By the time that the authors 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 and ended it all, and the mighty empire known as the Internet which was still reeling from her impact. The one thing was missing in it all was the queen herself.
Boxxy had vanished.
FOAR 4DD1 FRUM BOXXY
Catie, known universally as Boxxy, was just a regular girl. She was no different from 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. Still, there was something about her that managed to entrance more than half the Net like the song of a siren.
FOAR ANT FRUM BOXXY
With her dark, layered chocolate brown hair, her smooth, flawless peaches and cream skin pulled over her delicate but pronounced Greco-American features, the heavy black kohl encircling her clear brown eyes, Catie was by no means unattractive. That was how she was and how she wanted Boxxy to be.
FOAR EVERYWUN 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 is 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.
Catie never intended to start any drama whatsoever. She only wished to have pure, clean fun; to enjoy herself. This innocent fun earned her the full wrath of the Net's most fearsome group: Anonymous. Net 2.0 can make you or break you. In this case, it did both.
In April 2006, a fifteen-year-old Catie created an account on the popular anime-themed social networking site Gaia Online with the rather inconspicuous user name MoldyLunchboxx.
Following a year-long absence, she returned in late 2007 and notified everyone, va much posting, that she had come back. At the end of the first week in 2008, Cate altered her user name to the simpler form now known as Boxxy and began recording her first two videos.
Boxxy's Gaia Online profile.
The first was entitled "FOAR 4DD1 FRUM BOXXY." The 4DD1 in question was a shortened version of the user name 4DM1RAL_AWESOME, an online friend of Cate's and a fellow Gaia Online user. The video came about as the result of a promise that she had made to him and was intended to be a simple and amusing shout-out using her extremely hyperactive onscreen persona, Boxxy.
The remainder of the video consisted of Boxxy talking at some length about the way that she and 4DD1 interacted online, the fact that she overused black eye liner, and that if she knew anyone else on Gaia, all that he or she had to do was ask and she would make a separate shout-out video for them.
Boxxy posts on Gaia.
This offer was clearly accepted by another Gaia Online user who wished to be called Ant as shown in Catie's second video, entitled "FOAR ANT FRUM BOXXY." In this video, she more or less talked about many of the same things that she did in her other video. However, she revealed that Ant was the first person who she had ever met on Gaia. She digressed to describe how Ant and others frequented the notorious site 4chan, how Ant's avatars were very intriguing, and even drew an angry cartoon face with black and red markers to be a depiction of Ant.
This was the video wherein another one of Catie's friends was mentioned: Pocky. Boxxy 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 Catie's third video.
Upon close examination of Catie's 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 was cut in a shoulder-length pageboy bob with the edges flipped out; a barely discernible, black Alice band kept her parted bangs from falling on her face. Along with fairly heavy makeup applied to her pale complexion, thick lines of kohl encircled her eyes. What made her stand out even more was that she was seated in what appeared 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 had the peculiar effect of drawing attention to her face; the eyes in particular.
BoxxyBabe, the original YouTube channel.
In her second video, Catie wore a white, cotton T-shirt with a silver necklace and pendant around her neck. Her bob was suddenly a lighter brown and her skin tone changed from pale to a distinctive shade of buff. Even though it was still winter in many parts of North America, the fact that Catie was suddenly sporting both a lighter hair color and a darker skin tone seemed to indicate that she lived in a state which still received large amounts of sun and heat.
The two said videos were uploaded to her YouTube account under the user name BoxxyBabe. Records indicate that her last log-in on both Gaia and YouTube took place between the months of February and April 2008.
In December 2008, after sitting undisturbed on her channel, the video "FOAR 4DD1 FRUM BOXXY" was embedded onto the unremarkable site I-Am-Bored.com by an anonymous user.
Link is posted on I-Am-Bored.com.
