the typical TREK fan

[RobertScorpio]

So here we are in the 21st Century. Star Trek is 40 or so years old...what do you think was the typical image of a "star trek" fan through the years....and to be more specific, how did the rest of our culture view a typical star "track" fan in

1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
Now...

Or have we always had the same image? Here is how I see it. And if I offend anyone, oh well...

1960s...people saw Trek fans, as a bunch of high school aged hippies who drove Volkswagon vans and probably got high on pot, and were just starting college

1970s...We still maintained that hippie image, but now we started to also become big with kids. Thus we got a cartoon. But, underneath it all? Just a bunch of Pot smoking hippies who watched Star "track" and listened to Pink Floyd or Zepplin in the background

1980s...We became dorks. We were no longer the pot smoking hippies, we now became dorks who hung around arcades playing Tempest. We generally thought Trek was cool and the Holy Grail was the greatest movie of all.

1990s...Suddenly the first generation of fans (hippies) were now baby-boomers. TNG represented us, but as liberal leaning thinkers who had matured. Sure, we still attacted the dork label for the younger group, but now it was fashionable to admit you were a Trekker if you were a boomer.

2000s...we are struggling to find our idendity. The boomer-Trek fans have quieted down. We now seem to be comic-book buying group that is into Warcraft and Xbox 360s, with crystal Meth and/or pot creeping back into our persona.

Now, those labels I came up with are broad, and not meant to offend. In fact, they are silly labels that lump us all into one group. But that is what happens to every other group out there. What do I base them on? I couldn't tell you. How do you see the evolution of the 'typical star trek fan' through time??

Rob

 

[Danoz]

I was 11 years old when Star Trek: Voyager was first run. It was my first series and I was inspired by the stories, the characters, the relationships and the hypothetical socio-political issues in this world of fiction. I had memories of TNG at the time because my parents used to rush home from church choir to watch new episodes every week. As a result, I watched Star Trek in this order;

VOY
TNG
DS9
ENT
TOS

The Next Generation was also inspiring, if not a little more adult than Voyager could have dreamed of being. Both of these series, however, were simply priming me for the awesomeness of DS9, which I watched start to finish via Netflix last year .

We are a new generation of trekkies .

 

[Cyke101]

1980s...We became dorks. We were no longer the pot smoking hippies, we now became dorks who hung around arcades playing Tempest. We generally thought Trek was cool and the Holy Grail was the greatest movie of all.

I want to say we became dorks once we learned Star Trek III was coming out. So I'd have to say, to be semi-exact... perhaps the early 80s did we become dorks.

Of course, that's just my opinion, so it's more than open to debate if need be.

 

[RobertScorpio]

1980s...We became dorks. We were no longer the pot smoking hippies, we now became dorks who hung around arcades playing Tempest. We generally thought Trek was cool and the Holy Grail was the greatest movie of all.

I want to say we became dorks once we learned Star Trek III was coming out. So I'd have to say, to be semi-exact... perhaps the early 80s did we become dorks.

Of course, that's just my opinion, so it's more than open to debate if need be.

Oh, yeah, this is all based on our own personal opinions, so don't worry. No one can judge us on those. And, as I said, there were the labels being thrown at us. I actually think the Typical Star Trek fan through all those years is a general fan of scifi, a little on the more creative side of the house, into tech trends of the day, and most important; open minded to new ideas.

But then again...I do remember RUSH playing in the background of my smoke infested room in the mid 70s!!!