How to meet other fans?

[USSCoriolis]

Hi,

I have been watching Star Trek since I was 13, and other than introducing an ex to Star Trek, I have never actually met another Star Trek fan in real life. No one I have ever met or made friends of ever watched it. When I went down to a local game store that has D&D and everything else you can think of, they looked at me like I was crazy when I asked about Star Trek stuff.

Do people usually just meet at conventions? I know you exists because you are here on this forum aha, but I would love to know where people have usually met like minded Trek fans.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Have you tried a local comic shop?
I'm fortunate that my boss, best friends and most of my family are all big into Star Trek.
And a number of the guys at the local comic shop (including the owner) keep up with all of the new shows as well.

I've met fans at cons, but nothing long lasting.

 

[NCC-73515]

Saturday Trek Zoom

 

[Fantasy Lover]

Conventions!

 

[Forbin]

I think we just sort of gravitate together without trying.
I don't recall knowing any fellow Trekkies in high school (early 1970s), but found a few in art school afterward. Then fell in with a group of film buffs who were also Trekkies (married one of them!).
The most overt incident of making a new trekkie friend was when one of those film buff friends invited me along to his college classmate's house, who was making a super-8 Trek film for his film class. We hit it off right away. Those film buffs have all drifted apart, but I'm still friends with that guy who was making the film.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

8th grade junior high cafeteria. Back in the early 80s at least there were guaranteed to be at least three kindred-spirit TREKKers per lunch period. That average has probably skyrocketed since 2001 after HARRY POTTER and LOTR gripped the pop-film culture vise.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Never met one in real life. Never.

But then I’ve never announced I am one either.

Maybe I’ve met lots of fans, but because Star Trek didn’t come up in conversation, I just didn’t realise it.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Met one through here. I work with a couple now. I made one of them watch Very Short Treks and get a live reaction

 

[XCV330]

Conventions!

Going to one this weekend!

 

[Fantasy Lover]

Same! In november as well, but a different city.

 

[Forbin]

Oh, this sparks a memory: I was walking thru a NJ mall one day in the 1980s, while wearing a "Romulan Military Academy" T-shirt. A guy suddenly walked up to me out of a shoe store and declared "Romulan Military Academy?? I am Mortas K'Tas, Klingon Defense Force! You're under arrest! Come with me!" He took me by the arm and dragged me back into the shoe store and up to a woman, and said "Look, honey, I caught one!"

Turns out he was one of those guys who works security at the NY area conventions dressed in KDF cosplay.

It didn't actually start a regular friendship, but I've run into Mortas a few more times over the years and we said hi.

 

[1001001]

Going to one this weekend!

Nice.

Be sure to give us a report.

 

[Fantasy Lover]

Will do, so far it's been great so far. There were smurfs to be found in every hall. If we found them all, which we did, we would get something! It was a baseball cap from smurfs, tomorrow we're going to do it again! Now I'll get a baseball cap, because the other was for my bf.

 

[Fantasy Lover]

Oh, you weren't talking to me. Awkward.

 

[Timofnine]

I would love to meet Star Trek fans in real life, but I do not know any. I only seem to know Star Wars fans.

 

[Brennyren]

I honestly don't know how much of an option this is any more, but...fan clubs. Live, meet-in-person (these days, probably hybrid) fan clubs. I met my husband in our local chapter of Starfleet International, and we both made some dear friends in the group. -- we're still in touch with some, almost 30 years later. As has already been mentioned, conventions are another good option, especially fan-run cons.

But my very first successful strategy turned out to be: wear your fandom on your sleeve. When I was a geeky girl of 13, back in the 70s, I regularly carried around Trek paperbacks, mostly the old Blish novelizations. Did I get teased for it? Yup. But I got teased a lot anyway, so whatever. And a new girl in school, who also liked Trek, decided I must be pretty interesting if I did too. So she decided she was going to be my friend. (I don't recall that I had any say in the matter, but it wasn't an offer I got very often, so I wouldn't have objected anyhow.) We're still friends 50 years later. And sometimes we still talk Trek.

That still works for me, btw. Talking about my love of Trek with my coworkers has made me part of a little circle of folks who feel the same. It makes work a lot of fun.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I’m fine keeping everyone at a nice comfortable distance on the BBS.

 

[Joanna McCoy-Kirk]

I have a friend who is a Trek fan and a huge Star Wars fan (since 1977). We didn't meet through Trek, though. I don't know very many Trek fans around here, which is a shame. I live in a small town and don't get to go to conventions.

 

[Lord Garth]

I didn't have to go out of my way to meet Trekkies. My mother was a fan when she was alive. My father used to watch TOS in Iran and he also liked the TOS and Kelvin Movies, nothing else, though he'd tolerate the rest. My brother's a fan, though we gravitate towards opposite series lately. He's a HUGE Niner and, nowadays, he loves SNW and LD. The only things, for New Trek, that we agree on are Prodigy and Picard Season 3.

Outside of my family: Through school. In the early/mid-'90s, TNG was big. You watched it, Trekkie or not. So I knew a lot of people in junior high and high school who watched TNG. Some of whom happened to be friends of mine. They didn't continue onto DS9 or VOY, but one of my teachers was a Hardcore Fan (he wore a Star Trek tie every Friday) and, my senior year of high school, I'd get a pass during study period, and then we'd hang out and talk about the latest episodes of DS9 and VOY.

Then came college. I was President of the Anime Club. Chances were if you liked anime, you also liked comics, role-playing, sci-fi, fantasy, Star Wars, and yes, Star Trek. Though, as far as Star trek, most of them only liked TNG. A lot of them liked the TOS Movies too but trying to get them into TOS itself was an uphill battle. I told some of them about this board. I told them I was a moderator here (at the time). I even got a few people to join, though they didn't stick around. I'm still friends with a lot of the people I knew from college to this day, and some of them asked me about Picard. I invited two of my harder-core Trek fans over to watch the first two episodes of Discovery.

So, I didn't have to go online to meet Trekkies... unless I wanted to talk about Star Trek that wasn't TNG or the Movies with more than just a few people.

My brother got a lot of his friends into DS9 when the series came out on DVD in 2003, but those were HIS friends, not really mine. Later on, he'd get some of them into BSG, and they'd get together to watch the newest episodes sometimes, but they were always in a competition to see who could be louder and who could talk over each other the most, it seemed.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Oh, another thing that works great for me... wear or display something Trek in public, so long as you're comfortable with that. And I don't mean full uniform (though you do you).
I have an NX-01 baseball cap (which basically gets no comments, probably obviously) but my Star Trek license plate gets TONS of comments. Almost every time I go out, seemingly, today included. Always the most pleasant of conversations with really nice people, most people happy to simply say how they used to watch the show, or more recently "Have you seen Picard season 3!"
I'm shocked at how many random people watch the new stuff, I would have guessed just us people posting on the board