Recently in lonelygirl15 Category

So CNet is reporting MyspaceTV is going to "broadcast" the "season finale" of the "first season" of Lonelygirl15.

The number of quotation marks in that lede ought to communicate my utter skepticism.

My, my, Lonelygirl15 sure has come a long way. Not so long ago, everyone thought the too-cute videoblogger was, well, a too-cute videoblogger. Then some online video fans with a shocking amount of time on their hands deduced that she was likely an actress in a staged series of video episodes.

Screw you, buddy, I'm a very busy man.

Lonelygirl15 episodes have been uploaded to the Lonelygirl15 MySpace page since the series' early days, but this is the first time that they'll be available only on the portal. Lonelygirl, after all, is one of YouTube's biggest stars too.

So you're taking a "show" that is popular almost solely through YouTube and presenting its "finale" exclusively on a site nobody's ever heard of (seriously, MyspaceTV? What is that?) in order to reach a larger audience?

I didn't even realize they were still making episodes, frankly. I don't know what the Lonelygirl15 revenue stream is, but good for them if they've landed a deal with the mysterious MyspaceTV.

Let the bridge be burned behind me
Come what may, come what may

Never check your RSS reader before bed. You'll never GET to bed.

From about 1999 to 2003, I was a Wired subscriber. Then I moved to Florida, and I let my subscription expire because I didn't have the time or inspiration to really read it anymore. Wired felt tired to me; my increasing attention to blogs rendered most of the news in there useless -- not to mention I had a backlog of two banker's boxes-full of magazines, all of them unread. Most of them are still unread. (I use Devil Ray games to catch up on my reading.)

Anyway, it's while reading Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's blog The Long Tail (related to his excellent book of the same name) that I recognized a photo that seemed to be a non-sequitur in his post about taste and YouTube -- but no, it was completely appropriate, because it was a photo of Jessica Rose, the actress that stars in the Lonelygirl15 series which I'm sure is still going on... somewhere.

See, Wired made Lonelygirl15 their cover story this month, and have fortunately put the entire article online.

Welcome to the set of Lonelygirl15, the breakout Web hit that, in September, was unmasked by fans as a work of fiction. What nearly a million people thought was the room of a sweet, charismatic teen named Bree

I dunno if I'd call myself a fan. Devotee, perhaps. And saying that a million people were somehow hoodwinked by Lonelygirl15 is really inaccurate. The reason the majority of us were interested in the story is the very point that we knew it was fake.

Regarding the fact the show is filmed in Flinders' bedroom:

Now, three months into the project and with hundreds of thousands of regular viewers, he doesn't bother. It's too much work, even though it has blown some great opportunities for him. Last week, he spotted his neighbors – two Playboy playmates – and invited them in. They glanced at his room, got suspicious, and quickly left.

Is Flinders a loser? Click the jump to see our detailed loser-nalysis.

I meet with my attorney tomorrow. I'll have a better explanation of things afterward.

Meanwhile, NBC Nightly News covered Lonelygirl15 last night. No, they didn't mention this blog. Brian Williams ain't no Virginia Heffernan.

Hello, Jessica Rose. Congratulations on pulling off one of the greatest hoaxes in Internet history.

The L.A. Times has the story

Virginia is all over it

No good news on the legal front, yet. Shopping for attorneys.

My Internet crush, Virginia Heffernan, mentioned this very blog in her post today. Thanks, Ginny! Call me sometime.

We're on.. temporary hiatus. I believe I am being sued.

More to come. (But so much to say!)

Oh, and I know "temporary hiatus" is redundant. Bite me.

Dual CRTs are sexy.

She has a hot voice. She's 37. Think she's single? She's not bad looking. She has a Harvard Ph.D. (!!!)

Anyway, you know what she's talking about if you know why I'm taking time out of our holiest of holy days to post about it. She and her New York Times blog have been up, down, over, and under the Lonelygirl15 hoax | conspiracy | drama | fake drama | debate for a while, though we're still waiting for more of those vaunted emails she claims to have.

Oh, and the daughter of the dude who registered that trademark we talked about yesterday? She just happens to run the Young Writers' Workshop in L.A. (and volunteers for SUMMER CAMPS IN L.A. at the Painted Turtle Camp, affiliated with Paul Newman's Hole In The Wall Gang foundation).

So, here's my current stance on the story.

Bree goes to USC, meets Daniel, decides to put on the world with her elaborate hoax.

