Prologue
By the time that the writers of this blog had first encountered Queen Boxxy of 4chan /b/, the war which had been fought mercilessly by vigilantes on both sides of the conflict had ceased.
All that remained of this online blitzkrieg was an insurmountable number of her loyal subjects, countless captioned iconic portraits, the three videos of hers that started it all, and the mighty empire known as the Internet which was still reeling from her impact. One thing was missing in it all: the queen herself.
Boxxy had vanished.
Boxxy, known universally as Boxxy, was just a regular girl. She was no different than many other young pubescent girls who sit behind their web cams for different reasons; whether it be to show off their developing breasts and figures, give shout-outs to friends, give an opinion on the latest pop culture trend, or simply talk crap about crap. Yet, there was something about her that managed to entrance more than half the Internet like a the song of a siren.
FOAR 4DD1 FRUM BOXXY
With her dark, layered chocolate brown hair, her smooth and flawless peaches and cream skin pulled over her delicate but pronounced Greco-American features, the heavy black eye liner encircling her clear brown eyes, Boxxy was by no means unattractive. That was how she was and how she wanted Boxxy to be.
FOAR ANT FRUM BOXXY
Looking back at the videos that made her one of the biggest Internet sensations of all time and the target of Anonymous’ hatred, it's hard to understand exactly why her lovers and haters were so fixated with her. Her three videos contain nothing of value and are not very impressive at the outset. Indeed, in Boxxy’s hyperactive state, it is often difficult to follow, much less understand, what she's talking about.
FOAR EVERYWUN FRUM BOXXY
Boxxy never intended to start any drama whatsoever. She only wished to have pure, clean fun to enjoy herself. Yet, this innocent fun earned her the full wrath of the Internet’s most fearsome group: Anonymous. Internet 2.0 can make you or break you. In this case, it did both.
2.03.2011
Chapter 1
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Chapter 1
On April 2006, the then fifteen-year-old Boxxy created an account on the popular anime-based message board Gaia Online with the rather inconspicuous user name MoldyLunchBoxx.
Following a year-long absence, she returned in late 2007 and notified everyone, via much posting, that she had come back.
At the end of the first week in 2008, the sixteen-year-old was given the nickname Boxxy and began uploading her first two YouTube videos onto the channel BoxxyBabe.
The first was entitled “FOAR 4DD1 FRUM BOXXY.” The Addi in question was a shortened version of the user name 4DM1RALAWESOME, i.e., Admiral Awesome: an online friend of Boxxy and a fellow Gaia Online user.
The video came about as the result of a promise she had made to him and was intended to be a simple and amusing shout-out using her extremely hyperactive onscreen persona Boxxy.
Indeed, Boxxy stated in the video, which was punctuated with much stammering, that she'd make a video just for him. She also mentioned, albeit playfully, that she loved Addi because he's fun to talk to.
The remainder of the video consisted of Boxxy talking at some length about the way she and Addi interacted online, the fact that she overused black eyeliner, and that if she knew anyone else on Gaia, all they had to do was ask and she make a separate shout-out video for him or her.
The offer was clearly accepted by another Gaia Online user who wished to be called Ant, as shown in Boxxy’s second video, entitled “FOAR ANT FRUM BOXXY."
In this video, she more or less discussed many of the same things she did in her other video; however, she revealed that Ant was the first person she had ever met on Gaia Online while noting that she had been friends with him for a while and described him as a wonderful guy.
She digressed to describe how Ant and others frequented the notorious site 4chan, how Ant’s avatars were very interesting to look at, and even drew an angry cartoon face with black and red markers to be a depiction of Ant.
Boxxy's original YouTube channel, BoxxyBabe.
Note the change in hair and skin tone in the second video.
This was the video where another of Boxxy’s friends was mentioned, Pocky. She gossiped in an indiscreet manner about Ant and Pocky’s relationship and that it had ended.
This same Pocky later became a source of interest to various members of 4chan and was again referenced in Boxxy’s third and currently final video.
Boxxy's friend Priyanka, a.k.a. Pocky.
In close examination of her first video, Boxxy is clad in a black, short-sleeved T-shirt with the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Mooninite characters Ignignokt and Err, on the front, with a gold chain prominently displayed around her neck. Her dark brown hair is cut in a shoulder-length pageboy bob with the edges flipped out; a barely discernible, black Alice band keeps her parted bangs from falling on her face. Along with fairly heavy makeup applied to her pale complexion, thick lines of kohl encircle her eyes. What makes her stand out even more was that she is seated in what appears to be a darkened, cluttered office, as evidenced by the printer in the background to her left, with the glow of the computer screen being the only light source. This has the peculiar effect of drawing attention to her face, the eyes in particular.
In her second video, Boxxy wears a white cotton T-shirt with a silver necklace and pendant around her neck. Her bob is suddenly a lighter brown, and her skin tone changed from pale to a distinctive shade of buff. Even though it is still winter in many parts of North America, the fact that Boxxy is suddenly sporting both a lighter hair color and a darker skin tone seem to indicate that she lives in a state which still receives large amounts of sun and heat.
The two said videos were uploaded onto the YouTube channel BoxxyBabe. Records indicate that her last login on both Gaia Online and YouTube took place between the months of February and April 2008.
On December 27, 2008, after sitting undisturbed on her channel, the first video was embedded onto the unremarkable site I-Am-Bored.com by an anonymous user.
The embed on I-Am-Bored.com.
Within twenty-four hours, the comments page was filled with over 175 comments across eight pages. Only adding to the intrigue already surrounding Boxxy, the embed then strangely disappeared without a trace or explanation.
Screen shots of the video began appearing on the well-known image board 7chan coupled with fervent discussions and debates as to who the girl was and if she was afflicted with any ailments such as Attention Deficit Disorder or Tourette’s Syndrome, based upon her hyperactive and jerky manner.
An anonymous user then included a link to the video on the near-identical site 4chan. It was posted at the top of an endurance test thread on the random /b/ board: the birthplace of many of the Internet’s most famous memes. Those who could sit through the whole thing and not flip out in a fit of annoyance or simply give up were labeled as experts. Many present at that time described the whole escapade as "the most insane display we've ever seen on YouTube" and "the cutest girl you've ever seen." This adoration would soon mark the genesis of the Boxxy phenomenon.
By Anonymous
Chapter 1
On April 2006, the then fifteen-year-old Boxxy created an account on the popular anime-based message board Gaia Online with the rather inconspicuous user name MoldyLunchBoxx.
Following a year-long absence, she returned in late 2007 and notified everyone, via much posting, that she had come back.
At the end of the first week in 2008, the sixteen-year-old was given the nickname Boxxy and began uploading her first two YouTube videos onto the channel BoxxyBabe.
The first was entitled “FOAR 4DD1 FRUM BOXXY.” The Addi in question was a shortened version of the user name 4DM1RALAWESOME, i.e., Admiral Awesome: an online friend of Boxxy and a fellow Gaia Online user.
The video came about as the result of a promise she had made to him and was intended to be a simple and amusing shout-out using her extremely hyperactive onscreen persona Boxxy.
Indeed, Boxxy stated in the video, which was punctuated with much stammering, that she'd make a video just for him. She also mentioned, albeit playfully, that she loved Addi because he's fun to talk to.
The remainder of the video consisted of Boxxy talking at some length about the way she and Addi interacted online, the fact that she overused black eyeliner, and that if she knew anyone else on Gaia, all they had to do was ask and she make a separate shout-out video for him or her.
The offer was clearly accepted by another Gaia Online user who wished to be called Ant, as shown in Boxxy’s second video, entitled “FOAR ANT FRUM BOXXY."
In this video, she more or less discussed many of the same things she did in her other video; however, she revealed that Ant was the first person she had ever met on Gaia Online while noting that she had been friends with him for a while and described him as a wonderful guy.
She digressed to describe how Ant and others frequented the notorious site 4chan, how Ant’s avatars were very interesting to look at, and even drew an angry cartoon face with black and red markers to be a depiction of Ant.
Boxxy's original YouTube channel, BoxxyBabe.
Note the change in hair and skin tone in the second video.
This was the video where another of Boxxy’s friends was mentioned, Pocky. She gossiped in an indiscreet manner about Ant and Pocky’s relationship and that it had ended.
This same Pocky later became a source of interest to various members of 4chan and was again referenced in Boxxy’s third and currently final video.
Boxxy's friend Priyanka, a.k.a. Pocky.
In close examination of her first video, Boxxy is clad in a black, short-sleeved T-shirt with the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Mooninite characters Ignignokt and Err, on the front, with a gold chain prominently displayed around her neck. Her dark brown hair is cut in a shoulder-length pageboy bob with the edges flipped out; a barely discernible, black Alice band keeps her parted bangs from falling on her face. Along with fairly heavy makeup applied to her pale complexion, thick lines of kohl encircle her eyes. What makes her stand out even more was that she is seated in what appears to be a darkened, cluttered office, as evidenced by the printer in the background to her left, with the glow of the computer screen being the only light source. This has the peculiar effect of drawing attention to her face, the eyes in particular.
In her second video, Boxxy wears a white cotton T-shirt with a silver necklace and pendant around her neck. Her bob is suddenly a lighter brown, and her skin tone changed from pale to a distinctive shade of buff. Even though it is still winter in many parts of North America, the fact that Boxxy is suddenly sporting both a lighter hair color and a darker skin tone seem to indicate that she lives in a state which still receives large amounts of sun and heat.
The two said videos were uploaded onto the YouTube channel BoxxyBabe. Records indicate that her last login on both Gaia Online and YouTube took place between the months of February and April 2008.
On December 27, 2008, after sitting undisturbed on her channel, the first video was embedded onto the unremarkable site I-Am-Bored.com by an anonymous user.
The embed on I-Am-Bored.com.
