| Issue #30, October 20, 2006 |
Lonelygirl15
Last Sunday’s “Stand Up Against Poverty” Day was Led by Who?
By Dan Rattiner
The United Nations promoted an anti-poverty event last Sunday. Around the world, people held events and rallies to “stand up against poverty.” The event lasted 24 hours.
In anticipation of this event, the U. N. asked the Ad Council, which is a non-profit group of ad agencies that produces Public Service Announcements, to come up with some ideas to promote the event. And the Ad Council asked one of its largest members, Young and Rubicam, to oversee it. Y&R subsequently asked people who make 30 and 60 second TV spots around the world to come up with possibilities.
One entry that was rejected came from a group called Rednecks TV. They submitted a video that showed three men sitting around a table discussing the after-effects, in graphic terms, of eating beans. It was pretty hilarious, if you like that sort of thing, and it ended with one of the men turning to the camera and saying soberly, “Some folks don’t even have a bowl of beans to eat.”
It got the thumbs down. “Apparently, someone at the U. N. was offended,” said one of the creators, Bruce Taylor of Oklahoma.
One that was accepted was from Lonelygirl15, the 15-year-old teenager who has for months been posting short videos about her life on YouTube while sitting on her bed at her parents’ home. She talks about boyfriends, about clothes, about science, which she thinks is non-science, about school. In the last few months, more than 40 million people have clicked on one of her postings. She is considered one of the most endearing individuals to have decided to spread out the intimate details of her life. And she’s done it on an Internet destination: YouTube.
And of course, as you probably know, she has been found out to be a fake. Several reporters for the Los Angeles Times, reading some of the blogs about Bree, as she calls herself, came to the conclusion that she wasn’t who she said she was. Identities are protected on YouTube of course, so you can say what you want and nobody really knows, but then there are the videos.
The reporters, acting on a tip, looked into a website called Videobucket and found, sure enough, a discarded FaceBook entry with the photo and description of a 19 year old New Zealand actress named Jessica Rose, now living in Los Angeles, who’s only known credit was a bit part in a failed movie three years ago. There was no doubt she was “Bree.” All you had to do was look at her.
Soon it was learned that “Bree” had scriptwriters, who turned out to be two guys also from Los Angeles. And shortly thereafter, she went off the air, hooted off, actually, because so many people had fallen in love with this wispy, sad, endearing teenager and now felt completely betrayed.
What has happened since, however, is that Bree, like “Seinfeld,” began to appear in reruns. There were more than 90 episodes of YouTube, and they had not been taken off and now many people who had never seen her before came to see what the fuss was all about. And soon thereafter, “Bree” returned, and, with her crew, made more episodes. And so Bree is once again going strong.
For the U. N., Bree sits there with this soulful look on her face, and instead of talking about how her best friend betrayed her in the mall a few days ago, she talks about poverty.
“Twenty percent of the world’s population owns eighty percent of the world’s resources. It’s a fact.”
“Eighty percent of the world’s population goes hungry every night. It’s a fact.”
She speaks these lines as a 15-year-old girl named Bree who has no acting experience might. Her eyes move from left to right as if they are following words printed on a monitor. She even stumbles over the words sometimes. Of course she has this pre dumb-blonde Valley Girl persona that everybody loves so much. So you are probably not even aware of what she is talking about. Certainly she isn’t.
You can get to see Bree fighting poverty like this anytime you want because she is not on your television set taking up the time on the commercial breaks, she is just a click away on YouTube, which by the way last week, was sold by its founders to Google for $1.6 billion.
Andy Warhol said that everybody gets fifteen minutes of fame. But this is ridiculous. However, it is a good career move.
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