Get LOST (Gugger)

Intro
Text no matter how it is defined has the power of becoming something bigger than it actually is. What text is is also subject to interpretation, it can vary from a book to music to a TV show. Text is not just actual written words but nearly anything that makes the reader think more deeply. In today’s world, a multitude of texts are found on the internet or through some other digital or wired source. Text is ever changing and as Plato said new forms of text and passing knowledge can make people less wise. However there are certain times when it makes people think more.

This has changed the way we view texts in a traditional sense. Gone is the actual act of turning pages instead we click a link or scroll down. Instead of book clubs there are now internet discussion forums where the “club” is a worldwide array of fans or readers. The possibilities are nearly endless in today’s world for authors. Their only limits are their imaginations the abilities of the computer programmers. Instead of writing a work with intentions to be published in print, an author can publish their work by themselves onto the internet through sources such as a blog. There is even interactive stories and some may argue video games tell a story. Anything can be put into the public eye nowadays. That is both good and bad. The good part is that previously unknown writers can express themselves and finally get some exposure and there is now a larger array of stories to be read. The bad, not all of this stories are worth reading and there is much time to be wasted sifting through inferior works to find just one that stands out.

We also now have an interactive society between the reader and writer. Gone are the days of merely being a reader. What we call web 2.0 has changed life as we know it. The original internet or Web 1.0 was simply taking information from a computer screen with no real means of communication or comments from author to reader. Web 2.0 has expanded the internet and given it a new ability, it is a social gathering place. Sites such as facebook, blogs, and even forums all are part of web 2.0. The read/write generation of the internet has changed the way we go through our every day lives. We can now give our opinions to the writer who may actually read what you have to say and even adjust following stories accordingly. Communities are formed over the internet to discuss literally every topic from beer to space travel. Our intelligence as a whole is pooled in an electronic wasteland of ones and zeroes. The author and the reader have for the most part been separated leaving the text open to interpretation never giving a clear answer. However, with technological advances the role of reader and writer is becoming skewed. The reader can in fact change the way a writer acts.

I have decided to look into the fan communities which surround one of the most intricate and mind-blowing TV shows of our time, LOST. For those of you who don’t know I will give a very condensed explaination of the show. A plane crashes on an island and the survivors are forced to survive while encountering many thrilling and dangerous challenges along the way. Bill Carter, television reporter of The New York Times, said LOST was "the show with perhaps the most compelling continuing story line in television history. " J.J. Abrams, the creator of LOST can be seen as a mad scientist or author that forces his readers to think and interpret many different occurances during the show. Abrams believes that it isn’t important what the answer is but how you get there. Because of this a number of large fan-based communities have sprung up to serve as a means of interpreting the mysteries in the series. Even though the series is officially over, there is still a large amount of activity on these sites.I will try to go as in depth as possible withouth spoiling the series for those who may not have watched it yet.

Remediation
Remediation plays a huge role in the continuing success of LOST. Easter eggs and such featuring the series have appeared in a popular internet based series Red v. Blue. Red v. Blue is a popular machinima created through the video game Halo. Red v. Blue is meant to be a parody but they typically play on popular culture. Since LOST started airing they have had several references. In episode one hundred of red vs. blue a spaceship crashes at the end and a female character appears saying, “I came here in a spaceship, that came from the moon. It crashed next to the Blue Base, and now I live with Caboose, and the people from the tail section of the spaceship, live on the other side of the island.” LOST references are also in other episodes of RvB.

ings that nobody has said on the internet and between information you can hear a character, Sarge, says, “And what ever happened to the numbers on the hatch!? It's like they're making it up as they go along!” as well as talking about the polar bear, the transition from flashing backwords to flashing forwards to flashing sideways, and even mentioning the smoke monster. The creator of Red v. Blue is obviously a fan of the show and references LOST quite a bit. This occurs even in more current seasons of Red v. Blue “In the twelfth episode of RvB: Revelations, "Snooze Button", Grif, Sarge, and Simmons are stuck in an armor locked state after a disastrous brawl with Tex in the two previous episodes. Seeing as they don't know what is happening, the Reds believe they are dead, with Sarge suggesting they are in purgatory. Simmons quickly butts in, adding that it is also similar to the flash-sideways timeline (with Sarge sniping at Simmons for the reveal since he never saw The End, de



spite it being made five-hundred years earlier). ” Rooster Teeth, the creator of Red v. Blue also uses LOST references in their other work such as in a Rooster Teeth spoiler alert clip where important parts of the plot of season five are given away.

Even in more prominent places we see LOST references. The cover of the band Weezer’s newest album titled Hurley after the LOST character has a picture of Jorge Garcia on the cover. This was received rather well and probably made some people who were not Weezer fans buy the album merely because of the LOST reference. Even bands with seemingly no connection to the show have titled their songs after episodes such as Senses Fail and ''All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues. ''I have owned the album it is on for almost six years and just realized the reference today.

