Episode 14 - Cosplay, Furries, and Bronies

welcome to this episode of the wolf and

the shepherd today we are talking about

cosplay and the various parts of cosplay

but

we're going to dig in a little bit more

on cosplay with

furries and bronies so

as we kind of look right now at cosplay

what what exactly would you define

cosplay as what what is cosplay for

those out there that don't know what is

cosplay

well cosplay is the practice of dressing

up as a character

from a movie book or a video game to me

i think the uh practice came about

from people who were disgruntled that

they could only really dress up once a

year

at halloween with an excuse and people

who just wanted to play dress up just a

little bit more often and obviously

in this age with the internet found

similar

you know like-minded people sure i think

there's how that

you know cosplay came to be yeah nobody

frowns on anybody dressing up in a

costume at halloween it's a given

it's actually the opposite right if

you're not dressed up at halloween

you're kind of a party pooper

yeah you know it's like oh why didn't

you dress up in a costume oh well

you know and then they sold those

t-shirts so this is my halloween costume

it's like oh look how you're trying to

be

that way so now we've kind of spun that

halloween out

with that costume dress up but now we've

created this subculture in cosplay

yeah for you know year round basically

what you're saying yeah um cosplay

at least in the western world didn't

start coming around into popular culture

until about the 90s

but it could be traced back to japan uh

into the previous decade simply based

upon a lot of uh anime and manga

characters

so so we're talking about the 1980s yeah

wow

that was in japan when it first started

then and again you have to remember

not really any internet as such

right uh so internet is we know it today

right yeah

yeah yeah who knows what they had so so

basically this is kind of another little

piece of culture that we've

kind of stolen you know from

the eastern asia you know it they they

said oh look look we're

dressing up as these characters and then

somebody somewhere says

oh this is kind of interesting let me go

ahead and do that and now all of a

sudden it spills in

10 15 years later and now there's people

just dressing up year round

yeah and i think you know going back to

how it came from japan to here

it was around that period the early 90s

where um

the american fascination for anime and

manga comics came

um really into play and i think in a lot

of the comics

because they were you know direct

translations of the japanese magazines

but just with english uh text in there

right but they're all

also articles about cosplay in there and

i think

you know oh actually in the magazines

in the magazines yeah so were they

actually encouraging it

or or was it talking about what's going

on right no i mean

by that time by the time as i said the

manga and anime comics had become

popular over here

uh cosplay was already a thing over in

japan than they were already having you

know

various national conventions so it was

already

popular over there and once the cartoons

the anime cartoons

came into play and got on the cartoon

network and various networks over here

and the popular popularity started

rising more and more

yeah um i think there's more awareness

and again there's a little bit later so

people had access to that

you know that's crazy that's crazy

now um in terms of you know anything

that

gathers any traction i suppose uh

cosplay as soon as it started growing

attracted a lot of commercial interest

oh sure i mean they saw that

availability hey we can get that buck

off there sure so let's figure out how

we're going to make a buck off yes

you know there are always businesses

where they have a division

where as somebody said to them hey let's

make you know

size adult superhero costumes and all

these other type costumes

you know the various i think you know

before cosplay became a thing it's like

well yeah we do that

once a year you know six weeks before

halloween but then all of a sudden

you've got a year-round market

and i think a lot of the halloween

stores have actually

now just offsets of the full year-round

cosplay

and they well yeah and and of course you

know here we are we're recording in

october

halloween's right around the corner one

of the things that always baffled me

about a halloween store

was you kept seeing the same things

every year yeah you know there never was

a after halloween sale right they packed

up those costumes yeah right

and you saw those same costumes the next

year so

even though they might have went out of

vogue you know there might have been

something that isn't as popular anymore

you could still snag that costume

but the ironic thing if you probably

think back to before

the commercial people kind of grabbed a

hold of this right

was a lot of these people probably made

their own costumes

so you know somebody that sits there for

with

talent obviously right for two or three

months

and they make this costume like you say

commercial interests

probably grabbed a hold of that and said

well wait a second

what if we go ahead and make this

costume for the people that

really want to go to these deals but

don't have the two or three months to

create the costume then we sell it

and we license it and we bank off of it

and i think that's

what you're kind of leading into is is

that's basically kind of what happened

here

right that along with the halloween

knowing oh halloween's around the corner

so the

cosplayers that might only dress up once

a year

we'll mark these costumes up and go

ahead and really bank off

that yeah i don't know if you remember

back when i don't know maybe you were

about seven or eight

i think it started with the influx of

plastic

masks for uh halloween because there

used to be

i think latex i love them before then

but then i guess we got flooded by a

whole bunch of

uh chinese kind of superhero masks and

all that stuff

and i always remember buying a buying a

mouse kind of like a size too small

accidentally and you know where the ring

hole was well

where you put the cord through to tie

