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"Fear Factor is back! Five years after being booted off the air, NBC's gross-out stunt show returned to TV Monday night and dominated the social TV conversation.\nViewers generated more than 403,000 comments across social media websites during the two-hour premiere, according to data from Bluefin Labs. The reality show attracted 47% of all social comments for Monday's primetime shows, beating out WWE Monday Night Raw (10%) and NFL Monday Night Football (9%). \nViewers were kept abuzz, thanks to gross stunts, action-packed challenges and commentary from host Joe Rogan. A cringe-tastic scorpion scene \u2014 in which teams of two fetched the eight-legged creatures out of black sludge and then ate 10 of them \u2014 was Fear Factor's high point of social media activity. That scene helped the show's first hour net 218,000 comments compared to hour two's 185,000 comments. \nTo put that data into perspective, The X Factor premiere in September garnered 190,000 comments. The X Factor is 2011's number one social TV show in series programming, Bluefin Labs reports, and also routinely tops Mashable's weekly \"20 TV Shows With the Most Social Media Buzz\" list.\nThe Fear Factor contestants were competing to win $50,000. Stunts like these made the show, which first premiered in 2001, popular in the days before Twitter and Facebook. In those previous episodes, contestants devoured \"delicacies\" including cow bile, buffalo testicles and cave-dwelling spiders. Twitter publicly launched in July 2006, just a few months before NBC canceled Fear Factor.\nBluefin told Mashable that two other scenes stood out and incited plenty of comments. In one, Rogan says, \"I hug my mom, but I let go,\" referring to a close relationship between a mother-son team. In another, Rogan calls a contestant the \"whitest man in America\" and that he'd do well auditioning for future Twilight movies.\nCheck out Bluefin's data below to see the Fear Factor moments that got viewers typing away. To watch the episodes online, click here. The scorpion scene starts about 20 minutes in.\n\n\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/12/13/fear-factor-social-tv-buzz/>