Much like I can’t explain my fascination with memorizing every lyric from “36 Chambers” in high school, I can’t explain the current fascination the internet has with kids cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. I was vaguely aware of it thanks to a few of the viral YouTube mashups I’m about to share, but until I started doing actual research I had no idea how deep it goes. I can only assume the fresh new cartoon take on the established Hasbro brand was aimed at fans of Powerpuff Girls (see: your six year-old niece) but thanks to 4Chan, YouTube, DeviantArt, and the internet’s love of irony My Little Pony has taken on a whole new meaning.
I could get into all sorts of nuanced detail as to how this happened, but since the five of you who are interested can research Wikipedia, Know Your Meme, and DeviantArt on your own — not to mention I’m fine going to my grave without having a “Dissecting the Bronie Phenomenon” thesis to my credits — I’m going to jump ahead to the good stuff: the kick ass YouTube mashups.
Spawning from the aforementioned ironic appreciation of a hip cartoon for little girls, YouTube has recently been injected with lots of Pony mashups, the best of which are finely crafted videos of ponies synced with classic hip hop and iconic sitcom scenes. One talented video editor, Bill Brewer (aka YouTube’s Viraus2), is responsible for the majority of the best work, including this Wu-Tang mashup I’ve had playing on a loop while putting this together. The 14 year-old version of myself approves.
Wu-Tang’s “Shame on a N****”
NSFW Audio.
Beastie Boy’s “Whatcha Want”
Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi
Seinfeld’s Marine Biologist
Reggie Watts’s F*ck Sh*t Stack”
NSFW Audio.
