Natasha Whiteman

A.I. ON THE WEB: THE HARNESSING OF AN ONLINE COMMUNITY

Dissertation submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements of MA Media Studies Degree of the University of London

Institute of Education (2001)

This report/dissertation may be made available to the general public for borrowing, photocopying or consultation without the prior consent of the author.


Contents

Abstract 3

Introduction 4

CHAPTER ONE: THE WEB 10

1 Webness 13

2 New Mode, Old Content? 20

3 Innovation 23

CHAPTER TWO: FANS, COMMUNITIES AND ONLINE PARTICIPATION 29

4 Divide and Conquer 34

5 Perverse Approaches 39

CHAPTER THREE: THE A.I. GAME

6 In The Beginning 42

7 Game As Text/As Project 49

8 The Cloudmakers 59

9 Uncertainties 65

Conclusion 70

Bibliography 72

Appendix A - Web pages from the A.I. Game

Appendix B - Clonaid.com web pages

Appendix C - Photographs of ‘Cloudmakers’

Abstract

This dissertation aims to consider the manifestation of fan activity on the World Wide Web. More specifically, it will investigate how the “visibility and volume of fan talk on the Web” (Clerc, 2000, 227) is affecting the reception of “old” media products, and the ways in which this fan presence is being factored into on-line marketing strategies for film and television programmes.

The recent Web campaign for the upcoming film A.I. will be used as a case study to demonstrate how forms of communal discourse around texts are being integrated into marketing strategies through the formal coaxing of fan-type activities. This dissertation will argue that the A.I. game is a breakthrough event that draws upon traditional modes of fan activity in order to bring to life a hybrid form of entertainment; mediated by Information and Communication Technologies, and drawing on the uncertainties of online environments. The emergence of the game demonstrates the ways that the Web has created possibilities for forms of interactive, communal entertainment and the grouping together of like-minded individuals.

Introduction

Media texts have always been dispersed by external commentary: secondary texts, gossip and fan activity. The incorporation of films and television programmes into the World Wide Web has however, transformed the speed and reach of conventional processes of dissemination. This development has coincided with, and been part of, an electronically mediated culture of the instant dominated by the “need to know” and a generalised fan-type mode of reception. Writers such as Henry Jenkins have acknowledged the speed of transition and the effects of technological developments on fandom, a social, traditionally oral culture. The ‘electrification’ of fan customs has largely been examined in regards to the deluge of information, gossip and trivia circulating within the Internet, and the propagation of a “do-it-yourself” mentality (Rushoff, 2001). This mentality has helped lead to the creation of vibrant communities around niche-interests. Web sites such as pemberley.com (a fan site for Jane Austin fans) and dawsonscreek.com (the official Warner Bros. site for Dawson’s Creek) have demonstrated the way that the Web can support unique collective enterprises built on fan-interest. Whilst satisfying special interest information needs, these sites form often long-running allegiances, and demonstrate the audience’s playful involvement with texts, characters and narrative.

Up until now, on-line marketing of films has tended to be less participatory than the marketing of serial productions; seemingly restricted to the provision of a steady stream of trailers, wallpapers, onset reports, and ‘leaked’ information. The possibilities for novelty and conceptual innovation, and the nurturing of communities, have often been ignored. Emerging marketing campaigns are, however, beginning to exploit the ontology of the Web and the influential power of ‘patter’ campaigns; helping to form “mixed medium schedule[s]” (Moriarty, 2001, 20) which see producers taking the reigns and openly manipulating fan activities, using their imaginations and devotion as raw material. In the process, new forms of entertainment and participation are being spawned which represent a shift away from conventional pre-release activities to more ambitious (pseudo) techno-literate creations. These projects see fan activities being factored into innovative uses of technology to create hybrid entertainment events that merge marketing, fandom and gameplay, and producers with audiences.

The most striking example of this to date is the enigmatic web-based game linked to the upcoming film A.I. Constructed as a cutting-edge marketing campaign, the game first emerged in April 2001, when rumours of mysterious email messages posted to media forum sites and clues hidden in movie trailers/posters spread through online entertainment communities. News spreads fast on the Web and in the scope of three months these clues took their place within the newly formed mythology of the game, which had swiftly become an object of study and (obsessive) fascination. The emails led to the discovery of a series of websites which served as portals into a future universe.[1] Presented matter-of-factly, these sites contain few formal traits which betray the fact that they are part of a fictional project. Their relative authenticity comes from the use of established Web aesthetics: drawing on the conventions of corporate and institutional web-sites and homepages. A living, organic diegesis was fleshed out by the use of external communication mediums (telephone calls and faxes) which spread the game outside the margins of the Web. The world entered into was founded upon artificial intelligence and shot-through with dark mysteries played out in real time. Events were presented to players as if happening in a parallel universe, accidentally accessed via some misplaced connection. Once glimpsed, the challenge was to then learn more by finding your way into a deeper involvement with the world - by travelling ‘deeper’ into this fictional diegesis.

The specialist film and gaming press, as well as the more mainstream media outlets have heralded the A.I. phenomenon as a breakthrough event. Not since The Blair Witch Project, it is argued, has on-line marketing been carried out in such an audacious manner. Here however, a game borne of marketing strategy had really taken root, capturing and maintaining the participatory involvement of an audience by offering not just a myth but a truly innovative and complex entertainment experience. A game heralded by an archetypal murder-mystery question “Who Killed Evan Chan?,” metamorphosed into something much bigger via the constant interplay between game players and the shadowy presence of the powers that be; the game developers.

The key to all of this interest was the execution of online activity as explicitly delineated game of detective play; a form of electronic paper-chase, imbued with puzzles to solve, clues to decipher, literary and mythological references to unwrap, mathematical algorithms to calculate, languages to translate, pages to hack. The scope and complexity of A.I.’s web presence was almost immediately rewarded with an enthusiastic response from cyber gossip mongers and from web aficionados eager to test their search and discovery skills. The game rapidly gained an eager “official” following, the ‘Cloudmakers’ - a collective that formed quickly, imposed its own guidelines and began creating structure out of excess.[2] The group eagerly responded to the invitation to create, generating their own Web sites and game documents. In doing so, and by picking up the game and running with it, they demonstrated the unique forum for participation offered by electronic environments. This audience, these players, proved themselves to be the essential element of the game, their discourse and enthusiasm helping to create a work of collective fiction which brought an aura of sophisticated experimentation to the film, A.I. As the last film that Stanley Kubrick had been working on before his death (at which point Steven Spielberg took on the project), the film had been the source of speculation and debate online for years. The marketing of the film harnessed this speculative interest, using the central text as an unseen presence (unmentioned within the game’s parameters) whilst drawing on the broader streams of expectation surrounding it - for example the renowned secrecy of the Kubrick oeuvre. The online campaign thus stood alone, whilst also supporting the ‘cannon’ text.

The A.I. game acknowledged the move towards communal reception strategies; formally playing with the notion of mass problem solving, and driven by an elitist data and access-based epistemology. It celebrated and glorified the activities that fans and ‘Netziens’ demonstrate on- and off-line. Stringent enough to invoke the notion of web-mediated “collective intelligence” (Levy, 1997) it encouraged/demanded the give-and-take mode of exchange central to both communal fan activity and web-based communication. In doing so it openly encouraged two very traditional aspects of fan activity: vigorous exchange/discussion, and a ‘perverse,’ obsessional interaction with texts and extra-textual information. By audaciously attempting to transform the Web, and the processes of searching and surfing into a possible text, however, the game threw its own phenomenon into question. The Web is fraught with uncertainties, an environment in which it is often difficult to gain reliable perspectives. Recent news features have dwelt upon sophisticated web hoaxes and confidence tricks built upon the anonymous access of the web and the way that it’s virtual aspect dislocates it from the real world. As a relativist focus on logic and discovery is set within an abundance of signs, images and references, this enterprise, like much Web content, is imbued with doubt and paranoia. Coverage of the AI campaign has come up with various ‘facts.’ Game statistics are bandied about, that there are 6,000 “official” players, that there are 45 “game” sites incorporating 380 web pages. Photographs of players are posted photos as icons of uncertainty. Editorials are written. Emails and bulletin boards posted to. These facts, and this content, is undermined by the fact that on the Web the judgement of the user and faith in sources vital in determining the validity of signifiers. Additional complications come from the fact that as a marketing campaign it was seeking certain forms of reactions, and whilst may tell about community and textual involvement, the game was built upon questions surrounding content and power - the encouragement of specific forms of consumer agency.

These uncertainties mean that the attempt to analyse an event like this is in itself fraught with complications. In a transitory media environment such as the Web, it is important to acknowledge and question these uncertainties, which are themselves revelatory. At the same time, the consideration of content and collective activity can offer valuable insights into contemporary web culture: the attitudes flowing within it, the role of fandom, the mutually supportive relationship between producers and fans, the position of texts in the electronic age, and the potentials for web-based collective enterprises. In order to see how the game may represent a step to the future, a look to the past and to the mainstay and experiences of Web life - both social and formal - is essential.

Chapter One: The Web

The Web provides both media producers and fans with a vast arena. With television and films generating two of the most fanatical areas of devotion on the Web it is a site for both celebration and exploitation: “a means of disseminating information to film fans and of generating hype” (King, 2000, 53). On the Web nothing is sacred, and everything celebrated by someone, somewhere.

In the cross-over between old and new mediums on the Web, scavenging fans can now gather information about upcoming shows and films to a degree of explicitness and accuracy previously unheard of – the systematic revelation of big secrets through officially and unofficially sanctioned gossip sites, fan pages and chat rooms. The on-line fan community forms a constellation of dedicated sites, specialist search engines, web rings and affinity points. Within this, certain high-profile sites such as imdb.com and aintitcool.com serve as key junctures leading traffic and often draw press attention away from surrounding activities. The variety of sources and focuses which spread out from these sites serve as testament to the enterprise of fans. Exchange sites such as darkhorizons.com, comingattractions.com, countingdown.com, serve as information hubs, foreshadowing upcoming film and television productions with news and rumours gathered from daily user updates. Dedicated show-sites and listed sites offer detailed fan-written episode guides of shows from Happy Days to Angel to Law & Order, whilst network-associated sites serve as archives for official episode guides. Spoiler sites like moviepooper.com and themoviespoiler.com advertise themselves on their ability to offer revelatory synopses. They reduce films to the barest of elements - their plotlines - by consuming films (or pooling information from elsewhere) and revealing the “cardinal functions”[3] packaged as the information you need to be “in the know”. The information being circulated within all of these sites is both the breadcrumbs that fans are following/seeking/being fed and also tied into chains of involvement with the media by which textual information is dispersed, and hype built. Just like online news which -

has less to do with creating a record of life and more to do with anticipating what’s next by accumulating information and making connections among stories, heresay, gossip... (Jones, 2000, 178),

these sites cannot remain static; postings scoops and speculation are their lifeblood and constant updates are vital.

A site of mini-uprisings and challenges to authority, the Web is playing a key role in shaping early 21^st century Western culture. From the immediacy of new information to the creation of virtual communities, the Web offers an instantaneous connectivity branching out across geographical boundaries. This development is communication based and to do with information and the bargaining of knowledge - a shift that Levy sees as part of the move towards: “A new anthropological space, the knowledge space... which could easily take precedence over the space of earth, territory, and commerce that preceded it” (Levy, 1997, 255). The impact of the Web is a result of its unique elements such as its fluctuating nature and connective information-based architecture. The studios are finally starting to recognise these characteristics and taking a more medium-specific approach to online promotions which recognise the powerful audience units that are being created. After years pushing out conventional content whilst attempting to reign in the raucous copyright-challenging activities of fan sites, most of which are: “anarchic, filled with the kind of underground information (test-screening results, unauthorised artwork) that prompt studio lawsuits, not imitation” (Horn, October 2000), media corporations are increasingly channelling this taste-driven activity. Having set up specialist departments to look at the interactive possibilities for ‘old’ media, they are beginning to produce richer, fan-integrated campaigns. By taking fan activities seriously and expanding the reach of shows across the Web, investing in complex official sites and by carefully seeding the gossip-mongering URLs, producers have built hype and devotion around shows such as such as The X Files, Buffy The Vampire Slayer etc – simultaneously broadening resources for fans and building on-line constituencies. Such strategies have added layers of involvement to the reception of these shows and broadened the reach of their narratives. Crucially to the consideration of online entertainment that merges fantasy and reality, these campaigns are also maximising the fact that the Web is an environment in which it is increasingly difficult to distinguish “editorial content from advertising, or to tell whether there’s really just an accomplished charlatan behind a web site” (Shapiro, 1999,140)

Technophilic celebrations of this new technology centre on its possibilities for interaction and resources. As Murray notes, when the web user turns on the computer (“the most capacious medium ever invented” (Murray, 1994, 83)), and starts up the Web browser “all the world’s resources seem to be accessible, retrievable, immediate” (Ibid.). Yet this enthusiasm is qualified by the fact that much on the Web is traditional in nature. When a new medium is used in ways which hark back to the ‘old’ - such as the transferral of magazine-like editorial content onto web pages - the separation of ‘traditional’ and modern technologies is problematic.[4] The formal contrasts between print and web layouts and capabilities may not be activated if the possibilities of web technology are not called on. As Murray notes, the Web; whilst offering the appearance of endless possibilities/resources: “is still depending on formats derived from earlier technologies instead of exploiting its own expressive power” with many sites demonstrating a “derivative mind-set” that sees them taking “advantage of the novelty of computer delivery without utilising its intrinsic properties” (Murray, 1997, 67).