Within twenty-four hours, the comments page was filled with over 175 comments across eight pages. Only adding to the intrigue already surrounding Boxxy, the embed then strangely disappeared without a trace or explanation.
Screen shots of the video began appearing on the well-known image board 7chan coupled with fervent discussions and debates as to who the girl was and if she was afflicted with any ailments such as Attention Deficit Disorder or Tourette’s Syndrome, based upon her hyperactive and jerky manner.
An anonymous user then included a link to the video on the near-identical site 4chan. It was posted at the top of an endurance test thread on the random /b/ board: the birthplace of many of the Internet’s most famous memes. Those who could sit through the whole thing and not flip out in a fit of annoyance or simply give up were labeled as experts. Many present at that time described the whole escapade as "the most insane display we've ever seen on YouTube" and "the cutest girl you've ever seen." This adoration would soon mark the genesis of the Boxxy phenomenon.
By Anonymous
Chapter 2
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Chapter 2
As the days rolled by, interest in just who Boxxy was increased more and more. As speculation grew, threads dedicated to discussing the girl began to dominate the /b/ board of 4chan.
Boxxy threads inundating /b/.
Not since the days of Cracky-Chan had there been such a beautiful, curious, and enigmatic figure to fill /b/. Boxxy was everywhere, yet nobody knew anything about her.
Why was she suddenly such a hot topic when her videos had been gathering dust for nearly a whole year? Who was Boxxy in real life? Was she a paid actress in a similar vein as the well-known lonelygirl15? Why did she act the way she did in her videos? Drug abuse? Attention-Deficit Disorder? Tourette’s Syndrome? All of the above?
In any case, none of it really mattered, as Boxxy had become the biggest thing on the Internet since the discovery of wireless connection. Unfortunately, a huge division had begun appearing between the users of 4chan: the newfags and the oldfags.
Within the last five years of the existence of 4chan, the said two rival factions had been fighting each other for dominance over /b/. Each side hated the other for what was a perceived decline in the quality and content of posts on /b/.
Using context clues, it seems that newfag is the pejorative term used to describe a person who is new to 4chan and inexperienced with its inner workings. Oldfag refers to those who are far more experienced with the site’s inner workings in that they know how to post, what to post about, and what and what not to talk about.
Yes, this really happened.
Newfags are often notorious for annoying oldfags with what are perceived to be stupid and pointless threads, excessive camwhoring where pictures of themselves in stupid positions are posted, turning the /b/ board into their own personal twitter account, and attempting to use the notorious Anonymous, known for hacking and leaking the personal information of those who cross them, as their own personal army.
Frustration and tensions had been building up on the oldfags’ side, as they felt that /b/ had been hijacked by the overwhelming numbers of newfags from its original purpose and was now being used as a canvas for stupidity. Newfags on the other hand felt that the oldfags were stubborn, boring haters who could not accept the ever-changing realities of internet fads, or, put simply, felt that they were holding /b/ back from progressing.
The oldfag community’s positions summed up perfectly during the "Bring Back Snacks" campaign.
The oldfags did not have a legitimate reason or excuse at which to try and pummel the newfags out of 4chan permanently, as nothing they posted about could effectively rally the entire base. However, Boxxy would become their trump card, or the spark needed to ignite an all-out war.
To the newfags, Boxxy was the messiah who could enrapture and unite all of 4chan into one with her charisma, innocence, beauty, and bubbly personality. Her videos were the equivalent of the New Testament, a divine revelation to those who watched and listened. There was even a Church of Boxxy dedicated to her.
Blog posts about this savior started appearing all over the Internet as an effort to uncover the truth behind this mysterious figure and to spread the word. The newfag community and some oldfags, who had defected, were unanimous in deciding to name her the queen of /b/.
All hail Queen Boxxy of /b/.
The oldfag community, on the other hand, had had enough. Boxxy, to them, personified everything they had grown to hate about the Internet, as well as /b/'s current state.
The oldfags' response to the Boxxy phenomenon.
It also didn’t help matters that nearly every thread on /b/ was about Boxxy in some way, and the fact that there was absolutely no moderation by the administrators of 4chan. To them, Boxxy was a forced meme and the poster girl for attention-whoring; she had single-handedly dispossessed them of their ability to do what they enjoyed doing the most on /b/ and acquired seisin of /b/.
Whether she intended to or not, Boxxy became a meme.
By Anonymous
Boxxy is a teenage girl whose YouTube videos caused an Internet sensation in early January 2009. This website chronicles her mysterious tale.
Chapter 2
As the days rolled by, interest in just who Boxxy was increased more and more. As speculation grew, threads dedicated to discussing the girl began to dominate the /b/ board of 4chan.
Boxxy threads inundating /b/.
Not since the days of Cracky-Chan had there been such a beautiful, curious, and enigmatic figure to fill /b/. Boxxy was everywhere, yet nobody knew anything about her.
Why was she suddenly such a hot topic when her videos had been gathering dust for nearly a whole year? Who was Boxxy in real life? Was she a paid actress in a similar vein as the well-known lonelygirl15? Why did she act the way she did in her videos? Drug abuse? Attention-Deficit Disorder? Tourette’s Syndrome? All of the above?
In any case, none of it really mattered, as Boxxy had become the biggest thing on the Internet since the discovery of wireless connection. Unfortunately, a huge division had begun appearing between the users of 4chan: the newfags and the oldfags.
Within the last five years of the existence of 4chan, the said two rival factions had been fighting each other for dominance over /b/. Each side hated the other for what was a perceived decline in the quality and content of posts on /b/.
Using context clues, it seems that newfag is the pejorative term used to describe a person who is new to 4chan and inexperienced with its inner workings. Oldfag refers to those who are far more experienced with the site’s inner workings in that they know how to post, what to post about, and what and what not to talk about.
Yes, this really happened.
Newfags are often notorious for annoying oldfags with what are perceived to be stupid and pointless threads, excessive camwhoring where pictures of themselves in stupid positions are posted, turning the /b/ board into their own personal twitter account, and attempting to use the notorious Anonymous, known for hacking and leaking the personal information of those who cross them, as their own personal army.
Frustration and tensions had been building up on the oldfags’ side, as they felt that /b/ had been hijacked by the overwhelming numbers of newfags from its original purpose and was now being used as a canvas for stupidity. Newfags on the other hand felt that the oldfags were stubborn, boring haters who could not accept the ever-changing realities of internet fads, or, put simply, felt that they were holding /b/ back from progressing.
The oldfag community’s positions summed up perfectly during the "Bring Back Snacks" campaign.
The oldfags did not have a legitimate reason or excuse at which to try and pummel the newfags out of 4chan permanently, as nothing they posted about could effectively rally the entire base. However, Boxxy would become their trump card, or the spark needed to ignite an all-out war.
To the newfags, Boxxy was the messiah who could enrapture and unite all of 4chan into one with her charisma, innocence, beauty, and bubbly personality. Her videos were the equivalent of the New Testament, a divine revelation to those who watched and listened. There was even a Church of Boxxy dedicated to her.
Blog posts about this savior started appearing all over the Internet as an effort to uncover the truth behind this mysterious figure and to spread the word. The newfag community and some oldfags, who had defected, were unanimous in deciding to name her the queen of /b/.
All hail Queen Boxxy of /b/.
The oldfag community, on the other hand, had had enough. Boxxy, to them, personified everything they had grown to hate about the Internet, as well as /b/'s current state.
The oldfags' response to the Boxxy phenomenon.
It also didn’t help matters that nearly every thread on /b/ was about Boxxy in some way, and the fact that there was absolutely no moderation by the administrators of 4chan. To them, Boxxy was a forced meme and the poster girl for attention-whoring; she had single-handedly dispossessed them of their ability to do what they enjoyed doing the most on /b/ and acquired seisin of /b/.
Whether she intended to or not, Boxxy became a meme.
By Anonymous
Boxxy is a teenage girl whose YouTube videos caused an Internet sensation in early January 2009. This website chronicles her mysterious tale.
Chapter 3
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Chapter 3
Feeling the need to take matters into their own hands, a group of oldfag vigilantes decided to band together into a group and call themselves Operation Valkyrie. The name was a reference to the ill-fated attempt to oust Adolf Hitler from power in the Third Reich by members of their own inner circle.
Operation Valkyrie's now-infamous poster.
Their purpose was to locate, raid, and eliminate as much of Boxxy as possible via hacking her YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, and PhotoBucket accounts in order to find an identity and a specific picture Boxxy mentioned in “FOAR 4DD1 FRUM BOXXY” which showcased the moniker 4DD1 written on her upper chest.
Boxxy's sign for Addi on her upper chest.
The initiative left some people bewildered. To them, it made no sense for people to go to such lengths to harass and destroy someone who had done no one any harm whatsoever and who had not been active in any of her accounts for nearly a year. They disliked this strange obsession, and, as one person stated, it was “proof that /b/ is full of thirteen-year-old boys”.
Boxxy's already-known Gaia Online and YouTube accounts were quickly inundated with Operation Valkyrie’s spam tag. With some quick detective work, two photographs were located and taken from her Gaia Online friends’ PhotoBucket accounts. That was all they had ever managed to find. Operation Valkyrie was a failure, like its real-life counterpart. Nothing had been found. No MySpace, no email, and no FaceBook, aside from several charlatans.
Her location was still quite obscure. Some guessed, correctly, somewhere in California, such as Palo Alto, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Sacramento. Another side said Florida, or even down under in Australia. Trying to decipher her accent was of no help either. However, the majority consensus seemed to be "anywhere down the West Coast," or in England, or in of the Eastern European states such as Poland and Bulgaria in particular. It was January 6th when a 4chan user purported to be Boxxy posted two seemingly new photos on /b/.
