John Hinkley Jr. tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in an attempt to impress Jodie Foster. Is is possible that the young man who killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis was trying to impress … a cartoon horse?
It’s a serious question. We don’t know terribly much about the FedEx shooter, or a motive for his rampage. But. thanks to the Wall Street Journal we know that an hour before he started shooting in the FedEx parking lot he posted a message on a now-deleted Facebook page devoted to the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic animated series, declaring his love for one of the show’s main characters:
I hope that I can be with Applejack in the afterlife, my life has no meaning without her. If there’s no afterlife and she isn’t real then my life never mattered anyway.
We don’t know if he was sincere, or trolling, or a mixture of the two, and we can’t ask him now because he’s dead.
Regardless, some in the My Little Pony fandom are bracing for the possibility of a backlash against the sometimes innocent, other times deeply creepy “Brony” subculture of adult male fans that has grown up around a show that was originally intended for young girls.
On Equestria Daily, a site devoted to the show, writer Sethisto broke the bad news:
We have some horrible news coming out of the Indianapolis Shooting that went down the other day. Apparently the former employee and gunman was a fan of Friendship is Magic, and more specifically Applejack, who was the focus of his final message on his pony focused Facebook page an hour before the shooting. …
Facebook and The Wallstreet Journal couldn’t find any actual motive behind the attack from either of the [shooter’s Facebook] pages; just ponies. This is still all under heavy investigation, but for now, be prepared for some potential blowback once the news starts breaking out into the wider internet.
Commenters on the site were definitely not ready for their closeup.
“It’s gonna be a shitshow for the fandom this weekend,” wrote someone called Astral. “Joy.”
While numerous commenters remembered to offer condolences for those killed in the assault, others were more worried about the fandom itself, trying their best to come up with explanations for the shooting that had nothing to do with MLP. Wrote Pony4Koma:
This guy was under a mountain of stress, I can tell that by his words. Maybe Covid (maybe something else) must have taken away everything that used to make life worth struggling for, leaving only the stress and the good memories we burn to say alive.
Others seemed to think that with the right PR this story could be turned into something that was almost good for the bronies. Wrote ColoradoBob:
This is a terrible tragedy. Let’s remember that weird news sells, and people often jump to conclusions when given a story like this. If anyone asks me, I’ll be talking about how most of the Bronies I’ve met are just regular people with a random fandom that is a bit odd. Like any fandom, you can find the fringes.
I’m going to stay focused on the positive impact the fandom has had. For example: if any of his friends had been Bronies, I bet they would have tried to reach out in friendship and love, to prevent this tragedy.
Thanks, hypothetical brony friends for hypothetically averting the massacre.
Still others, forgetting about the actual victims of the shooting rampage, warned that the tragic events could lead to evil Social Justice Warriors cancelling Applejack and making the show more “woke.”
“Well, this is it, wrote commenter Jess Rose.
Hasbro will never reference Applejack or cowboy hats ever again. They always thought that she represented the conservative South with their ranch, farms and guns and now they only got more fuel to move the show into more sjw territory than ever.
In another comment, Rose preemptively blamed the media for covering the story badly:
I bet the mainstream media will do what every responsible and wise news outlet would do and blame everything on bronies, ponies and Hasbro and not on mental issues, bad parenthood or easy access to automatic guns with little control
Meanwhile, commenter aaargh Zombies complained that
the version of Applejack in Pony Life has already had most of her country\conservative traits removed because of current day politics. Even her core values of family and tradition have been taken out.
In a followup comment, Zombies added that
The trouble with the the American entertainment industry, particularly animation, is that it’s heavily California focused, and there are … prejudices that come with this.
The writers of MLP simply didn’t know how to relate to a character like Applejack because the last ten years of American popular culture have been spent painting small town conservatives in an unflattering way.
Eight people died. But some would rather complain about excessively … Californian the writers of the show are.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
Whatever microscopic crumb of sympathy I might have had for the plight of bronies is now officially, completely, and permanently obliterated. Every last one of them deserves to be incarcerated as domestic terrorists. And My Little Pony itself should be, in the most literal sense, cancelled. It needs to be pulled off the air RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.
Ugh, these people. Hate to admit having been a brony myself at one point but it just… like some other fandoms, I guess, too many people just got out of hand and I just.. noped out. They’ve never shown many signs of self-awareness on the whole, though.
TW r*pe/SA/CSA mention….
I hate to change the subject but can we get any info on the April 24 nationa r*pe/sexual assault day that’s apparently making rounds on Tik Tok? Because that’s disturbing AF especially since the edgelords/trolls (I HOPE they’re mere edgelords/trolls) who apparently came up with bright idea this apparently specified it as a day for men to SA both women AND CHILDREN.
