Lost Zombies was a

zombie A zombie (Haitian French: ; ; Kikongo: ''zumbi'') is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. In modern popular culture, zombies appear in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folkl ...

-themed

social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

with the goal of creating a community-generated zombie documentary. The website, built on the Ning platform, launched on May 1, 2008, and was created by Ryan Leach, Skot Leach and Rob Oshima.

Overview

Lost Zombies followed a fictional timeline which begins in February 2007 with an

influenza epidemic Flu season is an annually recurring time period characterized by the prevalence of an outbreak of influenza (flu). The season occurs during the cold half of the year in each hemisphere. It takes approximately two days to show symptoms. Influen ...

. The

flu virus ''Orthomyxoviridae'' () is a family of negative-sense RNA viruses. It includes nine genera: '' Alphainfluenzavirus'', '' Betainfluenzavirus'', '' Gammainfluenzavirus'', '' Deltainfluenzavirus'', ''Isavirus'', '' Mykissvirus'', ''Quaranjavirus' ...

mutates out of control, eventually causing Zombism. The timeline leads to the present day where 75% of the world's population is dead or undead. Users were able to create a profile on the Lost Zombies website and submit videos, audio, pictures and written accounts that reflect some portion of the Lost Zombies timeline. The creators of Lost Zombies intended to compile the user submissions into a single, cohesive, mock documentary.

Closure

The Lost Zombies website shut down on March 22, 2014, due to the creators abandoning the project for other ones and leaving the

community A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...

to dwindle.

Awards

Lost Zombies received the Best Community Website Award and the

People's Choice Award The People's Choice Awards is an American awards show, recognizing people in entertainment, voted online by the Fan (person), fans and Public, general public. The show has been held annually since 1975, with the winners originally determined us ...

at the 2009

SXSW South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

Web Awards held on March 15, 2009. Lost Zombies was featured as one of the 25 new faces of independent film by '' FilmMaker Magazine.''

References

{{reflist, 1

External links

SXSW Interactive awards for TDK ARG, We Tell Stories, Lost Zombies , ARGNet: Alternate Reality Gaming Network
Defunct social networking services Zombies in popular culture