Well, it’s been a hell of a fucking day. Bizarre and fascinating, through and through:
Russia and Georgia on the brink of war.
John Edwards confirming that Billie Jean IS his lover, not just some silly girl who claims that he is the one, but the kid is STILL NOT his son. Not until the DNA test anyways.
Also, the Olympics kicked off. (Looking at that picture, I really want to coin the term “Apocalympics.”)
And scientists created stem cells for 10 disorders.
But, all that said, rather than talking about any of that, let’s talk about something fucking important. Something that means something in all of our lives. Something that change the very nature of the way we live and breath and fuck and drink water and appreciate nature and what have you.
Let’s talk about our internet crushes.
Commander Light and I have already discussed this very briefly, but even that could probably use some elaboration. By “Internet Crush,” we mean our goofy little infatuations on internet personalities, people who, for us, exist only online, usually on other blogs or writers at websites we like. Someday, we’ll probably do a bit on just the women we love or whatever, but that’s someday, and this is today.
And today, having already mentioned a few of my personal internet crushes like Molly Young, Molly Lambert (from whom I stole the opening ceremonies picture somewhere up above), and Lena Chen, I want to to talk about a young woman I haven’t mentioned yet.
Caitlin Hill, otherwise known on youtube and the rest of the internets as Thehill88. (Or, less frequently, as SnarkleKitten.)
Caitlin is a vlogger I discovered on youtube, along with about a million other people (according to Wikipedia, her regular audience is about 52,000 while her cumulative view count resides somewhere around 18 million) , roughly a year-ish ago, and I’ve been a google-eyed fan ever since. She’s been dubbed “the goofy princess of the internet,” by 60 Minutes (the one in her native Australia, not ours). Her videos tend to just be little bits of her ranting about on things that annoy her or acting out her own goofy little skits (or sometimes just wonderfully choreographed lip synching) that are produced and edited by her, starring her, but she has contributed to other’s youtubery as well.
She’s only just recently moved from Australia to New York, hoping to make a go of it in the acting field outside of her own online videos, and has already appeared in the occasional music video or small indie movie. But up until this year, she was a part of youtube’s revenue sharing partnership with the vloggers that got the most hits. She’s also used her internet fame for good, especially with nonprofits like The Darfur Wall.
Her first video, posted on August 16, 2006, was a response to then slow growing internet juggernaut, Lonelygirl15. This was back when you still thought she was a real girl, just weird and homes chooled, and for some reason, had an altar to Aleister Crowley in her room. “I saw one girl who I thought was real and could do so much with the world,” Hill said to cnet.com when present at a gathering of some of youtube’s top personalities in San Francisco early last year. “I wonder what I can do… I’m still trying to figure out what to do with it, but I think I’ll get there.”
She’s an actress and a dancer, as well as a sparkling personality on the internets and some of her videos tend to be her rants about the daily life of a curious and smart and sometimes goofy Australian girl, while others are skits and rambling bits of in character goofy fun. And other than porn and stock quotes, isn’t that what the world wide web is for?
The one thing I haven’t talked about yet is the most important, which is why I like her. And it’s simple: Watch some of her videos and you’ll see. She’s a pro at self deprecation and she’s real. Even if her every move and appearance and utterance was some cold, shrewdly calculated marketing strategy, she’d sell it perfectly. Plus, she’s gorgeous. She’s almost all smiles and she radiates more life from her than a maternity ward on a busy day. She’s tiny, but not in a tortured way, she’s filled to the brim with infectious energy. Even when she’s ridiculously silly, you can still feel her intelligence there, and she has a genuine quality that many men and women lack these days: She can be brilliantly funny a lot of the time.
One of the many shrines online to her glory.
A video of her with her ex-boyfriend, a fat and gross camwhore himself.
Here is an interview she’s done. And another.
This is her twitter, this is her official fan site, and this is her blog.
And this is miss Hill getting up close and personal with one of her IRL fans:
I think we can wrap it up here for now, but with maybe just a few parting shots:
