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by Chris Wright Editor’s note: We’ve replaced the analysis of Episode 12 with the following, since by this point in the season there was little behavior left to analyze — other than bathing in elephant dung — and PopPolitics took a winter break. The episode summary is, as always, included at the end. One Thursday afternoon last April, a pricey hotel in New York City was bombarded with phone calls for Keith Famie. At least one person even asked for him in person. The hotel, however, had no one listed under that name, leading to much consternation at the front desk.
Why the commotion? Famie was one of the few remaining contestants on Survivor: The Australian Outback, and someone had posted a message on SurvivorSucks stating that Keith was in the hotel, which indicated he would be voted off on that evening’s broadcast and would appear live — as all former Survivor contestants do — on CBS” The Early Show the next morning.
Keith, however, didn’t get the boot that night. But the incident shows the lengths to which some people will go to learn what happens before the show airs — and trick others into believing them.
Most Survivor viewers are content to let the show go each week, once they see the preview of the upcoming episode. But for true Survivor addicts, the preview signals the beginning of another week of mind-bending analysis as they try to predict the next contestant to get “booted.” They freeze their videotapes and mull over scenes that may or may not provide clues. They scour the Internet for news and gossip. And they eagerly share their predictions — along with some deliberately misleading spoilers — on Web sites created for the sole purpose of debating who will ultimately win Survivor.
Although numerous Survivor message boards exist, SurvivorSucks, which has gone through various incarnations and ownerships is the granddaddy of them all. Since Feb. 14, 2001, when the SurvivorSucks message boards were transferred to EZBoard.com, the boards have received nearly 14 million visits and close to 472,000 posts, according to OkieLoki, a current board moderator, who, like most people interviewed for this story, goes only by an online nickname. In the last month, the boards have received an average of 35,000 visits and 1,400 posts per day. There are 13,527 registered members, though some individuals may have registered under more than one name. Why do so many get so into Survivor? Answers range from the intellectual to the basic. “I think [spoiling Survivor is] an interesting academic exercise in narration, storytelling and marketing,” says MadWoman, a frequent poster to SurvivorSucks. “I like trying to figure out what happens next because I enjoy the play between expectations and reality and how that gap gets deliberately constructed by the producers and editors.”
For others, it’s simply a chance to play sleuth: “It’s a game between the online Survivor community and [executive producer] Mark Burnett,” offers Shereebie. “He plays with us (and to us). … The people that just watch the show, and don’t analyze it like we do, don’t know what they’re missing. The boards are a game in themselves.” Indeed, Burnett isn’t the only one who tries to throw viewers off. Last Thursday, for example, someone named theIncredibleFaulk claimed, “I have information from a friend of Tom’s son who told me that Tom and [his son] are in N.Y. and believes Tom will be on Letterman as the next bootee. As always, I’m critical of these kind of spoilers but this one can be relied on for sure!”
Reactions ranged from serious evaluation to immediate dismissal. Then the episode aired, and suddenly Tom was being fingered as a potential victim of another of Lex’s witch hunts. Goodness, could this poster actually be right? But in the end, it was Teresa who got the boot.
Now, with the final episode about to be aired, more potential spoilers are surfacing or being revived, such as rumors that Tom placed fourth. Most will turn out to be hoaxes. A handful may wind up on the money, albeit accidentally. One may even be for real — but the trick is finding that diamond in the rough.
