For The Older Scifi Geeks
- Thread starter Starfleet Engineer
- Start date
Personally, I was always into this stuff. As a kid, I read Famous Monsters of Filmland religiously, checked out every book I could find on the history of science fiction and horror movies, rode my bike to 7-Eleven to check out the comic book rack every week, stayed up to watch "Nightmare Theater" every Friday night, etc.
I discovered organized fandom in college back in the eighties, long before the internet. Started attending conventions and scifi film festivals, meeting professional authors and editors, selling stories to Fantasy Book and Amazing Stories . . . .
All of this long before I owned a computer.
I discovered organized fandom in college back in the eighties, long before the internet. Started attending conventions and scifi film festivals, meeting professional authors and editors, selling stories to Fantasy Book and Amazing Stories . . . .
All of this long before I owned a computer.
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The Internet just pisses me off.
Too many geeks?
Too man h8ters.
My interest in science fiction predates home computers, but not the moon landing.
The Internet hasn't made me more enthusiastic, because that's not possible. Thankfully it hasn't made me less enthusiastic. Yet.
The Internet hasn't made me more enthusiastic, because that's not possible. Thankfully it hasn't made me less enthusiastic. Yet.
It makes all kinds of research easier.
When I first started reading GEnie and Compuserve, two negative things about a certain percentage of posters bugged me.
First, once they'd construct an opinion about anything - whether it was why something worked a certain way in Star Trek or some remarkable conclusion they'd come to about a stray subject like early childhood development (always formed through "many years of close observation of..." etc) they would take umbrage when simple objections to the opinion were posed. The intensity with which people invest personally in the rationalizations they've put together for How Things Are is much more peculiar and intrusive on-line. You can infuriate people just by saying, "I don't think that's true" and then refusing to engage in Wall O'Text debates giving them the opportunity to explain the obvious error of your ways.
Second, the possessiveness and sense of entitlement with which they would treat TV shows, actors, what-have-you. Allied with this was the conviction that organizations like TV networks, studios and so on made decisions motivated by contempt and the intention to affront (or "punish," oddly enough) them personally.
First, once they'd construct an opinion about anything - whether it was why something worked a certain way in Star Trek or some remarkable conclusion they'd come to about a stray subject like early childhood development (always formed through "many years of close observation of..." etc) they would take umbrage when simple objections to the opinion were posed. The intensity with which people invest personally in the rationalizations they've put together for How Things Are is much more peculiar and intrusive on-line. You can infuriate people just by saying, "I don't think that's true" and then refusing to engage in Wall O'Text debates giving them the opportunity to explain the obvious error of your ways.
Second, the possessiveness and sense of entitlement with which they would treat TV shows, actors, what-have-you. Allied with this was the conviction that organizations like TV networks, studios and so on made decisions motivated by contempt and the intention to affront (or "punish," oddly enough) them personally.
I've always been a HUGE geek; the internet has merely allowed me to be a more informed geek, more quickly, and with more people.
I'm not sure I could be more of a sci fi fan than I was before the internet. It was fading a bit in the mid 90s, then re-surged when I got my own pc in 1995 for awhile. After that I think I leveled off but I can never not be a fan...it's part of my thinking, I've been into the futurism, science, tech, and cultural speculation for a long time, and that won't change.
My interest in fandom has changed though. I have found--in general--that it's less positive, imaginative and adaptable as I thought it was when I was younger. It's just as interested in the familiar and the past as it is in change and thinking out of the box. Along with that it also seems to enjoy focusing on the negative...though I think that's something the anonymity of the net brings out with a lot of people.
One area that's better is being able to look up just about anything and the info is more up-to-date, even if it's rare. I use it for that almost every day.
RAMA
My interest in fandom has changed though. I have found--in general--that it's less positive, imaginative and adaptable as I thought it was when I was younger. It's just as interested in the familiar and the past as it is in change and thinking out of the box. Along with that it also seems to enjoy focusing on the negative...though I think that's something the anonymity of the net brings out with a lot of people.
One area that's better is being able to look up just about anything and the info is more up-to-date, even if it's rare. I use it for that almost every day.
RAMA
^^Yeah, the Internet has definitely disillusioned me about fandom. The negativity and lack of imagination is something I rarely encountered back in the pre-WWW days. Of course, culture in general has become darker and more lowbrow in the past couple of decades, so fandom is just following that trend, but in my youth I would have expected fandom to buck the trend rather than embrace it.
