We like HBO. We subscribe to HBO. We have friends that work for HBO and friends that used to work for HBO.

So, Tru Blood was sort of like Twilight on V Juice and might have fallen a little flat, but every time we think about canceling our subscription, they throw something like Generation Kill at us and we become believers once again.

Too bad we can’t say the same for HBOLab, which is trying to unify popular YouTube celebrities into one horrible-looking series as part of HBO’s attempt to grow into alternative markets.

Officially:

Jessica Rose, star of the Web sensation “lonelygirl15,” will be joined with top YouTube talent, including video bloggers known as sxePhil and KevJumba, for the scripted comedy “Hooking Up.” Set to premiere Oct. 1, the 10-episode series will be distributed on top video portals including YouTube and MySpace as well as a destination site, hookingupshow.com.

Now, we fell for LonleyGirl 15 before the satanic subplot and side characters were revealed, and when we discovered it was a YouTube Soap, we were even more impressed, but Jessica Rose and sxePhil (real name: Phillip DeFranco) have a short clip from the upcoming show that looks…um…horrible:

It probably seems like a no-brainer: Create an online series featuring YouTube “celebrities” for next to nothing and sit back and wait for the kids and their millions of video views to follow. You’ll spend a fraction of what it would take to create a TV-ready production by broadcasting on the internet. And you can pay these YouTube schmucks next to nothing, because a few thousand of your fancy TV-dollars must seem like winning the lottery to them, since they’re used to scraping out a few hundred bucks a month (at best) off their YouTube partnership accounts and ads on their eponymous web sites.
The thing is, it doesn’t work like that…

Simply put, your approach to online entertainment is fundamentally flawed. You are trying to bank on the popularity of these YouTube personalities when you should be focused on creating quality content. If there is one thing that the web has proven time and time again, it’s that quality content will rise to the top. Instead of trying to cherry-pick the (inflated) views of YouTubers who are on the Most Subscribed list, why don’t you enlist the help of users who are actually talented? Trust us, there are plenty of them. What you have right now are the makings of an unwatchable online series featuring YouTube personalities who aren’t actors. And it shows.
Sure, you might get an initial rush of viewers when sXePhil and KevJumba whore the link to your web site in their videos. But those people won’t hang around beyond the first couple of episodes. Everyone is prone to slowing down and gawking at a car wreck, but once that morbid curiosity is satisfied, no one sticks around to watch the clean-up.

So, head up on this series, ‘cause chances are we won’t be metioning it again. Though, if anyone from YouTube Review is reading this, I want in or I want you in, whichever you are more comfortable with…no homo.