Debate as to whether or not this person was merely a look-alike troll ensued. Boxxy's YouTube channel disappeared, and her Gaia Online account was rendered inaccessible except to her friends later that same day. Did Boxxy step in, or had Operation Valkyrie secretly succeeded in hacking into her online accounts only to shut them down? No one knew. It should also be noted that an impersonation YouTube channel was created, BoxxyakaMoldyBread.
One of the pictures Boxxy herself had posted on /b/.
It was January 8th when the YouTube channel BoxxyBabee showed up. It featured the two original videos coupled with the message in the channel comments that read: “i'm awsum, new video tommorrow 01/09/09”. People weren’t sure what to make of this. Was this another troll account, or had the real Boxxy returned?
The very next day, Boxxy’s new and most controversial video, entitled “FOAR EVERYWUN FRUM BOXXY,” was uploaded onto the channel as promised. By now, Boxxy’s hair had grown noticeably longer by approximately four inches, and was parted on the right side of her head. Her complexion was now a creamy white, and her eyeliner’s style had changed slightly, now extending a bit further down in the corner, giving her a slightly cat-like appearance.
Boxxy responded to so-called recent events, i.e., the discussions appearing on /b/ and many blogs, by confirming that she was not on any kind of drugs, did not have ADD or Tourette’s Syndrome, and showed that it was truly her that posted the photos on /b/. She had been watching the entire thing the whole time, and clearly, at the time, enjoyed the attention.
On /b/, just about every thread was devoted solely to Boxxy and her new video. Over 70,000 views had accumulated within twelve hours, subsequently elevating it to the home page, along with others, as the most viewed video of the day on YouTube. The next day, the video had reached number one, with more than 300,000 views, coupled with hundreds of subscribers every single hour.
On the 12th, the YouTube celebrity Philip DeFranco included Boxxy in the intro for his new video and used her face as the thumbnail. Entirely ignorant of the back story, a wave of viewers sent from sxephil proclaimed, "Wow, sxephil made you popular. Thank him in a video!" They were all wrong, as he did nothing.
The vast majority of viewers were more or less clueless as to what Boxxy was talking about. However, a video explaining the subject matter was uploaded onto the channel SeanBoy80, and it is now mirrored on the channel TheBoxxyPhenom.
This was the spark that the oldfag community had been waiting for to wage war on the newfag community. All of the Boxxy threads were under a virtual blitzkrieg, reminiscent of when the Nazis had carpet-bombed the city of London during World War II. The spam tag "DIE IN A FIRE," repeated to the maximum limit and posted ten times in a row, had quickly become a fixture on the threads.
Many of /b/’s patrons simply gave up in frustration and announced that they were taking leave for a week, a month, a year, or even perpetually. War had also broken out at 7chan, with its /b/ board inundated with Boxxy. On January10th, with Boxxy’s videos and channel rapidly approaching 400,000 views and 10,000 subscribers, Boxxy haters now took a new approach which could be considered a form of Internet terrorism with the now infamous Operation Clampdown, a watershed in 4chan’s history.
Operation Clampdown.
Moot, 4chan’s owner, and the other administrators were warned that if they did not evict the users posting Boxxy threads on /b/, the site would be attacked and forcibly brought down courtesy of a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack, an effort to make a computer resource unavailable to its users.
Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of such an attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or people to prevent the targeted site or service from functioning efficiently, or at all. It may be either temporary or permanent.
4chan about to get nuked.
As the time of the strike neared, the instigators got ready by posting messages with several bad programs open as the clock ticked down. Soon after, the entirety of 4chan became slow with pages taking minutes to open, and then subsequently crashed, resulting in a blank white 404 page. It was like the internet version of a Japanese kamikaze mission, with the Boxxy haters deciding to annihilate everyone and everything. Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of 4chan.
Several hours later, 4chan returned, with Boxxy threads populating /b/ again as if nothing had happened. However, this wasn’t to last. Moot and the administrators had given into the attackers' demands by banning users for two days just for even mentioning the name Boxxy, or posting in a thread about her. This method seemed to have worked, even if Boxxy threads still appear on 4chan from time to time. Anonymous was not done with Boxxy or Cate herself yet. Looking back, one of the authors of this blog, bjnboy, believes that 4chan erred in judgment by giving into the attackers’ demand of getting rid of Boxxy and Boxxy lovers from /b/ after the Denial-of-Service attack.
4chan is Moot's site. He pays for it with his own time and money, and he holds the right to call the shots. However, it can be argued that he has set a bad precedent for other sites, as well as the freedom of speech and expression by appeasing the hostiles. Historically speaking, appeasement has never worked and has only resulted in the bullies becoming emboldened, allowing greater tragedies to occur.
The actions of Moot and the rest of the 4chan administrators inadvertently provided Anonymous with the means and motivations to attack other sites in a similar manner when their demands are not met. It is representative of why the United States of America does not negotiate with or give in to terrorists. Doing so would show weakness and a lack of resilience. In addition, it legitimizes harming people and places as a means for extremists to get what they want. Moot shouldn't have brought 4chan back to life in any hurry. Rather, he could have waited until the obsession with Boxxy had died down while the attackers would feel that their tactics were futile. Also, it would have been better if Moot had installed newer and stronger firewalls, or used the Cean-the-Pipes technique with Prolexic or Verisign software.
By Anonymous
Boxxy is a teenage girl whose YouTube videos caused an Internet sensation in early January 2009. This website chronicles her mysterious tale.
Chapter 3
Feeling the need to take matters into their own hands, a group of oldfag vigilantes decided to band together into a group and call themselves Operation Valkyrie. The name was a reference to the ill-fated attempt to oust Adolf Hitler from power in the Third Reich by members of their own inner circle.
Operation Valkyrie's now-infamous poster.
Their purpose was to locate, raid, and eliminate as much of Boxxy as possible via hacking her YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, and PhotoBucket accounts in order to find an identity and a specific picture Boxxy mentioned in “FOAR 4DD1 FRUM BOXXY” which showcased the moniker 4DD1 written on her upper chest.
Boxxy's sign for Addi on her upper chest.
The initiative left some people bewildered. To them, it made no sense for people to go to such lengths to harass and destroy someone who had done no one any harm whatsoever and who had not been active in any of her accounts for nearly a year. They disliked this strange obsession, and, as one person stated, it was “proof that /b/ is full of thirteen-year-old boys”.
Boxxy's already-known Gaia Online and YouTube accounts were quickly inundated with Operation Valkyrie’s spam tag. With some quick detective work, two photographs were located and taken from her Gaia Online friends’ PhotoBucket accounts. That was all they had ever managed to find. Operation Valkyrie was a failure, like its real-life counterpart. Nothing had been found. No MySpace, no email, and no FaceBook, aside from several charlatans.
Her location was still quite obscure. Some guessed, correctly, somewhere in California, such as Palo Alto, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Sacramento. Another side said Florida, or even down under in Australia. Trying to decipher her accent was of no help either. However, the majority consensus seemed to be "anywhere down the West Coast," or in England, or in of the Eastern European states such as Poland and Bulgaria in particular. It was January 6th when a 4chan user purported to be Boxxy posted two seemingly new photos on /b/.
Debate as to whether or not this person was merely a look-alike troll ensued. Boxxy's YouTube channel disappeared, and her Gaia Online account was rendered inaccessible except to her friends later that same day. Did Boxxy step in, or had Operation Valkyrie secretly succeeded in hacking into her online accounts only to shut them down? No one knew. It should also be noted that an impersonation YouTube channel was created, BoxxyakaMoldyBread.
One of the pictures Boxxy herself had posted on /b/.
It was January 8th when the YouTube channel BoxxyBabee showed up. It featured the two original videos coupled with the message in the channel comments that read: “i'm awsum, new video tommorrow 01/09/09”. People weren’t sure what to make of this. Was this another troll account, or had the real Boxxy returned?
The very next day, Boxxy’s new and most controversial video, entitled “FOAR EVERYWUN FRUM BOXXY,” was uploaded onto the channel as promised. By now, Boxxy’s hair had grown noticeably longer by approximately four inches, and was parted on the right side of her head. Her complexion was now a creamy white, and her eyeliner’s style had changed slightly, now extending a bit further down in the corner, giving her a slightly cat-like appearance.
Boxxy responded to so-called recent events, i.e., the discussions appearing on /b/ and many blogs, by confirming that she was not on any kind of drugs, did not have ADD or Tourette’s Syndrome, and showed that it was truly her that posted the photos on /b/. She had been watching the entire thing the whole time, and clearly, at the time, enjoyed the attention.
On /b/, just about every thread was devoted solely to Boxxy and her new video. Over 70,000 views had accumulated within twelve hours, subsequently elevating it to the home page, along with others, as the most viewed video of the day on YouTube. The next day, the video had reached number one, with more than 300,000 views, coupled with hundreds of subscribers every single hour.
On the 12th, the YouTube celebrity Philip DeFranco included Boxxy in the intro for his new video and used her face as the thumbnail. Entirely ignorant of the back story, a wave of viewers sent from sxephil proclaimed, "Wow, sxephil made you popular. Thank him in a video!" They were all wrong, as he did nothing.
The vast majority of viewers were more or less clueless as to what Boxxy was talking about. However, a video explaining the subject matter was uploaded onto the channel SeanBoy80, and it is now mirrored on the channel TheBoxxyPhenom.
This was the spark that the oldfag community had been waiting for to wage war on the newfag community. All of the Boxxy threads were under a virtual blitzkrieg, reminiscent of when the Nazis had carpet-bombed the city of London during World War II. The spam tag "DIE IN A FIRE," repeated to the maximum limit and posted ten times in a row, had quickly become a fixture on the threads.
Many of /b/’s patrons simply gave up in frustration and announced that they were taking leave for a week, a month, a year, or even perpetually. War had also broken out at 7chan, with its /b/ board inundated with Boxxy. On January10th, with Boxxy’s videos and channel rapidly approaching 400,000 views and 10,000 subscribers, Boxxy haters now took a new approach which could be considered a form of Internet terrorism with the now infamous Operation Clampdown, a watershed in 4chan’s history.
