Do you really believe someone should lose their job for posting a 13/50 meme? I know what 13/50 refers to but I've never seen it in a meme. Are they bad enough someone should lose their job?
So, I just wanted to speak out a trans person, and a former user of Kiwi Farms. I don't want this to be a 'kiwi bad' post exactly, because there are good people that I met there who I'm still friends with to this day, but I think the idea I see going around that the website is 'edgy but mostly harmless' is missing the mark.
The information compiled on Kiwi Farms can be useful if you take the time to properly vet it, but it cannot be trusted because the users on that website do not prioritize the truth, they prioritize entertainment first and foremost.
If the truth is not entertaining, they will look for a way to spin it in an entertaining way.
If they can't twist the truth into an entertaining narrative, they will drop it.
If they find evidence that contradicts a more entertaining narrative, they will ignore it.
I've seen this happen first hand, even participated in it at times. The way the site operates is not conductive to nuanced understanding, and fosters a hyperbolic alarmism, all while posting the subject's legal name and address for anyone who wants to enact some vigilante justice on the person that the forum is swearing up and down is a child abusing pedophile.
Moreover, this contributes a dangerous narrative that has historically attempted to link LGBT people intrinsically with pedophilia in order to vilify the community as a whole. This is not harmless, and it shouldn't be tolerated.
Thanks for the level-headed take. It’s refreshing to see an opinion that acknowledges KF was a TMZ-tier, drama-mongering, dingy back alley for catty, obsessive assholes (I say this as a catty, obsessive asshole myself) without painting every single member as a Nazi.
If you’ll let me indulge in rambling for a moment, the events of this past week have had me reflecting on what started my KF lurking. It was an artist known as GlitchedPuppet, formerly Purple Kecleon. GP was a really popular artist in the Pokemon community and also had success in the MLP and furry fandom. Around 2014 accusations came forward that GP was abusive and their husband (now divorced), Marl, had been grooming minors and trying to get them into bestiality. GP was able to shut these down on places like Twitter and Tumblr because they had power in the communities where the accusations were most relevant (i.e. fandoms where GP and their posse hung out). Their fans dog-piled on the accusers, called them liars/attention whores, and effectively drove them into silence. This was helped in part by GP threatening legal action against an ex who confirmed that Marl was a zoophile who liked to groom people into committing sexual acts with his German Shepherd.
The Kiwi Farms thread for GlitchedPuppet ended up being one of the only places online (or maybe it was the only place) where those who had been victimized by Marl as kids could publicly say what had happened to them without being pressured to shut up. Instead of getting waves of hate, they were surrounded by people who told them “I believe you, and I’m sorry.” It was because KF was one of the few places where their abusers did not have power, where people did not feel a need to toe the line just so they could stay financially stable in fandom spaces. Not even Encyclopedia Dramatica had a place to talk about GP & Co., allegedly because GP’s girlfriend Eevee had connections with some of the higher ups.
Come the summer of 2018, one of the victims was able to recover chat logs that proved everything they’d been saying. They even proved GP knew Marl was a zoophile when they were threatening to sue the ex who spoke up. Marl was reported to the police. No action taken, sadly, as happens too often in these stories. GP’s reputation was destroyed. For years GP floundered, trying to make themself out to be the real victim of the whole situation (especially after the divorce), but their army of fans had abandoned them. Nowadays they spiral into irrelevancy on Discord servers where only the most die-hard of sycophants can tolerate them.
I wonder if that would have ever happened if the victims didn’t have a place that supported them and gave them a platform to speak up for themselves.
I’m not implying KF has never victimized anybody themselves, or that the GP story somehow absolves the forum of the victimization it inflicts. It just sucks to think that some abused kids had to go to a damn drama forum of all places to be given a fair shake. That so-called predominantly progressive, #BelieveAllVictims places like Tumblr and Twitter were worse for a pair of child grooming survivors than a place where 41% jokes and hard r N-words are impossible to dodge. With the internet coalescing more and more into a handful of sites, making it easier than ever for abusers to hold wide swaths of power, I wonder where the next group of abuse survivors are gonna have to go to be heard.
