Margaret Pless recently wrote a story about the Kiwi Farms, wailing and gnashing her teeth at how they are Hitler or something, and judging by what I’ve seen on Twitter, over half the people mad them (almost all of them have threads on the Farms as well) are trying to one up each other in outrage over how much they hate the Kiwis.

And, to my amusement, a bunch of Ghazi members joined in on the hate-on for the Kiwis, did a bunch of white knighting of Christine nee Christian Weston Chandler, and virtue signaled about how they used to be assholes who laughed at Chris but are now free of sin, repent of their earlier callousness, praise the Lord, they are free at last, and other such nonsense bitter assholes who want to hypocritically claim they aren’t shitheads are wont to do.

Ghazi trying to pretend they don’t do what the Kiwis do, except the only difference is that they sneer and hiss at who they consider lolcows on Reddit.

Because I find hypocrisy hilarious, I’m going to go through Pless’ article and add my own commentary, given I too have written about the Kiwis at length myself.

(My words in regular font, the article in italics)

We live in the age of the virtual pillory. Across communities like YouGotPosted, the revenge-porn hub/blackmailing scheme, or 8chan’s doxxing and raid board, whose server Fredrick Brennan conveniently formatted after its admin was caught selling Social Security numbers, or Gamergate, the “cringe-worthy breakup story” that became a self-sustaining witch hunt against women in tech, a highly recognizable positive feedback loop of abuse and harassment plays out: A target gets dragged into the public eye, more people begin to abuse them, and that abuse escalates as individual trolls try to one-up each other. In the eyes of the mob, the target’s life is a game, and the object is to screw it up as much as possible.

And here we have a lede that basically telegraphs where Pless is going with this article, the Kiwi Farms are just as horrible as the aforementioned assholes she spill spaghetti over, and while she actually isn’t entirely wrong, she, much like Ryulong (who has a thread on the Kiwi Farms and whom I’ve personally debated on RationalWiki) believes her audience is so stupid she has to tell them in advance to hate the target of her article instead of being confident the facts will lead them to that conclusion.

And before we go on, the conclusion of this paragraph is just fine when it’s someone people like Pless hate being put through this shit, but it’s bad when other people do it, but as I said, I find the hypocrisy (given Pless herself has tried to smear and dox people she believes worthy of pillory via her journalistic outlets) amusing.

The largest virtual pillory, and the one that best exemplifies its ethos, is Kiwi Farms, a loose community — centered on a forum and two wikis, with some activity on Tumblr, Twitter, Steam, and “lolcow” chan boards — that specializes in harassing people they perceive as being mentally ill or sexually deviant in some way.

Pless, to her credit, is not entirely wrong on the Kiwi Farms and its affiliated wikis, they are related entities. Of course, she’s wrong on the others aside from having a similar goal, but to someone like Pless all these places laughing at people on the internet bleed together into a gigantic conspiracy against Pless and everyone she likes, which is showing how Pless is utterly ignorant of how /cow/ on 8chan and the Kiwi Farms have a mutual disdain for each other despite covering many of the same topics, but then again, Pless is clearly writing this for outrage incitement, not to show she did serious research, or so it seems given I have done the legwork she apparently has not.

She’s also correct on how many “lolcows” are mentally ill and sexually deviant. I personally had to deal with a few of these people, and yes, mentally ill sexual deviants covers a lot of their problems rather well. As for harassing, she’s mostly full of shit, given that they generally stay on their corner of the internet and just laugh their asses off at stupid people, much like the r/drama subreddit on Reddit.

Granted, this is not uniformly true, some of these places don’t have as much restraint (I know, I was at ground zero when /cow/ decided to fuck with a lolcow on a few wikis I edited on), but the Kiwi Farms does have a formal rule AGAINST these sorts of interventions, with anyone who defies such sanctions becoming a target themselves, a fact Pless omits, but then again, the writing I am critiquing is rather poor on nuances, but I digress.

The origins of Kiwi Farms lie, as you might expect, on 4chan. In late 2007, Sonichu, a homemade comic-book series mixing the Sonic and Pokémon franchises, came to the attention of the anarchic, anonymous message board’s video-games community, /v/. Sonichu was the work of a self-described “artist, gamer and creative type” named Christine Weston Chandler — later dubbed, using the honorific attached to anyone unfortunate enough to come to the attention of 4chan, “Chris-chan.”