the thing on or the elastic

um that would start digging into your

face after all

that's too small have you bumped into

anybody i mean that thing i mean

especially because it would sometimes

split in different parts

yeah and it would start digging into

your face and then if anybody bumped you

oh not only that but you know they they

made those

for that one halloween night right but

yeah they really only made it for like

the first 30 45 minutes

yeah because you knew after you

trick-or-treated to you know a few

houses

you were done you were taking that cheap

plastic mask off

you might be being kind i think it might

have been 45 seconds

before you discovered the discomfort

well yeah and you got to remember as a

kid right you get that halloween costume

and obviously you're getting it

before halloween yeah so when you're a

kid what do you want to do

you immediately want to put that thing

on right even if it's

a day before halloween or three weeks

before halloween you gotta try that

thing on

right if you're gonna be batman right

you want to run around the house dressed

up in that costume

so a lot of times i'm sure there were

kids that ruined that costume before it

was even halloween time

right but the quality of costumes

nowadays compared to how they used to be

um just as an example here cosplayers

uh back in 2014

spent 11.7 billion dollars

billions with a b and that was in 2014

by the end of 2019 that figured

increased to 45 billions

of four-fold wait wait so go back and

say those numbers again 11.7 billion

11.7 billion

up to 40 some billion 45 billion

it's crazy yeah so it's crazy kind of

gone fourfold in the space of like five

years

the market for it and you know obviously

what happens is these costumes do become

more more elaborate

they realize that you've got those

people who only want the very very best

right costumes and so they'll pay for

the you know twelve hundred dollar iron

man costume as opposed to the

you know the 64 65 oh yeah yeah

yeah some some cheap junk i i remember

uh one of the first what i guess you'd

probably call it a cosplay costume

that i ever bought yeah i had always

wanted

real stormtrooper armor of course you

know you and i both were star wars fans

yeah and so i had always wanted a

full set of stormtrooper armor and i

paid

1100 dollars

for stormtrooper now you can go and you

can get something

probably actually better than what i

bought

for a few hundred dollars at a star wars

store

mine mine was pretty good i still have

every piece of it except for some reason

i lost the helmet

yeah like a long time ago and don't know

where the helmet

ever went to i think i had it on a

display somewhere and then it got packed

away and it got in a box it got thrown

away

but i still have a box that has that

storm trooper armor in there and i

remember

when i'd put it on i looked like

a storm trooper and of course one of the

cosplay things

star wars is very popular with that and

they have the

501st legion that they all dress as

stormtroopers and everything and it was

500 first legion approved and i think i

wore it honestly

like three times yeah but it was just

one of those kind of bucket list things

i

always wanted a storm trooper costume

and i had the cadillac version now

it's in a cardboard box somewhere do you

want that do you want to hear my

embarrassing make it yourself uh

stormtrooper

absolutely i'll go for it okay uh

this was maybe about 82

and i decided i would also like some

stormtrooper

so so now for uh clarity's sake this is

just before returning the jedi

right so empire's been out yep return of

the jedi yeah

not in the theater yet just just kind of

set the timeline yeah

um so uh i figured yeah i'd really like

stormtrooper kind of armor kind of thing

and i figured

well i looked through a few of my comic

books and stuff when there were places

which sold them

um but i made the mistake of wandering

around in the backyard

and i spotted two pieces of

uh tubing which were about 18 inches

long yeah yeah yeah

and um i kind of walked up to it

and i think my subliminal part my brain

was working

more than my uh conscience at the time

but uh i went over there kind of like

put my hand in there and it was a tight

fit

i thought hmm this looks a bit like

stormtrooper armor

so i pushed my hand all the way through

and i mean it was a struggle right

getting it all the way through and i'd

also kind of uh

not kind of worked out with the length

quite correctly because i mean it was

painful for as far as it was up once my

hand was yeah

elbow so now you can't bend your arms so

anyway yeah

well that i wasn't aware of that at the

time um

so i put the other one on because you

know i had to kind of like tip it up on

its end and push my hand through because

i couldn't do anything with the other

hand to help this

time around so i had them both on then i

realized

i couldn't bend myself i couldn't bend

my arms right and

now you're and now i

how am i supposed to get these off yeah

it was at that point i realized i'd made

a terrible mistake and i had to wait

uh for my dad to get back from work so i

sat out in the backyard i think it was

for like about

three hours uh because i didn't want to

go and knock on the back door my mom was

inside but

um i didn't i didn't want to disturb her

and listen to

a lecture so wait so i figured i'd wait

till my dad came home and

he had to actually um use a

sawzall type thing to cut right cut

through it and cut it around just at the

points where i could get my

uh elbow joint through so yeah that was

my do it yourself now

actually what i'm gonna do uh for this

podcast on

our facebook group i actually have a

homemade

batman costume i made i think

when batman returns came out and i wore

it to a fancy dress

party and believe me it's me wearing it

it's head to toe

homemade costume but yeah it's the sight

to behold so as soon as this podcast

goes live and we're up on the and it's

up on the

facebook group i'll uh go ahead and look

at this look

i'm looking forward to seeing that

because i have not seen this picture so

i'm looking forward to seeing that

picture

yeah now going back to the commerciality

of a cosplay

uh san diego comic-con

