At what point do sports fans resemble trekkies?
A couple years ago my brother Brian and I watched a movie called Trekkies. It was an interesting view of the Star Trek fan base as a whole, along with examples of really gung-ho fans. That being said, all we could do is just laugh hysterically at these people. I mean we laughed rudely at the entire culture and that was a good night to us. There are a couple admirable traits in these people, though few, but they do exist. Trekies have unbelievable loyalty to what they truly love, they have perseverance to not change even though they get made fun of, and that’s about all I can conclude. As much as I think trekies are not the coolest of the bunch, what makes them worse than giant sports fans?
In my life I have met many people who enjoy watching sports, I myself am loyal to a couple teams. I also know sports fans that I consider to be trekkies that just like sports more than Captain Kirk. The author of Pathology Henry Jenkins describes the trekkies in several steps. I will sum these steps up.
1. they are brainless consumers, 2. they cultivate useless knowledge about the subject, 3. they place inappropriate importance on cultural material, 4. they are emotionally and intellectually immature, 5. they are de-sexualized through their contact with mass culture, 6.they are unable to separate fantasy with reality. 7. They become so obsessed that it takes away from their social lives.
Let me attempt to connect sports fans with these traits. We have all seen somebody who has created a room in their house completely filled with memorabilia picturing their favorite teams logo on it. Sports fans have trivial knowledge about statistics, injuries, and past players on their team’s who have done amazing things. They will plan their day around watching the game on television or spending lots of money on season tickets. For the fans that happen to have a bad game they will be salty all day. Many husbands would rather spend their day of rest watching football instead of making love to their wives. The optimistic fans will have a serious argument about how their team will be much better next year, when all signs point the other way. I can not tie Jenkin’s last description in with sports fans, but hey six of seven is good.
My point is just because sports are liked by more people, we tend to look at the big supporters of the team as just enthusiastic. Sports fans can be just as lame as the trekkies we can so easily point our finger and laugh at.
References.
http://popcultural.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/fandom/
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEVdca9U9LM>
