The identity of LonelyGirl15 has been revealed, and she is Jessica Rose, a 20-something New Zealander and Los Angeles resident, and of course, aspiring starlet.
Jessica before she was Bree
The fake Youtube videos and MySpace page appear to be the part of a movie project by filmmaker Ramesh Flinders and Miles Beckett, a doctor turned filmmaker.
The videos were filmed in Flinder’s bedroom using a Logictech Quickcam.
Jessica’s identity was discovered by 18-year-old Matt Forernski, son of journalist Tom Forernski, who used Google’s cache of web sites to track down photos of Jessica.
Call me old fashioned, but I still think that this approach to generating publicity for a commercial product is simple fraud.
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Responses to “Identity of LonelyGirl15 revealed”
January 5th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
jz, you’re a tosser
shut up with your apologetic tone
how can the 18 year old mess up videos that were phony rubbish to begin with
if people thought like you “these days” we’d still be using our hands to clean ourselves of feces
now sod off
September 13th, 2006 at 11:43 pm
It’s not fraud if it’s not commercial. They have already stated it wasn’t a commercial project. Also only the slowest of the slow people wouldn’t understand that it was scripted. I questioned it being a typical girl after the first video. I was convinced it was scripted by the 3rd video. I don’t know her and am not defending her. I’m just against what I see as an obvious attempt on youtube and other sites to use the notion of being “fake” for people to promote their smaller sites or videos.
I’ve even seen youtubers talk about how upset they were to be fooled, only to admit in the same video that they were also upset that the plot was ruined now that everyone talks about her being fake. Basically admitting they suspected it was fake all along, but now that it’s in the open, it’s less fun.
Also the 18 year old (notice he’s 18) wasn’t bright enough to think through the consequences of messing up someone elses videos. But of course he’s the son of a journalist. He was just greedy and nerdy and felt like he’d be a hero.. But for what? Shedding light on what was already known to be storytelling? Well, at least by most. The vids were full of movie-like hints that were dropped at specific points. This is how most people knew there was a story here.
People just don’t think these days.