Baronlando said:
Tobar said: It just seems to me that he, like many, aren't aware of what's happened to Star Wars. Which is a sad state of affairs that should compel us to enlighten the uninformed, not berate them.
Well, we're not talking about a child, these guys I'm talking about are plenty educated. This situation has existed for 16 years now, with the educated people being mostly just fine with it. I think the high road is pretty useless at this point.
I think the real reason is that there used to be a convention sub-culture of hardcore devotees, but now that there is this "nerd chic" thing going on the last decade, you have seen a huge explosion of the convention scene. Do you remember anyone talking about Comic-con in 1997? Did you even hear about it back then? For most people the answer is no. But stuff like anime conventions, comic conventions, and the idea of going to a Star Wars convention, that's a popular mainstream thing. And that's cool. But what happens is that 50% of the people there are casual fans, they are part of the "nerd culture" I guess you could say, in that they may watch Pokemon and Cowboy Bebop, and know most of the characters from Star Wars, and read Death Note manga and follow Doctor Who on TV, etc. But they may not be hardcore Star Wars fans like us. They like Star Wars, and they like to cosplay, to meet cool people, etc. Nerd conventions are a mainstream social event these days. If you said you cosplayed in 1997, after you explained what that term meant, people would assume you were a 40 year old virgin. Now, you get jocks that do that sort of thing. Totally different world in 2012 than even ten years ago. So, it's the same amount of hardcore convention goers of 1994, but now you have an additional 200% of people on top of that now that it's a huge thing who are more casual because this sort of thing is mainstream, and in anything mainstream most people don't actually know that much about it compared to an expert.
So, you have fans that like Star Wars, that aren't there just because they want to be cool or some other write-off explanation like that, they are real fans, but they don't know the history like we do, they know the basics and they may remember hearing about how it was restored with improvements in 1997 but they may not really know what that means, or care about it. People also tend to go in groups, so if there is a group of five people, maybe two of them are hardcore fans and they know all this stuff, but then the other three are casual fans who are going because the first two sold them the idea, and why not, they like Star Wars, this sounds like great fun.
I have a lot of friends who are these people, and like most who go to these conventions they tend to be in their early 20s. Rather than being experts at one thing like we are, they are nerds with a very broad sense of taste, which means they like all sorts of nerdy things like anime, comics, toys, movies, video games, etc., but because there are a million of these things nowadays they only know a little bit about the history, or variations or releases, etc.
If that sheds any light on the issue.