>>41027576
>>41027592
>>41027689
It is an organic culture, yeah. In the same kind of sense as the freemasons, it arose from a community around one particular hobby, but the culture soaks so deeply into its people that we carried it to all other aspects of our life.

It's not quite a religion yet, maybe a "folk religion". The people who have religious experiences or beliefs around ponies are not really collaborating on anything - everybody has their own "local" way of worship, just like you might imagine isolated farmer communities would. There have been attempts at a unifying doctrine, e.g. sermonanon, but it doesn't do it for the people who really matter: the people who already believe. They already know what works for them and they don't need to convert to some other dude's passions, yet they are the people with the actual passion to be real followers of a faith.
I believe that over time, there are two paths a folk religion can take. The first and most common is a dominant force comes and forcibly reshapes/institutes religion, e.g. conquerors and missionaries, which in the age of the internet just means having different interests and the fandom dying. The other requires that our folk religion comes together in discussion, and eventually some beliefs will become dominant (whether by being more persuasive, more visible, etc.) and people will naturally start to assemble around that until a critical point is reached and they can assemble a doctrine that represents the people's belief accurately and can serve as a banner for themselves and others to rally under.

For most people in the fandom, it's just a culture though kek

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What do bronies really cluster with hobby wise in terms of what came before? I got it in my head recently that a lot of these "21st century"…