Lonelygirl15 the home-schooled 16-year-old emo girl that’s been pouring her heart out in front of her video camera in her bedroom has pretty much been de-masked. Since May she’s been posting clips to YouTube and has built up a large army of fans. “Bree”, as she calls herself, has become a phenomenon and the discussion of whether or not she’s the tool of some giant marketing machine has been quite an active one on many blogs and in many communities.
According to an article in the LA Times, the mystery behind LonelyGirl15 is starting to unravel:
No one has publicly come forward to lay claim to her work, but she is starting to look as connected in Hollywood as any starlet. 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. [...]
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 [...]
Indeed, if a commercial project does result, lonelygirl15 may prove to be a model of how to harness a groundswell created on seemingly populist, user-driven websites such as YouTube and MySpace.
Read it all on the LA Times | Lonelygirl15.com | Thanks, Jesse
Robin Wauters
September 8, 2006 at 3:02 pm
http://blog.futurelab.net/2006/09/lonelygirl15.html
Coolz0r
September 8, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Good find Robin!
And where does this fit in?
I don’t buy the story from the lonely girl forum. If they are really who they say they are (“We want you to know that we aren’t a big corporation. We are just like you. A few people who love good stories.”), then why would they hire a lawyer to register that domain name? Why not ask one of their friends? It doesn’t make sense.
TechAddress
September 8, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Is YouTube Waiting For The Payoff? Read more: http://techaddress.wordpress.com/2006/09/08/youtube-waiting-for-the-payoff-businessweek/
Robin Wauters
September 13, 2006 at 9:03 am
Lonelygirl15 = Jessica Rose. Check out the NY Times article revealing her identity.
keash
October 24, 2006 at 5:09 pm
why did you lie you must have none people would have found out how much did u get paid ur a sick person you no that
proxieslist.net
January 16, 2007 at 1:41 pm
[...] If you’ve heard about Lonelygirl15 on YouTube, then you might be interested in Coolz0r’s unmasking of this fraud. A very cool marketing campaign. [...]
LonelyGirl Fraud Links « Just Add Water and Blog
April 19, 2008 at 9:54 pm
[...] http://www.coolmarketingthoughts.com/2006/09/08/lonelygirl15-hollywood-takes-on-youtube/ [...]