The Spoiler: Revealing the Secrets of Survivor [Paperback]

William Marson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 2003

Could someone have actually spoiled an entire season of Survivor? That was the question everyone was asking back in January, 2003, an entire month before the season premier of Survivor: The Amazon.On January 9th, I started an Internet message board thread under the assumed alias of "ChillOne," and debriefed my intelligence, "would-be" confidential information that I uncovered while vacationing in the Brazilian Amazon, including contestant names, game dynamics, location details, and Tribal Council "boot order." In that report, I named Matt Von Ertfelda and Jenna Morasca as the two finalists and pointed to Jenna as the player who was better liked of the two, providing a tantalizing hint of a possible final outcome! Over the next four months, my information would be under the microscope; picked apart and analyzed piece-by-piece by thousands, while at the same time gaining national attention. In the end, ChillOne became one of the most talked about, if not the most talked about, informants in Survivor spoiling history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

ChillOne made "Survivor: The Amazon" one hell of an adventure for the media and the spoiling community. -- Paris Cosby, Reality News Online, October 2, 2003

One of the most important books to come about Survivor since the show's inception. -- Murtz Jaffer, Survivor-Central.com, October 18, 2003

About the Author

The ChillOne is an avid fan of reality television, especially Survivor. He enjoys eco and adventure travel, is a part-time ferryboat Captain, an aspiring USGA rules official, and a health and fitness enthusiast. His professional life has included surveillance-related consulting assignments for the FBI, NSA, RCMP, and Australian Federal Police.

Product Details

• Paperback: 140 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse, Inc. (September 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595291783
• ISBN-13: 978-0595291786
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #530,947 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Memoirs from a Message Board., August 9, 2004

By 

tvtv3 "tvtv3" (Sorento, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: The Spoiler: Revealing the Secrets of Survivor (Paperback)

I thought THE SPOILER would be a more in depth look at the "controversy" over the posts that The ChillOne posted at SurvivorSucks.com before and during the viewing of Season: Amazon. The first three chapters were rather interesting as they described how The ChillOne happened to discover the information that he would later post on the SurvivorSucks message board. However, other than the last chapter, the book is basically nothing more than a play by play description on what went on at the message board. It's not very interesting reading and one gets the impression by how the author continually refers back to his quest to be inducted to "Monster Island" (from the book I gather it's a place of honor for spoilers at SurvivorSucks.com) that he has a very large ego. There aren't very many people around who would believe that because they happened to spoil some major points of a reality show that they deserve better than the rest of us; I mean I'm all for everybody getting their 15 minutes of fame, but this is a little ridiculous.

THE SPOILER is not a book that many people can read and enjoy or even be amused about. In fact, the book doesn't offer much other than wondering about arrogancy and if one could become as inflated as the author if ever presented in the same situation. I would only recommend this book to really hard core SURVIVOR fans. Other than that, I would stay away, unless maybe your looking for a good laugh.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good start, but there's not enough for a book here., November 26, 2003

By 

Scott Chupack (Gurnee, IL USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Spoiler: Revealing the Secrets of Survivor (Paperback)

The story of "The Spoiler" would make some excellent online reading, but unfortunately, there's not even 100 pages of story here.

Let me start by saying that I stopped reading spoilers after Season 1, but I glanced at the spoiler boards a couple weeks before Survivor 6 to get an informed pick on my Survivor Draft at the office. There was lots of talk online at the time about a guy that visited the Araiu Towers Hotel, and using his info, I drafted Matt with the 11th pick. When I saw a blurb about the book, I was curious about the story, since I knew a little about it.

The first part of the book is pretty interesting. The author writes about his accidental trip to Brazil and stumbled upon the Survivor Amazon location. He talks about the care he used to glean information and his dealings with the hotel staff.

Unfortunately, this is where the whole story gets weird. The vast majority of the book is a play-by-play of the SurvivorSucks spoiler board. He writes about his posts, their responses, and his responses to their responses. He gets several conspiracy theorists that are convinced he's a hoax which are humorous to read. But I still can't get past the fact that this is all just the play-by-play of a message thread. As you can imagine, it's not that fascinating.

Beyond that, the author seems convinced that he's a super-spy and every decision he makes has grandiose implications. While he did a pretty good job of being the right type of person in the right place at the right time, I'm not sure that anything more than common sense was used to capture the information that he did. But when it comes to the online part of the book, he makes every posting he did sound like he's contemplating the ultimate in posting strategy. There's just not that much intrigue there. The big tension in the book is supposed to involve whether the thread will be locked or end up in "Monster Island", spoiler thread heaven, I suppose. While the interesting part was seeing how his picks did, anyone that watched Survivor 6 knew how accurate the picks were early in the book. But whether the thread would be locked or not was hardly compelling enough for 2/3 of the book.

The final chapter left cyberspace and got somewhat interesting again, as ChillOne meets up with the cast at a charity event, and you see their reactions to meeting ChillOne. But really, this book is 30 pages of interesting info and 100 pages of a bunch of people typing on keyboards. Good for an online read or sitting down for an hour in a bookstore, in my opinion.

On the other hand, I will say that if you are a member of the spoiler community, noone had more luck with Survivor than this guy, in which case it's probably worth it to have the book for posterity and to support this guy. But then, you probably already know most of the story.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars save your money, December 27, 2003

By 

"dreadloxx" (miami,fla) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Spoiler: Revealing the Secrets of Survivor (Paperback)

This book was a real disappointment and written mainly in two parts. The first 29 pages of this book were interesting as they
dealt with the time the author spent in the Amazon. Pages 30-113 were simply a synopsis of the activities recorded on the SurvivorSucks internet bulletin board six months earlier. Not only does the author build his ego up to be larger than
life in the second portion of this book but page after page he compares himself to a real life James Bond character - something he is clearly not. For a self-described "world-traveller" this book reveals nothing more than a typical narrow-minded rich American exploiting third-world people for his own profit.