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Mike Wesch

Urban Dictionary: efg - 0 views

  • EFG stands for Epic Fail Guy. He is a meme on the website 4chan. He is usually represented as a stick figure wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, and never does anything right. Combo? Fail. Meme? Fail. Comment? Joke? All fail. He can't even shoop a decent whoop. EFG: LETS! EFG: GET! EFG: READY! EFG: TO! anonymous: fail.
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    EFG stands for Epic Fail Guy. He is a meme on the website 4chan. He is usually represented as a stick figure wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, and never does anything right. Combo? Fail. Meme? Fail. Comment? Joke? All fail. He can't even shoop a decent whoop. EFG: LETS! EFG: GET! EFG: READY! EFG: TO! anonymous: fail.
Greta

Meme - Encyclopedia Dramatica - 0 views

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    Encyclopedia Dramatica's explanation of the origin of memes, as well as an extensive list of well-known internet memes and their origins.
Greta

YouTube - Susan Blackmore: Memes and "temes" - 0 views

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    Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain to brain like a virus. She makes a bold new argument: Humanity has spawned a new kind of meme, the teme, which spreads itself via technology -- and invents ways to keep itself alive.\n
Yann Leroux

How Boxxy brought the web to its knees | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

  • A year ago a young, unnamed and heavily-eyelinered young woman who hung around on Gaia Online made a video. She went by the handle of Boxxy.
  • That's it. Or at least it was for nearly 12 months.At Christmas, the video - by then languishing in YouTube's vaults - got posted to i-am-bored, and from there hit 4Chan, and in particular the site's /b/ messageboard... the heartland for many memes (and definitely NSFW). Why? Nobody's sure. Was Boxxy herself behind it? Or was she simply a vehicle for fans who liked her camgirl approach, apparent ADD and weirdly excitable behaviour?Over the subsequent days and weeks, Boxxy became a topic of contention on 4Chan - with the site splitting into two groups; those who professed to love Boxxy and all she stood for and those who hated Boxxy and her fans. Every thread threaten to spill over into Boxxy spam or a flamewar, and hundreds of 4channers went hacking Boxxy's YouTube account and other websites in search of her true identity. So far they don't seem to have succeeded.
  • Things really came to a head, though, when Boxxy haters - sick of seeing so much about her on 4Chan - decided to launch a denial of service attack on the website itself, bringing it down for some hours as a protest.
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  • OK, yes, the whole story is extremely convoluted. But it's the sort of thing that I saw in evidence at ROFLCon earlier this year: somebody who is entirely unknown can get picked up for basically doing nothing, but doing it in public. So when our future digital archaeologists start looking back at our actions, they'll come across Boxxy and look confused. How on earth do you relate that story in a way that makes sense in 100 years, given that it makes basically no sense right now? That's partly what I love about the internet - and partly what makes my brain hurt.
  • candleja 20 Jan 09, 6:48am posting about a site that shouldn't be talked about, much less visited, is unwise enough. gaining recognition as the person who's talking about it just doesn't make sense to me. plus the article itself is about some teen nobody, hardly worth putting yourself under that kind of scrutinyeven FOX news had more sense, and we all know how irresponsible their journalism is.this entry should probably be amended in some way, to protect the site, the poster, and the general population from exposure to one of the "darker corners of the internet." there's a reason people don't encourage others to walk down dark alleys in a bad part of town
  • the majority of people posting about boxxy were neither, they were people who didnt care less either way but decided to troll the boxxy haters by posting boxxy pictures of bawksey everywhere. they did it for the lulz
  • Please note that off-topic comments will be removed from this thread. Any users posting such comments may have their posting rights withdrawn and subsequently have to move with their auntie and uncle in Bel-Air.
  • @dvdhldnPerhaps I've got too much time on my hands, but I wrote about this because I find memes fascinating, and the idea of being internet famous is really intriguing. Add that to the violent, misogynistic tendencies of /b/ and the ability of the crowd to bully someone for basically nothing... this is - if we let it happen - the future of the internet.
  • Just looked up Anonymous on Wikipedia. Their 'demotivational logo' has the catchphrase 'Because none of us are as cruel as all of us'.What an incredible and disturbing concept - frightening because it is both barbaric and intelligent. Fodder for a Neal Stephenson novel, but in the real world. Anybody with an ounce of humanity would think these fascinating aspects of networked society very worthy of discussion.
  • I just lost the game. Boxxy isn't a meme, AT ALL. EFG is a meme. Boxxy = NOT.The old Anons will let this pass, new ones will get bored and eventually boxxy will be forgotten
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    Short story about Boxxy, the latest meme to get picked up by 4chan.
Greta

