THE WEB IS A POOR MEDIUM FOR PROPAGANDA, and a great medium for conspiracy -- as Esther Dyson likes to say -- and if there's one telltale confirmation of this theory, it's the extraordinary proliferation of "X-Files" literature scattered across the infosphere: Gillian Anderson tributes, David Duchnovy tributes, fanatic's marginalia and rumor mills, earnest cultural studies appraisals, love letters and disavowals -- not to mention enough doctored photographs to keep a squadron of Photoshop junkies busy for the rest of the millennium.

This FEED Feature is both another log on that bonfire, and an attempt to take stock of the blaze itself. In the most basic sense, readers can think of "The Story of X" as both an essay about "The X-Files," and a guide to other related reading on the Web -- in other words, not all that different from a conventional FEED article. You'll find here a thoughtful, entertaining piece by Matthew Debord, and you'll find a collection of links to other essays and web sites that deal with similar topics. We've added a few twists, however, and it's worth spelling them out in advance:

  • The article itself is divided into six more-or-less independent segments (called "chapters" in our lingo).
  • Each component of the larger feature -- chapters and links -- has been tagged with twenty-three different "topics."
  • Readers can build their own feature by searching for topics that are of interest to them.
We think this form makes for a nice compromise between the persuasive power of the essay, the navigational range of the "what's cool" page, and the conversational flow of an online bulletin board. It's only our first stab at this format, of course, so your feedback is more than welcome in a special Loop discussion we've created for "The Story of X." -- The Editors

P.S. Those of you who have no interest in all this nonlinear mumbo-jumbo can click here for a traditional, start-to-finish version of the piece, which reads pretty good too, as it turns out.