Today, Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal present the first ever BARPod two-parter in known human history. This duology will chronicle, in exhaustive detail, a calamitous struggle between Kiwi Farms, a gossip board and/or harassment amplifier and/or literal digital version of Hitler’s mountain rereat and/or actual terrorist organization (depending on you ask), and Keffals, a Twitch streamer and trans activist. The story somehow also involves, in no particular order, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Cloudflare, the entire mainstream media, Northern Ireland, Destiny, The Ulster Volunteer Force, The Ulster KiwiFarms Force, “ChudLogic” (?), questionable grooming allegations, unquestionable helping-minors-get-hormones allegations, GoFundMe, mean chat logs, even meaner chat logs, doxxing, harassing, stalking, Ethan Ralph, stealthing, screaming, swatting, and Reply All’s Alex Goldman. (Plus some more stuff in Part 2.)
(CORRECTION VIA COMMENTER: “Small correction on the go fund me targets. The original goal was way lower (30k I think). Everytime the goal was reached, a new goal was set in 10k increments. This article shows the goal at 70k just after they passed 60k in donations. I'm sure the wayback machine will have the original page. https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/twitch-streamer-keffals-left-traumatized-getting-swatted”) (Wayback does confirm this: https://archive.ph/WA0XR)
(POSSIBLY OVER-CAUTIOUS CLARIFICATION FROM JESSE, 9/12/22: We’ll mention this in the next ep but I do want to be crystal clear that there were firearms present at Keffals’ arrest. The London, Ontario Police Chief’s statement noted, “In this case, firearms were displayed until it was determined a threat no longer existed. I acknowledge that for the average citizen, having heavily armed police officers attend your residence would be traumatic. I understand this was a traumatic and shocking experience for Ms. Sorrenti.” And here’s what Keffals told Vice: “They told me to put my hands up, and when I get to the door, there are three police officers,” Sorrenti said. “Two of them were standing up and one of them in the middle was crouched down behind a riot shield with an assault rifle perched on top of the shield.”)
Notes:
Keffals claims to be woken up to an assault rifle in her face, leading to the campaign against KiwiFarms
Keffals claims Julie TerryBerry, David “Near” Ginder, and Chloe Sagal committed suicide as a result of harassment from KiwiFarms (a bit more about this in Part 2)
Keffals with all the food trolls ordered to her house
MTG on Newsmax, talking about her swatting
.MP3 backup
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bwZrWUZKh8nHvOzdkO6gB0ANyGxeDR91/view
Cloudflare’s essay on why they don’t pull support from unpopular websites
https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-approach/
Cloudflare pulls support from an unpopular website
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/03/cloudflare-drops-kiwifarms/
Cloudflare tries to justify pulling the plug on KF
Keffals announces Kiwi Farms was taken down from the Internet Archive
What happens when you try to access any KiwiFarms page on the Internet Archive
https://web.archive.org/web/20220000000000*/kiwifarms.net
A threat made against Keffals by a KF user
Kiwi Farms administrator Joshua “Null” Moon explains the situation
The timeline of the post, according to one Farmer
“This person is not an active member of our community”.
Another user threatens Keffals
KF users’ response to this threat [TOR REQUIRED]
A written threat to Keffals
The paper in question
See for yourself how much KF hates Ethan Ralph [TOR REQUIRED]
Or how much Ralph hates KF and Null
Never have (podcast) heroes
Jesse tries to explain (1/2)
Jesse tries to explain (2/2)
(UPDATE: Jesse was subsequently blocked by Goldmund, then unblocked. The drama continues.)
Keffals taking credit for getting Destiny permabanned from Twitch (but also not?)
Thread archive
Keffals does a little doxxing
Hotwheels does a face-heel (heel-face?) turn, comes out against internet harassment: “@keffals
is engaging in tactics much like those of Kiwi Farmers. She is "optics poison".”
He also exposes Keffals for gloating about telling other people to kill themselves
Keffals hires a private investigator to gather doxx on a latino man, sends him racial slurs, and claims to have made six figures in 2022 prior to her GFM
https://odysee.com/@Winter:7/keffalsblackmaildiscordleak:1
A snapshot of the convo
Keffals herself directing targeted harassment
The thread
Thread archive
Keffals’ incredible OPSEC
Keffals’ story regarding her swatting has changed
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f48HHqp--Pedx1UdtKuGPyIcbTS-mX9u/view
Statement from the London Chief of Police shows she has no legal challenges she’ll be needing money for, she wasn’t misgendered and deadnamed, she got her things back quickly, and never had a gun pointed at her
https://www.londonpolice.ca/en/news/statement-from-police-chief-williams-august-2022.aspx
Keffals’ mentions of finances and trauma (cut from her longer video by Jesse)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EsQm5UwyyO3eTjk61z3zp5Aw8I16yZPK/view
Keffals gets her things back a day after saying it will take months, repeats claim about being “assault rifled in the face”
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1558351420
Keffals falsely accuses Lauren Southern of being on the Epstein flight logs
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q_RceqwQxv65ZxlU0FFa1XTyU8lJKUo6/view
Keffals falsely accuses Destiny of rape (“stealthing”)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/tklc4p/keffals_says_that_destiny_stealths_people/
Keffals confronted over false pedophilia accusations
.MP3 backup
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eI3SpymuKZQ0NqgdVbeQT-to9zeyAf3q/view
Keffals sponsors the DIY HRT directory, instructing minors on how to get hormone replacement therapy
DIY HRT:
https://diyhrt.wiki/transmasc#sourcing_dosing (https://archive.ph/QEoZR)
https://diyhrt.wiki/transfem (https://archive.ph/hP6pT)
Keffals’ friend admits to getting minors on HRT
Keffals and friends talking about cute HRT packaging
~1:52:10 “We want to protect them from scrutiny” - SophieFromMars
“The packaging rocks” - Keffals (CORRECTION, 9/11/2022: that was “BadBunny”)
“Keep out of reach of parents,” “Don’t look at my giant Girldick,” etc. :( :
Image: Clara Sorrenti, also known as Keffals online, at her home in London, Ontario, Canada June 14, 2022. (Hao Nguyen for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
If there was ever any doubt that "trans rights" isn't (in large part) a male supremacist movement, behold the speed with which narcissistic injury has obliterated a website which laughed at men.
I know, right? This shit never happened to Get Off My Internets, whose targets were 99% women.
When GOMI imploded, lots of posters went to reddit and created Blogsnark and a smaller number went to KiwiFarms where a special lady section was created for them. It was the reddit posters who doxxed the Gomi admin - her phone number, very personal family/health history were all posted there - and the KiwiFarms posters who obsessively archived it.
I am pretty sure that I first heard of KiwiFarms when the BSC mods on Blogsnark created some rule that you could not say its name or refer to it. Me: "Well, NOW I'm interested!"
I think a lot of GOMI posters ended up on lolcow.farm, which is basically KiwiFarms for menstruators and cervix-havers.
If you ever listen to his podcast the owner of Kiwi Farms, has gone a little bit feminist over the past few months. He often talks about having boards within the forum managed by women, and allowing them to moderate themselves in a way they used to on lolcow.farm. Likewise about accomodating terfs and feminists.
Related: I like to occasionally check in on the GOMI forum for Dooce (cause I’m a weirdo) and apparently she’s a transphobe now. Makes me wonder if she’s a primo (Hi Heather!!)
It says a lot about the state of the discourse now that I’m wondering if she’s actually said anything “transphobic,” or if that’s now the go-to excuse for continuing to dump on someone online. People have been being bitchy about Dooce on on GOMI for freaking decades now, but “transphobia” gives it a veneer of righteousness.
I don't love Dooce - I think it's particularly gross how much stuff she's posted about her kids. But if the post they were talking about on GOMI is the only evidence, a transphobe she is not.
Is she the one who melted down on Insta? Another site where some people are not nice to those they disagree with.
Maybe? She was one of the OG mommybloggers pre-Insta. She sued the GOMI lady (who, incidentally, also has a thread on KF) and was truly a pioneer in internet-meets-IRL drama
Ha! I commented about Dooce above before seeing this
True, and both GOMI and Blogsnark were splintered from the inside by tactics straight out of the Mean Girls playbook, which says something.
Yep! The only post I ever commented on GOMI was a recent one about how Dooce is apparently a transphobe for asking the same "hateful" questions we talk about here. My comment, defending what Dooce said, was deleted immediately and I decided not to give them anymore clicks.
XOJane!!! Fuck. Sometimes I genuinely loved it but by the time it shut down I was like...meh. Now I really miss Sassy
“My Coworkers Cake Shamed Me On My Birthday” has a special place in my heart for its obnoxiousness, and I didn’t even read it until years after xoJane stopped publishing. I like to think the author is pretty embarrassed by it now.