uh used to be the biggest i think

comic-con i think it

still is isn't it well it actually

stopped it yeah

that actually got cancelled uh this year

well obviously along with everything

else but on average more than 130

000 people go to that each year and you

can imagine just as much

that's more in the super bowl well

they're taking a lot of money obviously

to spend their on merchandise and

everything else i mean

right you know that events like that and

that's not the only one it just happens

to be the largest one and you know

they're very specific

um cosplay ones again like you mentioned

with the star wars ones

right um but uh even on tick tock

there's a famous cosplay on there

cosplayer and

well we say famous i don't think you or

i ever heard of her but

she's her name is uh lauren gray and she

has over

38 million followers 38 million

followers wow that that's crazy yeah i

haven't checked her out yet mainly

because i don't have tick tock but yeah

well yeah you know i know we have a tick

tock channel but

uh we actually don't manage it because

neither one of us are

savvy enough to understand how to do

tick tock so we

leave that to some of our associate

producers but uh

yeah check out lauren gray i guess on

tick tock however you do that yeah and

i'm sure our associate producer is going

to be listening through this and

giving you some kind of link on how to

do that yeah and uh i may even upload a

photo of her onto the uh facebook oh

there's

a page as well as long as she's um

decent uh

anyway there's a few other cosplay

things before we uh okay

diver into our furries and bronies which

i'm sure the listeners are really

looking forward to

um a few other cosplay things which

there were

it was obviously going to be a thing but

your thoughts on it in terms of how you

see it operating or how it would

it'd be hard i don't know to deviate

from the norm that much and it still

works successfully so the first one

is there are a bunch of cosplay dating

websites where these people can date

each other

okay i can i can see that i mean you

you've got the

the dating websites it's uh what's the

one farmers only yeah when it's looking

for farmers and then you've got the

silver singles for you know the old

folks i could

i'm not surprised i mean i wouldn't have

thought about it so whoever came up with

that

you know props to you you're you're

sitting in a mansion somewhere

laughing about the idea because you

banked off of that so

so good for you but uh how does the

cosplay dating website work i mean it

are are they dressed up in their

favorite cosplay outfit and they say

i only want people that you know

wear star wars cosplay and no star trek

or something like that i mean do you

check off the little boxes of what kind

of cosplay

fan you are well and i can't believe

i'm about to say this but if i ran a

cosplay dating website oh

is this really hypothetical or or is

this something that

that you know for a fact secretly you

were the guy that created the cosplay

dating well this this is what i would do

i would have your main profile photo had

to be you normal

okay just your normal everyday self

because at the end of the day unless

somebody's

way into it now hang on now let's be

honest so if you got a million people

signing up for this

995 000 just signed out if they got to

put the regular picture up there

well you see this is the way you make it

work though because nobody really wants

to date

somebody based upon what they look at

like in cosplay when that's only going

to be a small percentage of the time

i'll tell that to instagram well yeah

but um i think

that you know that in terms of dating

you need to see who you're going to be

seeing

most of the time but then they should

post their four best cosplay photos

so if there are people who don't really

care what they look like in real life

but are only after the cosplay things

then they can also

judge them on the cosplay photos yeah

that makes sense and that would

that would be my minimum requirement i

follow i follow your logic there yeah

if that makes sense and i think i'd have

to have a system of weeding out

you know people who put in uh like blank

photos you know they don't upload photos

it must be required simply because

you're going to get those people who

just want to

go out and find girls who dress in nice

outfits yeah very true yeah because

especially if they're wearing masks

right right so that that's very easy to

hide your identity

if you've got a mask on so totally get

that totally get that

uh what else is in there in that cosplay

world

um there's a surprising number of books

uh okay devoted to cosplay now magazines

it doesn't shock me because again i'm

guessing half the magazine would be

advertisements from

online stores selling stuff and then you

know the rest of it

the rest of it will just be advertising

you know um

conventions and all that stuff yep but

books

it's kind of um i mean sure it's got to

be somewhat illustrated because i don't

know the fictional

story about cosplayers yeah you know

what maybe there is but

but i'm guessing the books that you're

talking about are like say full of

pictures

you know of different people at these

you know cosplay conventions cosplay

events

stuff like that so uh i guess that

leads to knowing that hey print media is

not quite dead

right because you think of something

cosplay as being internet centric

and everybody being on the internet and

worried about their web pages and their

social media sites and things like that

but

if you got it in print media i mean it's

taken hold well when i said book

i probably meant maybe ebook just simply

because i can't see most of the people

in the generation or interferes they're

actually going to well when they can

carry it everywhere on their phone and

read it yeah

fair enough but there's still people

that print emails so

yeah yeah um the last thing i wanted to

discuss with you

just about the general cosplay world

before we go off into the diversion of

the fairies and the bronies

um was that i actually discovered

cosplay has its own cryptocurrency

called the cosplay

token yeah c-o-t c-o-t the cosplay

token yeah okay wow and uh what one

thing we haven't hit on

