Long before the days of daily vloggers,
webseries,
Let's Play channels,
and community commentary videos.,
there was an entirely different beast that encompassed what we know as YouTube today
The year 2006 can be considered the Wild West of the YouTube era
as online video streaming was, at the time, a much,
much smaller market back then
This ultimately left the notoriety door wide open ,and YouTubers such as Smosh, Nigahiga,
Philly D, and iJustine sought after the chance to make videos simply because they had a passion for doing so. As we know today,
heir channels have since taken off, leaving their names forever rooted in YouTube history, Now, jumping forward a decade here,
you may remember a YouTuber by the name of Benjamin Bennett, famous for his eerie YouTube series "Sitting and Smiling"
Bennett has been the subject of many online analytical and list videos, primarily due to the unorthodox nature of his content
What if I told you, though, that instead of sitting there for hours instead of minutes, that his idea wasn't all that original?
What if I also told you that he was a solid 10 years late to the party of sitting in front of a camera and
doing absolutely nothing?
Well, that's because he was. Allow me to introduce you
...to Magibon
Margaret Lillian Adams, also known today as Magibon, started her YouTube channel in 2006 under the name MRirian
Her very first video titled. "Me doing nothing", has since spawned a wildfire of over 100 similar videos, each
spanning an average of 46 seconds. As we just witnessed, her content, like she says, consists of Magibon doing,
well,
nothing, and staring at the camera until uttering a short phrase in Japanese
Minna-san. konnichiwa! Magibon desu~!
So typically, save something along the lines of" konnichiwa Magibon desu" or "bye-bye" at the end of each video
Surprisingly, she gained rapid notoriety, and by 2010 her channel boasted a very considerable amount of subscribers
Alongside this her videos would garner upwards of over half a million views each time and as a result
she amassed a lot of online hate, primarily due to the idea that she's become Internet famous for doing absolutely nothing
Anyway, backing up to 2008. Magibon had reached her prime, if you will, on her channel, and with this newfound notoriety
she found herself landing a TV deal with a Japanese Internet television company called GyaO
With this, she was flown out to Japan to make a debuted appearance in a TV show by the name of Midtown TV
In April of 2008, a fan event was scheduled for the show and she was supposed to make an appearance
However, this was promptly cancelled due to threatening emails that she would soon receive
In October of that same year,
she was invited to the 21st annual Tokyo Film Festival and made an appearance as a voice actress in the film Blue Symphony
this, alongside many other appearances at various high-profile Japanese events and works, such as
Japanese PlayBoy and YouTube Live Tokyo would allow us to draw the conclusion that Magibon was, much like Philly D and iJustine,
attempting to cement herself in Internet history,
whether intentional or not
While she seemed to be at her peak during this point in time, not all would be sunshine and rainbows
Magibon during this time had a
peculiar online stalker so it seemed
A user by the name of Frank would launch an ominous website with the URL magibon.com and
here we would find disturbing videos about his endless obsession with the star
Allegedly, he had attempted to contact Magibon in real life
However, his attempts were futile. Out of spite, he would proceed to launch...
...this
(Reading from screen) "I am Frank. Without your eyes I can't be blessed.
Let magpies pick my worm-rid soul and claim the two that others coined for when we three and four are joined.
Seven's secret will ne'er to be told
What's to come is still unsure. In delay, there lies no plenty. We'll count your crookeds sweet-and-twenty; youth's a stuff will not endure
You'll be my Magdalena beating, journeys end in lovers meeting."
Frank would make three other videos for Magibon, which we'll get to shortly
However, I wanted to point out that many of the lines that he uses in this video are taken from the Shakespearean poem Twelfth Night
Strangely in the poem, the two characters in question are a jester by the name of Feste and his mistress, Olivia
The line "Journeys end in lovers meeting" is a reference to the pair falling in endless
love. Whether in this situation Frank is actually married or is just attempting to be poetic in his disturbing romance is unclear
However, I just thought that'd be an interesting tidbit to note
Now, video 4 here just says "I'm sorry" and there's really nothing more to it
Before we proceed and take a look at the other two videos, I wanted to make a note here
real fast that the two uploads on the website itself are actually the third and fourth ones that Frank had created for her
For some reason, 1 & 2 were taken down but, luckily for us, have been archived on the Internet
So, backing up here, what do videos 1 & 2 even show?
