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JESSICA: Hey, YouTube Nation, I'm Jessica Rose.
YOUSEF: And I am Yousef Abu-Taleb.
JESSICA: Lonelygirl15 is a video blog that started in 2006.
It was basically about a young girl
named Bree and her best friend, Daniel.
BREE: What you need to know about my town is
that it's really boring.
Like, really boring.
Really, really boring.
That's probably why I spend so much time on my computer.
JESSICA: People believed that it was real,
but it was in fact staged and improvised.
YOUSEF: There were these two guys, Miles and Mesh,
and they came up with this idea for a way to tell a story.
So they were going to set us up as these two characters,
and we were going to disappear.
And six months to a year later, a movie would come out.
But we got outed by the "New York Times."
Next thing you know, a brand new type of series was born.
JESSICA: Before we were outed, it was very much a mystery,
and that was what drew people in.
I think mainly people don't like to be duped,
so everybody was really just trying
to figure out the mystery.
BREE: Owen says Napoleon's troops reached
Dendera on May 25th, 1799.
He also says he feels uncomfortable
wearing a pink feather boa.
JESSICA: My initial response to all of it coming out-- it
happened really late at night.
They told me, all right, tomorrow we're
doing all these interviews.
We're just going to be honest and let
the world know kind of thing.
I was like, OK, cool.
Hung up, cried.
So scared.
YOUSEF: I kind of wish I knew a little bit more
what to do with interviews back then, because I would have made
my name something more like Madonna
where it's just one name, just Yousef.
Because nobody can pronounce Abu-Taleb.
JESSICA: What is it?
No, I'm just kidding.
YOUSEF: Exactly, see?
JESSICA: I immediately thought it
was going to be really negative, and so I really
went into it scared.
But it was actually really positive.
YOUSEF: When I look back at Lonelygirl,
I get some of the warm fuzzies.
In regards to learning a lot about the business,
it's kind of nice.
JESSICA: And I got Yousef out of it.
That's pretty good.
YOUSEF: Aw.
If I can get the rights to Lonelygirl,
I'll make something awesome.
JESSICA: I'm dead.
YOUSEF: I'll bring back her twin sister.
JESSICA: Or am I?
BREE: We have our fresh fish from a mountain stream.
And we have some nuts begging to be
mashed into a delicious hunter-gather breakfast cereal.
And we have bananas, because that's
all they had at the supermarket.