A Furry Who Is Also a Brony Wants to Unite the Two

Papabear,

I keep hearing about animosity between Furries and Bronies. Having recently become a fan of My Little Pony, and having been a Furry for several years, I'm thinking about a possible way to end the feud. Would going to a Brony convention as a "sleeper furry," making friends with a lot of people there, and revealing I'm a Furry at the last minute be a good idea, or do you think I should do something different?

Alec

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Hi, Alec,

It’s nice of you to want to do something to help unite Bronies with the rest of the fandom, but I’m not so sure your strategy is a good idea. Mostly because you are taking advantage of people’s trust and then revealing at the last minute you’re a furry (although, ironically, IMO all Bronies are already furries). This immediately sends a message to the Bronies that you have been lying to them, which will naturally make them wonder if you can be trusted in the future.

Even if your idea did work and the Bronies really liked you, just the fact that you were cool with them wouldn’t mean they would think that all furries would be just as cool. In fact, they would be very foolish to make such a generalization.

I believe, like everything else in the fandom, there will always be some conflict between furries and Bronies because, psychologically speaking, whenever you differentiate between two groups of people you create an “us” vs. “them” mentality that cannot be fully overcome.

However, there is hope that we can minimize such animosities over time.

It’s rather silly that we should be fighting each other, but that’s what people tend to do. It doesn’t matter if you’re a furry, Brony, mundane, or whatever. People are naturally prone to this type of mentality in which they form tight bonds within groups and then look at others with fear, anger, or mistrust. The best way to stop this is to join groups under one umbrella, but if you asked Bronies to call themselves furries, or vice versa, you would get resistance, which means possibly creating a new name for all groups—furries, Bronies, therians, otherkin etc. etc.—which would be artificial and rather strained.

I suppose such things are best left to heal organically or not at all. If we could combine diversity with tolerance, that would be the best solution of all. Or, as Tom Lehrer once made famous with a song, perhaps we should have a national day of tolerance to unite us.

Papabear

Here’s the song :-)