Hoax starts to get out of hand, and after receiving email from viewer about the selling of Lonelygirl15 merchandise (four days to be exact), the trademark application is filed. Read about that here, though it's the lg15.com forum so... don't waste your time.) Bree knows her friend Lisa (whom she works with either at the Young Storytellers Foundation or at Painted Turtle Camp) has a father who's an attorney, and asks her to ask him to protect her service mark.

So the application is filed, though since it has nothing to do with his work, he uses his home address on the application.

I think it all makes perfect sense.

Football picks for the day:

Ohio 35 Tennessee-Martian 7
Ohio State 42 NIU 24
Notre Dame 35 Ga Tech 14
Cal 10 Tennessee 7
Penn State 21 Akron 17

Today we launch Blogtracks, a musical accompaniment to your reading pleasure. Hopefully it catches on and more bloggers offer a streaming, relevant soundtrack to their posts. Stream today's by clicking here.

In today's episode of Journeys, we'll cover some major Lonelygirl15 hoax - scam - conspiracy - fakery news, talk with lonely Northwestern alums, and rock out with our collective jocks out to celebrate Football Christmas.

Big news in the Lonelygirl15 world, and hopefully the elaborate ruse all comes crashing down upon someone very soon -- as we here at Journeys have way better things to be doing than talk to attractive law school students over IM and fire emails across continents. Here's what's gone down in the last 24 hours.

Lonelygirl15 (I'm pretty much resigned to not calling her "Bree" anymore) posted a new video -- and it's time for making cookies! Though, conveniently, they make the cookies... in her bedroom. So we don't get to see the rest of the "house," or as I refer to them, "sound stages." The video, to its credit, is on face quite dull, but contains all number of clues to those of us on the investigation trail. "Bree" drops a few Myspace names, and "Daniel" is seen, almost ludicrously so (in the manner that they REALLY WANT TO MAKE SURE WE SEE), reading this week's Rolling Stone. Okay, so the videos really are recorded with a decent amount of recency. Or not? One poster matched a screenshot side-by-side with the actual cover and declared it a Photoshop job. You be the judge.

That's the least interesting discovery made in the last day, though.

Let's start at Tech forum site Anandtech. Anandtech is one of those sites you had bookmarked back in the late 90's owing to the forums constantly buzzing with news of free coupons, free shirts, and free DVDs. The late 90's were a jackpot for freebies, and those of us with the right connections ended up with piles of swag from websites that don't exist anymore. Except for this one called Google, who sent me a T-Shirt back in 1999 which reads, "I Google" (using the trademark as a verb, which they would really like you to stop doing).

ANYWAY, longtime Anandtech poster "edprush" lets this bomb fly:

Later posts explain she's been asked to attend a private school in Oregon or receive private tutoring. Apparently other cousins inform him an appearance on Leno or Letterman is in the works.

No surprise that he also has a YouTube account.

IT. GETS. BETTER.

Intrepid Lonelygirl15.com users tracked down a development at, of all things, the United States Patent & Trademark Office.

Yes, kiddos, Lonelygirl15 is now a trademark. Its owner? *drumroll*

Goodfried, Kenneth INDIVIDUAL UNITED STATES 17341 Cumpston St Encino CALIFORNIA 91316

Um. Okay? And the text of the application?

IC 038. US 100 101 104. G & S: Broadcasting programs via a global computer network. FIRST USE: 20060524. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20060524

First use in commerce? You mean this is commercial in nature? It's not just some girl and her friend making videos from her bedroom?

I feel so disillusioned.

So now it's time to track down Mr. Goodfried and find out the truth. Is the end in sight? And why is a labor attorney filing trademark applications? Using his home address (a modest-looking place right off the 101)?

Meanwhile, the mysterious informant Mr. T is speaking more Jibba-Jabba in the LG15.com forums:

she graduated from McAuley High School in 2003

That doesn't jive at all with what edprush was saying, but, then, what's McAuley High School? There's McAuley High Schools everywhere -- including Cincinnati. I'd do some Myspace school searching, but Myspace sucks. Seriously, I'm not sure how Myspace is so popular, as it's a standing example of how not to engage in web design. Not only is the site horribly ugly (which could be fixed by, oh, three minutes of CSS adjustment), but IT DOESN'T WORK. Seriously, try doing a search based on networking or high schools, or browsing schools by city -- it just doesn't work. "An unexpected error occurred." No, I've long come to expect them, thank you.

So Myspace sucks.