During the initial run of Survivor, two ’spoiler” moments stood out. One turned the practice into an online event; the other transformed it into a national one. courtesy of Paratrooper
Executive producer Mark Burnett couldn’t have seen it coming. During the opening montage for the show’s earliest episodes, he aired a split-second video showing nine people seated at Tribal Council (see photo at right) Astute viewers noticed both Tagi and Pagong members present, meaning the picture was taken after the tribes merged, with the seven missing already dispatched. As a result, then-SurvivorSucks Webmaster Paul Sims and his cohorts made a name for themselves by nailing the show’s results for several weeks running. There was one problem: One Survivor was tough to identify (second from left, seated). Debate raged for weeks, with some claiming it to be Gervase (a black man) and others sure it was Gretchen (a white woman), odd as that may seem. Viewers produced enhanced close-ups, with arrows pointing to items that could be “Gretchen’s bag” or “Gervase’s scarf.” Posters dubbed the figure “Black Gretchen,” and it became a crystallizing topic for speculation. On Episode 7, however, Gretchen was voted off, revealing Gervase as the mystery contestant. Speaking of Gervase, the spoiler heard “round the world was the work of a poster named CAP LOCK, who invaded the CBS.com labyrinth and unearthed pictures of 15 Survivors with red X’s in the corner, which the network posted as each was voted out. Only one person, Gervase, lacked an X, and the conclusion was that he was the winner, and CBS had screwed up big time. (There was precedent: CBS Web masters accidentally posted the summary for Episode 8 hours before it aired).
This revelation made national headlines and transformed SurvivorSucks from obscurity to cult status. The official line from CBS: “No comment.” Some board members bought it, but others smelled a rat. “I create Web pages as part of my job,” mrsbennett says, responding to questions I posted on SurvivorSucks. “Deep in my gut, I doubted that [Burnett] would tell a Web designer much about boot order. ” A designer would not need to know a bootee any sooner than the day before at earliest.”
"Kim J. washes in elephant piss every day." Courtesy of: Some viewers, however, thought they had pro-Gervase validation when opening-sequence footage — showing only Colleen, Rudy, Sean and Gervase seated at a Tribal Council — was aired. "I saw four people, and I almost had a heart attack," says poster WowILoveKimP. "I rewound, and watched it about four times and paused it, ran over to the computer, only to find out [everyone else] had already found it." This sparked even more intense examination than Black Gretchen, with posters analyzing where the “final four” were seated and the ’shadows’ of other contestants left in the footage. Although some suspected it was doctored, it still made the X theory more credible. And then, at the end of Episode 10, Gervase was voted out (frustrating even Time magazine writer James Poniewozik). The headline at SurvivorSucks the next morning? “Holy Sh*t!” Somewhere, Mark Burnett was laughing. Although Burnett (a.k.a. “Evil Pecker Mark,” as he came to be known on the message boards) had the upper hand, all the attention and team-oriented spoiling created a sense of excitement. As mrsbennett puts it, “Watching the show on TV alone was not nearly as intense [or] interesting as discussing screen captures on the boards.” CBS, it would seem, had created an interactive show with its own online agenda.
That sense of community was tested during Survivor: The Australian Outback, when the SurvivorSucks message boards were transferred to EZBoard.com, a public site where registration was much easier. With this came more posters — and more red herrings. Most legendary was one titled Uncle Camerman (sic), whose author claimed to be the young nephew of a Survivor cameraman. His spoilers gained momentum when he correctly pegged the ouster of Alicia, Jerri and Nick, but he failed thereafter and was discredited.
Other fake online spoilers were better executed: * A poster named Edina Lester claimed to be the wife of an Australian journalist and said the identities of the final four contestants were common knowledge Down Under. Lester backed up her claims with solid circumstantial evidence that convinced many board members. But her predictions did not come to pass. * Someone calling himself Seraphaem posted summaries of upcoming episodes interwoven with biblical passages. These tempted posters, but again were soon proven incorrect. * SurvivorBillyBob created a Web site with a slide show allegedly featuring the correct eviction order. The list was right for about two weeks (it was only introduced near the show’s conclusion).
These, combined with regular false alarms (e.g., Rodger was spotted in New York! Keith has checked into a hotel!) made for a chaotic board, where regulars didn’t know who was telling the truth and who was faking it (hmmm, sounds a lot like Survivor itself). The discussion, at times, turned downright mean-spirited.
