Boxxy

About

Boxxy is the online pseudonym of Catie Wayne, a YouTube personality who became known on 4chan in 2009. She claims ownership of several YouTube accounts including ANewHopeee^[1], bodaciousboxxy^[2], and Boxxybabee^[3], where she uploads videos of herself acting in a rotation of different characters including 3V3 and Svetlana.

Origin

After joining the anime themed social network GaiaOnline as MoldyLunchbox in 2006, Wayne created a character named Boxxy, a highly energetic and excitable girl with heavy black eyeliner and animated facial expressions. She made a YouTube video for another Gaia member 4DD1^[10] featuring the character which lay dormant for months until December 27th 2008, when it was shared on I-Am-Bored.^[9] While her original videos were taken down, they were reuploaded to the YouTube account boxxybabee^[3] on January 8th, 2009. As of April 27th, 2012, this account has 193,589 subscribers and more than 25,000,000 views, with an average of 20,777 views per day.

Spread

In the week following its upload on I Am Bored, the video made its way to 4chan's /b/ (random) board, where users were split between those who loved and others who hated Boxxy. On January 9th, 2009, Boxxy uploaded another video titled "FOAR EVERYWUN FROM BOXXY" addressing the /b/ community and the threads she had seen or participated in. While many of these threads went unarchived, search for Boxxy on Chanarchive^[13] yields 1880 results as of April 2012.

Following this video, twelve 4chan users met in an IRC channel, forming the Center for Boxxy Control and Restriction^[11] (CBCR). The group broke in to Boxxy's YouTube account, making all of her videos private. They also uploaded a video explaining that she should never make another video and disclosing her personal information. After receiving negative backlash for these actions, the group made her videos public again and by January 19th, 2009, uploaded a second video apologizing for the hack.

On January 19th, 2009, the Guardian^[12] published an in-depth chronicle of 4chan's response to these videos, stating that Boxxy spam and flame wars had filled the image board to the point where 4chan users launched a denial of service (DDoS) attack on themselves on January 10th, 2009 out of protest. The same day, Boxxy's videos also appeared on Fimoculous^[14], Buzzfeed^[15] and Videogum.^[16] That May, users organized a Twitter bomb^[17] to get the hashtag #Boxxy trending on the site.

Boxxy is also represented on other websites: A Boxxy Facebook fan page^[18] has more than 25,600 likes, there are a handful of single topic blogs^{[21][22][23][24]}, and a Tumblr tag^[25] associated with photos or videos of her. There are more than 350 Boxxy-related threads on Reddit.^[26] In March 2010, Urlesque^[29] declared Boxxy one of the most iconic vloggers online.

Lia Dawson Takedown

On December 10th, 2009, all of the videos on the YouTube account boxxybabee^[3] were removed due to a copyright claim by someone named Lia Dawson. Dawson proceeded to reupload Boxxy's three videos to her own YouTube account^[27], noting that the they had trademarked "Boxxy" and "Boxxybabee." While "Boxxy" is a registered trademark of Oulipo, Incorporated, it is unrelated to Wayne's videos. The copyright claim was ruled false^[28] and boxxybabee's channel was restored.

Return to the Web

Following her exchange with 4chan, Boxxy abandoned most of her online presence until November 18th, 2010. Wayne returned with an eBay auction^[6] selling a messenger bag from the Japanese manga series InuYasha. Within 24 hours, the bid reached $800,100 before the auction was voluntarily removed. The same day, she posted a photo to Unichan^[30], an image board specifically for her fans, with a PayPal email address asking for money.^[7]

Several days after this, the YouTube channel ANewHopeee^[1] was created, where she posted an edited Star Wars clip titled "A New Hope" to let people know that new videos were coming. On January 10th, 2011, Wayne posted a video revealing that she had some personal issues causing her to stay away from the internet and that there would be more Boxxy videos in the future. In the first hour the video was on YouTube, it accumulated over 2,000 comments, many of them hailing the "return of the queen."
As of April 2012, this YouTube account has 87,191 subscribers, 6,006,625 views and 11,551 views per day.

The Boxxy character returned to YouTube on July 16th, 2011, in response to a video Wayne made with a different character named Svetlana who claimed to have hacked the YouTube account ANewHopeee. This video was featured on Geekosystem^[31], Buzzfeed^[32] and I-Am-Bored.^[33]

Notable Parodies and Remixes

Personal Life

Catherine Wayne was born on April 28th, 1992. A Facebook fan page for all of her characters^[19] has 11,800 likes as of April 2012. She maintains a Formspring^[20], webstore^[34] and a personal website^[8] which hosts both a 4chan style 18+ image board and an all ages message board where fans can connect with her.

Search Interest

External References