Ahhh. But then you missed the comment sections which could be good, but were deranged fairly often
I feel like that's a stretch to be honest. In the video they mentioned a female individual that was harassed as a result of KF's activity. I also don't fully agree with the framing of the movement as 'male supremacist' tbh.
KF doesn't target men, primarily, they find LOLcows everywhere.
As to "being a stretch" to say transactivism is male supremacism in action, well, when men are erased by being renamed "ejaculators" or "prostate havers"; when transmen are dominating sporting competitions against men half their age; when hundreds of transmen, many of whom have been convicted of rape/sexual assault, petition to be moved to men's prisons, maybe I'll change my mind.
Transmen might have an edge when it comes to competitive shooting. For some reason, biological females tend to be better long-range shooters.
Most popular sports just don't align with biological females' advantages.
Trans-women are an extremely small percentage of the population, the main advocates of a lot of the policies in prisons, sports, and changing rooms in America (and most of the rest of the western world) are female women not men. Calling them a male-supremacist movement doesn't make any sense in this instance.
They're advocating for policies that harm women by allowing males with lady feelings to access previously single-sex spaces like prisons (which is a violation of the Third Geneva Conventions rules on how prisoners of war are supposed to be treated). It's a male supremacist movement bc the benefits of allowing males to join women's athletic teams, or use their bathrooms/changing rooms, benefits men & we've seen again and again that women's feelings on any of this really don't matter to anyone pushing these policies.
How are women benefiting from making it impossible for us to have boundaries? Women are not a threat to men in the same way that men are a threat to women. Predatory males are taking advantage of gender self-ID. Data from prisons shows a greater % of trans-identified males are convicted sex offenders than compared w/ the general male population. Either (1) trans-identified males are more likely to be sex offenders, or more likely (2) predatory males are using the system to access female spaces. Neither option is good but if we're seeing that play out in prisons, where ppl should have an incentive to be on good behavior, I'm guessing the predatory males are gaming the system. So whether or not the population of TIMs is an "extremely small percentage," the cohort of sexually violent men overall now being given access to female spaces by saying the Magic Pronouns will cause harm to a greater # of women, and that risk should not be taken lightly.
USA: Almost 50% of Trans Inmates in Federal Custody for Sex Offences: http://archive.today/D2tsf
UK: ~60% 👉https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/are-sex-offenders-exploiting-trans-rights-policies-behind-bars-
Fair enough I wasn't arguing based on the reality of the movement but based on the way we should talk about it, maybe in effect it is a male-supremacist movement.
I think part of the problem is that people are getting tripped up on the fact that the outcomes of the trans rights movement benefit male supremacism, but a lot of the social enforcers are women. One doesn’t cancel out the other though.
One of the most irritating aspects of popular transactivism over the past few years has been its adherents’ refusal to lay out their terms, talk about outcomes, and have a proper debate over whether the ends do actually justify the means. Any attempt to do that has been shut down with “no debate,” and anyone who attempts to follow logical outcomes is a “transphobe” - even if the questioner is trans. The fact that a pile of women are helping to enforce this and obediently refusing to think through outcomes does seem to indicate that women can fall prey to social pressure quite easily, but it doesn’t mean the outcomes themselves don’t benefit the type of men those women would normally oppose. It’s a maddening paradox.
I think that what may answer the question is class, which I personally believe is a better way to describe the more extreme aspects of trans-activism. In which largely upper class and upper-middle class socially liberal women (and men) make policies that will largely affect working class women who are more likely to go to prison and more likely to use community public swimming pools. They then say they are doing this to help the marginalized.
By extreme elements I mean self-ID in changing rooms and prisons.
Agree 100% about the prisons though to be fair about the pools, it is already happening at private pools as well.
I think the issue is who is marginalized, and whose marginalization, well, matters more. So. A poor woman who goes to the public pool and changes in the women's room and is appalled to see someone with a penis there. Or is it the penis haver? Or is it both? And if it is both, who matters more?
Like. A poor black woman who was abused by her ex husband and truly feels unsafe around men. Or a black trans woman who was constantly beaten up by men? Their needs contradict each other.
But here is where it gets mote complicated. I completely understand trans women being afraid of men's spaces because it is dangerous for them. What I find galling now is that a lot of trans activists talk about women's spaces as being affirming for trans women. So. Sure a women's changing room for a trans woman who is in danger if she goes to the men's room. But why the women's room for someone who cane out as trans a week ago? Fucking crazy.
Finally. In terms of class. I do think most trans women are poor and marginalized. Bit does their needs outweigh those of poor and marginalized biological women?
Abd I can't with trans women are women
Agree completely. To me, bottom line, there just isn't a way to make everyone happy here. If society wants to carve out space for trans people, it should not come out of women's spaces - they need a third space. In bathrooms, jails, pools, changing rooms, sports, everywhere. If Self ID is good enough, all the nonsense about "oh it's just a tiny % of people" goes out the window. My safety/comfort as a woman should trump a man's "affirmation" to feel like a woman. Every fucking time.
And honestly, if this was being dealt with in a normal, practical way, I doubt there would even be as much drama as there is. Sure there will always be a small number of people who are just bigots and hate trans people, but most of us women who question this stuff don't hate anyone. We just don't understand why we are constantly throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to these very important issues of safety, medical treatment of children, and our own sex-based rights and hard-fought privileges (like... the "women of the year" awards being given to men in dresses, etc.). That stuff is infuriating and illogical. Why are we expected to shut up and not be pissed off??
I have such mixed feelings as in grad school my internship was with an LGBTQ center and a few people were trans. This was in 2016 so the big thing wad bathrooms. And I sort of get the argument that special trans bathrooms is further stigmatizing. At the same time. I am not showering with a woman who last week was a 35 year old straight dude.
I dont know if you ever saw this video Meghan Murphy and this trans activist at a Calgary library. It was really interesting because at one point a woman stood up and asked a question abput her daughter. And the TRA said she wpuld answer "as a woman." I HATE this shit. Trans women should not be discriminated against. Should be treated with kindness and respect. But if you did not go through female puberty or didn't go because of health issues, then you are npt a woman. Even 10 years agp this was npt a question.
However the TRA did say something I found interesting. Which is that we have a right tp BE safe, not FEEL safe. Which I thought was a good point. OTH, by that logic. A 6 foot 2 250 pound dude who transitions - why the women's room at all then?
I would say means rooms women's rooms and gender neutral rooms.
Replacing sex with gender (where gender is defined by self-id) in all aspects of society is not the extreme position within the trans-activist community, it's the mainstream. The debate about this is happening all over the world, and not just in changing rooms and prisons, but wherever sex-segregation was the norm up until a few years ago: in college dorms, in all levels of sports, in children's camps, in lesbian bars/festivals/clubs, in hospital wards, in AA meetings and group therapy sessions.
Prioritizing gender over sex has profound implications, especially for women. While it may have more of an immediate, tangible impact in certain situations in which upper class women may not find themselves, eg a domestic violence shelter, the impact is rapidly spreading to many other areas of life.
I recommend you read Helen Joyce's book, Trans, or listen to one of her interviews (she's just been on Jordan Peterson's podcast.)
Sounds a lot like the abortion issue, don't it?
This podcast drives me nuts because they keep introducing me to people I'd rather not know exist.
I do think Kiwifarms is a pretty bad place, but I really don't think you can make a strong case that anything that is being done on their is really all that different/worse than stuff you see on major social media sites that no one is calling to be deplatformed.
This whole saga really just seems like a person co-opting social issues to take down a site that was airing her dirty laundry.
Before all this I had visited KiwiFarms occasionally but since Keffels started this campaign I've been on the site every day that it's been up so.... hello, Streisand effect.
On one hand, reading Kiwifarms was not good for my emotional, intellectual, or spiritual health, and it’s not a bad thing for me personally to not be able to access it.
On the other hand, where am I going to see sane updates on the utterly INsane Gretchen Martin/Nicole Cliffe romance?
obvs the censorship is a nightmare and so’s the media coverage.
I have to confess, that was the reason I visited too . . . Nicole's pretty outlandish medical claims on Instagram are what first inspired me to start investigating. I used to read the Toast back in the day and thought it was pretty good. The public personae of the two founders makes me question that assessment, though I haven't gone back to check.
Any juicy updates on Nicole? I visited Kiwi Farms for the first time last week and found it very confusing. The site needs tour guides!
This is exactly where I'm at.
LOL maybe I’m intrigued by the requirements for joining
I...am intrigued. And hate myself for it.
I'm hard pressed to think of a recent situation where a supposed victim has been as unsympathetic as Keffals has been during this entire time. I don't know how anyone could look at her history and not see that she's a complete bully and narcissist who gets off on the stupidest shit. Even while admitting that the police showing up and arresting you for something you didn't do is a terrifying experience, the way she has handled this situation and chosen to actively provoke her enemies makes it difficult to entertain taking her side in this.
Anyway, great job Katie and Jesse on delving into this story that truly exemplifies the worst of our times.