Nobody seems to be quite sure if it’s real and serious or just a sick joke from a bunch of shitheels that need a smack in the mouth. The 24th happens to be my shopping day and I’m still not living “out” and therefore am usually taken to be a butch woman, so I’ll probably be carrying my big ole D-cell Mag-lite in one of my cargo pockets while shopping and be ready to break someone’s teeth if they try anything, but anyway, it’s just a flashlight.
Wonderful. If their initial reaction is to grieve for the fandom (rather than, oh, the eight people killed), how about the actual little kids whose beloved imaginary friends—through one jerkhole’s actions—have become occasion for scandal?
I don’t know if the shooter was a nazi brony, but those are real a thing. The problem is the nazi part, not the brony part. Likewise whatever issues the shooter may have had in addition to or instead of that, those are the problem, not the brony part.
Those self-centered fans mentioned at the end aren’t doing anyone any good, not even themselves.
First, the horrible part in this is that people were murdered. I like MLP:FIM, but I have zero doubts about it having really terrible fans in the mix, much like, IDK, Star Trek, Star Wars, MCU, The Expanse etc. If one’s primary worry is “how other people will perceive other fans of the show”, then one needs a bit of readjustment of priorities here.
Second…
Well, there ARE MRA bronies too (in addition to Everything Terrible You Can Think of bronies),and I had fun breaking one’s brain by pointing out the feminists writing the show etc and trollish dude ceased to be a brony on spot. Wonder if he had been sincere about it in the first place! /s
PS: all is well, I have got 1 vaccine shot out of 2, and we got kittens on the way.
So off topic. watching this old spider man cartoon from the 90’S I used to watch when I was little. The green goblin just called Norman Osborn a whining simp and that was just so funny to me I had to share it with y’all. Something funny in these dark times hopefully. Since it’s becoming a shooting and mass killing of the week type of society.
My child likes the My Little Pony show, children being the actual target audience, so I’ve now watched it occasionally. It’s good for the kind of show it is. I have absolutely no idea why some of the worst people on the Internet are drawn to it.
I’m pretty sure most people who see what the shooter wrote are not going to blame the show in any way. If anything it’s going to reinforce stereotypes about mental illness. I hope angelic Applejack kicks him.
Odd. In some continuities, the Green Goblin is Norman Osborne. And as for terrible fans, well, spilled honey will draw flies …
@surplus
yeah he is the green goblin in this (the cartoon was from 1994, i don’t think you have to worry about spoilers) but like he’s the green goblin, he lost his mind, he got tost through a portal and now he’s in this weird veil universe and talking to his son Harry Osborn. So now Harry Osborn is the green goblin and his like insane father is talking through the veil trying to get him to do what he wants. So I guess the green goblin is suppose to be like a dissociated identity to Norman Osborn. It’s a weird show, spiderman gree four arms and turned into a spider like 10 episodes back but I still like it from when I was a kid.
@surplus
So you want to add on another layer of that, some part of Norman Osborn thinks himself a simp. Which is funny to me cause this man is rich but has not married anyone else since his wife left him. despite them showing she left him for someone else when Harry was small and he’s in college now in the show.
It’s always projection with right-wingers. The ones who most vociferously call people simps secretly deep down fear that that is what they are …
Well, just about anything is going to have its share of violent and unsafe fans associated with it. If I remember correctly, McVeigh was a Star Trek fan whom I believe referenced Captain Picard as an inspiration and seemed to believe he would have approved of his actions. I dunno how this is going to impact the Bronies otherwise sterling reputation though…
@Surplus to Requirements
Ah yes, I believe the definition of Simp is someone who is nice to women in the hopes of sexual favor, commonly used as an insult by people who think the only reason to be nice to a woman is to get sex… Oh, I think I see your point.
This might be a good time to rewatch Jenny Nicholson’s Hugo-nominated video The Last Bronycon: a fandom autopsy, which takes a good look at the fandom, from the perspective of someone who was there throughout.
Every time I see a MLP gif, I miss Scildfreja.
Mental issues and bad parenthood aren’t to blame either. I will give you easy access to guns, though.
What would be a flattering way to portray racism, homophobia, MAGA, and coal rolling?
I’m imagining one of those MSM vox pop pieces where they talk to people in a small town diner, but they’re all badmouthing Twilight Sparkle.
@Buttercup : open Fox News, it’s pretty much what they do all day.
(portray small cities conservative in the best possible light, I mean)
Jesus. That’s… special. But also kind of not surprising. A lot of fandoms are really terrifying that way, and there sorely needs to be a reckoning IMO. Fandoms tend to normalize some fucked up stuff, and that normalization for certain types of people is a stepping stone on a path into worse and worse behavior.
And that idea that fandom should police itself at all is a hard sell, IDK why. I’ve had people legit get angry at me when I said that AO3 should ban rape and CSA fics. Often people who understand intimately how bullshit “free speech” arguments are when the far right uses them, will turn around and spout the same tired shit if you talk about not enabling violent creeps.