Webness

The “newness” of an emerging medium is often established by its being set in comparison to precedents in the attempt to pin down ‘unique’ elements and map out historical progression. The question of how the Web is different to those mediums that have gone before is complicated by the spectral nature of online experiences and by the lack of concrete information about reception. The development of user profiling strategies is still at a relatively new stage and David Gauntlett argues that access statistics, the most consistently relied upon sources of information (the ‘facts’), tell us more about the culture of market research than about the cultural significance of the web (Gauntlett, 2000, 32). The Web’s complexities mean that generalisations are fraught with danger - the concept of “using the Internet” (Burkeman, 2000) is, for example, in itself relatively uncharted. The Web is constantly in flux and, as the rise and fall of the dot.coms have demonstrated, sites and initiatives come and go. These rapid transitions mean that studies of the Web are very much of the instant. As Henry Jenkins notes:

Writing the history of digital media will be much more like writing the history of a transitory medium, like early radio or vaudeville, than like documenting the evolution of a textual medium, like the printing press or the cinema. (Jenkins, 1999)

For those interested in the Web (and digital media in general), the obligation (or initiative) to archive and ‘preserve evidence’ of new media and the technological and aesthetic changes it is bringing about (Jenkins, 1999) is a pressing concern.

This apparent race-against-time, combined with a desire to take the Web seriously as a cultural force, has led to an often journalistic, specialised and incident-based approach to the study of it, with quick turnover time defending against out of dateness. Moments when the Web has been involved in events that have spilled into real-world consciousness - the Lewinsky affair, the state of dot.coms, the evil threat of anonymous chat room figures - have presented the Web in varying lights; as a site of anarchy and liberation, of fantasy and danger. As well as considering the cultural repercussions, academics and cultural commentators have focused upon the formal elements of the web, examining how new forms of narrative and publishing online reflect the ways in which the Web is “a technology of interaction and display, a medium and an archive” (Elmer 162).

Just as film theorists such as Bazin and Munsterberg argued that cinema’s ontology could reveal its ideal usage and lead to specific forms of expression, so too contemporary theorists have attempted to tie down the nature of “webness” in order to posit how it should be used and provide analytical paradigms for looking at digital Web technology. Lawrence Grossberg’s notion of ‘sensibility’ - which he outlines in the context of fandom - is also applicable to the consideration of the Web as a new medium with its own intrinsic processes:

The sensibility of a particular cultural context (an ‘apparatus’) defines how specific texts and practices can be taken up and experienced, how they are able to effect the audience’s place in the world, and what sorts of texts can be incorporated into the apparatus. Different apparatuses produce and foreground different sensibilities. (Grossberg, 2001, 55)

Various strategies of definition have been offered up in the consideration of the sensibility of the Web and the processes to which it lends itself most naturally. Shield appropriates Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotrope to try and define that which: “characterises the World Wide Web and differentiates it from other forms of expression” (Shields, 2000, 159), Herman and Swiss (after Jody Berland) describe how “all. media cultural technologies embody a spatialized logic of production, dissemination, and consumption” that “involves a mediation of a mode of address, the occasion of its reception and its consolidation as technique” (Herman and Swiss, 2000, 1.) Differing theorists offer differing guidelines, most of which (somewhat unsurprisingly) associate the characteristics of the Web with the characteristics of digital media - linking the shift from analogue to digital technology to the resulting malleability and interactivity of new forms of textual production. In this work, the Internet is often separated from the Web - its user-friendly offspring. For:

Where the Internet was largely textual, almost wholly owned by the academic community and serious in tone for the most part, the Web is open to all, uses a wide range of media and is often frivouless, recreational or commercial. (Sefton-Green, 1998, 84)

The Web offers both multimedia and hypertext technology, creating an immersive playground, a space which demonstrates the essential properties of digital environments outlined by Janet Murray: interactive and immersive habitats stemming from the procedural and participatory nature of digital forms and their spatial and encyclopedic properties. (Murray, 1994, 71). Mitra and Cohen (1999) outline what they see as the six characteristics of the web page: that it is overtly intertextual, rarely has linearity of conventional texts, links the reader to the author via choice, offers possibilities of multimedia, a global reach and is characterised by ephemeral and impermanent nature (Wakeford, 2000, 33). Wakeford argues that these attributes demand specific consideration of web texts - particularly, consideration of the newly generic features of web pages - the themes, structures, technical features and iconography involved and how create particular mode of address (Wakeford, 2000, 34). Derrick de Kerckhove offers a one-word summation - that “webness” is “connectivity.” (de Kerckhove, 2001, 240).

This user-friendly connectivity was made possible by the creation of hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and hypertext markup language (HTML) in 1993. The point-and-click navigation these developments enabled ‘democratised’ the Web (Feldman, 1997), and meant that not only was it was “possible to jump from page to page, document to document, server to server, creating a kind of web of interconnectivity spanning the Internet” (Feldman, 1997, 112), but that it was also possible for the user to add content to it. Ideal for fostering the exchange of information, this “acephelous ‘peer-to-peer’ architecture” (altculture: Internet), results in the experience of a dynamic fluidity of movement, an ever-forwardly expanding space growing with each click of the mouse. An environment perfect for building hype; a type of exploratory space unique to digital environments, one that we can transverse, propelling ourselves via our own individual paths of desire.

The Web’s interpellating strategies, like television’s, encourage particular activities and assumptions and have created an “environment within which “a certain type of consumer activity is assumed and propagated” (Ang, 1996, 22). One of the most familiar is the notion of surfing. Theories built around the dynamic nature of “surfing” need to be tempered by the actions of “surfers” - for the possibilities of a new technology are only demonstrated as far as the knowledge/habits of the user. Surfing the Web is often more of a static experience than its name suggests. Indeed Feldman argues that it is “one of the worst clichés of the digital world” (Feldman, 1997, 118). Whilst Murray describes the pleasures involved in travelling through the Web, and the “pleasure of the repeated arrivals” (Murray, 1994, 79) as repeatedly instigating onward movement, the notion of surfing as a “carefree voyage of discovery” (Feldman, 1997, 118) may be an ideal which does not correlate to the everyday experience of the frequent Web user. The static nature of many people experiences online attest to the fact that the Web is a market with market leaders who draw and maintain dominance.[5] Whilst some people trawl the Web, many stick to their favourite sites, popping in to acquire specific information and updates. Internet magazines trawl the Web collecting the strangest, coolest and most essential sites, “sites of the week” are a regular occurrence in a mainstream press fascinated by the Web’s oddities and sites like darkhorizons.com provide a meeting place for information so that this (time consuming) trawling process can be avoided. Once people have settles on sites they like they tend to be faithful:

60% of users visit fewer than 10 sites on a regular basis... Web surfing is not an arbitrary wandering, a voyage of discovery. Web users find the sites they like and stick to them. (Feldman, 1997, 119)

The pleasures of logging on and coming home to a favourite/most relied upon sites can provide as much pleasure as discovering and arriving at a new site - if not more so due to the familiarity and established identification with the atmosphere and lay-out of the preferred site. Logging onto a favourite sites and viewing updates is like viewing a metamorphosis, with the site as a living, evolving entity. This vibrancy becomes clear when abandoned, ‘dead’ sites are viewed - for the update is a vital component of the ontology of the web site. The sticking to a preferred site is based on choices and preferences, and around the sensibilities of particular groups and interests. Of course, the Web also has to incorporate navigation guidance for those for whom the idea of searching is in itself an alien entity, and those who only want to use it to purchase flight tickets etc. Such points of explanation and forms of use constrict scope for radical formal innovation.

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Whether the Web user surfs or sticks, topics of interest such as films and television programs are relayed through links and chains of references - this dispersal freeing “information from time by erasing the gaps between production, transmission and consumption of information”. (Jordan, 1999, 169). When television and film texts and audiences are subsumed within this fluid positioning, and picked up by web users (whose own experience of the Web may be more static), a form of choice-driven and responsive involvement is created that is both personal and also has formal repercussions on the text.

In his book Television Culture (1999), John Fiske makes a series of distinctions between texts which are problematised by the Web’s dynamism and by the blurring of boundaries between author/receiver. Within a consideration of intertextuality, he describes three levels of texts: primary texts (the program/film – the notion of the cannon text), secondary texts (extra-textual knowledge sources such as specialist magazines, advertising, publicity etc) and a third layer – tertiary texts. These tertiary texts are audience-sourced, the conversation/gossip/letters of the fans, ‘ethnosemiological data’ (Fiske, 1999, 124). The Web blurs the boundaries between these areas, the anonymous nature of involvement enabling a merging of opinions and sources. Fiske creates a polar distinction between sites of discourse that the Web’s ontology draws together. He maps out the position of producers at one end of the scale (providing source information for publicity and articles), fan magazines in the middle (pseudo-independent as relying on press releases) and the (independent?) viewers at the far end. These distinctions are based on the availability of source information and knowledge and assumptions about independence in the face of commercial domination. As well as providing a forum from the intertwining of Fiske’s secondary and tertiary texts, the Web submerges this distinction in the flow of mainstream and more specialist fan culture and the division between viewers and producers blurs. Boundaries have never been fixed - now they are ever more permeable - with texts and voices become inter-responsive, involved in processes transformation. For the Web enables: “grassroots cultural production to reach a broader readership...” (Jenkins,1998) and has led amateurs creating sites that are: “often more detailed and more accurate to the original that the commercially-produced sites.” (Ibid) The audience is not just retrieving information but sharing, witnessing and adding textual resources and information. Now producers take part in debates, whilst looking to the Web for feedback - with figures such as Chris Carter, (the creator of The X-Files) taking part in online web dialogues with fans after episode screenings and admitting to logging on to chat rooms and listening in on discussion boards to gauge responses to narrative developments.[6]

This merging of different types of texts with often opposing driving forces is useful for covert strategies of promotion in cyberspace. Messages “now revolve around receptors“ (Levy, 2001, 366) and gossip, traditionally part of folk culture, is increasingly being integrated into strategies of ‘soft sell.’ Spinning, viral marketing, seeding and ‘rogue’ film reviews - these trends foster an environment of uncertainty which undermines the notion of empowerment for the user. Shields comments upon the way that the Web offers an illusion of mastery with; the Internet presented as a “landscape before us...awaiting our instructions” (Shields 2000, 147). Much discourse on the Web takes on the guise of friendly impartiality or opinionated single-mindedness. The significance of web hosting, and the relationship between the content/author and server. (Wakeford, 2000, 35) (who is paying for site and why?) thus takes on added importance.

New Mode, Old Content?

Most web sites still pander to the ‘content is king’ ethos which ties the medium to the display and retrieve mode of print formats - presenting content in a way which all but ignores the malleable nature of the Web. The move towards more technically adroit strategies has been signalled by the perceived failure of banner culture and advertising. The response of marketing strategists has largely been seen in the integration of product information and points of purchase into lifestyle-dominated electronic shop-fronts. ‘Dressing up’ traditional content with “postmodern multimedia flash” (Friedman, 1995, 75), many big name sites use multimedia to liven up content, build brand awareness, improve click-through and consumer conversion (registration to membership or the making of on-line purchases).

The Diesel jeans website (www.diesel.com), for example, carries its fashionable, “cutting-edge” deconstructionist tendencies across into the aesthetic and content of its site via its clean, abstraction of design and quirky, pseudo-interactive elements such as a weekly “jeans planner” and a “save yourself” guide to life. These sections attempt to provide a Diesel “way of life” and utilise the interactive elements of the Web but fail to move the aesthetic of the site away from the flat nature of the web page. The site’s ‘interactive’ nature is limited to the viewing of flash animation and the chance to send in ideas/photographs/ commentary. The ‘jeans planner’ feature attempts a lifestyle link but is merely a flash-enabled catalogue set alongside simpler product folders and contact details. The site compensates for this by being visually sophisticated, with an aesthetic “coolness” which both feeds from and back into its products - displaying a stylistic world view clearly designed to appeal to the ‘hip kids’.

This packaging of multimedia experiments with conventional content is a trend which runs through the online marketing of films and television programmes. In some ways the Web is mainly being used by the media industry as, “just another marketing outlet for old-style celebrity” and discourse (Gamson, 2000). “Recycled old-media tactics” (Horn, October 2000) are relied upon just as much as traditional content. Seeding strategies are not a new technique - merely an technologically-mediated extension of the Hollywood rumour-mill. And spoiler sites are merely taking a long running trend towards revelation through the media to a rather cynical extreme. Magazines like Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, Heat and TV Guide offer a blend of teasers and spoilers alongside celebrity interviews with actors who offer “unique” insights into their characters motivations and future prospects. Key story-lines[7] of soap operas are picked up by the national press, are carried along in commentary, reviews and features, dissected and mulled over by critics and other ‘authoritative’ voices. In the process, they are transformed into events. Front-page headlines on newspapers and television guides often make the discovery of narrative secrets redundant. In this way, the inescapable circulation of journalism, news, advertising and cultural debate sets upcoming plotlines within the historical context of the series and also within national the consciousness. Information available on the Web is vastly more detailed and trivialised because of the range of sources and the individual interests and sources called upon. In some ways however, the Web’s influence is less intrusive - the user must go down certain paths to discover information - and it is possible to avert attention. This possibility of avoidance means that the information available is often more geeky and less generalised (highlighting details of costumes and backstory) - as those looking are the enthusiasts.

