My nephew the brony

At my daughter's college graduation gathering, my brother finally confirmed that my nephew is a brony. Others had speculated for some time and I have to admit that the first time I heard the term I had to Google it. I had no idea that there was this entire culture of men dedicated to the My Little Pony franchise of cartoons and merchandising. They dress up and even have conventions called Bronycon. Sort of like Comic-Con. http://bronycon.org/ Who knew?!?!

Anyway, what he had said was that their son, who is 19, sleeps all day (hence why he wasn't at the BBQ) and stays up all night doing his "work". I asked what that was and my brother said he has a blog and he gave me the name. I looked it up and it's about a flying pony and it's friends. He has 3000 followers who send in ideas for the plot and then he animates a frame or two based on that. Sometimes people just send in a situation like the ponies driving go-carts and he draws that. He also has some very basic games on line that look like old original blocky games from the early 90's.

Last summer my brother posted photos on his facebook of the nephew with his "team" at a game convention back east and it turns out it was actually Bronycon. Looking at some of the guys and the way they were dressed was when people first started thinking he was a brony and maybe his game was based on that too by the pony character on the table in front of them. I don't know how the "team" plays into this if they all work on this blog or just him. Maybe one of them does the animation. I know my nephew is a pretty good artist in the Japanese anime style that this pony is done in.

I almost asked my brother if his 'work" was just working on the blog for fun or if the blog was somehow a cash paying gig. My brother has always gotten real defensive when you ask him questions so I decided not to and keep peace at the party.

So I really don't care what a kid does or is into but I am genuinely curious. Can this kid be making money on this for himself or for a team? I didn't see any ads on his blog. I'm an old guy who doesn't understand all there is to know about commerce on the web. For all I know someday he's going to be a millionaire over this or just a 50 year old man in the basement of his parent's house staying up all night writing and animating a pony blog for other 50 year old bronies.

I would like to know if I should get in good with him so that in 20 years when I'm eating canned cat food for dinner and he's living in Key Biscayne, can I go to him for a enough cash for maybe some mac and cheese and spam.