Sandbox

Once upon a time, there was a boy and girl. They both met in Los Angeles, and they fell in love. One day, the girl moved across the country to go to graduate school (at Duke, coincidentally), but they decided to do the long-distance thing.

Instead of just drafting an e-mail or even handwriting a letter, the boy decided to write a love letter, in the form of a music video.

The boy happens to be roommates with some other boys in a band called the Daylights. With a Canon 5D Mark II camera, $100 and a Sunday afternoon, the video was made. It is rather adorable, featuring clever hand movements, a catchy tune and heartfelt lyrics.

But there’s a catch: The boy will not send the digital love letter directly to the girl. Instead, he’ll post it to YouTube, hoping the video will eventually crowd surf its way to Durham. He hopes the video will go viral. So, he tweeted about the video and asked his friends to tweet about the video. And now Katy Perry has tweeted about the video. And the Village Voice and MSN have written about it. And hopefully, eventually, the video will make it’s way to Lex.

Reading peoples’ comments about the video has been truly entertaining. There have been gushy reactions—and cynical ones. The skeptics call this a marketing ploy for the band, a scam, “creative theft” (in reference to a scene in the movie Labyrinth).

I say, we should just enjoy it. This is a post-modern love story, Daft Punk’s “Digital Love” manifested. Let’s assume the boy really does just miss this girl, plain and simple. It’s more fun that way.

Tweet the video. Post it to your Facebook. The jaded, hardened souls can go blog and whine about their unhappiness elsewhere. For now, let’s hope there can be a happily-ever-after for this boy and this girl.

(I won’t post the link here—I would rather not interfere with the web-based nature of the love letter experiment at hand, so go watch it online.)