Chapter . What It Is, Part Two: The Three White Girls from YouTube

What It Is, Part Two: The Three White Girls from YouTube

An avatar is a social creature, dancing on the border between fiction and fact.

Social interaction between online users is what creates avatars, shapes their personalities, and gives them a reason to exist. They don’t need to be little 3-D puppets, either.

In 2006 and 2007, on YouTube, LittleLoca, an independent filmmaker and young, attractive woman, began to post videos thanking her fans, doing little dances, and talking about her interests, her family, and the occasional crime of which she’d been a victim with a candor that seemed directed at conveying confidence, pride, and street-savvy ...

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