I'll mention, for the record, that I've been lurking 4chan for nearly 6 years now, and despite what 4chan says about hating furries, I get about half of my furry artwork from 4chan =P
I've actually said something similar to this awhile back, differences between furries and bronies with regard to why they watch MLP:FiM, said in almost those exact words, Cross: furries watch it because of talking ponies, bronies depsite the fact that it's talking ponies. And, while I agree whole-heartedly with it, I also have to recognize that any attempt to "summarize" why a person is a brony is as likely to fail as any attempt to explain why a person is a furry: there are MANY reasons. People will argue back and forth about whether it's to challenge traditional norms of masculinity/femininity, others will say it's because of affinity for other, similar animated shows (guilty as charged; I love MLP because it reminds me so much of Powerpuff Girls, which I used to adore), still others because it has that fuzzy, feel-good message of love and friendship, and the list of reasons goes on. And they're all perfectly valid reasons. It may seem like a cop-out answer to say so, but there is no one reason for a person to be a brony.
That said, I feel like there MAY be differences in the proportion of of people falling into one category of reasons versus another between bronies and furries. It'll be difficult to study that in future research, unfortunately. As I've mentioned in the past, we're sometimes limited in the questions we can ask, if only because we've got limited space in our surveys: each year we pare it down from about 400 questions to a barely-manageable 200+ questions. A lot of good questions get trimmed, oftentimes not because they're bad questions but because they only apply to a limited population. Asking "why do you watch MLP:FiM" may be a question that applies to 20-25% of furries; the other 75% have nothing to say on the subject, and we've effectively 'wasted' a question or two on them. What's worse, if we have too many of those types of "don't apply to me" questions on any given survey, it increases their likelihood of getting pissed off at the survey and not finishing it =/
I'll mention, for the record, that I've been lurking 4chan for nearly 6 years now, and despite what 4chan says about hating furries, I get about half of my furry artwork from 4chan =P
I've actually said something similar to this awhile back, differences between furries and bronies with regard to why they watch MLP:FiM, said in almost those exact words, Cross: furries watch it because of talking ponies, bronies depsite the fact that it's talking ponies. And, while I agree whole-heartedly with it, I also have to recognize that any attempt to "summarize" why a person is a brony is as likely to fail as any attempt to explain why a person is a furry: there are MANY reasons. People will argue back and forth about whether it's to challenge traditional norms of masculinity/femininity, others will say it's because of affinity for other, similar animated shows (guilty as charged; I love MLP because it reminds me so much of Powerpuff Girls, which I used to adore), still others because it has that fuzzy, feel-good message of love and friendship, and the list of reasons goes on. And they're all perfectly valid reasons. It may seem like a cop-out answer to say so, but there is no one reason for a person to be a brony.
That said, I feel like there MAY be differences in the proportion of of people falling into one category of reasons versus another between bronies and furries. It'll be difficult to study that in future research, unfortunately. As I've mentioned in the past, we're sometimes limited in the questions we can ask, if only because we've got limited space in our surveys: each year we pare it down from about 400 questions to a barely-manageable 200+ questions. A lot of good questions get trimmed, oftentimes not because they're bad questions but because they only apply to a limited population. Asking "why do you watch MLP:FiM" may be a question that applies to 20-25% of furries; the other 75% have nothing to say on the subject, and we've effectively 'wasted' a question or two on them. What's worse, if we have too many of those types of "don't apply to me" questions on any given survey, it increases their likelihood of getting pissed off at the survey and not finishing it =/