The series Quarterlife follows the life of a video blogger, Dylan, and her mid-twenties friends. The show, consisting of 8 minute segments, “airs” . . . → Read More: Quarterlife]]> Here’s an edited, but still rough, excerpt from the chapter I am working on, on spectatorship and the internet. I won’t review the quality of the tv show here, just the technology.

The series Quarterlife follows the life of a video blogger, Dylan, and her mid-twenties friends. The show, consisting of 8 minute segments, “airs” twice weekly. The series was originally conceived as a more traditional television show, but after some failed attempts to generate interest, the creators (Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Swick), no strangers to the industry, decided to go out on a limb and produce it for the web. The partnership with Myspace helps boost that company’s Myspacetv brand, which has both user-generated and professional, commercial videos (for example, I just found out I can watch the entire film The Jerk on Myspacetv). Quarterlife plays in a small window surrounded by pictures of the main characters, an ad for Toyota, and options along the bottom: “Blog This,” “Chat,” “Subscribe,” “Visit QL Channel,” “Email This,” and “Post Bulletin.” [edit/update: these things appear only under the myspace version, not at quarterlife.com] The inclusion of social features highlights the strength of the show’s affiliation with a social networking site, and creates tools to build community around the show, as well as to let users advertise the show. In addition to this, each character has a myspace profile, complete with, interests, taglines, and blogs, all written from the character’s point of view. And like with any myspace page, people can add these characters as friends and post comments to them. This blurring of actual and virtual personae aims to make the characters more personal, personable, real to viewers, who feel they can interact with them. This begs the question of how real the spectator who comments on a character’s page is. Is this done in irony, or genuinely? To what extent is the spectator enacting a virtual persona, or character, to interact with these characters?

The show aims to be a social site in itself, with the show as one part of it. The quarterlife site has a lifestyle advice blog, Ask Alex. The blogger, Alexandra Robbins, answers questions about the show and about twenty-something culture. The following quote appears on November 10, 2007: “Quarterlife is an interactive experience; you can watch the series or participate in it, post on the site about your job dreams or connect with someone who can make them come true.” It is hard to tell at this point whether this is a social site based on a show or a show embedded in a social site, but the interactive features certainly blur the line between a more traditional, passive, isolated viewing experience and the more socially interactive experience of social networking sites, blogs, and other online media.