The moment lonelygirl15 came out of the closet it became obvious that its blast will have widespread consequences and disillusionment. But nobody really expected what was to follow (see this video for a short summary)...
We have two large groups of people on YouTube to categorize for the purpose of looking into lonelygirl situation: the first group being people who couldn't believe LG15 was fake and the other group who couldn't believe that anyone would consider LG15 to be real. These two groups (and the ideological background behind them) emerged out of the lonelygirl15 collision, realizing perhaps for the first time that YouTube is not just a unified, self-standing trunk but rather a whole tree, made of a number of branches, each having its own perception of reality (the trunk).
Let's examine the events as they unfolded: After LG15's creators made their first announcement, vloggers who believed in her existence were the first to express their highly emotional video opinions. At this point more people joined in, adding their own response, this time not necessarily reflecting their true opinion... This is what happened to bravesgirl5's video - some of the first responses she got were meant to be sarcastic and one of those who decided to post their own masked parody of bravesgirl5 was renetto, questioning her intelligence and possible hidden motives for the outburst through sarcastic agreeing with her. Since he is of the backbones of YouTube, the issue not only caught a lot of attention but also generated massive response to both bravesgirl5 and him.
Renetto's action (once again) encouraged both groups to post their own videos: the first group blindly believed his sarcasm and the second one wanted to make their own parody of the "believers". Eventually, sarcastic videos became intentionally obvious and directly critical to the "believers" who responded back with exasperation. To try to fix the damage, renetto made another video, explaining his true view on truth and fakeness. But unfortunately, it didn't help much, so he tried to calm the storm with another entertaining video, this time claiming that LG15 was real and afterwards with another video, introducing himself as Trevor W.
The "believers" group finally started to crack, and while a majority of them still believed they were betrayed, their reasons for it began to differ. Some of them felt that way only because they were emotionally invested in the story, others partially accepted her fakeness through the positive things she encouraged them to do.
However, most believers to this day never managed to acquire a critical distance, required for a more clear view of LG15's phenomenon. This isn't worrisome just because it exposes a specific mindset that is prone to manipulation on any scale, it's also shocking because the percentage of such people could be far higher than percentage of those who are capable of making critical judgement.
This disturbing fact is most likely just one of the consequences of a certain mindset and is worth further study, and is in my opinion a reflection of the negative side of Western civilisation or at least U.S.A., where the majority of "gullible" YouTubers comes from.
Another important issue that lonelygirl15 exposed was how closely tied together the internet and television have become: TV turned into a reflection of internet and internet started paying attention to TV. The merging of two media formats remains only a matter of time. And with Apple's iTV in development, there is a realistic possibility that public television is about to die out. As Virginia Heffernan put it: why would someone want to watch boring TV shows and news when you can watch more entertaining and diverse original content on YouTube without time restrictions?
In the days that followed, more information on lonelygirl15 started coming out. Videos, revealing LG as a 19 year-old actress Jessica Rose, started appearing on YouTube - countless parodies and vlogs followed. U.S. (and some world) mass media (from CNN to NBC) were filled with reports on the subject and after a few days the first live interviews with Jessica and LG15 crew appeared on Jay Leno, CBS, CNN,... and on MTV, in which a somewhat shocking truth was revealed to mindful viewers - none of the interviewed creators or actors even mentioned YouTube, the reason for their success. Instead, advertisements of revver, one of YouTube's competitors, appeared behind interviewees. And as if that weren't enough, the lonelygirl15 project soon revealed a deal, struck with revver.
What bothers me at this point is not the denial of any negative viewer comments by LG15 team, nor the arrogance of creators, claiming that they had the drama's future all planned out. It is their attitude towards YouTube, the one and only thing that had the ability lonelygirl15's story a success. Making their own "video blog portal" with video response feature (copied directly from YouTube!) and a deal with revver could easily be described as a betrayal... but it is not.
Lonelygirl15 was never "faithful" to YouTube. In the beginning it might have been envisioned as a ground-breaking experiment - but after seeing a business opportunity the creators downgraded their attitude: YouTube and LG15's fans were suddenly used only as a tool to promote themselves in an effort to gain financial benefit from the situation. And they did it in a very instrumental way, completely erasing YouTube from their memory, hoping that (potential) fans will follow the example. They also latently erased the difference between active and passive viewers by treating them as a single viewer mass (referring to them as "fans"), rendering the promising new form of narrative to nothing more than yet another classic TV drama.
Despite all that, the LG15 experience is a good example that any kind of publicity is good for viewer ratings - she has once again climbed to the top of YouTube's most viewed and subscribed (currenty 41000) channels - and the numbers are still growing.
What can we expect from lonelygirl15 in the future? As for LG15 project itself, he answer is not hard: an attempt to switch from YouTube's platform and center it around its own website portal and revver. But will anyone actually be willing to make that move? I truly hope not.
To keep up with fans' demands, now that they now it's all an act, the producers will be eventually have to come up with more original content to keep the "fans" watching and raise the popularity bar even higher to make solid ground for a full-length theatre picture. It's also quite possible that at least one of the trinity of producers will part ways with LG15 project if it becomes too distant from the original concept. But of course, only time will tell - and measured in internet time, that means a few weeks.
