I was wondering if anyone could explain to my why My Little Pony seems to have such a huge cult following at the moment. I have only really become aware of this in the past few days, mainly through (loosely) following goings-on on this site. Before that, all I had heard was that deviantart is, allegedly, full of MLP pictures, and a rumour that this began on 4chan.

It may be hard for some of you to understand, but I felt a good deal of shock and horror when I realised that this is something that a lot of people take seriously. You could call it "culture shock". MLP was not part of my childhood - I was already well past the target age range when it was first introduced, and for a very long time it was something of a laughing stock for older people. It was the stereotyped example people used of a sexist and rather pointless toy for 3 year old girls. I didn't become aware there was even a cartoon of MLP until a few years ago. I think I have actually seen it exactly once in my entire life.

So it must be admitted there could be something I'm missing out on here. A lot of children's programmes are, in fact, very good. After all, the best ones are designed with the knowledge that grown-ups are going to be forced to watch them as well. Without this, one would quickly become insane whilst keeping toddlers and small children company when watching their favourite tv programmes.

In the past other programmes aimed at the very young have gained cult followings amongst an older age group - for example Teletubbies became very popular with college students. As far as I know, this sort of thing tends to be due to a fortuitous combination of scheduling times, psychedelic visuals and general silliness that can be quite appealing.

However, I don't think that I've seen anything quite like the MLP phenomenon. Granted, I've only been aware of it for a few days: but it looks as though it has a huge, devoted fan base. Does anybody have any thoughts, opinions or facts on how this came to be? This appears to be relatively recent - is it the latest incarnation of MLP that is simply superior? Was it originally ironic in some way? Or is it that the "MLP generation" grew up, and some people still have a lot of fondness for something that was originally a childhood thing?

I'm not trying to insult anyone or hurt anyone's feelings. Seriously, I am probably much too old to even be here, never mind understanding current "youth" trends. So don't take it personally.

If it makes anyone feel better, when I was around seven or eight years old I used to write stories set in a fantasy world populated by brightly-coloured unicorns and flying horses. I'm generally too embarrassed to admit to that! But I really enjoyed it at the time. I was quite peeved when MLP appeared (although I had stopped writing those stories by then).

I have a feeling that my recent surfing has only turned up the craziest of the crazy, which is probably contributing to my discomfort about this subject.

I needed to write this as a form of catharsis: for some reason this has been really niggling at me. I don't mind if nobody replies, but I'd be interested to hear anyone's take on this phenomenon, whether it's explaining the awesomeness of MLP, hating on it, a sociological perspective or any other.

There isn't anywhere else I can post this that people will even give two hoots, or probably even know what on earth I'm talking about ... so apologies if you feel this is misuse of the board.