To me, it is the greatest thing ever to happen. Completely not kidding.
The show's characters, writing, voice acting and so on is very strong and comparable with adult series. It just happens to be aesthetically for children so there is a stigma about watching it. Once you get over that it is high quality.
The fan community surrounding the show have produced gigabytes of music, art, games, comics and stories, and there have been real life meetups and conventions as big as any other fandom. That aspect is how people really get into ponies, they follow all the latest fan content (I myself have more Pony songs on my ipod than record label or videogame ones combined)
Salnax's link is to the 87-page Pony thread on VGC. Ask any of the people who post there about it. If you really want to know, watch an episode for yourself, they are all over Youtube, and decide for yourself whether it is good.
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Re: "pitiful" - liking something should not be pitiable. Having it take over your life is; same for any other pursuit, you can take it too far. Watching it and following the news site for it is in no way worse than arguing about videogame sales on this forum.
tl;dr It's not ironic. It's not counterculture. It's just what I like.
