The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: April 17, 2011

Official News page 6


REAL LIFE NEWS: STEREOTYPING STAR TREK FANS

by Hazed

Everybody knows what Trekkies are like - they are usually men, pale and pasty faced, overweight, geeky, unpopular, with bad hygiene and poor social skills, who obsess about trivial details and teach themselves to speak Klingon. Think of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.

Well, that's the popular stereotype. But a recent survey conducted by an academic shows how wrong that portrayal is. They polled just over 5,000 Star Trek fans last year and discovered some surprising statistics.

The most shocking is that 57% of the fans were female! Now that was unexpected.

The survey asked people why they were involved in Star Trek fandom, and 79% said it was because they agreed with the philosophical ideals of the shows. A noble reason for enjoying it.

Actually, I don't know why I am pretending to be shocked at the results: I am not all that surprised that the stereotype didn't exactly hold up. After all, the demographics of Fed players has always had a good percentage of women and the game tends to appeal to those who are well-educated. It's no surprise that a ground-breaking and thoughtful show like Star Trek has the same high quality fans.

Source: http://geek-news.mtv.com/2011/03/14/more-female-trekkies-than-male-according-to-new-survey-demographics-of-star-trek-fans/

Academic Paper: http://independent.academia.edu/DarylFrazetti/Papers/448772/Results_Star_Trek_Fandom_Survey


Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page