in any of our podcasts is cryptocurrency

but

let's talk about this a little bit so

how does the cot the cosplay token that

how is that playing into the whole

cosplay world well i'm figuring that

what they're going to use it for

is uh you know obviously the online

currency

when you buy stuff from the stores and

maybe

you know especially if it's shipping

from overseas a lot of the time you can

avoid certain taxis and important taxis

simply because well i can't remember

which one of the crypto currencies it

was i don't know if it was

the dogecoin or one of the other ones

that was more along the lines of tipping

yeah that was the yeah that was the

dodge coin because they used to do it on

reddit

so so i'm i'm wondering if this is kind

of the same thing with the cosplay it's

like okay

here's me in a cosplay costume right

so tip me cosplay coins yeah and

maybe that's what's going on and you

know once again

our uh crack team of fact checkers

we haven't figured this out we just saw

that there is one yeah

you know hey figure it out yeah yeah i

don't have a

a cot cryptocurrency

address but you can tip me a cot

coin and i'll let you know what that

address is once i figure out how to get

one

yeah i know there's a ever-growing

number of

bitcoin atms you know appearing all over

the united states including here in

north texas but i think it's going to be

a long time before they come across say

a

cosplay token atm ah but you know what

what if the cosplay token atm

dressed up as a vending machine then uh

it's sitting there it's doing cosplay i

mean that'd be the way i'd try to do it

it's like listening to pinky and the

brain sometimes yeah

sometimes sometimes but i digress so

uh so we got off cosplay but let's talk

about

kind of the where we where we originally

wanted to go with this podcast and

and we decided uh that we were gonna

combine

a few things into one right on this

so uh let's talk a little bit about

furries

because originally we were going to do a

podcast all about furries but we decided

hey let's rope some of this stuff

together and to me

and and this is no offense to the furry

community

but to me it's just kind of a form of

cosplay

and so when you and i were talking about

bringing up furries and everything else

we kind of decided to

go kind of north on the writing down our

topics and figuring out what we were

going to talk about and we said oh no

the main topic's got to be cosplay

and then of course the bronies we're

going to get to in a minute but

so what what exactly

beyond just the the term free what

exactly

is a furry this is um

one of those questions i'd love you to

be able to

go back in time interview into somebody

who knew the answer

but the audience be from like i don't

know about 50 years ago or 60 years ago

so i'd have to watch their faces

listening to this explanation

we do have some audience members out

there that are 65 plus

so so we're we're gonna pander to them a

little bit and for those that actually

kind of know

what it is uh what we'll still go on

with this because

like i said i'm not a hundred percent

sure exactly what they are oh so

so explain it to me like i'm one of

those 65 pluses out there

so what is a furry okay a fairy

is basically an enthusiast for animals

who have anthropomorphic qualities like

human characteristics or at least they

can ascribe

human characteristics to them and they

have a great fascination

with animals um like in cartoons that

talk

um especially the female especially the

female characters

but um so we're talking about cartoon

characters like say

bugs bunny right yeah bugs bunny is a

rabbit

he's obviously a rabbit right yeah and

he talks he speaks english

but he he kind of walks around in the

cartoon

yeah like a human he doesn't hop around

like a rabbit right

yeah but you know he's a rabbit yeah but

he acts more like a human

yeah yeah and that's those

anthropomorphic qualities you know it's

like using reason logic all their stuff

but um you know in particular furries

are attracted towards people who dress

up

in fairy costumes fairy being anything

from the fair world i mean i've

i'm guessing saying they kind of keep it

strictly to mammals but

who knows there might be some fish

fairies out there i'm not sure well

maybe that's a secret subset right it's

kind of somewhere on the dark web

of the the fish furries maybe the

maybe they're the the scalies or

something like that

yeah but but yeah so so you're talking

about like you say mammals that makes

sense right

because because most mammals you know i

mean you take your dog or your cat right

yeah everybody's kind of picked him up

made him walk on the hind leg

said look i'm a person right so i i can

see

the whole mammal concept you know that

you can

kind of picture a mammal walking on time

legs like a person even

even though they don't do it full-time

right there's actually a um

well furries are so popular and there's

been

a number of um psychological studies

on the um practice and there's actually

an academic body named iarp

also known as fur science

so i don't know yeah i don't know if you

can actually get a degree

to vary online with us i'm not sure but

anyway it's comprised of uh

psychologists sociologists social

workers

all around the world now i don't know

about you but if i heard a list

comprised of

psychologists sociologists and social

workers to me it sounds like an

intervention group

absolutely i mean it's you know people

in professional terms of trying to get

people away from

alcoholism and drug abuse yeah let's be

honest

in family troubles and all those things

so

i'm totally with you on that one yeah

that sounds like uh

daddy is cashed in your trust fund and

is paid for an intervention group to

stop you dressing up like a cow every

saturday right and whatever's left he's

going to buy a boat and call it you know

don't sink this furry yeah

um well i i was actually

while i was actually doing some research

and again i

this is one of those subjects which we

probably could have winged it

and nobody would have fact checked us

but i did actually do some research on

this

and there were a bunch of interviews

with practicing furries

