#1 It features a courageous but overmatched freshman named Brian Collins presenting the worst sports-highlight rundown in human history, culminating in the worst sportscaster catchphrase ever conceived: "Boom goes the dynamite." #2 It is horrifying. It is cruel. It is hilarious.

Judson Laipply's seamless sampling of footwork to 30 songs, from Elvis to 'NSync, pretty much is.

19 Until about five minutes ago, remember, almost all video-entertainment content was produced and distributed by Hollywood. Period. That time is over. There was a time when advertisers could count on mass audiences for what Hollywood thought we should be watching on TV. That time is all but over

Third-millennium humanity has demonstrated an interest in sifting through millions of pieces of crap produced by total strangers to discover a few gems – some accidentally entertaining ("Boom Goes the Dynamite"), some breakout performances from the previously obscure ("Treadmill Dance"), and some explorations of a new art form crackling with genius (Ze Frank, Ask a Ninja, and the guys behind Loneygirl15.)

And what if, as a bonus, the medium were able not merely to command eyeballs for marketers but to target content especially relevant to what the marketer is selling?

Beckett tried to explain to the executive that the central theme of online entertainment was interactivity, as opposed to the passivity of television.

each portal wanted the series to stream on its site only.

Unlike television, where writers sit in a room and come up with a single script, the Lonelygirl15 team comes up with a general plotline and then sends its writer-directors out to produce independent but interconnected videos. All the characters, in essence, have their own show.

The phenomenon is partly driven by technology – Lonelygirl15 wouldn't exist without the explosion of broadband and the advent of YouTube – and partly by the appeal of a hybrid form of storytelling. Lonelygirl15 is a mashup of homemade video diary, soap opera, and mysterious, hint-laden narrative like Lost. It's all the more engrossing because viewers can correspond with the characters and even affect the plot. For Flinders, it's a thrillingly uncharted creative landscape, and he has no interest in abandoning it for the tired conventions of film or television. Rather, he wants to be the JJ Abrams of the Internet.

The YouTube community was sucked into the plot and speculated endlessly about Bree's faith. Some thought she was Mormon; others insisted she was a Satanist. Another group tried to figure out where she lived: The leading guess was somewhere in the Midwest. Viewers spent hours Googling the possibilities and posting their results on YouTube.

Fair enough," the fan wrote back, and then went on to tell Bree the latest news in his life. To many, it didn't seem to matter whether she was real or not. A number of posts appeared on YouTube denouncing the series, but many more responded with variations of this simple statement: If you don't like it, don't watch.

ithin 48 hours, the video had half a million views.