Internet Meme - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia - 0 views

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    Another cyberculture take on memes including how to make and "responsibly use" one
Mike Wesch

Boxxy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy. Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page. Feel free to edit the article, but the article must not be blanked, and this notice must not be removed, until the discussion is closed.
  • Boxxy (also known by the YouTube handle boxxybabee) is an internet meme created by a series of YouTube videos of an American girl referring to herself as Boxxy which became highly popular during January 2009.[1] Her videos have been the subject of much speculation over the reasons behind their making, given their nonsensical and hyperactive nature.[2] Topics covered in Boxxy's most famous video include her assertion that she is not on drugs, her eyeliner, two males named Steve and Brandon, a film about The Beatles, her supposed husband, and her awareness of her digression during the video.[3]
  • The girl known as Boxxy was a user of Gaia Online and had only uploaded three videos in total to YouTube, all in the first week of January, 2009.[when?][4] Within a week, her videos had gained over a million views, reaching two million by January 20.[4] Her YouTube channel was also the most subscribed to during January 2009.[1] On 4chan, the videos caused a great amount of strife when posts related to them became excessive on the site's /b/ imageboard, eventually leading to a DDOS attack against 4chan because of Boxxy,[5] described as a "civil war" on one of the world's biggest websites.[1] Her YouTube account was hacked, and threats of releasing her name and other personal information to the public if she made any more videos were made by the individuals who hacked into her account[who?].[2]
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  • Boxxy has divided opinion on 4chan, between those who greatly like and those who greatly dislike her, and this was the cause of the DDOS attack, with attitudes ranging from love to hate.[1][2] A large number of parodies, spoofs and spinoffs relating to Boxxy were also created by YouTube users during the period of Boxxy's fame.[2] Boxxy also led to notable speculation and reflection over the very nature of internet memes, why they occur, why they exist, and how they will be seen in the future, especially given the fact that they make their subjects famous for being famous.[1][6] The "Boxxy" internet meme has been compared to rickrolling[1] by The Guardian technology correspondent Bobbie Johnson.
Greta

YouTube - Dan Dennett: Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes - 0 views

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    Starting with the simple tale of an ant, philosopher Dan Dennett unleashes a devastating salvo of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of memes -- concepts that are literally alive.
Mike Wesch

List of Internet phenomena - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • Anonymous - (used as a mass noun) is a label and Internet meme adopted within Internet culture to represent the actions of many online community users acting anonymously usually toward a loosely agreed-upon goal. It is generally considered as a blanket term – not tied to any monolithic group – for the vox populi or members of the Internet culture
  • 2channel — A Japanese Internet forum (the largest in the world). The site has significant influence on Japanese culture and popular opinion.[100] 4chan — The English equivalent to Futaba Channel, responsible for creating many popular Internet memes.[101]
    • Mike Wesch
       
      We may want a comparison ethnography of 2channel if anybody is up for it.
Mike Wesch

