The controversy of Lonelygirl15

Why did I stay up until 2:00 in the morning last night without any homework due today? I blame it on you, Achillesheel. Last week you posted a very interesting entry about Lonelygirl15, the video blogger, “Bree,” with mass viewership (100s of thousands/entry), who, as it turns out, is nothing more than the creation of three 23 year-old men and the actress they hired to play the main character. After reading your entry, I started checking out the vlog. What first drew me in was its mundane and uneventful nature. Lives really aren’t that interesting on a moment to moment basis and “Bree” doesn’t claim hers to be otherwise. The girl’s dull presentation of lackluster subjects – how her friend, Daniel, is lazy and rarely does anything, for example - leaves much to be desired. I wondered, what is it about this vlog that has intrigued so many people? (If any of you want to watch a couple of episodes, the link is at the bottom and I’d love to have this puzzle explained to me.) Not able to figure out the answer after a few “episodes,” I had to watch more. It was not a good cycle.

Eventually, however, it did lead me to start thinking about the vlog in relation to authorship. The controversy of the fake vlog touches on some good issues for our class. It is a case where one can debate whether the author matters. The creators claim that it does not. They claim to want the text to stand on is own. But surely, the identities of the authors contributed to the content of their vlog. And the identities of the real authors are separate from the identity of the fictitious author, “Bree”. To me, this shows that the author actually does matter here. Additionally, it seems this is a case where the authors had no authenticity yet were still given the authority to produce (not that this is necessarily a bad thing).

Thoughts?

Here are the links:
lonelygirl15.com
http://www.myspace.com/lonelygurl15