Every one of those policies has left the Iraqi people worse off than before, even if nowadays, from beneath the rubble, the devastated survivors can at least ruminate about a better future — though I doubt that many of them are in any mood to do so.

Almost everything in the room was bought from Target on the same day, and the price tags are still hanging from some of her stuff. The closet is filled with men's clothing, and in the corner two guys huddle around a laptop and stare at the webcam feed.

Meanwhile, the online celebrity started spilling over into the real world. Rose was browsing for a book in Santa Monica after "My Parents Suck …" was posted and noticed two girls watching her closely. That night, Amanda received an email from a fan: "Hi Bree. My friend and I thought we saw you at the Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica, but it couldn't be you, right?"

If you want to talk to Jessica Rose, you can go to her MySpace page. If you want to keep talking to Bree, use this email."

The previous week, one guy had offered her a part in a movie if she would use her student ID to buy him discounted film at Kodak

He'd take down the pictures of Rose as a baby, stash the stuffed animals, and swap out the girly bedspread for his more masculine blue-and-white-striped blanket. Now, three months into the project and with hundreds of thousands of regular viewers, he doesn't bother

He wrote short stories about her, and when he tried to make it as a writer in Hollywood, he put her in his screenplays.

#2 "They've got the audience

So what about "Evolution of Dance," for instance? To put together this medley, did Laipply license 30 songs?

Until now, advertisers have underwritten mass media to reach mass audiences. Indeed, they've paid increasing premiums for the opportunity as audiences have shrunk, because even in a fragmented media world, the largest fragment – network TV – is the most valuable. But now they realize that they are losing not only mass but critical mass.

Altogether, this stuff constitutes a bottomless reservoir of short-form video content for others to siphon off if they choose

"Broadcast Yourself."

which stars a chubby young man in his New Jersey bedroom lip-syncing to an insipid but weirdly fetching Romanian pop song.

The price tag for YouTube, just to put the investment in perspective, is what Target paid for 257 Mervyns department stores and four distribution centers in 13 states, and just a bit more than WPP Group paid for the Grey Global Group advertising network with 10,500 employees in 83 countries generating $1.3 billion in revenue. Those, of course, are both profitable enterprises with vast fixed assets.