Within twenty-four hours, the comments page was filled with over 125 comments across eight pages. Only adding to the intrigue already surrounding Boxxy, the video then strangely disappeared without a trace or explanation. The authors of this blog find it very likely that Catie herself was the one who posted and subsequently removed the embed on the site.
Boxxy deleting her videos.
Screen shots of the video began appearing on the well-known image board 7chan coupled with fervent discussions about who the girl was and if whether she was afflicted with any ailments such as Attention Deficit Disorder or Tourette's Syndrome based upon her jerky, hyperactive manner.
An anonymous user then embedded a copy of the video on the near identical image board 4chan. It was posted at the top of an endurance test thread on the /b/ board, the birthplace of many of the Net's most famous memes. Those who could sit through the whole video without flipping 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 we've ever seen." This adoration would soon mark the beginning of the Boxxy phenomenon.
Why did Catie film her videos using her hyperactive Boxxy persona?
As the days rolled by, interest in exactly who Boxxy was increased more and more. As speculation grew, threads dedicated to discussing the girl began to dominate the /b/ board of 4chan.
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 in the crazy way that she did in her videos? Was it caused by the effects of drug abuse, Attention-Deficit Disorder, Tourette's Syndrome, or perhaps all of the above?
In any case, none of it really mattered, as Boxxy had become the biggest thing on the Internet since free WiFi. Unfortunately, a huge division had begun appearing between the users of 4chan: the newfags and the oldfags.
Within the last five years on 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 of 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 accomplish what is known as a triforce.
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 accounts, and attempting to use the notorious Anonymous, who are 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 fags, or that they were holding back /b/ from progressing.
The oldfags did not have a legitmate reason or excuse with which to try to pummel the newfags out of 4chan permanently, as nothing that 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 cyber-war.
For Goddess so loved the world, that she gave her only begotten Daughter, that whosoever believeth in her should not perish, but have everlasting life.
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 Net as an effort to uncover the truth behind this mysterious figure and to spread the word. The newfag community was unanimous in declaring her the queen of /b/.
On the other hand, the oldfag community had enough. Boxxy personified everything that they had grown to hate about the Internet, as well as /b/'s current state.
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/.
Feeling the need to take matters into their own hands, a group of oldfag vigilantes decided to band together into a group who called themselves Operation Valkyrie. The name was based on the ill-fated attempt to oust Adolf Hitler from power in the Third Reich by members of their own inner circle.
The mission of Operation Valkyrie 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 that Boxxy mentioned in "FOAR 4DD1" which showcased the moniker 4DD1 written 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. As one user stated, it was "proof that /b/ is full of thirteen-year-old boys."
Catie's already-known Gaia 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 friends' Photobucket accounts. That was all that 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.
Boxxy's location was still quite obscure. Some correctly guessed that she was somewhere in California, such as Palo Alto, San Diego, Santa Barbara, or Sacramento. Others suggested Florida, or even Australia. Trying to pinpoint her accent was of no help either. The majority consensus seemed to be that she was "anywhere down the West Coast," England, or any of the Eastern European states such as Poland and Bulgaria in particular. It was January 6 when a 4chan user who purported to be Boxxy posted two new photos on /b/.
Argument as to whether or not this person was merely a look-alike troll ensued. Boxxy's YouTube channel disappeared, and her Gaia account was rendered inaccessible except to her friends later that same day. Did Catie step in, or had Operation Valkyrie secretly succeeded in hacking into her online accounts to shut them down? No one knew.
Soon, an impersonation YouTube channel was created, BoxxyakaMoldyBread.
It was January 8 when the YouTube channel BoxxyBabee showed up. It featured the two original videos, coupled with a message in the channel comments: "i'm awsum, new video tommorrow 01/09/09." People weren't sure of what to make of this. Was this another troll account, or had the real Boxxy returned?
