This is part of the classic The United Federation of "hold my beer, I got this" post chain. It's definitely part of my headcanon, if only in general spirit instead of literally that's-what-happened. It conveniently explains so much about why these shows focus so much on humans. It's like reality TV, it's pointless to focus the camera on the well-adjusted ones.

Edit: I should mention that my headcanon extends humanity's hold-my-bear mad science bent to the social sciences. Why else do you think we so rarely see other multi-species governments, or when we do it's just a boring old "boss species conquered a bunch of subordinate species"? Humans were probably warned by the Vulcans that different species tended to have incompatible governing interests and doctrines and the humans thought "but what if we gave them all a vote anyway and see what happens? Maybe a Federation will go twice as fast!"

Also humans: If we eject the warp core behind us, we could use it like a mine and take out the persuing ship.

Absolutely no clue about star trek but this sounds fun :)

Very much a "humans are space orcs" type story. Actual space orcs like the ones from wh40k are even more space orcs with their waaagh supported shenanigans

Wasn’t this the catalyst for the “humans are space orcs” meme?

Wait, wasn't this the official canon of Enterprise?

Sisko be like: oh yea those genocidal shape shifting freaks that have contempt for everything that isn't them and can ruin any government from within, have a billion-strong army of generically engineered suicidal supersoldiers armed to the teeth with resources of an entire quadrant. Aight brb, lemme grab our mortal enemies to work for us, and then I'll talk to my multidimensional gods pals for assistance.

Earth is the Florida of the federation and humans are the Star Trek equivalent of gnomes.

"The Federation is functionally the Human empire" has always been a far less interesting view than "The Federation is functionally the Vulcan empire"

Humans: beating the laws of physics into submission since 2061.

Humanity is God's collective nepo-fail-upwards-son.

This is a surprisingly logical argument

"Warp Cores are like Voltron; the more you connect, the cooler it is!"

Same with D&D, humans are like this because OMG we have short ass lifespans and I already hit middle age by 19 gotta go go go!!! Press the red button!

The Federation are the octopus from Children of Ruin. (Fantastic book series btw)

🫡 Thank you for sending me down a rabbit hole of early Federation days which made me rediscover Tellarites.

genius!

[off topic]

My headcanon is that every time a new race joins the Federation, they have the option of designing the Star Fleet uniform.

The Betazeds are responsible for the miniskirts.