online obviously is that the term that

they want to use those

practicing furry no i just put that in

front oh okay yeah i don't know

because that makes it sound especially

professional it's

and practice like practicing amateur

fairy yeah yeah i guess

if if you're gonna do it maybe you want

to be a professional furry

are you a practicing furry do you

actually get to the point where you're

professional furry

i don't know getting too deep down the

river well well i don't know i think

you know maybe the amateur fairies are

the ones that keep turning up as snakes

every now and then it's like

fairy idiot yeah yeah yeah i got my

animals confused i

i failed seventh grade science so i

don't know what a mammal is and what a

reptile is

well one of the one of the best opening

uh lines of one of the interviews i read

um this guy said uh hi my name is josh

but you can call me by my furry name

moon raiser oh so they have furry names

yeah so i didn't know this yeah moon

race so so

josh aka moon razor yeah uh do you

remember

what animal he dressed up as uh

because i'm picturing okay moon raising

gotta be like a coyote right

coyote something like that that that's

out there in the moonlight saying oh i'm

a moon raiser

it's probably a squirrel

raccoon you know maybe he digs around in

the dumpster

right and he realizes i might as well

put a raccoon costume on now i won't

look as bad digging in the dumpster

dress like a raccoon because i can hang

out with the real raccoons and maybe fit

in they can take me in as their family

and

we can all go steal dog food together

yeah

now um what have you had to guess

when would you think furries have been

around since oh gosh

you know i i would have to say

90s just you know

shot in the dark guess here i'm going to

say sometime in the 90s

right it was actually the early 80s

okay and this shocked me because again

without

really any type of internet or texting

how did people find these support groups

together together how did fairies find

other furries i mean did you just

basically bite the bullet and one day

just walk down the high street in your

panda costume

and somebody else see you hope you're

there again the same time tomorrow and

they

walk up in their cat costume and that's

how the group

you know that very well possibly could

be or maybe you're

taking too much time hanging out at the

zoo right

you know you go to the zoo you got a

season pass to the zoo when you're

you're kind of eyeing the koala bears a

little too longingly

and somebody says you know what i bet

that guy

dresses up like a koala bear and sits

there and chews on leaves and speaks in

an

australian accent and would really like

to hang out

that that could happen also what could

have happened is they could have gone

the whole

newspaper ad route you know putting out

in the local newspaper but

again just like i said about if you had

to explain this to somebody in front of

an audience 50 years ago

i think you'd have been shot right yeah

but even

you know you think even yeah actually

crap the early 80s that was almost 40

years ago anyway

oh dang this is kind of a yeah probably

that's a little probably

bad except gang so yeah so back then 40

years ago in an ad

how would you put that you're a person

who likes to dress up

as an animal in search of other people

who like to dress up as animals

well that could be attributed to the

fact of the name furry right because

if if you didn't know what a furry was

and i didn't know what a free was

and if you're listening out there and

you don't know what a free is right

you hear the term furry anything with e

you know the the y at the end or an ie

at the end

it sounds happy yeah you know hence the

word

happy has a y at the end right so furry

just kind of seems cheerful

that this is a happy thing there there's

nothing bad about it we're all smiling

it's all you know rainbows and

everything else everybody's dancing

around having a good time

so maybe they said hey we we got to come

up with some kind of name for this

that kind of has a happy sound and you

know

this costume's a little on the furry

side and somebody said hey

furry there it is and like well i was

going to call it blah blah blah but okay

furry yeah that sounds better

we'll we'll go ahead and we'll go with

that right now um

if if we have to be honest oh well we're

always honest

fairies um

it's obviously a kink of some type right

or a fetish just in the same way as

um yeah and and we got to remember you

know fetish

tends to have a sexual connotation but

it's not necessarily always that

it it's a bizarre thing bizarre

meaning as far as the normal parts of

society of course

normal here here i go with all these uh

terms that are maybe

socially unacceptable right but your

average person there's a better word uh

wouldn't dress up in an animal costume

right so it's a

fringe let's use the word french right

is that a fair enough word to use it

this is kind of a

fringe interest yeah you know it it's

kind of like uh

actually being a new york jets fan yeah

it's a fringe interest

and they're terrible this year so it's

only the die hards that are actually

wearing a new york jets hat right now

well

the one of the most freaking comments uh

i read on most

uh blogs and report articles about

fairies was that the furry fandom

or fandom is not all about sex okay

so this is where we kind of slightly

differ from the regular

cosplay because the regular cosplay i

mean like you said you wanted to have

stuff

you know stormtrooper armor there's

plenty of grown-up guys who

you know you can understand why they

want to dress up as batman or darth

vader or whatever you know just let off

some steam do that

and a lot of the time i think with that

it's because of

their interest in their own costume and

just being all feeling and

having a community of other people who

will pretend along with you

whereas when it gets to the furries

there's obviously a sexual side because

you've got

fairies with crushes on other fairies

who

all have ever seen is the costume and

not the person underneath

well and let's not let's not

you know use some toxic masculinity in

this right because

there are plenty of the female side of

