♪ (dramatic chord) ♪
- (Bree) Hi, guys. - Oh, it's lonelygirl15.
- Let's go! Lonelygirl15.
- (Bree) I really like... - Her eyebrows are on fleek.
- (Bree) I really like paytotheorderofofof2.
- Oh, I thought she had, like, a stutter. She was like, "of, of."
- (Bree) I guess the video blog is about me.
- She said "blog." - (laughs) Noob.
- (Bree) I don't really want to tell you where I live.
- Yeah, you do. We found out anyway.
- (Bree) ...stalk me.
(in video: shrill scream, Psycho theme) - What?
- ♪ I remember when ♪
♪ I remember, I remember ♪ - Wonder what it's like to film this.
- Wait. What's going on?
- ♪ There was something so pleasant about that... ♪
- It's like, I know you're cute, but you're not interesting.
I would probably click away by now.
- Would that have worked if she wasn't a pretty girl?
I don't think so.
♪ (dramatic chord) ♪
- (Finebros) Have the stereotypes of vlogging
changed much since 2006,
or this still kind of similar to vloggers today?
- It's so similar.
Nothing has really changed, just the quality of cameras.
- Only that they have nice little setups a lot of the times
and really nice quality cameras.
- Audiences these days have a shorter attention span,
so I think you have to be a little faster.
Sitting there not knowing what you're doing
might not help you grow that fast.
- (Finebros) So what did we just show you?
- You showed me lonelygirl15, I think was her name.
- Fakest video I've ever seen in my life.
- My high school crush, my first YouTube crush.
- Lonelygirl15,
one of the OGs.
- (Finebros) There was major news stories when this happened,
because it was this scripted show
pretending to be a YouTube vlogger back in 2006.
What do you think about the reality of that,
when you are around the YouTube community,
and then you find out this person isn't even real?
- Um, it's kind of weird.
- They played everyone.
- From reading the comments,
I think there's a lot of people that were upset about it.
- When I was a kid, you'd realize
your favorite celebrity was kind of crazy or you know.
Or, you know, I loved Amanda Bynes, then she went insane.
And you're like, "Oh, dang it!" So that's a blow.
- (Finebros) So what are the elements here
that made this feel so real? - I mean, it did feel real--
like, the jump cuts, her doing stupid--
that thing with her lips was random.
- It's definitely shot on a webcam.
It's kinda like what I think a lot of vloggers
naturally actually do these days.
- Uncomfortable pauses and weird cuts
to make it look like a 15- or 16-year-old person
is making, filming, and editing it.
- I didn't even know what vlogging was except for her.
And so I couldn't tell it was fake.
- (Finebros) So this was the early internet,
and it was one of the first times something from YouTube
made national headlines as being part of a big hoax.
Why do you think it became newsworthy
for traditional media to talk about it at that time?
- They weren't really used to YouTube and stuff,
things going viral like that.
Nowadays, when a video goes viral,
it's like, "Oh, a video went viral again."
- Even the news people were just like,
"Holy crap, so many people are tricked.
If we talked about this, we would get new eyes on this."
So I think it was just that big at the time.
- Any time you can get huge amounts of people into something
or confused about something, I guess that's national newsworthy.
- (Finebros) So lonelygirl became
one of the first hits of YouTube and went on
with multiple channels and a crazy story about the occult.
And spinoffs continued all the way until 2010.
Why do you think the concept worked
even after people knew it was fake? - It's like a TV show then.
'Cause then it's just like watching a TV show.
TV shows are fake, but people watch 'em.
- People want to watch a train wreck.
Like, where is this gonna go?
Even though it's bad, where is it gonna go?
- Her videos weren't that interesting, you know?
People that watched thought she was cute.
A dude fapping to a teenage girl is still gonna be fapping,
even if he finds out
that it's a production company behind the teenage girl.
- (Finebros) What kind of legacy do you feel lonelygirl has
in the history of web video?
- I think she will always be the pioneer of "video blogging"
or "vlogging."
- There will be a chapter about her
in the social media studies page, for sure.
I mean, is that a thing?
- People are so quick to call everything fake now.
And she probably had a lot to do with that.
- It's the beginning of everyone questioning
everything they saw on the internet,
as whether or not it was real or a marketing campaign.
- (Finebros) So last question:
what kinds of thoughts does it give you
that web entertainment has been around long enough
for us to be talking about an old show
and that there's a legacy and history
to what all of us pioneered?
- Ehh... it's always nice to look back
and check the ancestries of YouTube.
- They should make a book of YouTube viralness.
And you can just go through. And 20 years later, you can be like,
"Oh, this is when we started making YouTube videos."
- I kind of thought I was a little bit of an OG YouTuber,
'cause I started in 2008.
But now I'm like, "Pff, no way, man."
People were way before me.
- People always say, "Oh, it's a brand-new medium, YouTube.
It's brand new." But it's not really.
There's a huge history, not literally.
But the internet is so condensed
and everything changes so quickly
that yeah, that feels like ancient history now.
- Success doesn't happen overnight,
and there's rises and falls in it.
And it's pretty crazy that it already does have history.
It makes me feel-- it makes me feel old. Haha!
♪ (end music) ♪