(Oct. 15, 2015 4:40 AM)Bey Brad Wrote: The huge issue with this being applied to MLP is that it's a space that should've been safe for little girls that's been hugely co-opted online by men who make it a space absolutely unsafe for them. Every cartoon has fandom that takes things way past the boundary, but the scale and impact of what happened with MLP is pretty unprecedented.
This is actually an issue that I have had to deal with myself - my little sister (who declares herself to be a "brony" as well) who is 10 has started venturing out into the interwebs looking for fan content. Naturally, knowing that the Internet is not generally a good place for 10-year-old
anybody to be mucking about unsupervised, I was concerned - particularly since, by looking for fan content, she was deliberately straying from the kid-friendly official content.
I did a Google image search for "my little pony" after logging out of Chrome (to prevent Google from adapting my search results based on my account history) and was not impressed with what I saw. Fanart is present almost immediately at the top of the page, and begins to overwhelm official images before I even scrolled halfway down. Incidentally, the most concerning images were ones that had their search ranking boosted by being included in news articles condemning the fandom for such content, with the particularly offensive images used for shock value / clickbait. There's also a little bit of shipping and some memes, as well as a number of other things that would probably (at best) confuse younger kids. "my little pony coloring pages" (something my sister would often look up) turns up perfectly acceptable results, aside from one image which might indirectly reference something inappropriate (a character may or may not be dressed as a pimp, I'm not sure. I may be discriminating against vests and fedoras, sorry). I couldn't find the original source to confirm, though disturbingly the image is hosted on several sites claiming to be family-friendly.
What's visible here is two stages of a "vocal minority" - first, the brony community as a whole puts out a ton more content onto the Internet than Hasbro and the show's target demographic (young girls) do. Consequently, Google turns up a sea of fan content, because that's really all there is. Hasbro reusing the same few stock images doesn't help, either. The second layer of the "vocal minority" is within the brony community itself - you're much more likely to notice the one inappropriate image than the ten kid-friendly ones around it. Of course, the same applies to kids, so if Google turns up even one bad image on the first page of results, you can bet that a lot of kids will either click on it or be confused and scared. Bronies might be the minority fringe demographic, but since they put out so much content, they really do ruin it for the actual intended audience.
EDIT:
Further research indicates that Care Bears are not exempt from dubiously appropriate content either, though there is far less fan content than with MLP. Oddly, the search for "care bears" turned up an MLP image for some reason...
Thomas the Tank Engine is liberally slathered in memes.
Sonic the Hedgehog turns up less fan content than MLP, but a much higher fraction of what's there is inappropriate. Probably a self-reinforcing stereotype.
Pokemon has an even mix of fanart and official stuff. Some inappropriate content here and there.
Dora the Explorer turns up mostly official images and merchandise, with some fanart and cosplay.
I have no idea what childrens' shows are actually running right now, but R34 stops for no one. A large adult fanbase makes things worse, but there's no avoiding the fact that the Internet just isn't a safe place to wander around in.
Also, by this point anyone monitoring my browsing history through campus IT is probably thoroughly confused XD