Next Gen Web Workers: LG15’s Industrial Self-Reflexivity on SteroidsBy Denise Mann Figure 1. EQAL’s Miles Beckett (from <www.inside.lg15.com/2008/08>). Abstract: This article examines a new Introduction coheads of EQAL, having staked their breed of highly entrepreneurial, freelance futures on a new type of entertainment Web producers, who have emerged on The idea is to sell the “engagement,” they have dubbed social entertainment the margins of the heavily bureaucratic or mobilization of a community built (figure 1). Based on their early success around a show. After all, this isn’t TV, and conglomerated television industry. and the medium of the Web has its own with the Lonelygirl15 (LG15) franchise, Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried, the dynamic. EQAL will go this route sell- in April 2008 Beckett and Goodfried creators of the successful Lonelygirl15 ing LG15: The Resistance. It’s a raised their first round of $5 million (LG15) franchise, are staking their fu- tactic that may help the two [Miles in investment commitments from ven- tures on a new form of ad-supported en- Beckett and Greg Goodfried] amass ture capitalists, led by Spark Capital the type of statistics that advertisers tertainment that they have dubbed social want about user interaction before they and including Conrad Riggs, Ron Con- series . This production study examines turn over their ad dollars. (Abels) way, Marc Andreessen and Georges the producers’ self-reflexive statements Harik (Gannes). Sponsors are looking about themselves and the state of the s postnetwork television execu- to the new generation of Web content industry, which they have embedded in tives struggle to revitalize tradi- producers to offer them “multiple con- the social series as part of its commu- Ational production, marketing, and tacts between brand and consumer” via nity-building enterprise. distribution strategies in the face of the branded entertainment—a set of strate- Internet, a new breed of highly entrepre- gies that EQAL has mastered (Jenkins Keywords: branded extensions, engaged neurial, risk-taking, freelance Web pro- 68–69). Commenting on the something audience, independent Web producers, ducers have emerged on the margins of extra that advertisers expect in today’s industrial reflexivity, multiplatform TV, the heavily bureaucratic and conglomer- postnetwork TV, production study, pro- ated television industry. Former plastic sumer, social networks, social series, surgeon Miles Beckett and former at- Copyright © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC transmedia TV torney Greg Goodfried are the unlikely DOI: 10.1080/01956051.2010.483356 89 90 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television Caldwell’s cultural-industrial examina- tion of the Hollywood community of workers (and likewise for this article) is Clifford Geertz’s ethnographic analyses of “[t]he culture of a people [as] an en- semble of texts, themselves ensembles, which the anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong” (qtd. in Caldwell 5).1 A pointed example of this method- ological deployment is Geertz’s “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” a cultural exposé of a set of cultural practices that: [draw] on almost every level of Ba- linese experience, . bring together themes—animal savagery, male nar- cissism, opponent gambling, status rivalry, mass excitement, blood sacri- fice—whose main connection is their involvement with rage and the fear of rage, and binding them into a set of rules which at once contains them and allows them play, builds a symbolic structure in which, over and over again, the reality of their inner affiliation can be intelligibly felt. (qtd. in Caldwell) Figure 2. Lonelygirl15’s Bree (from <www.geeksugar.com/497343>). At first glance, a Balinese cockfight convergent marketplace, media theorist appears to have little in common with Industrial Self-Reflexivity LG15, a social series about a charming, Henry Jenkins states, “the strength of a on Steroids connection is measured in terms of its sixteen-year-old girl named Bree, who emotional impact” (68–69). EQAL’s so- In his Production Culture, John speaks directly to her community of vir- cial entertainment formats, also known Caldwell challenges media scholars to tual friends from her laptop camera in as social series, promise all that and view Hollywood insiders’ various acts the safety and comfort of her bedroom more by combining the best of You- of self-promotion as relevant research (figure 2). The LG15 Web-blog’s pro- Tube’s bite-size, low-production value, documents for ethnographic surveys of found impact on the public’s imagina- user-generated content (UGC), scripted this unique community of above-the- tion continued long past the discovery TV’s serialization and predictable line and below-the-line workers. He that Bree was not an actual teenaged girl genres (e.g., soap opera, sci-fi, detec- explains, “As a self-reflexive industry, but rather