“I don’t have a lot of patience with those that use foul language or shoot down others just because,” says morningal. “If someone is blatantly arrogant and wrong, though, sometimes I just can’t help myself.” The fear, however, is that someone with a valid spoiler might be scared off by the hostile tone.
The anonymous nature of the board and the ease of registering multiple user names also complicated matters. It was impossible to know whether a respected poster was also promoting misleading spoilers. Sometimes a user would defend or corroborate a spoiler, only to be accused of having written the original under another name; that is, leading an online double life.
“At times, the focus has shifted from spoiling Survivor into spoiling Survivor-spoiling people,” says MadWoman. Not unlike an Internet version of Lex’s witch hunt. This season, however, the traffic on SurvivorSucks has diminished somewhat (along with the show’s ratings), and so false prophets are less problematic. Posters are savvy and know which questions to ask to validate or debunk spoilers. Board moderators have also instituted a crackdown of sorts against anyone caught promoting a false spoiler. The penalty: banishment for life (or at least until you have a new IP address). “[I think] the zero tolerance policy to fake spoilers has helped,” says MadWoman, who is also a former moderator. Take that, posers.
The board’s dynamics have also been affected by several online reports that were stunningly accurate. Among them:
* SurvivorNews Webmaster Tim Gilman and Peter Lance, author of the Richard Hatch expos’, The Stingray: Lethal Tactics of the Sole Survivor, scooped everyone by posting the cast list for Survivor: The Australian Outback weeks before CBS officially announced it. This set off a flurry of investigations by SurvivorSucks members, who foraged online for photos and personal information on the contestants. An accurate Survivor: Africa cast list went online early as well.
* An online group called the Ellipsiiis Brain Trust picked virtually every bootee and challenge winner during the second half of Survivor: The Australian Outback, leading many to believe the group had a source inside the show. “It felt like cheating to look at who they picked,” poster mdz23rewls says. The group’s success led to national media attention, but also provoked animosity, as some accused it of a collective holier-than-thou attitude. However, the Ellipsiiis Brain Trust hasn’t been nearly as accurate this time around and recently broke into two factions.
courtesy of Dixiebelle31
* Late in the run of the second season, a photo surfaced on SurvivorNews and other sites that purported to show six members of the Survivor jury (the already-ousted castaways who pick the winner) partying in Australia (see photo at right). Many thought it was doctored or taken when all the contestants were back in the United States, but it proved accurate. “I tried oh so hard to discredit the “El Rancho” pic,” as it came to be called, says jimi852, “but it was one of the true spoilers we got.” * Another poster, TapeWatcherB65, simply used smarts to determine the winner. He (or she) noticed that Tina was the only contestant not prominently featured in the opening episode. That clue, along with information gleaned from subsequent editing patterns, enabled Tape WatcherB65 to correctly predict halfway through the season that Tina would win. (On Dec. 6, TapeWatcherB65 struck again, this time with a theory based on religious symbolism that Ethan will beat Lex in the finals of Survivor: Africa, with Kelly’s vote a possible linchpin. ) This season’s ’spoils’ have been more sporadic. There was a scoop on SurvivorNews about Lindsey being hospitalized during filming, and SurvivorFever featured video snapshots created by a poster named Paratrooper that foretold immunity victories by Lex and Tom. Even though these spoilers proved true, the sheer number of overall messages makes it difficult to determine which may be accurate — posters have cried “Wolf!” so many times no one knows who or what to believe. Gilman says he uses caution when evaluating potential spoilers. “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, so even if they’re making it up it could still turn out to be true,” he says. “The trick is knowing what is legit and what isn’t. The fact of the matter is that there are very few people or clues with information of any value.”
The decreasing number of spoilers, accurate or not, hasn’t lessened the enthusiasm of the online community that has led to a Survivor subculture. For some, the community is the most important thing. “I come here to read the interaction between posters more than anything,” says board member Tres Gay.
“I’m glad that a lot of people have made friends and shared parts of their lives with others,” MadWoman says. “I’ve met some very wonderful people here who I never would have known otherwise, and I’m thankful for the opportunities this place has given to me to interact with people beyond those I encounter in my daily life.”
