I love to watch Crime shows like Law and Order SVU and NCIS. I like to try to figure out who committed the crime after the detectives have uncovered all of the evidence. Some times I’m right and sometimes I an wrong. I know who has committed the crime by the end of the show. Then along comes reality TV; shows like Survivor and America’s Next Top Model where you have to wait 6 to 9 weeks to find out who is the winner.
The first reality TV show started in 1992 on MTV as an experimental documentary show called Real World.Now, you can find realty TV shows on every network and cable channel. The popularity of the genre is welcome news to networks and producers because reality television is so inexpensive to make. You basically watched strangers placed together in one house live their daily lives. Then the idea came along to have these guest compete for prize money and place them in remote locations across the world.
As viewers watch these shows the need to know who wins before the end or even before the show starts rises. Fan blog sites are created and people with far too much time on their hands use the Internet to research possible locations and people who may be contestants. They google information about the contestants hoping to find current pictures of them to see if they can figure out who won the show.They use collective knowledge in order to gain insight as to what is going to happen.
They create blogs and reveal information about that may or may not be true. Some of the information that they gather may be correct. For the viewer who generally likes to be surprise these viewers can spoil the out come for you if they are correct. Loyalist who want to be surprised will go through the season avoiding websites and post that are labeled spoilers. They avoid their ‘”die hard ” fan friends who have “inside information” so that they will not spoil the season for them if they happen to be correct.
Producers and sponsors love people who play the game of using collective information in order to gather information about the show because they can draw more viewers and sponsors sell more products.
This whole idea of spoiling as a game is completely new to me. I can understand how this interaction creates a type of collective intelligence from sharing, debate, and discussion; however, this example that Jenkins provides seems very silly to me. In my social media theory class, we watched a video of Clay Shirky speaking at a TED conference (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu7ZpWecIS8). Both Shirky and Jenkins have similar ideas about media, but I prefer Shirky’s discussion of cognitive surplus over Jenkins spoiling example solely because I feel like collective intelligence can be used for more than a game. I’m sure he meant for it to be fun and interesting for the reader, but I think it undermines the power of collective intelligence.
Well Jenkins has been studying fandom for most of his career, so that’s where his examples come from (and he is a media studies person). But the idea of collective intelligence applies equally to Wikipedia, as we will see next week.
Yeah, I gathered that from his writing and some additional reading and videos about him. I can definitely see how his examples help to explain his ideas, but I guess spoiling just didn’t quite make collective intelligence come to life for me.
This reminds me how ruined everything is because of this. At the Slam Dunk Contest you have to text who should win, American Idol and any other competition is the same way. The element of surprise is lost and may never return. It is great to kove on as far as technology goes, but a little old school may just be the best way, just like Captain America’s role in The Avengers. He isnt the leader for no reason. A little off base, but it basically means, evolve with caution.