Pless omits the fact Christine used to be a male named Christian, before a legal name change, a fact Chris-chan has made public, but that’s somewhat immaterial. Otherwise, this is generally correct.

Sonichu provided an unwittingly revealing look into Chandler’s life and fantasy world. Users on /v/ responded by mocking the art and its creator immediately. To them, Chandler was asking for harassment by putting the comics online. Within days of “discovering” Chris-chan, a profile about her was posted on Encyclopedia Dramatica, the wiki of record for 4chan and similar communities. After pleading with ED’s admins to remove the page, Chandler started vandalizing it, establishing an abuse/reaction cycle in which the reward for provoking her was more fodder for the mob.

And this is where Pless is utterly ignorant, so I’ll fill in blanks she omits. Chris-chan was, back in those days, an idiot with no filter or common sense (not the case in modern day), and didn’t understand the world would not be all loving and the internet is filled with shitheads and assholes who are shitheads and assholes for the mere sake of being pricks, and when the ED crap began, Chris stupidly tried to get ED to quit mocking him, which is foolish, this is something ED refuses to do since that goes against their entire point, and when Chris started vandalizing, he just gave them more reason to dig in their heels. And Pless omits how Chris could have ended the shitstorm by conceding defeat and walking away at any time, but because Chandler was ignorant of how to deal with trolls, it only got worse.

PROTIP: DON’T FEED TROLLS, IT MEANS THEY WIN.

(if Pless happens to read this, this is good advice, spread it around to your friends, and I mean that with no sarcasm, I want to help)

Kiwi Farms (whose name wasn’t coined until 2014) grew out of the groups who harassed Chris-chan in 2007 — but it’s obsessed with Chris-chan in way the original groups no longer are, and as a result its parent communities hold KF in (mostly mutual) disdain. KF’s first wiki, “the CWCki,” was created because users felt Chandler’s page on Encyclopedia Dramatica wasn’t detailed or accurate enough. Since 2008, every drawing, video blog, tweet, Facebook post, eBay listing, Etsy item, and PSN purchase Chandler makes has been archived on the CWCki and exhaustively discussed on the forums. During this time, various accounts of hers have been hacked, and the leaked data hosted on the CWCki. A whole coterie of KF members have also pretended to be Chandler’s friends and romantic partners in order to con Chandler into giving them more embarrassing content (photos, videos, drawings, etc.), which are then used to torment her. In the most extreme instance of this, they goaded a 13-year-old boy into masquerading as a 19-year-old girl in order to have phone sex with Chandler (and record it, of course).

Allow me to fill in a few more blanks Pless omits. The Kiwi Farms was originally called the CWCki Farms, but the name was changed to be easier to pronounce. Pless is correct about how the Farms obsessively document every aspect of Chris’ life. However, here are a few things she glosses over or gets wrong.

Yes, some accounts Chris had were compromised due to poor security and co-opted by trolls, however, the phone sex incident was done by a troll named Bluespike, and was NOT generally sanctioned or condoned at the time. In fact, many thought it was quite disturbing, over the line, and to this day most consider it a line too far. The fake girlfriend trolling though it quite accurate as described, though Pless omits that in modern day such tomfoolery is generally frowned upon and Chris is too paranoid to fall for it these days.

It doesn’t just stay online, either. KFers show up in real life to document Chris-chan’s court appearances, to photograph the Chandlers’ residence from the street, or to surreptitiously photograph Chandler herself in public places. Over the course of eight years, they’ve contacted Chandler, her pastor, and her parents, posing as journalists, former classmates, psychiatrists, potential business partners, and others, in the hopes these ruses yield more confidential info. Twice, female KFers arranged real-life dates with Chandler, both of whom used fake names and wore wires to record these outings. Packages and letters are routinely sent to Chandler’s residence, many of which contain obscene materials designed to unsettle the recipients. In one instance, someone sent prostitutes to visit Chandler’s house, then called the family to taunt them about it.

In this, Pless states a mix of truth and glosses over important information. Showing up to a courtroom procedure is legal under US law for the public to view, and photographing a private residence is not illegal so long as no trespass occurs in the process. Pless is correct on how many of Chandler’s associates have been contacted via various means and venues, and to some degree is correct about the parcels sent to the Chandler home, though some were harmless, like video games, and even a care package or two was sent in times of crisis (like when the Chandler home burned down), though some obscene materials were sent by those with less than honorable motives as well by others. The fake date information is fairly accurate, and the prostitute incident is also fairly accurate to known fact about the incident in question.

