How and when did you become a Pony Fan/ Brony?

There’s a thread like this, but not exactly. Who do you have to get revenge on or thank for informing you about FiM? Did you have the ol’ “watch 2, think it’s good, watch 6, become hooked” syndrome, ignore it for weeks then give in situation, or something else?
 
I’ll share my own story later.

I have to find someone online hunt them down in real life and kill them to get revenge for forcing me to watch mlp. Sure i enjoyed the show but hi’s constant pestering was too much.
 
In short someone kept spamming my emails with Fim.

it was around august 2011, I heard about it and was bored I guess

Eh, I saw some fan made stuff and I got curious to see why everyone was liking it, and after reading Tumblr blogs and watching fan-made stuff, I finally decided to watch it for myself, and while I can’t say it was the best thing I’ve ever seen I thought that it was pretty awesome

Found a thread on a forum I went to, decided to watch all of S1 and catch up to the point in S2 where I had missed.

The HUB had introduced Dan Vs. to it’s roster and i fucking loved it. So i started recording the episodes. I was watching an episode and when it got to commercials i fast forwarded, until is saw an animation style that appealed to me so I rewound it, and lo and behold it was my little pony. Having grown up with My Little Pony tails and then seeing what happened to it with G3, i was surprised by the animation not looking shitty. So my first though was, I’m gonna end up watching this show.

In about Spring of 2011 while Season 1 was still airing: a few of my friends in college were getting into MLP. At first I thought this (as the time) new show and fandom was kinda stupid. Then on the Internet I kept seeing pictures and “memes” from the show and I was a little intrigued. At the time I thought the animation style looked interesting. I then one day because I was bored decided to watch Season 1: Episode 1 on YouTube and I thought it was an okay episode… and it ended in a cliffhanger so I had to see the second ep to finish the story. I began to enjoy the show and before I knew it, I was finishing the most recent episode at the time. I later told my brony friends that I have “joined the herd.”
 
And the rest is history.

Was around March of 2011 during Spring Break when I first saw pictures of the show everywhere on the net. Few episodes later I’m hooked.

November 2011, alone in my room at night, I stumbled across Bad Pick-Up Line Spike. After browsing a few, I decided to see the first episode. Within the same calendar day, I watched every single episode. Then I found a thing on Ponibooru, colored it, and posted it to clarify that the artwork wasn’t mine. That’s how I got started.

I saw it cropping up about the summer of 2010, or around then. I think after season 1 would have been finished. But it was cropping up on dA and the people I was following was doing pony art, mostly from Angus McLeod (who does a lot of War art).
 
I also saw it cropping up on the Minecraft forums, and it popped up from time-to-time in the journals of some artists I follow about how to start. And then it popped up briefly on a small forum I visit from a 4channer. I sort of brushed it off and went on, making jokes about selling these new cartoon horse-fetishists.
 
Eventually I decided if I was going to argue about it I might as well check it out and get points for that. So following the advice of that one dA journal a while back I decided to go watch the first-three episodes…
 
And well, three episodes turned into four which turned into six and suddenly I was watching two a night when no one was around. By episode 21 of the first season I decided I was past “Brony-curious” and might as well declare myself a brony.
 
And nothing changed, except I did a lot of pony art.

Actually, I can trace the exact progression of events.
 
I was passing through a friend’s dA account one day when I saw her discussing Party of One, and a bit of digging revealed that it was a My Little Pony episode. I cocked my head, unaware a new My Little Pony was out and that women were watching it at the age she was. So I left it out of my mind…until another friend, a guy known for drawing graphic guro material and X-men vs Claymore crossovers, started drawing pics of Twilight Sparkle and Pinkamena. THIS caught my attention, so I began investigating the phenomenon, finding out many dozens of guys were into the show, and with great intensity. It fascinated me for many months until I decided it was time to watch the show, as a social experiment, to determine what the fuss was about.
 
Ever hear of Dr. Livingstone? It’s kinda like that. XD

I saw threads about the show everywhere I went, though I mostly ignored it. Curiosity got the better of me eventually, and I finally sat down and looked through a thread.
 
I remembered the G1 Smooze movie, and was completely unaware the franchise was even still going. I decided to watch an episode on TV afterward, which was Fall Weather Friends on the day it premiered. The rest is history.

Pony image macros/reaction images started being used on an EVE Online forum I frequented, Scrapheap Challenge (succeeded by Failheap Challenge in an oddly familiar way), around Feb/March 2011. No idea wtf, thought it was a web-short or something. Anyways, the trolling cost/benefit ratio was amazing: post cute little cartoon animal, get instant overblown rage.
 
After about a month of intentionally annoying people with that, I watched Night of pony and realized this was an actual 22 minute episode TV show. So I started downloading episodes and got hooked by the time Dragonshy was over.

I saw a YTP with pony footage and thought the show looked pretty interesting so I started watching it and liked it.
 
I didn’t go through the common “oh but this is mlp so I should hate it” sort of weird denial. I just watched it, loved it, and became a fan.
 
I became a fan right at the end of the first season.

2011 I think it was, searching around youtube for something to watch as always. Came across THIS VIDEO, one thing led to the other and the rest is history.

@The Smiling Pony
 
Wait, you play EVE?
 
I’ve always wanted to try that game but everyone told me it was way too complicated and over-involved. I’m still interested in trying it someday.

There was a FIM thread on the snopes.com message board. It made me curious enough to want to check out the show. One day around May of 2011, The Hub was airing a “Mare-athon.” The first full episode I watched was “Winter Wrap Up.” A couple of episodes later, I was hooked.