cosplay that wants to

dress up as some of these quote-unquote

sexy anime characters uh princess leia

in the slave outfit i mean that's a

popular one for women

so so they can play to that and say

we know this male fantasy over here is

this certain outfit yeah and so if we

put that on we can kind of take on that

persona and feel sexy

so so it works both ways works both ways

uh

how that works dressing up as an animal

i i don't know if this explanation's

going far enough for me well i think um

you know again going back to cosplay i

remember a time where

there used to be very few i guess sexy

halloween costumes

but now they've now they've sexified

pretty much every every female

absolutely

oh dude it is not only that it's

everything i mean you can be you can

pick a profession

and type that into google and put sexy

yeah yeah whatever profession yeah

halloween costume yeah and there's one

out there right yeah you know

there's going to be a sexy coal miner

sexy librarian

sexy lawyer sexy

uh dmv attendant

that there's gonna be something there so

so

absolutely but it kind of goes back to

what you were talking about earlier

about the commercialization of it yeah

right so

there's gonna be some woman somewhere

right and

you know we're talking about a woman

nice looking woman

in shape but maybe she's working at the

dmv

everybody makes fun of her for working

at the dmv but she goes to a halloween

party and she dresses as the

sexy dmv worker everybody's going to get

a kick out of it right right

and so you can do that with any costume

but

how do you make a sexy animal costume

well just before just before we leave

this other topic i just wanted to say

i knew the over-sexification of

uh cartoon characters etc

had gone far too far last year when i

saw

an advert for a sexy

grandma costume from little red riding

hood

oh yeah so we're gonna sex granny up in

little red right and yeah

you know what i i attribute that to

liberal arts schools where they get

marketing degrees

and they say i'm going to figure out a

way to sell this and you know what more

power to them right yeah because

because they're putting sales on that

dashboard right there and they're making

that graph

go the correct direction when they're in

meetings right you know because

there's so much that that they can do

but

transitioning on from the furry thing no

hold up

oh no sorry sorry go back and out and

stepping ahead sorry

go back and answer that question which

you asked about you know how do the

furries find each other attractive

you know with those costumes oh that

that is where we were so

so tell me about that so because i

remember i think the last um

comment i made was you know one of the

one of the most frequent

type of comments was the fairy fandom is

not all about sex

um but many fairies will wear at least

the head of their costume during um

romantic relations

no kidding i mean i guess everybody's a

10 with that fairy head on right well i

guess that

that goes back to the whole paperback

thing right

you know what what was it butterface

right

everything's great better face right so

yeah yeah so

i i totally see where that's going now

um

like you were saying about the

commercialization uh

fursuits which is obviously the costumes

they wear okay

can take hundreds of hours to make oh i

don't doubt that and a lot of the time

they're

they're hand stitched they're all well a

lot of them are custom made because if

you're going to pay a lot of money you

don't want to off the rack pretty portey

sure you know fairy suit um and they can

sell for thousands of dollars

literally thousands um but this might

actually surprise you

if you had to well actually i'll let you

guess if you had to guess

how many people identify themselves as

fairies but don't actually own any type

of fairy costume what percentage of

furries do you think that would make

wow okay so so we're talking about

people that are furries

but don't have a furry costume yeah what

percentage of

total ferries do you think that is i'm

gonna go with the

uh the cheap safe bet and i'm gonna go

50

actually it's as high as 75 wow

so 75 of the ferry community are pretty

much

voyeurs okay so so

they're out there just kind of looking

at the other 25

finding them attractive but they don't

really care what the other furry finds

attractive you know yeah you know maybe

maybe they're going to

the spirit halloween store and buying a

cheap like 10

thing but you know not wearing it that

long because they're more interested in

the ones that have gone all out and

spent these thousands of dollars on

these outfits

right yeah so they're cheap like me yeah

is basically what you're saying

yeah and part of the whole fairy promise

is you basically take on a

schizophrenic or disassociative identity

disorder type persona

because when they wear the actual

costumes or the fursuits as we've now

learned

they're called they actually have to

take on an identity which is completely

different than their real life

oh okay so it's known as a fursona

persona you've said before

that they changed their names

right so so are they

you know getting away from and let's

just pretend for a minute that they're

in the united states and there's normal

day-to-day they're speaking english

right do they

change their communication i mean do

they start

making noises towards each other well

maybe speak in a different voice or use

words that wouldn't otherwise use or

repeat things i guess in the character

of the animal

like if they were dressed up as a cat

you'd think despite the fact that

speaking english you're gonna throw in

the old meow

gotcha yeah okay no that makes a lot of

sense that that makes total sense or or

you know if they're a dog they're

gonna bark every once in a while or or a

horse they're gonna nay

every once in a while or y'all they're

gonna be like oh will you please stop

milking me moo you know something like

that yeah

okay that kind of pees on the parade of

the uh koala costume you mentioned

earlier because

who's gonna buy one of those well i

guess if you're devoted enough to buy a

koala

costume you're going to know what a

koala sounds like right here yeah

apparently

i mean it just a little bit of

