My 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 ag

My 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.