Near the end of class on Tuesday most everyone started to talk about TV shows and breaking the fourth wall, the fourth wall being the invisible barrier that separates the show/text from the audience. Breakage of the fourth wall has been used fairly extensively, albeit it only recently became a more popular technique in the 20th century.

The first notable usage of breaking the fourth wall would probably be the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series (and all books related to it, like the goosebumps books.) These books used the choices of the reader to impact the how the story played out- at the end of teach page there would be instructions to turn to different pages based on the reader's choices (that or the story would end.) In this example, the purpose of breaking the fourth wall seems to be to add a further layer of immersion to the story, allowing the reader to LITERALLY control the outcome of the story.

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