Official web sites for television programmes/films have demonstrated the shift away from the: “marginality of the television texts appropriated by fans” (Pullen, 55):

serving as a clearing house for fan activity. Most of these websites provide the kind of information previously available only through fan clubs and fan activities such as newsletters and conventions. (Ibid.)

Despite breakthroughs in on-line fan involvement, however, official sites tend to appropriate the techniques of fan activity but not the attitude; the anti-establishment, us against them, revelatory dominant. The Box office ‘tricks of the trade’ are still relied upon, with the Web serving as a support medium; hosting trailers, press junkets, reviewer quotes, promotional tie-ins, and the work of publicists (Snead, 2001).

The break from previous antecedents comes from the notion of content as experience. An increasing number of producers have grasped the fact that the web is not a “background medium” (Jones, 2000, 175) and integrated this aspect of the Web into new experience-based projects. As Feldman argues (perhaps optimistically):

While the Web may become a place where some traditional content is traded, it is more a place where trade will be based on very different notions of content than previously understood by the media industry... The type of content that flourishes on the Web is much more an experience than a fixed body of intellectual property in the traditional sense. (Feldman, 129, 1996)

Specific marketing strategies have attempted to deliver the appearance of such experienced-based events, by merely disguising conventional marketing activities. Many use the fluidity of web navigation and incorporate scavenger-hunt compositions but create campaigns which are restricted by the fact that following clues leads to conventional content as ‘treasure.’ The recent campaign for Swordfish (operationswordfish.com), for example, involved the search for 10 passwords and key codes - clues available in the real world (from interviews and posters) as well as online. This search befits the film’s hacker sub-plot, but all that the players are rewarded with after discovering these codes is access to restricted interviews, photographs and reports about the film. If all 10 are discovered, the player can enter a contest to win £50,000 - (Paul Semel, 2001, 47), but this is merely a conventional send-back-to enter prize draw of a direct marketing campaign. Whilst this extends a campaign across into the real world from the Web, the payoff is empty. This unsatisfying textual involvement seemed one of the key reasons that the campaign failed to capture the imagination of web users.

Innovation

The elements that combine to form ‘webness’ are beginning to be harnessed to create more “digitally sophisticated” interaction and participation (Murray, 1994, 67) ‘Product’ (and, by association, content) is being reconfigured as ‘experience’ with functional content becoming inspirational material. Producers are beginning to call upon a sophisticated, playful audience by replacing clear and recognisable media content with more complex creations often with postmodern “ontological dominants” (McHale, 1987). Whilst using new ways of communication to provide a richer experience around a core product, the strategies utilised have largely depended upon the form of the text, which, in turn, has helped determine the aesthetic of the campaigns. Series and soap operas are free to demonstrate the way in which the Web can build collectives over a period of time - creating online environments which can grasp the power of the update to build a loyal audience, smoothing across season breaks and narrative upheavals.

One of the most impressive online presences to date is the official site for Dawson’s Creek (dawsonscreek.com) - a site which puts ‘Dots Diary’ on the BBC’s Eastenders website to shame by skilfully melding the fictional world of Capeside and the characters within it, with those of the audience. It does this by breaking down the relationship between fiction and reality, and by linking the perspective of the visitor to that of the characters. The site has generated 100,000 subscribers to its weekly email update notification Dawsonsscoop. Both this and the site, tie in direct sales - making the most of product placements by presenting a range of purchasable Capeside Memorabilia.. During the planning stages, the site’s producers aimed to ensure that online participants returned to the television screen each week, but also wanted to offer:

more of the Dawson’s Creek experience to online users, so not only could they get more of the story, they could participate in the characters’ lives. (Andrew Schneider, quoted in Crosdale, 1999, 145).

The web site expands the programme’s environment and narrative reach and is so immersive that you don’t even have to see the programme to keep up with the lives of the characters and feel part of the Dawson’s Creek experience.

The site enables fans to access character’s desktops; thus seeing through their eyes, accessing their private lives, and gaining an internal perspective of their psychological and emotional states.[8] By accessing the email and computer desktops of key characters, seeing their drawings and photographs, reading their postcards and their diaries, fans can gain an “in” into their psyches. Characters are laid out for voyeuristic investigation which allows: “surfers to point, click and discover what makes Dawson tick” (Crosdale, 1999, 144). The involvement in characters’ thoughts and feelings provides access to meta-narrative ingredients - the fake desktops serving as expositionary portals. Web pages within the site play upon the suspension of disbelief ethos of fandom - presenting characters and places as real. In order to merge fantasy and reality, the site utilise the formal conventions of web design to enter users into these ‘realistic’ fictions. The fan can enter the world by checking out timetables and school events at Capeside High, booking hotel rooms at the Potter’s b&b and reading menus from the local restaurants.

The information surrounding soap operas and cult shows seem to function differently to the one-off text such as an upcoming film release. The former seems intractably tied into characters, empathy and the investment in long-running narratives (and the “what if” scenario), allegiance to a show/author - normally in serial format which can reward over timeframe. This rounding out of a fictional world is beginning to be tapped into by film marketing. Apart from sequels (which can tie themselves into a chain), films often have to depend on generic or auteurist antecedents. The fact that film and gossip sites often displayed industry-based information has lead to information-based content (“so and so has signed to play”, “here is a shot from...”). Films therefore become linked to the nature of knowing, the status of being an expert. The result is a different focus - which web sites like darkhorizons.com dwell on - the “hyperconsumerist” sensibility:

the seemingly compulsive consumption of mass media, regardless or whether any actual single text provides pleasure...the very activity of consuming becomes more important, more pleasurable, more active as the site of the cultural relationship, than the object of consumption itself (for example, ‘couch potatoes,’ collectors, and so on) (Grossberg, 1992, 56)

Films are beginning to move away from this information-based approach and moving towards involvement in campaigns which echo the strategies of the series - extending the narrative across the web and developing an online micro-world to broaden length and degree of involvement and participation. Films without established followings (like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings which already have fanatical following), are attempting to maximise the fact that if you inspire and generate a collective and create a loyal and enthusiastic group via a powerful web presence, you can appeal to specific groups, generate discourse and lead potential audience members to the film. For, as Stacey Herron notes: “A traditional TV ad might spark interest in a film but only a film site can really cultivate true obsession and extend the life of the film” (Herron quoted in Smalley, 2001). Whilst successful sites can provide films with artistic validitiy, the cult of the new means that real innovation can almost be counted upon to be fed across the web and into the press as evidence of the ‘latest trends’ in online life - generating further hype. The groundbreaking work here has been done by tying the unique qualities of the film to the aesthetics of the web campaigns; achieving “synergy “ with the film so that “the Web becomes another layer of the film” (Adrian Hennigan quoted in King, 2001, 52). This is a careful balancing act however, as many sites still adhere to the ‘dressing up’ pitfall and come off, “as ego trips for Webmasters,” sites that: “try so hard to be different and clever that finding any details about the film becomes and adventure in itself. (Graham, 2001)

The embracing of the Web has led to experiments with its thematic and interactive possibilities. When compiling a list of innovative Web presences journalists always include The Blair Witch Project - whose official site is still taken as the breakthrough in online marketing. The site; “blended fiction with reality to create a myth that spread like a virus across the internet” (Mark King, 2001, 52). Its innovation was narrative-bound and tied to use of visual and aural “evidence” to round out storytelling, creating a myth and using multimedia forms to break down the division between fantasy and reality. The importance of the site on the economic success of the film has been overstated, for role of strong word of mouth and old-media coverage was vital to the success of the film (Horn, October 2000) - but the site did set a precedent, awakening producers and viewers to the potentials of web-based marketing. Sites for Fight Club, Final Destination, The Centre of the World, Requiem for a Dream, X-Men, and Memento have also demonstrated skilful uses of web technology, often drawing on its oblique nature to express complex narratives. Of all the sites, one of the most memorable to date is that for Requiem For A Dream (2000) (www.requiemforadream.com), a site which successfully manages to convey the film’s themes (addiction, loneliness, mass culture), with the haunted tone of the film whilst effectively utilising multimedia resources. Shots from the film are worked into sophisticated design elements - which (echoing the tone of the film) are both beautiful and disturbingly compelling.

The site encourages an experience-based interactivity - taking the user on a trip through a similar nightmare to that of the film. Its formal palette includes hypermedia, filmic and theatrical conventions alongside flash design. The visitor is led through a number of fake sites with “authentic” banners and advertorials, (Tabbytibbons.com, net-compulsions.org, casino.net) which serve to comment on the film (as direct references to it) and to the compulsive, image-focused nature of massmedia. The progression through the site is detailed, frequently interrupted by technical “errors” - moments of interference which draw on television reception, highlighting the nature of differing mediums whilst also referring to the importance of commercial television in the film. Tied into a series electronic stream of breaks and introductions, a fractured, tortured stream of consciousness, the user must lead his/her self through the site through series of clicks and has to take an active role in order to progress. Whilst conveying the experience of old mediums through these breakdowns, the mini-transitions also simulate the hypertext/surf mode of navigation through differing styles of web site within the boundaries of one. These breaks are used as transitional pages between the mock sites and “official” film content, creating a cosmetic difference between the two which highlights the pauses and breaks of the web. This ‘artistic’ use of the Web both supports the film, and stands alone as a mini-experience. It is very much a work standing in isolation, a site which provides its own payoff, its own unique experience. In the process, it manages to distil some of the Web’s own “expressive power” rather than just documenting the ‘canon’ text.

Chapter 2: On-line Communities and Participation

Cyberspace is not Disneyland. It’s not a polished, perfect place built by professional designers for the public to obediently wait on line to passively experience it. It’s more like a finger-painting party. Everyone is making things, there’s paint everywhere, and most work only a parent would love. (Amy Bruckman quoted in Jenkins,1999).

In their e-encyclopedia entry for ‘The Internet,’ altculture.com argues that one of the key strategies for integrating ‘old’ media into successful web-based business enterprises is by “capturing readers and viewers as ‘members’ of ‘branded’ collectives...” (altculture:Internet). The classification and targeting of specific consumer groups by spending habits and lifestyle preferences is one of the key strategic weapons of the marketing and advertising industries. It enables companies to pinpoint potential markets and tailor approaches to them - looking for group attitudes and values in order to generate quality responses. This impetus towards establishing and milking niche groups[9] correlates with the natural drive of web users towards tribalism.

Howard Rheingold, an avid proponent of on-line communities, sees this move toward the propagation of communities as natural human desire “Whenever CMC technology becomes available to people anywhere, they inevitably build virtual communities with it” (Rheingold, 1995, 6). As the connectiveness of the Web demonstrates, this building has been expedited by the way that information technology is able to support “personal and social networks... by a technological extension, a technical surrogate of the Central Nervous System” that provides “quasi ‘synaptic’ connections with millions of minds exchanging information” (de Kerckhove, 2001, 18). Only now are the practical applications of such connections being overtly incorporated into campaigns.

From these junctions - and this discourse - an ecosystem of subcultures has emerged, “some frivolous, others serious” (Rheingold, 1995, 3). Constituencies springing forth via frequent use of sites have, in the main, united around shared interests and affinities.[10] These groups have proved a fertile ground for fan activities for: “though many [fan] activities are diverse, many are discursive - the most primal instinct a fan has is to talk to other fans about the common interest” (Clerc, 2000, 216). The strength with which a global connectiveness enables people to exchange information and gossip within communities which are “defined not geographically but by a commonality of taste” (Feldman, 1996, 124) offers a teasing possibility of being able to effect the show through involvement. Online initiatives around shows such as Freaks and Geeks, Twin Peaks (and initiatives such Bring Back Sliders to the BBC) have been encouraged with producers and studios using the Web to “rally the troops quickly and efficiently if a series is in danger of cancellation or has already been cancelled but has a chance of resurrection in syndication” (Clerc, 2000, 226).[11]

The atomization of web culture into interest groups has been driven forward by the enthusiastic banter of Internet-hosted discussion. Web talking is instantaneously recorded - breaking down the division between the electronic and the oral. The Web’s hypermedia capabilities, has also seen ‘talk’ become an annotated, collage-like mix of the visual and verbal with iconic exchanges. As well as posting commentary, people are able to illustrate their words and scoops with images, downloads and links. The exchange of knowledge, gossip, texts and advice within these groups has turned “cooperation into a game, a way of life - a merger of knowledge capital, social capital and communication” (Rheingold, 1995, 110).

