When Sofia says, “You think your life sucks? Watch mine…” she means “sucks” in the most adolescent, after-school-special of ways.
The oh-so-unfortunate 17-year-old star of Sony Pictures and UK social network site, Bebo‘s latest online, teenybopper soap opera narrates backstory in teenage anguish over footage of what would seem a relatively untroubled existence.
Her parents are divorced. Her father wives the mother of a sweet-smiling "devil child." Sofia sees gal pal Trisha lock lips with her ex-beau, so she blows up the school’s chemistry lab, gets caught with some ecstasy, and mom sends her to London to attend a new college and live with said father, new wife, and toddler.
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But then again, lonelygirl15 started out with an innocuous troubled teen before it got all occult and Aleister Crowley. I’m expecting a similar, sensationalized twist in Sofia’s Diary sometime sooner than later, and most likely involving the faceless "Jo," who’s on the other end of our protagonist’s computer convos (or maybe the "devil child" will turn out to be Rosemary’s baby).
###Sofia’s Diary, similar to its progenitors – lonelygirl15 and its English-accented spinoff, KateModern – and with a first life as an interactive, Portuguese cell phone game, touts its viewer involvement. Fans of the show can become a fan of the show on Bebo and answer polls that will influence the storyline. How much of the storyline can be influenced? Interesting question. Unlike Where are the Joneses? or iChannel, the show appears to have big chunks of the plot already laid out, leaving only the minutia in between open for the audience to influence.
The series also diverges from the internet aesthetic. This production value far exceeds "girl with webcam" quality. It illustrates what happens when talent from old media gets in the business of creating new media, and how more advertisers, viewers, and $$$ effect the end product..for better or for worse. (Check out Squeegees if you want another example – that’s a web show that looks exactly like after-school FOX.)
It’s both good and bad. You lose all that raw, amateur YouTubeness, but gain some good lookin’ video. So, if Sofia’s Diary sucks as much as her life does, the show will still get a few people watching. Viewers tend to be more forgiving when there’s a pretty picture.
New videos hit Bebo every Monday through Friday at 5:30pm GMT, "so that way Jo and anyone else who fancies it can be a part of" Sofia’s new life.
