Felicia Day: A rising star for the Internet geek

This is a story about Felicia Day.

Right now, 30 percent-ish of you are squealing with besotted fan-girldom and fan-boydom.

(Matt Sayles/AP) - Felicia Day, creator and star of ‘The Guild,’ an online series whose episodes have scored 150 million views since its 2007 inception.

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The first episode of Felicia Day's "The Flog," from her new YouTube channel Geek & Sundry.

The other 70 percent of you do not know what a Felicia Day is.

“That’s probably more like 90 percent,” she says. “Whenever I go to a meeting at a studio lot, it’s always the IT guy or the assistant or the accountant who knows me. And then the executives look at me, like, ‘I don’t know why I’m meeting with you.’ ”

Here is an explanation.

Day, 32, is the creator and star of “The Guild,” an online series whose episodes have scored 150 million views since its 2007 inception. She’s won two best actress “Streamys” for her twitchy, flustered performance as gamer Cyd Sherman. In January, the Hollywood Reporter named her one of the industry’s top 50 digital power players, a list that included George Lucas and the chief executive of Twitter.

Here is another explanation. If you are a geek — a proud, noble, reclaiming-the-word geek — then Felicia Day is your deity.

A few months ago, YouTube announced that it would launch 100 new original-content channels. The selected producers would get a cash influx to help them ramp up quality; YouTube would amass artistic credibility. Deepak Chopra got a channel. Shaquille O’Neal, Amy Poehler and Madonna-affiliated outfits got channels.

Day got a channel.

She named it Geek & Sundry. Its slate of shows — six new, original programs, created by or developed by or starring her — debuts this week.

“It’s this sort of grand experiment, and I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she says.

What will happen with Day is intrinsically tied to what will happen on the Internet, at a potential watershed moment in the future of online content.

“Remember that movie ‘Three Men and a Baby’?”  Joss Whedon writes in an e-mail. The creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” cast Day in that show as the slayer Vi, and in “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” his Web opus. “Felicia is the baby, the three guys raising her are Preston Sturges, Gordon Gekko and Rain Man. Her mind works faster than mine ever will and her mouth works faster than that. She’s funny, savvy, focused and encyclopedic to the point of scary. And, sidebar, the baby grows up to be really hot.”

Professionally, “Felicia’s career will go where she decides it will,” he writes. “Plus, she’ll probably rule Asia and invent a new color. I fear her.”

Awkward/cool vulnerability

Day is early for breakfast. She likes being 15 minutes early; it helps prevent the awkwardness that comes with meeting strangers. You can case the joint. Peruse the menu without having to make simultaneous chatter. Order extra croissants for later, if you want, without looking like a pig.

I know that she is 15 minutes early, because I am also 15 minutes early — for the same reasons. She darts into the Santa Monica, Calif., bakery just ahead of me — red hair; green sweater; skittish, quick steps.

“You’re early, too!” She wrinkles her nose, slightly thrown by being out-earlied. She looks like an elf, more “Lord of the Rings” than Keebler. She has the sort of awkward/cool vulnerability that invites immediate intimacy.