Perez Hilton was not the only wildly popular fictive persona made possible by the anonymity of the web. In 2006 the best-known face on YouTube was Lonelygirl15, a cute but awkward teenage girl whose first video was entitled "First Blog / Dorkiness Prevails." Speaking to the camera, her chin on one raised knee, she plaintively intones, "Hi guys…this is my video blog…um….I'm such a dork…" It was only later revealed that Lonelygirl15 was in fact a paid actress. Her show was scripted, based on her producers' guess of what an amateur video blogger might look like. Their success in getting the right effect would lead to more business for the production company EQAL, which, having proved it could aggregate a boatload of attention, would be commissioned to produce more content, including an original web series for CBS. As for Jessica Rose, the actress hired for the hoax, she would be cast in a web TV series called Sorority Forever, as well as the cable series Greek. An Anaheim Ducks fan, she would also begin blogging for the National Hockey League. Every bit of attention helps.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 964