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Sooner or later, the argument goes, all media content is going to flow through a single black box into our l i v i n g rooms or, i n the mobile scenario, through black boxes we carry around w i t h us everywhere we go. Part of what makes the black box concept a fallacy is that it reduces media change to technological change and strips aside the cul- tural levels we are considering here. I don't k n o w about y o u , but i n m y livin g room, I am seeing more and more black boxes.

There are m y V C R , m y digital cable box, m y D V D player, m y digital recorder, m y sound system, and m y two game systems, not to mention a huge m o u n d of videotapes, D V D s and C D s , game cartridges and controllers, sitting atop, laying alongside, toppling over the edge of m y television system.

I w o u l d definitely qualify as an early adopter, but most America n homes n o w have, or soon w i l l have, their o w n pile of black boxes. The perpetual tangle of cords that stands between me and m y "home entertainment" center reflects the degree of incompatibility and dysfunction that exist between the various media technologies. A n d many of m y M I T students are lugging around multi- ple black boxes—their laptops, their cells, their iPods, their Game Boys, their BlackBerrys, y o u name it.

A s Cheskin Research explained i n a report, "The o l d idea of convergence was that all devices w o u l d converge into one central device that d i d everything for y o u a la the universal remote. What we are n o w seeing is the hardware diverging while the content converges. Your email needs and expectations are different whether you're at home, work, school, commuting, the airport, etc.

We can see the proliferation of black boxes as symptomatic of a moment of convergence: because no one is sure what kinds of functions should be combined, we are forced to b u y a range of specialized and incompatible appliances.

O n the other end of the spectrum, we may also be forced to deal w i t h an escalation of functions w i t h i n the same media appliance, functions that decrease the ability of that appliance to serve its original function, and so I can't get a cell phone that is just a phone. Media convergence is more than simpl y a technological shift.

C o n - vergence alters the relationship between existing technologies, indus- tries, markets, genres, and audiences. Keep this i n m i n d : convergence refers to a process, not an endpoint.

There w i l l be no single black box that controls the flow of media into our homes. Thanks to the proliferation of chan- nels and the portability of new computing and telecommunications technologies, we are entering an era where media w i l l be everywhere. Convergence isn't something that is going to happen one day w h e n we have enough b a n d w i d t h or figure out the correct configuration of appliances.

Ready or not, we are already livin g within a convergence culture. O u r cell phones are not simply telecommunications devices; they also allow us to play games, d o w n l o a d information from the Inter- net, and take and send photographs or text messages.

Increasingly they allow us to watch previews of new films, downloa d installments of serialized novels, or attend concerts from remote locations. A l l of this is already happening i n northern Europe and A s i a. A n y of these functions can also be performed using other media appliances. Y o u can listen to the Dixie Chicks through your D V D player, your car radio, your walk- man, your i P o d , a Web radio station, or a music cable channel. Fueling this technological convergence is a shift i n patterns of media ownership.

Whereas o l d H o l l y w o o d focused on cinema, the new media conglomerates have controlling interests across the entire entertain- ment industry. Warner Bros, produces film, television, popular music, computer games, Web sites, toys, amusement park rides, books, news- papers, magazines, and comics.

In turn, media convergence impacts the wa y we consume media. A teenager doing homework may juggle four or five w i n d o w s , scan the Web, listen to and d o w n l o a d M P 3 files, chat w i t h friends, word-process a paper, and respond to e-mail, shifting rapidly among tasks. A n d fans of a popular television series may sample dialogue, summarize epi- sodes, debate subtexts, create original fan fiction, record their o w n soundtracks, make their o w n m o v i e s — a n d distribute all of this w o r l d - w i d e v i a the Internet.

Convergence is taking place w i t h i n the same appliances, within the same franchise, w i t h i n the same company, w i t h i n the brain of the con- sumer, and w i t h i n the same fandom.

Convergence involves both a change i n the w a y media is produced and a change i n the w a y media is consumed. They wake up together, w o r k together, eat together, and 18 go to bed together even though they live miles apart and may have face-to-face contact only a few times a month.

We might call it tele- cocooning. Convergence doesn't just involve commercially produced materials and services traveling along well-regulated and predictable circuits. It doesn't just involve the mobile companies getting together w i t h the film companies to decide w h e n and where we watch a n e w l y released film.

It also occurs when people take media i n their o w n hands. Enter- tainment content isn't the only thing that flows across multiple media platforms. O u r lives, relationships, memories, fantasies, desires also flow across media channels. Being a lover or a m o m m y or a teacher occurs on multiple platforms. Sometimes we tuck our kids into bed at 19 night and other times we Instant Message them from the other side of the globe.

