LAtimes on lonleygirl15 and the changing nature of content...
The development of lonelygirl15 is more electric than all other examples of the changing nature of content, because role playing and interactivity are critical to understanding the zeitgeist of the game generation. Beck and Wade, authors of Got Game have already illustrated how the dot.com bubble manifested from video games effect on the game generation’s attitudes towards business.
Interactive content is not just about participation, control, and new media distribution. If content producers ever hope to grab the attention the game generation they have to offer a heightened experience that suspends our disbelief and captivates our imagination. As one writer I spoke with remarked, “Entertainment is always flirting with reality. It seems that things that don't aim to be thought of as real do a much better job. Verisimilitude, it's what it's all about."
So yes, reality TV is certainly one manifestation of how entertainment software and digital media are transforming content, but for the last two years critical mass has been building around content that takes interactivity and role playing to another level. A good example of this is the ABC hit LOST and its manufactured relationship with "fake" websites and internet clues...now lonelygirl15.
Mystery Fuels Huge Popularity of Web's Lonelygirl15 - Los Angeles Times
Excerpts:
Lonelygirl15 appears to be an innocent, home-schooled 16-year-old, pouring her heart out for her video camera in the privacy of her bedroom. But since May, her brief posts on the video-sharing site YouTube and the social networking hub MySpace have launched a Web mystery eagerly followed by her million-plus viewers: Who is this sheltered ingenue who calls herself "Bree," and is she in some sort of danger — or, worse, the tool of some giant marketing machine?
Three lonelygirl15-obsessed amateur Web sleuths set up a sting using tracking software that appears to show that e-mails sent from a lonelygirl15 account came from inside the offices of the Beverly Hills-based talent agency Creative Artists Agency.
The apparent CAA link takes its place alongside other tantalizing pieces of evidence that lonelygirl15 is not who she claims to be: a copyright for the name obtained by an Encino lawyer, and a plot line that, leading speculation suggests, will turn out to be the lead-in to a horror movie's marketing campaign.
CAA spokesman Michael Mand said he "could neither confirm nor deny" that the agency is representing whoever is behind the 27 video posts.
As to horror film rumors, calls made to several studios found no such plans — but plenty of fascination for the way in which a Hollywood-ready cultural phenomenon has been built from a grass-roots Web platform. Lonelygirl15, many say, is the next-generation "Blair Witch Project," using interactive forms of storytelling that, like the 1999 hit, tries to trick an audience into thinking it's true.
"I like the community aspect of the mystery — getting together and trying to figure it out," Giammarco said in a phone interview. "Though I would still watch if there weren't a mystery, the videos wouldn't appeal to me as much."
Over the next three months, two dozen more videos hit the Web, spaced out every few days. Bree dangled hints about her life, revealing that she had spent her youth in New Zealand, was treated for "lazy eye" and had an obsession with physicist Richard Feynman. Oblique references popped up to "my religion," which was never named but which forbade things such as attending Daniel's high school graduation party.
In late August, fans discovered that the Web address for lonelygirl15.com had been purchased before the first video even appeared, with efforts made to shield the identity of the buyer.
