LogFAQs > #978726519

My wild conspiracy theory is that this ties into the unhealthy way society treats men who like "cute" things.

I could go on and on about this subject, and will probably end up accidentally doing so anyway, but...there has definitely been a persistent stigma against males liking cute things. If a guy likes something that's cute, it's treated as a sign that there's something wrong with him. The one exception I've observed is that it's okay for a guy to like something cute if it's for romantic/sexual reasons. Of course, this sentiment has been dwindling, which is great, but that's still a relatively recent improvement. There are a lot of people who would have already internalized all that...including men who would've been in their teens and twenties at the height of the MLP craze.

So my wild theory is that a lot of the brony crowd are guys who got swept up in the MLP hype and had to justify their interest to themselves in the only way their subconscious allowed: by viewing the ponies in a sexual light. If they'd never been taught growing up that liking that kind of thing means they're gay which is bad, they might have been able to just enjoy cute cartoon horses for genuinely wholesome reasons.