A n d yet another snapshot: Intoxicated students at a local h i g h school use their cell phones spontaneously to produce their o w n soft-core porn movie involving topless cheerleaders making out i n the locker room. Within hours, the movie is circulating across the school, being downloaded by students and teachers alike and watched between classes on personal media devices.

W h e n people take media into their o w n hands, the results can be wonderfully creative; they can also be bad news for all involved. For the foreseeable future, convergence w i l l be a k i n d of k l u d g e — a jerry-rigged relationship among different media technologies—rather than a fully integrated system. Right now, the cultural shifts, the legal battles, and the economic consolidations that are fueling media conver- gence are preceding shifts i n the technological infrastructure.

H o w those various transitions unfold w i l l determine the balance of power i n the next media era. A t the same time, there has been an alarming concentration of the ownership of mainstream commercial media, w i t h a small handful of multinational media conglomerates dominating all sectors of the enter- tainment industry. N o one seems capable of describing both sets of changes at the same time, let alone show h o w they impact each other. Some fear that media is out of control, others that it is too controlled.

Some see a w o r l d without gatekeepers, others a w o r l d where gate- keepers have unprecedented power. A g a i n , the truth lies somewhere i n between.

The arrows provide numbers others can call to access recorded voice messages—personal annotations on our shared urban landscape.

They use it to share a beautiful vista or criticize an irresponsible com- pany. A n d increasingly, companies are co-opting the system to leave their o w n advertising pitches. Convergence, as we can see, is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process. Corporate conver- gence coexists w i t h grassroots convergence. M e d i a companies are learning h o w to accelerate the flow of media content across delivery channels to expand revenue opportunities, broaden markets, and rein- force viewer commitments.

Consumers are learning h o w to use these different media technologies to b r i n g the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact w i t h other consumers. The promises of this new media environment raise expectations of a freer flow of ideas and content.

Inspired by those ideals, consumers are fighting for the right to participate more fully i n their culture. Sometimes, corporate and grassroots convergence reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding relations between media producers and consumers. Some- times, these two forces are at war and those struggles w i l l redefine the face of American popular culture. Convergence requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media, assumptions that shape both programming and marketing decisions.

If old consumers were as- sumed to be passive, the new consumers are active. If o l d consumers were isolated individuals, the new consumers are more socially connected. If the w o r k of media consumers was once silent and invisible, the new consumers are now noisy and public. M e d i a producers are responding to these newly empowered con- sumers i n contradictory ways, sometimes encouraging change, some- times resisting what they see as renegade behavior.

A n d consumers, i n turn, are perplexed by what they see as mixed signals about h o w m u c h and what kinds of participation they can enjoy. A s they undergo this transition, the media companies are not be- having i n a monolithic fashion; often, different divisions of the same company are pursuing radically different strategies, reflecting their u n - certainty about h o w to proceed.

O n the one hand, convergence repre- sents an expanded opportunity for media conglomerates, since content that succeeds i n one sector can spread across other platforms. O n the other, convergence represents a risk since most of these media fear a fragmentation or erosion of their markets.

Each time they move a viewer from television to the Internet, say, there is a risk that the con- sumer may not return. Industry insiders use the term "extension" to refer to their efforts to expand the potential markets by m o v i n g content across different deliv- ery systems, "synergy" to refer to the economic opportunities repre- sented by their ability to o w n and control all of those manifestations, and "franchise" to refer to their coordinated effort to brand and market fictional content under these new conditions.

Extension, synergy, and franchising are pushing media industries to embrace convergence. For that reason, the case studies I selected for this book deal w i t h some of the most successful franchises i n recent media history. Some American Idol, , and Survivor, originate on television, some The Matrix, , Star Wars, on the big screen, some as books Harry Potter, , and some as games The Sims, , but each extends outward from its originating m e d i u m to influence many other sites of cultural production.

Each of these franchises offers a different vantage point from whic h to understand h o w media convergence is reshaping the relationship between media producers and consumers. Chapter 1, w h i c h focuses on Survivor, and chapter 2, w h i c h centers on American Idol, look at the phenomenon of reality television. Survivor spoiling w i l l be read here as a particularly v i v i d example of collective intelligence at work. Knowledge communities form around mutual i n - tellectual interests; their members w o r k together to forge new k n o w l - edge often i n realms where no traditional expertise exists; the pursuit of and assessment of knowledge is at once communal and adversarial.

