Community Content/History
In their post on November 24th, 2006 on the lonelygirl15 message forum, the Creators of lonelygirl15 explained the various ways that viewers could interact with their story. Along with viewers' ability to use the official forum to discuss the plot and characters with each other and post questions, comments and suggestions to the characters via the character interaction section of the forum, the Creators emboldened fans to "[c]reate your own characters and storylines within the Breeniverse." The post goes on to explain that once fans create such videos, this work can be submitted "as 'Video Comments' to a video we produce." Fans were encouraged to "Give Bree or Daniel advice. Create your own story (like LordGreystoke422) or make parody videos (like LonesomeOctober)...you are only limited by your creativity." Many fans took up this challenge and began creating their own response videos. These fan-created videos are diverse in content, genre and production values.
Members of the official forum were given a section in which to discuss these fan-created works. The comments about these fan creations range from praise to criticism to lengthy discussions to occasional speculation about whether or not a video response is connected to the official story. One example of such speculation surrounding an official connection to the lg15 story has revolved around the video responses of Nikki Bower, whose investigative report videos have been set in many of the same locations as canon videos. This speculation could be due to the fact that two official characters, Gemma and Jonas, were introduced to the audience in videoblogs under the guise of fan responses. Once Gemma and Jonas were acknowledged by Bree in her videoblog, these two characters were understood to be an official part of the Breeniverse. Speculation about other videos revolved around the fan spin-off OpAphid, which became the official ARG of the lonelygirl15 series. OpAphid is unique in the fact that it was not created by the lg15 production team, but was rather incorporated into the series. According to a post made on November 24th, 2006 on the official forum, the Creators stated that OpAphid "was a 100% fan created ARG. We liked it so much that we decided to contact the creator and make it the official LG15 ARG."
In this November 24th post, the Creators continue with the following statements: "We can't wait to see what other characters and storylines you guys come up with. Your creativity and passion is truly amazing." Although the producers of the lonelygirl15 saga encourage fan-created materials, they are careful not respond to, comment on, or endorse these videos in any way. Fan creations can be uploaded to users' personal Revver accounts, and can appear on the main page of the Tribute to Lonelygirl15 site in a column next to the most recent lonelygirl15 video. Although referred to as "Fan Creations and Spin-offs" on the official forum, they are sometimes referred to by some viewers as Fan Fiction. This genre of fan-created video fiction is still developing and has yet to be named or specifically defined within the lexicon of fan-created endeavors.
