"HAND THING," uploaded to YouTube on July 13th, 2007, opens with a person in a wig and mask peering around a doorframe. "Shaye?" the character says. "Are you still doing that hand thing?"Cut to Shaye Saint John, supermodel and starlet, in her standard mask and wig, her rigid mannequin arms tapping one atop the other, back and forth.Shaye Saint John videos are the internet's answer to outsider art, and they've been flippantly relegated to just another thing in " that weird part of YouTube." There's no big artist reveal, no studio-backed film adaptation, no corporate sponsorship. She posted videos on YouTube, and then one day, she stopped. Her website looks like it was plucked from 2001, because it was. The "Meet Shaye" page, peppered with GIFs and an autoplaying MIDI, declares: "LONG STORY SHORT…I AM AN ENTERTAINER, I AM A MODEL, I AM A SINGER, I AM A MAGICIAN, I AM AN ACTOR. I AM SO MANY THINGS! I AM ALSO THE WORLDS RECORD HOLDER FOR HAVING THE MOST PROBLEMS!"
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According to Crew, after Fournier's death, a few good people from the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency again) took Shaye into witness protection to keep her from being subjected to more mind control experiments. She's in hiding, but has contacted Crew once, just to let him know she's alive. That fact is solace enough, but Crew hopes that Shaye will reach out to start creating videos again. "It will be a dreadful thing without Eric, but life goes on, and we just do everything in his honor. And Shaye really loved him too."Crew and Fournier worked together for ten years. Crew witnessed Fournier's descent into alcoholism, but it was fast-moving, and unstoppable. "You'll get that sometimes with really brilliantly talented people—really intense. I'll never ever ever forget working with him. He was such a dear friend. We had such an ease working together."It is possible for Shaye to return though, even without Fournier to guide her. "Carl was so involved with the legend of Shaye," Claire tells me, "Is it the kind of thing where you pass the torch? I have weird feelings about that. Obviously, just from pure enjoyment I would love to see something from Shaye again."I don't know—it would be Shaye 2.0. Some alternate version of Shaye. Because Eric is gone."But while Fournier is gone, his artist's hand was so carefully hidden underneath Shaye Saint John, and the character's personality so large, that Crew believes Shaye's identity can live on without him. "Shaye's still alive," Crew told me over the phone, in a hushed, excited whisper. "She's coming back."Kate Davis Jones is on Twitter.On Motherboard: Your Porn Is Watching You