Operation Clampdown.
Moot, 4chan’s owner, and the other administrators were warned that if they did not evict the users posting Boxxy threads on /b/, the site would be attacked and forcibly brought down courtesy of a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack, an effort to make a computer resource unavailable to its users.
Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of such an attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or people to prevent the targeted site or service from functioning efficiently, or at all. It may be either temporary or permanent.
4chan about to get nuked.
As the time of the strike neared, the instigators got ready by posting messages with several bad programs open as the clock ticked down. Soon after, the entirety of 4chan became slow with pages taking minutes to open, and then subsequently crashed, resulting in a blank white 404 page. It was like the internet version of a Japanese kamikaze mission, with the Boxxy haters deciding to annihilate everyone and everything. Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of 4chan.
Several hours later, 4chan returned, with Boxxy threads populating /b/ again as if nothing had happened. However, this wasn’t to last. Moot and the administrators had given into the attackers' demands by banning users for two days just for even mentioning the name Boxxy, or posting in a thread about her. This method seemed to have worked, even if Boxxy threads still appear on 4chan from time to time. Anonymous was not done with Boxxy or Cate herself yet. Looking back, one of the authors of this blog, bjnboy, believes that 4chan erred in judgment by giving into the attackers’ demand of getting rid of Boxxy and Boxxy lovers from /b/ after the Denial-of-Service attack.
4chan is Moot's site. He pays for it with his own time and money, and he holds the right to call the shots. However, it can be argued that he has set a bad precedent for other sites, as well as the freedom of speech and expression by appeasing the hostiles. Historically speaking, appeasement has never worked and has only resulted in the bullies becoming emboldened, allowing greater tragedies to occur.
The actions of Moot and the rest of the 4chan administrators inadvertently provided Anonymous with the means and motivations to attack other sites in a similar manner when their demands are not met. It is representative of why the United States of America does not negotiate with or give in to terrorists. Doing so would show weakness and a lack of resilience. In addition, it legitimizes harming people and places as a means for extremists to get what they want. Moot shouldn't have brought 4chan back to life in any hurry. Rather, he could have waited until the obsession with Boxxy had died down while the attackers would feel that their tactics were futile. Also, it would have been better if Moot had installed newer and stronger firewalls, or used the Cean-the-Pipes technique with Prolexic or Verisign software.
By Anonymous
Boxxy is a teenage girl whose YouTube videos caused an Internet sensation in early January 2009. This website chronicles her mysterious tale.
Chapter 4
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Chapter 4
Between January 17th and January 18th, after the crashing of 4chan via a Denial-of-Service attack, a splinter group of approximately eleven people from /b/ had formed with the intention of halting the Boxxy craze sweeping the Internet. This group was called the Center for Boxxy Control and Restriction, or CBCR, and their mission was to finish what Operation Valkyrie had started.
CBCR: Center for Boxxy Control and Restriction
The founder of this group went by the user name Eyrev. His other aliases include Zarithas and The WoW Lawyer, while his real first name is Ian. He recruited members for the CBCR by advertising on the talk page of the entry on Boxxy on the Encyclopedia Dramatica.
Eyrev's avatar.
Eyrev's role in the recruitment of members for the CBCR on the Encyclopedia Dramatica is commonly misinterpreted. According to Eyrev himself, all he had really done was add in a block of text, with XenuAstley inserting the flashing banner. The green highlighted text was due to the text not being there prior to five or six revisions.
Eyrev advertises on the Encyclopedia Dramatica.
CBCR Members
* Eyrev: Founder
* Vodderz: The CBCR’s 2nd-in-command and Chief Investigator.
* Redcups: Investigator.
* Anon77: Investigator. This person was directly responsible for hacking Boxxy and stealing her MySpace, YouTube, and e-mail.
* y0uth: Investigator. Google cache/archive master.
* A20Address: Investigator.
* GastricPenguin: Mentioned by Boxxy for remixing her videos, friend of Zarithas, used for contacting Boxxy. He divulged several of her messages.
* WTSnacks: Technical expert who took on the name of a banned 4chan moderator.
* Mancini: Investigator, operative of Operation Hunter.
* BBC_Soundsystem: Logger; monitors the *chans for leaks and other things
* Jack: Systems Administrator, technical expert, FTP server admin.
* Candlejack: Leecher. This person was used as a scapegoat when Cate’s personal information was leaked.
Through much detective work, an old YouTube account named S4TISF4CTION was discovered featuring a girl calling herself Boxxy, who, although much younger, bore a striking resemblance to Boxxy, minus the eyeliner.
Boxxy: the confirmed match.
The channel contained two videos, one of which was dated from December 2006. The match was confirmed via facial comparison with "FOAR EVERYWUN" and a video posted on the channel S4TISF4CTION.
From the information on the YouTube channel, Boxxy’s MySpace account was discovered. As it is nowadays, the MySpace account is currently empty with the user name nothing more than gibberish. However, she was caught by the Google cache which stored the page as it appeared on November 1st of 2008, including the first page of photos. The said page contained art relating to Gaia Online along with the user name MoldyLunchBoxx, Boxxy’s Gaia Online account. It was also revealed that Boxxy was not above twenty as was speculated, but rather, only sixteen years old, and that she lives in California.
With the information at hand, the CBCR was able to crack her email password and subsequently hack into her YouTube account. From there, they changed the background to red, privatized her three videos, and replaced them with one threatening her to not make another video again, lest they release all of her dox, i.e., personal information. It should be noted at this point that the CBCR had not found Boxxy’s full name, phone number, and address. They were merely bluffing at the time.
It was a bit vague as to specifically which member of the CBCR leaked Boxxy’s personal information, but conversations with a former CBCR member have revealed it to be XenuAstley.
The testimony of a former CBCR member.
The motivation for this was more than likely the result of over zealousness mixed with plain malice that got carried away. Since Anon77 had already found her email, it would have been fairly easy for WTsnacks to find the rest by using it to find an IP address or possibly a phone number online.
The above testimony reveals that there was a schism within the CBCR as to what to do with Boxxy’s account, with each side having a differing view. Parts of the CBCR’s video were also edited out and left on the cutting room floor.
Hacked.
Whatever the result, this action promptly garnered 1,000 comments within the hour and was the hottest topic on YouTube for the day. The CBCR had succeeded and removed the “cancer.” They had expected to be named the heroes of the Internet. The backlash which followed thereafter sent members of the CBCR running like puppies with tails between their legs.
The comment section for their video became inundated with supposed IPs of CBCR members. For reasons currently unknown, the CBCR’s video was removed and Catherine’s videos were restored to public broadcast. Two days after on January 20th, Boxxy’s account was suspended. This is more than likely the result of her writing a request to the administrators of YouTube to do so to avoid more attacks and confusion. It is now in possession of Google. It's currently unknown whether Boxxy will ever be able to retrieve her former YouTube channel.
As a direct consequence of the enormous backlash against them, Eyrev caved in and delivered an apology to Boxxy and everyone else for everything which had happened. At the time, one could have inferred that Eyrev was being a hypocrite to the extreme in sending this apology. After all, he did instigate and create the online witch-hunt against Boxxy, which had the effect of scaring her off the Internet. At the time of this apology, he tried to defend the actions of himself and the CBCR, but only wound up contradicting himself and making a bigger mess of things.
Eyrev's apology.
Eyrev attempts to defend himself on The Byzantinist’s blog.
Shortly after the collapse of the CBCR, Eyrev created another group called the Organization for the Suppression of Boxxy-related Events, or OSBE. After the leaking of Boxxy’s dox, this group was formed as a sort of misinformation committee where red herrings in the form of fake last names and fake addresses were leaked in order to discredit Boxxy’s real info.
However, this group spent much of its time deleting all paste bins of Boxxy’s dox that were found and also getting them deleted from various forums and sites. However, the OSBE had absolutely nothing to do with the story of the suicide of Boxxy, whose surname was falsely given as Gomez, as the result of harassment from Anonymous members and stalkers.
In conclusion to this entry, it should be said that the Linda Tripp of the BoxxyGate affair, Eyrev, the one who had inadvertently caused her downfall, has genuinely turned over a new leaf and exceedingly regrets the tragic events that occurred and admits that the actions and results of the CBCR’s initiatives were atrocious at best.
Despite wanting Boxxy off the Internet, he and the majority of the group had never intended, much less wanted, to interfere with Boxxy or harm her in real life. Boxxy's dox being leaked represented both a lack of foresight and misplaced morals on the part of all of the members of the CBCR. Whatever the arguments or excuses, not one of them had any right to do what they did.
The choices they made deprived Boxxy of having a regular life, at least until the Boxxy obsession dies down completely. It also deprived the Internet as a whole of a major source of love and joy. Each choice we make brings a lesson following the consequences of that choice. The lesson Eyrev learned was a painful one, and it is one that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Perhaps this is all to be expected in the twisting and turning grassy knoll of Internet stardom. With great fame comes great enemies, no matter how innocent those enemies intend to be. The past is history, and it can never change, no matter how much one wants it to.
By Anonymous
Boxxy is a teenage girl whose YouTube videos caused an Internet sensation in early January 2009. This website chronicles her mysterious tale.
Chapter 4
Between January 17th and January 18th, after the crashing of 4chan via a Denial-of-Service attack, a splinter group of approximately eleven people from /b/ had formed with the intention of halting the Boxxy craze sweeping the Internet. This group was called the Center for Boxxy Control and Restriction, or CBCR, and their mission was to finish what Operation Valkyrie had started.
CBCR: Center for Boxxy Control and Restriction
The founder of this group went by the user name Eyrev. His other aliases include Zarithas and The WoW Lawyer, while his real first name is Ian. He recruited members for the CBCR by advertising on the talk page of the entry on Boxxy on the Encyclopedia Dramatica.