The Boxxy Story - 0 views

  • Accusations began to fire. Just who would want to try and throw people off the trail and confuse them, and who would have a new, large photo of her? Boxxy herself, or a close accomplice was the consensus. They must have caught wind of her full name being found, and merely be attempting to mitigate the damage by stirring the pot with false leads. 
  • It sounded semi-plausible, but, unbeknownst to the vast majority of /b/ at that moment, the CBRC had long since uncovered a photobucket account which was later seen to contain the same photos, so the implication is obvious, members of the CBRC were trolling /b/ with the photos in a attempt to throw them off, as they themselves were close to breaking into her accounts and did not want Anonymous to do it first.
  • We have no way of verifying if they were telling the truth, or if any of the claimed locations were in any way accurate but the mere possibility of this is shocking indeed. Thankfully, these were almost certainly fake - one of the addresses was a mall, one of the phone numbers was for a chiropractor.
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  • Within a couple of hours, CBRC had breached her Youtube account, via successfully guessing the secret answer for her email account, deduced from the stack of information they uncovered.
  • Or phishing her with a fake email, depending on who you listen to.
  • They then made her videos private, uploading a video warning her to never post another video again. This attracted 1000 comments within an hour and became the most commented video of the day on Youtube. So that brought it to an end, in theory. They had removed the ‘cancer’.
  • So after all that, was the ‘chemo’ even effective? No, not really. A look at /b/ will reveal Boxxy threads are still being posted. By essentially martyring the Boxxy meme, CBRC have simply created a new groundswell of people willing to troll with her image, as well as genuine resentment at their actions. 
  • Now she has her name, age, dozens of photos, school, internet accounts, alleged phone numbers, and alleged location available online, along with the details of several uninvolved friends. Nobody could have predicted she would create so much chaos, not least Boxxy herself. She had no idea what she was getting herself into by posting a response video.
  • This entire debacle ultimately stems from those who spammed /b/ with her image and pissed off so many people.
  • The lesson for all of us here, obvious as it is, is to think about what you divulge online. Is your Myspace secure? Is your Facebook account private? What forum accounts contain your details, and can they be traced and linked to each other? Everything you write online can potentially be linked, as if it were a jigsaw, and a profile of your life built up. I know plenty of people who have publicly viewable Facebook accounts containing their D.O.B, phone numbers, emails, addresses, places they work, go to college and so on. This is lunacy. This is asking for trouble. Boxxy didn’t do this, yet was still tracked down. 
  • “First, we, CBCR, pretty much made all the breakthroughs in the investigation. I don't care if it sounds arrogant, but if you look through our now-leaked dox, you can see that everything that was found on 4chan was found by us beforehand.”
  • Give people anonymity, and they become de-individuated, whether it be on an image board or in a rioting mob.
  • he same internet machine that could propel you to the top of the Youtube charts and hand you online fame will happily chew you up and spit you back out just as quickly, with zero remorse or consideration for the consequences. This is the reality of the internet today, this case is not the first, and surely not the last.
  • A few examples of fakes:www.youtube.com/user/boxxiebabee  www.youtube.com/user/therealboxxybabee www.youtube.com/user/boxxxxybabeee www.youtube.com/user/boxxyfriendsonly www.youtube.com/user/B0xxxybabee www.youtube.com/user/boxxybaabee www.youtube.com/user/boxxybabee2 www.youtube.com/user/thenewboxxybabee
  • And of course:www.youtube.com/user/Boxxyakamoldybread 
  • P.P.S Some distasteful and blatantly fake photoshopped news items are being posted on /b/ claiming Boxxy is dead. The fakes are very poorly written and contain numerous flaws. Again, don’t be fooled.
  • It's Friday January 16th. On Youtube, the user 'boxxybabee', has 21,800 subscribers, 1.4 million video views and over 38,000 comments on her videos and channel, yet she only signed up 8 days ago, and has only 3 videos. Many people were, and are confused. How did this happen? By documenting what I personally saw, I will show you.
  • The story essentially begins back in April 2006 when 'Boxxy' joined the anime forum/game based site Gaia Online under the username 'M o l d yLunchboxx'. It appears Boxxy returned from a Gaia hiatus at the very end of 2007, and embarked on a posting spree which lasted a week. It was during this first week of January 2008 that she made two Youtube videos for two fellow Gaia users, '4DM1RALAWESOME' and another referred to simply as 'Ant'.
  • Boxxy's last login to Youtube was February 2008, and for Gaia Online, April 2008.
