The concept – A woman who claims to go by the name Alejandra Gaitan, above, has been on YouTube since August, and her main routine is to reply to popular videos, load her responses with ads, and wear something revealing, with the goal of enticing a click. She’s not alone — a woman who calls herself Megan Lee Heart, for example, posted a well-tagged video after Whitney Houston died and got 100,000 views. And hundreds of dislikes on the clip.
The precedent Gaitan, Heart and others are essentially pulling off an elaborate search engine optimization scheme on YouTube. Their videos show up high on YouTube search results because of strong tagging and they get clicks because of the eye-grabbing visuals. The result is that the videos themselves are extremely low-quality (Gaitan’s English, for example, is poor), but it doesn’t matter, because the goal is to build huge numbers of ad impressions.
Here’s the thing … TheReplyGirl is interesting because it’s a new twist on a relatively old idea — the production of low-quality content that shows up high in search results, which has the side effect of diluting searches. Minus the human being talking, this was basically Demand Media’s business model. The question is, though, will Google step in? They took on Demand, forcing the company to change its model. Will they do the same on YouTube?

(Anderson) recalls moving from England to Michigan, when she was 11, and discovering that she was no longer part of the tribe. “Going from London to a small Republican town like Grand Rapids was quite a shock,” she says. “I thought it would be a place of sunshine and happiness and candy bars.” In high school, she was voted “Most Bizarre” and “Most Likely to Be Arrested.” Both descriptions, says Anderson, contained a kernel of truth, “based on how I chose to look, dress, behave, you know—the relationships I was in at the time were freaking people out.” Invited to elaborate, she begins to list them: “I was in a relationship with a girl for a long time when I was in high school, and then I was in a relationship with a punk rock drug addict who…”

Wait, a lesbian relationship? “Yeah, yeah, well it’s… You know, I’m old enough that I can talk about that,” she says, before resuming her list: “And then I was in a relationship with somebody who was way, way older than me. Everything that that kind of anarchistic attitude brings—the inappropriate behavior it leads to—was how I chose to be in the world at that time, which was, you know, not what people did.”

Great. As if my fantasy store wasn’t already overstocked.

I can hardly wait for the movie.

Unfortunately, unless Ron Howard has this site bookmarked or in his daily reader, it will be a long wait.

While the poster is real enough, the movie is nothing but a dream, that according to the artist himself.

“A lot of people wish to see this movie on screen, but nothing today can confirm that such a project is now starting.” This from the poster’s creator, Parisian artistic director and graphic artist Pascal Witaszak. “All my posters are original ideas. It’s a personal research, besides my advertising job. Of course if I could create official posters in the further months, I’d be the happiest man in the world.”

Disappointed the film wasn’t Coming Soon, I nonetheless had a small (and apparently theoretical) quibble: Ron Howard? What if, you know, what if he turns Walt into another…je ne sais pas…Willow? ¹

“It‘s funny, I know that many people don’t agree with my choice of Ron Howard. But for this story of Walt Disney, I’d see a classic (in the good way) and epic director, who could tell this (a)merican dream without too much patriotism. He did it so well with Apollo 13,” Witaszak responded.

Fair enough. Which, considering Ron’s busy on the set and not taking my calls on the subject ², will have to do. In the meantime, you could do worse than to take in M. Witaszek’s web presence.

Your Presumptive GOP Nominee

Super Tuesday went as expected; Romney padded his delegate lead – Santorum, Paul and Gingrich gained just enough to continue to receive federal matching cash try and force a floor fight at the Miami convention this summer.

Meanwhile, in a truer temperature check of the nation’s health, while the list of advertisers who have dropped Limbaugh like the hot turd he is continues to grow ¹, only two radio stations have dropped El Tubbo from their line-up — WBEC in Pittsfield, Mass., and KPUA in Hilo, Hawaii. ²

Just two stations.

Which is another way of saying El Lardo keeps his job. ³