Eyrev's avatar.
Eyrev's role in the recruitment of members for the CBCR on the Encyclopedia Dramatica is commonly misinterpreted. According to Eyrev himself, all he had really done was add in a block of text, with XenuAstley inserting the flashing banner. The green highlighted text was due to the text not being there prior to five or six revisions.
Eyrev advertises on the Encyclopedia Dramatica.
CBCR Members
* Eyrev: Founder
* Vodderz: The CBCR’s 2nd-in-command and Chief Investigator.
* Redcups: Investigator.
* Anon77: Investigator. This person was directly responsible for hacking Boxxy and stealing her MySpace, YouTube, and e-mail.
* y0uth: Investigator. Google cache/archive master.
* A20Address: Investigator.
* GastricPenguin: Mentioned by Boxxy for remixing her videos, friend of Zarithas, used for contacting Boxxy. He divulged several of her messages.
* WTSnacks: Technical expert who took on the name of a banned 4chan moderator.
* Mancini: Investigator, operative of Operation Hunter.
* BBC_Soundsystem: Logger; monitors the *chans for leaks and other things
* Jack: Systems Administrator, technical expert, FTP server admin.
* Candlejack: Leecher. This person was used as a scapegoat when Cate’s personal information was leaked.
Through much detective work, an old YouTube account named S4TISF4CTION was discovered featuring a girl calling herself Boxxy, who, although much younger, bore a striking resemblance to Boxxy, minus the eyeliner.
Boxxy: the confirmed match.
The channel contained two videos, one of which was dated from December 2006. The match was confirmed via facial comparison with "FOAR EVERYWUN" and a video posted on the channel S4TISF4CTION.
From the information on the YouTube channel, Boxxy’s MySpace account was discovered. As it is nowadays, the MySpace account is currently empty with the user name nothing more than gibberish. However, she was caught by the Google cache which stored the page as it appeared on November 1st of 2008, including the first page of photos. The said page contained art relating to Gaia Online along with the user name MoldyLunchBoxx, Boxxy’s Gaia Online account. It was also revealed that Boxxy was not above twenty as was speculated, but rather, only sixteen years old, and that she lives in California.
With the information at hand, the CBCR was able to crack her email password and subsequently hack into her YouTube account. From there, they changed the background to red, privatized her three videos, and replaced them with one threatening her to not make another video again, lest they release all of her dox, i.e., personal information. It should be noted at this point that the CBCR had not found Boxxy’s full name, phone number, and address. They were merely bluffing at the time.
It was a bit vague as to specifically which member of the CBCR leaked Boxxy’s personal information, but conversations with a former CBCR member have revealed it to be XenuAstley.
The testimony of a former CBCR member.
The motivation for this was more than likely the result of over zealousness mixed with plain malice that got carried away. Since Anon77 had already found her email, it would have been fairly easy for WTsnacks to find the rest by using it to find an IP address or possibly a phone number online.
The above testimony reveals that there was a schism within the CBCR as to what to do with Boxxy’s account, with each side having a differing view. Parts of the CBCR’s video were also edited out and left on the cutting room floor.
Hacked.
Whatever the result, this action promptly garnered 1,000 comments within the hour and was the hottest topic on YouTube for the day. The CBCR had succeeded and removed the “cancer.” They had expected to be named the heroes of the Internet. The backlash which followed thereafter sent members of the CBCR running like puppies with tails between their legs.
The comment section for their video became inundated with supposed IPs of CBCR members. For reasons currently unknown, the CBCR’s video was removed and Catherine’s videos were restored to public broadcast. Two days after on January 20th, Boxxy’s account was suspended. This is more than likely the result of her writing a request to the administrators of YouTube to do so to avoid more attacks and confusion. It is now in possession of Google. It's currently unknown whether Boxxy will ever be able to retrieve her former YouTube channel.
As a direct consequence of the enormous backlash against them, Eyrev caved in and delivered an apology to Boxxy and everyone else for everything which had happened. At the time, one could have inferred that Eyrev was being a hypocrite to the extreme in sending this apology. After all, he did instigate and create the online witch-hunt against Boxxy, which had the effect of scaring her off the Internet. At the time of this apology, he tried to defend the actions of himself and the CBCR, but only wound up contradicting himself and making a bigger mess of things.
Eyrev's apology.
Eyrev attempts to defend himself on The Byzantinist’s blog.
Shortly after the collapse of the CBCR, Eyrev created another group called the Organization for the Suppression of Boxxy-related Events, or OSBE. After the leaking of Boxxy’s dox, this group was formed as a sort of misinformation committee where red herrings in the form of fake last names and fake addresses were leaked in order to discredit Boxxy’s real info.
However, this group spent much of its time deleting all paste bins of Boxxy’s dox that were found and also getting them deleted from various forums and sites. However, the OSBE had absolutely nothing to do with the story of the suicide of Boxxy, whose surname was falsely given as Gomez, as the result of harassment from Anonymous members and stalkers.
In conclusion to this entry, it should be said that the Linda Tripp of the BoxxyGate affair, Eyrev, the one who had inadvertently caused her downfall, has genuinely turned over a new leaf and exceedingly regrets the tragic events that occurred and admits that the actions and results of the CBCR’s initiatives were atrocious at best.
Despite wanting Boxxy off the Internet, he and the majority of the group had never intended, much less wanted, to interfere with Boxxy or harm her in real life. Boxxy's dox being leaked represented both a lack of foresight and misplaced morals on the part of all of the members of the CBCR. Whatever the arguments or excuses, not one of them had any right to do what they did.
The choices they made deprived Boxxy of having a regular life, at least until the Boxxy obsession dies down completely. It also deprived the Internet as a whole of a major source of love and joy. Each choice we make brings a lesson following the consequences of that choice. The lesson Eyrev learned was a painful one, and it is one that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Perhaps this is all to be expected in the twisting and turning grassy knoll of Internet stardom. With great fame comes great enemies, no matter how innocent those enemies intend to be. The past is history, and it can never change, no matter how much one wants it to.
By Anonymous
Boxxy is a teenage girl whose YouTube videos caused an Internet sensation in early January 2009. This website chronicles her mysterious tale.
Chapter 5
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Chapter 5
In April 2009, after Boxxy's personal information was leaked online, BoxxyChan.tk was founded. It was one of the first websites entirely devoted to Boxxy, and all images on the site were supplemented by thumbnail pictures of Boxxy which accompanied each post. The site eventually became deserted due to inactivity. After the rival fan site IHeartBoxxy was founded, Unichan was discovered. After BoxxyChan lost its domain name due to inactivity, the site was spammed with advertisements, rendering the site completely unusable.
Founded in late May 2009 by two avid Boxxy fans with the aliases Overbeing and Athynkronos, IHeartBoxxy was the replacement of BoxxyChan. In early June 2009, a new secret forum was created and named The Council Chamber. The idea was that it would be a site where the most trusted members of IHeartBoxxy could discuss certain things that should never be made public to the average visitor. At first, the initiative seemed like a good idea in that any information or pictures found would only be shared with the people deemed to have enough integrity to refrain from bragging about the new material, and therefore anything they did would not affect Boxxy in real life.
The situation started to go downhill once several of the councilors began to brag about the secret pictures and information that they had gathered in the public IHeartBoxxy chat room. The thread which led to its creation was kept public, and the forum group councilor was also viewable by the normal users, so even though the council chamber itself was inaccessible, everyone knew who they were and that they had something that they weren't sharing. Eventually, the council's reckless bragging would lead to the event known as the July 12th.
The site was ridiculed for being too strict in policy after the now repentant Eyrev took over as a moderator. Much of this wasn't because the policies were really strict but simply because they were made by Eyrev himself. The site was also criticized by anonymous users at the other rival site Unichan for their hoarding of information and pictures and for their rules and policies, which were deemed Nazi-like by many.
Unichan was created by a person with the aliases Chaz and chuckstudios. Originally founded as a school project with which his friends could utilize, there wasn't much activity on Unichan. Eventually, it was deserted after there were no new posts in over a month.
Around late June, a link to Unichan was posted on BoxxyChan's board with the message "Spam this board with Boxxy." Many users posted a couple of Boxxy threads and then promptly departed. A user posted a link on BoxxyChan and asked, "Why don't we move in here?"
The idea caught on like wildfire, and users quickly made Unichan their new haven. Links to the site were posted on /b/ by the new Unichan users. It wasn't long before Unichan was flooded with Boxxy fandom and became one of the biggest and most important Boxxy fan sites.
Later, the site Killwebs tried to take down Boxxy websites in what was dubbed Operation Counter-Strike, echoing Anonymous' successful attempt at taking down 4chan. Unichan became the first target. Killwebs took down Unichan for a few hours late in the night with a Denial-of-Service attack. Chaz later upgraded the server and reloaded the site. Killwebs had never tried to attack it again.
Unichan stayed online until sometime in November, when Chaz lost the server. After a few months without Unichan, links to a new Unichan were posted on /b/ and other sites. It is currently unknown who the owner of the new Unichan really is. Today, Unichan is more active than ever. With little to no place else to go, many Boxxy fans manifest there.
The event known as the July 12th was a watershed in the BoxxyGate affair. Two short videos containing footage of Boxxy were released. She was virtually unrecognizable, and the perceived weight gain would later be determined to be the result of water retention.
The videos were obtained by an IHeartBoxxy user, Shamage. On a social networking site, he sent friend requests to people he suspected knew Boxxy in real life. Then, he perused their pictures and videos for any images that he could find of her. He didn't leak the said videos. Rather, he sent them to several people on the IHeartBoxxy council, several of whom started boasting about it on /b/.
