Strange Things are Afoot at the Circle K - 4 Sept blog post - lonelygirl15:
In July a guy with the YouTube moniker gohepcat posted a video in which he questioned the authenticity of lonelygirl15's videos. ...Bree and her friend clearly have a script in mind when recording a video. But is she, along with her story and her friend, real, or is it a ploy by a marketing or production company? Or is it just some teenagers who came up with a story and decided to film their own soap opera?
As lonelygirl15's web fame grew, the press came calling. Those journalists predictably also contacted gohepcat, the skeptic. After noticing some unprofessional touches in her videos and talking more to the journalists, he began to think Bree may indeed be real. This caused many among the virulent Web masses to believe gohepcat was in on it. Gohepcat has since offered a reward to anyone who can prove it's fake.
Let me back up and explain the story arc. ...She learns his feelings go beyond the platonic after viewers point out that a video of them going hiking looked more like a compilation of Bree's beauty in the outdoors than a video of two friends going hiking. huh.That seemed rather contrived. After that, they were in a fight, which was resolved when Daniel did surprise her and show up at the play. This led to another outdoor adventure which led to another compilation of Bree's video in the outdoors - this time in a conservative one-piece swimsuit. Her latest video announces that she is about to begin a religious rite of passage that even her parents can't go to.
Despite gohepcat's reversal, the number of lonelygirl15 skeptics has probably been growing. More articles have been popping up about the phenomenon, not only about the number of fans but also about the authenticity. The article by New York Magazine, perhaps predictably, takes the what-it-means-for-American-culture-today angle. A Business Week piece declares Bree to be a fake, the product of some ambitious creative types. The writer claims to have gotten this info from within the entertainment industry. A piece at the Alternate Reality Gaming Network provides a shorter, more informative and better-written post than this blog entry. (It is interesting that whether this is fake or not, proving it fake has turned into a AR game, which couldn't have been a goal of the creators unless they're, um, writers for Lost.)