Truth or fiction
Sep. 12th, 2006 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrisvenusI just came across through a series of links (I forget where) the story of a youtuber called "lonelygirl15". I came across this in the context of it being a series of video diaries released to youtube over the last few months that were an artificially sculpted story presented as reality.
I tend to use youtube more for watching taht clip from this, or that video from that and so on. I don't really see the blogging side of it but I am aware that lots of people make videos of themselves and upload. So this girl (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=lonelygirl15) released loads of videos that apparently tell a story. This interested me for several reasons. Firstly the obvious use of a new (and geeky) medium as a mechanism for telling a story. How new it is, I'm not sure. The idea of a narrative in diary form is not that new. I'm sure its probably been done on TV before. Its not common though and I can't think of something in this exact form. But at the end of the day I think the thing that interested me more was the reaction.
The main jist of the reaction is that I think people don't like being duped. People see these videos that seem genuine and empathise with the girl, comment on her videos and send her messages and such like. They are responding to her through what they have seen. When it turns out that the videos are sculpted fictions designed to tell a deliberate story (even if that is just the story of a girl and nothing more interesting) then people feel betrayed and cheated and lied to.
So is there a place for this kind of thing on a public forum next to real videos or should people keep these video diaries to their own site? Should people make it clear that the video isn't real? But doesn't that spoil it in some way? Or does it spoil it more to see it and realise only at the end that it was all made up?
I know that I wouldn't have watched any of them (or not more than one) if I hadn't known it was fake. But then I wanted to try to see some of the story they were telling.
Its all very strange. If you want to see some of the videos then go to http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=lonelygirl15 and click the all videos link. There are also videos from Daniel (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Danielbeast) who is the best friend in all this and occasionally you see the other side of the story.
At some point I want to find the time to watch all the videos to see if the story is any good. It seems interesting enough and given the last video was posted after the debunking (http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2006/09/07/lonelygirl15.html is the article I found it from) it seems it is still an ongoing story. Currently our heroine, Bree, is grounded after sneaking out to a party her dad told her she couldn't go to. She is grounded but is planning on sneaking out again anyway... Yeah, I may have failed to mention there is a little bit of soap opera style about it... :)
I tend to use youtube more for watching taht clip from this, or that video from that and so on. I don't really see the blogging side of it but I am aware that lots of people make videos of themselves and upload. So this girl (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=lonelygirl15) released loads of videos that apparently tell a story. This interested me for several reasons. Firstly the obvious use of a new (and geeky) medium as a mechanism for telling a story. How new it is, I'm not sure. The idea of a narrative in diary form is not that new. I'm sure its probably been done on TV before. Its not common though and I can't think of something in this exact form. But at the end of the day I think the thing that interested me more was the reaction.
The main jist of the reaction is that I think people don't like being duped. People see these videos that seem genuine and empathise with the girl, comment on her videos and send her messages and such like. They are responding to her through what they have seen. When it turns out that the videos are sculpted fictions designed to tell a deliberate story (even if that is just the story of a girl and nothing more interesting) then people feel betrayed and cheated and lied to.
So is there a place for this kind of thing on a public forum next to real videos or should people keep these video diaries to their own site? Should people make it clear that the video isn't real? But doesn't that spoil it in some way? Or does it spoil it more to see it and realise only at the end that it was all made up?
I know that I wouldn't have watched any of them (or not more than one) if I hadn't known it was fake. But then I wanted to try to see some of the story they were telling.
Its all very strange. If you want to see some of the videos then go to http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=lonelygirl15 and click the all videos link. There are also videos from Daniel (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Danielbeast) who is the best friend in all this and occasionally you see the other side of the story.
At some point I want to find the time to watch all the videos to see if the story is any good. It seems interesting enough and given the last video was posted after the debunking (http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2006/09/07/lonelygirl15.html is the article I found it from) it seems it is still an ongoing story. Currently our heroine, Bree, is grounded after sneaking out to a party her dad told her she couldn't go to. She is grounded but is planning on sneaking out again anyway... Yeah, I may have failed to mention there is a little bit of soap opera style about it... :)
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-12 03:53 pm (UTC)No coherant thoughts really on the betrayal thing. But this doesn't seem like real duplicity (sock-puppetry etc) and as art I think it's legitimate...
Thanks for sharing anyway, I'll watch to see how it develops.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-12 04:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-12 05:40 pm (UTC)Weird entries are good. And distract little rebels from the massive volume of words they need to write in order to finish the novel.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-12 04:43 pm (UTC)Admit it Chris, you wouldn't be interested in all this if she wasn't nice-looking ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-12 05:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-12 08:24 pm (UTC)(I've not been following it myself, but it appeared on Slashdot after the creators admitted it was fiction.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-12 09:54 pm (UTC)Also given I wasn't really that aware of its huge following when I first saw it, just that it was fake, I didn't really get that anyway (especially given that in one of the episodes I saw, cookie making, she was talking about recipes she'd been sent by viewers).
Whatever the giveaways to its nature I still think its interesting anyway. Reality was never an issue for me anyway. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-13 06:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-13 05:52 pm (UTC)