M a p p i n g h o w these knowledge communities w o r k can help us better understand the social nature of contemporary media consumption. They can also give us insight into h o w knowledge becomes power i n the age of media convergence.

O n the other hand, chapter 2 examines American Idol from the per- spective of the media industry, trying to understand h o w reality tele- vision is being shaped b y what I call "affective economics. This new "affective economics" encourages companies to transform brands into what one industry insider calls "lovemarks" and to blur the line between entertainment content and brand mes- sages.

A c c o r d i ng to the logic of affective economics, the ideal consumer is active, emotionally engaged, and socially networked. Watching the advert or consuming the product is no longer enough; the company invites the audience inside the brand community.

Yet, if such affilia- tions encourage more active consumption, these same communities can also become protectors of brand integrity and thus critics of the compa- nies that seek to court their allegiance.

Strikingly, i n both cases, relations between producers and consumers are breaking d o w n as consumers seek to act u p o n the invitation to par- ticipate i n the life of the franchises. In the case of Survivor, the spoiler community has become so good at the game that the producers fear they w i l l be unable to protect the rights of other consumers to have a "first time" experience of the unfolding series.

In the case of American Idol, fans fear that their participation is marginal and that producers still play too active a role i n shaping the outcome of the competition. H o w m u c h participation is too much? W h e n does participation be- come interference? A n d conversely, when do producers exert too much power over the entertainment experience? Chapter 3 examines The Matrix franchise as an example of what I am calling transmedia storytelling.

Transmedia storytelling is the art of w o r l d making. To fully experience any fictional w o r l d , consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing d o w n bits of the story across media channels, comparing notes w i t h each other via on- line discussion groups, and collaborating to ensure that everyone w h o invests time and effort w i l l come away w i t h a richer entertainment ex- perience.

Some w o u l d argue that the Wachowski brothers, w h o wrote and directed the three Matrix films, have pushed transmedia story- telling farther than most audience members were prepared to go. Chapters 4 and 5 take us deeper into the realm of participatory cul- ture. Chapter 4 deals w i t h Star Wars fan filmmakers and gamers, w h o are actively reshaping George Lucas's mythology to satisfy their o w n fantasies and desires. Fan cultures w i l l be understood here as a revital- ization of the o l d folk culture process i n response to the content of mass culture.

Chapter 5 deals w i t h y o u n g Harry Potter fans w h o are writing their o w n stories about Hogwarts and its students. In both cases, these grassroots artists are finding themselves i n conflict w i t h commercial media producers who want to exert greater control over their intellec- tual property.

We w i l l see i n chapter 4 that LucasArts has h a d to contin- ually rethink its relations to Star Wars fans throughout the past several decades, trying to strike the right balance between encouraging the enthusiasm of their fans and protecting their investments i n the series.

Interestingly, as Star Wars moves across media channels, different ex- pectations about participation emerge, w i t h the producers of the Star Wars Galaxies game encouraging consumers to generate m u c h of the content even as the producers of the Star Wars movies issue guidelines enabling and constraining fan participation.

Chapter 5 extends this focus o n the politics of participation to con- sider two specific struggles over Harry Potter, the conflicting interests between Harry Potter fans and Warner Bros.

Rowling's books, a n d the conflict between con- servative Christian critics of the books a n d teachers w h o have seen them as a means of encouraging young readers. This chapter maps a range of responses to the withering of traditional gatekeepers and the expansion of fantasy into many different parts of our everyday lives. O n the other hand, some Christians embrace convergence through their o w n forms of media outreach, fostering a distinctive approach to media lit- eracy education and encouraging the emergence of Christian-inflected fan cultures.

Throughout these five chapters, I w i l l show how entrenched institu- tions are taking their models from grassroots fan communities, and reinventing themselves for an era of media convergence and collective intelligence—how the advertising industry has been forced to recon- sider consumers' relations to brands, the military is using multiplayer games to rebuild communications between civilians and service mem- bers, the legal profession has struggled to understand what "fair use" means i n an era where many more people are becoming authors, edu- cators are reassessing the value of informal education, and at least some conservative Christians are making their peace w i t h newer forms of popular culture.

In each of these cases, powerful institutions are try- ing to b u i l d stronger connections w i t h their constituencies and con- sumers are applying skills learned as fans and gamers to work, edu- cation, and politics. Chapter 6 w i l l turn from popular culture to public culture, applying my ideas about convergence to offer a perspective on the A m e r i - can presidential campaign, exploring what it might take to make de- mocracy more participatory. A g a i n and again, citizens were better served by popular culture than they were by news or political dis- course; popular culture took on new responsibilities for educating the public about the stakes of this election and inspiring them to partici- pate more fully i n the process.

