by
NARR:
In January, I received a lot of e-mails about a funny—and disturbing—You-Tube video. My friends raved about the six-minute footage of a bride on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of a bad hairstyle. As her bridesmaids tried to console her, the bride cried and collapsed to the floor. She eventually chopped off her hair--- hours before her wedding.
In just three weeks, over 8,000 people posted online comments about the video's authenticity and the bride's mental health. Eventually more than 3 million people watched the video—that's six times the amount of people who watch CNN at every given moment. The Today Show's Meredith Viera pleaded to her audience: if you know any of these girls, tell them we want them here!!
As it turns out, I did know one of the girls: my younger sister, Ingrid. She's a recent theatre school graduate who lives in Toronto where she works as a waitress. She created the video as a marketing experiment for a new hair product. When an advertising agency asked my sister to create a "bad hair day" scenario, she came up with the skit and recruited three actors. She played the bridesmaid narrating the saga from behind the camera.
The entire video was a hoax.
The next day Canada's largest daily newspaper blew my sister's cover and soon she was inundated by phone calls from news outlets. Diane Sawyer's people at Good Morning America flew the women from Toronto to New York in order for Sawyer to be the first to interview them on television.
The next morning Sawyer enthusiastically hugged each girl, before interviewing them for ten minutes.
I couldn't help but laugh at the irony of the entire scene. Here I am at a journalism school learning how to report compelling stories about global issues and conflict, and I'm happy if five people listen to Uptown Radio. Meanwhile, my sister produces a skit, purely for entertainment, and gets over 3 million viewers. And now Sawyer, one of my role models who days later would interview the President of Iran, gushed over my sister and her friends on national television. If only we could be drawn a similar audience to stories on Darfur or our health-care system.
Sawyer's was the first of an onslaught of sit-down tv interviews. A few weeks later ABC flew my sister and the other actresses out to L.A. to record a pre-Oscar segment — citing them as stars worthy of an Academy Award.
My sister ended up staying in L.A. for a month. And because of the video, she landed meetings with producers at Paramount Studios.
As Ingrid schmoozed, I tried to understand how You-Tube had accelerated her dream of becoming a Hollywood darling.
Andy Warhol said "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes." You-Tube made Warhol's prediction a reality. Ingrid's fame was short-lived, and her future in Hollywood is hardly secure. But her You-Tube experience was more than superficial celebrity.
If time is our most precious resource, then the time which over 3 million people spent watching this video reflects some of our society's values and desires.
I hope that my little sister's unexpected celebrity propels her career forward—her enterprise alone warrants success. Now if only she could share some of her Internet appeal, and I could increase my listenership.
Time: 2:57