I work in software, and whenever we hire a new programmer, it only takes about a day or so before someone asks the really important question: Star Trek or Star Wars?
See, there are three types of people in the world: Star Trek people, Star Wars people, and people who don't know the difference between the two. Star Wars fans accuse Trekkies of being smelly losers who live in their parents' basements and have no social skills, to which I say, I live in my own basement dammit, and I'd have mad social skills if I had any desire for human interaction. Star Wars fans, on the other hand, are pop culture dabblers who prefer flash to substance (sometimes stereotypes are eerily accurate, amiright?). Of course, people who don't even know the difference are just so far beneath consideration that Trekkies and Warsies can easily set aside our differences to look down on them.
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It is funny, isn't it, how eager we can be to form factions over something so superficial? And it's not just geeks either. Mac people and PC people, Beatles fans and Elvis fans, Team Edison and Team Tesla, mayonnaise and Miracle Whip - we form alliances with only the slightest provocation.
Animals form packs or factions to control scarce resources - it's much easier to protect your stash of rotting zebra meat if you have a posse. Here in the land of plenty, there are more than enough zebra carcasses for everybody, but the need to form packs is so deeply ingrained in us, like a vestigial organ that has long since become irrelevant.
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