As this channel progressed and started creating more content, her fans started to notice weird things taking place in her life such as things on the wall, bruises, stories about her parents etc. This worried a lot of the fanbase, creating an explosion in subscribers, comments, discussion on forums creating theories such as her parents being satanic priests or cult leaders. Eventually, it was revealed that Lonelygirl15 was actually a character, created by Greg Goodfried (a Lawyer), Miles Beckett (plastic surgeon intern) and Mesh Flinders (a Screen Writer).
This is the first example of people manipulating the platform in a completely new way, by creating a character with a story arc but presenting it to the consumers in the most common video format on youtube, vlogs. This very much signaled the start of further manipulation of the platfrom of youtube and the development of the marketisation of youtube.
below is an interview with the creators of Lonelygirl15:
Unsurprisingly, this reveal was met with some backlash. Even though the creators carried no malicious intent with the creation of Lonelygirl15, viewer's still didn't like the fact that they were being lie to.
This does bring up an interesting point though. Looking at a few lists of so called "fake videos" and the drama that seems to collect around them, it brings up the point that very few of us truly know how real much of the content we watch is when it comes to prank videos or vlog channels. Below is a video showing some other fake video "scandals" in the past including Lonelygirl15. If anything, the video shows just how volatile the platform of youtube is and the lengths some people will go to just to get themselves extra viewership. I hope you enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment