I was just thinking that the people who can speak Klingon or who debate the physics of light sabres with a 100 page FAQ are a very special breed of people indeed. Is this just another sign of the modern times or did similar kinds of people channel their obsessions into some other activty?
One could say the same kind of obsession over fictional stories/characters being organized into large followings has been going on for thousands of years with repsect to …
Dah da da daaaah -
The major (and minor) religions of the world… No??
According to History Bites, a great show I watch whenever possible, fannish devotion to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s first book, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) went as far as young people dressing like the characters and occasionally committing suicide like the characters. History Bites may have gone a little far in drawing the analogy to modern-day Star Trek fans (“We consider ‘Werthies’ to be an offensive term. We prefer ‘Werthers’.”) but it was clear that obsessive followings around popular fiction is not a 20th-century phenomena.
Oh, please, nobody can discuss the physics of lightsabers for 100 pages. Now, if you want me to delve into a discourse on the designs of the starships and their capabilites, the companies that make them, and the respective usages of such, I can fill NOVELS.
I think a good analogy was the obsession Spanish people had with the original “Don Quixote” by Cervantes around 1605. AFAICR historians reported people, demanding more, even creating unauthorized plays and tales (fan fiction?) of the error prone knight. The obsession culminated when a writer (Avellaneda) created a successful but false second part of the novel. Besides not giving credit to Cervantes, he even insulted him in the now called “The apocryphal Quixote”.
The notorious thing is that Cervantes even used the fan base that he had as a plot device:
In the real second part of Don Quixote (published 10 years later), Cervantes gets his revenge by creating (in one of the early chapters of the second book) a couple of book lovers of the fake tome, they were reading the book in a tavern, and criticizing out loud the “new” adventures of Don Quixote. (I noticed that the writer did not point out how odd that behavior was, implying that that was a normal thing).
And there, the fictional character came to face with the real obsession he had “created”. Both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza meet the fanatics and the Don And Sancho made mince meat of Avellaneda’s book, by pointing out big errors of continuity and in names from the first book. The fanatics, chastised, even proposed the way for Don Quixote to discredit the fake book: to go to the jousting competitions in Barcelona. Something the Quixote in the fake book did not do.
That sequence had a flavor like the recent funny episode of Futurama that has the crew meeting the “real” members of Star Trek. 
I just heard on the news that, on days when a new starwars is released the economy takes a $300 million dollar hit, due to all the people that call in sick that day. And the industry that is hit that hardest, the tech industry. The news said this was becuase of all the “young people” working in the tech industry.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin (point of a needle? That was one that got scholars really worked up.
Yeah but we already know that a star destroyer would mop the floor with the enterprise 
I can go even earlier than that: Pythagoreans were sort of a cult following of the Greek mathematician Pythagorus. In order to study his mathematics, you had to forego meat, associate with only other Pythagoreans, believe in reincarnation, and kill yourself if faced with an irrational number. Somewhat more fanatical than Trekkies, if you ask me!
Elvis has left the building.
Tris
More proof of the old adage that just because a thing CAN be done doesn’t mean it SHOULD be.
:::d&r:::
The novels of Dickens produced obsessive behaviour in their readers to rival anything by Trekkies or Warts. The novels were published originally in monthly serialization, and crowds in New York, as the ship carrying the latest installment of The Old Curiosity Shop neared the mooring, shouted, “Is Little Nell dead?”.
Daniel O’Connell, the great Irish member of Parliament, read the account of Nell’s death while he was riding on a train, burst into tears, cried “He should not have killed her,” and threw the novel out of the window in despair.
If you want to see a movie, you go to the nearest movie house where it is playing, pay $8 and see it. The actors and the language will always be the same. Then you buy the video or DVD and see it a million times for free.
When you become obsessed with a theatre show, you often have to travel to the theatre where it is playing (often hundreds if not thousands of miles away), pay $50 - $80 on a ticket, and buy scads of souvenirs (it costs one hundred dollars to come see the show, and $100 more to leave). Ever time the cast changes, you have to see it again. You save money and vacation time to see it in another language. If the show runs for 10 years, you can see it over 500 times or more.
You think Star Trek/Star Wars fanatics are crazy? Hang around theatre people for a while. The Guiness Book of Records recognizes ** Starlight Express [/b[ fans as the most fanatical in the world! I scored a tape of the songs from the Mexican rpoduction of ** Espreso Astral [/b[ that was recorded, but never released. Made me very popular, I can tell you.
And the Phantom Phans (or POtaTOheads, as I call them) who are going nuts cause Michael Crawford won’t be starring in the movie. It’s a freaking movei, people.
Back in the 1950’s Howdy doody fans got pretty carried away.
But nothing compares to Elvis. NOTHING.
Pastorialism was all the rage amongst the well-to-do in France just prior to the revolution. Marie Antionette herself had a sectionof the palace grounds turned into a veritable Forest of Arden so she and her ladies-in-waiting could dress up and pretend to be shepardesses and milkmaids.
I do not know whether there were any arguments over which was the better cahracter to play act.
Really? How do they determine that? (I was a huge fan of Starlight Express when I was about twelve. I grew out of it, though. ;))
Way to go mmmiiikkkeee.
Think about all the time that scientists have put into explaining the plagues of the biblical exodus and attributing them to natural events (a volcanic explosion in the Mediterranean which caused a tidal wave in the Red sea, which according to Cecil doesn’t even seem to be the sea that they crossed). Or how about all those Noah’s flood “theories” involving the Black sea, or even the theological aspects of the Big Bang.
Why is it whenever they show a program nowadays about the ‘true’ nature of God on the Discovery channel they interview astronomers? What makes them experts about god? Maybe they should ask a few sociologists and get some really good answers.
Or maybe we should stop trying to come up for scientific explanations for something that we just want to believe in. Ask the Trekies, they are the new breed of biblical historians.
This may be stretching the analogy a bit, but there are two more instances worth consideration… Firstly, The Peoples Crusade, led by Peter the Hermit; an offshoot of the First Crusade. Thousands of peasants were recruited in a march accross Europe, believing that their faith (and numbers) would be enough to free Jerusalem from the infidel. Apparently they were a huge pain in the ass wherever they went, and arriving in Constantinople, they were too impatient to wait for the actual military element of the crusade to arrive, and the Emperor (probably happily) shipped them over the Bosporus, where, on their march into the Holy Land, they were, of course, massacred. Some estimates put the total dead at as much as 300,000.
The second instance would be the Flagellants… a movement that occured during the Black Plague, where people travelled from town to town beating and whipping themselves in an effort to assuage God’s anger. Apparently they picked up adherents everywhere, and in some cases so many people left town to become a flagellant, that crops were not harvested butter not churned etc etc. They became so endemic tha the Church eventually outlawed them.
What about Sherlock Holmes? Didn’t Sir Arthur Conan Doyle bring him back from the dead because of all the pressure the fans were putting on him?
Actually, Doyle brought his detective back for the money… which was fueled by the insane demand by the fans, so I guess that’s an indirect influence.