Post by Alissa Brooke on Sept 13, 2006 11:30:35 GMT -5
UK
--The Times--
*Jonathan Richards 8.19.06
Worldwide fame for a lonely girl
By Jonathan Richards
HER name is Bree, and she is schooled at home. She has a lazy eye, and when she was younger she had to wear a patch, which embarrassed her. Her best friend is called Daniel and he really fancies her, but she doesn’t like him in that way.
They may seem like the mundane details of teenage life but to the more than one million YouTube users who have watched the confessions of “lonelygirl15” since she posted her first video three months ago they are a source of great fascination.
Not one of them would have become public were it not for Bree’s strict father, whose authoritarian ways were the reason for her refuge on the internet.
“I was usually stuck studying the Treaty of Versailles or Occam’s razor — making videos was much more fun,” Bree said when she was contacted by The Times this week.
“I have been open — maybe too open — about my parents, but kids all over the world have written telling me their personal stories and asking for advice. Some people who also come from strict homes have given me hope that there is life beyond what I’m experiencing now.”
According to psychologists, therapy is one of the key reasons why people choose to post video blogs, or “vlogs”. “It’s much easier to tell your problems to complete strangers than it is to tell someone you are intimate with — in which case you have to live with the consequences for life,” said Helen Petrie, Professor of Human Computer Interaction in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York.
“When it’s not face-to-face, people also have more time to reflect on their problems before they talk about them, which can be beneficial.
“There is a deep psychological need to feel that other people are interested in you and care about you,” Professor Petrie said.
There is also the matter of instant fame. More than 100 million videos are watched every day on YouTube.
YouTube is the most popular video-sharing site in Britain, and the 40th most visited site overall. According to the internet research company Hitwise, it attracts 63 per cent of all video-sharing traffic; its nearest competitor, Google Video, attracts 10 per cent.
*Michael Parsons 9.7.06
Get your online real fake teenage girls!
The interesting bits of the internet play with the boundary between real life and make-believe, writes Michael Parsons
The drama of lonelygirl15, a beautiful teenage video diarist type on YouTube, is only the most recent soap opera to hit the net. Debate rages as to whether our heroine Bree's confessions, which include boyfriend trouble, parent angst, and an intriguing whiff of old-time Satanism, are a commercial venture, the art project of an inspired theatre group, or, God forbid, the work of a real, beautiful, teenage video diarist. So far, so last week. Yet this current microfad plunges me much further back, way back into my internet time machine. In 1995, and yes folks, that's eleven of your offline years, American film maker Scott Zakarin launched a net soap opera called The Spot, featuring a bunch of beautiful teenage online diary types, winning himself a Wikipedia citation as the 'first episodic fiction Web site,' but entirely missing the forces that lonelygirl15 has so neatly mastered. It's time to get real fake.
There's a three-dimensional quality to the lonelygirl15 saga: there's the story itself, as narrated by Bree and her sometime friend Daniel, then there's other YouTube community members posting comments about whether the whole thing is a fake, and then there's external bloggers blogging about bloggers who've blogged about each other's blogs on the subject. Much of this debate is concerned with two powerful forces around which virtual culture constantly circulates: authenticity and intimacy. If you wade through the thousands of comments (and much spam) appended to Bree's video diaries, many writers appear to feel they're in direct connection with her. Others angrily accuse her of abusing the YouTube community by presenting fake material as real.
This is the essence of the virtual experience: that it feels so real, that all these virtual creatures are so close to our screens that we can touch them, look in their eyes, read their diaries, get to know their laugh – yet they may in fact may be entirely, cynically false. You'll see endless arpeggios and variations played on this tension, more or less seriously, in every aspect of online culture, as more and more of our experience becomes virtual.
Back in 1995 many, many journalists were quick to point out that the soap opera surrounding The Spot's financial problems, corporate governance, and management conflicts proved much more entertaining than the occupants of the Santa Monica beach house which gave the website its name. The site eventually closed in 1997, when, according to the site's executive producer and head writer quoted in a News.com story, "a series of behind-the-scenes financial problems finally took their toll."
The Spot ultimately failed because it could never exploit the tensions between the real and the false. It was clearly made up, presented as honest fiction, and what real-world drama existed, in the shape of the business problems of its founders, was only of interest to the business press. Lonelygirl15 understands that popular modern drama sits in the treacherous space between the real and the fake. TV has taken on much the same lesson with its pursuit of the real fake, in the form of virtual reality shows. The point is to have your cake and eat it, too: we want a seamless web of meaning that has the crunchy veracity of real life and the staged, heightened drama of art: so the Big Brother contestants may get arrested, married, divorced, giving the real fake tabloids their fuel and keeping the whole saga spinning years after the programmes that made them famous have gone off air.
