LUCYinLA, the Response

This is Laura's response to the accusations she's a fake.

We meet her cameraman Karim, a friend of hers who is an aspiring film-maker.
It turns out that even though her name is Laura, Lucy is a nickname. She used it in favour of her real name to maintain a little bit of privacy. All the videos were shot in Karim's office.

Rather than an outright lonelygirl15 type production, it seems that this was more of a blurring of reality. According to Karim, the stories she told in her vlog were not scripted, but were real things that happened to Laura.

It seems that all the "fake" parts of her series (her name, her temp job etc) were contrived solely so Laura could retain some privacy. I can definitely understand her motivations behind this. Unfortunately, it has left her open to accusations of being a fake.

The thing about the internet is that there are a lot of people out there who are happy to invest time to research someone to find out who they really are. Even if everything else in Laura's vlog is real, a couple of fake things makes it easy for people to accuse the whole thing of being made up. Especially at the moment, when a lot of people are still pretty angry about the whole lonelygirl15 thing. I think at least some of the negativity towards Laura, in light of these accusations, is actually displaced anger following the outing of lonelygirl.

I think people will continue to watch Laura's vlog though. Given her response above, I think I like her even more now.

NoHoGirls "enjoys" negative comments, has fake birthday

Another member of YouTube emailed me with another good point which suggests NoHoGirls is fake.

They mention that in her second video, she says she has been reading the comments, and "really enjoying them". Yet, as the emailer points out -

"The messages have been at least 90%
negative! She's read nothing! That right there makes me suspect that this could be LG15 all over again!"

Excellent observation. Keep 'em coming!

...................... UPDATE ...............................

This just gets better and better.

In her first video, North Hollywood Girls Rule, Cara mentions that it's her birthday today.

YouTuber SteveM999 points out in a comment that on her MySpace it's listed that she's a capricorn (december).

Whoops.



Secondly, to whoever is behind NoHoGirls - film noir was 1930's to 1950's, not 1920's.

LUCYinLA outed!

Okay, so this is something I wasn't expecting.

Lucy is a fake. It turns out her real name is Laura Segura, and she isn't a struggling actress.

Usually I am probably too quick in assuming vloggers are fake, but in this case I never really considered it. Looking back, the only thing that might have given it away was the excellent quality of her videos, which is something I thought stood out.

Hmm....

First Suspect - NoHoGirls

http://www.youtube.com/user/NoHoGirls

This girl smacks of fakeness. I think she'll turn out to be the next lonelygirl15

REASONS FOR SUSPICION:

Videos watched Vs. time as a member -

This was observed by other YouTube users in the comments to her videos. As of 09/23 she has been a member for just two days, yet she's already watched 2080 videos. According to USA Today, the average length of videos on YouTube comes to around 2 minutes each. This means the girl has watched 4160 minutes of videos, or around 69 hours.

But she's only been a member of the Tube for around 48 hours............huh? She must be loading up an awful lot of videos and not watching them the whole way through.

Secondly, it's a little strange that out of 2080 videos, she hasn't found a single one she considers good enough to favourite. The only video she has favourited is one of her own. She doesn't subscribe to any channels either.

No Google Results:

Searching for her name - "Cara Brimley" brings up zero results. Sure, some real people don't appear in google, but it's increasingly unlikely these days. Personally, I have gone to every length to make sure my name isn't plastered all over the net, yet there are still a whole lot of results for me related to employment and the time I was a student.

It's even more bizarre when you consider this girl is supposed to be an aspiring artist. Most amateur artists I know who want to break into the scene use the net a lot for promoting their work. Strange that she doesn't even have a deviantART page or anything. She's obviously web-savvy enough to upload vids to YouTube, it's weird that she doesn't appear anywhere else.

Her MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/carabrimley

Her MySpace page is suspiciously sparse. The comments start on 09/20, mainly people thanking her for adding them to her friends list. This suggests the account is fairly new, started around the same time as her YouTube account. This is also backed up by the fact that google has not yet indexed her MySpace.

One comment comes from her supposed roommate, Blue Nguyen. If you open up Blue Ngyuen's page, it's even emptier than Cara's - no comments, no blog, no likes or dislikes, nothing.

Her Art

Okay, this is perhaps more subjective, but even her art looks fake. Having long been interested in the visual arts, particulary abstract pieces, I don't consider myself entirely unknowledgeable...

The pieces we see in her video demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of depth of color, tone and compostion. The way the paint has been applied suggests it was done by someone with little to no experience with the medium. Even artists who imitate what could thought of as "amateur" styles (Picasso, etc) betray their experience with the medium in the way they apply it to the piece.

Sure, there are a lot of really bad amateur artists out there and she could be just another one of these talentless hopefuls, but this stuff goes even beyond that.

It's hard to explain, but say you watch a movie and one of the characters is an artist, and some of their work appears in the film. It always, and I mean always, has a particular look about it. It looks like it was slapped together for the movie. In short, It looks like her stuff.

The "Plot"

After only two videos, I'm already getting lonelygirl15 de ja vu.

An apparently sweet girl making vlogs in her bedroom. She hints at tension between her and her parents. We're already been introduced to a bit of mystery in her second video, when she starts raving on about graveyards and a possible prophecy of her death.

Something about the way she talks makes it seem as if she is acting. It's interesting to note that there's no editing or high production values used. If it is fake, perhaps the people behind it have chosen to do it this way on purpose, to make it seem authentically amateur.

......................................

The jury is out on this one I guess, but I'm convinced it's fake.

About this blog

Hi all....

So you must be living under a rock if you've missed the whole lonelygirl15 thing -

A pretty homeschooled girl starts a vlog on youtube. Aside from being cute, she makes strange allusions to some kind of occult religion she practices. Throw in some ridiculously strict parents, and a potential love interest in her geeky friend Danielbeast....and well, you've got entertainment. People were hooked from the beginning.

When the whole thing was outed as fake - the work of three aspiring film-makers - the media attention and general uproar was intense.

Naturally there's gonna be a slew of copycats following in her wake. What better way for young, inexperienced actors and film-makers to get their foot into the movie-making door? Fake vlogs are cheap to make, all you need is an attractive main character, a web cam, and some props.

I thought I'd make a blog which tracks the potential fakerz. Mainly because I find the whole phenomenon insteresting. But also because outing youtube fakerz looks like fun :)