Mashable released their latest “Social TV” list for both cable and broadcast programs for the week of 10/24-10/30/2011. Through a partnership with Trendrr, the list presents which shows were most buzzed about online, incorporating statistics from Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue and other social platforms.

We’re in an interesting place in pop culture right now.

Never before has pop culture been more about the NOW.

However, never before have we had the ability to time-shift the way we do now.

While the online conversation is real-time, we can easily postpone watching a show by minutes or even months.

This “mixed media” presents some obvious challenges for all parties involved:

1) While you can avoid “spoilers” for shows that haven’t aired yet, how can you possibly avoid conversations about major TV shows after they have aired?

I vividly remember an episode of the tragically-short series “Sports Night” where sports broadcaster Dan Rydell goes to great lengths to avoid knowing the score of a game he wanted to watch in full after his show. This included rewiring the studio, involving a dozen other people and other shenanigans. Naturally, someone who didn’t know about his avoidance tactics told him the final score immediately following the broadcast.

2) You have to choose: be in the NOW or be free.

If you watch a TV show live, you are doing so with millions of other viewers. You can have live chats with other viewers online and over the phone, which builds amazing communities.

Years ago, my wife and I would call people during the commercial breaks of LOST and create a shared viewing experience.

The trade-off is freedom; freedom to set your own schedule, consume media when you want and skip over commercials. You can’t generally have both.

3) Stories play out so differently.

Gone, for many, are the days of the cliffhanger. There was little more exhilarating than seeing your favorite show end in a mystery or with a shocking development – knowing you had to wait a full week for the next chapter in the story. Anticipation would build over the next seven days, allowing word of mouth marketing to get more and more people interested.

Now, you can live-stream entire series, or DVR and store several episodes, watching a season’s worth of stories play out in a lazy weekend on the couch.

We’ve traded anticipation for instant gratification. Not a bad thing, per se, but still a thing.

4) Who wants to be 2000 and late?

As our news/entertainment/meme cycle continues to accelerate, things happening this morning will be even more obsolete by this afternoon. (Dare I say things will appear and move on faster than a Kim Kardashian marriage?)

And with hundreds of channels and hundreds of social platforms, the churning will lead to burning faster than ever.

We have been presented with some of the greatest technology to control our lives and increase productivity, only to see pop culture move more rapidly in response.

How do you keep up with your TV and social media?

[Note from Mike: The following is a guest post from NEW Buzz Contributor Andi Narvaez!  Click the Contributors tab above to learn more about her!  She currently is petitioning me to change the site's name to "Da Buzz."  I'll take it under advisement.]

LOST is to social media as… how many times can you jump the shark???

The Castaways - plus Ben. Jerk.

Hi, my name is Andi Narvaez and I’m addicted to LOST. Like some of you, I was told by the rest of you, “you HAVE to watch it. It’s sooo good.” And not only did I watch it, I’ve devoted the last seven weeks of my life to catching up from the very first episode. That’s right. If there are six seasons, a total of 121 episodes, each 45 minutes long… you do the math. The sad thing is that after the second season, it wasn’t even worth it. But like a good addict, I couldn’t quit it.

Is this sounding familiar? That right. Social media. Hey, if I’m going to make those 5,445 hours (Holy waste of time, Batman! I wish I hadn’t done the math…) worth my time, you bet your life I’m at least going to get a blog post out of it.

LOST is like social media in many ways.

If you think of the island as the Web, think of the passengers on Oceanic Flight 815 as everyone who ends up here either intentionally, by accident, or fate – who knows really. Some of them die. Some survive on shore (the people who get on Facebook, open a Twitter account, but you ultimately stick with Facebook and quit Twitter because it’s stupid and who cares what you had for breakfast, right?) Some of them move into caves and start living on the island rather than surviving on it (most people who use some of the basic social networks and update them pretty frequently). Finally, others explore the island and they find the hatch. They move in and the island becomes home (people on Facebook, Twitter, those who blog, upload and share media, etc.).

And though we sometimes thinks the Web belongs only to us because our experiences via social networks and niche sites are increasingly more personalized, the reality is that there are Others who also live here (and have lived here longer too!) and they do their own thing. But we can only learn that by exploring the Web and bumping into what’s out there. Then we learn that by creating our own realities within this virtual space, we affect the lives of others’ in many ways even if we do not see it.

And then seasons 3, 4, 5, and 6 happen and we don’t know whose lives ends where. [Note from Mike: And...WHEN!]

When a show jumps the shark that many times we need to ask ourselves, “why am I still watching this?” And the answer is – those characters and that island. Social media has had its ups and downs too. We’ve seen social networks come and social networks go. We have had to adjust to changes on our social media platforms. Most recently, our privacy has been the victim of a social network’s fickle terms of use.

But six seasons later, we’re still here because we know and love the characters and we care about our island. And in one way or another, we think of ourselves as candidates.

Some weeks ago Mike Schaffer, the proud owner of this blog, asked which LOST couple we like the most. I jokingly said “Hurley and Charlie” but I’d like to officially take that back and say, “The people and the island.”

The final episode of LOST will air on Sunday, May 23. None of our questions will be answered. But at least we’ll still have social media where we’ll endlessly debate and ask the infamous question – WTF?