[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???

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 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 . 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?

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