@Seth S
Yeah I saw about that, it’s pretty scary. And with a lot of these edgelords they seem to draw no distinction between “kidding around” and actually doing the thing – like with Trumpists they go the whole way while convincing themselves it’s still a joke. I want to believe it’s all boasting and lies, but after 4 years of dictatorship and 500,000+ deaths I kind of can’t. So as much as I hate the idea, I’m probably going to stay home this Saturday.
Used to be TBH I’d just be like “whatever, any guy who tries something gets a hiking boot in the nuts.” But between asthma, hip problems, autoimmune shit, and a year of lockdown, my body is in pretty bad shape right now. I probably couldn’t kick a guy once without getting out of breath. And I feel that every time I go out, really. Being mobility disabled and female in public is a whole extra load of fear and trauma, vs. being female and abled.
@Ohlmann – I think he was talking about pop culture (movies, TV shows, etc) rather than news shows. Pop culture generally has a sentimental streak for small towns, but doesn’t love the narrow-minded authoritarians and bigots who rule those small towns.
A lot of right-wing pundits (Steve Bannon, Dana Loesch, Brian Kilmeade, Andrew Breitbart, Ben Shapiro) got their start trying (and failing) to break into the ranks of screenwriters and comedians, which probably accounts for their simultaneous contempt and craving for Hollywood acceptance. None of them are good at writing or comedy. Hate-based humor doesn’t sell well. If you don’t hate the same groups of people, you won’t find it funny.
That’s a whole load of wrong, but I think what mystifies me the second most is the notion that the Element of Honesty would sympathize with a con artist’s cult (beyond maybe feeling sorry for the least malignant among their number, anyhow).
These “people” deserve every bit of backlash that might be coming towards them. Worrying more about cartoon animals and how they personally might be thought of, than about real murdered humans. And little kids who shouldn’t have to deal with this shit.
MLP is good for little kids, and is pretty feminist in its current incarnation IIRC.
But that doesn’t stop creepy adult men from being creepily into it, nor does it stop Nazis and MRAs from being into it.
This guy — IF the FB post is taken at face value — definitely had lost touch with consensus reality. But if he hadn’t had easy access to All The Guns, 8 people would still be alive.
And probably dialing back on Applejack for a while is a good idea, no matter how it upsets the fascists.
@Seth S: Ugh. May your flashlight not need use. Good luck.
@Cyborgette: what you said, all of it. Me too.
@Buttercup said:
What would be a flattering way to portray racism, homophobia, MAGA, and coal rolling?
^^^^^^^ THIS.
I just heard about the shooting in passing and didn’t realize anyone was killed. 8 people? Fuck.
I don’t think this reflects badly on the show itself. Or the majority of fans. I think David’s point was more the entitled (and often misogynist) types in lots of fandoms, who want everything to cater to them. And/or people who’ll trivialize a tragedy.
@Seth S:
I hope no one really meant it. But even if they didn’t, it’s still basically terrorism. Because the “joke” strikes me as trying to make people afraid, especially women & probably non-binary folks too.
I’m a brony and a furry.
We have assholes in every community.
Some websites attract more undesirable members of certain communities than others.
@Chris Oakley
No.
The show itself isn’t the problem.
Let kids and adults who aren’t a-holes enjoy it.
I didn’t see the comment of Chris Oakley, but he’s probably closer to be the one that need to be incarcerated for domestic terrorism than the average brony.
I mean, what the hell ? What can motivate someone to say something that stupid ? He have a hard-on when hating people or what ?
@Mogwitch,
Years ago I read an article comparing MLP fandoms with assorted magical girl anime fandoms (the MLP story structure of six young females fighting evil resembles the MG formulas, at least on the surface). Apparently the MG fandoms had their equivalents to Bronies in them too, meaning that the story formula of female teens/young women fighting evil strongly attracts that kind of fan. One result of these male fans’ presence is that many of the MG animes will include stuff like upskirt shots just to please them, which the MLP show can’t/won’t do (US federal regulations on what can be shown on a kids show can get very strict on that stuff). Whether that is good or bad depends on how you look at things.
As for the Indianapolis shooting in general…I live approximately one hour from that hub. A little too close, even at that distance.
Meanwhile the authorities are still trying to figure out this guy’s motives, since he didn’t seem to have left a manifesto behind and no-one could make out what he shouted before opening fire. They can’t even figure out yet if racism played a major role yet in choice of victim – four of the dead were Sikhs, in a workplace that the Wiki page states is staffed by about 90% people of Indian descent.
This IndyStar article from yesterday has what little is publicly known up to that point about what went on that night. Nothing about the Brony angle though, though there is a bit about a ‘red flag’ law that might have caught this guy earlier, but wasn’t really invoked for as yet unrevealed reason.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.indystar.com/amp/7276123002