This banter sees the Web duplicating, “the webs of friendship that make up the heart of fandom” (Clerc, 2000, 224). Fandom is, as Henry Jenkins points out, historically specific and determinate upon the technological resources available at the time. The speed and immediacy of the Internet has speeded up the growth and breadth of fan culture, providing: “the ideal basis for... multi-authored and collaborative fantasies” (Jenkins,1998) The speed of these transitions are demonstrated by the differing environments described in two of Jenkin’s key texts about fandom, his book Textual Poachers (1992) and his essay The Stormtroopers and The Poachers (1998). The period of time between these works saw a major overhaul of resources and the fan experience. In the latter, as well as highlighting the speed of web discussion, Jenkins describes how new technology has swept fandom into the mainstream. By 1998 it had become a familiar mode of activity which had broaden interests whilst seeing users band into units whereas: “a decade ago... I was describing a subculture that was oddly alien to a good percentage of the audience I was addressing” (Jenkins, 1998). As other critics have noted, as well as opening out fan culture, the Web has “designated more television programs, celebrities and films as worthy of web activity” (Pullen, 2000, 55) leading to a general hyper-celebratory approach within a cultural shift to an even more “postmodern” culture of the image and the instant.

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Before the commercial potential of the Web was fully realized, the first web sites were based around points of group focus: “Campus internet servers quickly became hosts to a wide-range of interest-based web sites covering every imaginable enthusiasm.” (Feldman, 1997, 114). Since then, allegiances to specific areas of interest have both strengthened and undermined the Web. Whilst they have generated imaginative and challenging readerships/followings, the public reception of these groups have added to the image of the Web as an environment inhabited by “geeks” and obsessives demonstrating misguided enthusiasm.[12] This perspective has resulted in serious web-use being tainted by links to fandom; seeing the Web as the realm of low culture (“a vast repository of porn and drivel” (Dean, 2000). Assumed to be dominated by “the trivia-obsessed micro-fan followings of pop culture obscura” (altculture:Internet), it is often represented as the domain of people with too much time on their hands. Rather than being directed into an attack on the mode itself, this hostility is founded upon value judgements about the choices and the degree of investment that people are making in what they choose to share/celebrate. For communal reception is united by choice of not only of what is celebrated but also how, the “particular form of engagement or mode of operation” (Grossberg, 1992, 53) involved in a person’s relationship with texts. As the derogatory labels (geeks...) suggest, this relationship is unusually strong in case of fans who grant certain texts: “an importance and perhaps even a power denied to others” (Grossberg, 1992, 53). Studies of the ‘active’ audience have distinguished between types of viewers and identified differing approaches to reception.[13] Jenkins describes fans as:

readers who appropriate popular texts and reread them in a fashion that serves different interests, as spectators who transform the experience of watching television into a rich and complex participatory culture. (Jenkins, 1992, 23)

The emergence of vibrant communities on the web has helped awaken communal participation and, in certain cases, made theoretical dreams of “collective intelligence” appear to be a normal part of web communal life. A vast bank of references, knowledge and recollections is housed in chat rooms, entertainment news sites, multiplayer networked roleplaying games like Ultima Online and discussion boards. The groups built around texts (films, literature, computer games and TV programs) have become powerful resources, playful, self-referential, creative, loud, resourceful and vocal - demonstrating an ability to acknowledge and play with postmodernist tendencies and generic conventions. Whilst feasting upon the highly self-referential nature of many of the texts they celebrate, fans document their own activities and efforts with fan fiction and commentary. Occasionally this production slips into the voicing of elitist perspectives, the criticism of other groups and other approaches. Demanding and unruly, fans hold texts up as objects of adoration whilst ‘disrespectfully’ carving the text up for analysis. This refusal to be bound by the text and the skills they bring to the communal reception and ‘reading’ of texts offer producers with a challenge. :

as the Internet becomes a standard adjunct of broadcast television, all program writers and producers will be aware of a more sophisticated audience, one that can keep track of the story in greater detail (Murray, 1994, 85)

The studios have begun to pander to this sophistication, playing the ‘web-literate’ card in advertising campaigns, whilst also recognizing the on-line fans as a resource. As Andrew Schieder, Director of Marketing at Columbia Tristar Interactive notes: “Internet fans are perhaps our best fans... we support them. We recognize their talent and their enthusiasm” ( Schieder, quoted in Crosdale 1999).

Divide and Conquer

Of course we hope you like it here, because we made this place in our own image, but if you don’t like what you see, keep shopping.” (Pemberley.com/faq.html)

The Republic of Pemberley (www.pemberley.com) a site for “Jane Austin obsessives” demonstrates the power of the Web to join fellow-obsessives in a space which ideally suits the demands of exchange and display central to fandom. An on-line “imaginary women’s nation” (92% female) led by a “matriarchal governance,” the site is presented as a safe cultural haven - an ‘island’ of tranquillity amongst the choppy, polluted waters of the mass culture surrounding it. The site demonstrates many of the complexities of life online, and the ideals and aspirations of web communities, as well as the tendency towards exclusivity. This ‘realm’ is linked to amazon.com through banner advertising and the group’s suggestion that books acquired in order to take part in the “group read” are purchased from them - demonstrates the intertwining of the cultural and social with the commercial; the mass participation and consumption of texts generating further layers of consumption and subsidiary consumer groups.

This volunteer run site’s original incarnation was a bulletin board for “addicts” to the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Since then it has grown into a micro-universe for Austin fans. The site offers its members a feeling of identity and belonging tied into a specific, chosen ideology posited as independent from mass culture and built into sense of belonging. It is presented as a place where virtual friends will “get” your obsession with Austin, or Mr. Darcy, or Emma, unlike most “‘real’ families and friends” (www.pemberley.com Welcome Page) It is a culture to “soak in,” - built on discussion and exchange. Postings, discussion boards, photo boards and general information are joined by fan art, online publishing of sequels (fan fiction) - all or which are bound by a “common fascination” (www.pemberley.com/newbie.html). In this way the site house a gallery type space to “gush,” show off skills and knowledge and share gossip. As well as these literary fan-productions and activities there are social elements - photo galleries of members, birthday notices, advice board, biographies of individual members, and a summer travel board; these domestic issues linked to ladylike, ‘feminine’ sensibility of the site. Perhaps due to the group’s television fan-base, the site is less ‘literary’ than others (such as the “mother planet” AUSTEN-L) - a lower leaning reflected in the group’s abbreviations (CF= Colin Firth, JN=Jeremy Northam) which demonstrate an interest in ‘hunky’ actors as much as in Austin characters. Nevertheless, it takes itself, and its way of life, very seriously.

References on the site’s welcome page to “staying”, “visiting”, “tourists” or “lifelong friendships,” see involvement with pemberley.com being codified as various forms of cohabiting. These categories of involvement provide a framework which defines the roles and responsibilities of members. Murray argues that:

one of the simplest ways to structure participation is to adopt the format of a visit. The visit metaphor is particularly appropriate for establishing a border between the virtual world and ordinary life because a visit involves explicit limits on both time and space. (Murray, 1994, 106)

Yet the use of these words seem to reflect the breaking down of considerations between the virtual and the real. The idea of visiting, rather than watching or reading, suggests a physical absorption into virtual worlds as part of (or an escape from) everyday life. This absorption involves becoming part of a social group - the “we” used in the FAQ and welcome pages. When a user first comes across a site like pemberley.com and decides that this is home, she (or he) must enter into a process of acclimatisation (pemeberley.com’s moderators describe this gaining of a voice as a type of initiation[14]) - gaining familiarity with the ritualistic modes of discourse specific to the group and earning respect. Entering a knowledge and dedication-based hierarchy from the bottom, the ‘newbie’ must be prepared to gauge what is and is not acceptable to the group (such as references to sex)... or face the wrath of regulars. This process of initiation is based on familiarity - for example with the posting etiquette or the error of raising issues/asking questions made redundant by the previous activity of the group.

Whist the welcome page (“Darcy Peninsula, The Newcomer Processing Centre”) announces that the site for everybody, it is clearly not. It is not even for anyone who likes Austin. The site’s founders/organisers pronounce this “clubby” nature and express the financial and ethical reasoning behind it:

The site’s narrow appeal is intentional, and it has a sound basis... by subtle, yet consciously undertaken means, we exude a bit of an attitude, which could be characterized as polite with a bite. We miraculously manage... to remain one of the most civil places on the Internet, a distinction we prize, but one which is cultivated through an emulation of Jane Austin’s own honest, moral and forthright ways... The attitude weeds out some people, and that’s what we intend. If you resonate with the tone, visiting the site will be all the more fun for you. If you don’t, just don’t come; it’s not your kind of place. (www.pemberley.com/faq.htm)

The highbrow/lowbrow perspective of the group demonstrates a specific insider/outsider distinction as: “Through... investments in specific differences, fans divide the cultural world into Us and Them” (Grossberg, 1992, 58). Lawrence Grossberg distinguishes the fan from the consumer by the differing seriousness of approach each bring to the process of consumption. Pemberley.com raises the stakes and differentiates between the fan and the really obsessive fan. Even if the technology of the Web means that access to the site is ‘democratic’ in its introductory text the group makes clear that it is for specific sorts of Austin fans only. Just as companies and brands attempt to establish themselves by differentiating themselves from their competitors. Pemberley’s ‘brand’ identity is set by comparison to other alternatives in cyberspace - their “tone” in comparison to that of the Derbyshire Writers Guild or AUSTEN-L. In creating brand values they identify the ideal user. This segregationist attitude seems an aspect of much collective activity online. In discussion of how going on-line has effected Bad Subjects for example, the dangers of an expanding audience is examined by one regular poster:

Not everyone who encounters Bad Subjects is necessarily what we might consider to be the ideal Bad Reader, and the larger our readership, the more likely we are to encounter the less-than ideal.... (Rubio, 1995)

With the segmentation of groups and audiences: “You can learn a lot about someone by simply looking at their bookmarks to see where on the Net they like to return“ (Rubio, 1995) Just as moving around numerous web pages often sees rejection and disinterest serving as a guiding logic, so too the devotion to a specific cause/area of interest involves a divisionism - a rejection of other approaches/areas and ‘unsuitable’ people (those less focused, or qualified). These divisions are driven by choice, the act which Ang argues interpellates the audience as ‘active’ (Ang, 1996, 12) taken one step further - towards allegiance. As “one of the prime discursive mechanisms through which people are drawn into the seductions of consumption” (Ang, 1996, 12), choice is tied into chains of consumption. The fact that the “multiplication of consumer options”(Ang, 1996, 57) generated by mass media has been thrown into greater excess by the Web has only resulted in increased fragmentation.

The specialised knowledge and interest underpinning these groups has seen: “Internet newsgroups” and web pages become “notorious for both blinkered specialisation and the ferocious debates of blinkered specialists”[15] (alt.culture:Internet). The sorts of approaches displayed by ‘webbites’ are similar to those demonstrated by on-line fans - both of which have free time they are able to give up, are not scared of technology or in recovering and exchanging information. For, although on-line life:

appears to be even messier and more anarchic than real life... it is actually narrower than our real lives... One can indeed avoid on-line contact with large segments of humanity, because access to on-line systems is still limited to specific social groups (Rubio, 1995, 95)

Jon Katz’s description of the “Digital Nation” sums up many of the assumptions/judgements of what it is to be one of Net.Gen “they tend to be libertarian, materialistic, tolerant, rational, technologically adept....they share a passion for popular culture.” (Katz, 1997) . They would seem to be the ideal demographic to bring a project to life; with money and time to burn.

Perverse Approaches

What you make of the fact that someone is a hard core Will and Grace or Angel fan reveals more about you and your assumptions than it does about them. In the same way the division of culture into sections has been led by value judgements. Harold Becker’s notion of the “Art World’s” ‘serious audience members’ (Clerc, 2000, 46) breaks down on the Web and can be applied to the demonstrated approaches of Web users; fans taking on high art terminology and perspectives in the context of ‘lower’ art concerns. The distaste many feel towards this degree of involvement comes from the seemingly inappropriate “excessiveness” of behaviour (Jenkins, 1992, 53), as tied into culturally unsuitable products: the misplaced affect which “defines the strength of our investment in particular experiences, practices, identities, meanings, and pleasure” (Grossberg, 1992, 57).

The Web has caused the breakdown of the division between what is and what is not worthy of fan-type attention resulting in a postmodern all-inclusive celebration. David Harvey describes the postmodern “rapprochement... between popular culture and what once remained isolated as ‘high culture,’” a merger that has happened before (Harvey giving the examples of Dada and the early surrealists). Now however, “the closing of the gap between popular culture and cultural production in the contemporary period, seems to lack any avant-gardist or revolutionary impulse leading many to accuse postmodernism of a simple and direct surrender to commodification, commercialism and the market” (Harvey, 1992, 312). When Harvey describes the collapse of time horizons and preoccupation with instantaneity, mediated by exploration new technologies he is referring to television and art, but these characteristics are pertinent to the thematic inclusiveness of the Web, whose multimedia and emphasis on both the update and the outdate further emphases “the fleeting qualities of modern life” (Harvey, 1992, 312).

