I Am Sophie

About

I Am Sophie is an Alternate Reality Game starring a character named Sophie, a caricature of rich online influencer culture. While the series at first seems like a straightforward lifestyle series and potentially a parody, as videos progress, horror, supernatural elements and characters are introduced as Sophie as kidnapped and a strange man with a hand on his face appears in found-footage uploads.

History

The I Am Sophie YouTube channel was created on January 11th, 2020. The first upload was a trailer for the series posted on February 13th (shown below, left). On February 20th, she posted "THE GUIDE to being YOUNG, RICH & POWERFUL," gaining over 48,000 views (shown below, right). In the videos, she discussed her life as a rich heiress millennial living in a massive house and is filmed by her friend Ben.

On February 29th, her videos were covered by YouTuber Leon Lush, who mocked the over-the-top, out of touch nature of "Sophie," and noticed some inconsistencies with her story, such as her social media accounts had been recently created and all the items in her "merch shop" had "sold out,"^[1] leading him to think it may have been a parody (shown below).

The first clue the channel was not what it seemed appeared in I Am Sophie's February 27th video "RICH GIRL lives on £10 FOR A DAY (failed)," when near the end of the video, there is a brief, grainy shot of a girl sitting in plain clothing (shown below, left). More apparent glitches appeared in her next video, "responding to leon lush" (shown below, right)

The narrative ramped up in the following video, which introduced the characters "Lara," apparently Sophie's stalker, and Mark, who appears as a "computer wizard." In the episode "11271518920813.mp4," Sophie seems to be kidnapped by Mark and another woman, perhaps Lara or Sophie's friend Plum, and Ben is killed. It also marks the appearance of the "Spider-faced man," a man with a hand on his face, who may be supernaturally controlling the other characters (shown below, right).

The following videos are found footage-style horror, with a woman impersonating Sophie and Lara seemingly apologizing for dragging Sophie into this (shown below).

Online Presence

After Leon Lush's channel helped amplify the series, it began attracting more attention, particularly when people began noticing the horror elements. On March 6th, 2020, Atozy posted a video about the developing ARG, gaining over 320,000 views (shown below, left). On March 16th, Night Mind gave a summary and analysis of the series up to that point, gaining over 145,000 views (shown below, right).

A Reddit community, /r/iamsophie,^[2] gained over 3,500 subscribers in a month. Lush again talked about the series on March 22nd, now praising the ARG, and saying he had been duped into thinking it was sincere and inadvertently promoting it (shown below).

Search Interest

External References