Lonelygirl15
The Youtube Story That Fooled the World
If I took you back to 2006, and made you watch the vlog (video blog) of an unknown YouTuber, a teenage girl perhaps, who told you some crazy things were happening to her… would you believe everything she said? Or would you be skeptical? 10 years later, and we’ve been conditioned to question the authenticity of everything we see on the internet — it seems like every other video is a viral marketing campaign! Back when YouTube first began, however, we were all probably a little more gullible.
And that’s why Lonelygirl15 was such a phenomenon.
Lonelygirl15 is a YouTube channel starring Bree, a typical, 16-year-old girl-next-door: sweet, cute, and a little quirky. In her vlogs, she talks about daily life with her best friend Daniel. But as her video count grows and we learn more about her, the cheery, playful videos begin to tell a different tale. Bree, we learn, is part of a cult. A tried and true plot in internet fiction nowadays, in 2006 Bree’s story was a first. What’s more, it was supported by videos from her friends’ YouTube accounts, which served to draw us deeper into the story of her escape.
The addition of these supporting character accounts, and the discovery process readers have to go through in search of them — following new accounts, watching the story from a seemingly neutral third-party viewpoint, reaching out to talk to the characters through video comments — added a depth and realism to this growing story of suspense. These are levels of audience interactivity and story immersion unique to the YouTube medium.
It’s not hard to see why Lonelygirl15 was so popular. Putting aside the story for a moment, vlogging was still a new, novel experience for many people. Lonelygirl15 also felt truly believable when it debuted: the settings, content, and editing (or lack thereof) were natural, and each of the elements of the production supported the facade that Bree was documenting parts of her everyday life.
So as the audience tuned in — and bought in — to Bree’s story, they had no idea that it was all one big Pierre Brassau-esque hoax.
Lonelygirl15 was without a doubt one of the most successful YouTube channels of its time, with some individual videos (of which there are hundreds, spanning multiple seasons) reaching half a million views. Surprisingly, when The New York Times revealed the story to be fabricated a few months after it began, this only served to drive more traffic to Bree’s channel, and build even more hype around the story.
Lonelygirl15 is the creation of Mesh Flinders and Miles Beckett, who saw their creation as a way to “redefine entertainment in a digital age.” They did this by using the personal focus of the YouTube medium to develop a character the audience could fall in love with, and wove a compelling story around this character. By shooting the videos in a room lacking specific details, they could also ensure it was difficult, if not impossible, for viewers to discern when and where the vlogs were shot. This was an innovative way to create discussion and conjecture; viewers wondered whether Bree was real, but there were no easy answers — they could only work with what was there.
Another element that makes Lonelygirl15 an intriguing study in storytelling is that the creators avoided having a solid ‘plan’ for story direction. Instead, they made full use of the comment feature of YouTube, banking on viewers submitting their thoughts and reactions. The commentary and viewer community that grew from these inherently social videos had a strong impact on the overall story development.
Take the season 2 finale for example: the characters themselves invited audience participation, saying “We’ll be checking the forum regularly to see if you’ve come up with any useful information.” It’s a creative approach to reader interaction, and one which is impossible to achieve in ‘traditional’ storytelling. Breaking the fourth wall in this way works because it doesn’t feel like you’re talking to a fiction character in a book; it feels like you’re interacting with people who inhabit the same world that we do.
Lonelygirl15 shows us that social fiction has existed longer than we might have thought, and it’s only grown from there. Will we continue to see more YouTube stories? Of course! Will we see social media supplement traditional storytelling? Yes. We. Will! And who knows how many other stories are being told among the more than one billion videos that fill YouTube? The very next Lonelygirl15 story is likely being told right now, right beneath our noses!
But in case you don’t want to go digging and searching for the next big hit, check out the brand new, 2016 season of Lonelygirl15 (it’s back!). Or for some nostalia, check out the original from 2006, right here!
Do you know of any stories where the audience wasn’t aware that what they were experiencing was fiction? Do you have any ideas for how to get the audience to be part of the story, through social media or otherwise? Let us know in the response section, we’d love to hear from you!
Enjoy!
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