It's embarrassing how many people (including J&K) are falling for Keffals' shit. If you were genuinely scared for your life, to the point that you apparently had to flee the country, wouldn't you avoid doing ANYTHING that might lead people to you? Instead, Keffals keeps posting just enough information for people to figure out where he is, then crying about stalkers, then posting his location again. Each time he gets more press and more money. Trolls and journalists alike should be able to see through such obvious manipulation. We are truly living in the dumbest timeline.
Why does it matter to you? Third person pronouns are most often used when the person spoken about isn't even there, like now. It's hard to take comments like yours seriously and not just as a power play. Humans cannot change sex. Pretending that ppl's existence depends on whatever pronoun a random person on the internet uses for another random person on the internet is odd. Pronouns are not magic words. He's a male, and is acting like an aggrieved male.
Made it harder to understand by referring to a man as a "he" instead of "she"? We're not extras in The Truman Show. I'm not going to lie to protect the illusion that any of this is real.
Aggrieved male population +1.
Pronoun Police here ma'am. Please turn over your logins and erase yourself from existence online. Then donate to the keffels vacation fund. TY
I had no trouble, because Keffals is a man. What I find difficult is to suspend my disbelief and hear people refer to a man as "she". For real- I'm not being snarky in any way.
I have zero interest in being performative or hearing other people be performative in using pronouns when the person in question isn't even around.
Exactly. Anytime there is discussion of a TIM or a TIF I get cognitive dissonance because I know the words being used are masking the truth. And what message are we sending others by stating their sense of self depends on the willingness of others to use certain words to describe them? The "It Gets Better" campaign was powerful because it was based on appeals to our humanity, with older members of the LGB community telling LGB youth to look at their lives as a journey in time. Whereas now youth are being told that their lives depend on the words other people use to describe them. They're teaching them to be fragile.
I'm just going to follow you around loving everything you say.
[Jack Nicholson Aww Shucks GIF]
Someone who clearly drinks their refill of kool-aid every day, I'm shocked you listen to this podcast. How many "friends" would you lose if your entire social circle knew you listened to Jesse and Katie?
I think David E does have some issues with the wokie race stuff and seems a bit more Marxist than a proper wokie... But then we've gotten full blown MAGA cultists in here on occasion and at least he's a regular...
Should be used to the GC-adjacent "misgendering" by now though.
Sounds to me like Keffals is a ginormous POS grifter. Period.
Keffals genuinely seems like a malicious, horrible person.
MTG was also a victim of doxxing! yet something tells me that she won't get the same kid-glove treatment that Keffals got.
It's almost as if the supposed concern about doxxing is overstated & not based on deeply held principles.
Who proved keffals didn’t do it though? I didn’t see the police confirm anything or anyone take credit (possible I missed it)
Does someone whose only copy of their thesis lives on an external hard drive deserve a PhD?
Or am I just displaying backup privilege?
I invented the concept of the "cloud" 20 years ago by emailing important documents to myself. Your welcome.
I had a laptop stolen out of my hands once. It contained the only copy of my draft dissertation. I will always be grateful to the teenage boys who chased the fucker down, tackled him, and got my computer back.
I always thought those kinds of stories were apocryphal because everyone I knew had multiple back ups and paper back ups because of the fear of something happening. Hell I had back ups in different locations because I thought if my house burn down, I can’t lose my data.
Yes, that was obvious bullshit.
I'll apply a little benefit of the doubt and hanlon's razor.
Keffals doesn't appear to be the smartest person. Her partner may also fall into that category.
Doing a PhD and not having DropBox? ICloud? HMMMMM...
I was going to post the same thing. I was going through some old thumbdrives the other day and found multiple copies of ALL my papers on all five drives. I, too, have backup privilege, formerly known as paranoia.
I worked the university help desk and helped a few students who had the only copy of some important paper on a Zip disk. We didn’t grant doctorates so none of them were doctoral dissertations, but I think one was a master’s thesis.
Seriously. When I was in grad school I lost my usb drive and thus a whole paper. Luckily I had time to rewrite it but from then on I backed everything up on multiple sources. And I agree withbyou
This is as likely as the "assault rifle in my face" lie.
Was interesting hearing two Americans trying to sum up The Troubles in less than a minute (I give your summation a 7/10).
It's interesting to note that giving the recent history of the province (in the past 10 years particularly) that an LGBT person hoping to escape harassment and ill treatment decides that the best place to be safe is NORTHERN IRELAND.
Is it me or have there been more connections between trans activism and the Troubles recently with trans ideology co-opting Republican politics a bit? I can't find the article now but I think that in the Taylor Lorenz profile of the trans people doing DIY surgeries - one of the trans people seemed to be involved in that. I may have pulled this out of thin air! but it does make sense then that the person posting a bomb thread would claim to be pro Ulster. NB all this larping as IRA/Loyalist forces is in pretty bad taste.
Many Americans (and Canadians which lets face it, diet Americans) are obsessed with Ireland to a ridiculous degree. Since the queen died I've been seeing all sorts of posts about how 'all of Ireland is celebrating' when it's just a section of some fans at one football (soccer) game and some anonymous Irish twitter users.
I rarely see anyone caring about Ireland except St Patrick’s Day. Which, let’s face it, is 100% an excuse to day drink on a Tuesday.
Another great excuse for day drinking on Tuesday is....being Irish.
I count that as a big aspect of the obsession, I think it's more common in left-wing circles but I do think it's an aspect of American culture generally.
Haha. Ouch to all the Canadians. Are you American? I don't really see an American obsession with the Irish.
I mean you haven't heard you're white American friends say that they're like 2% Irish and use it as an excuse to call themselves Irish
No BUT you do bring up a good point as back in high school I had 2 teachers, one from Ireland, the other of Irish descent, ask my mom if my dad was Irish, since my mom clearly is not.
Are you American? St. Patty's Day is huge here (well, at least in the New England area). Shamrock Shakes at McDonalds, anyone? ☘️
Yes. I am in NYC, where the St. Patrick's Day parade is a drunken epic bacchanalia.
There has been a close relationship between Irish republicanism and the global left for decades. From an unsavory perspective, the IRA/pIRA/etc. had a long history of sharing weapons and training with various anticolonial and leftist groups, including the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Red Army Fraktion. I'm not surprised that the trans-specific part of the progressive blob has glommed onto this too.
As an anglophile who grew up in heavily Irish-American suburban Boston, the reflexive lefty anti-English sentiment (allegedly motivated by sympathy for Ireland) is so predictable and lazy that it just makes me roll my eyes.
I'm Irish, and spent a long time in UK. I feel really beyond angry when I see the BS of "Irish Twitter" re the queen. Yes, monarchy is weird and irritational. As are many, many aspects of our national identity. I also really cringe at the way all the motley Irish leftwing causes are getting eaten by wokeness. One day soon, Gerry Adams is going to put his pronouns in his biog and that's the day I officially want to stop the world, I have to get off.
For some reason the Republic of Ireland dove really headfirst into gender ideology. Search “Barbie Kardashian” and recoil in horror when you realize they put this psychopathic man in a woman’s prison. Ireland shares some kind of post-colonial neurosis with Canada.
I figured it was a way for these countries to forge their own modern identity, like, “look, we are anti-oppressive and kind, not evil cisgender heteronormative patriarchal colonialists like YOU. All of that rubbish came from your CoLOniALiSm”
It's the geopolitical version of the revenge-of-the-nerds movement that seems to have taken over American politics!
I know. Colonialism is rhe evilest evil that ever happened and was done by awful white men to the poor bereft people of color. Because the Ottoman Empire never happened. Japan never did a thing. And China doesn't exist as it does without some expansionist practices of its own. Add to the fact that some cultures that were colonized had done horrible things and were deeply misogynistic and homophobic. But mo. All evilscwere wrought by colonialism
I think that's a good point. We are extremely thirsty for recognition in Ireland, especially from Americans and supporting gender ideology is one way of getting it.
I wouldn't know enough about it to comment on it, but if it is the case it is in bad taste, especially given that some splinter groups from the ones that went on ceasefire are still active, a few years ago a journalist was killed in Derry after being shot by a dissident republican group whilst covering a riot there.
Although for what it's worth, if the Ellen mentioned in the podcast is the same one I'm familiar with, she is/was a member of the Green Party (which identifies as neither nationalist or unionist, and stood in the Belfast West constituency (the most nationalist constituency in NI) in the Assembly Elections in 2017 and got only 251 votes.
Was it the story about people doing illegal surgeries in a barn?
https://archive.ph/8UypE
NI is pretty safe for LGBT people though. It's obviously worse than say, most of Scotland or England or Canada but by and large if you're a young LGBT person staying in like South or central Belfast - which I'm guessing this person is because there's only one poutine place in Belfast - you're really not going to be in any particular danger compared to elsewhere. Things have gotten a LOT better over a short space of time. Obviously the story may change in staunchly loyalist areas, but bad neighbourhoods are bad, what else is new? It's not like she went to Afghanistan.
