The Web is Dumb

There's an excellent decade wrap-up article over at The Awl about the hunt for lonelygirl15, an even Richard Rushfield describes as "the finest hour of post-modern journalism." Particularly good are his lessons from the event, including:

The wisdom of the web is a bunch of hooey: The lonelygirl research teams drew professionals from every discipline and field of study known to man, who pooled their talents to crowdsource the hunt. Horticulturists examined the flora dotting some videos and pronounced it native to only a very tiny part of Northern California. Crews from major Hollywood productions drew graphs proving that the lighting on the videos had to be a very expensive, complex set-up only available to professional crews. When I met Jessica and the lonelygirl team, they told me that the lighting in the video had consisted of a desk lamp, turned in different directions and also sometimes they opened a window. And they had never shot anywhere near Northern California. The Web, simply put, is a humongous moron.