The Recordist

By Andrew Moore(@ashok0)

Retention rate is an absolute KILLER on the World Wide Web. Try Googling "+supplex +scully" in 2015, and you'll get 0 relevant results. In 1998, Supplex was a wildly popular website that hosted content related to The X-Files. Alas, this occured during a long forgotten era when GeoCities was a popular Web host, ISDN was considered "high speed", and Vivo and RealPlayer were still king of Internet video. Fast forward 10 to 15 years later, and there are no remnant traces of vast amounts of Web 1.0 content anywhere in cyberspace.

When Fringe was given a solid end date in 2012, I began to worry that over time, Fringe content, along with Anna Torv's videos and photos, might slowly be lost from Web 2.0. FOX would surely be closing down www.fox.com/fringe and fans might start closing Fringe-related accounts. I immediately started saving all FOX material, fan distributed material, TV spots, Web spots, episode stills, electronic press kits, magazines, interviews, SDCC panels, photoshoots, event photos, etc. for personal reference. I found that quite a few things were no longer on-line, but I was able to find trace elements of missing content via Tumblr GIFs and forum posts which I indexed for reference.

By Summer of 2014, I believed I was nearing completion of my Fringe catalog, and casually mentioned my project to a few of my Twitter followers, including Subject13Fringe. In September of 2014, Subject13Fringe suggested that we work together and design a website to host our Fringe libraries. She --- along with all the Torvettes who have done nothing but pour out love for our show via social media ---- convinced me that Fringe was something worth saving long after it had gone off-line.

What followed was an extensive 8 month campaign of hunting down the material in our Fringe catalog which was still missing from our archives. Our project was completed in April of 2015 and AnnaTorverse.com was born. My hope is that, in 2036, a search for very specific Fringe content won't result in 0 hits. Fringe was more than a show and is far too special of a show to be lost over time.  But the love and support I have received from Fringies these past few years has convinced me that Fringe will live forever.  <3