Mr. T would also like us to know "she spent 2004-apr2006 in miami florida" which ... means nothing. He won't tell us much more, because he "doesn't want to face litigation." Seriously, check it out here. I think the dude's nuts.

For what it's worth, there are people getting paid to do what I'm doing here, and so they're doing a better job of it. The L.A. Times (thanks milo) has latched onto the story, and yesterday published a long expose on the subject. Here's the highlights:

If you freeze the frame at one minute and 36 seconds, you will see (according to some) a shadow sweep over the lower left-hand corner of the video; a shadow which, it is alleged, was likely cast by a boom mike — proving the use of professional equipment on the set.

(In regards to a YouTube message poster:

However, when contacted by ToLD, Johnny replied by saying: "i am sorry i am not at liberty to share any information with you. i apparently signed a Non Disclosure aggreement in feb 06. which legally keeps me from responding. again I apologize." (sic)

The fact that a major international newspaper has something called "The Trail of Lonelygirl15 Daily" on the front page of their Entertainment section is phenomenally surreal. It's the big time, kiddos, and those of us scooping up the dirt on the sidelines are headed for the bench, unless we keep up the due diligence. Now I know what it was like for Pauly when the big-timers showed up just in time for the Main Event and muscled the bloggers out of the way.

Finally, one of the forum kids made this parody. It's smart, but if you're going to make something smart, get somebody not tone-deaf to sing it. Gilbert and Sullivan weep in their graves.

Some of us are just gearing up for the backlash.

--

Yesterday was Football Christmas. To celebrate, I attended my local BW3's to watch the Northwestern-Miami game and whatever else they'd put up ... which wasn't much. Sat next to an excited Northwestern alum who had nice things to say about Athens. He was okay, but the $3.00 22oz Coors Lights were better. So was the Chase Club bartender next to me from Bay City, who wouldn't leave me alone, not that I wanted to be left alone.

The most miserable part of Football Christmas -- and there's always a miserable part -- is the fact that more than half the televisions at BW3 were set to the Buccaneers' preseason game. And the ones that weren't were being roundly ignored. These ignorant 'necks care more about meaningless NFL preseason games than FOOTBALL CHRISTMAS. Oh, and Delmon Young has a higher batting average than he does on-base percentage. God, I love baseball stats. Psyched to see Delmon in person tonight.

Behave, kiddos.

Today's Blogtrack featured 7L & Esoteric - "Play Dumb" and Goldfrapp - "Fly Me Away (Ladytron Remix)".

For the latest Lonelygirl15 news, check the main page.

Ran into American Idol finalist Melissa McGhee last night at the Hangout.

Minor, not Big, goon.

So we have a new Lonelygirl15 video... and it's a real piece of work. Bree and Daniel go swimming... and we see a side of Bree we haven't seen before. Specifically, her backside.

If you somehow missed this development, check the video.

Almost immediately, an eagle-eyed viewer with some botanical knowledge (see, I knew that line of questioning would get somewhere!) located the swimming-hole site:

rm59918rm (2 hours ago)
This was filmed in Southern California anywhere south of Fresno, along the foothils of the Sierra Mtns., or possibly in the foothills of the San Bernardino Range. The specific Nolari Parryi (Nolari Bear Grass) is indigenous only to that area. Bree walks right through a patch of it, without question, that is what that plant is.

Okay, so it's not a complete location, but it finally gets us out of Texas, Oklahoma, et cetera.

Meanwhile, Milo brings up Lonelygirl15.com frequent poster Jessica (with whom I've had a few conversations) and her apparent geolocationization placing Bree near Mountain View/San Mateo -- home to YouTube. There's also a Scientologist Delphi Academy 25 miles away that is home to short summer camps for the poor children of Scientologists.

And then you have an actual botanist who notices this and says yes, yes, yes, it's Southern California and if she says she lives three hours from the nearest mall she's lying. And yeah, there's a Delphi Academy outside L.A., and San Diego, and all over, really.

The swimming video is notable for a number of reasons, not least among them the evidence that it most certainly was edited by a man -- and probably not Daniel, or whatever his name is. The video is so obviously from the male gaze, yet uncomplimentary to Daniel, that it's practically prima facie. On top of all of this is my contention that the video was edited using Adobe's After Effects studio and the Magic Bullet suite. Now, it's possible Daniel pirated a copy, or something, but you don't see many 18-year-old kids running around with $800 video effect suites.

Things get better.