In the wake of a divisive campaign, pop- ular media may also model ways we can come together despite our differences. The elections represent an important transitional mo- ment i n the relationship between media and politics as citizens are being encouraged to do m u c h of the dirty work of the campaign and the candidates and parties lost some control over the political process. Here again, all sides are assuming greater participation by citizens and consumers, yet they do not yet agree on the terms of that participation.

In m y conclusion, I w i l l return to m y three key terms—convergence, collective intelligence, and participation. I want to explore some of the implications of the trends I w i l l be discussing i n this book for edu- cation, media reform, and democratic citizenship.

I w i l l be focusing throughout this book on the competing and con- tradictory ideas about participation that are shaping this new media culture. Yet, I must acknowledge that not all consumers have access to the skills and resources needed to be full participants i n the cul- tural practices I am describing.

Increasingly, the digital divide is giv- ing w a y to concern about the participation gap. Throughout the s, the primary question was one of access. Today, most Americans have some limited access to the Internet, say, though for many, that access is through the public library or the local school. Yet many of the activities this book w i l l describe depend on more extended access to those tech- nologies, a greater familiarity w i t h the new kinds of social interactions they enable, a fuller mastery over the conceptual skills that consumers have developed i n response to media convergence.

A s long as the focus remains on access, reform remains focused on technologies; as soon as we begin to talk about participation, the emphasis shifts to cultural protocols and practices. Most of the people depicted i n this book are early adopters.

In this country they are disproportionately white, male, m i d d l e class, and col- lege educated. These are people w h o have the greatest access to new media technologies and have mastered the skills needed to fully par- ticipate i n these new knowledge cultures.

I don't assume that these cultural practices w i l l remain the same as we broaden access and par- ticipation. In fact, expanding participation necessarily sparks further change. Yet, right now, our best w i n d o w into convergence culture comes from looking at the experience of these early settlers and first inhabitants. These elite consumers exert a disproportionate influence on media culture i n part because advertisers and media producers are so eager to attract and hold their attention.

Where they go, the media industry is apt to follow; where the media industry goes, these con- sumers are apt to be found. Right now, both are chasing their o w n tails. You are n o w entering convergence culture. It is not a surprise that we are not yet ready to cope w i t h its complexities and contradictions. We need to find ways to negotiate the changes taking place. N o one group can set the terms.

N o one group can control access and participation. We are entering an era of prolonged transition and transformation i n the w a y media operates. Convergence describes the process by w h i c h we w i l l sort through those options. There w i l l be no magical black box that puts everything i n order again.

Medi a producers w i l l only find their w a y through their current problems by renegotiating their relationship w i t h their consumers. Audiences, em- powered b y these new technologies, occupying a space at the intersec- tion between o l d and new media, are demanding the right to partici- pate w i t h i n the culture.

Producers w h o fail to make their peace w i t h this new participatory culture w i l l face declining goodwil l and d i m i n - ished revenues. The resulting struggles and compromises w i l l define the public culture of the future. A r o u n d each carefully crafted episode emerges another contest — a giant cat and mouse game that is played between the producers and the audience. Every week, the eagerly anticipated results are fod- der for water cooler discussions and get reported as news, even on rival networks.

Survivor is television for the Internet age—designed to be discussed, dissected, debated, predicted, and critiqued. The Survivor winner is one of television's most tightly guarded se- crets. Executive producer M a r k Burnett engages i n disinformation cam- paigns trying to throw smoke i n viewers' eyes. Enormous fines are written into the contracts for the cast and crew members if they get caught leaking the results. A n d so a fascination has g r o w n u p around the order of the "boots" the sequence i n w h i c h the contestants get rejected from the tribe , the "final f o u r" the last four contestants i n the competition , and especially around the "sole survivor" the final w i n - ner of the million-dollar cash prize.

The audience is one of the largest i n broadcast television. In its first eight seasons, Survivor rarely dipped out of the top ten highest-rated shows. The most hard-core fans, a contingent k n o w n as the "spoilers," go to extraordinary lengths to ferret out the answers. They use satellite photographs to locate the base camp. They watch the taped episodes, frame by frame, looking for hidden information. They k n o w Survivor inside out, and they are determined to figure it out—together—before the producers reveal what happened.