Let's take a look
So here we can see our alleged Frank in a gas mask
He seems to be in a room with Magibon's videos playing on a projector
The text that pops up states things such as "I want Magibon" and "Yaranaika",
accompanied by a disturbing drawing of himself next to a crudely drawn representation of her
After looking into the "yaranaika" quote I came across a Japanese manga by the name of "Kuso Miso
Technique", also known as "Shit Soup Technique" (slight laugh) in translation
Apparently, the term is the opening catchphrase, which translates to "Shall we do it?"
So, with this and the Shakespeare quote,
apparently our Frank here is cultured enough to reference these various works of art
So, is he being serious?
At the time, many that came across this feared for Magibon's safety and well-being as this guy clearly seemed to have a
disturbing obsession with her
Video 2 is a bit longer, spanning just over two minutes rather than 36 seconds
In this, we can see Frank introduced himself as the person in the gas mask and if we pause at the 36 second mark in this
one, we can see him writing out the very same text that we found in the captions of video 3
Afterwards, we can notice much of the same disturbing types of imagery that we've seen prior
Take a look:
So here, instead of being in a room with a large projector playing Magibon's videos,
he's in front of multiple monitors and appears to rub his hands on her face in a very strange manner
Now, with all the content that we've covered here on Nexpo, we've seen editing with creepy ARGs like this before
In fact,
It's pretty commonplace nowadays to find YouTube channels that
exhibit the same style and editing practices, but back then this kind of content was very few and far between
Strangely, this lasted for a couple years, and to his dismay, Magibon continued to ignore it
In 2014 though, Magibon ceased to upload on her channel
Her final video was released on November 18th of that year and, out of nowhere, she would vanish from the platform without a trace
Now wait a minute, I know you may be wondering "Okay Nexpo. What the hell even is this? Did she die?
Is she still around? What happened?"
Thankfully, no she didn't die
She's still around and actively posts on her Instagram and Twitter accounts @magibon2015
and apparently is happily married and is doing pretty well for herself. So,
she's doing okay. She's not dead and everything blew over
Now, what about Frank? Who is this guy and what was this all about?
After doing some digging through Reddit and various other archive websites, it turns out that Frank actually isn't named Frank at all
Apparently he's a digital art student by the name of Joakim Danung
Back then, his main goal is to create a social experiment on all of us to determine just how many website views he could amass
off of the success of another online personality
According to a post by him on a now-defunct website called net-art, Joakim directly owns up to the act,
claiming that it's an artifact that's entirely an experiment in memetics. It exploits the mystery of the bizarrely popular YouTube video blogger
MRirian, also known as Magibon. He then goes forth to claim that, being an experiment,
the project is presented in two parts. On one hand,
there is Frank and his fictional films. On the other, there is documentation of the outcome, which you're looking at
After over 90,000 visitors and being linked to and discussed on a myriad of blogs, forums, and mail services
it's necessary to attempt an overview of the effect based on server statistics,
along with collected samples of Internet debate and inspired video
reinterpretations, this documentation interface aims to summarize and deliver the general idea
Looking back it's safe to say that Joakim's project ended up being a success since, when Googling the term Magibon,
his website is among the top search results
Interestingly, I feel like this, whether intentional or not, has spawned influence on the many ARGs and web series that we have today
Although Magibon's content was mysterious within its own rights, I find it interesting that, in this case,
we have different layers of what we could find creepy with her. I feel that, in this day and age, putting yourself out there is
so commonplace now that we don't exactly consider the repercussions that it could have on someone
Magibon was likely pretty damn disturbed by this back then, and honestly,
I don't blame her. This all happened nearly a decade ago,
way back when putting your face out there seemed much more unorthodox and rare
The Wild West days of YouTube are an enigma, and it's safe to say that I'm glad Magibon made it through this and is
doing well for herself
You may have seen my stalker video from last year and I can attest, no matter how serious our humorous the intention is,
it's definitely not something that's fun to deal with
Anyway, with that we wrap up the tale of Magibon's online stalker. Ironically,
this is my first video of being on camera, and to close, I'd like to ask you guys:
What do you think? Do you like this on/off camera format or should I just stick to narration? I don't know
I really want to become more personable with you guys and after a year and a half of doing just narration only I
feel like it's time to shake it up. So I'd love to hear what you think. Anyway, to wrap this up,
thank you guys for joining me in this investigation of Magibon's online stalker. I hope you enjoyed this
I'll see you in the next one. I love you all, and good night