That, too.
Why do non-fans think we think it's real?
- Thread starter gomtuu20
- Start date
That, too.
It has always been easier for people to ridicule and put down things they don't understand. It's even easier to do if it's two or more against one...You trying to say that I don't really live on the Enterprise, I'm gutted!
I have had the same thing happen to me too with some of my friends, they poke fun and ask which planet I'm visiting and if I've seen Spock lately etc.
I put it down to that they have a serious lack of imagination and do not have any form of escapism themselves.
"Let's lynch the Trekkie. It's fun, and it reaffirms our coolness in the process..."
It doesn't help that Trekkies do the same thing to each other about various aspects or versions of Trek...
"Your Trek is dead and cheesy. Our Trek is cooler and is teh awesomeness."
"Whatever" applies to both, IMO...
Not at all. Most sports are contests of skill in which the outcome is not predetermined. This kind of spectacle attracts people for different reasons than watching scripted stage or film performances does, and the kinds of emotional investment that fans make are also different in most cases.
This is one reason that despite the fact that there are thousands of examples of better films and novels than anything produced for Star Trek there are not examples of devoted, organized fan groups for each of them. Trek fandom is an idiosyncracy of the Franchise - not unique, but far from a typical or necessary expression of audience enthusiasm for art.
Equating fiction with athletics is just defensive foolishness; they're distinct kinds of human endeavor. Our eagerness to ignore that or to equate such things may be one reason others perceive us as "socially inept."
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
Yeah...but then after saying all that we can just say that we're both fans of something again.
I think that's what Forbin was getting at. The fan thing. I don't think he thinks Star Trek is like a sports team.
I think that's what Forbin was getting at. The fan thing. I don't think he thinks Star Trek is like a sports team.
It makes a lot of difference in how the fan following for such things is perceived and functions, though.
There's a big difference between a basketball fan playing a pick-up game while wearing a team jersey and a Trek fan playing Star Trek while made up as a Klingon.
Nice avatar, BTW. Flatters the old curmudgeon.
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
It makes a lot of difference in how the fan following for such things is perceived and functions, though.
There's a big difference between a basketball fan playing a pick-up game while wearing a team jersey and a Trek fan playing Star Trek while made up as a Klingon.
Nice avatar, BTW. Flatters the old curmudgeon.
Oh man, I wasn't even thinking about the costumed fans! That changes things...for the worse.
Yeah, ol' Heinie looks great there....the real pic has more to it. I like his expression as he looks off into space thinking about how to fit more incest into his time travel stories!
Who says it is and it isn't? There are a lot more sports fans, a lot more goofy sports fans - and if you do any kind of survey of, say, TV advertising or newspaper comics you'll doubtless find a lot more examples of them being played for laughs than you'll see references to trekkies period.
Context is everything.
You know, a lot of people actually participate in recreational sports throughout their lives. No one commands a starship.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZi2ZDtOLRE
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I wonder if there are just as much anti-social, insecure, introverted, anxious, self-loathing people amongst soccer fans as there are amongst Star Trek/Star Wars/Science Fiction/Fantasy/... fans... I have yet to see a sports fan declare to wear nothing but the team jersey all day long as part of his personal religion. Same goes for a sports fan who openly declares that he never made out with a girl. Haven't found one yet.
And then sport teams actually achieve something in real life. Star Trek fans are following some fictional universe that makes no sense and has no real importance to anything. Plus you can get sport scholarships. Haven't seen Star Trek scholarships as of yet.
That's how it is. Star Trek fan and fan fic author vs. Sports fan and sport player.
http://oi53.tinypic.com/2uivq4i.jpg
And then sport teams actually achieve something in real life. Star Trek fans are following some fictional universe that makes no sense and has no real importance to anything. Plus you can get sport scholarships. Haven't seen Star Trek scholarships as of yet.
That's how it is. Star Trek fan and fan fic author vs. Sports fan and sport player.
http://oi53.tinypic.com/2uivq4i.jpg
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So all the doctors, scientists and engineers in an array of fields and industries around the world - not to mention who knows how many people that have come and gone at NASA alone - who admit they were inspired by the likes of McCoy, Scotty, Crusher, LaForge and the rest are all just wasting their lives?
Wow, that's a remarkable leap of illogic. Because some people who like Star Trek live productive lives doesn't make the kinds of fannish behavior we're discussing here one bit less silly. You're not seriously giving Trek fandom credit for the fact these people got degrees and careers, are you?
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
I was about 190lbs in high school at 6'1" so I used to slam the football players up against lockers and take their lunch money.
When they'd stammer something about coach saying they needed to eat more before practice or whatnot I'd just rough them up a bit and tell them these Star Trek novels don't buy themselves!
Then in my final year of high school was when Pocket was putting out two books per month.Damn the football team was hurting then! I feel genuinely bad about that because they had a good chance of winning the Provincials that year....but there were the hardcovers to think about.
When they'd stammer something about coach saying they needed to eat more before practice or whatnot I'd just rough them up a bit and tell them these Star Trek novels don't buy themselves!
Then in my final year of high school was when Pocket was putting out two books per month.Damn the football team was hurting then! I feel genuinely bad about that because they had a good chance of winning the Provincials that year....but there were the hardcovers to think about.
Wow, that's a remarkable leap of illogic. Because some people who like Star Trek live productive lives doesn't make the kinds of fannish behavior we're discussing here one bit less silly. You're not seriously giving Trek fandom credit for the fact these people got degrees and careers, are you?
Are you addressing me or Jarod? I was questioning his statement.