On July 12th, after a few weeks of tension and rumors of new Boxxy videos, a link to IHeartBoxxy was posted in a thread on 4chan during another heated discussion about the new videos. Angry posters then inundated IHeartBoxxy and attempted to find Shamage's personal information and threaten all of the IHeartBoxxy users, many of whom had no knowledge of the videos prior to July 12th. As the threats became more serious, an admin at IHeartBoxxy uploaded the two videos onto YouTube. Boxxy herself appears only briefly in either video. Nevertheless, they caused a storm of intrigue.
During the same day that the July 12th videos were leaked, The Boxxy Forums were created as a direct response in conjunction with the YouTube channel BoxxyReturns. These forums were used as a means of retreating when IHeartBoxxy's policy became too annoying and restrictive. It was also after Eyrev began to use his moderator status to compile personal information on users that he suspected of stalking. Another difference between the two was that The Boxxy Forums were more public and accessible for a time by anyone who signed up.
The new videos of Boxxy had sparked enough attention to lead to another watershed. The event was known as BoxxPeace. This was expected to be a complete disaster like its predecessor BoxxMeet. A group of fourteen people met at a park in Boxxy's town, and they headed off to investigate one of the addresses that Boxxy was believed to be residing at. The known attenders had the aliases Big Red, NinjaTheory, Russian Girl, Derek, Flowerfag, and there were several others.
When they arrived, they were stopped by a chair barricade. Big Red pushed the chair aside and rang the bell. While waiting, he caught a glimpse of someone with dark hair running past a window. A blond woman answered the door, and Big Red asked for Boxxy. The woman told him that she lived alone and that he had to leave. Before Big Red and the group left, they placed a set of flower pedals spelling out the alias Anon.
Dan
Later, they met Boxxy's ex-boyfriend Dan, and they proceeded to ask him about accusations of him deflowering her, but he was unwilling to answer the questions on-camera.
Niki was the first person who knew Boxxy personally to come to the community as a whole. She knew about Boxxy, as well as what Boxxy had been through, but she joined anyway. Niki's involvement began when she uploaded a video of Boxxy and her peers dancing to Thriller for their school performance, The Princess and the Porcupine. At this point, she discovered the video had been mirrored by BoxxyReturns. The new title suggested that everyone save for Boxxy were faggots, and Niki commented saying otherwise.
Niki
The owner of BoxxyReturns came to be known as Addmin on a message board that Niki eventually agreed to join. Many fans then bombarded Niki with questions via private messages. Niki told many stories about Boxxy, defending her against hateful and defamatory comments. She posted regularly and made full use of the chat room, often going on web cam while talking freely to those who were available. Several people gained her trust, one of which was Cali4nia, the leader of Killwebs. Niki would also become close with Eyrev and his group, until she found out about his involvement with the CBCR.
On October 1, Niki allegedly contacted Boxxy to explain what had been going on and then asked whether there was anything that she could do to help her, now that Niki was a part of the community and held leverage over it. Boxxy appeared to say that if Niki could close down the forums, as well as Unichan, it would help her immensely.
The next day, a meeting was held on Skype with all of the administrators of the forums and image boards related to Boxxy. The concensus of this meeting was that all of the forums and Unichan should be closed to help Boxxy. Many administrators were uncertain about whether this was true, although the forums were shut down. However, Unichan came back up a couple of days after the forums went down.
Niki and Killwebs had become close when she began to spend more time in the Killwebs chat room than the one of The Boxxy Forums. Killwebs had been looking up Niki's information and eventually initiated private calls between each other. Niki discussed Boxxy with him and eventually granted him access to pictures of Boxxy working on school plays, which have since been leaked. After Killwebs had collected enough information and recordings to be able to harm Niki, he made a video consisting of all this information. Niki has not been heard from since.
In early August 2009, a user with the unpronounceable alias asdfghjkl; made a thread claiming to be a friend of Boxxy. Some users asked her many questions, and many others called her a troll. She asked, "What do you want from Boxxy?" From the overwhelming response, it was clear that everyone wanted something from her.
Later, the initiative for a Valentine's Day video came about by a large post on Unichan with the basic idea of Boxxy fans recording footage of themselves praising Boxxy and then apologizing to Boxxy. It is currently unknown whether Boxxy has seen this video.
On March 11th 2010, the videos from the channel BoxxyBabee vanished. Upon clicking on any embed of any of the three videos, a message would appear: "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation." Mirrors of the three videos remain untouched.
The videos have disappeared.
On Unichan, the alleged Anon77 claimed to have fooled YouTube staff into believing that he was Boxxy returning to state that the channel was hacked and asked for the videos to be removed. He even went as far as to make a video with an edited picture of Boxxy with a note asking for the channel back.
A YouTube user with the alias Boxxology had personally lobbied to get the videos taken down. He believed that many of the comments on the videos were repulsive and misogynistic. The true reason for the removal of the videos is currently unknown.
Chapter 5
In April 2009, after Boxxy's personal information was leaked online, BoxxyChan.tk was founded. It was one of the first websites entirely devoted to Boxxy, and all images on the site were supplemented by thumbnail pictures of Boxxy which accompanied each post. The site eventually became deserted due to inactivity. After the rival fan site IHeartBoxxy was founded, Unichan was discovered. After BoxxyChan lost its domain name due to inactivity, the site was spammed with advertisements, rendering the site completely unusable.
Founded in late May 2009 by two avid Boxxy fans with the aliases Overbeing and Athynkronos, IHeartBoxxy was the replacement of BoxxyChan. In early June 2009, a new secret forum was created and named The Council Chamber. The idea was that it would be a site where the most trusted members of IHeartBoxxy could discuss certain things that should never be made public to the average visitor. At first, the initiative seemed like a good idea in that any information or pictures found would only be shared with the people deemed to have enough integrity to refrain from bragging about the new material, and therefore anything they did would not affect Boxxy in real life.
The situation started to go downhill once several of the councilors began to brag about the secret pictures and information that they had gathered in the public IHeartBoxxy chat room. The thread which led to its creation was kept public, and the forum group councilor was also viewable by the normal users, so even though the council chamber itself was inaccessible, everyone knew who they were and that they had something that they weren't sharing. Eventually, the council's reckless bragging would lead to the event known as the July 12th.
The site was ridiculed for being too strict in policy after the now repentant Eyrev took over as a moderator. Much of this wasn't because the policies were really strict but simply because they were made by Eyrev himself. The site was also criticized by anonymous users at the other rival site Unichan for their hoarding of information and pictures and for their rules and policies, which were deemed Nazi-like by many.
Unichan was created by a person with the aliases Chaz and chuckstudios. Originally founded as a school project with which his friends could utilize, there wasn't much activity on Unichan. Eventually, it was deserted after there were no new posts in over a month.
Around late June, a link to Unichan was posted on BoxxyChan's board with the message "Spam this board with Boxxy." Many users posted a couple of Boxxy threads and then promptly departed. A user posted a link on BoxxyChan and asked, "Why don't we move in here?"
The idea caught on like wildfire, and users quickly made Unichan their new haven. Links to the site were posted on /b/ by the new Unichan users. It wasn't long before Unichan was flooded with Boxxy fandom and became one of the biggest and most important Boxxy fan sites.
Later, the site Killwebs tried to take down Boxxy websites in what was dubbed Operation Counter-Strike, echoing Anonymous' successful attempt at taking down 4chan. Unichan became the first target. Killwebs took down Unichan for a few hours late in the night with a Denial-of-Service attack. Chaz later upgraded the server and reloaded the site. Killwebs had never tried to attack it again.
Unichan stayed online until sometime in November, when Chaz lost the server. After a few months without Unichan, links to a new Unichan were posted on /b/ and other sites. It is currently unknown who the owner of the new Unichan really is. Today, Unichan is more active than ever. With little to no place else to go, many Boxxy fans manifest there.
The event known as the July 12th was a watershed in the BoxxyGate affair. Two short videos containing footage of Boxxy were released. She was virtually unrecognizable, and the perceived weight gain would later be determined to be the result of water retention.
The videos were obtained by an IHeartBoxxy user, Shamage. On a social networking site, he sent friend requests to people he suspected knew Boxxy in real life. Then, he perused their pictures and videos for any images that he could find of her. He didn't leak the said videos. Rather, he sent them to several people on the IHeartBoxxy council, several of whom started boasting about it on /b/.
On July 12th, after a few weeks of tension and rumors of new Boxxy videos, a link to IHeartBoxxy was posted in a thread on 4chan during another heated discussion about the new videos. Angry posters then inundated IHeartBoxxy and attempted to find Shamage's personal information and threaten all of the IHeartBoxxy users, many of whom had no knowledge of the videos prior to July 12th. As the threats became more serious, an admin at IHeartBoxxy uploaded the two videos onto YouTube. Boxxy herself appears only briefly in either video. Nevertheless, they caused a storm of intrigue.
During the same day that the July 12th videos were leaked, The Boxxy Forums were created as a direct response in conjunction with the YouTube channel BoxxyReturns. These forums were used as a means of retreating when IHeartBoxxy's policy became too annoying and restrictive. It was also after Eyrev began to use his moderator status to compile personal information on users that he suspected of stalking. Another difference between the two was that The Boxxy Forums were more public and accessible for a time by anyone who signed up.
The new videos of Boxxy had sparked enough attention to lead to another watershed. The event was known as BoxxPeace. This was expected to be a complete disaster like its predecessor BoxxMeet. A group of fourteen people met at a park in Boxxy's town, and they headed off to investigate one of the addresses that Boxxy was believed to be residing at. The known attenders had the aliases Big Red, NinjaTheory, Russian Girl, Derek, Flowerfag, and there were several others.
When they arrived, they were stopped by a chair barricade. Big Red pushed the chair aside and rang the bell. While waiting, he caught a glimpse of someone with dark hair running past a window. A blond woman answered the door, and Big Red asked for Boxxy. The woman told him that she lived alone and that he had to leave. Before Big Red and the group left, they placed a set of flower pedals spelling out the alias Anon.
