Not so lonely (girl15) at the top
Let us hear that drum roll: "The Forbes.com Web Celeb 25 is a list of the biggest, brightest and most influential people on the Internet. From bloggers to podcasters to YouTube stars, these are the people who are creating the digital world from the bottom up."
So, Forbes picks the web's celebs, and who comes out on top? The savvy pundit? The cool geek? The blogging CEO? No. The winner is Lonelygirl15. And what a story she has to tell. Bree, the 16-year-old, home-schooled American teen records her thoughts into a digital video camera and posts them on YouTube as Lonelygirl15. Millions are entranced. Then, heartbreak as the videos are exposed as scripted fakes, and Bree is outed as 19-year old New Zealand actress Jessica Rose. But instead of the expected torching of LA and the public flogging of the impostors involved, the public cries out for more! More! MORE! Bree is now the epitome of YouTube fame and doing film deals in her spare time.
On Monday, Rainy Day spoke to Miles Beckett, the man who, to the horror of his parents, gave up a promising career in surgery to become the creator of Loneylygirl15. And proving that all you need for to give it a go are an idea and guts, he went to a local store, bought a camera and relied on natural lighting — no studio, no stars, no union crews. And when did he realize that he had created a phenomenon that would become a springboard to fame, possible fortune and rock-star status at conferences in Europe? "Tuesday, 4 July," he says matter of factly.
Internet video being a medium where a picture is worth a million words, we will go now to the one-minute clip that marked the tipping point. And as it rolls, take a look at how often it's been watched: "Views: 715,833", as of the time of writing. Says Beckett, "We were out partying on a boat and when I got back and checked it was at, like, 200,000, and I couldn't believe it." Here's "My Parents Suck…"
Miles Beckett may yet go down in history as the man who created the next iteration of the soap opera or, to use an overused term, Soap 2.0. The global hunger for stories is growing, not diminishing, and seeing that the novel is unable anymore to deliver the beginning, middle and end in a way that satisfies a mass audience that's increasingly image oriented as opposed to word driven, the internet soap opera, portable and eminently shareable, may be the medium of the next Beckett (Samuel, as opposed to Miles) or na Gopaleen (Myles, as opposed to Miles).
