Wednesday, April 18, 2012

"Hot Problems" - Yes, Of Course Its Fake

UPDATED 4/19: See updates at bottom for identities of who is behind the video.



This showed up on YouTube on April 15 and went viral on Tuesday after Huffington Post and other websites pimped it as the "next Rebecca Black".

Of course, this one is fake though.

It has some connection to CalState-Northridge film geeks. I may update this further, but just wanted to post to confirm for anyone who cares - yes, its fake. Fascinating though, that HuffPo and others posted it without caring that it was fake -- they just wanted to pretend it might be real, because that's more fun, I guess (and guarantees more ad impressions).

Here's some tweets I recently had with someone else confirming it:


As of April 17, when the story first broke, "OldBaileyProductions" which uploaded the video to youtube, had other videos on its channel, related to film projects at Cal-State Northridge. These were all quickly removed as the vid took off, and the channel reworked to be about "Double Take" the band (which "band" has no facebook, twitter, or other presence online at the moment.)

Just after OldBailey uploaded the video though, it did post on another video a joke about its new bad video. The post says "Come check out my page if you want to get a fucking laugh at the new artist 'Double Take'!!!" (The comment was made on the Lexi St. George video -- Lexi is a post-Rebecca Black creation by ARK Music Factory).


OldBailey has some connection, I'm not sure what, to Alex Goyette, who posts funny parody vids on Youtube as well, under the JouleTheif channel. On one old JouleTheif video, OldBailey posts that Alex is his roommmate.

ETA 9:42am PDT: Fuse has spoken with "OldBailey Productions." This confirms the CalStateNorthridge connection again.

ETA 11:10am PDT: One of the girls' (alleged, not proven yet) moms posted on the Fuse article:


ETA: 12:19pm PDT - It is now is clear I should mention that two of the original tags on the video (later removed as of late April 17) were "Drew G*****" and "Lauren W*****" - probably the names of the girls.

Yes, it is. Since they appear to be minors I will not post any additional information about them.


ETA 5:30am PDT 4/19
- The song is finally up on itunes now.


ETA 4/17 5:50am: Old Bailey Productions is probably a guy named Connor Abrams (at least he used to be a big part of it). He has videos up on other sites like this one credited to Old Bailey. He's from the same hometown and high school as the two girls in the vid.

ETA 4/17 6:04am: And Connor Abrams of Northridge, CA currently has a soundcloud account as "oldbailey", clearly he has the ability to record similar music.


ETA 6:15am PDT: Here's a radio interview the girls (Lauren and Drew) did this morning: kiss92.5. The girls don't admit its fake, but clearly they imply its a joke. It might have been more fun if they claimed it was real.

ETA 4/19 10:56am PDT: The girls did interviews with MTV and CNN this morning, based on their new twitter account @DoubleTakeMus1 (which I can verify is real, despite it looking new and fakey.)

6 comments:

Kaleb said...

I've been a news anchor for the last few years and have dreams of being on the Today Show or Good Morning America. �So today I get a call from one of the girls in "Hot Problems" (my sib went to school with them & I know them a bit.) and she says to me "You might want to interview me because I'm becoming famous. I know you've dreamt of being on Good Morning America so It's funny because I do one video and I get on there in a few days. haha, you've been trying to get on there forever. I'm willing to let you interview us because I feel real bad for you. Maybe you can get a little fame from us."
Whatever bitch.
I declined the interview.
The video is horrible and they are complete skanks. She also said that they did the video as a joke to become famous and make lots of money. I guess it worked. She's claims that the itunes of the song has already made over $60,000 from downloads and they are gonna be on GMA. Ugh!
FYI, their names are Drew & Lauren. Theres no production company that produced the video either. "Old Bailey Productions" is her boyfriend Connor's made up company. He's a film student.

kaleb said...

oh their last names are garrett & willey. they are not underage either. they are in college at the moment

medicus man said...

Kaleb, if it makes you feel any better those "skanks" are lying through their teeth about the 60k. Their video on youtube only has 1.6 mil visitors. Itunes takes a healthy chunk of coin from an artist for the song (about 30% I believe) so they're trying to say 100,000 people downloaded it? No way. It isn't even in the itunes top 100, which Rebecca Black's song was. They don't even have the advertising blocks enabled on their youtube channel so missing that revenue as well. Best of luck w/ your broadcasting career.

Anonymous said...

Wait wait wait... you won't post more info about the girls because they're minors?
Doesn't this imply that if they had just turned 18, that'd be okay then because they're suddenly responsible adults? Or how about instead of 18 they're 25, does that make it even more okay? But as long as they're minors, we're not gonna infringe on their privacy?

Can't they have their privacy? Just type the name in Google or look for a Facebook profile, and you've got a street, a city, and a State. Now just wait until some nutcase gets bored and here we are, we've got Columbine: the boys are coming home.

milowent said...

to anonymous: other less reputable news sources than this one have posted their full names and high school and other details, i feel no need to do that. - milo

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