I live in S Belfast... where is the poutine place lol
I can remember, as an English 18 year old, reading a student guide that said gay people should avoid Northern Ireland and the north east of England (where I am from).
"She helps to supply hormones to trans kids w/o their parents permission." "Isn't that illegal, Jesse?" -- then Jesse says to "set that aside."
It's incredibly illegal, Jesse, even if ppl sympathetic to the issue of kids with gender dysphoria don't want to admit it. If nothing happens on the legal front to Keffals and Eli Erlick for coordinating the delivery of prescription medications, especially Schedule III drugs like testosterone -- lots of ppl are going to be hurt. Not a lawyer, but transferring meds across state lines using US mail is a federal felony. If these hormones are not administered properly there is a medical risk to people OTHER than the person using them. https://www.insider.com/testosterone-gel-toddler-puberty-early-2022-06
A f-ing doctor could lose their license for prescribing meds to a person they don't have as a patient, at any age. And here we have trans rights extremists playing pharmacist & illegally supplying minors with prescription medication & if you want to #supporTransKids I guess that's okay now?
Looking forward to the first lawsuit against one of these ppl for harming a child. They have no right to do this, no matter how right they think they are.
We have to win the cultural victory of getting people to stop feeling like a good guy in a movie for mutilating children before anyone is going to enforce laws on this. I can’t believe we’re in this state, but it seems to be where we are and getting people to flip that switch in their heads is the only way I can see to get us out of it.
This is an important part of understanding why this isn't just a slapfight about terminally online people. KiwiFarms has archived tweets and messages on discord and Twitch of this man bragging about supplying hormones to kids so their parents have no idea. And these can be from shady sources so god only knows what's in it. Not to mention the cute tweets Keffals has about raping women (just a normal thing us girls brag about to our buddies).
KF is doing the work journalists not only refuse to do but cover up for. That's why KiwiFarms is being memory-holed. The only reason this is a discussion is the owner is a stubborn bastard that won't get bullied.
The Keffals drug story and the trans lifeline story are just two of the many coverups orchestrated by TRA's and media. A big thing to note, in KF, you better bring receipts in the form of archived links if you want something added to the thread. Why? Because KF doesn't want fake and manipulated information on threads. I can't think of a single media outlet that has that standard.
I think “bringing receipts” and due process should be a systemic part of government over the whole internet. Too many people saying too many things.
"Not a lawyer, but transferring meds across state lines using US mail is a federal felony."
I don't know. Given the current situation re: abortion rights I'm really not in favor of improving the infrastructure to catch people who are mailing legally restricted medications around. Leopards + faces. If we make it normal thing to prosecute people for mailing around T it's going to happen to mailing of contraception and abortion pills even quicker.
These are NOT physicians or medical specialists. These are social media grifters, and primarily, grown ass MEN, getting kids in secret discord servers and "helping" them. Big difference. And as much as I'm disgusted about the post-Roe restrictions, this isn't a gray area.
The womens groups sending meds to women in states with draconian laws are also not MDs. The situations are not that different legally speaking.
Also if they were doctors would it really matter? Would you be surprised if activist docs would be sending T and E through the mail to basically anyone who asked? I would be surprised if they weren’t. It’s hardly solving the problem to go after Keffals - underlying problem is still that kids now think they need this and anyone keeping it from them is a bigot.
I think it matters. First, if a doctor is found to be negligent they can lose their license. They also have to carry insurance so if they lose a liability case, they can pay up.....and their insurance goes up so there's a penalty to their practice.
There also has to be a log of who they proscribed to and how much.
Whether you think what a doctor is right or wrong, the systems are in place to hold them accountable once the evidence is out.
This is dramatically different than some twitter nut sourcing blackmarket T from Mexico and mailing it to 12 year olds.
Thing is that I don’t mind if non doctors are sending abortion pills and plan B to Texas because in my opinion the laws banning them are killing women and this is a morally acceptable workaround in an untenable situation.
The same argument is made by trans activists about hormones. It’s “life saving medical care” to them as well - saving these kids from bigoted parents and a society that doesn’t care if they suffer.
It’s hard to think of the criteria here other than “well I personally think that A is OK and B is bad”
My criteria is that substances that carry medical risk should be proscribed by doctors or medical professionals (pharmacists) and not activists.
I think drugs should be fully decriminalized. But I'd feel uneasy about activists mailing oxy to just anyone that asks.
If there are a lack of doctors, pharmacists, and volunteers willing to connect you with doctor's and pharmacists to get the treatment you need, I might see the point. But since there is no dearth of access (virtual or otherwise) to professionals, I'm not on board with random activists mailing abortion pills.
For example, in the past when abortion was completely prohibited I sympathize and would support the underground effort to provide some kind of abortion access. But not today.
Take the worst case we saw in the news today. The 10 year old rape victim who was refused care. On the one hand, it shows just how fucked up these laws are. On the other, her doctor took her to a neighboring state where she received the procedure. Showing that, in very significant ways, we are not in the same situation we were decades ago before Roe.
I think we're different in the conclusion, in that I really do think that some women will die without some "illegal" activities happening and therefore I don't support any laws about interstate drug mailing being enforced in a heavy handed manner. A precedent set wrt digging through mail to figure out who is sending hormones will likely lead to similar situation in the abortion / planB case. If I have to accept that a few kids will get hormones in the mail I'm willing to accept that cost.
Also there is a dearth of professionals, or there will be soon. Many states have made it illegal for medical practitioners to send prescribe these drugs to patients out of state, and send them to states where abortion is illegal, or are working on getting such laws passed. E.g. the Texas vigilante law maybe could be applied here. Those docs aren't going to risk their licenses or being sued. Hence why the underground pathway is needed. That 10yo girl could be one of the lucky few out of many, many more who simply can't get out of their town, let alone out of state, and need the mail pathway. We aren't going to hear about these girls.
Do you not think they're already surveying the mail for this stuff? There's an entire organization just for doing investigations of crimes/fraud via US mail. https://www.uspis.gov
You can wish these criminals well (activists doing something illegal because they have good intentions are still criminals), but if I come across any of this I will archive the shit out of it and report it. No one is above the law.
"I don’t mind if non doctors are sending abortion pills and plan B to Texas" -- I missed that day in school where the rule of law in the US only matters if we agree. It doesn't matter whether you think it's okay "just in this circumstance because that thing over there is awful, even immoral" -- can you not see that people who fought against abortion may also be taking a moral view that the life of the fetus matters? Some crazy people have used their feelings about how abortion is immoral to justify murdering doctors ("hey, it's not murder if I think the victim was acting against my morals"). This is why we have to defend the rule of law, even when it's hard. A country can't survive if there is no understanding that there are laws & punishments for breaking those laws, applied equally even if you're sympathetic to the perpetrator.
But if you are the doctor prescribing the birth control or abortion pills, you're covered with regard to the law we are discussing here. Neither of these people are MDs.
Most of the people sending abortion pills to people in red states that need them are not doctors either. But they are saving lives by doing so.
No matter what anyone thinks about Roe, it is illegal to send meds to anyone without a prescription. You don’t know people’s medical history, they may be at greater risk of stroke (hormonal BCPs are not risk free).
If it's not prescription medication, then fine. If it is prescription, that's illegal and I'm ok with prosecuting.
There are plenty of doctors that will telemedicine the prescription meds.
That's not leopards eating faces. It's good medical sense. . . .
*edit*
Pretty sure even the over the counter needs to come from a pharmacist.
Yeah I had really bad reactions to certain birth control before I had to stop. Would be scary to do that without a doc or planned parenthood (where I went). I feel bad for women in those states, but a professional should be involved.
Is that true? And are any of them minors? This certainly creates an ethical wrinkle.
More commonly it’s family / friends in other states that obtain them legally via prescription, then mail to their relative who needs the meds (but wasn’t prescribed them).
Yea there’s some lady in Louisiana who has sent out hundreds of packs of what Dan savage refers to as m and ms. Heard an Interview somewhere (can try to look it up if you care). She might be a retired midwife but doesn’t know the people she’s mailing to (probably does not know if they are minors). I’d rather keep that and work on kids getting too much E or T in other ways than policing the US mail.
Totally with you. Red states already want to pounce on stuff like birth control and plan b and abortion bills. And I honestly dgaf if some 16 year old girl in Texas gets sent some plan b that she can keep on hand. Like, I don’t care if she’s a minor or not. I’m not going to send pills of any type to people through the mail, but I 100% agree that I don’t want the feds using the whole DIY hormones freakout as a reason to start going through our mail looking for other types of pills.
How does one obtain hundreds of packs of birth control or abortion pills without a prescription? Are they available over the counter in some states now? I don't know about policing the mail - I certainly don't want that - but if someone's dumb enough to publicly admit they're sending kids hormones without parental consent, they should be investigated.