Contemporary media fandom on the Web may be a free-for-all of an unprecedented scope, but it relies upon the established practices of fandom. The pleasure involved with engaging with trivia is central, and expressed by Jenkins as a: “mixture of emotional proximity and critical distance” (Jenkins, 1992, 278). He refers to Fiske’s distinction between semiotic and enunciative productivity - activity involving both the “popular construction of meaning at moment reception” and the “articulation of meaning through dress, display and gossip” (Jenkins, 1992, 278). In the case of the fan, her argues, these distinctions break down and become integrated into fully rounded “perverse” approach which lies outside of the ‘uses and gratifications’ paradigm. Clerc outlines a further range of activities involved with the transformation of texts into communal projects: the discussion of characterisation, communal alerting of others to the appearances of stars, speculation, the creation of drinking games, the comparison of shows and films, and the picking over of episodes. These fannish activities have been joined by emerging popularity of slash fiction and, to a lesser extent, filk; communal production that helps bind groups of individuals together. From Jenkin’s descriptions, most of a fan’s real work begins after the first viewing of an episode - the process of replaying/reviewing/transforming the text via ”close scrutiny, elaborate exegesis, repeated and prolonged rereading” (Jenkins, 1992, 23). In this way, fans transform reception into “a rich and complex participatory culture” (Jenkins, 1992, 23)

This scrutiny-led focus means that technology plays an important role in fan activities. The invention of the VCR, was seized upon as an extension of the individual’s analytical weaponry ( a “cognitive” resource) and revolutionised the focus on the text - enabling rewatching/freeze frame for the close inspection (as well as the exchange) of fan texts. Compuserve and Usenet broadened the approach electronically - serving as discussion forums (community) and sources (information). These technologies have made detailed examination possible, partially determining the activities and approaches of fans. The way that the Web has empowered fans and affected interpretation and creativity has been demonstrated by a number of key events and by the persistent and futile attempts producers to reign them in. In 1999, fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer used the Web to distribute the postponed season finale (the episode had been screened in Canada but not the US due to controversy about its violence in the wake of Littleton (Wen, 1999)). In contrast to Henry Jenkin’s discussion of fans sending/swapping videotape copies of unavailable or unscreened episodes or shows, fans now demonstrate “online bootlegging,” backed up by the Quicktime/Realplayer formats and the increasing speed of flow via broadband cabling and resource channels. The notion of fans doing it for themselves via technological know-how is expressed by Michelle Erica Green in her discussion of episode X-Files:

A decade ago, most fans never would have learned how Amor Fati (episode of X Files) originally ended. Today they have the Internet, where television fandom has gone from the province of a small group of devotees to a free-for-all in which anyone with a computer can participate. (Green, 1999)

This harnessing of technology has seen the emergence of collective projects and “internet enabled games” - with groups forming to argue, play games and “even work on a range of complex communications media” (Kollock and Smith, 1999, 3). The online gaming community, like online fans:

continue to exploit the Net’s predilection for community-building, They hang out in ITC or in chat rooms, arranging contests and swapping stories; they readily take to building clans - allegiances formed among players united by geography, skill level, or shared vision. (Berry, October 1997)

Both the gaming and fan “interlinked communities” (Berry, October 1997), utilise the “Internet’s strength as a distribution mechanism.” (Berry, October 1997), showing off knowledge, collectively partaking of an overt form of collective reception and most importantly moving away from the individual experience and: enabling the player and viewer to “go beyond his or her individuality and call on group reactions, group knowledge.” (Tulloch and Moran quoted in Fiske, 1999, 79). As well as for social reasons then, fans unite in order to maximise their knowledge resources. Their activities produce cultural capital which they attribute meaning to - knowledge based resources built from collaborative effort.

The collective focus on re-watching and group interpretation is bound by the search for hidden secrets and the filling of syntagmatic gaps - a look back into the text from a higher vantage point armed with insider (extra-textual?) knowledge. Complex, open-ended, gap-ridden programmes/films such as Twin Peaks, Lost Highway and The X-Files have provided ‘food for thought’ and their mysteries have inspired fans to play detective. Web technology has aided fans in their attempts to ‘master’ texts, extended information, enabled downloads and digital imaging. Whilst treating texts as sacred artefact (Adorno in Jenkins, 1992, 51) fans thus use the resources available to them to dissect texts and bring them “more fully under their own control” (Jenkins, 1992, 68). With the Web, the look back of re-reading has shifted to an applied look forward. This growing tendency towards being in the know about future narrative events is demonstrated by the pervasive presence of the spoiler in postings and discussions. The spoiler is a piece of information that has the power to transform the experience of a narrative by revealing the secrets of the text’s structure. Depending on your reception preferences and whether you like to know what is going to happen in your favourite soap opera, these are either prized facts or violent revelations. By their nature they are potentially devastating to those who want to be kept in suspense. In newsgroups discussions, all spoilers must be pre-warned with participants contriving:

Elaborate mechanisms to avoid spoilers. Large amounts of blank space in the body of a message is required, to act as a kind of radiation shield against the unwary accidentally coming across the potent data. Social sanctions against revealing spoilers are severe - even the inadvertent mention of plot data by an inexperienced poster will attract tremendous opprobrium (Caldwell, 1999)

Spoilers are not a new phenomenon, texts have never been air-sealed and there has never been a “standard” reading practice. People skips pages and read tv schedules to discover what is to happen. With all its updates and speculations however, the Web is stuffed with high and low level spoilers. The power of the spoiler means that the decision to seek them out reflects a specific involvement, with the text and the technology and a specific form of agency.

This attempt at mastery of the text links fans to computer game players, who have also assembled online to broaden resources. Just as the revelation of plot lines replaces suspense with differing pleasures and a feeling of mastery, the exchange of game cheats give away formal secrets and transform the gaming experience via the acquisition of external knowledge. The exchange of spoilers and cheats displays the Web serving as an activating device for the collective solving of problems, the group being able to “exhibit an intelligence higher than any member” (Turoff, quoted in Rheingold, 113).

The view of fan communities as a warm accepting space for the discovery of talents, with the celebration of individual skills and creation of friendships is somewhat altered by this rather functional exchange of information. Enthusiasts see the Web as an empowering medium for the fan cause - the strength of the virtual group in cyberspace suggesting a ‘power to the people’. However optimistic notions of fandom as offering liberation from the capitalist monotony of the mass media undermined by the harnessing of this desperate ‘need to know’ ethos by producers, and the move towards overt linking of fans and economics:

one of the reasons that the cultural logic of fandom seems less strange to people today is that core aspects of fan aesthetics and politics have been appropriated by the culture industries themselves (Jenkins, 1992)

Whilst the deluge of information on the Web is a valuable resource for fans, the overwhelming amount of information available often threatens to go beyond usefulness and into overload. When this happens, the ability to ascertain what is a reliable source is also compromised. The appropriation of this confusion alongside with the harnessing of fan activity, is demonstrated to an extreme extent by companies such as M80. M80’s ‘specialty’ is the use of the anonymous nature of web discourse and the organization of “artist fan communities” into “online” street teams” (www.m80.com). These lead and generate hype in chat rooms and bulletin boards, infiltrating and guiding on-line debate. This activation of niche audiences, with fans as corporate agents tears fandom from memories from folk/social background and demonstrates the malleability of the Web for viral campaigning. M80 prays upon the need to know, arming the fans who work for it with information and access, and rewards them with ‘swag’ (fan merchandise, tickets and memorabilia). In return, Britney Spears fans (for example): “seed chat rooms, conduct reconnaissance on search engines or bombard MTV’s Total Request Live, begging for the pop star’s latest hit” (Shreve, 2000). Although ‘real’ fans are growing increasingly skilled in distinguishing infiltrators - as the company sales patter describes - by seeding “new avenues of communication... the results are immediate: on/offline buzz... Word of mouth, fan to fan, it’s the most effective way to get information to the people who want it most” (www.m80.com).

CHAPTER 3 - THE A.I. GAME

In The Beginning

Like the best textbook marketing campaign, the A.I. game involved a powerful call to action to a specific demographic, in this case: “serious film buffs and web afficianados.” (Simons, June 2001). The channels and processes by which the game stepped out of the hubbub of online fan-debate and became specific topic of interest reveals a great deal about the nature of viral ‘spread,’ targeting strategies and the encouragement of specific modes of communal audience engagement. For the potential player, the point at which he or she first learnt about the game reflected upon their media consumption habits - as the game started as whispers on key media-enthusiast sites and spread out into the more mainstream, traditional press.

As the game grew it spread from the “underground” into mainstream attention via press articles and bulletin board discussions. This discourse displayed a communal digestion of the game and the issues is raised. These initial responses ranged from the cynical and the enthusiastic, to helpful D.I.Y. instructions as to how to get involved. The viral spread through the online entertainment grapevine demonstrated an accelerated ‘fan’ ecosystem. In a matter of weeks game ‘veterans’ had created guides and FAQ’s to take ‘newbies’ on introductory tours and clarify the game’s many oblique aspects. The hesitant, rumour-spread nature of the game’s emergence demanded group intervention - the banding together of individuals to try and work out what was going on - as well as imbuing the game with the feeling that something radical and new was underway.

The online media’s coverage of the game ensured that a mythology of the game soon appeared. The game’s quest-like call to arms carried into the way introduced as stuff of web ‘lore’; the established importance of the status of who “broke the news first” attributing credibility to those who were in on it from the start. The secondary texts around the game ‘investigated’ the how, where and when people were let in on the big secret. Alternative offerings as to how the game started were offered with all trails leading to the text search engine entry for Jeanine Salla, and nearly all going along with the opinion that the game had been “sparked by eagle eyed film fans” (Ward, April 2001).

Jeanine Salla is credited on the posters and trailers for A.I. as a “Sentient Machine Therapist.” A fictional character, she provided the start of the game with a central focus point - a name easy to remember and easy to look up. Of all the reported ways in to the game, the primary, and most referenced being was email sent on 10^th April 2001 to aintitcool.com by the mysterious Anna Ghaepetto (whose surname, it was to be discovered, was that to which all game sites were registered). Elsewhere, other strategies of incorporation were coming to light; “someone” had noticed the name Jeanine Salla on the credits of A.I.’s trailers and had the presence of mind to challenge the notion of a sentient therapist by using Google (specifically) to search for her. Others had discovered a telephone number on one of the posters, dialled it up and received an email address from a recorded message. After sending an email, they had received a response - an email from the mysterious “Mother” which had notified them that “Jeanine is key.” Those studying one-sheet posters given out in cinemas had noticed circles and squares on the reverse which highlighted the messages “Evan Chan was murdered” and “Jeanine was the key.” All of these paths lead to the same place, the search engine.

Entering “Jeanine Salla” on Google or Yahoo brought up links to the Bangalore World University, her ‘employer.’ Within this site, the player followed could follow the trail to news of the death of her close friend Evan Chan (who had died in mysterious circumstances whilst sailing on his boat, the Cloudmaker). Doing a ‘google search’ soon became the player’s search mode of choice, as they attempted to move outwards from Bangalore via the clues that were threaded through the site. These ways into the game were reported through news distribution sites and discussion boards via aliases and anonymous parties. Due to this, the specifics were somewhat displaced - and the mythology is vague. This confusion only added status to the labyrinthine structure that seemed to have been created right under the noses of web users.

Clues awakening potential players to the presence of the game sites were launched at the beginning of March,[16] but it was not until Ain’titcool became involved that word spread. Ain’titcool is a is a major league fan/breaking news/gossip site (run by Harry Knowles, who has his own online nemesis, Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report[17]); a site abhorred by many in the film industry for providing a housing point for fans to gather and exchange gossip and ‘honest’ reviews of films and spoiler information, but also criticised in the past by the fan community for being under the influence of the studios. It is a well-known ‘underground’ site, not a tiny specialist site, and one likely to be a gathering point for the target audience. Gossip dissemination sites, newspapers and magazines also use the site as a resource - a way to keep an eye on the activities and news of the web ‘anarchists’. Whoever sent those first emails (and addresses let us know that at least one involved direct intervention from the game’s producers) the game was being set in motion from key points of departure - tapping into the ‘word on the street’ that is vital for any successful viral campaign. This choice of entry point was clearly premeditated.

The game sites and references, as in hypertext formations, serve as a “series of discrete lexion linked by overlapping paths” (Murray, 1994, 58) but were transformed into an event through this absorption into the chains of innuendo and gossip of the web. The emergence of the game was an organic process which maximised the architectural playfulness and connectivity of hypertext construction. (Murray, 1997). Its carriers were not only the players, but also the news and entertainment sites and forums that picked up on the game. These ranged from the specific web based journalism (Badsubjects, Wired, Salon.com, E!Online) to traditional press (The Guardian, CNN, BBC, New York Times). Coverage ran from April to July 2001, when previews of A.I. began screening in the U.S. and focus shifted to reviewing the film. Sites like Comingattractions/Darkhorizons had followed the A.I. film for years[18] - from postings about Kubrick’s ideas for the project, through involvement with the game to reviews of the finished product. In contrast to these sites, the SKG A.I. dedicated fansite provided a good example of the appropriation of fan site style by studios - sharing the underground spoiler-discover style and positing itself as a site for speculation and rumors, feeding off other sites in trawling style, but being scattered with references to Dreamworks (“This remarkable studio” April 22^nd 2001) productions, memorabilia, soundtracks and presskits, and integrating the release of films such as Shrek, Minority Report and direct-to-video specials such as Joseph King of Dreams. This coverage markedly tied the game into the production of the studio, configuring it as an object, another text.

