The recent outing of popular YouTube personality "lonelygirl15" as an out-of-work New Zealander—who lists “American and British accents” as acting skills on her resume—has prompted many to ask why we are still so trusting of what we find on the internet.
You’d be hard-pressed to find someone these days willing to respond to a Nigerian widow’s email asking for help with a bank transfer, let alone purchase medications or stock options on the cheap from a random website. So how did lonelygirl15 fool people?
Going by the name of Bree, she seemed to be a disaffected teenager with strictly religious parents, posting short video clips detailing the unfolding dramas of her life—sneaking out to a party, getting caught by her father, battling her parents for independence. Her vlogs (video web-logs) were extraordinary only in their ordinariness, and this is what captured people’s attention; Bree’s videos topped YouTube’s "most watched" lists for almost four months. When it was revealed that lonelygirl15 was the work of a Hollywood talent agency, ostensibly promoting a “new form of storytelling”, many of her fans were disappointed.
The burgeoning YouTube community—non-existent in 2004, and so popular now that Viacom, MTV’s parent company, blames it for a decline in MTV audiences worldwide—has been revolutionary. The sense of community—real or imagined—that YouTube has created is significant. The exposure of Lonelygirl15’s creators was perhaps the moment that this community lost its innocence, yet it was only a matter of time before Hollywood creatives started on the YouTube medium.
The response has been telling, in that it reveals the extent to which people are willing to trust in what they find online. Some were not surprised at the deception, not least because of the sophisticated editing techniques of Bree’s videos. Yet some comments on "her" profile point to a real disappointment in the actress’ decision to carry the storyline beyond the vlogs and into reality, by interacting with her fans "off-screen" via messaging. One commentator argued that by answering YouTubers’ messages posted on her profile, she was pretending to be a real person and therefore taking advantage of her viewers’ trust; “that’s where she crossed the line.”
The question of whether internet users can expect a level of honesty from the people they interact with is a difficult one. The ethics of creating a persona on YouTube are slippery. Forums like YouTube and MySpace are the new soda fountain, the