They’re already dumb enough to let it be known that they’re going out for poutine in Belfast, so...
I think the womens groups organizing these things have contacts with oversees manufacturers. That is no it’s not strictly legal, again similar to the hormones thing.
It’s a good point about publicly admitting it using your real identity. If you do that you are an idiot and you can expect to get in trouble.
Certainly the person I’m talking about who is sending abortion pills and instructions for using them to women who ask for them works hard to protect her identity, and she’s aware if she got caught she could go to jail. She almost did get caught by a postal worker once. But sending stuff through the mail can be pretty untraceable and I think that in balance is a good thing. Even if occasionally we get anthrax letters and Unibombers as a side effect.
Yeah. No matter how righteous these groups think they are I hope they’re prosecuted without any special consideration. This is illegal. Medications are not candy. I know a veterinarian & they can’t even casually talk to a person about their pet’s health if they’re not a client & haven’t seen the animal because they put their license at risk. No one is above the law.
As I commented elsewhere in this thread, as a young woman I used to have HORRIBLE side effects from BC. It was the 90s and I was one of many who underwent the dreaded "Depo Provera" era... hair loss, horrible mood swings, and literal fainting the day of the shot. These are real drugs and they have real side effects. I agree with you. A medical professional is needed.
I'm glad that you're okay now. That must have been scary.
This is such a tricky subject and it's something I've thought about a lot. How do I justify supporting under 18 girls using planned parenthood/other repro health, but not the equivalent services for gender transition? The only thing that comes to mind is that STD testing, abortion, Pap smears, birth control, etc., are all real things that real girls need in the real world, while I believe probably 99% of gender treatment is not. Unfortunately that argument alone would have me locked up in a prison for thought criminals, so it's not particularly helpful in 2022.
It's yet another great example of women "allies" completely trashing a previously solid feminist argument/position to be more "intersectional". Watering down the whole movement in order to solve every problem under the sun, while actual material issues that affect women and girls are right there. So endlessly frustrating. This is something radfems could be working on - maybe they are ?- a solid case for why these two things are different and why one is ethically just and the other is not. It's probably not happening though because the best arguments come out of the UK where they don't have to worry about abortion/birth control being made illegal. What a disaster.
“How do I justify supporting under 18 girls using planned parenthood/other repro health, but not the equivalent services for gender transition?” It’s not easy, but if you believe in the rule of law as a fundamental bedrock of the nation, there is no gray area here. Build up supporting organizations for women with unplanned pregnancies in the states that need them until the laws can be changed.
You not being in favor of something does not make it legal. We have a justice system based on laws. Laws may suck in some states but the people can vote against state legislators, and do the hard work of getting better state laws. The only reason this sounds hard is because both parties thought it would never really fall at SCOTUS, so they amped up vitriol on both sides, Dems at the federal level never *seriously* (meaning try to at least get European level protections, which is what polls show most Americans will support... so limits after 1st trimester & exceptions for extreme problems with the baby’s health or to save the mother).
I didn't catch on to how they were doing it. Don't some states not require parental notification? Maybe they're not trafficking, but connecting them to doctors or services in those states.
Similar to what the new abortion services network is doing to get people around their local laws.
Re: Twitch. They'll permit it until they inevitably get sued someday.
Instinctively I feel like 'troon' doesn't mean 'trans activist' as much as 'trans person with AGP who doesn't pass well and is kind of cringey online'
Yeah, the term came from Something Awful and it didn’t start as a negative term- SA members call themselves “goons” and it was a play on that. I think they’ve since banned the term there.
I thought it was a reference to how many Something Awful posters ended up coming out as MTF, so basically a transwoman in the style of a Something Awful transwoman.
I thought Troon currently meant TRA's with anime/cartoon avatars. Key example would be Ana Mardell (sp?).
Jesse - stop twitter replying to all of the Trans activists. They are the only ones gunning for you and much less consequential than their twitter activism on would suggest.
Jesse's twitter addiction is genuinely concerning. Constantly arguing with the dumbest people on the internet is bad for your mental health.
There's a reason these twitter people spend their whole lives on the internet.
I need that as a tattoo.
Seriously Jesse, I'm grateful for your research but just ignoring the people who want to gain asspats on Twitter will greatly improve your life.
Say it with me people: Don't. Feed. The. Trolls.
Correction on the Keffals gofundme:
The target donations were at least at $20k to begin with and she kept raising it by like 10k+ increments every time the goal was reach or was close to reaching until it was at the current 100k target. You can see it all in the archives of the gofundme.
You really said "she raped her mother" with a straight face? If ever there was an argument against using preferred pronouns, this is it.
I noticed that, too. We're expected to be kind and use preferred pronouns even when the person referred to allegedly raped his frail mother? The cognitive dissonance is reaching its peak here when we're pretending a daughter raped her mother (with her girldick, of course). Even in the bits with Keffals I got tired of the "she, she, she," when the person comes off as a typical aggrieved dude hell-bent on revenge to the point of getting a site nuked from the internet bc of their "safety" -- when they're sloppy enough to let it be known (or their friend) pretty specific details that any new Google user could plug in and get a location. Ppl who are really scared do not blast their openly broadcast their lives on the internet. I don't even get what this person does to make money, talk on Twitch all day? What ppl pay money for this? Is this person an expert in something?
That people pay to watch this kind of garbage really puts my age and related cultural "outsider" status in stark relief. I can't wrap my mind around why anyone would want to listen/watch this person for more than 2 minutes.
10 min from the end, have to say:
1. Excellent episode, brilliant work Trace & Jesse for research, Jesse for reporting and Katie (so ironically) being an excellent straightman and giving sane reactions to this insanity.
(Jesse: “……..Catboi Ranch”
Katie: “nooo nononononononono”)
2. Can’t wait for Part II!!1!1!!!1
3. I was worried you weren’t going to circle back to the assault rifle claim! Glad to be mistaken.
4. I think we can agree that the lolcows aren’t the only ones getting milked in this saga. Whatever you think of Keffals, that’s some savvy entrepreneurship. And don’t forget, that was $100K US dollars. To us Canadians like the fortunes of all our maple syrup magnates combined.
There needs to be some serious inquiry into what is actually happening here. The insane amount of baseless reporting by every single “news” outlet, every service provider dropping essential services based on zero evidence, and the 24/7 ddos attacks do not make ANY sense. At all.
I’ve never seen any website be so thoroughly and rapidly suppressed without committing serious, credible crimes. Even then, it takes a long time. There were numerous spree shooters posting on 8chan & 4chan, and the Christchurch shooting (that’s being blamed on KF) was live-streamed on Facebook!
This response seems massively lopsided. KF is not a threat especially when compared to social media platforms and has never broken any laws.
Every person needs to be concerned about the gaslighting and manipulation that’s happening. I’ve never been a “MSM is filled with lies” person until now. And conveniently enough, no random person reading any of the reporting can fact check because they are even wiping out ARCHIVES!
It’s scary how we’re watching the very concept of free expression be demolished in real time. This just seems to go way beyond an online slap fight.
I absolutely agree and I’m alarmed that so many analyses are missing the mark by dwelling on who doxxed Keffals and if Null is a psycho and whether slurs are bad mmkay. What is clear is that the website was/is not a Silk Route redux -- its raison d’etre is not to foster illegal activities. That having been established, the real story clearly begins with the question of what kind of apparatus got mobilized to efface the website, why and how it was mobilized, and what the implications are for free speech in a world increasingly shaped by (and experienced through) online discourse.
Just wondering: If KF was removed from the Internet Archive, but is now on Tor, is the whole thing still intact? All of it going backwards in time?
I would read the KF SRS thread regularly (which never focused on one person, but was just about anyone who had a problem with SRS surgery) b/c I am fascinated by what goes wrong with the surgeries. (This thread was NOT for the squeamish and included graphic images of the surgical results.) I can report that in a thread like that it is a mix of people, from obvious bona fide transphobes to people genuinely concerned for the lives of young people being exploited by doctors. That it is such a diverse group is part of what makes it not only fascinating, but the kind of place that a bona fide transphobe might even begin to feel a "sympathy" or "empathy" nerve while reading the posts of fellow farmers. Posts would sometimes be deeply philosophical on this whole issue. Some posts were feminist, some were anti-feminist, some were clearly hateful, some were attempting to speak directly to trans people with great sympathy in an attempt for them to understand the dangers of surgery, to save their future health and sanity. It's the kind of place where people can absorb ideas previously alien to them. In other words, it's one of the few internet forums that was not really encased in a bubble. And to maintain that non-bubble status, and to have that kind of cross-pollination of opinion, yeah, you have to include absolutely everyone, including the assholes.
NB: No doubt there were threads that were far more "bubble" like and far meaner. I had no interest in those. Also, I was just a lurker, not a participant.
Yes, and Null had previously said on telegram that if worst came to worst, he would anonymize all forum content and put it in a torrent.