Great article, I particularly liked the part where you posed the question about what all lolcows have in common. If Keffals wasn't trans and still acted the same way, they'd still be in this exact situation (minus the tens of thousands of dollars they've grifted on gofundme).
What makes a great lolcow is their inability to learn anything, and Keffals fits that description perfectly.
I'm a trans person who uses kiwifarms, and I think you've really expressed a lot of the feelings I have about this whole thing.
Kiwifarms absolutely had some awful shit. I tended to avoid the threads that were about trans people, because I didnt like seeing it. What I didnt avoid were the threads on legitimately harmful people. I'll proudly admit (anonymously, lol) that I doxed a handful of pedophiles, abusers, and a zoophile during the zoosadist leaks a few years ago. You'd think the crowd who's always shouting stuff like 'shoot your local pedophile' would have appreciated that part of the site and saw it's worth, but I guess not.
KF also helped people. There was a thread on a woman who posted insane videos on her Youtube and Facebook. She was an actual child abuser, and is delusional and violent. She started targeting her sister, and KF helped her sister gather evidence to take to court for a restraining order. KF also just supported the sister in general. People gave her advise, listened to her talk about her day, and reached out when they realized the sister had violated her restraining order. I worry about her, the sister posting on KiwiFarms. I hope she's ok.
Team Kiwi here, I am a toxic shitty person, but I don't wish harm or death on anyone. I don't care about people's sexual preferences. I cared about documenting and gossiping about weird people on the internet.
Taylor, you've written a wonderful article that I think hits the nail on the head. Much love to you.
Its members are not toxic sludge or abominable, but NORMAL.
The people it milks are often abnormal, but more importantly, deeply narcissistic, desiring to always be in the spotlight.
So spotlight will be provided for them - just not in the way they desire ;)
Societies need to have social norms, and that means that some people will remain on the MARGINS, outside the norm. Either it's the trains&allies, or the NORMAL people on KF and the victims of so many other deplatforming attempts.
Solid points. It's much more nuanced than just having the right to scream the N word on the Internet. If Kiwifarms goes down, other sites will follow, until the useful idiots like Keffals become no longer useful and they too get sanitized.
Precedents are being set now that could spell bad news for the Internet as a whole. The same logic that is being applied to Kiwifarms can very well be applied to blogs, news sites that do not follow the "correct" thinking, and actual attempts from authoritarian countries in breaking apart the Internet into smaller, regional internets. If you happen to live in such a country, you're shit out of luck if they decide to come for you.
I have not had a single positive interaction with a trans person over the internet. All the trans people I have known personally were extremely mentally ill and social grafter's, manipulators of the worst kind.
Trans hormones bring out the worst of both sexes in people who taken them. You get the hyper-masculine aggressiveness of men, but without any of the bro code or any of the fight, forgive, forget motto that men live by. You also get the hyper jealousy and insidiousness of women, as well as their emotional impulses. This creates the perfect machine for evil.
There are many non trans people who share biological make-up like this, such as white pasty soy boys who make up most of the twitter crowd. Low testosterone in men has been linked to leftist ideology and more emotional responses.
For some reason, this emotional behavior has been normalized and accepted. I think that it is encouraged even, by the regulating powers. People like Keffals exist because of systematic censorship of ideas. There is huge opposition to him, yet they are all banned, fact checked, ratioed or shadowbanned out of existence.
this is obviously not fucking good and I hope the wizards of the 2030's manage to fix this issue.
Taylor Lorenz and Keffals are both utterly pathetic.
Who the hell is Taylor Stuckey?
Do you really believe someone should lose their job for posting a 13/50 meme? I know what 13/50 refers to but I've never seen it in a meme. Are they bad enough someone should lose their job?
So, I just wanted to speak out a trans person, and a former user of Kiwi Farms. I don't want this to be a 'kiwi bad' post exactly, because there are good people that I met there who I'm still friends with to this day, but I think the idea I see going around that the website is 'edgy but mostly harmless' is missing the mark.
