That Girl Emily

So here's the idea: Emily is an underemployed realtor in New Jersey, married and about to have kids with her financial consultant husband, Steven. She then finds out that Steven is having an affair with her best friend Laura. Coincidentally, she started a blog just a couple of weeks before she found out about the affair. So if you read the July archives from the bottom up, you get the whole story.

Oh, and did I mention that as part of her scheme to get back at her husband, Emily has bought an enormous billboard above Mercury Lounge on Houston Street? The photos on the blog are genuine, even if both the blog and the billboard seem to have far too little personality and far too much professionalism to be real. The blog, especially, is structured far too much like a bad novel, with the "before Emily finds out" posts setting us up far too neatly for the "after Emily finds out" posts.

And if Steven is really a financial consultant for a big firm, how likely is it that his office is in the Lower East Side?

My guess is that the whole thing is would-be viral marketing for a new book or film. But just not done very well. If you're going to set up a fake blog, keep it going for more than a couple of weeks before you drop the bomb.

UPDATE: Gawker had it yesterday, when I was still on holiday, and apparently the billboard is up in LA as well. Now that's what I call a long commute from New Jersey!

Posted by Felix at 9:42 EST