TOS and Doctor Who for me started my Sci-Fi love. The BBC iPlayer etc, has opened up a massive amount of content. Considering what it was like with a BB on an Amiga 500, the internet has almost become like TV, people just expect it to work. I like my Rigs, but even I do not feel that the likes of Youtube should really be showing footage of Gaddafi's capture and capping (ok not shown, but the inference was there) should not have been uploaded or allowed to be.
Of course there is always another side to the coin. There is a lot of good stuff out there, especially good that you can be reintroduced to a series past and lots of other legacy stuff, long presumed to be lost. Legal or not'ish.
Of course there is always another side to the coin. There is a lot of good stuff out there, especially good that you can be reintroduced to a series past and lots of other legacy stuff, long presumed to be lost. Legal or not'ish.
Reruns of Flash Gordon and The Adventures Of Superman in the mid '60s got me started. There was also an assortment of Irwin Allen sic-fis and some cartoons. Then the early '70s saw me discover Star Trek and other television sci-fi. It's also when I started to read original SF literature and starting to get a sense of fandom.
I think the '80s started to legitimize fandom---you were no longer a pariah for being into this stuff. That seems to have reversed a bit since but certainly not to the degree it once was. Today a lot of folks can openly express their interests and hardly anyone bats an eye...except for the media that likes to play the stereotype.
I wouldn't say the internet has made me more of a geek. It has allowed me to connect with likeminded people who I likely wouldn't have met without the internet, but I don't spend any more time on my interests than I did before.
But the internet has shown something of a dark side to fandom. Nuance often doesn't covey well in text on a screen and some people can be prone to say things online they likely wouldn't dare say to someone's face. Face-to-face I've never encountered the bitterness, rudeness and open hostility as it can be expressed online. And that applies to any subject besides genre stuff.
The internet has opened or expanded ways to express and explore my inner geek, but I've always been essentially the same at heart.
I think the '80s started to legitimize fandom---you were no longer a pariah for being into this stuff. That seems to have reversed a bit since but certainly not to the degree it once was. Today a lot of folks can openly express their interests and hardly anyone bats an eye...except for the media that likes to play the stereotype.
I wouldn't say the internet has made me more of a geek. It has allowed me to connect with likeminded people who I likely wouldn't have met without the internet, but I don't spend any more time on my interests than I did before.
But the internet has shown something of a dark side to fandom. Nuance often doesn't covey well in text on a screen and some people can be prone to say things online they likely wouldn't dare say to someone's face. Face-to-face I've never encountered the bitterness, rudeness and open hostility as it can be expressed online. And that applies to any subject besides genre stuff.
The internet has opened or expanded ways to express and explore my inner geek, but I've always been essentially the same at heart.
I grew up watching Land of the Giants, Buck Rodgers, The Next Generation, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, UFO, god knows how many other shows since I was 3 years old, glued to the TV watching anything science fiction I could, the internet came along in 1998 for me and posting around forums in 2003. So yeah, been a long while 
It's interesting to ponder what it might have been like if the internet and BBS forums had been around forty years or so earlier. What might have been said about the shows and films of those days with perspectives not yet influenced by what we've had since. Sure people today can watch those old shows now online or on dvd, but their perspective is coloured by all the stuff that has since come along. A younger viewer watching TOS (for example) today after watching TNG, DS9, B5 and whatever else isn't likely to see the show in the same way as when TOS was new.
Its foggier now, but I DO recall some negativity even in my more idealistic days...years before I had my own internet I used to browse and print out the pre-WWW convos on bulletin boards on my friend's PC. This was the age of popular STNG and less stigma for fandom...though that seems to be changing yet again for general sci-fi/fantasy...the Comic-cons are much bigger than we prob give them credit for. The influence is amazing.
While I don't entirely disagree with you, I'm not so sure that fandom is responsible for that. The current trend in sci-fi on the other hand has everything to do with it. Star Trek, with it's positive message has dissapered from TV and the latest film was more about "shot 'em" up", than about exploration. Battlestar Galactica was perverted beyond recognition, and most other sci-fi (the ones I can stomach, anyway) are mostly about "doom and gloom" than about looking at the future. Now, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that kind of storytelling, but I DO think it's become the rule, when it should have stayed the exception.
^^ I'm with you on that, no doubt about it.
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