Here’s a weird one.

I had originally intended this to be one in an ongoing series of posts where I mock Bronies for being so passionate about being fans for a children’s show. (Sure, I once had website about The Muppets, but that’s completely different!)

I originally wasn’t even going to post this one. There are so many clueless idiots on Kickstarter who think they’re going to make a video game it’s not even fun to make fun of them anymore. The video is exactly what you’d expect. Some sketches of My Little Pony style ponies, some basic video editing tricks, and some terrible, terrible voice acting.

However, this rabbit hole is even deeper and funnier.



How strange. The pony craze was started by the break-out hit television series “Friendship is Magic“, which premiered in October of 2010. Either this man is lying, he can’t do basic arithmetic, or he started his “ultimate brony dating sim” about a year before their were any bronies!

Still, with all the time he must have accomplished something, right? He does say that the game is 95% complete. How does he react when people ask to see this amazing 95% finished game?



That’s right. He acts like a sarcastic Jack-ass who’s unfamiliar with how Kickstarter works.

(If anyone finds his logic seductive, let me introduce you to something called Steam Early Access, which seems to be doing quite well.)

Pretty soon accusations of hoax start flying, and he releases a laughably faked “gameplay video”, and starts trying to play the victim.

Unfortunately, My screenshot was a little too late, but early versions of the project page had photographs of all the people involved. One of them posted this to Twitter :



Turns out, that all the so-called developers that could be tracked down denied that they’d ever even heard of the project!(Except for one artist, who apparently thought she was doing concept art for a comic book.)

As soon as this revelation hit, a whole bunch of new Kickstarter accounts with pony avatars were created by people who tried to mindlessly shout completely vapid praise of the project and defend it with a complete lack of logic. Clearly these people were friends of the creator trying to distract from criticism, but it was an impressive effort.

So what’s the real story?

So far as I can determine, this is the work of Youtube comedian, Sam Hyde, with assistance from his group of friends, the “Million Dollar Extreme”. (However, I seriously doubt that’s his real name either. Sam Hyde is a character from New England folklore, renowned for being a teller of tall tales. ) Apparently, Sam Hyde fancies himself a “media hoaxer” like the fabled Alan Abel, or Joey Skaggs. However, there’s a big difference. Abel and Skaggs are revered in certain circles because their hoaxes spoke truth to power. The best hoax I can find from Hyde is a gibberish Ted Talk he gave while dressed like a Roman centurion, and of course, trying and failing to steal $7.5k from a bunch of bronies.

After this truth finally came out, (And apparently he was bragging about his big win before he’d actually won) the project filled with people leaving “hilarious” comments, by people trying to maintain the hoax, and by people trying to troll the hoaxers, and by yet others trying to parody bronies for sport. I’m not going to bother reproducing any of them here, because they’re all pretty dire, even from a comedy perspective.

Where does that leave us?

I don’t know, but it leaves me right back where I started : Wishing this was a crowdsourced sequel to my favorite candy advertisement disguised as a video game : Darkened Sky”

It also gives us something to think about next time you’re backing a Kickstarter project about something we’re enthusiastic about. When this thing was finally canceled there was still four thousand dollars in pledges standing for this obvious hoax. When you back a Kickstarter project, please go back the next day to make sure you didn’t just do something really stupid.