What secret? For the answer, I recommend reading Joshua Davis’s story in the new issue of Wired (and don’t just look at the photos … you animal). It’s here, and it’s a great coda to the end of the beginning of Lonelygirl15, the end of the beginning of YouTube, and the end of the beginning of a new type of celebrity. It’s also about the new age of storytelling that’s at the soul of SMITH:

What began as a quirky story about a religious girl fighting with her strict parents and her boyfriend is poised to break out of the bedroom and into a full-blown international thriller. In the process, the series is helping to invent the rhythm, grammar, and style of online storytelling.

Listen to a podcast interview with Joshua Davis about his subject here.

I’ve been a fan and student of Wired since its debut issue, and I have to say that the November (cover: The New Atheism) and December issues (including a piece by Frank Rose about Chevy’s wild and wiki user-generated-video campaign, which worked out better than many of us realized) are two of the best back-to-back issues of a magazine I’ve read in the past 10 years. The future is fun again….