drunkenness and an australian yeah

i'm like oh you might you know something

like that yeah i think by the time you

spent uh

1500 or 3 thousand dollars on a koala

costume you've pretty much researched a

little bit about them yeah

you know oh especially yeah yeah if

you're dropping that kind of green on it

that makes sense

so with all that said

now we got to move a little bit into

bronies so

the reason why we roped bronies into

this

was because we we were talking about the

furry thing before

and i i said okay well you know let's

let's put some

talking points together i said by the

way i don't know if this kind of fits

into the cosplay or not but

we gotta do a little bit of look up on

bronies and your exact response back to

me is

what is a brony and i was shocked that

you hadn't heard about this and for

those of you out there that don't know

what a brony

is a brony is

a teen you know

kind of early teen maybe what do they

call them tweens now you know

11 12 years old through adult

male that loves my little pony

and it was shocking to me that there

is a giant following

of people that that love my little pony

of stereotypically people you would not

think would like my little pony

so when you kind of looked at me like no

this doesn't exist i said all right

you've accepted the challenge tell us

about bronies

what what did you find out about this

brony world that is

actually hiding out there well firstly

when you

mentioned the word brony to me the

immediate thought in my head was

huh that sounds like pony i wonder if

it's a real world

i'm going to save that for the next time

i'm playing general knowledge in case it

comes up

and that's not brony brony no no idea

and then

obviously you showed me a video a rather

disturbing video

um about what bronies are um

you mentioned it being you know from

tween males up to

you know middle aged males but there's

but

it also has a female sure following and

they're called

pegasisters i guess after pegasus

right yeah see i didn't know yeah yeah

now

um how many of you have to guess

even by 2012 how many bronies there were

in the united states what would you say

2012 2012. how many bronies are there in

the united

states i'm gonna go with a hundred

thousand

and by 2012 it was estimated that the

number of bronies in the united states

alone

was between seven and 12 million

oh my god now that seems a bit wow that

seems

extremely no way because i mean

let's be honest right if there were

literally

50 million actual bronies in the united

states

and somebody came up and asked you if

you were brony

how many are going to say no chance no

no right well it's probably only going

to come out of like maybe nine people

out of 50 million is oh there's only

nine bronies in the entire country

right yeah so i don't know how they got

those figures

because you can't imagine there was a

anonymous online poll that reached

that many people that they could have 12

million responses because if it was that

widespread i'm pretty sure

i would have remembered it you know if

it have come up as a random kind of

question

sure you know do you like dressing up as

a pony bunny chance yeah but

but the ironic part and that's why i

wanted you to kind of do

your due diligence on it it was this

following and

and there is a lot of cosplay there's a

lot of dress up

in in this brony world but

there's some that don't necessarily

dress up as the ponies

but are fascinated with the world of my

little pony yeah

and my little pony by the way you know i

don't know if we fact check this or not

but it's been around for

years i remember as a kid my little pony

being available but it was always the

girls that had the my little ponies and

i had

transformers and gobots and star wars

figures and things like that

and the girls would have the barbie

dolls and the my little ponies and

everything and it was

it was truly a girl toy

and a boy toy right thing i mean there

was a time

and i don't know if this exists or not

anymore but

you'd pull up to mcdonald's and you'd

say i want a happy meal and they'd say

do you want a boy toy or a girl toy

they probably had to get rid of that by

now right but i could see

like a my little pony being the girl toy

and

that would that was always pointed that

way

yeah but then this subset decided

no we these guys said well we like my

little pony too

and they just they grabbed a hold of it

and gravitated toward it and made this

movement behind it almost as strong as

the furries have done

yeah and um my little pony the toys were

actually first released by hasbro back

in 1981

so again we're looking almost well 40

years

and i've never actually seen an episode

of my little pony

nor have i almost watched a clip today

on

youtube to prepare myself but didn't

bother me but

but i will tell you this i took my

daughter

to a live my little pony show

i've seen horror movies in the movie

theater i've been to haunted houses

i've never seen anything scarier in my

life

than full-size adults dressed up in pony

outfits

dancing around on the stage i told my

wife i said

i think i'm gonna have to go this is

scaring me to death

seeing these people dressed up as purple

and pink ponies

dancing around on the stage singing i i

truly got frightened i

i wanted to just do horrible things to

people because i was so

psychologically damaged by watching this

stage play

play out in front of me of these people

dressed up and dancing as ponies it it

was scary

yeah i mean that's normally the kind of

thing reserved for ever

you've dropped some lysergic acid or

managed to get hold of some

dimethyltryptamine

yeah yeah i mean i mean this is one of

those things that maybe you take the

magic mushrooms and you see

but yeah all i had to pay was like 18

bucks for a ticket and i see these

people dancing around i'm like

i can't do this i i i can't do it i'm

scared

i want to go home right now um brony

fandom actually started from an internet

meme on um

4chan now i remember i used to go on

4chan quite a lot

for uh so kind of like

research purposes general news yeah

general news political news

uh because it was completely uncensored

and they weren't back at that time yeah

