Ah, Enterprise on TrekBBS. Has anyone mentioned "The Interregnum" yet?
I adored that show, and I was always so upset with the haters. There was, indeed, a much richer diversity among Enterprise haters than among Disco haters... and even the fans (who were very numerous, at least on this board) were deeply divided about what made the show good (particularly if you were fool enough to cross a shipper).
My gut sense, though, is that Disco is just as polarizing (in the sense that both its haters and fans are passionate, vocal, and numerous), but we see less diversity on both sides because there just aren't as many Disco viewers. Not as many people care about it as cared about Enterprise in its heyday, so it's just not possible for Discovery to be as polarizing. We know without a doubt that Discovery's first season viewer averages are well under half of Enterprise's. (ENT S1 averaged 6 million viewers, and CBSAA only was 2 million subscribers at last report, so a more realistic estimate would be 20-30% of ENT's audience.) And, just going back and looking at the board archives from the old days -- even deep into Enterprise's decline -- it just looks a lot more lively in there. Their review threads are a lot smaller than the Disco review threads, but the range of things people want to discuss in a zillion other threads is... well, it strikes me as more energetic than the Disco boards are. Some of that's just because threads on the old board were less consolidated than they are today, but I think some is just because there were more fans and haters coming at it from more perspectives.
(And, honestly, looking at those thread titles, it sure looks to me like there's more positivity about the show in that forum than in this one.)
But other posters are right that this pretty much happens every single time anything new happens in Star Trek, and we somehow forget it as soon as the next polarizing installment comes along. Something I wrote a while back when someone asked me if Trek fandom had become less "welcoming" since the Abrams movies:
I stand by that. I can't stand Discovery ("and it breaks canon all over the place!") but it's still Star Trek as long as CBS deems it so, and the people who love it are still just as much "real" Star Trek fans as anyone else.
I used to believe this about haters as well. Now, contrary to all my hopes, I have become a hater of Discovery, and I find (on self-reflection) that these explanations do not ring true for me. I have no love for conflict -- not for its own sake. I know the production team isn't reading the BBS. And I know my Internet rants aren't going to end the show, nor even measurably harm it.
Yet I've never seriously considered dropping the show. And then I watch it, and it makes me upset, and I feel compelled to vent about it to someone.
Why? I don't know. I could drop the show. I could watch it and then just not get upset about it, like a normal functioning human. Or I could vent my outrage about a silly TV show into my pillow rather than putting it up online. This whole pattern of behavior strikes me as completely irrational. Yet I keep doing it, I don't really understand why, and, on several levels, I am genuinely concerned about that.
My current working theory is that this impulse is the mirror counterpart of that urge you get after you watch something really good: you want to share that feeling with other people, you want them to say to you, "Man, I loved that!" and thank you for helping them find it, you want to shout from the rooftops about how X is great -- even though that, too, is pretty irrational when you get right down to it. Many people, on a deep level, (apparently including me!) don't want to just have feelings; they want to share their opinions, validate their opinions, and build communities around shared opinions. Maybe that impulse is what builds fandom, why we have things like conventions and the TrekBBS at all.
But now I have these strongly negative feelings, and my desire to share, validate, and community-build with them isn't going away. So I don't just go away like a sensible person, repeat the MST3K mantra to myself, and find the next season of The Expanse. I turn into a full-blown anti-fan who goes on boards and tries to convince people their enjoyment of the show is wrong, and I keep watching because my anti-fandom is now one of my communities.
I dunno. I could be wrong. I still don't like haters (even though I am one now) but I am starting to understand them a bit better. I'll keep you posted.
I adored that show, and I was always so upset with the haters. There was, indeed, a much richer diversity among Enterprise haters than among Disco haters... and even the fans (who were very numerous, at least on this board) were deeply divided about what made the show good (particularly if you were fool enough to cross a shipper).
My gut sense, though, is that Disco is just as polarizing (in the sense that both its haters and fans are passionate, vocal, and numerous), but we see less diversity on both sides because there just aren't as many Disco viewers. Not as many people care about it as cared about Enterprise in its heyday, so it's just not possible for Discovery to be as polarizing. We know without a doubt that Discovery's first season viewer averages are well under half of Enterprise's. (ENT S1 averaged 6 million viewers, and CBSAA only was 2 million subscribers at last report, so a more realistic estimate would be 20-30% of ENT's audience.) And, just going back and looking at the board archives from the old days -- even deep into Enterprise's decline -- it just looks a lot more lively in there. Their review threads are a lot smaller than the Disco review threads, but the range of things people want to discuss in a zillion other threads is... well, it strikes me as more energetic than the Disco boards are. Some of that's just because threads on the old board were less consolidated than they are today, but I think some is just because there were more fans and haters coming at it from more perspectives.
(And, honestly, looking at those thread titles, it sure looks to me like there's more positivity about the show in that forum than in this one.)
But other posters are right that this pretty much happens every single time anything new happens in Star Trek, and we somehow forget it as soon as the next polarizing installment comes along. Something I wrote a while back when someone asked me if Trek fandom had become less "welcoming" since the Abrams movies:
I stand by that. I can't stand Discovery ("and it breaks canon all over the place!") but it's still Star Trek as long as CBS deems it so, and the people who love it are still just as much "real" Star Trek fans as anyone else.
I used to believe this about haters as well. Now, contrary to all my hopes, I have become a hater of Discovery, and I find (on self-reflection) that these explanations do not ring true for me. I have no love for conflict -- not for its own sake. I know the production team isn't reading the BBS. And I know my Internet rants aren't going to end the show, nor even measurably harm it.
Yet I've never seriously considered dropping the show. And then I watch it, and it makes me upset, and I feel compelled to vent about it to someone.
Why? I don't know. I could drop the show. I could watch it and then just not get upset about it, like a normal functioning human. Or I could vent my outrage about a silly TV show into my pillow rather than putting it up online. This whole pattern of behavior strikes me as completely irrational. Yet I keep doing it, I don't really understand why, and, on several levels, I am genuinely concerned about that.
My current working theory is that this impulse is the mirror counterpart of that urge you get after you watch something really good: you want to share that feeling with other people, you want them to say to you, "Man, I loved that!" and thank you for helping them find it, you want to shout from the rooftops about how X is great -- even though that, too, is pretty irrational when you get right down to it. Many people, on a deep level, (apparently including me!) don't want to just have feelings; they want to share their opinions, validate their opinions, and build communities around shared opinions. Maybe that impulse is what builds fandom, why we have things like conventions and the TrekBBS at all.
But now I have these strongly negative feelings, and my desire to share, validate, and community-build with them isn't going away. So I don't just go away like a sensible person, repeat the MST3K mantra to myself, and find the next season of The Expanse. I turn into a full-blown anti-fan who goes on boards and tries to convince people their enjoyment of the show is wrong, and I keep watching because my anti-fandom is now one of my communities.
I dunno. I could be wrong. I still don't like haters (even though I am one now) but I am starting to understand them a bit better. I'll keep you posted.