Katie makes a really good point that hadn't occurred to me before: we do a ton of hand-wringing over online doxxing.
Yet until about 15 years ago, millions of Americans were listed in a phone book that contained not only their personal phone number, but also their full home address. This phone book was available to anybody and everybody. If I recall correctly, there was a fee to have an unlisted number.
What has happened in the US that we obsess over the disclosure of information that used to be publicly available as a routine matter?
a) before the internet you weren't getting into rage fueled arguments with strangers. The
'letters to the editor' page was your best option.
b) people learned they could weaponize dox info for swat attacks
c) The Terminator
First thing I thought of when Katie made this point. The point is still valid! But also...Sarah Connor.
Which Terminator (my teen self had a dumb crush on what’s his name in the 2nd one).
The evil Ahnold one from the original film was the Terminator who was fond of murdering with only a phonebook and a laser sight to guide him.
In the second film, the evil Terminator was a shapeshifter who mostly stayed in cop form and ran EXTREMELY AERODYNAMICALLY.
A-ha. Thank you.
I would give this 1000 stars if I could.
Even more extreme: pre-WW2 it wasn't uncommon for telephone books to also list your place of employment/type of job next to your residential listing!
Didn't doxxing previously refer to connecting someone's online and offline personas against their will? LotT was anonymous until she wasn't (and fuck her) but that was definitely doxxing. Whereas if I know who Jesse and Katie are because they don't just use kittypurrzog as their Internet handles (I don't know Jesse's off hand)
Probably wouldn't be too hard to figure out who I am based on my Internet activity but I'm pretty sure my spouse is the only one aware of a direct connection.
I see now she is bragging on Twitter about getting the founder removed from Google voice. This seems like absolute madness. This person clearly has a Messiah complex and should not be taken seriously. What a stupid time to be alive.
I predict that Keffals will unleash the TRAsh army against the BARpod since it's documented some of the things that Keffals was trying to delete off the Internet.
And you didn't even get into the fart porn.
“we’ll get to that”
Wild that Kiwi Farms probably made sure that more trans people got the help they needed by exposing the grifters that took over trans lifeline which eventually appears to have led to their ouster.
This is such a great illustration of how a group or service can be monsterized by strategically overemphasizing its worst adherents--and how mainstream media and the extremely online collectively decide (or at least upvote?) which groups will be targeted for scrutiny, and which will get a pass. So agree with Katie's reference to Parler taking the heat for January 6th, while Facebook barely got a "tsk-tsk."
These virtual sacrifices are making online spaces so volatile, but they're also supremely ineffective: NOTHING would be served by getting rid of Kiwi Farms, because all those people can and will immediately go somewhere else, even as hand-wringing observers convince themselves that Something Has Been Done. (Sinking feeling here that the chief reason we have so much suppression of speech on the internet is it's such an easy way to pretend you did something! I can imagine an alternate universe where the dominant culture trended conservative, and the riots in the wake of BLM got pinned on Tumblr somehow, and it got shut down, and everybody cheered and moved on...despite the fact that, apart from costing a bunch of Tumblr employees jobs, nothing actually happened!)
Final point: this topic REQUIRES a deep dive like this episode if you want to truly understand it, and most consumers of media fluff *don't want that*--they want a quick dose of validation. "Don't worry dear, the simple problem was quickly solved, and by the way *you're reading the right people!*" The way you feel after reading the bowdlerized version of this story is much more empowering than the way you feel after hearing it from all angles like this!
Honestly, this topic would be well-served by one of those lengthy New Yorker or Vanity Fair pieces that reads less like an article and more like a proposal for a book. But only if they examined it as even-handedly as the BARpod team does here...which they wouldn't.
Yes about requiring the deep dive that no one wants. The rehashing of the "Reply All" debacle in this BARpod episode inspired me to Google how Gimlet is faring now (not great!) and dredged up an old NYT article from the dustup time, the vast majority of the comments on which were along the lines of "This article makes zero sense and I don't know what you're even trying to tell us here." Because there was nothing of substance to report or that was being given out by sources. But report (in some lockstep tone) they must!
there are a handful of people in this thread who completely missed the point of the episode. those people are complaining about J+K defending kiwifarms, saying KF deserved it because it is a cess pool, and saying that anyone who cares about this should get offline and """"touch grass""""
those people should read this comment.
What keffals and all the other nuts with threads don't realize is that there are many relative normies out there who are true and honest fans.
My word this has to be one of the best episodes I've heard. Great investigation by Jesse. Annoyed by having to wait for the next episode! (a bit annoyed)
Kerffals' persona is based on attention. The fact that no one (including J&K, mostly J) seems to suspect her and her friends of playing a part in keeping this extended drama going is baffling to me.
She's making so.much.money off of her victimhood.
No terrified victim continues to publicly post their locations. Kerffals, being a troll herself, knows full well what some people on the internet are capable of with even small bits of information. To post she's in Belfast and going to a poutine joint is inviting harassment (online harassment, not face to face confrontation. Which is the point.) She knows she's not in real physical danger, so being the target is fine if it garners her pity, attention, and money.
I don't deny her accounts being hacked isn't really fucking annoying and inconvenient, especially if cards have to be canceled, waiting for refunds, etc.
She's a part of online troll culture and trolls are always at risk of being targeted by their own. Boo hoo. She needs to grow up, move the fuck on from that community, and better herself. Otherwise, the cycle continues.
We're not in 1990s N. Ireland. No one has bombs just laying around ready to hand out to blow up small restaurants because some random Canadian might show up. JFC. Do you not see that the person who made the BS bombing threat picked an obvious method people would associate with Belfast based on their limited knowledge and just assume, "yup, that sounds credible!"?
Lol I just realized some Americans (and English) might have read that she was being stalked in Northern Ireland and been like... oh my God, she isn’t safe, there are people with bombs literally everywhere!1!
I don't believe for a second most of this isn't orchestrated by his weird discord and twitch cult. They very openly brag about doxing and ddos on twitter in full view. You think they aren't the ones doing the false flags? It's making him a fortune.
Edit: There's ZERO proof of this "hacking." It literally was a pic of fast food on a bed. I cannot believe the sheer amount of garbage being pumped out and aggregated on this. (not blaming you, it's hard to keep track of the grift)
I WAS THINKING THE SAME THING. Like. Truly if you were worried about bring attacked you would not announce where you are going. Cue Salman Rushdie.
It was immediately obvious to me that this entire controversy is just a bunch of elaborate trolling on all sides. Absolutely none of it should be taken at face value. You don't have to be some kind of 4chan edgelord to figure that out - if you have even a passing knowledge of online trolling culture it's just blatantly obvious. Every single person who reported on this and took these people's statements at face value is the butt of the joke here.
So, I'm an AAAB (assigned American at birth) but identify as British. By 'identify' I mean emigrated circa 25 years ago, became a citizen, etc.
I used to be anti-monarchy, for the usual reason. I fail to accept someone should deserve such wealth and privilege for taking the trouble of being born. Some right wing press argue having a monarch brings tourism money, but there's no study of this that proves tourists who buy monarch merchandise wouldn't buy other souvenirs.
I now realise having a monarchy and House of Lords makes ours a more robust democracy. While the prime minister is head of government, the monarch is head of state and the head of government swears fealty to the monarch. The monarch has the legal right to dissolve any government.
So if we had a megalomaniacal PM we have someone with a secret trap door button that PM could fall through. It'd be something of a constitutional crisis but I think, for example, if we had a Hitler, the monarch would press the button. That the monarch can't be bought is another democratic boon, if annoying.
Likewise with the House of Lords. Having the upper chamber appointed for life rather than elected allows them to vote with their conscience (hopefully) and for the good of the country rather than crass political interests (they still do vote along party lines if they're party loyalists however).
Very few members of the HoL are actually hereditary peers - nearly all are appointed/given titles after retiring from elected positions. So basically the HoL functions more like the SCOTUS in the US. This means they represent the people without having to pander to anyone in order to get elected.
There are other things which makes our democracy - monarchy and all - more robust than the US's but I'll leave that for another post.
As a person that transitioned to American at a young age I feel compelled to defend American democracy by saying that the real leader of the United States currently received the votes of 10s of millions of American voters, while the real leader of the UK currently received the votes of 81,000 party members.
No arguments here.
That's not necessarily a good thing though. The president is primarily for executive function and not beholden to the constituencies/constituents of states or districts. Combine this with executive orders which in turn bypass those representatives and it's less democratic.
Likewise you can have a president of one party while the majority party of Senate and House are a completely different to the presidential party.
By design, the PM is the leader of the majority party so it makes sense that party members elect the party leader. City and County Councils can run things quite differently from the National government, which may or may not be a good thing. What services you qualify for or benefit from is often referred to as the "postcode lottery."