  • The story now takes a leap forward to December 27th, 2008, when, according to Encyclopedia Dramatica, the video 'FOAR 4DD1 FRUM BOXXY' was posted on i-am-bored.com. This was spotted by someone at 7chan, who embedded the video at the top of the random '/b/' board. 
  • This writer first saw FOAR 4DD1 on January 3rd, 2009, when the video was posted as a 'you rage you lose thread' on the /b/ board at 4chan, with the 'Expert' level afforded to those who would withstand the entire video without wanting to tear out their hair or hurt small animals. /b/tards saw what has been labelled 'the most insane display we've ever seen on youtube' and 'the cutest girl you've ever seen'. This was the true start of the Boxxy phenomenon.
  • Over the next couple of days, interest grew, and Boxxy threads began to populate /b/. Why have her videos lain virtually unviewed and untouched for 51 weeks only to be brought up now. Who was this girl? What was the cause of her unique behaviour - her vivacious mannerisms, head bobbing, jaw grinding, random accents and rambling? Was she really 21 as her profile stated? Speculation began. Some pulled out their wikiPHD and speculated, tourettes? ADHD? Drug abuse - cocaine, ecstacy, meth? No, just too much coffee, according to others, or simple acting up to the camera. Comparisons to Zed from Police Academy and Heath Ledger's Joker were immediate.
  • Regardless, a split already began to emerge at /b/. Half of /b/ appeared smitten, captivated by this pretty, wacky girl drenched in eyeliner, but the rest were having their patience tested. Whilst a group of /b/tards declared 'Operation Valkyrie' on Boxxy - intending to find, raid and destroy as much as possible - youtube, myspace, facebook, photobuckets, etc in search of an identity and the 'upper boob' sign mentioned in 41DD, others simply sat and dismayed at the whole effort. Why try and raid the accounts of someone who hasn't logged into any known accounts for almost a year? Many /b/tards resented the obsession with someone who was not only inactive, but a Gaiafag, emo and a camwhore to boot. As one naysayer put it, it was: 'proof that /b/ is full of 13 y.o boys'.
  • The known accounts, Youtube and Gaia, were quickly spammed with the Operation Valkyrie tag. Via analysis of so called 'Gaiafaggotry' forum posts, /b/tards extracted two pictures of Boxxy from her Gaia friends photobucket accounts, and threw out possible names.
  • On January 6th, someone claiming to be Boxxy posted two previously unseen photos on /b/. A troll, surely? The same day, her Youtube account disappeared and her Gaia account became inaccessible to the public. Was this the real Boxxy intervening, or simply trolls posting photos from photobucket under her guise, and hacking into her accounts and shutting them down? It was also on the 6th that a clearly fake Youtube account was created - 'Boxxyakamoldybread'. Even though the videos are clearly of lower resolution than the originals, some were fooled by this, and some probably still are.
  • The 'boxxy lovers' of 4chan were by now declaring her the 'Queen of /b/' and a instant new meme. The haters labelled this as a perfect example of a forced meme. To them, she was the epitome of the 'cancer killing /b/'. Battle lines were being drawn.
  • On the 9th, Boxxy delivered. She addressed 'recent events', said she was in fact free of drugs and personality disorders, and proved it actually was her posting her photos on /b/. Whilst /b/tards were scrambling to find her identity and spamming her accounts, she was there, watching.
  • his interest generated over 70,000 views within 12 hours, pushing the video onto the first page for most viewed of the day on Youtube.
  • Identical chaos was occurring at 7chan, with the /b/ first page 100% filled with Boxxy at some points. On the 10th, with Boxxy now approaching 400,000 views and 10,000 subscribers, Operation Clampdown was declared. If Moot did not ban the users spamming boxxy threads on the 4chan /b/, the site would be brought down via a DDOS. 
  • On the 12th, Youtube 'celeb' Sxephil included Boxxy in the intro for his new video, and used her face as the thumbnail. Personally, I found it extremely cynical of Phil, a Youtube partner who makes money from views, to advertise his extremely boring video about Joe the Plumber with Boxxy's face. What a dick. Worse still, the exposure to his 310,000 subscribers sent several thousand more people to the Boxxy videos.
  • There are many patently absurd theories about Boxxy. If you listen to the drooling idiocy leaking through the interweb, you'll be told she is in fact an actress hired by Gaia Online to promote their product (that's why she says she moved on to bigger and better things, huh, morons?), the whole thing is a giant trolling exercise meticulously planned by her and accomplices, the entire thing was perpertrated by 7chan users attempting to cripple 4chan, she's a paid actress akin to lonelygirl15, or most bizarrely of all, a claim has been put forward that she is a fraud mocking the mannerisms of a 15 year old girl who lives in Chicago, orchestrated by said girl's obsessed crush who is angry at his unrequited love. Some people actually believe this.Well, there you have it. That's pretty much what happened.
Mike Wesch