To a large extent journalists were the third group of players involved in the game, alongside the producers and responders, attempting to grasp the validity and significance of what was going whilst circulating information. The online reports were important because they provided hypertext links directly into the game - enabling an easy back and forth to sites for interested parties who did not want to have to do any work in accessing them. The positioning of the hypertext link as cheat/spoiler saw some sites holding back, not wishing to spoil the game experience. As Film.com noted: “We’ve been kind of holding back on reporting the A.I. Internet marketing campaign - just because it seemed like something fans should discover on their own.” (Film.com 2001).

Game As Text/As Project

The capacity to represent enormous quantities of information in digital form translates into an artist’s potential to offer a wealth of detail, to represent the world with both scope and particularity... It offers writers the opportunity to tell stories from multiple vantage points and to offer intersecting stories that form a dense and wide-spreading web. (Murray, 1994, 84)

The misleadingly straightforward cinema trailers for A.I. demonstrate the rush of being ‘in’ on the A.I. secret. Like literary paratexts; “liminal devices that mediate the relations between the text and reader”, (Genette quoted in Koenig-Woodyard, 1999), trailers play an important role in targeting and generating a cinema audience. Available to download from the official site and sites like darkhorizons.com, they were the first glimpse that people had of footage from the film. Whilst advertising the film (with classical music, a portentous voice over and a rather cloying style), the A.I. trailers included covert pointers - to parallel texts waiting to be discovered. The hints within these trailers that something unusual was going on was a silent, hidden extra (the Salla credit, the almost indiscernible flashing of letters), the viewer either had to be highly observant and curious or aware of what to look for.

The screenings of the first trailer in the U.S. resulted speculation that Steven Spielberg might have drowned the film in his notorious sentimentality - auteurist fears were immediately raised in bulletin board discussions and news reports.[19] The contrast between the sentimentality of the Spielberg oeuvre (and memories of E.T.) with the cool, intellectual (Kubrickian) atmosphere of the game, was an important factor in the appeal of the campaign. [20] Being given access to a secret narrative, whose perversities and horrors impacted upon the sentimental Pinocchio-esque leanings of the trailers, saw the campaign tying in the fascination of the science fiction micro-world. Although early news coverage linked the narrative of the game sites directly to that of the film (Ward, 2001), it soon became apparent that the game world was a distant relative to that of the film. As such it maintained the layers of secrecy surrounding the film that had already built up because of Kubrick’s previous involvement.

The bricolage of web sites and external references which emerged from these various reports and speculations together created the sort of absorbing, quest-like story (or ‘intricate environment’ Murray, 1994) that invites “participation by offering us many things to keep track of and by rewarding our attention with a constituency of imagination” (Murray, 1994, 111). It maintained the make-believe involvement of identifying with characters and environments, whilst also being studied both as an work of art and in relation to the upcoming film. The game’s formal composition drew from the medium which housed it; taking advantage of the unique interactive and technical aspects of the Web’s ontology in order to create a complex, multidimensional and immersive diegesis and call forth specific forms of responses. Jenkins argues that, to become a ‘cult’ object, a text must:

provide a completely furnished world so that its fans can quote characters and episodes as if they were aspects of the fan’s private sectarian world (Jenkins, 50, 1992)

The game successfully produced such a world; its scope, detail and imagery capturing the imaginations of many players who like fans, were are able to dissect and celebrate their favored texts whilst being “transported” (Gerrig, 1993) by their fictional worlds. The blend of involving sci-fi plotting/writing and impressive aesthetic range with multi-media (and multi-technological) innovation was the reason that the game was soon described as “The Citizen Kane of on-line entertainment” (Simons, 2001).

The A.I. game is set in 2142, within a dark sci-fi future in which the Internet has become “the sphere”, a world divided by the presence of cyborg technology, populated by murderous sexbots and sentient houses: “a bleak America where Anti-Robot Militias are crusading to rid the world of androids, and where sophisticated androids, called A.I.s must flee to Canada via a post-modern underground railroad” (Simons, 2001). The sites display familiar sci-fi and fantasy referents; from the “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” mystery of Twin Peaks, to the paranoia and conspiracy led thinking of the The X-Files - all references familiar to web fans. Here however, “instead of being about the 22^nd century [the sites] are designed as if they’re from that world” (Scott B, 2001) - a world waiting to be discovered. The sites are not supposed to be viewed in isolation, but as part of a mosaic of intertwining references. Because of this, the consideration of the formal nature of the game is dual natured: in a micro perspective the look at individual sites and in a macro perspective, at the bigger picture, the grouping of sites and the connections between them.[21] The enormity of the endeavor is reflected by the fact that the Cloudmakers key text, The Guide, was already 81 pages of listed updates, connections, puzzles and solutions in June, 2 months after the game had started.

The varied “cosmology of game sites” (Burns, 2001) saw individual sites representing the different characters, factions, companies and corporations involved in the game’s narrative arc. The game’s story-lines were brought to life through the discovery of these sites, the solving of puzzles and reading of clues, and the continued close examination of updates and changes. To make the game international there were also sites in French, German and Japanese. By setting up dramatic events such as murders, disappearances, hackers, pro- and anti- AI militant factions and rogue A.I.’s, the game provided a playground for intrigue and speculation. It started as a quest to discover who had killed Evan Chan, but spread out to an examination of the fictional universe and the characters within it. The universe took on mythical status through processes of discussion and debate: characters such as Laia, Martin Swinton, ‘Mother,’ Loki, Venus, Enrico Basta; companies and groups such as Rogue Retrieval, Belladerma, Pan-American Coroners Office, and the activities of the Mowz Hackers - fictional agents who meant nothing to those in the film and everything to the players.

The variety of formal styles and thematic content within these sites not only helped keep the attention of players, but also served to round out the illusion of entering “the sphere” and surfing through the Web of the future. As with the Dawson’s Creek site, the chance to access characters’ inboxes (such as those of Evan Chan and Jeanine Salla) in order to read their emails, let players gain internal perspectives as well as to gain clues and evidence. The sites demanded investigation, many of them requiring attention in order to see that something odd was going on. The game designers utilized the conventions of web design, layouts familiar to web users; from the bland professionalism of uninspiring corporate sites to the “chatty style and snapshot illustrations” of homepages (Butler, 2001). The reality-effect was propagated by the depth of content, and the documents which could be retrieved, including coroners reports and official documentation. Within these formal archetypes however, secrets were waiting to be discovered and connections to be inferred. Points of entry into the sites were provided by search boxes and password entry points, telephone numbers to call and email addresses to contact - all of these waiting to be activated. The imbedding of clues within the sites (and the required extraction of them) meant that the onus was very much on the player. The project could not be watched - a suspension of disbelief and imaginative involvement with the text would not suffice alone - as an analytical and scholarly approach was necessary for progression. Otherwise little would happen. Many of the clues contained self-referential elements : allusions to Pinocchio (Ghaepetto as a play on Geppetto the maker of the boy who, like the Haley Joel Osment character in the film A.I., would be real); to the presence of the Red King from Alice in Wonderland as a central figure (who “appears in Alice in Wonderland amidst questions on the nature of reality, presumably one of A.I.’s central themes” (Wistreich, 2001)).

The extreme difficulty of the puzzles meant that individual progression was almost impossible. The game’s taxing nature demanded “collective brain power” (Robertson, 2001) - the support and teamwork of a group response. [22] The fact that the temporal boundaries of the sites were fluid, with updates, the disappearance of links and arrival of new content, meant that a ‘communal eye’ was needed to keep watch. A range of deduction strategies was required to solve puzzles, alongside technical skills (running anagram programs and hacking into sites), and linguistic capabilities in order to translate documents. In order to work out passwords and to make inferences a vast range of knowledge was called upon: of the periodic table, Greek mythology, Mathematics, Shakespeare. Clues were embedded into the ‘meat’ of the sites, the html, and encrypted pages were only viewable through coding. The game took lateral thinking to the extreme and the Cloudmakers rose to the challenge with gusto. They created a vast mindset, a team of researchers able to crack problems and fill the gaps within the text through deduction as well as through trial and error. Their attention to detail became notorious and was carried into press coverage: “One clue came out after game players zoomed in on a tiny screen in a photo, ran it through the software program MS Paint, and discovered a message invisible to the human eye.” (Mathews, 2001a).

The paperchase construction of the game meant that whilst part of the whole, each discovery of a URL was an isolated form of payoff - rewards, as in the playing of a computer game, spread through the game experience to maintain play value. The primacy effect is potent on the web and the arrival at new game sites backed up Murray’s description of the pleasure of arrival during surfing. Here, this arrival was tied into a successful act of discovery by the players. Levy’s essay The Art of Cyberspace investigates how cyberspace, an environment in which “creative effort is shifting away from the messages towards the devices, the processes and languages, the dynamic architectures and environments” (Levy, 1996, 366) is affecting the notion of a work of art. In cyberspace, he argues, rather than creating a text/product which is then received, the artist (producer) instead:

attempts to establish an environment, an arrangement of communication and production, a collective event which involves the recipients, transforms interpreters into players, and places the interpretation in the same loop as the collective paradigm. (Levy, 1996, 367)

As much process as product, the game breaks down the distinctions between “emission and reception, creation, and creation” - the type of “art of involvement” described by Levy which: “places us in a creative cycle, in a living environment in which we are always already co-authors.” (Ibid.)

The game used many technical aspects of the Web in order to challenge and inspire its ‘co-authors’ - from pop-up windows (superstitials), flash design, audiovisual effects, banners and error pages as covert sites, keywords and search boxes - an eclectic multimedia approach to persuade click-through and attention. Intrusive and challenging email auto-responders and hacked deconstructed sites brought drama to a multi-layered presentation of a world - one embedded in the electronic sphere and thus ephemeral and intriguing. Part of the ‘experience’ element of the game, that transformed it from just being about puzzles was the generation of suspense and surprise through use of sound and staging of interruptions through the use of pop-up windows. The use of the “startle effect” (Baird, 2001) to shock those playing perhaps late at night merged generic conventions from both the film and Web mediums. It used timing and exposition to create physical, visceral responses - the pacing of direct manipulation of the player’s emotions invoking participatory responses (Gerrig, 1993). Just as in a horror film these moments were dependent on timing, theatrics based around sensation and hinting at off-screen space - as if more interruptions could come in from the web at any moment. These intrusions are familiar to any web user used to pop up advertorials - but the content (autopsy photos and threatening messages[23]) was unnerving, presenting the web as a haunted space.

Despite these supernatural, theatrical elements, the game could be a project because it was built upon a rationalist grounding, the fact that the secrets were revealed via the application of logic and reason. Katz argues that in specialist forums (and, almost in spite of the face of disorganisation and a “brawling and ill-defined Web”), the Web is hosting the emergence of a new rationalism based on instantaneity and the ‘democratic’ flow of information (Katz, April 1997). This rationalist stance is applicable to the A.I. game - a process of teamwork and educated guesswork. The elements that make the Web such a battleground for ascertaining truth also makes it the perfect place for the acquisition of knowledge. The game uses this - to inspire involvement and also to invoke paranoia - what is being missed, and what is relevant, whilst ensuring that the players believe that through determination and hard work they will be able to solve it. In this way agency shifted clearly to the audience.

Gary Saul Morson’s distinguishing between product (artefact-structure) and process (moment-by-moment identification) is useful in this context. Like the characters in a book, the players were at first unaware of the shape of the structure around them. The basis of their mode of reference was the process – all they could do was document what they knew, without knowing where it would lead them. The player’s had an internal view of the process, whilst the game had an “open future” (Morson, 1994, 43). In order to bring forth the sort of interactive involvement the game demanded, it had to be relatively open in structure - a formal construction in which speculation could be a key building block. The game sites display this through their polysemic nature - open to interpretation and calling for the making of assumptions (Fiske, in Pullen, p.54). Playing was thus a producerly process, the intertwined strands of the game ridden with gaps requiring activation. (Pullen, 54). A mode of agency that the viewer is not often called to demonstrate, but the fan and computer game player is more familiar with.

The possibility of textual analysis of the web sites is complicated by the fact that they are tied into a game-system played out into the real world via the use of ‘old’ communication technologies - telephone numbers to call and messages to hear. Following registration on certain sites players received incoming material from the ‘real’ world. At a meeting of the ‘Anti-Robot Militia’ (played by actors) in New York: “clues abounded: a half-burnt note in the men’s bathroom, torn fragments of a book, and a ‘help wanted’ posting in the bar” (Parker, 05.08.01) and references were made at an M.I.T. press conference/screening in which Kathleen Kennedy the film’s producer, gave out the business cards of Jeanine Salla.