The devolved nations also have their own laws and sets of services. So in Scotland for example, you can pay from UK-wide taxes for Scotland-only benefits such as social care and free tuition not available to residents in England, NI and Wales.
I’m in agreement about the House of Lords. It’s objectively ridiculous but actually does its job extremely well and party loyalty is incredibly weak there.
I think whether the monarchy is providing a working ejector seat is much more doubtful. It’s entirely reliant upon the incumbent p.m. playing by the unwritten rules.
The fact that SadSack thought it acceptable to lie in order to prorogue parliament because it wouldn’t do his bidding on Brexit showed that the emergency button is broken.
And now we have a more controversial monarch who couldn’t be guaranteed to have widespread public support if something similar happened in the future.
Yeah I mostly agree. But if even when she made quite vague comments it was a big deal. It would really take something as drastic as a leader mass murdering citizens or something of that magnitude to break the unwritten rule that the monarch doesn't meddle in government.
House of Lords does significantly better scrutiny of legislation than House of Commons. Ask civil servants who have prepped for a Bill which they worry about …
As part of my job, I sometimes have to read Hansard. The difference in debate quality between the two Houses is huge - so much of what passes for “debate” in the Commons is nothing more than partisan playground poo-flinging.
And yes, there is the irony that it is often the unelected Lords who put up roadblocks to anti-democratic legislation promoted by the elected Government.
I'm AIAB (Irish) and lived in UK and while I definitely do not identify as British (I'd implode) I've undergone same journey re my feelings towards monarchy. Ireland does well without one but we imitated the HoL (somewhat) with our Seanaid and our President is similar to the monarch with the quite significant difference that they are elected. It works in our small, homogeneous country but it would be v difficult in a more diverse democracy like the UK which seems to be strengthened by its monarchy. I love Britain, and want it to thrive so I guess I'm pro the monarchy!
Your first sentence fits me perfectly. I wish my passport could reflect it. I'd be tempted to say "assigned American at Birth" when I go through customs but I don't want to listen to B&R from Gitmo because DHS can't take a damn joke.
As an AAAB but mid-transition (my citizenship application is underway), I'd say this really isn't what the queen should be doing. She's not there to save the voters from themselves, which is as slippery as slopes get. She was an incredible head of state, far better than any of the heads of government would have been.
Being AAAB, I've got to admit I have a natural aversion to a monarchy. Yes, I know that's how people organized themselves for thousands of years, but this is the time we refer to as 'the period that didn't really matter' in history class. Still, if you're going by results, it's hard to say the UK monarchy hasn't delivered.
I hate the unfairness of people having so much wealth and privilege just for having been born. But it ended, more or less accidentally, to be one of the most stable forms of democracy there is.
Well, the places that tried to do away with people being born into wealth and privilege didn't end as nicely.
I’m not really in favour of the Monarch exercising their prerogative powers in that way, tbh. Doesn’t seem like an extreme enough situation. You’d have people clamouring for them to dissolve parliaments all the damn time.
Dissolving a government would have to be something that is unimaginably extreme. It would cause a huge constitutional crisis because the monarch is meant to stay out of politics completely, but also has a duty to the people. But even when a royal *hints* at having an opinion on something that's happening in politics it's *HUGE* news. It's only really happened a couple of times in my lifetime.
Wasn't one of them when the late Queen let it leak in the press that she was very unhappy with Tatcher about the goverments reluctance to join the sanctions against apartheid South Africa?
Yes, that's my recollection. I think they did have that in The Crown as well?
There’s a play about that by Mike Bartlett from a few years ago, called (prophetically) Charles III - raises lots of interesting moral and constitutional questions about what would happen if the sovereign did the wrong thing for the right reasons:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/11/future-history-how-charles-iii-first-trod-the-boards-of-london-stage
Woah. Woah. WOAH.
Bad enough I’m currently besieged by smoky haze from wildfires and random minor earthquakes in the night. Now you’re telling me I’m surrounded by f****** ALLIGATORS as well?! How dare you.
In all sincerity......I rank this THE best episode of B&R to date.
In-depth and thought-provoking reporting and commentary from start to finish. I’ll take this reporting any day over an NPR word salad puff piece.
100% Possibly some of Jesse's best work.
And research props to Trace, too.
He should just put on headphones & let Katie do that part.
I do not care at all about this topic as such but am so here for the window onto media mistakes made on this sort of story. Great stuff.
That's a good point. The B plot is the media's behaviour isn't it?
I was like "wait, long as sh*t and going on tangents? I'm here for it."
I didn’t realize how bad the smoke was until I tried to take the baby for a walk yesterday. I hadn’t turned in the news and I was like “goddamnit who is burning yard waste!”
Randos supplying steroids to minors is “controversial”?
Portrait in courage there.
I also think you give journalists too much credit by saying that they just don’t know. There’s a lot they don’t know but some of it is that I think they deliberately take things on face value to save themselves from having to put in it any controversial opinions that would piss off people on twitter.
IMO it's less saving face on controversial opinions and more deadline pressure + their own preconceptions. Controversy about Kiwi Farms? Hop onto Google and find the first news results implicating KF in horrible actions. Look at Wikipedia & further confirm their views. Interview sympathetic actor, start writing, hit publish.
And this *is* an indictment of the current press.
Only an independent journo with the time to really dig in will find the deeper truth.
A journalist's job is to figure out what they don't know and then research the hell out of it until they *do* know. I wish Katie and Jesse would stop giving activist "journalists" the benefit of the doubt. They don't deserve it.
Of course Katie isn’t worried about being doxxed because you can’t dox #vanlife
For my own amusement, I’m going to pretend that Andrew Sullivan was the anonymous listener who explained Daisy Chains to K & J.
The Most Oppressed™️ wielding their power 🤷🏻♀️
So vulnerable, so oppressed, so capable of pressuring billion-dollar companies to deplatform their enemies. Let us weep for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
That was totally NOT 5 seconds of silence.
Three seconds this episode and two next. One sitting isn't enough to express Jessie and Katie's grief about the queen.
I love BAR and this episode is great (and I will obediently imbibe episode 2 in this series) but hearing about all the internecine drama between this person and other streamers, internet people I've never heard of, gofundmes, different camps of "supporters" and "detractors", etc., it really makes me realize that this is just reality TV for the new generation. The drama IS the show, ya know?
This felt like a recap show for an episode of Real Housewives. No shade here, I love and pay to listen to this show and will continue to do so as long as they put out episodes... but at some point I'd really like to just hear an episode where instead of doing deep dives we just hear two people we cherish and respect (Katie and Jesse) tear into these losers and just say what they (likely) really think... that everyone involved in this bullshit is a fucking boring, pointless human being who contributes nearly nothing to humanity and in fact, detracts from it. The mailing hormones to kids w/out parental knowledge thing was the final straw for me. This person is repugnant and deserves nothing but scorn.
Editing to add in my previous comment before I'd finished listening -- the monotone and general look of this internet "celebrity" is shockingly off-putting and I honestly do not understand why anyone would pay to engage with their persona.
This is a bigger issue than the two involved. This really is about the ability to even exist online or be allowed to read any information that isn't approved by the activists that use twitter as a Gatling gun.
I agree with you about that. What should constitute an entire website being nuked from existence? Is there anything that rises to that level? I think about the Q anon stuff and that lump of rotten garbage who ran those sites and even I have a hard time wanting everything to have a place to exist. But... sadly I don't think the deep diving is going to solve it? This person is not a sympathetic character, but the "tribunal" is not going to go this deep to make a call. Like every other instance of cancelation, the powers that be clearly run from drama/negative attention and behave reactively. Is it possible that this level of investigative reporting will make cloud flare change their minds? My gut tells me no.
Probably goes without saying but I must add that child pornography and snuff should OBVIOUSLY be removed. If it were up to me, most porn too, but that’s a topic for another day.
I think making it generally known that these allegations about the site are nonsense will spread awareness. It'll get at least some people to realize that most of the mainstream internet and mainstream journalism is about as honest as Disney Land is to little kids. No one wants to be patronized to, and once you notice it once you can't stop noticing it everywhere. And the demand for alternatives will grow.
> this is just reality TV for the new generation
Yeah, these streamers generate content & followers via drama. Want to gain followers? Start a fight with a bigger streamer with a debate stream or make wild allegations. If that doesn't work, accuse another streamer of 'sniping' your stream (non-DMCA copying). I feel like a boomer for learning what a 'hate raid' is. There's also a whole genre for meta-drama commentary.
Tune in tomorrow for the latest update! Don't forget to like, subscribe, and discuss the drama on our community's subreddit.
Yeah when you view it through that lens it’s a lot more icky and a lot less interesting, no?
You're onto something here about this being like a reality show recap. I tried to explain some of it to my husband and quickly realized it's absurd to talk about these people at all when I got to the origin of KiwiFarms and its connection to Chris Chan, aka the alleged Motherfucker.