All we need to give this micromeme a fitting conclusion is to prove that the three words within lonelygirl15's name are all lies. She's clearly not lonely, as more than 6,000 people have posted to her pages on YouTube. She's clearly not fifteen, as says in one of her first videos that she's actually sixteen. You heard it here first: Lonelygirl15 is actually a boy. And I think Daniel knows.
--The Guardian--
*Dan Glaister 9.9.06
A series of videos showing a 16-year-old girl opining about life, relationships, planets, cookies and religion from the orderly confines of her bedroom somewhere in smalltown America has become the pop culture hit of the summer.
The short video blog postings by lonelygirl15 on the YouTube website have attracted millions of viewers since they started appearing in May. But the postings' polished nature and the intriguing inconsistencies in the stories led many to suspect that lonelygirl15 was fake.
"Bree", the "girl" in the videos, appears older than 16. One in particular, in which she goes swimming with her friend Daniel, resembles a pop video more than a blog.
Some bloggers suggested she was part of a viral marketing campaign for a film or computer game, the successor to that used to promote the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project.
Yesterday her "creators" came clean, admitting the site was fake. In a posting on lonelygirl15.com labelled "A message from the creators", the unnamed makers of the videos adopted a more conventional entertainment industry tone. "Thank you for enjoying our show so far. We are amazed by the overwhelmingly positive response to our videos; it has exceeded our wildest expectations."
They went on to address some of the speculation about the videos: were they promoting a film or a reality TV show? Was some corporate behemoth behind the venture? And who the heck is lonelygirl15 anyway? According to the creators, the enterprise is far larger than any of that.
"With your help we believe we are witnessing the birth of a new art form," they wrote. On the question of lonelygirl15's identity, the creators attempted to invest her with everyman qualities.
"Lonelygirl15 is a reflection of everyone. She is no more real or fictitious than the portions of our personalities that we choose to show (or hide) when we interact with the people around us."
But there were signs that the admission that the site is a fake and the pretensions of the "creators" could backfire. In attempting to harness the interactive power of an online community there is a danger that consumers may decide they do not like being fooled.
The first posted response to the statement came from Alissa Brooke, a blogger who has hosted a forum on the lonelygirl15 phenomenon. She simply wrote: "Well, that's no fun any more."
The identity of the creators of lonelygirl15 remains a mystery. In their statement they claim to be film makers, not computer programmers, adding: "We want you to know that we aren't a big corporation. We are just like you."
But internet sleuths have established that emails sent by lonelygirl15 came from the powerful Creative Artists Agency in Hollywood, and that lonelygirl15 was registered as a trademark by a California lawyer two weeks ago.
--The Times--
*Jonathan Richards 8.19.06
Worldwide fame for a lonely girl
By Jonathan Richards
HER name is Bree, and she is schooled at home. She has a lazy eye, and when she was younger she had to wear a patch, which embarrassed her. Her best friend is called Daniel and he really fancies her, but she doesn’t like him in that way.
They may seem like the mundane details of teenage life but to the more than one million YouTube users who have watched the confessions of “lonelygirl15” since she posted her first video three months ago they are a source of great fascination.
Not one of them would have become public were it not for Bree’s strict father, whose authoritarian ways were the reason for her refuge on the internet.
“I was usually stuck studying the Treaty of Versailles or Occam’s razor — making videos was much more fun,” Bree said when she was contacted by The Times this week.
“I have been open — maybe too open — about my parents, but kids all over the world have written telling me their personal stories and asking for advice. Some people who also come from strict homes have given me hope that there is life beyond what I’m experiencing now.”
According to psychologists, therapy is one of the key reasons why people choose to post video blogs, or “vlogs”. “It’s much easier to tell your problems to complete strangers than it is to tell someone you are intimate with — in which case you have to live with the consequences for life,” said Helen Petrie, Professor of Human Computer Interaction in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York.
“When it’s not face-to-face, people also have more time to reflect on their problems before they talk about them, which can be beneficial.
“There is a deep psychological need to feel that other people are interested in you and care about you,” Professor Petrie said.
There is also the matter of instant fame. More than 100 million videos are watched every day on YouTube.
YouTube is the most popular video-sharing site in Britain, and the 40th most visited site overall. According to the internet research company Hitwise, it attracts 63 per cent of all video-sharing traffic; its nearest competitor, Google Video, attracts 10 per cent.
*Michael Parsons 9.7.06
Get your online real fake teenage girls!
The interesting bits of the internet play with the boundary between real life and make-believe, writes Michael Parsons
The drama of lonelygirl15, a beautiful teenage video diarist type on YouTube, is only the most recent soap opera to hit the net. Debate rages as to whether our heroine Bree's confessions, which include boyfriend trouble, parent angst, and an intriguing whiff of old-time Satanism, are a commercial venture, the art project of an inspired theatre group, or, God forbid, the work of a real, beautiful, teenage video diarist. So far, so last week. Yet this current microfad plunges me much further back, way back into my internet time machine. In 1995, and yes folks, that's eleven of your offline years, American film maker Scott Zakarin launched a net soap opera called The Spot, featuring a bunch of beautiful teenage online diary types, winning himself a Wikipedia citation as the 'first episodic fiction Web site,' but entirely missing the forces that lonelygirl15 has so neatly mastered. It's time to get real fake.