The upcoming interactive computer game Majestic (EA, 2001) has been linked to the A.I. project - suggesting a trend which may herald the future of computer game and online entertainment. Majestic also blurs reality and fiction by combining the “existing tools and content of the web with groundbreaking interactive technology” (Moriarty, Ain’titcool, May 2001) - using telephone calls/faxes and pagers, AOL Instant Messenger and Multimedia capabilities, as well as the involvement of live actors to spread the game out into the real world. Once paid up and registered, the Majestic player is emerged in a personalised solo experience similar to that featured in the film The Game. By analysing the information and messages you receive, the player unravels the story/mystery, which is imbued with conspiracy theories and paranoia. The company behind Majestic, EA, has set up “dummy corporations, with real phone numbers... and fake websites, containing a mix of real and fictional information, which aim to provide clues and draw you into the story” (Sammons, DailyRadar) - these “conduits” drive the player “through a plot of deception and intrigue.” (Sammons, DailyRadar.) EA says this is a new generation, a game made especially for the online experience.[24] Unfortunately, outside of the computer game press, the emergence of the A.I. game has somewhat taken the shine off of Majestic’s novelty. A.I. might not have offered as personalised an experience, but it did integrate all of the elements of Majestic into a free form of communal entertainment....

The Cloudmakers

The digital young are bright. They are not afraid to challenge authority. They take noones word for anything. They embrace interactivity - the right to shape and participate in their media... [the] sense of novelty, of building something different” (Katz 1997)

Just as texts need readers/viewers, games are reliant on players to bring them to life. The A.I. game is tied into both the text which it supports and into a mode of fandom - with the players demonstrating a fan-type approach and an obsessional devotion to a cause. Because of the way it emerged from the grapevine, those who learnt of it first thus were also those most likely to be embedded in fan culture, the ‘serious’ web users most likely to take up the call to participate - the curious and knowledge hungry rather than those who prefer to read about the activities of others.

Within days of the posting to Ain’titcool, an official groups of players had formed, ‘The Cloudmakers.’ They were linked by their common enjoyment of the game, their interest in media and culture and a shared manner of approach. Throughout, they celebrated their communal resourcefulness - often acknowledging that the game demanded a group mind response. Notions of collective intelligence may once have seemed been laughable in the context of a marketing strategy but as the game actively encouraged this notion, so too the Cloudmakers acknowledged and forwarded the idea of communal problem solving. Acknowledging, and challenged by, the fact that the game demanded a group response, they celebrated the ‘intelligence’ and ‘skill’ of the virtual unit that they had created. Their activities demonstrated a clinical approach to textual analysis and problem solving: incorporating the skills of fans/web aficionados (searching / analysing / speculating / creating) with the technical skills, classical knowledge and clinical approach of the computer-literate scientist/mathematician/academic.

The key Cloudmakers, the moderators[25], proved to be bright, young, and media literate, skilled in ways of dealing with the press as well as in consuming and generating media products. In the process they gained high (online) media profiles. Whilst imposing policies around key issues such as spoiling and posting, and writing the indispensable guides/trails and setting up affiliate web pages, they actively took role in an ongoing public relations exercise. Liasing with the press they put forth their views on both the game and the Cloudmakers as a virtual army of detectives and, in turn, generated further media coverage. Importantly for those interested in the game, they also maintained a web page listing all press coverage of the game (www.cloudmakers.org/media/) - with Cloudmakers from around the world emailing in news of additional references.[26]

The Cloudmakers were united by bulletin board (http://cloudmakers.restraint.org/) and yahoo community site (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cloudmakers) as well as the official web site (www.cloudmakers.org). The chatroom offered ‘live’ chat - both instantaneous and reactive - helping to build the feeling of a ‘real’ community. These forums served as base for group distillation of the game sites and housed the discussion and exchange which lead to their building the game through discovery. Taking the game on as a project, the hyper-enthusiasm they showed betrayed a barely-covered joy at being given a project worthy of the skills they had been demonstrating in the more unfocused/channelled nature of web-involvement. In interviews, the Cloudmakers demonstrated a mixture of pride that others were following the game with the desire to protect the workings of the game and the investigation. As one member allegedly said:

when this breaks it will change everything. We’ve managed to keep this thing pretty well organized thanks to the hard work of a few individuals and a co-operative spirit... Personally, I hope we can keep this underground. We probably can’t though. So, to all of us ‘old timers’ I say, be prepared for a flood of newbies. Please try to treat them nicely. (Wistreich, 2001)

The pleasure of communal participation saw the groups social identity becoming the element which solidified the game after the novelty of the puzzles had begun to wear off - the move to meetings and talk of conventions and the idea of perhaps creating their own games...

With so much uncertainty about who was behind the game (everyone knew it was a marketing campaign but who were the twisted geniuses behind it? Kubrick? Spielberg? Microsoft? Warner Bros?) the Cloudmakers gave the game’s creators a name, ‘The Puppetmasters’. Respect was demonstrated between the Puppetmasters (repeatedly praised for providing the greatest roller coaster ride ever) - and the players (without whom, the game would have been nothing). They formed two tribes united by the mutually dependent obsession with creating/revealing a technical experiment in storytelling/marketing as a work of art. The relationship demonstrated the way that producers and audience on the Web are intertwined and the merging of texts: with the audience recovering and bringing to life the game text.

Jeanine Salla’s ‘essay’ Multi-Person Problem Solving Arrays Considered As A Form Of Artificial Intelligence, linked directly to Cloudmakers.org, the homepage of the Cloudmakers. This demonstrated the acknowledgement of the activities of the players, suggested that this sort of response had been expected, and recognised the responsive relationship between the two. This textual linking of producers and receptors, saw the game developers incorporating “fan websites and conspiracy theories into the evolving story-line” (Robischon, 2001). The interactivity worked two ways with the game’s producers reacting to the activities of the players: for example the incorporation of a player’s pseudo-game site (www.for-evan.com) into the game - which resulted in its creator being assumed to be part of the game by newbie’s.[27] This relationship suggested that whilst the developers undoubtedly had a surplus of knowledge and storylines that they were working to, the structure of content and timing was by necessity flexible and in some ways organic. Whereas the future in a novel “has the full substantiality of a past event” (Morson, 1994, 49), the game’s future appeared to be determinate upon the progress of the players. When the players slowed, ot got stuck, further clues and ‘hints’ were added. The process of narrating is in this way taken from the computer game construction, playability demanding a structure which could incorporate the deviations of the player and a responsive ‘author’ empowered by digital meldability.

Proud of their achievements, the Cloudmakers expressed themselves an elite - like the participants of pemberley.com aligning with the subcultural model described by Grossberg by which “fans constitute an elite fraction of the larger audience of passive consumers” (Grossberg, 1992, 52) - a group with their own criteria and focus. Their description of their activity in their welcome page is different to that of pemberley.com - less of a warm and friendly place, and more of an intellectual hot house:

The Cloudmakers bring together diverse skills ranging from cutting edge spectral analysis to a unique and unrivalled knowledge of historical events and world literature. Two heads may be better than one, but thousands combine to form the ultimate crimesolving syndicate” (www.cloudmakers.org)

There words and discussions revealed a great deal about the group, revealing their elitist sensibility - banding about words like “cutting edge” “groundbreaking” and “unrivalled.” They debated the ethics of game - whether hacking and the use of registration sites to identify game sites were using legitimate modes of involvement. They also set the game in opposition to Majestic- demonstrating their awareness of what else was going on the web and gaming community. Whilst spawning groups who were willing to mock this self-granduising element, they saw themselves as able to resource what ever needs they had from the abilities of their team: web design and writing skills, puzzle freaks and fiction writers, flash designers, film students and computer technicians. Together they believed they formed the type of multiplayer online community which:

explores and extends the digital frontier - pushing new technology to its performance limit, creating effective ecommerce, and building immersive electronic worlds. (Berry, Oct 1997)

Their words revealed them to be demonstrating how fan activity can merge with technological skills - in forming a group that echoes Jordan’s description of emerging new elite’s; one “whose greater expertise, allows them to manipulate cyberspace’s technology,” an elite “based on expertise or the control of expertise” (Jordan, 1999, 101).

The creation of editorials (and drinking games and communal joke texts[28]) helped the group build a communal inclusiveness. It also helped them to get their bearings within the game world. As Murray describes:

In a complex narrative world we can reinforce our belief by writing scholarly analyses or fanzine articles that analyze the underlying assumptions of the world. (Murray, 1994, 110)

Indeed the game was so complex - with chains of interlinking clues and references that the documentation of the game by moderators ( The Trail and The Guide) was vital to be able to enter and follow what been happening. Editorials written by key players examined the key issues, “studied” the game, and put forward their view of what has been going on - rather than just leaving it to the journalists to apply external perspectives. Jenkins argument that fandom “provides a space wherein which fans may articulate their specific concerns” (Jenkins, 1992, 283) is useful in regards to the beliefs and concerns revealed in their writings. The editorials contained references which tell us about the types of people that were playing key roles in this collective. The Editorial Only Solutions written by Rich Stoehr (2001), contains references to Tim Berners-Lee’s book Weaving the Web, compares Jeanine Salla to Rosalind Picard “the ‘Mother’ of Affective Computing at MIT,” and discusses the game experience, newbies and The Trail It closes with the following passages, words which speak volumes - showing an awareness of the players’ agency and a techno/socio utopianist self-belief:

I walk among my fellows, my compatriots, with eyes wide in wonder, watching as connections grow and strengthen, branching and branching and branching again to form complex lines in three dimensions, then four, then five, Geometries unheard of, never-seen or long-forgotten, surface in the connectivity, the unity of this world, this group, this mind, that is many, and one. This is the way it should be, I think. This is the way it has always been. We just don’t know it.

And there it is. Perfect in a simple unity, glittering before me as it moves and grows, there is the solution to all of it. The solution to all of it. The solutions do not lie in the puzzles we are presented with, they lie in the connections we make, between the ideas and between one another. These are what will last. I look down at myself and see that I, too, have been incorporated into the whole, connections flowing to me and from me, ideas flowing freely as we work together, as individuals and as a group, to solve the challenges we are presented with.

The solution, however, does not lie in the story.

We are the solution.

(Stoehr, 26^th July 2001)

Uncertainties

The scope and immersion of the game within cyberspace means that without the activities of the Cloudmakers the game would be almost unfollowable - “out there” but not visible. The Cloudmaker’s attempt to define the boundaries of the game, instilling order from a chaotic environment and bringing clarity to the ways that the game’s formal elements dwelt upon uncertainty. The ‘concrete’ activities of the Cloudmakers were, however, undermined by the ontology of the web which imbues consideration of the game with uncertainty and ties it into realm of postmodernism. The game cannot be examined without bringing in the consideration of postmodernism; whose multiple surfaces and overload of signifiers inform the game’s aesthetics and formal construction. Taking its architecture from its postmodern host, the game was set within an environment which provides: “problematic diffusions, dispersals, dissemination... a patina of thought, of signifiers, of ‘connections’” (Hassan, Jencks, 198). The game’s overabundance of signifiers, the shift from finished work to performance and process (Harvey, in Jenks, 304), its microworlds, and breaking down of boundaries between fact and fiction tied the game to the postmodern whilst the barrage of data and spectacle, set the certainties of the game into doubt. As Dean notes:

Anxiety about the World Wide Web tends to centre on its excesses, on the overabundance of information, the overstimulation of graphics and gimmicks, the multiplicity of links. (Dean, 63)

There are numerous problems to be faced by those studying Internet phenomenon like the A.I. game. The who’s, why’s and where’s are difficult to ascertain - due to the lack of a workable “digital identity infrastructure” (Birch, Aug, 160) and the Web being a site full of avatars, bogus events (such as the online diaries of Kaycee Nicole), masks and falsities - the whole overwhelmed by deluge of information.

The game’s sites shared an uncanny element that seeps from the web - which is filled with unsuitably personal effects set out for public consumption. The sense of unease that these sites created from the use of photography (of death and automatons) and nearly-right references, language and imagery helped to create an ‘unheimlich’ aesthetic. The notion of the double tied into theories of the uncanny seems particularly pertinent here - for the pseudo-authentic nature of these sites instilled unease and a sense of foreboding. A comparison of some of the web pages from the game site with those of Clonaid.com, a ‘real’ site (Appendix B) shows the difficulty of ascertaining truth from the fiction. The aura of a Web is far removed from notions of ‘reality’ and many sites stumbled upon whilst surfing the Web are display twisted aesthetics. Surreal and disturbing juxtapositions of the personal and private abound as well as the perverse inclinations of individuals. Reality often seems displaced from the images on the screen. Because of this, the game sites emerge as ghost-like doubles from the swirling activities of the web. Entering the mailbox of a ‘dead’ person - via a corporate site and yet reading emails with references to Alice in Wonderland and emails from “Mother” about a child that must be punished, instills and almost gothic sense of dread within a ‘realistic’ aesthetic. The sites are discernible as somehow different from those around them - a b-list aesthetic, a mundane glossiness in contrast to the most corporate website. But on the Web, as Clonaid.com demonstrates, one can never be sure... This unease increases as the game seeps out from the computer screen into the players private world.

