 The adult interest in the show is comparable to that of The Magic Roundabout , Tiny Toon Adventures , Rocko 's Modern Life , Animaniacs , Dexters Laboratory , The Powerpuff Girls , SpongeBob SquarePants , Yo Gabba Gabba ! , and Phineas and Ferb : older audiences appreciate jokes aimed at adult viewers and a sense of nostalgia for older cartoons and animated films . Many of the aforementioned shows had attracted college @-@ aged fans who , when Friendship Is Magic was airing , would be raising children of their own . The show references works that older viewers would recognize , such as I Love Lucy , The Benny Hill Show , X @-@ Men , 2001 : A Space Odyssey , Diamond Dogs , The Big Lebowski , The Avengers , Star Wars , and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas . Most of these fans are surprised by their fondness for the show . Shaun Scotellaro , operator of Equestria Daily , one of the main fan websites for the show , said , " Honestly , if someone were to have told me I 'd be writing a pony blog seven months ago , I would have called them insane . " He commented that the spread among adults was accelerated by its presence in online gaming . Mike Fahey , an editor for the gaming website Kotaku , noted that the fandom was " building friendships among a diverse group of people that otherwise might have just sat on either side of the Internet , flinging insults at each other " . Dr. Patrick Edwards , who performed several " Brony Studies " to survey and analyze the fandom , observed that the brony fandom is unlike most other fandoms which " aren 't welcoming to people who are different " , and promote the show 's message of love and tolerance . Further interest came from the furry community , which includes a large number of animation fans . One contributor to " The Brony Study " ( below ) , Dr. Marsha Redden said that the adult fans are " a reaction to the US having been engrossed in terrorism for past ten years " in a manner similar to the Cold War , and are " tired of being afraid , tired of angst and animosity " ; the show and its fandom are outlets from those strifes . She compared the brony fandom to that of the bohemian and beatniks after World War II and of the hippies after the Vietnam War . In a similar vein , Amy Keating Rogers , one of the show 's writers , believes that the fans have come to like Friendship Is Magic due to " so much cynicism and negativity out there in so many [ other ] shows " , while the show " has such a positive message " that counters this . 
