l i f e s t y l e. businesswoman. model. vlogger.
As the series goes on, horror and ARG elements begin showing up more and more.
The channel can be found here
, along with Sophie's Twitter, Instagram, and website.
In April 2021, the series was prematurely cancelled due to production issues according to its creator...or so it seemed. In June 2021, two new videos were posted without comment to Sophie's Twitter page, prompting speculation by fans that the supposed cancellation was actually part of the ARG's story. However, the accounts went back dormant until recently, where they promoted a Kickstarter for a project the creators moved on to: [1]
i am sophie provides examples of:
- Alternate Reality Game: Like the most classic examples, it requires the watcher to piece together the events through increasingly cryptic videos and social media posts. Freeze-Frame Bonus abounds.
- Body Horror: The Hand Monster/Hate, a Humanoid Abomination with a hand grafted into his deformed skull. Just look at him.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: It's implied that Mark isn't acting of his own volition, but is being controlled by the Hand of Hate.
- The Cracker: An unknown person watching video tapes in "THE GUIDE to being YOUNG, RICH & POWERFUL". In "i can see you too", his name is revealed to be Simon.
- Daddy's Girl: Sophie, whose father gave her most of her fortune. Lara too, according to "lara.mp4".
- Deliberate VHS Quality: The videos that appear after Sophie's kidnapping, complete with heavy distortion.
- Dumb Blonde: Sophie has platinum blonde hair and is generally rather Genre Blind, crossing over into Too Dumb to Live when she continues trying to do her vlog with a potentially insane Mark and the Hand Monster in the mansion.
- Eye Scream: "are you being you?" depicts someone wearing YRP merchandise in the process of tearing out their own eyes. Thankfully, you don't see the deed, but you do see the torn-out eyes on the floor.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: There are some disturbing images inserted in the videos.
- The very first one is a grainy image of a woman in her bedroom "RICH GIRL lives on £10 FOR A DAY (failed)".
- The woman appears again along with other ominous images in "responding to leon lush..."
- A flash of the Hand of Hate in lara2.mp4.
- Foreshadowing:
- "RICH GIRL lives on £10 FOR A DAY (failed)" and "responding to leon lush..." features an unknown woman in her room. The next video introduces Lara, the girl who is in the glitched footage.
- One of the frame features a poor-lit grimy room with a tripod, the same room where Sophie was placed in.
- Hell Is That Noise: The audio file, which features strange noises. Playing it a bit faster reveals "
i can see you sophie" and a woman crying. - Gag Censor: Profanity are censored with duck quacks. It is dropped in the last minutes of "my #1 super CRAZY fan!!" and remains that way in the rest of the series.Plum: Oh fuck this, I'm gonna go up and find out.
- Green-Eyed Monster: This seems to be Lara's motivation. She dresses like Sophie, acts like a Loony Fan, and soon kidnaps and replaces her. "Lara.mp4" reveals she once tried her hand at vlogging as well, with a more genuine approach.
- Hate Sink: Sophie is an interesting example. She doesn't seem like a particularly cruel person, but her conspicuous consumption, pretentiousness, constant plugging of merch, and complete lack of understanding less privileged people is clearly intended to disgust. This is highlighted by the reveal that Lara used to be a completely normal, more relatable vlogger long before her current obsession took hold.
- Hostile Show Takeover: After 11271518920813.mp4, whatever kidnapped Sophie is now running the show.
- Humanoid Abomination: The Hand Monster looks like a man with a dashing suit. He also has a severed rotting hand sewn onto his face, severely lopsided ears, and a grotesquely stretched-out mouth. He is also implied to have control other characters as well.
- Ironic Name: Sophie comes from the greek word for wisdom. The Sophie in this series is neither wise nor particularly intelligent.
- Loony Fan: Lara. Or at least, one version of her.
- Kill and Replace: Implied to be the reason why Lara is targeting Sophie in the first place. The videos after Sophie's kidnapping are Meaningful Echos of the channel trailer, only with Lara replacing Sophie.
- Knuckle Tattoos: The hand on the Hand Monster's face is tattooed with "HATE".
- Left for Dead: Plum accuses Sophie of having left her to die when she left Lara's house.Plum: You left me. You left me to rot!
- Light Feminine Dark Feminine: Sophie and Lara are contrasted this way, with Sophie being the vain, superficial rich girl and Lara being the grounded, humble middle class girl.
- Meaningful Echo: A rare example that's not just dialogue. After Sophie is kidnapped, the videos that start appearing on the channel are all repeats of the previously uploaded ones, but with Lara replacing Sophie.
