Andrew W.K. and his alter-ego, Pinkie Pie (Getty Images, Hasbro)

Here's something to make your Thursday a little more uncomfortable: performer Andrew W. K., no stranger to stunts, has declared himself an official Brony and will be speaking at a panel in September called "What Would Pinkie Pie Do?"

What are we talking about? We wish we didn't know...

Bronies are male fans (or "bros") of the Hasbro toys and TV show spin-off, My Little Pony. Once upon a time, The New York Times wrote an article on Bronies and then was forced to issue a correction.  We assumed most Bronies would be heading out to San Diego's Comic-Con, which takes place in mid-July, but apparently there are some Ohio holdouts who will be holding their own My Little Pony Convention later in the year.

Mr. W.K., who loves to party, will be exploring how his own persona mirrors that of Pinkie Pie, one of the stars of the My Little Pony show who works at the Sugarcube Corner as a baker, is bright pink, and also loves to party. (Imagine Michelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but as an anthropomorphic pink female pony instead of an anthropomorphic green male turtle.)

We're sure there will be no mistaking the Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle fans in the audience this time around

My Little Convention

It was less than a month ago that The New York Times was forced to print a correction for an article by Amy Harmon titled "Love and Autism." The error was innocuous enough--Ms. Harmon referred to her subject Kirsten Lindsmith's obsession with a My Little Pony character, but misidentified the introverted Fluttershy for the animal-friendly Twilight Sparkle. This lead to some very irate male commenters who also claimed to have autism and loved the animated TV show "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic" and who were outraged that Ms. Harmon could make such a horrific error, which in turn made some great copy for the rest of the Internet that day.

Well, now we have some faces to put with the "Brony"--the terminology for a boy or man who loves My Little Ponies...though apparently you can't just love the dolls, you have to be a devotee to the series, which seems sort of insular and clique-y for essentially the plastic equivalent of a furry-- after BronyCon 2012 hit the Hotel Pennsylvania this weekend. They are surprisingly normal.

What's truly sad about this video aren't Bronies themselves, because lord knows we've gone to enough comic/anime conventions in our day to make us feel like dirty old (wo)men. It's that this Brony convention's well-timed placement right after the infamous Times correction is turning what would otherwise be a relatively normal Internet sub-culture (and believe us when we say Bronies are nothing once you've entered into the bowels of 4Chan) and brought them to light as some sort of freak show Internet meme.

Get over it, people. It's 2012. Ryan Gosling starred in a movie about a Real Doll years ago. Compared to the mainstreaming of having sex with plastic women, BRONYs barely register as a hobby. Nothing to see here folks, move along.