Catherine Wayne

Online work

In January 2008, Wayne recorded two videos addressing her friends on Gaia Online and uploaded them to YouTube under the alias boxxybabee. They were reposted to the site i-am-bored.com later in the year, and then eventually appeared on 4chan. Wayne responded to the popularity of her initial videos in a third video that was uploaded to her new YouTube channel, boxxybabee, in January 2009. The videos depict Wayne in heavy eyeliner^[2][3][4] rambling in an excitable stream-of-consciousness style about various topics and experiences.^[1][5]

The presence of the videos was divisive on 4chan, with factions claiming to either support or oppose Boxxy, leading to various flame wars and hacking incidents.^[2][6] This led to a denial-of-service attack on 4chan itself, shutting the site down for several hours.^[1] Participants went elsewhere, launching a "Twitter bomb" that May.^[7] On YouTube, the popular Boxxy channel was hacked and the source's identity outed.^[8] A number of spoofs, parody videos and remixes were posted throughout the web.^[1][6][8]

In March 2010, Urlesque named Boxxy number 104 on its list of "The 100 Most Iconic Internet Videos". She was left out of the top 100 list because her videos were relatively new at the time.^[9] In late 2010, Wayne began selling Boxxy items on eBay.^[3] On November 25, 2010, she uploaded an edited clip from the film Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope under the alias ANewHopeee. The original clip contained Princess Leia's holographic message to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Wayne replaced Princess Leia's speech with her own request for her fans' help in regaining access to her old account, boxxybabee.^{[citation needed]}

On January 10, 2011, she posted a new, more introspective video^[10] onto a new YouTube account (ANewHopeee)^[11] in which she explains that Boxxy started as an exaggerated internet persona representative of her personality and interests at the time of the first recordings, but eventually grew into a tongue-in-cheek parody of her younger self in later videos. This video caused some discussions as to its authenticity.^[3][5] On January 19, 2011, Boxxy was mentioned in a local Fox 11 report on Internet trolls.^[12]

On June 17, 2011, Wayne made a third YouTube account (Bodaciousboxxy) and continued uploading a single video of herself.^[13] In this video, she claims that the Boxxy in the video of January 2011 is not the real Boxxy, but a girl who looks a lot like her, who was supposedly hacked by a character named "Svetlana".^{[citation needed]}

Other work

Between December 2013 and December 2014, Wayne was a host for the Animalist streaming series for Discovery Digital Networks.^[14][15][16]

In 2017, Wayne voiced the character Marsha for Disney XD's Billy Dilley's Super-Duper Subterranean Summer.^[17]

In 2018, Wayne lent her voice to BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, an indie role-playing game satirizing various aspects of internet culture. She is credited with both conceptualization and voice-over work as the game's protagonist.^[18]

Wayne is of Greek descent.^[19]

• Official website
• Catherine Wayne at IMDb
• Boxxy entry at Know Your Meme