I was a forumite on the old Mushroom Kingdom Fusion board before they replaced it. Several of the off-topic threads had some pony gifs in them. I said, “Alright, I’ll see what this is about.”
 
This was about the time Party of One was out, and I quickly caught up and got my brother into the fandom before the Season 1 finale.

@professor_of_hoers  
Played; eventually I just didn’t log in enough for it to be worth the subscription, and the people I met playing and wanted to keep as friends I already kept in contact with outside of EVE (like, say, Clover and Carcer ¬_¬)
 
It’s a good game if you’re willing to spend (a lot) of time on it. It’s not as complicated as people make it out to be, but the “good bits” of the game are magnitudes more involved than your usual MMO fare (those mostly being playing the market, corp politics, industry and gang/fleet fights). 15 day trial is free, so just give it a go to see if the core principles interest you. Gotta remember, though, it’s an actual MMO and not a glorified coop-ready RPG; the meat of the game is in play with (in both senses) other people.

@The Smiling Pony
 
 
Well, I like 4x games like MOO2 and the like and I have no problem with games that require a bit of micromanaging and all but if it’s going to be one of those games you can only really enjoy with an huge time commitment I think I’ll give it a pass for now.

Feb 2011. There was some random forum post with some guy saying “hey this is amazing, go watch it” and the words “Friendship is Magic” in tempting blue hypertext.
 
I had heard nothing about the show, so I passed, didn’t click it. Figured it was something that looks happy and bubbly for irony sake, but was actually gross and dark. Like happy tree friends or something. If not that, then some vapid, girly, barf. I was certain I wouldn’t like whatever it was. The though that he was serious never crossed my mind.
 
How cynical I was back then, and may have stayed, kinda scares me a little.
 
Later on I found that ‘elder scrolls Equestria’ trailer. I only clicked that because it was obviously some kinda skyrim parody. What I saw was a unicorn kick a manticore in the face. I didn’t know what it was, but it looked kinda good. Nice animation, a little action. Maybe a little something else I couldn’t place. Found out what it was. Found out the guy who recommended it before was serious. Said “screw it” and watched.
 
The real hook, the first episode cliff hangered me. I had to keep watching then.

Surfing memebase when suddenly I see an influx of cartoon ponies, so I decided to investigate to see what was this craziness. The characters looked cute, especially Fluttershy, so I investigated more like their names and stuff like that, but I didn’t wanted to watch the show, then I saw a Fluttershy gif that made me laugh in memebase afterdark (the one where she goes nuts and she yells to the animals, but instead of love me it said “F*ck me”), I thought “with a pony pony this crazy this show must be good”, so I watched the first ep but I stopped afer the first 12 minutes and I was like “meh”, but then I finished watching it just to see what happened next until I found myself whatching several episodes, that’s when I realized that I became a brony.

December 12-14, 2010.
 
I run a small Powerpuff Girls forum, and in September someone had started a thread about Lauren Faust’s latest project on a new channel called “The Hub.” At the time I thought little of it, but after the show premiered and they started discussing the episodes, I was struck by two things: 1) Faust was far from the only veteran of PPG working on the show, and 2) the other forum members, who are most assuredly not little girls, were enjoying it. So eventually I decided to pull up the YouTube links and see what all the fuss was about. The first two episodes were rough, obviously, but by the end of the third I was a fan. I caught up on the remaining episodes in time for the premiere of “Swarm of the Century,” and the rest is history.

Winter/Spring of 2011:  
I am either not yet banned from 4chan, or I am browsing it through a proxy, I can’t really remember. People are posting some pony stuff on /b/. They claim it’s very funny and enjoyable and everything. Somebody links to a video of Fluttershy singing ‘Evil Enchantress”, which I find pretty funny. I search mlp on youtube, and click the first link, being the first ep of FiM, and start watching it. After I hear the introduction about the magic of harmony and sheit, I decide that it’s probably not for me. I have a long break from browsing 4chan, and forget about the thing.
 
Summer 2011, not long before the start of 2nd season:  
I’m on vacations in a hotel in the mountains. It’s a rainy day, so I’m laying bored in bed. The hotel has free wifi, and that means, I do not have to worry about my ban, and I can go to 4chan. /b/ is posting a lot of crap about mlp, which get’s me really interested, since I know they have been doing that for a long time. I finally decide to ask if I should watch the series from the very beginning - as I didn’t know that G4 was something new, and I thought it’s all just a continuation of the older ponies - or should I start with more recent episodes, and later check out the older ones.  
Most people tell me that there is barely any continuity, so it doesn’t matter. Some other people say that the first two episodes are not as good as the later ones, so I should skip them and watch it later. A huge argument starts. I get linked to ‘Dog and pony show’ and ‘part of one’. Those two episodes were well enough to get me in. It took me 3 or 4 days to watch the entire first season, and it was so long only because I spent most of the time outdoors. It still took me some additional month to join the fandom.

I used to hate MLP because i thought the pics were spammy and unfunny, then after watching some videos(Double Rainbow, Pony Pokey, Sonic Rainboom)my hate decreased to “Ehh it’s overrated, but it’s ok”, then one day my friend decided to watch the first episode out of nowhere and i just followed him through, after some couple of seconds i couldn’t believe of how much different it was than what i thought it would be, then when Nightmare Moon appeared i knew this show was something, then i kept watching it.  
I had a problem accepting the term “Brony” though, while i already liked the show i didn’t considered it a masterpiece, it took me several episodes to become a huge fan.