The next day, Boxxy's new video was uploaded onto the channel as promised. It was entitled "FOAR EVERYWUN FRUM BOXXY." Catie's hair had grown noticeably longer by approximately four inches and was parted on the right side. Her complexion was now a creamy white, and her eyeliner style had changed slightly, now extending a bit further down in the corner, giving her a slightly cat-like appearance.
Boxxy addressed recent events by confirming that she was not on any drugs, did not have ADD or Tourette's Syndrome, and confirmed that it really was her who had posted the photos on /b/. She had been watching the entire thing the whole time. Clearly, she 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 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 January 12, YouTube celeb Philip DeFranco included footage of Boxxy in the intro of his new video and even used her face as the thumbnail. Entirely ignorant of the back story, a wave of viewers sent from Philip commented with messages such as, "Wow, sxephil made you popular. Thank him in a video!" They were all wrong, as he had nothing to do with it.
The vast majority of viewers were clueless as to what Boxxy was talking about in her third video. A separate video explaining the subject matter was uploaded onto the channel SeanBoy80 and is now mirrored on TheBoxxyPhenom.
Boxxy's revived popularity was the spark that the oldfag community had been waiting for to wage a cyber-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, month, year, or even perpetually. War had also broken out at 7chan, with its /b/ board inundated with Boxxy. On January 10, with Boxxy's videos and channel rapidly approaching 400,000 views and 10,000 subscribers, Boxxy haters then took a new approach which could be considered a form of terrorism with the now-infamous Operation Clampdown, a watershed in 4chan's history.
4chan owner Moot 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.
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. Then, it subsequently crashed, resulting in a white 404 page. It was like a Net 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. This wasn't to last. Moot and the administrators had given in to the attackers' demands by banning users for two days just for even mentioning the name Boxxy or posting in a thread about her.
Between January 17 and 18, a splinter group of approximately eleven users from /b/ had formed with the intention of halting the Boxxy craze that was sweeping the Net. This group of users called themselves the Center for Boxxy Control and Restriction, or CBCR. Their mission was to finish what Operation Valkyrie had started.
The founder of this group used the handle 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 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.
CBCR Members
Eyrev: Founder.
Vodderz: Second-in-Command and Chief Investigator.
Redcups: Investigator.
Anon77: Investigator. This user was directly responsible for hacking Boxxy and stealing her MySpace, YouTube, and email.
y0uth: Investigator. Google cache and archive master.
A20Address: Investigator.
GastricPenguin: Mentioned by Boxxy for remixing her videos. Friend of Zarithas, used for contacting Boxxy. He divulged many 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 user 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 younger Catie, who bore a striking resemblance to Boxxy, sans eyeliner.
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, Catie'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 1, 2008, including the first page of photos. The said page contained art relating to Gaia, along with the user name MoldyLunchboxx, Catie's old Gaia account. It was also revealed that Boxxy was not twenty as was thought, but 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 privatized her three videos and uploaded one video telling her to not make another video again, lest they release all of her dox, i.e., personal information. In reality, the CBCR hadn't found Catie'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 had leaked Catie's personal information, but conversations with a former CBCR member have revealed it to be XenuAstley.
The motivation for this was more than likely the result of 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.
There was a schism within the CBCR as to what to do with Boxxy's account, with each side having a differeing view. Parts of the CBCR's video were also edited out and left on the cutting room floor.
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 declared heroes of the Net. The backlash that followed thereafter sent members of the CBCR running like puppies with tails between their legs.
The comments section for their video became inundated with supposed IPs of CBCR members. The video was removed, and Catie's videos were restored to public broadcast. Two days after on January 20, Boxxy's account was suspended. This was more than likely the result of Catie writing a request to the administrators of YouTube to do so to avoid more attacks and confusion. It was then in possession of Google. It's currently unknown as to whether Catie 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 Catie and everyone else for the controversy that had occurred. At the time, one could have inferred that Eyrev was being a hypocrite to the extreme in making this apology. After all, he did instigate and create the online witch-hunt against Boxxy, which had the effect of scaring her off the Net. At the time of this apology, Eyrev tried to defend the actions of himself and the CBCR, but he only wound up contradicting himself and making a bigger mess.
