Script #3: Listening

Theme: The connection assumedly shared amongst individuals in the digital world isn’t always necessarily a two way street.

Premise: JACOB is in love with LONELYGIRL15. He’s been following her videos every since her first post and has disillusioned himself, through Youtube video post, into believing they actually have a relationship. Despite Lonely Girl 15’s non-responsiveness, when it comes to the light that all of her video post where merely performance Jacob, feeling frustrated and betrayed, wigs out and from that incident never trust Youtube again.

Program: This story is set within the Internet world. Jacob does however sit alone in his room throughout the entire script, but what is of most importance is he interactions with Lonely Girl 15’s Youtube videos through his video comments. Youtube is home to many Internet sensations, including Lonely Girl 15, who doing her fifteen minutes of fame, had many followers. Despite the fact that she was playing a fifteen year old girl she attracted followers of all ages who were excited to tune in for her random antics of, “life.” Some followers admitted that they were deeply saddened after discovering that Lonely Girl 15 was merely an actress. This will be a story told through video comment post about a fictional character who falls in love with Lonely Girl 15 as well.

Treatment: Jacob is a twenty-five year old Internet geek who spends most of his time trolling threads and constantly looking for updates on when the next Lonely Girl 15 video is to be posted. Over the past few months Jacob feels he has built a relationship with Lonely Girl 15. Despite the fact that he too is a avid troller, he makes sure to report every trolling post. He even defends her against angry comments that refer to her show as, “disgusting,” or a, “waste of time.” In addition to his vocal replies to her every action in her videos he leaves long heartfelt messages after each episode is over and is sure that Lonely Girl 15, though she has never replied to any of his post, has read them. Jacob even misconstrues some of Lonely Girl 15’s videos as video replies to his commentary. He goes on with this for a few months. Jacob is heavily disappointed when he checks into her Youtube channel and sees that there is no repost. When she has added a new video Jacob drops everything he was doing, which in this instance is put his game of World of Warcraft on hold, to devout his full attention to his self-assumed girlfriend. Jacob grows more and more delusion. He tells his friends of their “relationship.” Most of his friends poke fun of his delusion, but another friend, Matthew, admits that he is in love with Lonely Girl 15 too. Jacob becomes jealous and tries to stalk out which comment post could possibly be his friend Matthew. He replies to a number of comments telling other Youtube users to back off of his “girlfriend,” hoping to scare off every adoring commenter.

One day when Jacob checks into Lonely Girl 15’s page he comes across her latest addition to her VLOG, which just so happens to be the video where Lonely Girl 15 admits that all of her previous videos has been a performance. This fact hurts Jacob. He is sad that she isn’t really Lonely Girl 15, but still attracted to her confidence in allowing the world into her room and midway through the video he begins typing a comment about how he doesn’t care that she was performing and hopes that soon they could meet so he could get to know the real here. Jacob does not get the hint until Lonely Girl 15 admits that there are producers and writers involved as well. At this instant he recognizes that the whole thing is a complete hoax. Nothing about his love is true and instead of laughing it off as a normal Youtube user would do he replies in a fit of rage, crying and tossing his computer to the ground as he shouts phrases like, “but I thought you loved me.”

The last scene one of Jacob’s friends leaves a message on Jacobs facebook page reading, “So how about that Lonely Girl 15?” He merely replies, “…Fuck Youtube,” and the play ends.