UTubeDrama Website = UTubeDrama = UTubeDrama.com = YouTube Drama - 0 views

  • 1. BoxxyBabee HACKED by CBCR CENTER FOR BOXXY CONTROL AND RESTRICTION! BoxxyBabee aka S4TISF4CTION Catie (PERMABAN MirokuFanGirl) who is a 16 year old teenage girl 4Chan Meme YouTube Channel was hacked by CBCR members Eyrev, Vodderz, anon77, Red, Xenu, BBC, asianpersuasian by guessing her YouTube secret word and they got this information from collecting her private information on the internet which sounds like an oxymoron in the first place but then an eBaumsworld fanatic in the group DROPPED HER DOX ON THE INTERNET which the whole group had gathered about her including her REAL FULL NAME and her ADDRESS and her SCHOOL and her BIRTHDATE which is enough damage for this teenager to scared of ANONYMOUS for the rest of her life and never have her make another YouTube video ever again but for her thousands of MEME fans who want to see her back on YouTube you can ask her to please come back by emailing her at catiemicheal@yahoo.com.
Kevin Champion

Modest Web Site Is Behind a Bevy of Memes - WSJ.com - 0 views

  • "It's like Craigslist -- hugely simple and highly useful," says David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. 4chan's utility is its ability to gather millions of people in conversation in a single place and create a "meme-rich" environment, says Mr. Weinberger.
  • Mr. Poole originally just wanted a place to share his fascination with Japanese comics and television shows. He was a fan of the popular Japanese image Web site 2chan and wanted to create a version for American audiences. With his mother's approval, he used her credit card to purchase server space and started 4chan.org.
  • "They get rowdy -- it's like a bar without alcohol," says Willard Ling, a moderator and long-time user of the site. "It's like that psychological concept of deinvidualization -- when groups of people become less aware of their own responsibility." Mr. Poole and his team of moderators have handed out 70,000 bans over the last three years, but preventing long-term abuse can be difficult. 4chan's "Wild West" reputation has created a dilemma for Mr. Poole. While it's brought him Internet fame, albeit through his alter ego, and created enviable traffic, he has trouble selling ads to more cautious companies who don't want their ads appearing next to potentially graphic content. He's attempted to quarantine sexual material on a set of adult boards, but that doesn't stop pornography or other adult content from appearing elsewhere.
Mike Wesch

/b/ - Random - 0 views

shared by Mike Wesch on 15 Jan 09 - Cached
  • :1232043528.jpg-(41 KB, 710x387) Anonymous 01/15/09(Thu)13:18:48 No.109831589   [Reply] Real Life memes GO9 posts and 3 image replies omitted. Click Reply to view. >> Anonymous 01/15/09(Thu)13:26:07 No.109832717>>109832385Good one! >> Anonymous 01/15/09(Thu)13:26:42 No.109832813     File :1232044002.jpg-(774 KB, 2048x1536)is cave man a meme? >> Anonymous 01/15/09(Thu)13:27:00 No.109832856     File :1232044020.jpg-(56 KB, 489x809)they faggots
Mike Wesch

Know Your Meme - 0 views

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