They call this process " s p o i l i n g. W h i l e it's m y job to keep our fans on their toes and stay one step ahead, it is fascinating to hear some of the lengths these individuals are w i l l i n g to go. Before his sudden fame w i t h i n the fan realm, he claimed to be a lurker w ho has never pre- viously posted to a discussion list. O n vacation in Brazil for N e w Years , he said, he stumbled into a detailed account of w h o was going to get b u m p e d from Survivor: Amazon, the series' sixth season.

H e posted this information on the Internet and lived through months of intense grilling by the spoiling community to defend his reputation. To some, C h i l l O n e was a hero, the best spoiler of all time. For others, he was a villain, the guy w h o destroyed the game for everyone else. A s we have seen, the age of media convergence enables communal, rather than individualistic, modes of reception.

Not every media con- sumer interacts w i t h i n a virtual community yet; some simply discuss what they see w i t h their friends, family members, and workmates. But few watch television i n total silence and isolation.

For most of us, tele- vision provides fodder for so-called water cooler conversations. A n d , for a growing number of people, the water cooler has gone digital.

Online forums offer an opportunity for participants to share their knowledge and opinions. In this chapter I hope to bring readers inside the spoiling community to learn more about how it works and how it impacts the reception of a popular television series. M y focus here is on the process and ethics of shared problem-solv- ing i n an online community. I a m less interested, ultimately, i n wh o C h i l l O n e is or whether his information was accurate than I am with h o w the community responded to, evaluated, debated, critiqued, and came to grips w i t h the kinds of knowledge he brought to them.

I am interested i n h o w the community reacts to a shift i n its normal ways of processing and evaluating knowledge. It is at moments of crisis, con- flict, and controversy that communities are forced to articulate the prin- ciples that guide them.

What we cannot k n o w or do on our o w n , we may n o w be able to do collectively. The emergent knowledge culture w i l l never fully escape the influence of commodity culture, any more than commodity culture can totally function outside the constraints of the nation-state. H e suggests, however, that collective intelligence w i l l gradually alter the ways commodity culture operates. The new knowledge culture has arisen as our ties to older forms of social community are breaking d o w n , our rooting i n physical geogra- phy is diminished, our bonds to the extended and even the nuclear family are disintegrating, and our allegiances to nation-states are being redefined.

N e w forms of community are emerging, however: these new communities are defined through voluntary, temporary, and tactical affiliations, reaffirmed through common intellectual enterprises and emotional investments.

Members may shift from one group to another as their interests and needs change, and they may belong to more than one community at the same time. These communities, however, are held together through the mutual production and reciprocal exchange of knowledge. A s he writes, such groups "make available to the collec- tive intellect all of the pertinent knowledge available to it at a given moment.

It is fundamentally collective knowledge, impossible to gather together into a single creature. Everything else is k n o w n by individuals w h o are on call to share what they k n o w w h e n the occasion arises. But communities must closely scrutinize any information that is going to become part of their shared knowledge, since misinformation can lead to more and more misconceptions as any new insight is read against what the group be- lieves to be core knowledge. Survivor spoiling is collective intelligence i n practice.

Each fan I spoke w i t h had their o w n history of how they became a spoiler. Shawn was a history major w h o loved the process of investiga- tion and the challenge of weighing different accounts of a past event. Wezzie was a part-time travel agent w h o became fascinated w i t h the faraway locations and the exotic people represented on the series.

Survivor asks us to speculate about what happened. It practically demands our predictions. Trosset describe the role chance plays i n shaping outcomes: "Narrative pleasure stems from the desire to know what w i l l happen next, to have that gap opened and closed, again and again, until the resolution of the story.

In Survivor, unpredictability whets the desire to k n o w what happens next, but how that gap w i l l be closed is grounded i n uncertainty due to chance. In its invitation to prediction, Survivor is more like a horse race than fiction. Someone out there—Mark Burnett for o n e — knows something they don't. They want to k n o w what can be known.

A n d that's part of what makes spoiling Survivor such a compelling activity. The ability to expand your i n d i v i d u al grasp by pooling k n o w l - edge w i t h others intensifies the pleasures any viewer takes i n trying to "expect the unexpected," as the program's ad campaign urges. A n d , so, Survivor's spoilers gather and process information.

A s they do so, they form a knowledge community. We are experimenting w i t h new kinds of knowledge that emerge i n cyberspace. A t his most optimistic, he sees the sharing of knowledge around the w o r l d as the best w a y of breaking d o w n the divisions and suspicions that currently shape international relations. We are, he argues, i n a period of "apprenticeship" through w h i c h we innovate and explore the structures that w i l l sup- port political and economic life i n the future.

