May 27 Shooting day. Adams arrives at Brown's apartment after shopping for Becca at Urban Outfitters (and coming to the disturbing realization that shopping for women's clothes is more fun than shopping for men's). Averett discreetly shoots incriminating footage of Brown and Adams dressing Becca. We film Becca sitting on Brown's futon for two minutes. Not exactly Dalíesque heights of absurdity. We tip Becca over. Verdict: not as funny as you'd imagine.

In a fit of frustration and hey-I-took-an-improv-class hamminess, Brown accosts Becca while she's resting comfortably at the kitchen counter. He plays it as a breakup scene. Averett says, ''That's it! Do it again.'' The scene is repeated, though neither Brown nor the mannequin displays the impassioned spontaneity they had when the camera was off. There's one money moment: Brown confronts Becca with a stray leg, suspecting another lover. ''Whose leg is this?'' he screams. Everyone agrees this will be the video's high point. Unfortunately, it comes almost two minutes in, violating the ''hook'' rule and risking viewer ADD.

But Adams thinks strategically: The Break-Up, he notes, is partnering with Google Video, encouraging people to post their best breakups online. The Jennifer Aniston–Vince Vaughn film will open June 2. We can ride its wake to Web stardom. To celebrate, we take Becca outside and try to play catch. Results are mixed, and one of Becca's hands is temporarily misplaced.

May 30 Averett wrestles with technical issues. Compression is a problem, he explains. Adams and Brown nod and act as if they understand. On MySpace, Becca (myspace.com/beccakell) has one friend. We get excited before realizing it's just Tom, the crap friend everyone gets just for joining MySpace. The video, now called ''Whose Leg Is This?'' goes to the lawyers. It comes back clean — no bite marks, even.

May 31 Brookers, she of ''Cell Block Tango'' fame, posts a tearful sign-off video on YouTube. What happened? Did our lawyers get to her somehow? We read the accompanying text: ''I have been in contact now with Carson Daly Productions for about a month...i just wanted to say that this has been an amazing 7 months and...just to have someone with such a high status look at my videos and say 'hey this girl has potential' it amazes me still.'' Carson Daly! OMG! Brookers is famous. And not just YouTube famous. She's crossed over. We call Averett to nag. We want to be famous too. Before lunch, if possible.

June 1 ''Whose Leg Is This?'' is posted on YouTube, clocking in at 2 minutes, 39 seconds. It's still ''pending verification'' on Google, where we enter the Break-Up contest, which would move the video to a featured page. Heeding the advice of the man behind Google Video, Peter Chane, to ''e-mail it to as many friends as possible and see what they think,'' we send a vague note with a couple of links to our video to our co-workers and friends. The viral spin has officially begun. First person to respond? Oddly, the lawyer, telling us, ''Nice work!'' The Hollywood agency bigwig chimes in: ''Not terrible. Should be 30 seconds shorter.''

June 2 ''Whose Leg Is This?'' moves into the Featured Break-Ups section on Google Video. But Averett notes that ''Getting Dumped Sucks,'' a 10-second clip of an angry little kid stewing over lost love, will be tough to beat. We realize we're competing in a hipper version of America's Funniest Home Videos. Brown asks Averett, who's just recovered from a pair of all-nighters working on the video, if it's possible to insert footage of Becca hitting him in ''the deal.''

June 6 Adams is antsy. He's not satisfied with our numbers. He wants to hire a marketing firm. We agree this is a very un-grassroots thing to do. But persistent lack of page views — and, by extension, fame — is really starting to eat away at morale. Thus we turn to Fanscape, a new-media marketing agency that boasts a database of 1 million young adults and 30,000 field reps and promises to ''reach and activate the hard-to-reach young-adult tastemaker — the ones least responsive to traditional advertising.'' Yes! That's exactly what we want: to reach and activate the young-adult tastemaker! Reach, Fanscape! Activate!

Meanwhile, over on MySpace, Becca has quietly acquired several friends, some creepy (''Love Boat Captain''), some sweet (''becca i saw the video of your and your man in the kitchen and fell right in love!'' posted by someone named''i love you''), and some just plain fitting (an emo band called Jack's Mannequin).

June 7 Brookers, reached by phone, turns out to be 20-year-old Brooke Brodack from western Massachusetts. She's refreshingly philosophical about her sudden fame: ''It's a mystery to me. Personally, I don't really think that I have talent, I just like doing what I like to do.'' Carson Daly likes that too — his production company contracted her to do more video clips. ''Her creative mind... When I watch her videos I think, 'Oh, my God, this girl is...what is she thinking?' She's sort of crazy, she's unique. That's the exciting thing — what can't we do with somebody like Brookers?''

Suppressing a shudder, we wonder: What does Brookers think of our video? Actually, she gives us our first props on our YouTube comment page: ''LMAO ok ok i have to addmit this is funny.'' With the Brookers' endorsement in hand, we're sure to crack 3,000 views, and then...hang on — another comment's coming in: ''not funny at all. keep your day job.''

June 8 Ricky Van Veen from CollegeHumor weighs in: ''I don't think the video you made has viral potential. The joke comes during the last 20 seconds of a three-minute video. That's not going to hold people's attention spans. Also, it reeks of effort.'' So that's it. We reek. Meanwhile, our young-adult-tastemaker activators over at Fanscape have repackaged our underperforming YouTube video. It's been retitled ''Cheater!'' and padded with new tags, the keywords YouTube uses to help viewers search for content. Our new tags include hot, chicks, and funny, but also amputation, crotch, and McPhee. Traffic triples, but celebrations are muted. These aren't Leeroy Jenkins numbers. We're still nowhere close to getting a chaise longue on Web fame's lido deck.

June 9 We console ourselves: Maybe ''Cheater!'' is a slow burn. A platform release. A sleeper. We're heartened by our chat with SNL's Andy Samberg, co-writer of ''Lazy Sunday,'' and his writing partners Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. The trio counsels patience, reminding us that the Internet, like Batman, is Forever. Notes Schaffer: ''If you liked someone's podcast, you can go back and watch all 10 of the previous video podcasts.''

But Van Veen is merciless about our video, which differs from Samberg & Co.'s in that, he explains patiently, it sucks. ''If something is inherently viral, there's no reason why it wouldn't be viral from the start.'' Meanwhile, our marketers regard 2,000 as ''a good number considering the content of the video did not necessarily allow us to target any specific Web communities. We did, however, locate a LiveJournal community dedicated to mannequins (creepy!).''

June 13 Seven. Thousand. Cumulative. Views. We don't know if that makes us famous or not (actually, we do — it doesn't), but we're pretty frickin' happy with ourselves. This despite our Google score for yesterday: zero. We've come full circle. But Becca, everyone agrees, will emerge from this unscathed. She's still out there, online. Waiting for Carson. And she's nothing if not patient.

(For four more viral videos currently rocking our experts' worlds, click here).