The transformers connection to on-line communities

Ok, so I almost just wanted to post this just on the bases of my love for transformers and the fact that they have a pretty cool remix of the theme song that goes along with it, but of course I'm posting this for another reason. So, maybe not everybody knows, but there is a cable station out there devoted to video games and the video game culture called G4TV, and one of the shows they air is called Attack of the Show. ATOS as they call it for short, pretty much talks about everything from video games, new tech toys, movies, etc. Well since they have the new live action Transformers film coming out this summer, they have decided to do a segment called stump the expert. They have pulled one of their staffers, who claims to be an expert on transformers, and have him answer questions sent in by the viewers. Now if a viewer is able to stump him then they get a prize. Pretty much like any contest. Well I'm watching this and he answers one right and one wrong and can't even answer the third one due to being a trick question. Now I’m sorry, but any one that really knows me knows that I have a real love for transformers knowledge and I will go as far to wager that I could go head to head even with the best of them. So I’m sitting here watching some guy that claims to be an expert, but who I would bet just happened to collect all of the boxsets and has watched each episode a couple of times. Well by now the hamster in my head in spinning fast in its wheel and I started thinking about questions I could send in that I know he would never get. So I get to school, go the G4TV website and go to submit a few questions, and as I get to the trivia page it says that I have to log in first. Great, yet another on-line community that thanks to my geekness, I may now have to join just so I can try to get some pleasure on trying to prove this guy a fake. I mean here I am pondering whether or not I want to create an account and join the G4TV forums just to submit a trivia question, but then I started to really think about it more and thought about everything that your able to do through their website. Not only do they have podcast that you can watch but you can get into chat discussions with the host of the shows while they’re airing. In some ways, people are able to be a part of the different shows. Now if that is not a use of new media I don't know what is. I mean like I stated in my last entry, how long will it be before some guy shoots there own independent film, creates a Myspace account and tells people to come watch it on a certain date, to when he will up-load it via Myspace video and you can sit there watch the film with out having to leave the confines of your home and deal with traffic and paying $8-9 dollars for a ticket (since a good amount of theaters don't accept student i.d's anymore). Here we have a Cable station that has created a website that in it's own right has become yet another on-line community, but unlike Myspace, allows interactibilty between user and host that other communities do not. I know there are more things that viewers to do, which I haven’t discovered yet, but I have to ask, do I really want to join yet another community? One that in all reality won’t really ever do much me and will probably just sit there with out any use except for when I go into one of these crazes of thinking that I know a subject better than someone and want to prove them wrong, not for some prize, but just so I might a get a little satisfaction of knowing that hey, I know this subject better than you. I know that sounds pretty petty, but transformers is just one of those subjects that if people think they know something, I like to challenge them at it. Past that, I probably will end up creating myself an account on the site, because I almost would like to see how they might use new media to further the use and interactiveness of their site. It’s fun to see where this is all going. I mean it’s like we are climbing a ladder to see how far technology can take us and we have barley gotten off the first step.