Dan
Later, they met Boxxy's ex-boyfriend Dan, and they proceeded to ask him about accusations of him deflowering her, but he was unwilling to answer the questions on-camera.
Niki was the first person who knew Boxxy personally to come to the community as a whole. She knew about Boxxy, as well as what Boxxy had been through, but she joined anyway. Niki's involvement began when she uploaded a video of Boxxy and her peers dancing to Thriller for their school performance, The Princess and the Porcupine. At this point, she discovered the video had been mirrored by BoxxyReturns. The new title suggested that everyone save for Boxxy were faggots, and Niki commented saying otherwise.
Niki
The owner of BoxxyReturns came to be known as Addmin on a message board that Niki eventually agreed to join. Many fans then bombarded Niki with questions via private messages. Niki told many stories about Boxxy, defending her against hateful and defamatory comments. She posted regularly and made full use of the chat room, often going on web cam while talking freely to those who were available. Several people gained her trust, one of which was Cali4nia, the leader of Killwebs. Niki would also become close with Eyrev and his group, until she found out about his involvement with the CBCR.
On October 1, Niki allegedly contacted Boxxy to explain what had been going on and then asked whether there was anything that she could do to help her, now that Niki was a part of the community and held leverage over it. Boxxy appeared to say that if Niki could close down the forums, as well as Unichan, it would help her immensely.
The next day, a meeting was held on Skype with all of the administrators of the forums and image boards related to Boxxy. The concensus of this meeting was that all of the forums and Unichan should be closed to help Boxxy. Many administrators were uncertain about whether this was true, although the forums were shut down. However, Unichan came back up a couple of days after the forums went down.
Niki and Killwebs had become close when she began to spend more time in the Killwebs chat room than the one of The Boxxy Forums. Killwebs had been looking up Niki's information and eventually initiated private calls between each other. Niki discussed Boxxy with him and eventually granted him access to pictures of Boxxy working on school plays, which have since been leaked. After Killwebs had collected enough information and recordings to be able to harm Niki, he made a video consisting of all this information. Niki has not been heard from since.
In early August 2009, a user with the unpronounceable alias asdfghjkl; made a thread claiming to be a friend of Boxxy. Some users asked her many questions, and many others called her a troll. She asked, "What do you want from Boxxy?" From the overwhelming response, it was clear that everyone wanted something from her.
Later, the initiative for a Valentine's Day video came about by a large post on Unichan with the basic idea of Boxxy fans recording footage of themselves praising Boxxy and then apologizing to Boxxy. It is currently unknown whether Boxxy has seen this video.
On March 11th 2010, the videos from the channel BoxxyBabee vanished. Upon clicking on any embed of any of the three videos, a message would appear: "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation." Mirrors of the three videos remain untouched.
The videos have disappeared.
On Unichan, the alleged Anon77 claimed to have fooled YouTube staff into believing that he was Boxxy returning to state that the channel was hacked and asked for the videos to be removed. He even went as far as to make a video with an edited picture of Boxxy with a note asking for the channel back.
A YouTube user with the alias Boxxology had personally lobbied to get the videos taken down. He believed that many of the comments on the videos were repulsive and misogynistic. The true reason for the removal of the videos is currently unknown.
2.02.2011
Epilogue
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Epilogue
Looking back on what made the BoxxyGate affair as big as it was, one can see an emerging pattern in Internet phenomena. Boxxy was by no means the first or last of her kind, as young girls in the past have become the target of Anonymous' intense obsession. Such fascination would often lead to disturbing consequences for many of the girls involved.
There are six cases in point to illustrate such a pattern of Anonymous' fixations: Cracky-Chan, Magibon, former MySpace model Zoe Kimball, Boxxy, Amber Lamps, and the most recent contender for the throne of /b/, Tabby. The question which must be asked is why and how do these girls shoot to such prominence on the Internet, often to the point that their personal lives are invaded? The common denominators must be observed carefully.
All of the aforementioned subjects are very attractive, if not beautiful, young women. Since time immemorial, beauty has been a much sought after commodity by people all over the world. While it is often said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, most people would agree that all six subjects are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. For instance, researchers have found that good-looking students get higher grades from their teachers than students with a more ordinary appearance.
How much money a person earns may also be influenced by physical beauty. One study found that people low in physical attractiveness earns five to ten percent less than more ordinary-looking people, who in turn earn three to eight percent less than those who are considered good-looking.
If we take these statistics into consideration, it can be said that the physical attractiveness of the six subjects played a sizable role in capturing the attention of Internet users around the globe. People naturally respond better to those who are beautiful, so when images of Cracky-Chan, Magibon, Zoe, Amber, Boxxy, and Tabby ended up on sites with user-generated content like 4chan and YouTube, the occupants of those sites naturally became interested in who those characters were.
A mixture of randomness coupled with unique artistic expression made all of the said subjects stand out from everyone else. Internet 2.0 websites are known for being bottomless wells for creating some of the most enduring, endearing memes and personalities on the Internet. A seemingly perpetual cycle has been observed in the functioning of these sites where they would start off with something new, creative, and random. This new idea then becomes popular, but then it winds down to becoming repetitive and bland, with many feeling a sense of being stifled. Then, something new, original, and with a level of randomness goes completely against the grain of the previous flow. Once the novel entity emerges, it totally offsets the current, creating a new one, only to repeat the same process again.
When each of the six subjects emerged onto the Internet, it was during that stage of the cycle wherein previous phenomena had started to become bland and uninspiring. Out of this virtual tide, these girls made unexpected appearances. What they did or didn't do established new channels of thought and perspective.
Cracky-Chan
Cracky-Chan posted on /b/ at a time before cam-whoring properly took off. As a result, many became obsessed with her. Part of the reason for the longevity and popularity of Cracky-Chan is that she took many well-composed artistic photos, often self-portraits, then uploaded them onto various online communities, such as LiveJournal. These photos were inevitably found and shared by her fans, allegedly through dubious means, such as password hacking, leading to a steady drip of content. She, like Boxxy, was also a sort of taboo, with the moderation crackdown. She was forbidden, and this only made people more interested. This was before anyone really knew what /b/ was capable of, as well as its true nature.
Magibon
Magibon posted her material on YouTube when the site was still relatively new, in July 2006. Unlike the usual expectation on YouTube that posters should actually do something in their videos, Magibon did absolutely nothing but stare silently into the camera. Magibon personified the silent but beautiful stranger archetype. Further stoking the intrigue were her large eyes that seemed to touch one's consciousness, as well as providing a glimpse into her own, which revealed a sense of innocence.
Zoe Kimball
Zoe Kimball uploaded many videos of herself wearing chav clothing and flashing gangster signs while her friends shouted, "What up, nigga?" This random act of potential racial insensitivity was forgiven by /b/ because of her perceived overwhelming cuteness.
Amber Lamps
Amber Lamps, like Magibon, personifies the silent but beautiful archetype. What gained her the attention of the Internet at large was the fact that while the infamous AC transit bus fight was going on and everyone was in a frenzy, she sat there completely unfazed and seemingly oblivious to the events occurring in front of her. Also drawing attention was her unusual hipster clothing consisting of an aquamarine tunic top, vivid purple leggings, unassuming shoulder bag, and enormous silver headphones.
Boxxy
Boxxy, as discussed in previous entries, made all of her videos in the dark, which had the effect of keeping focus only on her face and eyes in particular. Her three videos don't tell any real story. They were also not intended for such a wide audience. The two original videos that propelled her to Internet stardom were addressed to a few specific people. Considering the intentionally confusing way that Boxxy babbles, we may then finally reach the very obvious conclusion that her success is related to her machine gun of expressions, in constant and very quick succession.
Tabby
Tabby's success and popularity could be owed primarily to the fact that many saw her as a replacement for Boxxy, after the latter vanished from the Internet. She was in the right place at the right time in that after she posted her first video, it came to the attention of /b/ on September 24th 2009 after new Boxxy material had ceased. Tabby was quickly named the new queen of /b/, while Boxxy fan boys were upset by the new declaration. Another online civil war threatened to occur.
Interest in the said subjects skyrocketed because of the lack of new material or no response to the fans. It requires a basic understanding of the economic model of supply and demand to see why interest continues to persist in these six girls.
Demand refers to how much of a product or service is desired by consumers. The quantity of demand is the amount of product that people are willing to purchase at a certain price. Supply represents how much the market can offer. The quantity supplied refers to the amount of a certain good that producers are willing to supply when receiving a certain price.
There was a high demand for more material of these girls, but the supply is often low, leading to increased fascination. This is often the result of the girls being scared off the Internet and into hiding from stalkers, threats, or because they simply do not wish to embrace any stardom on the Internet. Magibon is a notable exception out of the six. She quickly embraced her popularity and fandom. She continues to regularly upload new videos.
When Tabby disappeared for several months at the behest of her mother and the police after receiving threats of rape and death, obsession grew to higher levels. Once she returned with MySpace and Twitter accounts, as well as more videos, interest seemed to decrease. Her Internet sensation is now at a point that allows her to manage her online affairs.
Once the personal information of Cracky-Chan, Zoe, and Boxxy was discovered, all three had fled from the Internet. They ceased to release anymore photos or videos of themselves. Their respective phenomena only grew, leading to further interest and curiosity.
This type of episode has been likened by some to be identical to that of the Garbo Effect, which refers to the event of curiosity brewing once a famous person wants to keep his or her life private. Greta Garbo was mistakenly quoted as having said, "I want to be alone." Later, she clarified that what she had actually said was, "I want to be left alone." Clearly, the second quote means that she wanted to be left alone to enjoy her private life, not that she didn't want anyone around herself.
Greta was thought to be a very mysterious person. She didn't give any interviews, she didn't go out to the red carpet premiers of any of her films, and she wasn't seen in public very often. Back then, studios encouraged their stars being seen and photographed in public as often as possible, since famous actors and actresses made for big money at the box office.
