As an early example of people engaging with each other online, alt.tv.twin-peaks helped establish behaviors and patterns that eventually evolved into today's social media-obsessed culture. It also meant that Jenkins had a head start on understanding the internet and how it would eventually change our world, which he's chronicled ever since in his work, including the fascinating text ”Convergence Culture."
”It meant that I was ahead of the curve in watching that development of online fandom leading up to that moment of ‘Lost,' where I think the news world and everyone else discovered just how intense the online engagement with television was. ‘Twin Peaks' is, in so many ways, a trend setting show," Jenkins said.
”Lost," of course, was a game-changer in terms of the relationship between television, the fans who watched it, and the digital means that they used to talk about it. As Jenkins explained, ”The idea of creating reference sites online to pull together all the information, people passing back and forth alternative conspiracy theories about what would happen, the show intentionally embedding little secrets and mysteries, Easter eggs which are there for the fans to pick up on and discuss, the perception that maybe the producers were following the fan discussions and altering the story to reflect it — all of the things that people wrote about ‘Lost' were already there with ‘Twin Peaks.'"
Thanks to Twitter now, we know that many showrunners follow the conversation online — but during the original ”Twin Peaks" run, many on Usenet were uncertain if the show's creators were aware of their existence.
”There were rumors that Mark Frost read the discussions," Jenkins said. ”There was some sock puppet who pretended to be David Lynch at one point and was easily disproven not to be, but the widespread understanding was that Mark Frost was reading the discussions."
IndieWire asked if Frost would respond — and it turns out the answer isn't cut-and-dried (all too appropriate, given the nature of the show).
”Halfway through production," Frost wrote via email, ”I received a stack of printouts on my desk as thick as an LA phone book. Chat room dialogues from some online forums that had sprung up. Needless to say, astonishing. I was an early adapter, but still here was concrete evidence a new world was forming right under our feet.
”I read about nine pages and realized ‘this way lies madness, it's way too much to think about.' I set them aside and went back to making the show," he added.
Jenkins' response to that? ”Interesting. Fans imagined Frost reading the posts daily. Today, many productions assign interns to do just this, to identify the audience's preferences and dislikes, to map their response to creative decisions, and create a greater responsiveness," he said. ”No one [at the time] expected ‘Twin Peaks' to do this. If anything, they hoped Lynch and Frost were doing the exact opposite — figure out where the crowd was heading and then throw them a curve ball. The authors were seen as tricksters who wanted to constantly defy expectations, and masterminds who had thought everything out to the Nth degree."