- Mind Screw:
- Once it starts delving into horror, a lot of unexplained elements of the series reveal themselves. Who is the Hand Monster? How much of the situation is his doing or was he summoned by Lara and/or Mark? Is Mark brainwashed? With the advent of "YRP COLLECTION - AVAILABLE NOW", how actually much is Lara actually in control of the situation?
- "lara.mp4". An unknown viewer selects through a menu of Lara's vlogs. In the first one, she reveals she actually does have a cat, when in "my #1 super CRAZY fan!!" she claimed she didn't, despite cat food being present in the house.
- "are you being you?": Lara hears Sophie, Plum and herself from "my #1 super CRAZY fan!!" outside her bedroom, which is implied to be the room Lara stopped the two of them from entering in that video. When the Lara inside the room opens the door, there's nobody there. Thing is, "my #1 super CRAZY fan!!" was uploaded on March 5, 2020, and would have been filmed at about that time, while the footage of Lara we're watching is from a livestream that happened on July 11, 2019.
- Missing Mom: Notably something that Lara and Sophie have in common.
- The Most Dangerous Video Game: The Guide to Being Young, Rich, and Powerful, where Lara plays through Sophie's first few videos in video game form nearly a whole year before any of them were uploaded. Some objects in the videos are replaced with more gruesome imagery (such as the leather seats in Sophie's private jet being Genuine Human Hide instead of cowhide). The game also directly addresses her and responds to her voice several times.
- My God, What Have I Done?: In "i can see you too", a potentially brainwashed Mark sends Simon The Guide to Being Young, Rich, and Powerful under the guise of it being a piece of malware he wanted Simon's help dissecting (presumably to find a way to remove it from an infected computer). However, due to being quite drunk and having a chip on his shoulder regarding his two friends constantly asking him for help with things but never doing anything for him in return (or at least that's how he perceives it), he didn't play the game and instead sent it to his other friend, Lara, as a form of petty revenge. He clearly didn't expect it to be The Most Dangerous Video Game and feels very guilty over what happened to her because of this.
- Neck Snap: How Plum is disposed of.
- Rule of Empathy: Up until "lara.mp4", all we knew about Lara was that she was an obsessed creepy fan. The following videos show her before becoming that way, she was normal likable girl struggling to get noticed on YouTube. So that we feel more distraught at her encountering the unsettling "Young, Rich & Powerful" game.
- Satire and Switch: The series starts as just a Stealth Parody (albeit one with an impressive production value), but as the ARG elements increase, the facade starts to completely fade with "my #1 super CRAZY fan!!" introducing the first hints of a Disguised Horror Story. With the release of "11271518920813.mp4", it becomes a full-on horror piece featuring a stalker and possibly supernatural elements.
- Screens Are Cameras: Simon was being spied on by someone or something (most likely the Hand of Hate) through his computer and smartphone. Not through his webcam or phone camera, but through the screens themselves. Anything that appears on-screen is transparent so that Simon is visible through it and flipped horizontally as if being viewed from behind, with the exception of The Guide to Being Young, Rich, and Powerful.
- Sdrawkcab Name: One of the video titles: "reliarT lennahC - EBUTUOY fO NEEUQ WEN ehT".
- Stalker without a Crush: Lara. She claims to be a superfan of Sophie's, wears exact replicas of her outfits, and ends up pulling a Kill and Replace on her.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: "RICH GIRL lives on £10 FOR A DAY (failed)" has a single glitchy and grainy frame that features a woman in plain clothing in her bed room. This is becoming more apparent as the video series go on.
- Take That!: Sophie's entire character is a Stealth Parody of influencer culture, being a rich, vapid daddy's girl who constantly undermines her own claims of being "one of us" by spending lots of money, constantly plugging her own merchandise, and putting out videos that usually have little to do with their titles.
- The merchandise itself is also a parody of overpriced, minimalist Gucci-esque fashion.
- "lara.mp4" parodies reaction videos with Vlog 12 ("Unedited Reaction Footage"), with Lara reacting to a new Fortnite map. It fast-forwards through the whole thing, showing Lara barely changing her expression the entire time.
- Totally Radical: As part of her portrayal as a vapid self-obsessed influencer, Sophie's speech is full of slang associated with social media culture, like "AF" and "fire" to name a few.
- Valley Girl: Sophie has many mannerisms and speech patterns (and general intelligence) associated with this character type despite being British.
- Wham Shot:
- Mark standing in Sophie's bathroom, covered in blood.
- Lara revealing herself to have been in on the kidnapping the whole time, as well as romantically involved with Mark.
- Wham Line: In "lara2.mp4".
