Every single large server in this federation has at least one Star Trek community. There is even an entire server dedicated to Star Trek.
Not only that, these communities are some of the most active I’ve ever seen. There is no other franchise I know of that dominates the federation as much as Star Trek does.
So, what’s the correlation with Lemmy and Star Trek? Why not other sci-fi series? Please, are there any connections?? Is this all coincidental?
dominates the federation
Well there you have it.
federates the Dominion
FTFY
I think it’s nerds. /s
I think a lot of the lemmy userbase are at least somewhat techy (also see the Linux communities), and a lot of techy people like Star Trek.
Techies are Trekkies!
Well, you see, Lemmy is full of nerds and communists.
“Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to loose but your chains!”
that’s why
We may never have a good answer for why the gay nerdy communists love the colorful scifi communist space adventures
If you’re trying to say the way ryker throws his leg over a chair is the cause of me becoming a communist programmer then I have to tell you that you are sorely accurate.
Why is the show about gay space communism popular on the gay space communism network?
In an interview during the 90’s, William Shatner told of a story of him being recognized in mid-perfomance by a sword dancer in a small Iranian village. The man stopped dead in his tracks and looked straight at him uttering with utter amazement; “Captain Kirk?!?” That should give us perspective as to how deep and far Star Trek reached people for the last 51 years.
Source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-approximate-number-of-Star-Trek-fans-worldwide
There’s also the song 99 Luftballoons which includes the line “Everyone’s a Captain Kirk.”
Not exactly a positive analogy, but it shows how deeply embedded it is in a collective culture.
Dude, I hate Nena so much!
i hate to break it to you, but i heard she doesnt dig you either
In fact I would take it as a compliment, especially considering that she is a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer …
bonus!
(i kinda thought she was dead)
The Star Trek community has been going strong for nearly 60 years for a reason - Star Trek rocks.
When it started in the 60s (and continued especially strong with TNG in the 80s), it was unique in depicting a hopeful look at how things could be rather than a reflection of how things are, differing from how most shows do social commentary. It’s refreshing.
Star Trek is attractive to people who want to see a world where people work together toward great things in a post-scarcity utopia, with current day conversations of race, nationality, sex, gender, etc. being so far in the rear-view mirror that they’re non-issues. Plus cool technology. I think that appeals to the Lemmy crowd.
Another key point I feel is often overlooked about Star Trek is the “Gulliver’s Travels” component of (at least pre-Kelvin) Star Trek. Every show, every race was secretly a fun-house-like caricature of humanity’s worst traits, with the humans of the show demonstrating growth past that point. You laugh at or shirk away from them, but really it’s modern humanity that is being depicted (Ferengi as capitalists, Klingons as warmongers, Romulans as subversives, etc.) And then we see what we could be, the hope that you talked about, in future humanity
It seems like such a creative way to do social commentary. We get to see our present failings in aliens, and then contrast it with how the crew (future humanity) carries themselves. Sometimes it’s very clunky and heavy handed (like that TOS episode with the half-white/half-black aliens), but it’s still good. My favorites are every time Picard monologues about their values to an alien race in TNG.
Even if you already share the values, it’s fascinating to hear them laid out so clearly.
It helps that Stewart is such a fantastic monologist. It’s like hearing something complex about biology or ecology from David Attenborough. They both have such an effortless ability to communicate difficult subjects.
Do you include Wesley as an alien in that instance? Because that monologue is solid.
I’m going to say yes. Every teenager is an alien.
That’s very interesting. I think you’ve sold me on watching the show.
The original series is very 1960s and I wouldn’t recommend for a jumping in point. I’d go with next Gen for that, it’s the quintessential trek more so than the original having had 3 spinoffs in the 90s and defining most of the canon. Here’s the issue though, the first 2 seasons of tng really suck. Like maybe the worst 2 seasons of the whole franchise. I’d check out some best of lists for those seasons and maybe sprinkle a couple random ones in, they did 26 hour long episodes per season and there are some amazing clunkers there, bad episodes are part of trek and you’ve gotta learn to enjoy them, but those first 2 seasons are rough.
To me, Trek is a mash of three great communities, each nerdy in their own way:
- Science-fiction, specifically optimistic mid-century science fiction.
- Theatre / Drama
- Revolutionary Socialism
This article scratches the surface of it.
Same reason Linux is popular on Lemmy. Lemmy is essentially an explicitly leftist community that appeals to people nerdy and techy enough to leave Reddit and join a smaller platform. Linux is a FOSS, ie leftist techy OS. Star Trek is leftist Sci-Fi.
Nerds, tech, and leftism all congregate on Lemmy.
ELI5…what’s leftism?
Its so big and wide and vague, theres no good answer.
But basically, communists and hippies
I think it would be awsome to have Trekkies and Whovians do some crossovers.
it happens regularly o’er at startrek.website
Star Trek has more historical weight behind it. It more or less created modern scifi fandom. It’s probably so widely beloved because it’s unlike most scifi in that it’s hopeful. It sells you on the idea of a better future where everything could go right, where we can explore space and be chill with everyone. Other scifi franchises sell you on window dressing or a bad future full of the same problems we have now.
People like Star Trek because they want it to be reality in a way that other scifi stuff just doesn’t do.
and it’s positively liberal compared to The Culture series but obviously far more mainstream. there isn’t a real radical reordering of society and humans are basically bioessentialist almost to a fanatical degree, but the fully automated luxury communism itself just seems so radical compared to any visions of the future dropped on us by the ruling classes of today
where’s The Culture tv show? i don’t have the executive function for books anymore.
Amazon is supposedly working on it, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up of it being any good.
It’s popular, very memeable, has a long history, and most importantly: there’s 2-3 series of it running right now. So it’s topical and being engaged with.
it is a giant, hot garbage dump of memeable content. i love it
In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the United Federation of Planets is the interstellar government with which, as part of its space force Starfleet, most of the characters and starships of the franchise are affiliated.
