Girl Uninterrupted

The life and death of Lonelygirl15 was the most popular show on YouTube, until viewers realised it was fiction

Rare are the teenagers who have not declared themselves the loneliest in the world.
And so it was with Lonelygirl15, also known as Bree, who, in two- and three-minute video blogs, introduced herself to the world, told of her struggles with her parents and her best and only friend, Daniel, whose love for Bree was unrequited.

Now, a year later, she’s gone, her legacy suggesting the power of empathy and entertainment (as well as product placement) in the online world. Her digital life was proof that Internet audiences hunger for more than unscripted animal tricks, comedy shorts and music videos. It was through Lonelygirl15, in part, that we explored the question: What’s “real” on the Web?

Lonelygirl15’s videos became a YouTube sensation in 2006 with as many as 1 million views per episode.
The creative team behind Lonelygirl15, a trio of 20-somethings in Los Angeles, Miles Beckett, Mesh Flinders and Greg Goodfried, hired an actress, Jessica Lee Rose, to tell a mystery on the Internet. What started as a show about an Everygirl pouring her soul into her Webcam took on the contour of a teen thriller, as Bree joined — and then fled across the country from — a religious cult, the Order. After each action-filled sequence, the characters would regroup and quietly video-blog their emotions to the world.

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In the season finale, Bree’s death consisted of a goreless murder in a medical facility, the evil cult collecting her blood for unknown purposes.

The show’s second season will get underway this week, but, of course, without Bree. The discovery that Lonelygirl15 was not an angsty teen but an actual production became an outsize media phenomenon last September. So with the secret out, the numbers of people watching declined overall, but diehard fans made Lonelygirl15 the most subscribed channel on YouTube.
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