Having been asked the question, 'should a memoir writer tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?", I have to disagree. Thinking to myself, if I ever wrote a memoir I would hope I would have the sense to add in some fictional details to spice up my own story, considering that I find we generally all go through similar things through our lifetimes.
Looking into Glassco's case, I think his make believe is very interesting. It shocks me somewhat to find he had made up his stories of meeting certain characters, describing encounters which never occurred. The first question I ask is why? My second is, why not? Why can't he throw in an imaginary event here and there? Of course it is lying, but so are most novels we so often enjoy reading. Maybe he just knew better than everyone else that a good read is likely to be fictional. Look at Harry Potter and Twilight novels, great series captivating all sorts of people worldwide, books of complete make believe! Seeing as Glassco is writing about his own life for anyone who wishes to read about it, I think he has the right to jot down anything he wants to, if in his opinion, it completes his life story.
On the subject of the lonelygirl15 youtube series, I believe there are two sides. Of course it was a clever idea to create a series by fooling an audience, but is it fair to trick an audience that way? It is almost like making a scripted film and telling everyone it is a documentary. The only difference between Glassco's memoir and lonelygirl15 is that most of Glassco's memoir is real, while lonelygirl15 is all fiction. I can see how viewers of the video clips could be angered by discovering their 'vlogger' is just a character, which may dampen the appeal to watch her entries, considering these days reality television is more appealing to most people. I do not think it was wise to stage this video blogger, but I also don't know if it would have been as successful if it was known to be fake. Either way, there is nothing anyone can really do about it.
So, considering in both cases there is nothing we can do about it, and considering that whether truthful or not we can't help but enjoy both of these medias, I really don't think it matters in a question of honesty. The main thing is entertainment and captivating your audience. I would rather be captivated and tricked than bored and unenthusiastic, wouldn't you?
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I agree with you that authors should be able to write whatever they want in their stories. Also I agree that books such as Twilight and Harry Potter are popular and are completely fiction. However, they are just that, fiction novels. Memoirs are understood to be the truth about someone’s life. I think if you asked anyone to describe a memoir, most people would mention that they are non-fiction. I believe this is universally understood about memoirs. This is the big difference between memoirs and novels such as Twilight. It’s ok to make up stories in fiction. In my opinion it is not in memoirs.
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