People Twitter

Gather 'round the social media garbage fire children, and let me tell you a tale of the before times...

At the time, having a camera on your phone was a new thing. Phones were for calling/SMS, maybe playing snake if you bought a flagship model. If you wanted good pictures you'd have to spend $200-300 on a digital camera (in 2000 dollars, $400-$600 today) or take a film photograph and have the negatives scanned (drug stores and some retail stores also did film processing).

Very few people had laptops, mostly people who would frequently travel or tech professionals/nerds(same thing, at the time) but most people had a home desktop PC and they would often purchase a separate external camera to use for video chatting on the web; hence, the term: webcam. Since they were not restricted in size by being in a phone, they could use larger sensors and so they typically had a higher quality (but not by much) than phone cameras. Also, image processing was way too heavy of a lift for phone processing hardware, so they often sent the image directly off the sensor while PC webcam software could include basic things like denoising and exposure adjustment.

In order to make images with an effect like Instagram filters, you'd have to use Photoshop and the average person just knew enough to run a web browser and login to myspace. Instead of filters people would use lighting and angles. You've probably heard the term 'myspace angles', this is approximately the era where that term was invented.

All of that being said, Boxxy had a good webcam but she was doing a bit and the overexposure was part of the bit. Evanescence's use is more of an artsy representation of the same mainstream style that Boxxy was parodying.

We also wore an onion on our belt, which was the style at the time.