Echo Rose: Critical Review

Echo Rose is ARG that combines elements of comedy and supernatural horror to explore a mystery that’s lurking in the fictional town of Nettlebrook. I think Echo Rose caters to a younger audience for a few specific reasons. The first is the style in which the story is largely presented: vlogs! Echo Rose, the main character in the story, is a vlogger who claims to be a psychic and an empath, and presents her findings about the weird town of Nettlebrook in casual, chatty vlog setting. The editing of these videos is remarkably similar to established vloggers and youtubers like Kurtis Conner. In the example below Echo Rose and Kurtis Conner make use of zoom and color filters (and sound filters) to achieve a comedic moment. 

Echo Rose also makes use of the instrumental version of “Thank U, Next” by Ariana Grande, and finally, and perhaps most importantly, this ARG chooses mainly to operate over instagram and Youtube–two platforms that a younger audience would likely be savvy with and comfortable navigating. I believe these strategies have worked in drawing in a large amount of a younger audience, as the Echo Rose youtube channel views had been steadily growing and peaked with the video “JUST AS I THOUGHT” at 18k five months ago. Since then, the videos’ views have been on a decline likely due to the stream of updates coming less often than they had before. 

In terms of Alexander’s themes, Echo Rose makes use of multiple proscenia between its main hub on Youtube and the information it has sprinkled over multiple accounts (some of which are private) on instagram. These combine both video and photography, as well as written captioned text to tell the story. It is serial in its updates, and obviously benefits from the social media exposure that comes with the effective use of a social framework as that is what the story is told using. I think this ARG also benefits from a large sense of personal presence, as Echo Rose will both frequently interact with fans and information hunters as well as address things in the real world the audience would likely be familiar with. The latest video posted is called “Quarantine Vlog! 😷😘🍕”, in which she addresses how the fictional town she lives in is addressing the Corona Virus.

If you want to learn more about Echo Rose, I’ll link the youtube channel and instagram for the main character herself. Thanks for reading, and stay safe!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/miss_echo_rose/