LonelyGirl15 as proof of concept

This is terrific. Background: starting two months ago, a user of YouTube named LonelyGirl15 started posting videos to YouTube. Cute girl, etc. Videos are apparently engaging (it’s obvious I’m out of touch with the ‘youth’ – to me, they’re soporific) and in diary format tell a narrative of emerging romance blocked by her father and her family’s involvement in some sort of emerging mystery, which appears to be Satanism. (Aleister Crowley pictures in the background, etc.) The makers of the film series foul up and lose verisimilitude, but not before they’ve become one of the most popular YouTube ‘channels’ of all time. Over a million and a half views on her profile page. Totally internet-famous (although maybe not in my neighborhood of it.) A classic example of a snowball – throw the video up on YouTube, generate a lot of attention, and anything you get from it is gravy because it costs nothing, compared to traditional entertainment, to produce.

I’m impressed by the low low overhead, but I’m even more impressed by the conversational aspect. The videos lead to more videos as viewers respond, and a conversation is entered as the original creator of the videos responds to the respondents. (LonelyGirl15 did a bit of this – the potential is much greater.) Of course, LonelyGirl15 didn’t come up with a convincing way to monetize this online drama – maybe it was coming, maybe the project was just a stepping stool for greater things. But monetization is possible, and will be done effectively by more competent people in the future.
I think this genre has potential. But what are the consequences of entertainment masquerading as reality? The LonelyGirl15 series would have had a fraction of its popularity if it was revealed as artificial from the start. Entertainment is usually labelled as such – what happens when this ceases to be the case? Especially when the monetization problem is solved, and LonelyGirl15-like productions cease to be shot from a webcam in someone’s living room and move into the world as a whole?

I predict that in the next few years we will see an ‘entertainment project’ that takes place both online and off, and has enough authenticity that for the vast majority of viewers and the news media itself, it’s simply taken as and reported on as news. Get ready for manufactured reality.