This gentleman commented in Bree's Myspace:

Following to "My Adolescent Opposite"'s profile, we see... DUN-DUN-DUNHHHHHHHHHH!

Is it a door closing? Is it a window opening? Is the guy just joking around? Stay tuned...

Wikipedia finally undeleted the Lonelygirl15 entry. If you have the time, unlike me, head over there and edit up a nice entry. It deserves it, we worked hard to get the entry undeleted.

John Green asks if Dan Brown might be Lonelygirl15's father. It would be more coherent than his books, that's for sure.

BusinessWeek's Jon Fine, usually a man commenting on more mainstream media content, seems pretty obsessed -- and here presents his email dialogue with the Richard Jewell of the Lonelygirl15 fiasco, Satanic director Brian Flemming.

Our friend Xanax posted in Virginia Heffernan's blog (boy, she seems depressed) that he still thinks it's Flemming.

Flemming adamantly denies it and calls us all a bunch of retards.

And here's an odd post that mentions LG15 and Delmon Young in the same post.

Oh, and apparently LG15 is an alternate reality game.

Back to school. Be good, kiddos.

For the latest Lonelygirl15 news, check the main page.

Germany has latched onto the Lonelygirl15 phenomenon and the debates over whether she's a hoax, scam, fake, authentic, real, or any other adjective one might use to bump up search results. The Frankfurt General Sunday paper had this to say about what has clearly become an obsession for those of us at EW: (translation courtesy the Babelfish [Edit: Babelfish sucked at translating this, I ended up doing it myself])

Frankfurt general Sunday newspaper
COLUMN: Politics (Politics? Leave it to the Germans to make Internet fads political); At present; S. 10
LENGTH: 1097 words
HEADING: Fair of the privacies; The generation Webcam has a new star: "lonelygirl15". Only: Is it also authentic?

TEXT: OF BERTRAM EISENHAUER FRANKFURT.

Thus. Either we hang it high, then we must talk about the French Poststructuralist Michel Foucault and about what he called "technologies of the self". Or we hang the thing substantially lower, which makes it about a girl and a boy, a matter out of America and around it, which the two make in the room of the girl. What darf's its? - imagined I.

Bree thus, the girl, announces herself every three, four days. Sh chats little over homework and books, which it read. At other times the sixteen-year-old girl, shows a a rather melancholischen tendency; first she doesn't want to talk about it, then confesses a controversy with her parents. Those parents had already forbidden, for example, going on a trip going with a certain Daniel, to the boy already mentioned; she had prepared for it, even Eiersalat [Egg Salad?] Sandwiches in such a way, but for one while it looked in such a way, as if Daniel was not allowed to go any further. If now sounds, as if Bree and I would be close to us.

Bree divides their small mostly privacies -- irrelevant for most of the world -- by video message with up to 500,000 further users of the Web Site "YouTube" (in German "DuGlotze"); here she goes by the name "lonelygirl15". "Broadcast Yourself" is the ambiguous slogan of this so-called video Community: "Make your own promo" - and at the same time "Make you to the promo [?]". Daily, then YouTube enumerates, places 35,000 new videos of at the most ten minutes duration. in spring 2005 they started the InterNet platform; between 40 and 100 million downloadeds a day for day one the Filmchen. It is a gigantic video chip bazaar of the global village, on which newscasts appear, likewise, like experimental home productions of sometimes amazing quality, puzzling Japanese television shows just like Stefan Raab and Harald Schmidt, regular music clips just like their Parodies. Two young Asians in basketball shirts about were with their extravaganten Playback version of the Backstreet Boys song "I want It That Way", with simplest means provided, for weeks the heroes of the Web and the photographs of the Rueckenmassage, with the George W. Bush Angela Merkel recently with the G-8-Treffen surprised - troubled, like some mean -, are with YouTube in nearly 50 versions; of it reached more than 340,000 clicks.

Particularly the literally very easy digital technology stimulated the confession urge of the generation Webcam. "lonelygirl15" does not find obviously nothing at all to place a video in the net in that she, with effectively struck down view from her large haselnussdunklen eyes, from a "strange" moment with Daniel - as likewise on-line "danielbeast" - reported. He helps to see her with the cut and in the background of their films had been magazine-reading often; now it had included a video arranged, in which Bree - a beauty of nature with a favourable bone structure anyway - looked owing to numerous slow motion pictures like the expenditure for the rodent [no idea -- but i love it] of "Friends" star Jennifer Anniston, the kokette the hair out the front capers. And because so many of their spectators would have addressed it on it, told "lonelygirl15" further, asked it Daniel simply whether he has her perhaps, well, at the end gladly; it answered, well, actually already and so. "and which also a little is strange at the thing: that Daniel probably watches now." An easy smile into the lens: "good one, Daniel."

