New Medium-Marketing: LonelyGirls16, 17 & 18

Capping off a week of Lonelygirl stories and postings at Wired, I’d like to offer up these apples…

To push the April 13th release of Perfect Stranger* the upcoming murder mystery about Halle "Sorry about Catwoman" Berry delving deep into the *cough* “world of obsessive love online,” Sony has created not one, but THREE Lonelygirl15 knockoffs.

Beyond confessional YouTube vlogging, the 20-something women — side characters in the film — also have separate blogs and MySpace accounts seemingly intended to provide clues and background details about the flick.

Here's an old post and video from one character titled "Farewell to Blogging":

The world is turned upside down. My boss was arrested this afternoon for the murder of Grace Clayton. That was FASTFILLY. Apparently she didn’t disappear into the ether. She disappeared into the Hudson. I don’t know what to believe, and I’m worried I might become a suspect by proximity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdHtc4FIGU0

Heavy.

Here are the characters/actresses (note the oh-so-subtle # in each user name):

“Josie” = samesame__413__ – 938 MySpace friends – Played by Daniella Van Graas

“Grace” = fastfilly__413__ – 27 MySpace friends – Played by Nicki Aycox

“Mia” = need2no__413__ – 346 MySpace friends – Played by Paula Miranda

None of the profiles, videos or written content indicates these characters are fictional. However, all of the YouTube videos link directly to the film (via www.actions__have__consequences.com), so the marketing tie-in seems blatant – to a fault. Wasn't the magic of Lonelygirl15 wrapped up in pondering whether it was legit?

Guess it was only a matter of time before some studio did this, but man, this "experiment' feels kinda icky and uninteresting.

*Yes, a remake of the beloved, similarly-named sitcom would have been WAY more awesome