jan 23
2009
Boxxy, Part Deux
Boxxy boxxy boxxy boxxy boxxy boxxy boxxy boxxy, part two.
2 comments
Dude. What's with these CBRC people who hacked her accounts and threatened her? Is there something I'm missing that would excuse their actions and not make them terrorists? First a DoS attack on 4chan, then this? These people are officially out of control.
posted by brianvan at 10:05 AM on January 23, 2009 
This is like an elusive specimen caught in the lab. I expect Dr. Sorgatz or others of his ilk to investigate. Boxxy was not of interest in her own right. She got linked by somebody and somebody and somebody because she was mildly odd and spastic. The linkers were bored and said, "Check out this spastic girl." Had something more interesting happened that day, they wouldn't have bothered. Through pathways unclear, this below-the-radar level of interest was artificially but exponentially inflated by virtue of the number of links and reblogged links that ensued. I saw links and didn't click, because it did not sound interesting. Then I saw more links and didn't click, same deal (but early adopter memers were clicking already). As the links persisted, this thing of no interest to me became something that finally crossed the threshold, tipped the point, so to speak. "This thing is still here," I said to myself. "I wonder why it persists?" I clicked it from fimoc and watched it and went, "huh, high school girl youtube silliness. Whatevs," and moved on. I theorize that this happened en masse. But all of our clicks counted. And the weight of those clicks and name recognition prompted more linking. She wasn't any more interesting at this point, but she had momentum behind her, as a thing, an identifiable issue. There isn't anybody sitting around going, "OMG, I'm in love with this girl," or "I can't stop thinking about this girl. She's amazing." It's just that she's a thing, and she has a unique name with brand-friendly uniqueness. And at a certain level, the requisite haters moved in to perform their prescribed takedown function. Unfortunately for Boxxy, but interestingly and helpfully for meme-trackers, it was the 4chan haters that latched onto her unintended getting above herselfness. So she went from meme to event and it bled over into real life. That's where it got ugly. But we must look back and see that, as with other unwitting microcelebs, the original product was of little actual interest. The interesting part is in the echo chamber magnification. Some smart person is going to identify an algorithm in this, I swear.
posted by Eric at 9:48 PM on January 24, 2009
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