Star trek not real !!!! Your joking me !!!! Lol
Ok I love star trek people find the whole series very geeky but I always feel that it and always shall be a great way to look at the future. I'm a big scifi fan and also love anything to do with space and it's real to have your own views on our future.
Ok I love star trek people find the whole series very geeky but I always feel that it and always shall be a great way to look at the future. I'm a big scifi fan and also love anything to do with space and it's real to have your own views on our future.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
Yes - sport TEAMS play the games; future athletes get scholarships and athletes are payed for their performances.
That's similar in the star trek franchise - in the entertainment industy, in general - : actors are playing the roles and they are payed for it or writers are payed for their books.
But we are talking about the FANS:
A sport fan does NOT play the games (indeed, it has no influence on the outcome, despite what he/she wishes to think); he/she is not payed for anything (indeed, he/she is the one paying); there are no scholarships for a sport fan.
The only difference between a sport fan and a trek fan is that one is watching sport and the other, star trek.
Both are doing so due to escapism, both like to endlessly comment/discuss on these subjects despite the fact that none will ever have a shred of influence on what goes on in sports, respectively trek.
And trek, by inspiring generations of people to go into engineering, in the long term, had a far more positive influence in the world than performance sports (which have been around since the antiquity without changing much).
In conclusion, with regards to the fan, spors and star trek are exactly alike.
Why is embarassing being a trek fan and OK being a sport fan?
PR - the society accepts the nutty sport fans (who like to start riots in the streets after a football/etc game
) 'just because'. They have the reputation of being 'cool'.
Wow, that's a remarkable leap of illogic. Because some people who like Star Trek live productive lives doesn't make the kinds of fannish behavior we're discussing here one bit less silly. You're not seriously giving Trek fandom credit for the fact these people got degrees and careers, are you?
Are you addressing me or Jarod? I was questioning his statement.
I thought I was obviously addressing you - Jarod's not claiming that Trek has had any especial real world influences.
It's just stereotyping in action. Similar stereotypes include the "male virgin living in mother's basement" one that keeps getting trotted out whenever a show like CSI does an episode that features fans. Never mind that it was women like Bjo Trimble who gave birth (if you'll pardon the expression) to modern-day SF fandom and Trek fandom in particular by organizing the first Trek conventions, and it was women who wrote many of the early Trek novels. The whole idea of fandom being all about nerdy introverted boys and men is as fictional as, well, a tribble.
Sadly, you do get the occasional people who reinforce the stereotypes by indeed treating Trek as something that's real. Not necessarily real in that the episodes are "historical records" a la Galaxy Quest. (Though I'm sure there are a few crazies out there who do.) But they treat Trek as a pseudo-religion. I first encountered this back in the 90s when I attended a Trek convention and there were people discussing Bajoran religion and how they practice it -- and they weren't being ironic, or even role-playing, they were dead serious. We have people as you know working on making Klingon an actual working language (things like the Klingon Hamlet have gone beyond novelties). And you get people doing things like wearing Starfleet uniforms all the time -- and I've seen a few of those. And getting back to Trek-as-religion, I saw that reaching a climax during the Enterprise era when you had people using religious terms like apocrypha and blasphemy without tongue in cheek or irony to refer to creative decisions made by the writers of that show. I wasn't the only one to start getting a Scientology vibe from this at one point. (And before their Men in Black come after me, let me clarify that I refer to the fact Scientology was created by a science-fiction author and was first introduced as an article in a science fiction story magazine; regardless what it became later, that was its origins, so it's not too far removed from something emerging out of a television series.)
It's not just Trek, of course. You'll find some of this in just about every fandom, from anime to Firefly.
It's easy to completely deflate most "Trekkie" or "sci fi geek" stereotypes by simply pointing out the likes of Olivia Munn or even Jolene Blalock who confessed to being a full-on Trekkie at one point. Or just steer them to any con where you find women that Playboy would give their eye-teeth to shoot doing full-on cosplay. But lots of folks seem content to look down upon fans of a particular show, or who collect things (god help anyone who collects toys), or who choose to learn things like the TOS episode titles or who played Doctor Who over the years rather than who scored the most touchdowns at Super Bowl XI. Is there really a difference? But you don't dare call anyone a sports geek. And I bet there are just as many "virgins living in mom's basement" who follow every political decision made in Washington, too. And I'm not even going to go into the new subculture we've created of people who spend their entire lives online, either doing stuff like I'm doing now or Second Life or Warcraft.
Alex
That CSI episode was uncannily accurate in terms of the characterizations and behavior of the folks at their "Star Quest" (or whatever the hell it was called) convention. They took liberties with the logistics of how those things are run and television is produced (sure, the producer carts the fully functional bridge set of his ship around the country
) but as for the rest of it the writers obviously had the benefit of having been involved as guests and attendees at many of these things.The fans in the show ranged from the hopelessly over-involved types to characters like the bartender, who was a casual fan/observer and who spoke very highly of both the values of the show and the people who attended the conventions.
That we can recurrently carry topics like this on for four pages or more on a Trek bbs is itself testimony to how overly sensitive we are about taking this stuff seriously. I've been involved in group fannish activities since the 1970s, and those have on occasion (mainly back in the 1980s, pre-TNG) included attending public events in Trek costume. I've probably been ridiculed and stereotyped less for being a Trek fan than I was for being a Republican back when that was my party affiliation.
Like people, there are all kinds of Star Trek fans out there. Their fandom ranges from "obsessive," to "moderate," to "very casual," IMO. It's the obsessive ones that tend to get the most attention though...
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