I think that’s called ‘viral marketing’
also, fraud. In an update to a post on a site to which I have no connection or affiliation, it turns out that the YouTube celebrity lonelygirl15 is a complete and utter hoax. A starlet wannabe affiliated with the CAA doing web videos as part of the pre-marketing campaign for a horror film to be released at some future point
Lonelygirl15 appears to be an innocent, home-schooled 16-year-old, pouring her heart out for her video camera in the privacy of her bedroom. But since May, her brief posts on the video-sharing site YouTube and the social networking hub MySpace have launched a Web mystery eagerly followed by her million-plus viewers: Who is this sheltered ingenue who calls herself “Bree,” and is she in some sort of danger — or, worse, the tool of some giant marketing machine?
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.
The apparent CAA link takes its place alongside other tantalizing pieces of 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.
I never found her compelling or interesting, though I did think that the videos had amazingly high production values. Upon reflection, her calm delivery is much more indicative of acting than a preturnaturally centered teenager. Come to think of it, I’d lay dollars to donuts that lonelygirl15′s initial popularity came from comments and links to from other astroturfed CAA-affiliated drones.
That the whole thing turns out to just be yet another marketing gimmick is unsurprising. Call me when she gets naked.
