No lonely boy. Just Lonelyboy15.

A little while ago, I posted about Daxflame, a YouTuber that I thought could either be a legitimately lonely and awkward kid or a brilliant actor. I'm now convinced it's the latter.

He’s a fine specimen of adolescent dorkitude – clashing outfits, social awkwardness, simultaneous self-consciousness and complete lack of self awareness – and his video diaries are burnin’ up the YouTube charts like he’s the next Lonelygirl15. Each video he posts, in which he describes his painful quest to make friends and get through the school day, is watched about 50,000 times. (See: Dax goes to school dressed as Superman, Dax seeks a BFF, Dax continues to seek a BFF.) There may be good reason for it: The rumors on the Internets are that he’s a brilliant fake – and that his sister, a student at Berklee College of Music, plays a large role in the production. True? Let’s shake the tubes and see what comes out.

One of the first signs of Lonelygirl15’s fraudulence was her website: Someone had bought Lonelygirl15.com shortly before any videos of her were posted on YouTube. A similar thing is happening here: Daxflame.com has been purchased by Jeff Patrello, someone in McKinney, Texas. This same Jeff Patrello also owns DylanPatrello.com. (You can check the ownership at Whois.net.) Nothing is up at either site, but Dylan Patrello has plenty of MySpace presence: Her profile says she went to high school in McKinney, Texas, and is now a student/singer/songwriter at Berklee (and her stuff’s pretty good, if you like Tori Amos.) So, we’ve established that the two are connected via Jeff Patrello, whoever he is.

McKinney is about 30 miles from Dallas, where a guy named Shawn Patrello – an uncle? – runs a bunch of comedy organizations, including Funnybiz and Kidprov. A Dallas Morning News story posted on Kidprov’s site shows a picture of a little kid that looks a hell of a lot like a young Dax.

Someone’s been going around to message boards, anonymously linking (1, 2) Shawn Patrello to Dylan Patrello and Dax, and claiming that Dylan has had a major hand in shaping and promoting DaxFlame’s stuff. It’d make sense: If this is a little homegrown talent family, Dylan sings, Shawn improvs, and Dax gets help working out his comedy stylings on YouTube. So if Dax is indeed a fake, and Internet sleuths don’t know how to find him, Berklee might be a good place to start.

Posted by Jason Feifer at April 19, 2007 09:18 AM