Little surprising that this video with well 568,000 Klicks achieved the highest ratingses of all past episodes around the "lonely girl". The fusion of Naivite and authority, from Intimacy and spectator participation: simply irresistible. (Michel Foucault would say, the user there a witness of one of those practices, "with those humans from its life a work to make would seek, which carries certain aesthetic values and corresponds to certain style criteria", but of it you wanted to hear nothing.) Naturally there are such, which grumble her a "weinerliche cow" and worse beside those, which find "lonelygirl15" nice and visit its small continuation dramas again and again. Also they have it quite simply: With its own Web camera and little software can be provided in the hand turning a video comment to the newest Kapriolen of "lonelygirl15" - or also a satire, as those of the user "fortey", who made itself merry over their small girl clay/tone, including their over-clear sad Ausatmer.

Particularly to meet the Webcam Girl must meanwhile a suspicion: It is not a Schwindlerin, older, than it indicates, Amateur, but a professional one, an actress on the hunt for a television appearance possibly. It would not be the first talent, that would have been recommended with YouTube for larger; also the "New York Times" reminded already halfironically: "does someone give its own transmission to lonelygirl15 in broadband Hollywood, ' finally?" One the "lonelygirl15"-Kritiks- "gohepcat" steps themselves with verspiegelter sun glasses and straw cowboy hat before the own camera - feels it also as charming, but "a little too perfectly". The "dramatic elbow" of history around Bree and Daniel is, their allegedly spontaneous comments would sound "almost shakespearehaft" as after film script, it is too well illuminated. Why have, he asks, someone one month before Brees first appearance with YouTube register the address lonelygirl15.com for a fan Web Site? In addition, in summary finds "gohepcat": "if it is completely falsified, is brilliant." Another YouTube user commentated: "it is no matter whether it is falsified or not. It is maintenance, like television." Perhaps also "lonelygirl15" suspects and "danielbeast", how virtual its fame could be. After they the first public crisis of their relationship - which is in all other respects not yet clearly certain - behind itself had brought, placed it a video on-line, which showed Bree at the telephone. Faded in among them the wording of the discussion, which caused allegedly desired clarifying of the situation: - which you make afterwards? - Nix special. - desire to turn a video? - about what? - white not. This telephone call? - wouldn't that be boring? - Oh. Yes.

--

Well. There you go. Michel Foucault, everyone, and I'd like to thank the city of Frankfurt for doing my forthcoming article in Journal of Popular Culture for me.

The debate rages at Wikipedia over whether or not Lonelygirl15 should have an entry in the online encyclopedia. If you have an account, please go to the Deletion Review and chime in (preferably supporting Undelete) about the matter. It blows my mind how many Wikipedia editors think this is a non-issue, despite the fact that GERMANS ARE WRITING ABOUT IT AND SENDING IT THROUGH THE MICHEL FOUCAULT WRINGER.

Meanwhile, the kids over in the Lonelygirl15.com forums are trying to locate where in the world Carmen Webdiego might actually be -- I asked for closet botanists and horticulturists to give me a hand with that in my last post. Certainly, finding a place that has deer, gophers, and hummingbirds can't be that difficult. So far, it looks like West Texas or southern Oklahoma are the best bets.

Today's media:

Ben Werdmuller says this is the beginning of a long trend of viral marketing.
Matthew Ingram draws the Alice in Wonderland allusion.

On a final note, I want to express some amusement at the developing aspects of this story. The kiddos at the lg15.com forum have been wondering, as have many of us, how the identities of Bree and Daniel have remained so clouded for so long. Clearly, some clever kids are more apt at concealing identities than the CIA. Take note, Bush Administration.

And finally -- finally -- I think some of you are taking this too seriously. Yes, there's something strange afoot, but you all are so anxious to posit identities that you're getting way ahead of yourself. As one poster, named "skinkles," in Jon Fine's article thread (which, incidentally, has driven the majority of traffic here in the past twelve hours) has proposed, Bree is none other than actress Annie Kehoe. Let's look at the evidence.

Um, no.

Have a good day, kiddos! Happy first day of school! Auf Wiedersehen!