Much of our daily communication happens through the faceless internet: emails, tweets, instagram photos, gchat, online dating sites and much more. I’d like to think I always know who I’m talking to, but sadly, I can never be too sure. and, the new lifelong TV movie The Girlfriend You Bought Online, which will premiere on Saturday night, will really show the public that the new love you found on the internet could be a mere joke of some teenagers. We hear about the idea of catfishing quite often, so it’s fair to ask yourself: is the girlfriend you bought online based on a true story?
“I find it interesting from a theoretical point of view that the internet has created crimes that did not exist before and how people, due to the anonymity of the internet, have the ability to sit behind a screen and do things that they could not justify do it in person,” says the film’s writer-director, christine conradt. “That’s what inspired me to create a story around that concept.”
So, while the film isn’t based on a specific case, Conradt says he was inspired to write the film by several cases of cyberbullying and juvenile delinquency. conradt has a master’s degree in criminal justice from boston university and her studies focused on cybercrime and juvenile delinquency. The Girlfriend She Bought Online certainly deals with those issues. is a story about three teenage girls who run a prank blog and decide their ultimate target will be the man who falls for a fake profile they posted on a mail-order bride website. Unfortunately for them, the prank man becomes hell-bent on getting revenge on the girls, but will he take it too far?
cybercrimes & Internet trust
conradt is passionate about these issues and has studied the motivations behind teen crime (peer pressure and lack of understanding of consequences are among them) as well as internet crime, in which the world wide web gives people a new way to commit crimes. old fashioned evil He published an article in the International Journal of Cyber Criminology on the Adrian Ghighina online auction fraud case.
but does this mean you should distrust the entire internet? not quite. “I think what’s interesting is that when people go online, the balance of trust is thrown off, because they either just trust completely without being given a reason to trust that person, or they completely mistrust,” Conradt tells bustle. “A lot of our meaningful interactions with people have been replaced by what we think of as meaningful interactions online. People now believe that you could meet someone so well online and fall in love with them.”
how the movie came about
in addition to studying crime, conradt has a bachelor’s degree in screenwriting from the prestigious usc film school with over 40 film credits to his credit as a screenwriter, and a fair number of those are beloved titles that have run for ages. her life, including a nanny’s revenge, a single mother’s secret sex life,and betrayed at 17.
said that she originally wrote The Girlfriend She Bought Online as an independent horror film that would be her directorial debut and was ready to start a crowdfunding campaign. but there was no need, because executive producer pierre david was interested in the idea, but as a thriller.
that ending (but no spoilers)
Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the ending for you, but I will say it’s pretty dark. nothing is tied up in a neat little bundle with a bow and that’s something that makes sense for a movie with so much gray area, where no one is totally right or totally wrong.
“When [Lifetime] finally saw it, they said this is one of the darkest movies we’ve ever done, because of the ending,” Conradt hints. “You start with the girls and they’re so awful to this guy, doing something so bad and so bad. Then when it changes and he gets revenge, I wanted the audience to say, ‘They were mean, but they didn’t do it.’ he doesn’t deserve that“.
How far can revenge go and how dark does it get? you’ll have to tune in on Saturday, July 18 at 8 p.m. to find out.
images: for life (4)