The information compiled on Kiwi Farms can be useful if you take the time to properly vet it, but it cannot be trusted because the users on that website do not prioritize the truth, they prioritize entertainment first and foremost.
If the truth is not entertaining, they will look for a way to spin it in an entertaining way.
If they can't twist the truth into an entertaining narrative, they will drop it.
If they find evidence that contradicts a more entertaining narrative, they will ignore it.
I've seen this happen first hand, even participated in it at times. The way the site operates is not conductive to nuanced understanding, and fosters a hyperbolic alarmism, all while posting the subject's legal name and address for anyone who wants to enact some vigilante justice on the person that the forum is swearing up and down is a child abusing pedophile.
Moreover, this contributes a dangerous narrative that has historically attempted to link LGBT people intrinsically with pedophilia in order to vilify the community as a whole. This is not harmless, and it shouldn't be tolerated.
Thanks for the level-headed take. It’s refreshing to see an opinion that acknowledges KF was a TMZ-tier, drama-mongering, dingy back alley for catty, obsessive assholes (I say this as a catty, obsessive asshole myself) without painting every single member as a Nazi.
If you’ll let me indulge in rambling for a moment, the events of this past week have had me reflecting on what started my KF lurking. It was an artist known as GlitchedPuppet, formerly Purple Kecleon. GP was a really popular artist in the Pokemon community and also had success in the MLP and furry fandom. Around 2014 accusations came forward that GP was abusive and their husband (now divorced), Marl, had been grooming minors and trying to get them into bestiality. GP was able to shut these down on places like Twitter and Tumblr because they had power in the communities where the accusations were most relevant (i.e. fandoms where GP and their posse hung out). Their fans dog-piled on the accusers, called them liars/attention whores, and effectively drove them into silence. This was helped in part by GP threatening legal action against an ex who confirmed that Marl was a zoophile who liked to groom people into committing sexual acts with his German Shepherd.
The Kiwi Farms thread for GlitchedPuppet ended up being one of the only places online (or maybe it was the only place) where those who had been victimized by Marl as kids could publicly say what had happened to them without being pressured to shut up. Instead of getting waves of hate, they were surrounded by people who told them “I believe you, and I’m sorry.” It was because KF was one of the few places where their abusers did not have power, where people did not feel a need to toe the line just so they could stay financially stable in fandom spaces. Not even Encyclopedia Dramatica had a place to talk about GP & Co., allegedly because GP’s girlfriend Eevee had connections with some of the higher ups.
Come the summer of 2018, one of the victims was able to recover chat logs that proved everything they’d been saying. They even proved GP knew Marl was a zoophile when they were threatening to sue the ex who spoke up. Marl was reported to the police. No action taken, sadly, as happens too often in these stories. GP’s reputation was destroyed. For years GP floundered, trying to make themself out to be the real victim of the whole situation (especially after the divorce), but their army of fans had abandoned them. Nowadays they spiral into irrelevancy on Discord servers where only the most die-hard of sycophants can tolerate them.
I wonder if that would have ever happened if the victims didn’t have a place that supported them and gave them a platform to speak up for themselves.
I’m not implying KF has never victimized anybody themselves, or that the GP story somehow absolves the forum of the victimization it inflicts. It just sucks to think that some abused kids had to go to a damn drama forum of all places to be given a fair shake. That so-called predominantly progressive, #BelieveAllVictims places like Tumblr and Twitter were worse for a pair of child grooming survivors than a place where 41% jokes and hard r N-words are impossible to dodge. With the internet coalescing more and more into a handful of sites, making it easier than ever for abusers to hold wide swaths of power, I wonder where the next group of abuse survivors are gonna have to go to be heard.
Great article, I particularly liked the part where you posed the question about what all lolcows have in common. If Keffals wasn't trans and still acted the same way, they'd still be in this exact situation (minus the tens of thousands of dollars they've grifted on gofundme).