played by a twenty-year-old tive, etc.), and the community-building Hollywood constantly exposes itself actress named Jessica Rose. A Los An- activities associated with social net- and its production processes to the pub- geles Times journalist traced the origins works like MySpace and Facebook. lic; workers’ ideas about the industry are of Bree’s blog back to Hollywood in- In this brief, ethnographic survey of embedded in their daily practices and sider and Creative Artist Agency (CAA) EQAL—which is based on industry and the media they create” (Caldwell back agent Amanda Solomon, the eventual popular press coverage of the Lonely- cover). The methodological impetus for wife and business partner of COO girl15 phenomenon, visits to the EQAL production office, interviews with mem- bers of the team, and examinations of the team’s self-representation on the The LG15 Web-bLoG’s profound impacT on The LG15 Web site—it becomes evident that the next generation Web workers are ea- pubLic’s imaGinaTion conTinued LonG pasT The ger to differentiate themselves from the dominant Hollywood culture industry discovery ThaT bree Was noT an acTuaL TeenaGed as a way of ingratiating themselves with a young, Web-savvy audience; what becomes equally evident is how many GirL buT raTher pLayed by a TWenTy-year-oLd continuities exist between the old and so-called new media practices. acTress named Jessica rose. Next Gen Web Workers 91 Greg Goodfried. Like The Blair Witch One would have expected users to New York network headquarters to para- Project in 1999, the LG15 Web series reject the incursion of advertising and phrase Churchill by stating: ‘Never have (2006–present) has had a special hold product integration deals into these new so many people made so little objection over the public, which can be explained social spaces; however, any public out- to so much selling” (102). In hindsight, in Geertzian terms as a symbolic struc- cry appears to have been muted based on Sinclair’s prescient article represents a ture that binds the participants “into a audience’s familiarity with ad-supported clear assessment of Disney’s entry on set of rules which at once contains them “free” TV. For example, there was very the scene as the first fully-operational, and allows them [a space of interactive] little negative reaction to NBC’s land- multiplatform, convergent version of play” (Geertz 449–50). mark product integration deal with Nis- a modern entertainment conglomerate Although the film sequel to The Blair san, despite its full penetration of NBC. that prevails today. Witch Project, Book of Shadows: Blair com, the Heroes’s online graphic novel, Despite the relative ease with which Witch 2 (2000), failed at the box office, and the series itself, all of which fea- ad-supported social networks have the later iterations of the LG15 franchise tured Hiro in a brand new Versa (figure become accepted parts of our collec- continued to provide satisfying outlets 3). In fact, it is surprising how easily the tive social fabric, this new past-time is for the expression of a specific set of public has adapted to ad-supported on- not without its naysayers—even from cultural themes—namely, the compul- line entertainment in contrast to the ava- within the Web producer workforce. sive urge among a mostly young, rela- lanche of bad press that accompanied an Just as the cockfights betray a dark, vio- tively affluent, tech-savvy audience to analogous moment of cultural-industrial lent, and rage-filled subtext in the Ba- “stay connected” with a virtual com- transition when television first entered linese social system, so too, the grow- munity. One explanation for the public’s the once “sacred” space of the home. In ing number of users visiting Facebook acceptance of the LG15 spin-offs may the late 1940s and early 1950, television and My Space (and, by extension, social derive from their greater similarity to was blamed for everything from marital series like Lonelygirl15) invoke a darker branded extensions of familiar network discord to juvenile delinquency (Spigel cultural subtext for the Net generation. series (e.g., Dawson’s Creek’s Daw- 36–72). The backlash culminated in John DiMinico, one of a new generation son’s Desktop and Nip/Tuck’s Carver the mid-1950s when journalist Charles of freelance Web producers who is re- MySpace page).2 Sinclair of Sponsor magazine reported sponsible for the branded extensions of As the vertically-integrated studio- on Walt Disney’s successful foray into a number of FX series (e.g., Nip/Tuck, media network groups (e.g., Disney- network television via The Wonder- Rescue Me, Damages, etc.), explained ABC) have become increasingly adept ful World of Disney. He wrote, “Every that he and many of his Hollywood at using Web-based, branded extensions kind of plug imaginable has been used counterparts worry that they are capital- to sell their TV series, journalists, schol- to boost the new Disneyland amusement izing on an unhealthy trend.