some cartoon and animation enthusiasts. They went and watched the show for themselves to find out what all the hoo-haa was about. Ironically, many of them liked it. Discussions spread across 4Chan. As the fandom started to grow, an obligatory hatedom followed. To cut a a very long story short, BIG EPIC SPAM WAR ON 4CHAN, Bronies later went ahead and created Ponychan.
The fandom's beginnings had a lot to do with response to the initial criticism. Whilst many users on the /c/ boards liked the show for the artwork and the ironic side of it, many /b/ users genuinely loved the show itself. /b/ + Ponies = "Bronies".
....Oh
Now I'm proud of not being a brony