we're talking about way back in the day

yeah there wasn't that many independent

news sources so anything you kind of

read you would

kind of well i mean it wasn't you didn't

have such

um an opportunity well an opportunity to

have to be able to fact check

what you were reading because there

weren't that many sources you could

actually trace back to

right um but anyway um like i said it

started

from an internet meme on 4chan and

in 2010 um a new

my little pony series was released and

it was called

friendship is magic okay and after that

was released

that was when the brony was officially

born because

on 4chan you'd have people upload photos

of themselves

in my little pony kind of rainbow

colored wigs and all this stuff

and then it started developing further

from that

and from that point you know it started

gathering traction and now

i mean it's got uh quite a worrying

number of

members that may know back in 2012 it's

between seven and 12

million which is yeah well yeah but but

you're also talking about that movie

coming out

two years just before this that's a huge

following in that short of time right if

you stop and think about it that that's

a huge

following just based off of that yeah

and with all the commercial things that

are are

fighting for people's attention even

10 years ago that gotta admit

you know more power to the my little

pony people right i mean that they were

able to grab a pretty

sizable subset of the population to get

them right behind this

right and i think you know there hasn't

traditionally been much

criticism of cosplay or even furries

in terms of it being a threat uh to kids

right um because it's mainly practicing

adults but

um there's been a bit of concern

you know in regard to the whole kind of

brony movement

because it creates a similar environment

environment with the you know grown

adults and little kids in the same

kind of world and it was actually back

in 2014 a critic

of brony said the problem with bronies

has nothing to do with grown men

like in a children's cartoon but

everything to do with their

usurping of a safe space for young girls

and distorting it into a hypersexual

and toxic environment for those younger

fans

wow and that you know it's hard to kind

of

regardless of whatever innocence there

is in the brony movement you can't

really

come back with a good rebuttal for that

criticism of it as such

one of the things i remember when i was

kind of showing this to you and

kind of explaining to you what i knew

about it which by the way is

very very little was a documentary that

had came out

about the whole brony movement and

i guess one of the positive things that

came out of it was

some of these tween

teen young adult males that shared this

interest which on its face seems kind of

harmless was

able to find some friendship through

this seemed

harmless once again on its face i mean

any documentary is

gonna lean one side right so obviously

the

the documentary i haven't watched the

whole documentary by the way i've only

seen the trailer

but uh in looking at that it it

kind of seemed harmless with that but

i guess that that would be the the

positive

spin that came out of that that at least

there were some

ostracized people that had some kind of

mutual interest that they were able to

get together

hang out even if it was playing with

little plastic horses

right yeah i think the whole

topic today is something which

you know i've certainly learned about a

thousand times more than before i

researched it because i knew very little

outside of some of the cosplay stuff and

that because of you know our star wars

um intro but there was one question i

was going to ask you actually after you

showed me the trailer the other day for

the

uh perronie's uh okay show

um at any point

because i think you saw a longer trailer

than the one you showed me

i i think i did yeah honestly i think i

did yeah

at any point did it show

um any female members because remember

earlier i said there was the female

version of it but on there

and there's a reason why i was asking

that because sometimes

they create i don't know almost a fake

counter balance to make it like see look

there's men and women who

yeah yeah yeah this is safe there's no

big deal here yet

to be honest that the one that i showed

you the other day yeah there

there were a couple of female people in

there which

kind of you sure are you sure they were

female no okay

i'm not because remember you say that

because remember this is part this is

part this is closely uh

aligned to a movement where you can't

always tell fair enough

fair enough uh i i assume them to be

female that is probably my own error

right um maybe it's not maybe you know

i i won the guess maybe i lost the guess

i don't know i had a 50 50 chance there

and now i can already hear the haters

saying no you had like a

16 guest but anyway

uh i i think there

are enough female

people out there that can probably

legitimize

this because there's that attack on

toxic masculinity and trying to

let the male members of

the brony movement feel like hey

it's okay it's okay to like this we like

it too

and by the way you know you can you know

come in here you can live with me and

and i won't

attack you for not being a

toxic masculine guy and so it provides

them a safe space

that's kind of the way i look at that if

that makes sense

yeah yeah so um i had this thought about

the largest um

kind of comic con equivalent for bronies

is called bronycon

bronycon yeah and it actually ended last

year

was this a casualty of koben or what did

this well this is last year was its last

year and i don't know why it was it's

last year

so they they said this is the last one

so this is

this is pre-covered they decided to

close it down okay

now this is i had this had this thought

once

once i read that fact um and it was

well i wondered what they did this year

and then i thought about

the stereotypical person who probably

dresses as a brony and i thought

i bet they all joined antifa ah

possibly i mean if you think about you

know are

are they wearing pony shirts maybe we

need to be

watching out for that right so well

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