OMFG: It's my knowledge community.

SPOTTED: People all over the US setting their DVRs to record at 9 pm on the CW. At my house, Monday nights are reserved for the never disappointing fashion, drama, and scandal combination that is Gossip Girl. The show's vast knowledge community is made up of girls and guys from middle school age to adults all coming together to watch the rumors and gossip wreak well-dressed havoc across the Upper East Side. While you don’t have to have very much going on upstairs to get the premise of the show, this community’s most dedicated members have more fun than the passive watchers, as we speculate and theorize about the show the way the Survivor fans in Jenkins’ chapter did.

The question on every fan's mind since season one has been who is gossip girl? Together, the knowledge community has tried to figure out who it is. I participate in this knowledge community with my friends and roommates. This season, we almost had it: the show introduced a new character with such stalking skills that she couldn't be anyone but gossip girl. We still don't know and probably (sadly) will never find out. Still, every episode, someone yells out "IS THAT GOSSIP GIRL?!"

Jenkins mentions that members of knowledge communities share an "emotional investment" (27), and that's definitely true here. For example, main characters Chuck and Blair have an off-and-on romance that pretty much directs the way my week will go after 10 pm Monday. (This week's episode made my month). I've seen the duo pull tears out of even the biggest Bass-haters. The other various love-hate relationships that fuel the show get this knowledge community all riled up: hate Serena, hate Jenny, like to hate Vanessa, like Serena, still hate Jenny. The cycle repeats itself every season, but it never gets old: the gossip gets juicier every time.

With so much drama in every episode, the knowledge community has to be there for one another- it's really hard to keep track of who Serena slept with and why Blair is mad at Nate (again). Every season gets more and more complicated, and it gets harder to remember who characters are when they reappear from previous episodes. The community helps each other stay afloat.

This knowledge community also bonds over the show's fashion. Each week promises an hour of trendy, sophisticated, and just plain amazing style. Websites like Seenon.com offer sales on the very same designs the characters wear in the show. These hundred-to-thousand dollar frocks and handbags put fans one step closer to being the characters that they obsess over, like the harry potter fans Alissa talks about. Since my pockets are not nearly deep enough for said luxuries (yet), I'll stick to the nail polish and DVDs.

Like Jenna mentions, collective intelligence keeps a knowledge community alive, even if the knowledge doesn't have a direct relationship with the show. For example, I read the Gossip Girl books when I was younger, and even though the plot of the show now never happened in the novels, I'll tell my friends about a weird difference between the book and show. One of my friends saw the crew filming the show in New York last year, and even though it didn't reveal anything about the coming episodes, I could have cried.

This knowledge community is definitely huge, and I think it works because of the mischievous personalities of all of the characters. Everyone is up to something, and it's fun to try to figure out what it is. Plus, it is a show that lets you indulge in gossip, ridiculous wealth, and an impossible cycle of lust-turned-love-turned-blackmail-turned-love-turned...

xoxo,

gossip girl