Chandler is far from the only “lolcow” to be targeted by KF. If anything, Kiwi Farms has been a victim of its own terrifying “success,” and attracted way more would-be trolls than its Ur-victim could possibly respond to. (Strewn about the KF forums and the CWCki are paradoxical admonitions to not contact Chandler, and to not organize trolling plans on the forums, in part because if too many idiots start calling the Chandler residence to yell memes at her elderly mom, she may go on hiatus again, depriving KFers of their entertainment.) For this reason, the community encourages would-be trolls to stalk other people with the same vigor, in the hopes that some of them might prove to be as “entertaining.” The selection of new marks goes through a specified process on Kiwi Farms. Judging by the people they stalk the most, Kiwi Farms preferentially selects those they perceive as mentally defective or sexually deviant in some way for their virtual pillory.

Again, more fact and glossed over information. Yes, they do have admonitions to NOT contact Chandler directly, which are not always obeyed, and some happen because not everyone can abide by the informal covenants they set forth, that’s a little thing called “free will” and “human nature” at work, but the reasons for this are stated accurately, they do want to be entertained. Pless also doesn’t seem to understand, except in a shallow sense, they don’t select people at random and zero in on the mentally ill and sexually deviant in the process, it more they find the nails that stick up by themselves and go from there, and generally, those parties tend to be mentally ill and sexually deviant.

In short, this isn’t a calculated process of considered cruelty, it’s more “look at this deviant weirdo I noticed [insert here], let’s point and laugh”

The Kiwi Farms community is obsessed with its own warped ideas about mental illness. Its justification for picking on Chandler, such as it is, has always been her perceived mental illness — first, for being autistic, and, in later years, for being transgender. That her disability is severe enough to qualify her for SSI benefits is, to her detractors, just another reason to hate her. Everyone KF targets is “crazy” to them, and everything KFers find funny or worthy of disdain is justified as evidence of this perceived mental illness. “Crazy” is both a catchall justification for anything they feel like paying attention to, and the reason KFers will indulge themselves with lengthy armchair diagnoses about their targets.

As an autistic person who has sought treatment for anxiety related disorders, Pless has a shallow yet mostly accurate view of how the Kiwis see others, they tend to throw around the term autism and make disparaging remarks on the mental health of the people they laugh at quite often, though she omits the fact they often do this to themselves as well, freely admitting they are a community of varying degrees of mental health laughing at other people of varying degrees of mental health, and they have at times shown appropriate seriousness on the topics of mental health, even being willing to contact proper authorities to head off certain lolcows attempts to commit suicide, and they were even partially responsible for the incarceration of at least one sex offender named Nick Bate who had a plethora of issues, so they are not a totally malicious group of asshats, they do possess some level of reason and civic responsibility.

As for Chandler, Pless is doing some severe whitewashing of fact here. Chris was put on SSI due to the efforts of the now late Bob Chandler, who assumed Chris would never be able to hold down regular employment despite having graduated college and being just functional enough that with proper treatment could live a somewhat functioning life (which Chris never received), and a lot of the scorn goes towards Chris well documented frittering away of money on video games, sex toys, and other nonsense instead of spending on more important things like food, clothing, living expenses, and so on. Pless is however correct on how many Kiwis play armchair psychologist, it part of their site culture to do so and to bitch at them for this is like whining because someones breathes.

The guys at r/drama laugh at people who cause drama, the people at r/gamerghazi have a bitter hatred of anything GamerGate related, and the Kiwis have their own circlejerk of pointing and laughing at eccentric people while speculating about their mental health.

Basically, it’s what they do.

Their deep and abiding scorn for people with mental illnesses leads them to classify anyone they target as mentally ill, and to focus their energy on those who appear most vulnerable. Those people tend to be minorities, women, LGBT people, or kinksters. Victims who exhibit mental strain as a result of being hounded by KFers are subject to a redoubling of efforts, in the hopes they can precipitate a breakdown. To date, one target has killed herself after being featured on Kiwi Farms, after which KF’s admin posted a note exonerating the users and forum from any responsibility for her suicide.

