A Question Of Reality

[suri]

I hope this is the right board on which to post this, but I wrote the following buried in various responses in another thread, and have become more and more interested in the question of "reality" and performance of self in relation to LG15. Figured I'd re-post this as one cohesive unit and see if it sparks an interesting dialogue:

"Well, the really funny thing about all this is . . . the idea that it's real makes the most sense!

Now, I don't necessarily think this is so, but, well, the "official explanation" of everything does make complete sense if you let yourself buy into it. Things like an ARG or a movie/TV promo or a viral add or a secret religion, while all potentially feasible, are all a lot more complicated and ridiculously complex to pull off than it just being two kids actually living their lives and making some YouTube vids.

Perhaps I'm not expressing myself as well as I could hear, since I'm not attempting to act as a proponent of the "it's real" camp, I'm just saying that nothing I've seen or read has caused that possibility to leave my mind.

Now, don't get me wrong, I HOPE it's not real. My "real makes sense" idea is the pessimist in me. I'm a writer, and have become more and more intrigued in alternate narrative forms - if nothing else, this whole thing has pointed me to ARG as an interesting art-form - and the LG15 phenomenon is a fascinating way of telling a story, so I hope that it gets more interesting rather than petering out as the school-year begins (which is what would happen with two kids doing a Youtube diary over a long, boring summer).

My perpsective on "real," however, is also slightly askew as a Performance Studies scholar. I've done a lot of work/reading on the construction of self (see, for example, Irving Goffman's "The Presentation of the Self In EveryDay Life") and put a lot of thought into the creation of personality.

Think about it. I'm not the same person here as I am when I turn to my office-mate and talk, and not the same person to him as I am to my boss, my parents, my friends, a girl I'm trying to seduce, a friend I haven't spoken to in years, a friend I had drinks with last night, etc., etc. We construct who we are based on the situation, and think about how often that leads us to change/alter/construct/exaggerate/falsify a story. So, surely, LG15 is a different person on the camera than she is when living her life, in it's various personality-modes. It explains the heightened melodrama of it - she enjoys playing that role - and still allows her to be more or less who and what she says she is."

[suri]

So, to asininely respond to my own thread in light of the morning's revelations (which frighten me a bit with how close I am to corporate-lingo in terms of "playing different parts of reality on camera" - or perhaps frighten me how corporate-lingo has taken over Performance Studies lingo), I was thinking - is there ANY way for the makers of these videos to have "done right" by this community?

Jessica and two others took it upon themselves to track the LG15 crew using superior technology, forcing the creators' hands and pushing them to make the much-discussed post revealing the "truth." So, even if "we" didn't get what we wanted, the jig was up, and they could either come clean or risk these deep investigators getting closer and closer to who/where they are. Assuming they didn't want to take this risk - either for fear of their safety or simply because they didn't want their story to be forced, even if their "reality" was - they very hastily threw together a convention that, yes, lacked a payoff on built-up dramatic tension.

Keep in mind, however, this was likely NOT how nor when they wanted to reveal the truth - likely they wanted it to come out only when it eventually became patently obvious as a fiction because of the story-line (think Blair Witch, to a certain extent). Also do keep in mind that the built up tension, to a large extent, came from US. The videos themselves don't intentionally lead us to doubt the reality of these people/characters, those suspicions came from us (to use the term loosely) and our investigations. WE created a tension that we expect THEM to pay off for us? That seems slightly harsh on our part.

The payoff, I would like/hope to believe, will still be coming, but it's the payoff to a STORY, to a unique narrative. I, for one, would love for the creators to even potentially switch gears and make it interactive - for instance, leaving enough clues to know where/when this "ceremony" is and making it seem darker and more threatening, until (now knowing it as a fiction) a team is forced to come together and intervene, or something equally as fun/engaging/ridiculous.

However, in my mind, we're being way too unfair to what seems to be a small company telling a story in a new way, and, yes, trying to get a little money for their hard work and creative endeavors. If we hadn't so obsessively tracked them down, perhaps we would have gotten a bigger payoff down the line; or perhaps this same revelation would have happened this same day and time. It's too late now to tell. All that's left is to enjoy the community that's been built and to follow the narrative, even if that narrative now lacks SOME of the investigative qualities it once had.