Phorum 3

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The Phorum 3, as they are sometimes called, were three members of the original Lonelygirl15.com Phorum message board who decided to track down the Creators behind the project by capturing their IP addresses. The plan was hatched on or about August 28th, 2006 and led by phorum member "Jessica". Originally consisting of six phorum members, the group quickly narrowed to Jessica (The Networker), SharpDressedMan (The Techie), and Oberlin College student Shaina Wedmedyk (The Brain).

The preliminary results of their search resulted in a long post from Jessica at the phorum on August 30th, 2006 titled "All Roads (Don't) Lead to Rome" which pointed to "San Mateo - Mountain View" California as Bree's likely location through an AOL IP tracked on MySpace. It was suggested that YouTube, which is based in San Mateo, was responsible. While the Silicon Valley hypothesis later turned out to be incorrect, the California link lined up with prior posts on the phorum suggesting that fauna in the Hiking and Swimming videos pointed to California as the filming location.

The Phorum3, convinced they had their match in San Mateo, laid off. But Shaina Wedmedyk set up a secondary sting, wary of the ambiguity of the original theories based on the traced AOL IP. Shaina contacted Richard Rushfield at the LA Times with her new findings, an IP which hit her fake myspace profile within the minute that "Bree" had sent her a message. This IP traced directly to the private server of the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Beverly Hills, California. On the evening of September 7, 2006, the LA Times published these findings, and CAA did not deny a link to LG15, but seemed to make moves to a full-scale admittance that the videos were a farce. The story was published widely and picked up by the Associated Press.

Once Bree was identifed as Jessica Lee Rose in articles first published in the LA Times and NY Times on the evening of September 12th, 2006, the story finally broke. Speculation ran rampant on the phorum that Jessica of the Phorum3, whose full identify was never disclosed by Rushfield, was actually Jessica Lee Rose. They are not the same person.

References

Richard Rushfield, LA Times