The sites were presented as representing real companies, people, events and the merging of fantasy and reality was carried over into real world official comments from those closest to the film. The stars and the Dreamworks studio refused to acknowledge its existence[29] and in interviews, Hailey Joel Osment spoke of Jeanine Salla as if she were a real person - not a character created by a team of writers and developers. The parameters of the game were not acknowledged by the polished, high-production valued official Web site for the film - whose Chatbot was most unhelpful. As with The Blair Witch Project the creators fed the myth by refusing to acknowledge it, instead letting it create“its own reality and [allowing] the Net Surfer to tap into it” (Butler, May 11, 2001) . The ill-defined borders of the game and the control issues involved fed into the postings and speculations. These served to highlighted the innocuous names of posters to bulletin boards and hosting sites - who were these people and what were their status (were they being paid?)? People like ‘Lord Bullingdom’ ‘Darthnub’ ‘The Underground Man’ ‘Spy in LA’ ‘Holderccc’ - fantasy figures whose identities are unattainable. In the very first days of the game, before the Cloudmakers had become the team of choice, leads and coverage came from figures on bulletin boards such as Bradee-oh (who alterted Comingattractions.com to the game on 10^th April) and nachoworld (who mailed slashdot.com only days after the game first emerged and was very well informed knowing that there were “hundreds” of game pages to discover, meaningful notches in posters and telephone numbers - remarking that this involved only “3%” of the information “out there” and that people should check out Aintitcool.com. to find out more).

The game developers used this uncertainty to increase the game’s status - a method whereby inferences could spread out so that even sites which had nothing to do with the game fed the players hunger and generated speculation. Murray writes that:

”..to the postmodernist writer, confusion is not a bug but a feature. In the jargon of the postmodern critics, Joyce is intentionally “problematizing” our expectations of storytelling, challenging us to construct our own text from the fragments he has provided” (Murray, 1994, 58).

The game as text is structured from such fragments and also imbued with confusion and semiotic uncertainties. These gaps are also, however, those needed for detective play/fiction - as well as for narrative in general - for the attempt to fill in gaps and uncover secrets and ‘clues’ is part of the reception, the ‘making’ of stories and dramas. The “postmodern” questions surrounding A.I.s mysteries were more focused on the status of meaning - the question whilst playing as to whether the game was empty - as in the Twin Peaks mystery of “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” - could all this effort and the attempt to instil and utilise logic and relativist thinking be based on something without logic, a metaphysical mystery - to be explained away as a surface? Harvey’s discussion of meaning in postmodern culture sees him refers back to Jameson who:

has been particularly emphatic as to the ‘depthlessness’ of much of contemporary cultural production, its fixation with appearances, surfaces and instant impacts that have no sustaining power over time. (Harvey, 1992, 312)

The game only needed to sustain the players for the duration of its run - approximately 5 months. During this time, the players displayed a sense of trust not only about the community but also that they would not be let down by the text, which seemed to stem from the presumption that as it was linked to artists such as Kubrick and Spielberg (!) the narrative would have an integrity which would reward their efforts. One the Web, as with the game, “responsibility for determining truth rests as much with those who consume information as with those who produce it.” (Shapiro, 1999, 136) Within the Cloudmakers group, there was a sense of trust involved in choosing to enter a community “with common values and specific goals....that the people in [this] ‘space’ are talking sense” (Eco quoted in Coppock, 1995). Whilst the press was often cynical:

Is it all part of a million-dollar Internet PR campaign for the film? Or are Web heads spinning their own cyber fantasy? (Trattori, 2001)

The Cloudmakers dealt with this question with the response “Who cares?” regarding the Puppetmasters (whoever they were) as praiseworthy adversaries, and the quality of entertainment negating any of these questions. The strength of the game for them linked promise and pay-off[30] and thus saw the uncertain environment as providing ideal playground for their beloved game. Indeed, for keen game players, the major problem with the intangible nature of the web was that the things that made the game such a rush - its dynamic transitory nature filled with developments and disappearances - also mean that the game might also be transitory, something to mourn. This fear came through strongly in suggestion from ‘Longway Home’ that:

If the game IS almost over...then maybe we ought to archive the game as a memento. I mean... what if one day we log-in to Cloudmakers and everything is just GONE (maybe even cloudmakers.org;) ? No more game... vanished without a trace back to the future. I wouldn’t put it past ’em [the Puppetmasters]. Should we take a family “snapshot” to remember it all by, or at least part of it. (email posting to Cloudmakers.org, ‘archiving pages (Re: It’s all over)’ Thursday 21^st June 2001 07:58:15 -0000)

Conclusion

The Web has transformed fandom and nurtured the creation of new communities. In the process, conventional fan activities have been confronted with a deluge of information and misinformation. Whilst dealing with these changes, fans have grasped the technology available far quicker than the studios, who have attempted to contain their more anarchic endeavors. The A.I. game is indicative of a change of attitude and approach to fan activities. It demonstrated a sub-culture being used to fuel the hype machine. By manipulating the online rumor mill and challenging the fan and gaming communities, the game secured prestige for both the film and the campaign itself. The game demonstrated the textual hybridization of media forms the Web enables: the merging of the multiplayer online game, postmodern charade, detective investigation and marketing ploy. Demonstrating the possibilities for postmodern, communal entertainment projects online it invited performance; demanding “to be written, revised, answered, acted out” (Hassan, 1992, 198).

In recuperating the unruly audience to support the mythology of the text, the game recognized and played to the skills and enthusiasm of fans and ‘serious’ web users. The reliance upon the agency of fans served as a marker of the shift from the ‘active’ audience posited by reception studies to the pro-active viewer that has become ever more visible online. The reciprocal relationship between the producers and fans/players highlighted the ways that life online can be a participatory experience. It also demonstrated the breakdown of official and unofficial discourse stemming from the removal of the editorial barrier and the instantaneous nature of web ‘talk.’

An evolving process running through chains of conversation and references, the game is not an easy object to map or analyze. Made up of multiple, changing and hidden texts, the game’s labyrinthine composition called upon the fluctuating, decentered nature of the Web and the ease by which fantasy and reality can be merged within its margins. The scattering of clues and references through the “sphere” created a voyage of discovery, highlighting the transitional nature of surfing the Web. The Cloudmaker’s enthusiastic, response demonstrated the actions of a sophisticated, obsessional audience rising to the challenge whilst celebrating their abilities, and their role in bringing the game to life through the ‘mastery’ of the text.

.

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A.I. GAME WEB SITES

See AI game archive @: http://www.geocities.com/nwhitemanai1/

Cloudmakers Sites

About Us - http://www.cloudmakers.org/

Contact Details - http://www.cloudmakers.org/contact/

Collective Detective Database: http://www.taxicafe.com/cbbd/welcome.php

FAQ - http://www.cloudmakers.org/faq

The Guide - http://www.cloudmakers.org/guide/index.shtml

Media Coverage - http://www.cloudmakers.org/media

Meeting Gallery - http://www.taxicafe.com/cbbd/meeting.php

Getdrunk - http://www.cloudmakers.org/toyland/drinkinggame.shtml

“Shock as Muppet Kermit Admits To A.I. Mastery” - http://www.cloudmakers.org/toyland/shock/

The Trail - http://www.cloudmakers.org/trail/

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[1] Throughout this dissertation I refer to the A.I. game in the past tense - primarily to configure it as an object of study. The game ran from April to late August and loose ends only are being tied up as I write. The web pages are, however, still accessible. I include a list of the game sites in the bibliography and a selection of print outs in Appendix A.

[2] Splinter-groups playing the game, such as Spherewatch and the humorous Troutmakers, played a supporting role but relied upon the Cloudmakers for game resources and knowledge.

[3] The “narrative node” points that help “map out the basic network of the narrative” (Caldwell, html, 1999)

[4] See Buckingham, 2000, 82 for discussion of the convergence between old and new mediums.

[5] The bargaining of search engine positioning through payment for registration with search engines for example, is one way that major sites can ensure dominance.

[6] See Clerc, 1996.

[7] Such as the recent “Who Shot Phil Mitchell” storyline on the BBC’s soap Eastenders - the vast majority of Eastenders fans could not help but learn of his fate in advance

[8] As the website explains “Ever wished you could see inside someone’s computer? Someone like one of your favorite characters on Dawson’s Creek? Well, here’s your chance!.. you can delve into their journals, instant message chats - even their trash cans!... and since Dawson and his friends are often online, there’s something new every day!” (www.dawsonsdesktop.com/index.html accessed 10/10/00)

[9] Niche being: a “small target group [with] special requirements” Grayson et al, britannica.com.

[10] For example the recent focus on pro-anorexia sites as providing alternative meeting points.

[11] Alongside these, quirky character-based campaigns such as the Hang Dierdre Rachid Campaign have offered a more humorous perspective.

[12] For mainstream print media, the World Wide Web isn’t the information superhighway promised by Al Gore and Newt Gingrich. Instead, it’s a vast repository of porn and drivel. This lament is typically followed by the observation that home pages tend to feature photos of pets or Beanie Babies, that more people use the Web to fawn over celebrities and document UFO sightings than, say, to grapple with the constitutional implications of a recent Supreme Court decision. (Dean, 2000)

[13] For example the distinguishing between: Casual viewing (specific show not “special event” but part of flow), devoted engagement (show = special event that must not be missed, encouraged by networks) or avid fans (watch and tape, show kind of “quasi-religious experience,”) the latter more likely to be members of fan clubs/online discussion groups (Reeves, Rodgers and Epstein, 1996, 26).

[14] The site links the process of becoming part of pemberley.com as a form of initiation similar to the “culturally accepted norm of waiting until you have been on a new job for a while before you begin to say how the workplace should be changed”. (www.pemberley.com/faq/html)

[15] Illusions of power and superiority have resulted in competitiveness and conflict emerging from enthusiasm - as demonstrated by recent evidence of unofficial Buffy The Vampire Slayer webmasters aiding the Fox network’s attempt to control such sites by sending out fake legal threats to fellow (opposing) webmasters (Armstrong, 2001) - this self-protection hardly demonstrates an “us against the system” perspective.

[16] See Simons “Discovering The Alternative Universe of A.I.” (June 2001)

[17] For example the heated argument between Drudge and Knowles after Drudge revealed the ‘secret’ ending of Planet of The Apes on his site.

[18] One of the strengths of these sites is that they enable the fan to track projects and rumored projects over years - seeing how events transform from initial idea to finished product - revealing about industry and quirks of actors and directors etc.

[19] “In Spielberg’s hand, the Pinocchio-like story of yearning to become human could well be a license for some of the most outrageous, manipulative smaltz seen in recent years.” (Observer, 27 May 2001)

[20] The dawning of realization that something up noted in two online Empire reports the first that notes that the teaser trailer is “ambiguously soppy” (Empire: A.I. Unrevealed) and the second being impressed that had missed something: “While at first, the trailer might seem a little underwhelming, it would seem to contain the most elaborate, and down right mysterious, promotional campaign we’ve ever seen.” (Empire: The A.I. Mystery,)

[21] The scavenger hunt approach had also been appropriated by the largely ignored Plant of the Apes campaign which ran concurrently but was trapped by its one-note idea - missing a fictional world to get involved in it failed to capture the imagination.

[22] Indeed Harry Knowles saw the game as a challenge to his activities, noting:

“If you read all the web pages its so much more intelligent, in terms of written style, and the research is far more intensive, than anything I’ve ever seen... Everything has been calculated so well to throw people like me off.” (Knowles quoted in Clewley, 2001)

[23] “GET OUT. THEY ARE SMARTER THAN YOU. YOU WILL BE BROKEN.”

[24] It’s the first game that calls you, the first game that calls you, the first game that faxes you, the first game that reaches out into your life and connects with you. It’s an online entertainment experience, created specifically for the medium of the Internet, and it combines gameplay and storytelling that unfolds at an unpredictable real-time, real world pace. (Neil Young, Vice President and Executive in Charge of Production at EA quoted in Akinnuso, 2001)

[25] The moderators were: Irwin Dolobowsky, Dan Fabulich, Adrian Hon, Bronwen Liggitt, Andrea Philips, Cabel Sasser and Brian Seitz.

[26] My own offering remains on the list for posterity.

[27] “I’m getting all these e-mails saying ‘Are you a robot? Are you human?... I just say ‘I’m a friend of Evan.” (Cabel Sasser, executive at PanicInc, a software firm in Portland Ore. Quoted in Anna Wilde Mathews, April 30)

[28] Drinking games “getdrunk” - getting drunk on own via reading messages posted on boards - key words and topics that crop up. Creating texts for the group to enjoy - like fan fiction. Jokes - such as “Shock as Muppet Kermit Admits to A.I. Mastery” (cloudmakers.org/toyland/shock). And more conventional in-jokes drawing on a groupmind sensibility (such as “You know you’ve been reading Cloudmakers too long when....”)

[29] “The official comment from Warner Bros. is ‘no comment.’” (Means, June 24, 2001)

[30] For discussion of the relationship between promise and fulfillment see Gerrig, 1993.