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
So others have already talked about how great Star Trek is. I agree with them, but I think that literally everyone has missed the point of your question:
https://startrek.website
It’s its own lemmy instance. It was spawned from the migration away from reddit, and it’s stayed alive since. So combine an active former-reddit community with lemmy and a good reason to all rally around, and finally the final ingredient of federation, and the Star Trek related rooms will always be on every server, and they’ll always be populated.
Yeah, I think this is a big part of it. The Star Trek sub’s total abandonment of Reddit and conversion to a standalone Lemmy instance during the Blackout was a big deal and a big driver of traffic in those days and beyond.
Star Trek is big in the Threadiverse for the same reason that Earth is big in the Federation. They were a massive force in the early days.
And it’s a great example of how viable lemmy is as an alternative. Not sure about random subs, but any of the really nerdy ones could make the jump.
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.
Do you include Wesley as an alien in that instance? Because that monologue is solid.
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.
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.
But if you hang in there, you get rewarded with a Riker’s Beard
How’s Giant Spock doing?
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.
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!
I never really thought about it before, but it seems obvious now. Trekkies and open source tech folks would have a massive overlap, and Lemmy kind of exists perfectly within that intersection of utilitarian principles. So of course we would all find each other here.
I’m convinced that Trekkies and open source tech are concentric circles.
We may never have a good answer for why the gay nerdy communists love the colorful scifi communist space adventures
Most of the internet was started with Star Trek boards. If I recall correctly, one of the first emails ever sent was about Star Trek
Also credited with the first widespread fanfics of a TV show, I believe.
I haven’t thought of this in years but back in the '90s I participated in an email fantasy RPG where we all roleplayed Romulans. One person would write a chapter from their character’s POV and email it to the group, then the next person does one, and so on, so the story unfolded in unexpected ways. It was actually pretty fun.
That sounds like such a an awesome early internet thing.
And first male pregnancy fan fiction, fan fiction rings, shipping wars, and so on. House wives created the world AO3 writers live in today
Including the one that is the reason we call laughably stupid perfect characters Mary Sue.
star trek mods successfully moved their communities from reddit back then. afaik the only other community with similar success is the piracy community.
Trek fully embraced the principals of piracy. “You wouldn’t download a car”? Motherfucker, here’s a replicator.
Successfully pulling off a lift-and-move like that was huge. I wish more niche/fandoms had followed suit instead of staying put.
Unfortunately, outside of the meme zone (i.e. !risa@startrek.website) there isn’t a whole lot of engagement anymore. Once the blackout was over, the reddit communities opened back up.
I mean, look at r/DaystromInstitute versus !DaystromInstitute@startrek.website – it’s not pretty.
Well that sucks. I am guilty of really only following Risa, mostly due to big gaps in my watch history and wanting to avoid spoilers for the newer shows. I’m not surprised though… Reddit had (and still has) tremendous amounts of inertia.
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.
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i hate to break it to you, but i heard she doesnt dig you either
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bonus!
(i kinda thought she was dead)
c’mon, it’s right there
United Federation of Planets
Fediverse of Lemmy Instances
I’d been hearing talk of Lemmy as a potential Reddit alternative around the third party app debacle, but nobody seemed to be taking it terribly seriously until I saw the Star Trek subreddits open startrek.website for themselves.
That got me interested. It was the first instance I can remember of one of the bigger communities I followed just up and moving like that, and it made the whole thing feel more real.
because star trek has long been welcoming to gay and trans people for their inclusiveness and the fediverse is home to a lot of nerds and gay or trans (or both) people. 💕
I recently started watching TNG for the first time since I was a kid (mostly thanks to the rosa memes). The show is incredibly progressive, especially for a show that came out in 1990. I just watched a race last night where Riker “fell in love” with a member of an androgynous species that were not gendered.
The whole thing was about the individuals struggle to realize their gender identity.
It’s wild to me that I have friends who say dis is too woke because it has real gay, trans, autistic, etc. characters, but they love TNG. Really? You sure forgot a lot of the episodes.
dominates the federation
Say it again so the kids in back can hear ye
No Dominion in my federation!
Exactly. The question that answers itself.
Aye-yai Cap-ten!
Star Trek just kinda kicks ass.
What, you haven’t seen Deep Space Nine?? Cmon what’re you doing? Fix that!
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.
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.
