Eeep, I have been so caught up with writing, working, and managing 20 projects all at once that I missed this fascinating story! Lonelygurl15 is a series of videos which have been telling the story of a teenage girl, Bree, over the US Summer. I managed to read the full story on Danah’s blog here, which gives a run down on the mystery of who lonelygurl15 actually was, the fans who managed to crack the mystery after suspecting she was a hoax, and the media reports about the way the narrative and fan activities played out.
It’s wonderful because it’s another form of blog fiction but taken one step further - using youtube and myspace it reflects the teen vibe better than I have seen elsewhere although as Danah pointed out, it was clearly a fake because it didn’t *quite* convince.
UPDATE: Henry Jenkins has a very well constructed response here about Lonelygurl, and the comments are also enlightening. Fantastic reading!
I think it is nicely done… even if it is a fraud.
Comment by Jesse — October 6, 2006 @ 1:01 am