There's a three-dimensional quality to the lonelygirl15 saga: there's the story itself, as narrated by Bree and her sometime friend Daniel, then there's other YouTube community members posting comments about whether the whole thing is a fake, and then there's external bloggers blogging about bloggers who've blogged about each other's blogs on the subject. Much of this debate is concerned with two powerful forces around which virtual culture constantly circulates: authenticity and intimacy. If you wade through the thousands of comments (and much spam) appended to Bree's video diaries, many writers appear to feel they're in direct connection with her. Others angrily accuse her of abusing the YouTube community by presenting fake material as real.
This is the essence of the virtual experience: that it feels so real, that all these virtual creatures are so close to our screens that we can touch them, look in their eyes, read their diaries, get to know their laugh – yet they may in fact may be entirely, cynically false. You'll see endless arpeggios and variations played on this tension, more or less seriously, in every aspect of online culture, as more and more of our experience becomes virtual.
Back in 1995 many, many journalists were quick to point out that the soap opera surrounding The Spot's financial problems, corporate governance, and management conflicts proved much more entertaining than the occupants of the Santa Monica beach house which gave the website its name. The site eventually closed in 1997, when, according to the site's executive producer and head writer quoted in a News.com story, "a series of behind-the-scenes financial problems finally took their toll."
The Spot ultimately failed because it could never exploit the tensions between the real and the false. It was clearly made up, presented as honest fiction, and what real-world drama existed, in the shape of the business problems of its founders, was only of interest to the business press. Lonelygirl15 understands that popular modern drama sits in the treacherous space between the real and the fake. TV has taken on much the same lesson with its pursuit of the real fake, in the form of virtual reality shows. The point is to have your cake and eat it, too: we want a seamless web of meaning that has the crunchy veracity of real life and the staged, heightened drama of art: so the Big Brother contestants may get arrested, married, divorced, giving the real fake tabloids their fuel and keeping the whole saga spinning years after the programmes that made them famous have gone off air.
All we need to give this micromeme a fitting conclusion is to prove that the three words within lonelygirl15's name are all lies. She's clearly not lonely, as more than 6,000 people have posted to her pages on YouTube. She's clearly not fifteen, as says in one of her first videos that she's actually sixteen. You heard it here first: Lonelygirl15 is actually a boy. And I think Daniel knows.
--The Guardian--
*Dan Glaister 9.9.06
A series of videos showing a 16-year-old girl opining about life, relationships, planets, cookies and religion from the orderly confines of her bedroom somewhere in smalltown America has become the pop culture hit of the summer.
The short video blog postings by lonelygirl15 on the YouTube website have attracted millions of viewers since they started appearing in May. But the postings' polished nature and the intriguing inconsistencies in the stories led many to suspect that lonelygirl15 was fake.
"Bree", the "girl" in the videos, appears older than 16. One in particular, in which she goes swimming with her friend Daniel, resembles a pop video more than a blog.
Some bloggers suggested she was part of a viral marketing campaign for a film or computer game, the successor to that used to promote the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project.
Yesterday her "creators" came clean, admitting the site was fake. In a posting on lonelygirl15.com labelled "A message from the creators", the unnamed makers of the videos adopted a more conventional entertainment industry tone. "Thank you for enjoying our show so far. We are amazed by the overwhelmingly positive response to our videos; it has exceeded our wildest expectations."
They went on to address some of the speculation about the videos: were they promoting a film or a reality TV show? Was some corporate behemoth behind the venture? And who the heck is lonelygirl15 anyway? According to the creators, the enterprise is far larger than any of that.
"With your help we believe we are witnessing the birth of a new art form," they wrote. On the question of lonelygirl15's identity, the creators attempted to invest her with everyman qualities.
"Lonelygirl15 is a reflection of everyone. She is no more real or fictitious than the portions of our personalities that we choose to show (or hide) when we interact with the people around us."
But there were signs that the admission that the site is a fake and the pretensions of the "creators" could backfire. In attempting to harness the interactive power of an online community there is a danger that consumers may decide they do not like being fooled.
The first posted response to the statement came from Alissa Brooke, a blogger who has hosted a forum on the lonelygirl15 phenomenon. She simply wrote: "Well, that's no fun any more."
The identity of the creators of lonelygirl15 remains a mystery. In their statement they claim to be film makers, not computer programmers, adding: "We want you to know that we aren't a big corporation. We are just like you."
But internet sleuths have established that emails sent by lonelygirl15 came from the powerful Creative Artists Agency in Hollywood, and that lonelygirl15 was registered as a trademark by a California lawyer two weeks ago.
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