Boxxy

2008

Date: 27 October 2008 · Place: YouTube, recorded in Bishop, California · Figures: Catherine Wayne aka Catie, performer · Tags: Webcam Girl, 4chan Worship, Parasocial 01. A Teenage Girl Says Hi To Gaia On 27 October 2008 fourteen-year-old Catherine Wayne uploads a webcam introduction to the social network Gaia Online under the username Boxxybabee. The video, two minutes of caffeinated direct address with thick eyeliner, migrates to YouTube in January 2009 and is discovered by 4chan's /b/ board. Wayne is declared empress of /b/. A faction war breaks out between users who love her and users who hate that other users love her. The board is briefly taken offline by the volume of activity. 02. The First Parasocial Object Boxxy is the prototype of the audience-captured webcam girl, a figure later iterated as the YouTuber, the streamer, the TikToker. Wayne herself goes silent for years to escape the harassment, then returns in 2010 with the channel ANewHopeee on her own terms. She is also the first internet celebrity whose fame is openly understood by its participants as a sociological event about themselves, not about her. "Hi, I'm Boxxy, and you be Boxxy too!" — Boxxybabee, Gaia introduction video, 27 October 2008 Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Boxxy' • Encyclopedia Dramatica, 'Boxxy' (archived 2009-2012) • The Daily Dot, 'The Strange Saga of Boxxy' (24 January 2014)