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 Catie's dox, this group was formed as a sort of misinformation committee wherein red herrings in the form of fake last names and addresses were leaked in order to discredit Catie's real info.
This group spent much of its time deleting all pastebins of Catie's dox that were found and also getting them deleted from various forums and sites. The OSBE had absolutely nothing to do with the story of the alleged suicide of Catie, whose surname was falsely given as Gomez, as the result of harassment from Anonymous members and cyber stalkers.
The Linda Tripp of the BoxxyGate affair, Eyrev, seems to have 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 never intended, much less wanted, to interfere with Catie or harm her. Catie's dox being leaked represented both a lack of foresight and misplaced morals on the part of the CBCR. Whatever the arguments or excuses, not one of them had any right to do what they did.
The choices that were made by the CBCR deprived Catie 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 that we make brings a consequence. The lesson that Eyrev learned was a painful one, and it is one that will haunt him for the rest of his life. The past is history. It can never change, no matter how much one wants it to.
Perhaps this is all to be expected in the twisting and turning grassy knoll of cyber-stardom. With great fame comes great enemies, no matter how innocent those enemies intend to be.
In April 2009, 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 that 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 wherein the most trusted members of IHeartBoxxy could discuss certain things that would 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 who were deemed to have enough integrity to not brag about the new material, and therefore anything that they did would not affect Catie 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 repentant Eyrev took over as the 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 for their rules and policies, which were deemed Nazi-like by many.
Unichan was created by a user with the aliases Chaz and chuckstudios. Originally founded as a school project 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.
In 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 filled with Boxxy threads 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 never tried to attack it again.
Unichan stayed online until someone 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's currently unkown 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 Catie 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 who he suspected knew Catie. He then 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 12. As the threats became more serious, an admin at IHeartBoxxy uploaded the two videos onto YouTube. Catie herself appears only briefly in either video. Nevertheless, they caused a storm of intrigue.
During the same day that the July 12 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 dox on users who he suspected of cyber-stalking Catie. Another different 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 Catie had sparked enough attention to lead to another watershed, an event 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 Catie's town, and they headed off to investigate one of the addresses that Catie was believed to be residing at. The known attenders had the aliases Big Red, NinjaTheory, Russian Girl, Derek, Flowerfag, and there several others whose aliases are unknown.
Once 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 Catie. 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, short for Anonymous.
Later, they met Catie'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 Catie personally to come to the community as a whole. She knew about Boxxy and the trouble that Catie had been through, but she joined anyway. Niki's involvement began when she uploaded a video of Catie and her peers dancing to "Thriller" for their school performance, The Princess and the Porcupine. At this point, she discovered that the video had been mirrored by BoxxyReturns. The new title implied that everyone save for Catie were faggots, and Niki commented protesting otherwise.
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 Catie, 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 come to trust Eyrev, until she found out about his involvement with the CBCR.
On October 1, Niki allegedly contacted Catie 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. Catie appeared to say that if Niki could close down the forums, as well as Unichan, it would help her immensely.
During that next day, a meeting was held on Skype with all of the administrators of the forums and image boards related to Boxxy. The consensus of this meeting came to be that they should comply with Catie's wishes, no matter how painful this may be for them. Many administrators were uncertain about whether they had heard the truth of her desires, although the forums were shut down, while Unichan came back up a couple of days later.
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 Catie with him and eventually granted him access to pictures of Catie working on school plays, which have since been leaked. After Killwebs had collected enough information and recordings, he made a video consisting of much of her dox. 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 Catie. Some users asked her many questions, and many others called her a troll. She asked questions such as, "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 Catie.
On March 11 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 remained untouched.
On Unichan, Anon77 claimed to have fooled YouTube staff into believing that he was Catie 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.
