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What's the difference between a trekkie and a trekker?

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I didn't hear the term "trekkers" until after TNG was on the air.

I heard of "trekkie" around the time of TWOK, and I think it was out of Leonard Nimoy's mouth.
 
Trekkies are fans of the show, they can name most episodes by name, and they can explain certain production decisions like giving klingons forehead ridges.


Trekkers are fans of the federation and the universe it exists in. They will argue the merits of a utopian society based on a premise of man using self betterment as a motivation. When the issues of klingon forehead ridges being present they'll have 100 different scenarios explaining how they came about.


I'm without question, I see the show has a bottleneck in my appreciate of the federation universe.

That being said I think trekkie is far better sounding. It's the more popular and common word. Plus trekker sounds way to serious kinda like stargate fans calling themselves gaters.

However Trekker is a verb and trekkie is closer to an adjective. Trekkers build a fictional universe in their mind while trekkies are simply fans.
 
The real problem with the whole "trekker" vs. "trekkie" thing is that invariably it's used as a club to run down the "wrong" kind of fan. And as a way of distancing oneself from, you know, those "other" fans . . .. the ones we don't want to be associated with.

It's too often all about setting up some sort of hierarchy of Trek fandom, in which some Trek fans are more Trekkish than others.
 
Everyone else has pretty much summed up the supposed differences in the terms. Personally, I call myself a Trekkie. I don't care if that gets me lumped in with a group stereotyped as lonely virgins who focus too much on technical details. None of that describes really me but I am an unabashed Star Trek fan and I don't give a shit who knows or what they have to say about it. Star Trek has changed my perception of a lot of things. Doctor Who did as well when I was watching it but not to the same degree. I've had people delete me from Facebook because I post too much Trek stuff lol. At the same time, I also got a friend into it because of those posts sooo. "Trekker" sounds pretentious to me and my love for Trek is without pretentiousness - I want everyone to give it a shot.
 
Trekker simply doesn't sound right to me. It was always Trekkie. It didn't know the term Trekker until I came here (and I was a lurker for several years).
 
Everyone else has pretty much summed up the supposed differences in the terms. Personally, I call myself a Trekkie. I don't care if that gets me lumped in with a group stereotyped as lonely virgins who focus too much on technical details. None of that describes really me but I am an unabashed Star Trek fan and I don't give a shit who knows or what they have to say about it. Star Trek has changed my perception of a lot of things. Doctor Who did as well when I was watching it but not to the same degree. I've had people delete me from Facebook because I post too much Trek stuff lol. At the same time, I also got a friend into it because of those posts sooo. "Trekker" sounds pretentious to me and my love for Trek is without pretentiousness - I want everyone to give it a shot.

I pretty much share this view. I always saw the term Trekker as being a misguided and ineffective attempt to counter the stereotype of a Star Trek fan. In reality, the the attempt just reinforced that view and gave the naysayers another weapon in their arsenal of ridicule.
 
The only way to tell which camp a given fan is a member of is to call them a Trekkie.

If they angrily correct you, they're a Trekker.

If they don't seem to mind, they're probably a much more fun person to be around because they don't get caught up in silly things like whether they're a Trekkie or a Trekker.
 
Trekkers get girls.

Trekkies don't.

;)

You are sooooo wrong, Bubba.

I am a Trekkie and I got the girl. I could not have done better. Put up with decades of me being a soldier and gone all the time, gave me three great kids, and more memories than my little brain can handle. (I saw the wink, but I had to say it!)

On a more serious note, I think it is more of an age thing - or maybe an insecurity thing. I have no issue being a Trekkie. I have no negative connotations associated with it.
 
Sir, he specifically requested two Trekkers? Well, to tell the family secret, my grandmother was Dutch.
 
Both groups think the following is funny..

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd5yB9Vmd6I[/yt]
 
A trekker is one who treks. A Trekkie is one who is either trekked upon or upon whom a trek is bestowed. It's more "logical" to apply the term Trekker to someone like Nichelle Nichols, who is one who trekked the Trek. Some fan who buys DVDs or attends conventions ought more appropriately be referred to as a Trekkie, like a hippie, or a yuppie. Frankly, the term Trekker applied to fans always seem disingenuous, the way hipster does, compared to hippie.

That is how it always seemed to me, & as a fan from way back in the 70s, when Trekkie was the most common term, I'll always identify with that, despite whether it may carry disparaging connotations. In fact, that gives it even more affinity for me, not all that dissimilar to how the N-word has evolved culturally.

Where my Trekkies be at?
 
I was always under the belief that Trekker was created as a one off line in a movie designed to 'humorously' show Trek fans being cranky and uptight, because I certainly never thought about it before then. But since were talking about it, I call my self a fan, and if we need a united name, my votes on 'Hufflepuffs', just to confuse everyone :D
 
You know, fans of "Carmilla" (the vampire webseries) call themselves "Creampuffs."

I wonder if someday people will insist that "Carmels" is a more "dignified" term. :)
 
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