Greta refused to participate in such behavior, preferring to keep her private life to herself. Because of that, people had an even greater desire to know what she did behind closed doors. There was much speculation about her, none of which could be confirmed or denied, since she never spoke about it. Long before the days of insane paparazzi, she was stalked by people with cameras. A similar phenomenon was observed in the tragic case of Diana, princess of Wales. The more that Diana ran and hid, the more the paparazzi wanted more pictures and stories of her.
In life, there will always be people who either like or hate you. On the Internet, nothing is sacred. Sometimes, both sides could wind up destroying you. Anonymous showed the true extent of their power and capabilities in hacking and spreading Boxxy's personal information, as they did with the other girls before and after her, save for Amber Lamps.
Thus, it is vital that you be careful with what you post on the websites of Internet 2.0. Think twice about who you add or accept on FaceBook or MySpace, especially if you barely know someone. Make sure that absolutely nobody could ever possibly guess your passwords, save for yourself. Think before sharing any personal information with people on chat rooms, or even putting up seemingly harmless bits of information on any online profiles of yours.
Every single thing that you post leaves a trail of data. Eventually, a profile of yourself can be built up for the wrong hands to utilize. The BoxxyGate chapters make one truly wonder about what freedom really exists for people on the Internet. Anything that you do can be replicated, altered, and propagated infinitely, such that you can rapidly lose any semblance of further control over your online affairs.
By Anonymous
Boxxy is a teenage girl whose YouTube videos caused an Internet sensation in early January 2009. This website chronicles her mysterious tale.
Epilogue
Looking back on what made the BoxxyGate affair as big as it was, one can see an emerging pattern in Internet phenomena. Boxxy was by no means the first or last of her kind, as young girls in the past have become the target of Anonymous' intense obsession. Such fascination would often lead to disturbing consequences for many of the girls involved.
There are six cases in point to illustrate such a pattern of Anonymous' fixations: Cracky-Chan, Magibon, former MySpace model Zoe Kimball, Boxxy, Amber Lamps, and the most recent contender for the throne of /b/, Tabby. The question which must be asked is why and how do these girls shoot to such prominence on the Internet, often to the point that their personal lives are invaded? The common denominators must be observed carefully.
All of the aforementioned subjects are very attractive, if not beautiful, young women. Since time immemorial, beauty has been a much sought after commodity by people all over the world. While it is often said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, most people would agree that all six subjects are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. For instance, researchers have found that good-looking students get higher grades from their teachers than students with a more ordinary appearance.
How much money a person earns may also be influenced by physical beauty. One study found that people low in physical attractiveness earns five to ten percent less than more ordinary-looking people, who in turn earn three to eight percent less than those who are considered good-looking.
If we take these statistics into consideration, it can be said that the physical attractiveness of the six subjects played a sizable role in capturing the attention of Internet users around the globe. People naturally respond better to those who are beautiful, so when images of Cracky-Chan, Magibon, Zoe, Amber, Boxxy, and Tabby ended up on sites with user-generated content like 4chan and YouTube, the occupants of those sites naturally became interested in who those characters were.
A mixture of randomness coupled with unique artistic expression made all of the said subjects stand out from everyone else. Internet 2.0 websites are known for being bottomless wells for creating some of the most enduring, endearing memes and personalities on the Internet. A seemingly perpetual cycle has been observed in the functioning of these sites where they would start off with something new, creative, and random. This new idea then becomes popular, but then it winds down to becoming repetitive and bland, with many feeling a sense of being stifled. Then, something new, original, and with a level of randomness goes completely against the grain of the previous flow. Once the novel entity emerges, it totally offsets the current, creating a new one, only to repeat the same process again.
When each of the six subjects emerged onto the Internet, it was during that stage of the cycle wherein previous phenomena had started to become bland and uninspiring. Out of this virtual tide, these girls made unexpected appearances. What they did or didn't do established new channels of thought and perspective.
Cracky-Chan
Cracky-Chan posted on /b/ at a time before cam-whoring properly took off. As a result, many became obsessed with her. Part of the reason for the longevity and popularity of Cracky-Chan is that she took many well-composed artistic photos, often self-portraits, then uploaded them onto various online communities, such as LiveJournal. These photos were inevitably found and shared by her fans, allegedly through dubious means, such as password hacking, leading to a steady drip of content. She, like Boxxy, was also a sort of taboo, with the moderation crackdown. She was forbidden, and this only made people more interested. This was before anyone really knew what /b/ was capable of, as well as its true nature.
Magibon
Magibon posted her material on YouTube when the site was still relatively new, in July 2006. Unlike the usual expectation on YouTube that posters should actually do something in their videos, Magibon did absolutely nothing but stare silently into the camera. Magibon personified the silent but beautiful stranger archetype. Further stoking the intrigue were her large eyes that seemed to touch one's consciousness, as well as providing a glimpse into her own, which revealed a sense of innocence.
Zoe Kimball
Zoe Kimball uploaded many videos of herself wearing chav clothing and flashing gangster signs while her friends shouted, "What up, nigga?" This random act of potential racial insensitivity was forgiven by /b/ because of her perceived overwhelming cuteness.
Amber Lamps
Amber Lamps, like Magibon, personifies the silent but beautiful archetype. What gained her the attention of the Internet at large was the fact that while the infamous AC transit bus fight was going on and everyone was in a frenzy, she sat there completely unfazed and seemingly oblivious to the events occurring in front of her. Also drawing attention was her unusual hipster clothing consisting of an aquamarine tunic top, vivid purple leggings, unassuming shoulder bag, and enormous silver headphones.
Boxxy
Boxxy, as discussed in previous entries, made all of her videos in the dark, which had the effect of keeping focus only on her face and eyes in particular. Her three videos don't tell any real story. They were also not intended for such a wide audience. The two original videos that propelled her to Internet stardom were addressed to a few specific people. Considering the intentionally confusing way that Boxxy babbles, we may then finally reach the very obvious conclusion that her success is related to her machine gun of expressions, in constant and very quick succession.
Tabby
Tabby's success and popularity could be owed primarily to the fact that many saw her as a replacement for Boxxy, after the latter vanished from the Internet. She was in the right place at the right time in that after she posted her first video, it came to the attention of /b/ on September 24th 2009 after new Boxxy material had ceased. Tabby was quickly named the new queen of /b/, while Boxxy fan boys were upset by the new declaration. Another online civil war threatened to occur.
Interest in the said subjects skyrocketed because of the lack of new material or no response to the fans. It requires a basic understanding of the economic model of supply and demand to see why interest continues to persist in these six girls.
Demand refers to how much of a product or service is desired by consumers. The quantity of demand is the amount of product that people are willing to purchase at a certain price. Supply represents how much the market can offer. The quantity supplied refers to the amount of a certain good that producers are willing to supply when receiving a certain price.
There was a high demand for more material of these girls, but the supply is often low, leading to increased fascination. This is often the result of the girls being scared off the Internet and into hiding from stalkers, threats, or because they simply do not wish to embrace any stardom on the Internet. Magibon is a notable exception out of the six. She quickly embraced her popularity and fandom. She continues to regularly upload new videos.
When Tabby disappeared for several months at the behest of her mother and the police after receiving threats of rape and death, obsession grew to higher levels. Once she returned with MySpace and Twitter accounts, as well as more videos, interest seemed to decrease. Her Internet sensation is now at a point that allows her to manage her online affairs.
Once the personal information of Cracky-Chan, Zoe, and Boxxy was discovered, all three had fled from the Internet. They ceased to release anymore photos or videos of themselves. Their respective phenomena only grew, leading to further interest and curiosity.
This type of episode has been likened by some to be identical to that of the Garbo Effect, which refers to the event of curiosity brewing once a famous person wants to keep his or her life private. Greta Garbo was mistakenly quoted as having said, "I want to be alone." Later, she clarified that what she had actually said was, "I want to be left alone." Clearly, the second quote means that she wanted to be left alone to enjoy her private life, not that she didn't want anyone around herself.
Greta was thought to be a very mysterious person. She didn't give any interviews, she didn't go out to the red carpet premiers of any of her films, and she wasn't seen in public very often. Back then, studios encouraged their stars being seen and photographed in public as often as possible, since famous actors and actresses made for big money at the box office.
Greta refused to participate in such behavior, preferring to keep her private life to herself. Because of that, people had an even greater desire to know what she did behind closed doors. There was much speculation about her, none of which could be confirmed or denied, since she never spoke about it. Long before the days of insane paparazzi, she was stalked by people with cameras. A similar phenomenon was observed in the tragic case of Diana, princess of Wales. The more that Diana ran and hid, the more the paparazzi wanted more pictures and stories of her.
In life, there will always be people who either like or hate you. On the Internet, nothing is sacred. Sometimes, both sides could wind up destroying you. Anonymous showed the true extent of their power and capabilities in hacking and spreading Boxxy's personal information, as they did with the other girls before and after her, save for Amber Lamps.
Thus, it is vital that you be careful with what you post on the websites of Internet 2.0. Think twice about who you add or accept on FaceBook or MySpace, especially if you barely know someone. Make sure that absolutely nobody could ever possibly guess your passwords, save for yourself. Think before sharing any personal information with people on chat rooms, or even putting up seemingly harmless bits of information on any online profiles of yours.
Every single thing that you post leaves a trail of data. Eventually, a profile of yourself can be built up for the wrong hands to utilize. The BoxxyGate chapters make one truly wonder about what freedom really exists for people on the Internet. Anything that you do can be replicated, altered, and propagated infinitely, such that you can rapidly lose any semblance of further control over your online affairs.
By Anonymous
Boxxy is a teenage girl whose YouTube videos caused an Internet sensation in early January 2009. This website chronicles her mysterious tale.
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