Survivor Sucks
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Survivor Sucks (aka Sucks) is an internet forum on the ezboard network, in which posters discuss and ridicule reality television shows such as Survivor, The Amazing Race, Big Brother, American Idol and The Apprentice. In 2006 they opened a forum for the ABC TV series Lost, the first time the board dedicated an entire forum to a non-reality TV show. With more than 40,000 users (known colloquially as Sucksters) and over five million posts since its founding in 2001, it ranks among the largest and most active communities on the ezboard network.
The forum takes its name from an earlier website, SurvivorSucks.com, (itself a spinoff of its parent website, planetsocks.com) which was created in the spring of 2000 to lampoon Survivor in its first breakout season. When that site began to buckle under the heavy traffic at the beginning of the second season, the site's creator moved its discussion forums offsite to the ezboard network where it resides today. On February 14, 2001, the Survivor Sucks Ezboard was born.
While the tone of the board is unashamedly combative, cynical, and sarcastic, Sucks is also home, somewhat contradictorily, to some of the show's most avid fans. This atmosphere likens Sucks to a comedy roast. Like many open forums, in-jokes and cliques are prevalent, and a significant portion of member entertainment is derived from flaming newbies and taunting the openly-dictatorial moderators. Despite its hostile nature, many alumni of Survivor and other reality programs have braved the flames to contribute to the board; conversely, on several occasions, Sucks members have successfully applied as participants in one reality show or another.
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[edit] Spoiling History
Sucks serves as the central gathering point for Survivor's "spoiler" subculture, which has been devoted to predicting and "spoiling" the outcome of each season since the series began -- a natural effect of the show's structure as a pre-taped competition. Shortly after the first season premiered, a Sucks user posted a screenshot taken from the opening credits montage, which clearly showed nine contestants from different tribes seated together at Tribal Council. Known as "Black Gretchen" (due to debate over the identity of one of the players shown), this screenshot was direct evidence that those players would survive until there were only nine left in the game. This allowed attentive fans to more accurately predict which of the remaining seven players would be voted out at each Tribal Council leading up to the final nine.
In response to this, the producers began manipulating images in the program to disguise future events and throw the spoiler community off track. Later in the first season, a digitally-manipulated image of the alleged final four players was shown, and buff colors in previews are often changed (a technique Sucksters call the "Buff-o-Matic") to avoid revealing which players get switched to different tribes.
In 2001's Survivor: The Australian Outback, a poster known as atlantafatmike was able to determine the fate of contestant Michael Skupin when he went to the website of Skupin's business and found pictures of Mike with burned hands before the episode showing his accident aired.
Later, in 2003's Survivor: Amazon, a poster known as ChillOne provided descriptions of the final four contestants of that season, which he had received from locals on a vacation to the filming area. ChillOne later published a book about his travels and his experience as a Sucks "spoiler", and has gone on to collect similar spoilers in the same fashion for subsequent seasons.
Though these examples are not the extent of Sucks' contribution to Survivor spoiling, the bulk of the "heavy lifting" in the spoiler community is done by individuals and groups from other websites who, in addition to spoiling in the "traditional" sense using material evidence and speculation, also rely on information leaked from trusted private sources within the show's production. This provides some with an added advantage, leading to a higher accuracy rate in predicting the show's outcome, and also often causing their predictions to be used as the primary or even only rationale for the predictions of many common posters.
[edit] Vote for the Worst
Sucks is also the origin point of the infamous Vote for the Worst (VFTW) movement, Dave Della Terza (thefunnystone)'s brainchild, that enraged American Idol viewers in 2005 when contestant Scott Savol outlasted other, more popular contestants, due to fan attempts to deliberately sway the show's results. VFTW made headlines when Savol ended up in the top five and Constantine Maroulis was sent home during season 4. The media again took notice when VFTW helped Kevin Covais into the top 12 over Gedeon McKinney. The movement has since been attempted again in subsequent seasons, as well as in recent seasons of Canadian Idol.
[edit] Culture & In-jokes
Sucks' nature as a message board has created a vast number of in-jokes and memes that many regular Sucksters recognize. The ezOP of the board is Dogstalker and the board admins are known by Sucksters as "admin idoits".
The "Uncle Camerman Spolier" [sic] was posted midway through the second season by an individual claiming to have obtained a full "bootlist" from an uncle who worked on the show's camera crew. While the list's accuracy was always doubted by the majority of posters, it was accurate for four weeks, earning it a formidable base of supporters. Though it was eventually proven to be a hoax, devoted posters continued their tongue-in-cheek support of the spoiler, turning its discussion thread into a mock shrine where "Uncle Camerman" was worshiped as a prophet or god-like figure. The "Camerites" declared themselves as a pseudo-religion and created their own ezboard, and the misspelling of "spolier" has come to be used to describe later spoilers which have proven to be hoaxes.
The board remained online during the September 11 attacks, and a thread discussing that day's events became an invaluable source of information for many members who did not have a television nearby and/or could not access news websites due to the tremendous influx of hits. The thread was archived unedited, and as such it provides a raw, real-time play-by-play "frozen in time", chronicling the entire sequence of the attacks as they unfolded, as well as the posters' reactions. The thread is featured in a special memorial forum opened each year on the anniversary of the attacks.
Other in-jokes and traditions include:
- Flaming Wood - During the second season a thread was begun to discuss the appearance of a piece of wood set ablaze by a forest fire. The spelling and grammar of the post was so poor that rather than respond to the poster or even flame him, the forum regulars instead copied the garbled post word for word, replacing only the proper nouns to create new and increasingly nonsequitur imitations. This style of flaming became known as the "flaming wood".
- Burn baby burn - the name of the first "monster" thread, and one of the first notable threads which cemented the Sucks board's reputation as mercilessly hostile toward reality television. It was begun after the second-season episode in which contestant Michael Skupin fell into the campfire. The poster expressed joy at the injury, believing it karma as a result of Skupin's having killed a wild pig in a previous episode. Reaction to the post was mixed and contentious, and a furious debate began over where Sucks' line of decency should be drawn.
- Silas Screws - A photo was posted of Survivor: Africa contestant Silas Gaither shirtless at a publicity event. The photo displayed Gaither from the waist up and at a provocative angle. A tradition was quickly begun in which the photo was placed alongside other photos in an attempt to simulate Silas "screwing" the subject.
- Whatevia - During a performance by American Idol contestant Jennifer Hudson, a reaction shot of the crowd showed Hudson's cousin standing motionless and noticeably unenthusiastic. Her apparent refusal to show excitement earned her the Sucks nickname "Whatevia" and she became a frequent and popular photoshopping subject.
- Anal sex - The long tradition of inserting the words "anal sex" (or variant thereof) into mainstream media articles pasted into new threads. The practice was originally begun by a board regular to see if anyone actually read the many long articles posted in the off topic forum, but has become so natural that users point out when the reference has been omitted.
The vast and dynamic membership of Survivor Sucks makes it one of the five largest message boards on the ezboard network, and has spawned dozens of offshoot 'splinter' boards, which are known collectively as the "Sucks Splinterverse". The board is also notably ad-free and relies entirely on member donations to cover costs.