YouTube user Boxxology claimed to have personally lobbied to get the videos taken down. He believed that many of the comments underneath the videos were repulsive and misogynistic. The true reason for the removal of the videos is currently unknown.
Looking back on what made the Boxxy controversy as big as it was, one can see an emerging pattern in Net phenomena. Catie was by no means the first or last of her kind, seeing that many young girls before her 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, Zoe Kimball, Boxxy, Amber Lamps, and Tabby. The question which must be asked is: How and why do these girls shoot to such prominence on the Net, 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 young women. Since time immemorial, beauty has been a much sought-after commodity by people all over the world. While it's 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 many 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 earn five to ten percent less than more ordinary-looking people, who in turn earn three to eight percent less than those who are considered to be 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 Net users around the globe. People naturally respond better to those who are beautiful. When images of Cracky-Chan, Magibon, Zoe, Amber, Boxxy, and Tabby ended up on sites with user-generated content such as 4chan and YouTube, the occupants of those sites naturally became interested in who those girls were.
A mixture of randomness coupled with unique artistic expression made all of the said subjects stand out from everyone else. Net 2.0 websites are known for being bottomless wells for creating some of the most enduring and endearing memes and personalities. A seemingly perpetual cycle has been observed in the functioning of these sites wherein they 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 off-sets the current, creating a new one, only to repeat the same process again.
When each of the six subjects emerged onto the Net, it was during that stage of the cycle wherein previous phenomena had started to became 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 virtual villages, 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 was also a kind 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. She did absolutely nothing but silently stare 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 spirit, 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 personified the silent but beautiful archetype. What gained her the attention of the Net at large was the fact that while the infamous AC transit bus fight was going on ad everyone was in a frenzy, she sat while 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 filmed all of her videos in the dark, which had the effect of keeping focus 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 cyber-fame were addressed to a few specific people. Considering the intentionally confusing way that Boxxy babbled, 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 blamed primarily on the fact that many saw her as a replacement for Boxxy, after she vanished from the Net. 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 24, 2009 after new Boxxy material had ceased. Tabby was quickly named the new queen of /b/, while Boxxy fan boys were upset about the new declaration. Another cyber-war seemed imminent.
Interest in these 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 in these six girls continued to persist.
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 was often low, leading to increased fascination. This was often the result of the girls being scared off the Internet and into hiding from stalkers, threats, or because they simply did not wish to embrace any stardom on the Net. Magibon is a notable exception out of the six. She quickly embraced her popularity, and she continues to regularly upload new videos onto her YouTube account.
When Tabby disappeared for several months at the behest of her mother and the police after receiving threats of rape and death, obsession escalated to higher levels. Once she returned with MySpace and Twitter accounts and new videos, interested decreased. Her cyber sensation is now at a point that allows her to manager her online affairs.
Once the personal information of Crakcy-Chan, Zoe, and Boxxy was discovered, all three had fled from the Net. They ceased to relase 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 saying, "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 a social life.
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 to be seen and photographed in public as often as possible, since famous actors and actresses made for big money at the box office.
She refused to participate in such behavior, preferring to keep her private life to herself. Because of this, 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 Princess Diana 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 you or hate you. On the Net, nothing is sacred. Both sides may wind up destroying you. Anonymous showed the true extent of their power and capabilities in hacking and spreading Catie's personal information, as they did with the girls who came before her, save for Amber Lamps.
It's vital that you be careful with what you post on the Net. Think twice about who you add or accept on social networking sites, especially if you barely know someone. Make sure that absolutely nobody could ever possibly guess your passwords, except for you, of course. Think before sharing any personal information with people in chat rooms, or even putting up seemingly harmless bits of information on any online profile of yours.
Every single item that you post leaves a trail of data. Eventually, a profile of yourself may be built up for the wrong hands to utilize. The chapters of BoxxyGate lead one to wonder about what freedom really exists for people on the Net. 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.
