For months now geeks have been closely following the v(ideo)log of a YouTube'r named "LonelyGirl15", a teenage girl named Bree who had strictly religious parents (yadda yadda) and was interested in "geek stuff", for wont of a better phrase.

Well, it turns out that the LonelyGirl saga was a fake, and that it was created by some enterprising film makers using nothing more than their intelligence, acting ability and a web cam. They led many scores of obsessed geeks on for four months, until finally a massive web witch hunt tracked down the producers and unveiled the mask of LonelyGirl.

Many geeks are decrying this great "scam" against them. I don't see why everyone has to get so touchy - well, I do actually. On the internet we all seem to be trying to form meaningful connections with others, even if it's just a passive thing where you watch that other persons vlog on YouTube, or comment in their blog, become one of their friends on MySpace or get chatting on MSN. LonelyGirl was one such passive relationship, where geeks listened to her woes and associated with her interests, probably amazed that a good looking girl could also be classed as a geek.

So some people feel personally betrayed that this was all a show. Well, tough luck I say. If you come onto the internet looking for meaningful lifelong relationships then you're entering into dangerous waters; even more so if the "relationship" you have is with a person looking into a webcam to record a vlog entry. Go out and meet some real people, for crying out loud. Internet relationships can work, but you have to have that distance between yourself and the chat box representing the person on the other side, or else you are quite likely as not to get burned.

I see the LonelyGirl show instead as a brilliant example of what can be done by film makers in the age of New Media Convergence; a scriptwriter and an actor, maybe even with a prop or two, can run an entire show - be it a fictional one like LonelyGirl purporting as real life, or a current affairs show, or whatever else you want - off of a site like YouTube, other blogs will talk about it and link to it, then big publications will weigh in. Even the "hunt" for who the real LonelyGirl was is a bit of fun - a distraction, something to do in your spare time, as most of this stuff is.

There's a lot of crap on the internet, but increasingly too there's a lot of quality stuff out there, the entry bar to creating of which has come down very low in recent months, and I don't see the LonelyGirl incident as a personal betrayal - it's a successful experiment.