To Spoil or Not

First off, I have to say after reading the chapter on Spoiling Survivor I was left knowing so much more about the art of spoiling and why it is so intriguing to the individuals in which participate. I was left dumb founded now knowing that the individuals who play this sport put so much effort into spoiling a show like Survivor.

Spoiling Survivor speaks to the idea of virtual communities of individuals who gather to use the knowledge they know about Survivor to try and figure out what each episode will bring before it airs. In addition to this cat and mouse game that is played on the show which determines who will get booted each week, the producers play this game with the spoilers in order to prevent the spoiling but usually it is only delayed. Spoiling Survivor goes on to get inside the communities of the spoilers and leads the reader down a path to understand what makes a group of spoilers tick and how an individual gets the status of a spoiler.

In order to understand the workings of the group three key ideas have been identified as collective intelligence, brain trusts and the expert paradigm.

First, Collective intelligence is the idea that what we cannot know on our own we may be able to learn and find out collectively. The author states, “Survivor spoiling is collective intelligence in practice”. Second, brain trusts are a group of people who search for bits and pieces of information to help the spoiling. These individuals do all of their searching on secure password protected sites and do not share the information they arrive upon or figure out but dump the spoiling if and when they feel like it. Thirdly, the expert paradigm is Peter Walsh’s take on collective intelligence but adds the idea that there is a bounded body of knowledge which an individual can master. One individual related spoiling directly to an undergraduate degree in history stating, “I like to dig. I like to look at primary source information. I like to dig to the bottom”.

The most difficult concept for me throughout this reading was how could the seasoned spoilers trust ChillOne. Throughout the reading ChillOne was not always correct in the spoilings that were provided but he or she was able to distract the seasoned spoilers from continuing their normal path of spoiling the show from week to week to just paying attention to what chill one would post.

A few discussion questions I thought about are how can this knowledge of spoiling be used for other types of work and what drives the individuals to participate in the act of spoiling.

In reality I am not a fan of spoiling because I do not want to know the end before I get there. Before reading this piece I was under the impression that people who spoiled for others were just bored but in actuality it is so much more than that. The people who participate in this are out for the hunt and enjoy that more so than actually spoiling it for others.

The Reinvention of the World Wide Web is about the convergence theory and how it applies to the internet. According to this article the World Wide Web is the ultimate convergence of all forms of media. Through the article there is discussion on if this is the ultimate form of convergence or a road block in further expansion of the internet.

Three key ideas from this piece are the idea of the ‘receiver’ as a barrier to accessing the media is just as significant an issue to the Web as it was to TV and radio, the idea that if you throw more money at it the thing in question will grow and get better and media travels through a cycle of invention, access limitations, and information overflow.

The receiver being the barrier is in reference to the internet not having enough space to hold all the information which is being dispersed as well as all the individuals who access it on a daily basis. If there was infinite space than the possibilities of what could be done on the internet would be endless. With the money being thrown at the development of the internet it may eventually become as big as everyone would like it to be but is this really what needs to happen or will we be opening Pandora’s Box? In order to achieve a medium which reaches the best of it’s ability the process needs to go through the stages of invention, access limitations and information overflow and currently the internet seems to be in the access limitation stage until the bandwith issue is resolved.

After reading this piece the most difficult issue for me to swallow was the debate on whether or not the internet follows the model of radio or television and actually has a model of it’s own.

What makes the internet different that it would be considered as having it’s own model and does the solution for the bandwith issue currently exist and is not being distributed for the fear of opening Pandora’s box?

Exploring the idea of convergence theory and how it applies to the internet would be a great question to explore for a research paper. Pushing it further and exploring if the model for tv and radio and how it differs to the internet would be more intriguing.