Imagine the kinds of information these fans could collect, if they sought to spoil the government rather than the networks. Later, we w i l l look at the roles collective intelligence played i n the presiden- tial campaign and we w i l l see signs that players of alternative reality games are beginning to focus their energies toward solving civic and political problems.

H a v i n g said that, I don't want to seem to endorse a very old idea that fandom is a waste of time because it redirects ener- gies that could be spent toward "serious things" like politics into more trivial pursuits. Quite the opposite, I w o u l d argue that one reason more Americans do not participate i n public debates is that our normal ways of thinking and talking about politics requires us to buy into what we w i l l discuss later i n this chapter as the expert paradigm: to play the game, y o u have to become a policy wonk, or, more accurately, y o u have to let a policy w o n k do your thinking for y o u.

One reason w h y spoiling is a more compelling practice is because the w a y knowledge gets produced and evaluated is more democratic. Spoiling is empower- ing i n the literal sense i n that it helps participants to understand h o w they may deploy the new kinds of power that are emerging from par- ticipation w i t h i n knowledge communities. For the moment, though, the spoilers are just having fun on a Friday night participating i n an elaborate scavenger hunt involving thousands of participants w h o all interact i n a global village.

Play is one of the ways we learn, and d u r i n g a period of reskilling and reorientation, such play may be m u c h more important than it seems at first glance. O n the other hand, play is also valuable on its o w n terms and for its o w n ends. A t the end of the day, if spoiling wasn't fun, they wouldn't do it. Spoiling emerged from the mis- match between the temporalities and geographies of old and new media. For starters, people on the East Coast saw a series three hours earlier than people on the West Coast.

Syndicated series played on dif- ferent nights of the week i n different markets. America n series played i n the United States six months or more before they broke i n inter- national markets. A s long as people i n different locations weren't talk- ing to each other, each got a first-time experience.

But, once fans got online, these differences in time zones loomed large. Someone i n the East Coast w o u l d go online and post everything about an episode and someone i n California w o u l d get annoyed because the episode was " s p o i l e d.

Over time, though, the fan community turned spoiling into a game to find out what they could before the episodes even aired. A g a i n , it is interesting to think about this i n terms of temporality. Most viewers experience Survivor as something that unfolds week by week i n real time. The show is edited to emphasize immediacy and spontaneity. The contestants don't appear publicly until after they are booted and often they speak as if the events hadn't already happened. They can only speak concretely about things that have already been aired and seem at times to speculate about what is yet to come.

Spoilers, on the other hand, w o r k from the knowledge that the series has already been shot. A s one fan explains, "The results were determined months ago and here we wait for the official results.

A n d a few people out there who participated k n o w the results and they are supposed to keep it under lock.

M o r e recently, a news crew interviewed a Survivor producer i n front of a white board that outlined the challenges for the forthcoming season; the fans were able to do a "frame grab" of the image, b l o w it up, and decipher the entire outline, giving them a road map for what was to come.

O n one level, the story of Survivor: Amazon was done before C h i l l - One arrived on the scene; his sources at the A r i a u A m a z o n Hotel were already starting to forget what had happened. ChillOne knew he had some hot inside information and so he went where the hard-core fans h u n g o u t — S u r v i v o r Sucks, one of the oldest and most popular of the many discussion lists devoted to the series.

The name bears some explanation, since clearly these people are dedi- cated fans w h o don't really think the show sucks. Initially, Survivor Sucks was a forum for "recaps," snarky summaries of the episodes. O n the one hand, a recap is a useful tool for people w h o missed an epi- sode. O n the other hand, the recapping process was shaped by the desire to talk back to the television set, to make f u n of formulas and signal your emotional distance from what's taking place on the screen.

Somewhere along the way, the Sucksters discovered " s p o i l i n g , " and the boards haven't been the same since. So, it was here—to these people w h o pretended to hate Survivor but were pretty m u c h obsessed w i t h it —that ChillOne brought his information. Anticipating some reaction, he started his o w n thread, " C h i l l O n e ' s A m a z o n Vacation Spoilers.

C h i l l O n e made his first post at P. By P. It wasn't until P. A few minutes later, someone asked whether this might be a hoax. It began innocently enough: "I have just returned from Brazil and a trip to the A m a z o n. Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading About Emma I am a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo who is writing a dissertation about pornographic comics.

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