Of all the clips you might expect to become a YouTube phenomenon, an interview with a student pole vaulter – in which she outlines her training and talks of her plans for the future – probably isn’t one of them. In the past month, though, a three-minute interview with 18-year-old Californian athlete Alison Stokke has racked up almost 260,000 viewings. At the same time, an unofficial MySpace site called “Alison Stokke fans” has attracted 1,015 “friends”. Countless blogs have run photographs of her, and she has been the subject of a fake Facebook entry in her name (which has been taken down).http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2091654,00.html
The US pole vaulter and her unwanted internet fans
Of all the clips you might expect to become a YouTube phenomenon, an interview with a student pole vaulter – in which she outlines her training and talks of her plans for the future – probably isn’t one of them. In the past month, though, a three-minute interview with 18-year-old Californian athlete Alison Stokke has racked up almost 260,000 viewings. At the same time, an unofficial MySpace site called “Alison Stokke fans” has attracted 1,015 “friends”. Countless blogs have run photographs of her, and she has been the subject of a fake Facebook entry in her name (which has been taken down).