Voices on the internet

The cover article for this month’s Wired magazine is about a subject that I’ve been thinking about over the past couple of days. It focuses on the internet phenomenon of Lonelygirl15, which is probably the first episodic web broadcast to really break big. Sure, there are some pod casts that had success but these videos are the first buzz worthy mentions in the new internet paradigm. People have given a lot of reasons for its success: interesting writing, a blurring between fiction and reality, or its interactive nature. All of those hold some truth but in the end I think there is one huge reason that people overlook: Lonelygirl15 looks like someone you would really want to date.

I know that sounds really bad, almost chauvinistic. Like the only reason these guys have any buzz is that they found this exotic looking 19 year old Australian girl to act in front of a webcam. That’s not my point. If you had Nicole Kidman doing this it wouldn’t be interesting at all. She’s incredibly beautiful but is so beautiful and famous that she doesn’t really exist as a human being. What would you say if you walked into a room and Nicole Kidman was there? What would your reaction be? It probably wouldn’t be any different than if you discovered the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy or the Soul Cake Tuesday Duck. But people like Jessica Rose (the actress behind all of this) have a quality that just makes you want to know them and even more, give you the impression that if you ran into her at a bar that you’d be able to hit it off.

See, modern entertainment has had a strange evolution over the last hundred years. It started off as pure escapism: here is what life could be like if you weren’t dealing with the dust bowl or random bear attacks. There was no connection to reality, everything was just a soundstage backdrop of a perfect world. Over the years that false front still exists its just that we now all believe that our lives are supposed to mirror what we see on television and in the movies. We want the perfect house and the perfect smile and love at first sight because damnit, if it can happen to Rob Schneider in a movie why can’t it happen to me in real life?

So we look to entertainment now to escape a life that isn’t as glamorous as we dream it to be as well as to give us hope that maybe there is a chance for us after all. So when this girl starts posting videos to YouTube and you see that she is cute and interesting and smart you become intrigued. Maybe you check out her MySpace page. Maybe you send her an email. And she responds and you think that who knows, maybe this will be the one moment in your life where you find yourself living a movie. And it’s all because of the girl with the interesting eyebrows.

To me, that’s the future of entertainment. We really don’t want to watch beautiful people living lives that we can’t imagine anymore. There’s no joy in watching Paris Hilton either as a person or a fictional character. To be honest, it’s like watching a National Geographic special on kangaroos: fascinating at a distance but having absolutely no relevance on my life. But things like a good reality show or Ted’s journey for love in HIMYM tend to give you hope that the world is a little less plastic than we fear. That’s what we should learn from Lonelygirl15. We’re not looking to the internet to create a new form of entertainment. Were looking for someone out there in the world who will listen.

Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone.