Skip to main content

Home/ Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University/ Group items tagged messageboard

Rss Feed Group items tagged

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.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • 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
  •  
    Short story about Boxxy, the latest meme to get picked up by 4chan.
Yann Leroux

The Ridiculant | Stuff we found down the back of the internet - 0 views

  • It all kicked off when Boxxy’s video was posted to the notorious EBAUMSWORLD* messageboard, as a challenge to see if anybody could make it through the entire video without going mad.
  • Posted by: HHahsHASs | January 22, 2009 at 02:08 PM Wow, this whole article is wrong. Did the journalist even bother to research? Boxxy was started by ebaumsworld.com. DO NOT GO TO 4CHAN. Only go to 4Chan if you want spam and viruses on your computer. My friend went to that site the other day and now his computer is complete dead. By the way, how is this news? Boxxy has been around for like a month now.
  • Posted by: Anonymous | January 22, 2009 at 02:57 PM It's quite clear that Tom Phillips is new to the reporting game and win not last long with shit like this.
1 - 3 of 3
Showing 20 items per page