It’s December 29, and 30 minutes into a Twitter Spaces event set to reveal new details about Shiba Inu projects. There’s just one problem - Queenie, the Shiba Inu Discord moderator and unofficial spokesperson, hasn’t been added to speak.
Tweets, Reddit posts, and Discord messages all came in - some more abusive than others - asking her to join the Twitter Space, but she was already there, just waiting for someone to add her in.
This was the introduction for many of the ShibArmy to Queenie, who had been hand-selected for the AMA, and will participate in another Shiba AMA later in February. “The AMA was a trial by fire,” she said. “Look, I won’t mince words. It was a trainwreck at the start.”
Queenie x Shiba Inu
Queenie first joined the ShibArmy during the May peak, after finding an article comparing SHIB to Dogecoin. “I was looking at the price, and quite literally as I bought it, SHIB went straight up to its highest price. At the time, I thought it was just going to go up, and then of course it went down and down and down., but I kept buying. I’ve never sold, I’ve only ever bought in, and even then I don’t buy the dip, I don’t even look at the price.”
She then stumbled across the ShibArmy subreddit, where she was a “FUD-fighter from Day 1”, quelling fears when Vitalik Buterin began donating and burning SHIB. She then found the Discord server and, within a couple of weeks, had made her way up to the moderator role as she continued to answer questions within the server. “The old community manager picked me up, and he said: ‘You’re getting to these questions faster than the mods are.”
From there, Queenie continued to moderate the Shiba Discord server, before gaining outside attention after being chosen as the spokesperson for the December AMA event. The Twitter Spaces suffered from both a lengthy delay as the hosts attempted to add Queenie, who then suffered from her own audio problems. “I had done a test with my setup, and it was fine. I don’t know if it just couldn’t handle that many people, but I went through three headsets and two phones.”
After the AMA concluded, Queenie was hit with a barrage of feedback - both positive and negative. “ I definitely beat myself up about it for a couple of days after. I’ve learned a lot,” she said. “I didn’t know I have a nervous tic of laughter, so that’s good to know.”
One of the most common pieces of feedback she saw questioned why they didn’t get someone older, or a professional speaker, which Queenie pushed back against due to the requirements for the role. “What people miss is that the devs needed someone that they trusted, and that English is my first language, and I was comfortable speaking and doxxing my voice.”
Aside from the feedback, the AMA brought Queenie a newfound level of attention as one of the faces of SHIB. So, beyond SHIB, who is Queenie?
Shiba Inu And Beyond
“I’m not that exciting, I’m just a 23-year-old Aussie,” she said. “It’s not so much that I have things to hide, but more if and when I do doxx myself, I’d rather it be from me in a controlled manner.”
Outside of her Shiba duties, Queenie works as a client manager in superannuation, the Australian equivalent to a 401k, and is working towards a financial planning degree. While somewhat different from the cryptocurrency audience, she says the roles do work together. “When moderating a Discord, my conflict resolution skills and ability to remain calm have been tested but ridiculously strengthened.
“When I went into my new role as a client manager, I felt ‘Oh, this is nothing compared to internet trolls’. I’ve got an old man yelling at me on the phone because the post didn’t deliver his papers. Well, it’s better than 20 people DMing me because they’re upset about the price.”
Looking to the future, Queenie said she is “beyond excited” for the upcoming Shiba Inu games, made in her native country. “ It's a card game and I am a big fan of Hearthstone and Gwent, so when I found out it was going to be a card game, I was stoked. And the previews I’ve seen of the art are something else, they are phenomenal. Catch me on Twitch reigniting my channel to play it.”
As for the other projects on the Shiba Inu roadmap, Queenie was reluctant to pick a favourite. “The reason it's hard to pick is because it would be like asking me to pick between the three devs,” she said, referencing developers Kaal, Eric M, and Shytoshi Kusama. “I just couldn't do that because they all bring something incredible to the space.”
With a new AMA coming up at the end of February, Queenie remains excited, but wanted to stress that people need to have patience. “ At the end of the day, we are all just people who've come together to achieve a common goal,” she said.
“Have some faith and look how far we’ve come. 2021 was just the prologue.”