One of the minor wonders of the net is the ability to post and read messages in forums. Somehow I've stumbled on to Mighty Big TV which hosts forums for a batch of tv shows from Buffy to Survivor to Making the Band to Queer as Folk.

I started watching Making the Band out of curiosity, then I became interested in the guys, and then the boy band process itself. I'd not realized how managed it was. You start with some guys who have some basic talent; you train and re-train to get the best boy band qualities; you backtrack; you train some more; etc. A lengthy and expensive operation. One with no guarantee of success. I suppose the process itself is little different from that employed by the big movie studios in the 30s. Or that of a professional football franchise.

It has taken me a while to realize that Making the Band is different from the other reality tv productions in that success depends on the entire group. Certainly at odds with the mercenary back-stabbing of Survivor or Big Brother. From the beginning of Real World and Roads Rules, the producers were interested in disparate individuals whose interaction would generate tension. So Making the Band is something of a novelty.

The forums dish out re-caps, analysis, gossip, spoilers, member sightings, etc. And it their way, they manage to create their own level of tension. But even more intriguing is the shifting of facts. In most cases, you have no outside knowledge to bring to the process, so about the best you can do is to note the internal logic. What is true? What is supposition? What can you derive from what is presented? Or you may decide there is no way to know.

Of the few things that have stayed with me from college, one was the term "egocentric predicament." That you can never know anything outside of youself. So as I read the forums, I kept thinking of that. And as I read journals, I think of that.

By rights there should be some cogent summary here. But I don't have one. But then of course even the null set is a subset of the universal.