We have two large groups of people on YouTube to categorize for the purpose of looking into lonelygirl situation: the first group being people who couldn't believe LG15 was fake and the other group who couldn't believe that anyone would consider LG15 to be real. These two groups (and the ideological background behind them) emerged out of the lonelygirl15 collision, realizing perhaps for the first time that YouTube is not just a unified, self-standing trunk but rather a whole tree, made of a number of branches, each having its own perception of reality (the trunk).
Let's examine the events as they unfolded: After LG15's creators made their first announcement, vloggers who believed in her existence were the first to express their highly emotional video opinions. At this point more people joined in, adding their own response, this time not necessarily reflecting their true opinion... This is what happened to bravesgirl5's video - some of the first responses she got were meant to be sarcastic and one of those who decided to post their own masked parody of bravesgirl5 was renetto, questioning her intelligence and possible hidden motives for the outburst through sarcastic agreeing with her. Since he is of the backbones of YouTube, the issue not only caught a lot of attention but also generated massive response to both bravesgirl5 and him.
Renetto's action (once again) encouraged both groups to post their own videos: the first group blindly believed his sarcasm and the second one wanted to make their own parody of the "believers". Eventually, sarcastic videos became intentionally obvious and directly critical to the "believers" who responded back with exasperation. To try to fix the damage, renetto made another video, explaining his true view on truth and fakeness. But unfortunately, it didn't help much, so he tried to calm the storm with another entertaining video, this time claiming that LG15 was real and afterwards with another video, introducing himself as Trevor W.
The "believers" group finally started to crack, and while a majority of them still believed they were betrayed, their reasons for it began to differ. Some of them felt that way only because they were emotionally invested in the story, others partially accepted her fakeness through the positive things she encouraged them to do.
However, most believers to this day never managed to acquire a critical distance, required for a more clear view of LG15's phenomenon. This isn't worrisome just because it exposes a specific mindset that is prone to manipulation on any scale, it's also shocking because the percentage of such people could be far higher than percentage of those who are capable of making critical judgement.
This disturbing fact is most likely just one of the consequences of a certain mindset and is worth further study, and is in my opinion a reflection of the negative side of Western civilisation or at least U.S.A., where the majority of "gullible" YouTubers comes from.
Another important issue that lonelygirl15 exposed was how closely tied together the internet and television have become: TV turned into a reflection of internet and internet started paying attention to TV. The merging of two media formats remains only a matter of time. And with Apple's iTV in development, there is a realistic possibility that public television is about to die out. As Virginia Heffernan put it: why would someone want to watch boring TV shows and news when you can watch more entertaining and diverse original content on YouTube without time restrictions?
In the days that followed, more information on lonelygirl15 started coming out. Videos, revealing LG as a 19 year-old actress Jessica Rose, started appearing on YouTube - countless parodies and vlogs followed. U.S. (and some world) mass media (from CNN to NBC) were filled with reports on the subject and after a few days the first live interviews with Jessica and LG15 crew appeared on Jay Leno, CBS, CNN,... and on MTV, in which a somewhat shocking truth was revealed to mindful viewers - none of the interviewed creators or actors even mentioned YouTube, the reason for their success. Instead, advertisements of revver, one of YouTube's competitors, appeared behind interviewees. And as if that weren't enough, the lonelygirl15 project soon revealed a deal, struck with revver.
What bothers me at this point is not the denial of any negative viewer comments by LG15 team, nor the arrogance of creators, claiming that they had the drama's future all planned out. It is their attitude towards YouTube, the one and only thing that had the ability lonelygirl15's story a success. Making their own "video blog portal" with video response feature (copied directly from YouTube!) and a deal with revver could easily be described as a betrayal... but it is not.
Lonelygirl15 was never "faithful" to YouTube. In the beginning it might have been envisioned as a ground-breaking experiment - but after seeing a business opportunity the creators downgraded their attitude: YouTube and LG15's fans were suddenly used only as a tool to promote themselves in an effort to gain financial benefit from the situation. And they did it in a very instrumental way, completely erasing YouTube from their memory, hoping that (potential) fans will follow the example. They also latently erased the difference between active and passive viewers by treating them as a single viewer mass (referring to them as "fans"), rendering the promising new form of narrative to nothing more than yet another classic TV drama.
Despite all that, the LG15 experience is a good example that any kind of publicity is good for viewer ratings - she has once again climbed to the top of YouTube's most viewed and subscribed (currenty 41000) channels - and the numbers are still growing.
What can we expect from lonelygirl15 in the future? As for LG15 project itself, he answer is not hard: an attempt to switch from YouTube's platform and center it around its own website portal and revver. But will anyone actually be willing to make that move? I truly hope not.
To keep up with fans' demands, now that they now it's all an act, the producers will be eventually have to come up with more original content to keep the "fans" watching and raise the popularity bar even higher to make solid ground for a full-length theatre picture. It's also quite possible that at least one of the trinity of producers will part ways with LG15 project if it becomes too distant from the original concept. But of course, only time will tell - and measured in internet time, that means a few weeks.
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