COMMUNITY

In the short burst of LOST memory articles and posts on the interwebs, there is one thing that everyone can agree on: the lasting legacy of LOST was that it built communities of fans who followed the show.

It is one thing to discuss an episode of a show or sporting event next to the water cooler the next morning. That has happened from the dawn of television to today. But the LOST experience went from a one-time, casual conversation with co-workers or friends, to dedicated sites where people interacted, discussed, debated, argued and flipped out over story details for the six days  in between episodes.

This is why LOST has even today so much deep meaning for many people. These community experiences bonded in our inner core. It changed how we looked at television shows. It made us change how we discussed our favorite TV show. It changed  how we digested the show. In the past, entertainment was called the "boob tube" because it was a one-and-one flash of content that was meant to be consumed and slowly forgotten by the time the next show appeared on the TV screen. It was the functional equivalent of brain candy. But LOST made most of us think, and think hard about what was on the screen.

It made some of us dust off old science text books to re-learn concepts of space, space-time and ancient civilizations. Homework is something not connected with television viewing. In fact, it is the polar opposite: kids used TV to avoid doing homework. The first example of this was the appearance of the charging polar bear. WTH? How could a polar bear be living on a Pacific tropical island? Common sense would dictate that polar bears could not survive on the island. Research on the topic would yield information such as this : When you look at the polar bear's white fur under a microscope, it is actually clear tubes, almost glass-like in a sense, that they refract sunlight onto the skin. It's a little like burning ants under a magnifying glass. All those picture we see of polar bears looking playful as they roll and slide on the snow, they are actually cooling themselves off. And from this information, one could start further research to speculation on how the polar bears could survive in hot climates. Then one considers that polar bears live in zoos located in hot weather zones, there has to be a scientific answer for such adaptation.  It was the foreshadowing of the Dharma experiments. It was those type of connect-the-dots thinking that made on-line communities so vibrant.

In reading many comments and posts, the thing most fans miss most about LOST is their fan communities. There was nothing left to discuss after the finale after people expressed their opinions on whether they liked or hated the ending. A few tried to keep their groups going by trying to move their tribe to new sci-fi or drama shows, but it did not have the same appeal as LOST.