On Sept. 11, soon after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, someone posted the news. Dozens of messages, now a chilling online time capsule that recorded the day’s tragedies, rumors and false reports, quickly followed. The urgent requests for information, along with concern for people’s safety, illuminate the group’s camaraderie, which has been forged by months of working together. “I’d like to think that I could share a beer with almost every poster here,” says Crochungry.
In the end, though, the focus of the group remains spoiling, spoiling, spoiling. But the chase may be more desirable than the ultimate prize. Asked what they would do with the Holy Grail of spoilers — a full, accurate list of the “eviction order” of all 15 ousted contestants — some SurvivorSuck members said they would post it or send it on to a Survivor news site, while others insisted they wouldn’t even take a peek. As Tres Gay says, “I would hate to know the outcome in advance, and I would love to know the outcome in advance.” That’s the paradox of spoiling.
The Web masters of Survivor’s two most prominent news sites (neither affiliated with CBS) say they wouldn’t spoil the entire season at once. Gilman says he’d hold on to such a list. “I wouldn’t be so irresponsible as to publish the entire thing in one fell swoop,” he says. “That’s no fun for the fans.”
Trish McLoed, head of SurvivorFever, says that she can’t imagine that anyone who published the entire “boot list” in advance “wouldn’t be a hated person. ” I’d probably sit on it and maybe just have a “pretty good” track record.”
McLoed gets at what’s perhaps the nut of the whole online Survivor phenomena: “Having a list of bootees is not in a true sense outwitting, it’s out-scooping. It’s the difference between spoiling by being tipped off and spoiling by detective work and intelligent speculation. Both are ’spoilers,” but which is more rewarding?”
It’s all also seemingly never-ending. Come Jan. 11, Survivor: Africa will be history. But members of the online Survivor community shouldn’t fret: Two months before its debut, rumors are flying about the identities of the contestants for the Survivor: Marquesas. If you’re reading this, Kathy O”Brien of Burlington, Vt., you’ve already been exposed. Next episode: We learn the winner. Fearless predictions, based on online speculation and gut: Tom goes first (delayed reaction to Teresa’s revelation) after Lex wins immunity; having learned lessons from Colby’s error last season, Kim J. and Ethan strike a “no hard feelings’ deal; Ethan wins the final challenge and takes the disliked Lex to the finals, where he beats him, 5-2, for the dough. Chris Wright, an admitted Survivor addict since Season 1, Episode 3, spends his days as a copy editor for Federal Computer Week in Falls Church, Va. He previously wrote about how the media turns crime stories into narratives. His take on Survivor will appear here each week.
Related Sites: Immunity challenge: In a “Super challenge” — that is, a redux of elements from past contests — Lex continues his dominance, winning handily. Moto Maji developments: The tribe finds elephant droppings in the water hole; a chicken temporarily escapes from the pen; the tribe connives against Lex until he wins immunity, causing a desperate Teresa to tell Lex and Kim J. that she voted against Lex in the Episode 7 Tribal Council (the impetus for the witch hunt leading to Kelly’s booting) because Tom hinted she should. Tribal Council: Teresa, the sole original Samburu, is tossed on a 4-1 count, leaving a final four of Lex, Ethan, Kim J. and Tom (who snagged T’s vote).
The following report aired on WCAX-TV (Burlington, Vt.) on Friday, Jan. 4: "Channel 3 News has learned that a Burlington woman is a contestant in the CBS reality show Survivor 4 — which will air next spring. Several sources have told Channel 3 that real estate agent Kathy O’Brien is that contestant. Both O’Brien and CBS have refused to confirm or deny her participation in the show — but sources have told us that O’Brien was gone for several weeks — and just returned to work. Survivor 4 finished taping a little over two weeks ago on a South Pacific island, part of the Marquesas Islands chain, which includes Tahiti. CBS says it will release the names of contestants in about a month." |
