lonelygirl15
Does anyone else find this lonelygirl15 thing outrageously “neat”? My ability to suspend my disbelief is severely limited and as a result I’ve had trouble really enjoying the latest crop of horror movies. I like “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and other classics but I find the last few years worth of suspense or horror movies to be really lacking. But this daily video diary on YouTube is different, mostly because the context is different. It starts out as just a web diary, with daily entries by a very cute sixteen year old girl, who we find out is home schooled by very religious parents and who has a close friend who is a bit of a nerd and helps her edit and post her videos. It is all very reasonable, and I had taken these video logs at face value. My theory was that these videos were popular because there was a cute girl in them. But there is more going on, and it took a entertainment news report on NPR to make me see it (in fact there has been a lot of press coverage), this is actually a horror movie unfolding very slowly in three minute web logs, with subtle but scary details… Here is a run down of what viewers have figured out so far:
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lonelygirl15 is a trademark, and the website www.lonelygirl15.com was registered before the first videos were added to YouTube
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lonelygirl15 is member of a strict religion (Mormonism?) and is home schooled
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Her bedroom is very sparsely decorated but in one video you get a close up of a candelabra with a picture of Aleister Crowley above it
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In one video she rates cookies, on a one to ten scale, the three cookies she tries are rated “10″, “12″ and “06″. Aleister Crowley’s birthday is 10/12/06.
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In the latest video she explains that she has been asked to take part in a special religious ceremony…
I just think it is really creepy, and the fact that it seems “real”, and seems like “found” art, makes it a lot more enjoyable then most of the horror that Hollywood is currently crafting.
Wednesday, September 6 9:08 pm
It certainly is interesting. Kind of like when we all sat around at 905 and watched The Blair Witch Project for the first time. I had no idea it was fake, I didn’t have any disbelief to suspend because it was presented to me as an actual documentary. It freaked me out.
Mainstream media, blogs and the Internet being what it is today, makes it nearly impossible for anything like Blair Witch or lonelygirl to sustain itself for very long. Sustain in the sense of fooling the audience into believing what they are watching is real.
However, if the writing is good enough, the audience will keep coming back — even if they know it is a put on.
Part of the fun for most people is the speculation of lonelygirl. It is an online soap opera for conspiracy theorists. Look at the sucess of “Lost.” Frankly, I don’t get it, but many people do. I think the speculation of what will happen next and where they are is part — if not all — of the appeal for fans of “Lost.”
It is all too polished to be real. I watched one segment and it seemed so scripted and perfect. The sound and image quality is too good to be some random girl and her nerdy friend posting stuff to You Tube. And the fact that this plot twist is introduced makes it even more obvious to me.
And the Internet will continue to take moviegoers away from theaters if Hollywood keeps insisting on putting out crap. Look at all the remakes, are original ideas that scarce. Or are writers looking elsewhere to share their ideas?
All I really want to know, however, is whose idea was it for an Aleister Crowley product placement?
Miiiister Crowley, bah bum bahhhh…What went wrong in yer head? Da da, da-da-da-dah, da, da!
Thursday, September 7 9:11 am
I perfer to supply my own exposition, reading a wikipedia (or rotten.com in this case) entry will always be better then the tv show trying to bring me up to speed… It just proves that there are lots of people who are entertained by doing “research”…
Thursday, September 7 3:25 pm
Alchemy, dude. I was only able to watch a few episodes before youtube crapped out on me, but her she was constantly reading material that in one way or another references the very nature of the physical world. I don’t know exactly what will be transmuted, but I’m curious.
Thursday, September 7 4:54 pm
I don’t know exactly what will be transmuted, but I’m curious.
I’m fairly certain it will be her SOUL.
Thursday, September 7 7:58 pm
MOST COMMENTS EVER!!!!!
Saturday, September 9 7:38 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et24KNCbkF0
Sunday, September 10 5:03 pm
I hope her religious “act” has something to do with necrophelia.
Thursday, September 14 11:37 pm
[...] Their next step? Wii Channels of course. Wii Channels are the first thing you encounter when you turn on your Wii (that sounded kind of dirty). You can choose to play a game or go to Wii Forecast where you encounter an interface similar to google earth to give you weather reports–without the silly weather men or the sillier comercials or the silliest-having to wait for that segment of the news to start. Alternatively you could visit Wii News, which I expect to be very customizable (hopefully it will support RSS feeds) and designed for the Wii allowing easy zooming to accomadate the lower resolutions of a TV. Perhaps you have your family over and don’t want to start up your PC and truck everyone into the den to see the photos from the last camping trip, so instead you stick your SD card into your Wii (again I feel a bit dirty) and go to the photo channel which has an easy interface to display your pictures with. Then there is the Internet Channel which is essentially the Opera web browser made for the Wii if this allows for YouTube watching… well… even though she’s staged I’m still going to enjoy LonelyGirl15. [...]
Tuesday, May 13 8:23 am
Crowley’s birthday was in 1875, not 1906.
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