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SEASON 2: Australia
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So we broke the news about the Survivor 2 contestants and it made a lot of news articles, radio shows, etc. Reporters were calling me, which was pretty freaky. I answered print media but stayed away from TV and radio. Some queen from the Early Show called me at work and was upset when I declined.

Eventually a lot of that died down, and I just reported the news and didn't do much spoiling. However, during this season there was a lot of controversy about Peter breaking the news about Stacey Stillman alleging the show was manipulated by the producers. Stacey, Peter and CBS were in one giant melee, and eventually Stacey sued. In the discovery phase a letter from Dirk Been, written to Burnett following the taping, talked about the producers swaying votes, i.e. convincing himself and Sean to vote Stacey off and keep Rudy for the ratings. I don't know if she won that law suit, but she didn't lose. I suspect they settled with a non-disclosure, but I could be wrong.

Meanwhile, the Ellipsiiis Brain Trust (EBT) was having an uncanny ability to pick the boots each week, and one week even had challenge info. At first I didn't know or think much about it. I made the mistake of accepting an Admin position at Votedoff and was busy putting those bitches fires out (most people there were cool, but you know who you are). The EBT were in a weird position of feeling the need to pretend that they were figuring the boots out each week without a source, I guess because some were worried about legal ramifications, but also some of them may have also been motivated by ego. This upset people like Gator (of "I deleted those posts" fame) who is a pretty smart guy and won my game a couple times. Some people like Crops like coming over to VO and rubbing it in. Liquidstar was this neurotic guy who was posting nice stuff to us and then posting snarky stuff in private at EBT (as reported by my mole). He hacked into the VO admin board by getting ahold of Gummiwormz password. I don't remember how we figured this out, but we did. Griftd didn't let us post about EBT on Sucks, which made it fun to try and also post about EBT on my own site.

Meanwhile, with and without EBT, there were other connections in the Survivor online community that was becoming pretty combative and freaky. I'm surprised few if any of the brinkmanship spilled over into RL. The VO board got DOS'd. My site went down, and people thought I got DOS'd. The day it went down, some guy called me on my cell phone while I was sitting at Burger King, asking why the site was down. He didn't identify who he was.

Nearing the end of the season Darkrivers, who was the EBT source, and I started talking. He felt bad about all the fighting and gave me the finale spoiler to report. I reported it on Sucks and most people ignored it. Owen93 had to bump it. It was pretty weird.

The S2 finale came and went. I was tired. I was over it. I was ready to quit, then Season 3 came.



eta: Man, I sure screwed that up. I gotta fix it.
brb

SEASON 3: AFRICA
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During Season 3 taping Big Loser posted on Sucks about Lindsey Richter being on the show. I did some quick research and found her photo, etc. I would hear from BL later, and Lindsey. After learning Lindsey's AOL ID, I chatted with her and she gave a non-denial denial about being on the show. I knew she was on.

The contestants were spoiled by someone (at the EBT) who discovered that someone (CBS/SEG?) had registered the name of a contestant for a website. They looked at the hotmail e-mail address of the registrant, guessed "survivor" as the password, and logged in. Then went the domain registrant, used the "forgot password" feature to e-mail a new password, and logged in to find all the domain names, and thus all the contestant names. Lindsey was among them. Spoiling was getting pretty ballsy now. So, all the contestant names were spoiled again, but from a much different methodology.

There was a lot of contestant research and photos that surfaced. Somehow I got mixed up with Star Magazine.

Much of the rest of Survivor 3 was a spoilers nightmare. DarkRivers was sitting back and exposing the myth of the EBT, while everyone was getting the picks wrong. Later, I had a small spoiler. That was Lindsey was hospitalized during the taping of the show. BL provided me that information along with sufficient evidence that I knew it to be true. This ended up in the tabloids (along with some false information) but I didn't get paid for it. I think BL was jealous of Lindsey in an understandable and long story kind of way. I felt bad about the way I tortured Lindsey, but as Survivor contestants know by now, it's a rite of passage and comes with the territory.

Toward the end of the show I heard from Wezzie that she and Dan were going to the Survivor finale. So, I decided to ask CBS myself and they agreed (ask and you receive). I gave tickets to a few people at VO, one of whom was a lawyer who lived in Los Angeles near CBS Television City. We stayed at her house and went to the finale together. That day was filled with a lot of drama for reasons I can't even explain.

Anyway, when we drove over we brought 3 other people who didn't alreayd have tickets. We snuck them through the initial gate of CBS security, which was manned by what could be described as a combination of Don Knots and Snoop Doggy Dog. Inside, we ended up in the front row seats because of a mixup with some of the staff. It turns out it was reserved for Les Moonves, Mark Burnett, et al, who were standing in the hallway and near us during the taping and looking at us from the corner of their eye, which was weird. After the show, I was walking down a hallway and saw Mark. We were along. I swallowed and introduced myself, shook his hand, saying exactly who I was. He said, "ah" and quickly walked away, like he was nervous. Moonves had a bunch of company fanboys standing around him. He was inaccessible and kind of smirky.

After the show we went to Mike Boogie's (of Big Brother 2 fame) bar. Just when I was ready to quit for the 2nd time I got sucked back in and was given information about 2 contestants on Survivor 4 Marquesas. Gabe worked at the bar. Sean was a frequent patron. How could I not go back and report it?

The next day I had lunch with Lindsey and Jessie.

Like the mafia, you try and get out and get sucked right back in.