Of course I’ll be following BBCi’s new email and website drama about recently deceased popstar Jamie Kane. I wasn’t going to actually spend time on it just yet, but then I got this really personal email from Jess, who runs the fan site, and so I just clicked the link to read the discussions. I couldn’t add my own message for some reason, and the time stamps said the messages were from 9 pm and it was only 10 am when I signed up, but one of the latest posts on the board was from Jess, saying there was a new fan called Jill, and then she asked me to chat with her. So I did – and so long as I answered her questions (where do you live? do you live with anyone? are you in school or do you work? what’s your favourite music?) straightforwardly without trying to trick her, she was really friendly and convincing.

There’s a lot of material to explore – the blogs and user profiles of the most active posters to the discussion board, external sites for Jamie’s manager and to the news report of his death. Which I thought was on a fake site until I noticed the bbc.co.uk URL and realised that the other pop news was probably real. I’m not going to spend more time on it today, but I suspect Jess or someone else might send me another email tomorrow. (via GrandTextAuto)

[Update: Just got another email from another of the characters, who says I can’t post yet cos there’s a bug – I wonder how my posting messages to the board will work story-wise? Here’s an excerpt from her (that is greta@techminx.co.uk’s) email: “ive jst set you up with a newbie membrship. only prob is the m/board software is beeing reely flakey. until ive fixed it u wont b able to post messages + u will hav to rely on other members to email you wiv updates. soz for the hass. im hoping to do a bug fix on this tmrw.”]