Knowledge Communities
The fans and communities surrounding LOST enable the show to become somewhat interactive. Throughout the entire series, many questions and speculations have arisen that have not been answered. This is where online forums and wikis come into play. By far the largest and most in depth forum and wiki on LOST is lostpedia. On this site is a wiki about everything LOST from the Man in Black, or MiB to the significance of the numbers. It is more than just a website for information, there is a forum attached and fans can dispute the significance of any little part of the show. The community surrounding LOST is enormous. Even during the filiming of the show, the writers were actively watching the boards to see what discussions were going on and modifying the show because of it.

Anybody can join the forums on these communities and the discussions are not just pertaining to LOST. On 4815162342.com there is even a VIP section of the forums. What goes on there I don't know, one can only assume. Luckily for us commonfolk there is an answers thread where you can find out where that polar bear came from and just why the character Sawyer is called Sawyer. The community has even influenced what doesn't happen on the show. Between the second and third season there was a rather large gap. The community didn't like this and spoke out about it. The writer's response was to create [|The Lost Experience]. This was an interactive way to experience things not directly in the show such as the parent company of the Dharma Initiative among other things. They even expanded on what happens in the series and have written book detailing parts not even discussed in the show. One thing which the community does is inspire the writing of books for side-characters of LOST such as going deeper into an equation seen in one of the episodes, the Valenzetti equation. This equation is said to be able to basically predict the end of the world and the numbers tie into it. One of the non-importan

t characters on the plane was the author to a book of the same title. The community has taken this to the next level, they have actually ghost written books under the pen name Gary Troup. Gary Troup was the person who is said to have originally written ''The Valenzetti Equation. Gary Troup is as the lostpedia community puts it, "He was the author of mystery novel Bad Twin and the controversial The Valenzetti Equation. He was one of the people who survived the initial crash of Oceanic Flight 815, but was sucked into a turbine of the plane only minutes afterward, causing the engine to explode and kill him. " This man featured on the show for all but 30 seconds has actually "written" a real book titled Bad Twin ''because of these communities ghost-writing for him. The story also carries over some characters and brands from LOST.

Interpretive Disputes
If you were a follower of LOST you may have noticed 4 8 15 16 23 42 appear many times throughout the show. So much in fact that I did not even have to look them up. If you have the desire to look up the meaning you could simply visit LOSTPEDIA or the forums at 4815162342.com. There are many theories but no totally contrete evidence of what they mean. That is what makes the forums so usefull, it is possible to spend hours or days researching one thing. But what do they mean, well here is one interpretation from lostpedia what it does is condense the six numbers into four numbers then breaks the significance of those numbers apart. But the numbers are still a mystery and JJ Abrams, a creator of LOST has stated “here are times when mystery is more important than knowledge.” And “Mystery is the catalyst for imagination. ” Basically saying we will never know. [|Numbers Analysis]

The analysis in the link above is mind blowing for the casual viewer of the show. It says that to properly analyze the numbers you must first know certain patterns which take place and even the names of characters such as, “Consider Charlie Pace’s middle name. Do you remember it? It’s Hieronymus. At first glance, we might think that what we are getting is just an interesting middle name. Or maybe we think we’re getting a casual reference to Hieronymus Bosch, the famous fifteenth and sixteenth-century painter, who used his brush to illustrate mystical stories laden with mysterious symbols. Bosch is a fascinating possibility and may even be a secondary reference, but what we are really getting is another Hieronymus - one that reveals a great deal about the story of LOST. "Hieronymus Cardanus was a sixteenth-century Italian mathematician and inventor. He invented the combination lock and the gimbal. He also invented something called the Cardan Shaft. Today, we call it the drive shaft. Drive Shaft is the name of Charlie’s band.So when we get Charlie’s middle name and the name of his band, what we're really getting is a deliberate reference to a man we’ve probably never heard of who has been dead for hundreds of years. Why? In addition to inventing the drive shaft, Hieronymus Cardanus invented a method of hiding secret messages in plain sight known as a Cardan Grille. The secret message is written first using the grille, scattering the words and letters across a blank page. Then, when the grille is removed, a larger story is written on the same page in such a way that it absorbs and conceals the original message, preventing the unknowing eye from even detecting there is a secret message at all. ” There are patterns which go undetected that must first be understood and that is what these communities attempt to do. There are multiple blogs and wikis like the one above which speculate and give answers about literally every detail of the show.

Still, there are even more theories about the numbers and how they tie into the rest of the show. Some say that they are the solution to an equation that predicts the end of the world while others say they are the numbers assigned to each "candidate" on the island. However, with the show being written by JJ Abrams, we will most likely never know with any certainty.

Links and Resources
LOST Theories

LostPedia Main Page

4 8 15 16 23 42 Forums

Official Weezer Site

Rooster Teeth Home Page

ABC LOST