6 ms·
The difference is, we have the Internet to actually create large communities centered around these interests. This makes it look like more people are involved,
by _asummers 11y ago
The difference is, we have the Internet to actually create large communities centered around these interests. This makes it look like more people are involved, when in fact all the separate islands of fans have simply been bridged together.
- joezydeco 11y agoAnd the internet has enabled those fans to be continuously engaged in their interests. Where trekkies/ham operators/beatlemaniacs might have assembled once in a while or yearly at a convention, now they can stay with their tribe all the time. What's the cultural impact when that happens?
- hodwik 11y agoMy knee-jerk reaction is to say the people become more insular, but perhaps the opposite is true. If trekkies come from all over the country, from different age groups, backgrounds, perhaps interacting with your internet trekkie tribe all day will give you a broader picture of things. In that sense it may be an exchange of intellectual depth for breadth. In a time of a broad globalism that may be just the sort of population you want. What's more, generally the shared interest is used as a social glue, not as a sole topic of discussion. Case in point, the fact that on Hacker News we are discussing this.
- dllthomas 11y agoI have a freind and co-worker who is on the more extreme end of the "brony" spectrum. He's still plenty capable of interacting with those of us who've never seen an episode of MLP.
- robotresearcher 11y agoDidn't ham operators talk to each other all night long over random and often amazing distances? That was kind of the point.
- joezydeco 11y agoOkay, yeah, bad example. I was trying to think of groups that actually met F2F in the days before the Internet.