And here is where Pless is mostly bullshitting. They DO cover many eccentrics in the groups they mention, as well as MRAs, Nazis, all sorts of white people who are lolcows…..they do not play favorites. Hell, they will even go after each other if a member becomes such a drama llama it’s becomes more entertaining to laugh at them.

If someone they cover notices or becomes aware of their Kiwi Farm thread, Pless is correct, they do bait them, knowing they are reading what they posting, and they do laugh when the party in question reacts badly, because it ENTERTAINING. Then again, Pless has no room to complain given how she has tried to bait various GamerGate related parties she hates so she can further goad them into anger, a fact she conveniently omits.

As for the suicide she mentions, that party committed suicide for a plethora of reasons the Kiwi Farms had no hand in, and the Kiwis, as mentioned earlier, try to PREVENT people from committing suicide (it cuts off the entertainment flow, since dead people can’t be lolcows), and they have no culpability in that suicide because, after reading their thread on the topic and looking up the facts, the party in question was suicidal for reasons the members of the Farms had no control over and likely would have killed themselves in any case, a regrettable outcome they would have, by their own ethos, done what they could to prevent had it been possible.

The doth-protest-too-much tone of obsessive stalkers scornfully describing their victims as crazy isn’t lost on Kiwi Farmers. There’s a term for those who embarrass the larger community by revealing their own eccentricities: “A-Logs.” It’s named after a former member, Anthony “A-Log” Logatto, who drew attention to himself by furiously comparing Chris-chan to Hitler. Logatto’s malicious diatribes about Chandler got him banned and rebranded as a fit mark for trolling, with those most annoyed with him leading the vanguard. After finding and investigating Logatto’s furry-porn collection and My Life As a Teenage Robot fanfiction, KF’s consensus was that A-Log hated Chris-chan because she reminded Logatto of himself — or, to put it in their terms, A-Log was “the second Chris-chan.” Consequently, KF harassed their A-Log using the same methods they perfected on Chandler, including a spinoff “Logattopedia.”

In this, Pless cites a lot of fact, too much so, basically putting Logatto’s foibles and indiscretions on public display again, opening him up to MORE scorn and ridicule by any interested troll, an error I would think she should have done her best to refrain from if possible, given her apparent disdain for such activity, but what’s done is done. Otherwise, she is right on the concept of “A-Logging” in most particulars.

The truth is, I think it might be A-Logs all the way down.

In fairness to Pless, she might be right on that. And, based on what the Kiwis think in reaction to Pless’ article on their thread for reactions to the Farms, they concur to an extent.

It isn’t a stretch to imagine that KF members are acting out of the same insecurity that motivated A-Log; that by ridiculing those they perceive as mentally ill or sexually deviant, KFers feel functional and successful by comparison. By putting these people up on their forums, they reject the notion that they themselves might share anything in common with their targets. And that works, so long as everyone remains anonymous and pretends not to care too much either way. A-Logs put the lie to the rationalizations that make Kiwi Farms a comfortably consumable entertainment product.

This is pure opinion, but in fairness to Pless, it’s not entirely without merit, and even the Farms occasionally indulges this opinion as a possibility with a degree of truth.

Consider that across the forums there are multiple warnings to members to conceal their identity. For KFers, anonymity isn’t a choice but a necessity — they know what they’re doing is probably illegal, and that their anonymity insulates them from any consequences. They know their “entertainment” harms vulnerable people, which is why some of them felt bad when that one target hanged herself. But, most important, they know that if their anonymity were compromised, their own community might eat them alive.

The conclusion is filled with pure whining. The Kiwis sensibly know anonymity is their best defense against being targets of trolling themselves, and no, what they do is, for the most part, entirely legal, at least under most jurisdictions I’m aware of. Morally, it is somewhat reprehensible under most definitions, depending on your point of view, but if talking shit about the public actions of anyone who does stupid things is LEGALLY wrong, then every forum on the internet needs to be shut down, including places like Twitter and Reddit. She DOES concede the Kiwis have some level of conscience (they are human beings too) though, and she does end with an unintended truth she might wish to pay heed, since she had a thread on the Farms as well.

“If you don’t want to be the target of people laughing at you, don’t do stupid shit in public, especially under an identity that could compromise your personal life”

NOTE: A few mistakes were fixed after publication such as an erroneous comment about 8chan and r/drama being on the same site, I meant to say r/drama was on Reddit.