I got bullied a lot. The only clique that didn’t bully me, was them. They were very ride or die people. They always made me laugh, my first ever crush was on one of them, but I never told him. Then, years after school, I’d get random people from that subculture helping me. A bunch of them talked me out of suicide. I didn’t even know them, but that’s what they did. And now that subculture’s just…gone. I know those people still exist, obviously, but every time I think about it, or watch old videos involving people of that subculture, I feel a wave of warmth followed by emptiness. I never got to thank some of them for making my teenage years my golden years. I felt safe opening up to them emotionally. Otherwise, I was a closed book. My family are very “get on with it” “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” people.
I forgot to put my age, but I’m a woman, and 30.
Apart from a lot of us (myself included) appreciating high quality animation and story that didn’t predisposition itself to be dumbed down for their intended audience, the main mantra of the Brony movement was “Love and Tolerance” which in the early days was practiced pretty cohesively, even extending to aggressors who would pop in and call everyone gay/other slurs to try to get a rise out of others, and whatnot. We’d just be like “ok, that’s just like, your opinion man, we love you anyway” and proceed on with our lives instead of engaging them in arguing and namecalling. At the time your typical garden-variety internet troll didn’t really know what to do in that situation. The Encyclopedia Dramatica page on Bronies was especially amusing because they admitted they didn’t have any viable way to cause flame wars or upset within the fandom.
As the fandom got bigger of course it was going to get people that take the bait so from my perspective it wasn’t as much of a unified front in later years as it was in the beginning.
But I was part of Mumble/Teamspeak servers, Minecraft servers, Steam groups etc and they were all very welcoming. I think it was just that most of us were well intentioned people that enjoyed us a good cartoon, lol.