What makes a great lolcow is their inability to learn anything, and Keffals fits that description perfectly.
I'm a trans person who uses kiwifarms, and I think you've really expressed a lot of the feelings I have about this whole thing.
Kiwifarms absolutely had some awful shit. I tended to avoid the threads that were about trans people, because I didnt like seeing it. What I didnt avoid were the threads on legitimately harmful people. I'll proudly admit (anonymously, lol) that I doxed a handful of pedophiles, abusers, and a zoophile during the zoosadist leaks a few years ago. You'd think the crowd who's always shouting stuff like 'shoot your local pedophile' would have appreciated that part of the site and saw it's worth, but I guess not.
KF also helped people. There was a thread on a woman who posted insane videos on her Youtube and Facebook. She was an actual child abuser, and is delusional and violent. She started targeting her sister, and KF helped her sister gather evidence to take to court for a restraining order. KF also just supported the sister in general. People gave her advise, listened to her talk about her day, and reached out when they realized the sister had violated her restraining order. I worry about her, the sister posting on KiwiFarms. I hope she's ok.
thanks for the article. it almost felt like everything thats been running through my head since clara took credit for destinys ban being verbalized.
i hope you dont get too much flag.
(and thanks from my mom and my aunt. because both dont use the internet. and i had trouble explaining) xD
Team Kiwi here, I am a toxic shitty person, but I don't wish harm or death on anyone. I don't care about people's sexual preferences. I cared about documenting and gossiping about weird people on the internet.
Taylor, you've written a wonderful article that I think hits the nail on the head. Much love to you.
I'm here from the farms and I have to say that I really like your article, it is well structured and factual.
In the light of the truth no one, no matter where on the trans-issue spectrum they are, can overlook
how much Keffals has been hurting the cause of trans people with their actions.
I hope that many other people see this and actually take the time to read, hopefully you don't get too
much flak for the article, though there is the saying,
"If you're taking heavy flak you are probably above the target."
No, KF dindu nuffin wrong.
Its members are not toxic sludge or abominable, but NORMAL.
The people it milks are often abnormal, but more importantly, deeply narcissistic, desiring to always be in the spotlight.
So spotlight will be provided for them - just not in the way they desire ;)
Societies need to have social norms, and that means that some people will remain on the MARGINS, outside the norm. Either it's the trains&allies, or the NORMAL people on KF and the victims of so many other deplatforming attempts.
Solid points. It's much more nuanced than just having the right to scream the N word on the Internet. If Kiwifarms goes down, other sites will follow, until the useful idiots like Keffals become no longer useful and they too get sanitized.
Precedents are being set now that could spell bad news for the Internet as a whole. The same logic that is being applied to Kiwifarms can very well be applied to blogs, news sites that do not follow the "correct" thinking, and actual attempts from authoritarian countries in breaking apart the Internet into smaller, regional internets. If you happen to live in such a country, you're shit out of luck if they decide to come for you.
This is a certified Lucas Roberts banger of a news article. Good job!
very based article
The single best and only honest take on the kiwifarms vs Keffals incident to date. Well done.
I have not had a single positive interaction with a trans person over the internet. All the trans people I have known personally were extremely mentally ill and social grafter's, manipulators of the worst kind.
Trans hormones bring out the worst of both sexes in people who taken them. You get the hyper-masculine aggressiveness of men, but without any of the bro code or any of the fight, forgive, forget motto that men live by. You also get the hyper jealousy and insidiousness of women, as well as their emotional impulses. This creates the perfect machine for evil.
There are many non trans people who share biological make-up like this, such as white pasty soy boys who make up most of the twitter crowd. Low testosterone in men has been linked to leftist ideology and more emotional responses.
For some reason, this emotional behavior has been normalized and accepted. I think that it is encouraged even, by the regulating powers. People like Keffals exist because of systematic censorship of ideas. There is huge opposition to him, yet they are all banned, fact checked, ratioed or shadowbanned out of existence.
this is obviously not fucking good and I hope the wizards of the 2030's manage to fix this issue.