"that everyone involved in this bullshit is a fucking boring, pointless human being who contributes nearly nothing to humanity and in fact, detracts from it." I'm on the young end of Gen-X, and I have no idea what Twitch even is (bc I don't care enough to look it up. Is it that place where people go to watch other people play video games? What does Keffals add to humanity? Keffals & Eli Erlick and any other person coordinating the transfer of illegal prescription medications (& testosterone is schedule III) to ANYONE, let alone MINORS, needs to spend a few decades in a federal prison. Just because they think something is wrong, just because they're in the sacred caste of trans people -- they are not above the law.
I'm young Gen-X too (44) but I know what twitch is because I had to use it to communicate with high school interns at a previous job! Apparently they won't deign to use google meet or Zoom so we had to "engage" with them in their "native online spaces". Hahha. It is basically just Zoom with a chyron, better chat, and graphics, and you can easily share whatever it is you've got going on another screen. I mean, that's my old-ish lady interpretation of it.
I've never watched an episode of Kardashians or Real Housewives (and proud of it) and when my friends all went down that road I would just leave the room or look at my phone when they started in on recounting the drama. I've never understood the desire to get into the weeds of the lives of people much stupider than me... hahah. SOooooOOoo yeah, love Katie and Jesse to bits, but like I said, I really just want to hear them go hard on how broken this culture is and how embarrassingly lame all the "players" are. I know these freaks have a lot of cultural "clout" (including people like that Lavery person), but at the end of the day it's all quite high school cafeteria the only difference is it's happening online vs. in the real world.
Yes this is horrifying indeed. I'm a local and Scott Weiner (the SF state senator who is behind it) is a real piece of shit on this topic and several others.
How does a guy like that get elected? I mean, isn't there anyone else that aligns with their politics other than THAT guy?
He had one cool moment, I think he told Fox News to fuck off on live TV when they tried to corner him at City Hall years ago. But the truth is, in SF politics once you're in, you're in. Name recognition is massive here. SF voters just aren't that bright. You have to do SERIOUS bad things, or piss off a very select group of people, to be voted out or recalled. There's a serious political machine here that doesn't get a lot of attention because other liberal cities are bigger/more corrupt but SF just had the head of public works sent to federal prison, the head of the municipal power company and his wife (who was also the city manager) resign in shame due to corruption and illegal activities, the DA get recalled because a big part of downtown is now essentially a fentanyl farmers market/ bike chop shop/flea market for stolen goods --- and somehow there are still ballot measures in SF and over here in the East Bay asking voters to continue passing bonds to 'solve homelessness' or 'fund our [insert community response program that shouldn't need to exist]". I used to work in government here and I had to depart. It's too broken and depressing. The book San Fransicko is great if you're interested in the topic (take it with a grain of salt, but a lot of good info).
The school board had some recalls, though, right?
Yes. COVID pushed everyone over the edge and they were so bored they finally started paying attention to the nonsense that was going on. I am a covid hawk so I don't agree with the aggro parents who organized to make that happen, but I do understand where they were coming from. Most expensive real estate and property taxes - maybe in the country? - and they were getting super substandard results from the school district. Meanwhile they were like changing school names and removing Diego Rivera murals because they were "racist". SF government is 20% smart people, 20% name recognition, 60% clowns.
I think you did a really poor job describing what kiwifarms is and it colors the entire story and props up the narrative.
I am not a user but poked around after the last mention.
First: they do not “target” or “harass” anyone and I think it’s SUPER important to make that clear. The fact you consistently use this phrasing misrepresents what goes on. Think about them more like archivists - they “monitor and log” all the dumb shit their favored lolcows do on the internet - typically interactions between different lolcows or between lolcows and their enemies or lolcows and their followers. They don’t encourage the lolcow’s behavior or generate it they only archive it in the person’s thread.
That’s it - full stop. If you want a mental picture imagine a bucket at the end of a funnel filling with milk. The bucket does not fill the funnel - it’s supposed to be one way.
If you even engage a bit or get emotional with your lolcow you are called out and risk a ban - it’s constantly stated and comes up in the threads whenever they veer that way (at least in Keffals thread of which I read a couple hundred pages).
Kiwifarms is not the source of any organized actions outside the site, again it is explicitly banned - no swatting or pileson or attempts to organize it etc - and You cannot state they do so without evidence, which you have none of - except in characterization. If kiwifarms users do things offsite, you can’t blame kiwifarms for it.
This was a pretty obvious setup, and it boggles my mind anyone falls for it and isn’t being critical. Keffals is an internet-obsessed manipulator and the thread on kiwifarms documents some really bad behavior bordering on both illegality and safeguarding concerns.
You raise good points. The community policed attempts to interact in any way with “lolcows” and expected receipts to back up claims. They covered and documented subjects nobody else would touch, like the absolutely appalling results of many “sex change” surgeries. Many of their subjects were public figures who deserved scrutiny but received none in the mainstream, like “Grace” Lavery. I suspect there were many closet lurkers of the Farms for these reasons, and only these reasons.
The whole thing with Keffals reeks of a set up.
That said, I don’t think it was strictly for archival purposes in the way you suggest. The point was to laugh at and ridicule people. Many users, quite frankly, were great at it, and ridiculed subjects with unabashed cruelty (and rapier wit.)
Sometimes it went further than that. There were definitely posters on there who encouraged these people to kill themselves. You could argue that these subjects will only see it if they visit KiwiFarms, but how far does that excuse really go?
The slurs, especially the racial ones, are also hard to stomach. It’s obvious once you’ve spent some time looking there that they aren’t being deployed in an earnest way like stormfront, but in a wannabe ironic, edge lord fashion (for example, they often call white people the N word, like Jesse says.)
It’s also important to mention this type of behaviour was more common in some threads than others.
I’m also not sure why it’s necessary to document someone’s home address.
I’m with Corrina Cohn: we don’t need KiwiFarms. We need investigate journalists brave enough to cover taboo and important topics, and more spaces to discuss them.
It’s fair that commentary and criticism/ridicule/objectifying of the documented subjects is part of the culture - didn’t mean to ignore it as a thing - but it’s analogous to this comment thread on the podcast episode to me (the ‘dossiers’ are rolled up into the intro post as more happens). The podcast is the parent media and comment thread is a child. And I think a community talking to one another in inside jokes and references and, yes meanness and hatred is like getting a peek at a lot of people’s group chats and it doesn’t bother me. My point on that aspect was that they weren’t posting their ridicule outside kf but just to each other inside their walls. As many things if observers want to be voyeurs that is on them but you can’t blame kiwifarms.
And necessary to do, and funny to do are two things. In some cases I do think the people they are following are dangerous and so it achieves something important: a lot of these people are predators and mentally disturbed (I think of challenor or keflls or eli and so on) and they cleanup after themselves or use alts or otherwise try and obfuscate their footprint (like kflls). Having someone keeping receipts in this era of no-memory media is nice to keep a sanity check.
And then some are just schadenfreude like the laveries (although grace is borderline when viewed in sum).
Points taken, for sure.
This is an interesting distinction. When you step back and think about it, why would someone who chooses to share every aspect of their lives with complete strangers, for money, be surprised that there is an effort to archive/scrutinize their behavior? Not unlike searching "Jessica Simpson" on D-Listed or Perez Hilton 15 years ago. Not saying I loved those sites or what they stood for - or what they did to women - BUT! this Keffals person is a celebrity, with all the trappings, which include wackadoos on the internet. Yes there's quite a bit of daylight between kiwi farms and, say, People Magazine, but... how much? KF is internet dorks doing all the archiving instead of "reporters" and with anonymity often comes extreme language/behavior. I dunno maybe I'm way off base here but I guess I just feel like if you want privacy, maybe don't be an influencer? Isn't that what we tell celebrities all the time?
I think it’s telling how many of the legitimately illegal and harassing activities supposedly committed by KiwiFarms are mixed in with complaints of KiwiFarms users saying mean or offensive things. (eg; they had the temerity to uncover my “deadname”, they said I look like an ugly man, they posted messages I wrote in a discord and made fun of my PTSD diagnosis, they’re gossiping about my relationship with my family, etc.)
Not saying that’s right or admirable behaviour, but I think it’s clear many trans activists simply don’t want people to be able to say certain things. They’re on Twitter already gunning for Ovarit and Mumsnet for next, even though the only thing these sites can be accused of is allowing women to say gender ideology is rubbish.
I think your interpretation is spot on.
This keffals person’s entire schtick on twitter is (probably using bots) to ‘ratio’ people on twitter they disagree with as some kind of lame mic drop to their in crowd. This is what matters to them: likes, rt’s, domming twitter. Winning.
To pretend these social media darlings are somehow victims because people are privately laughing at them and finding their dirty laundry strewn across the internet that ruins their carefully curated social media image is laughable imo - in this context the subjects of ridicule are the powerful ones, as you said the ‘celebrities’. They are the ones trying to control public discourse and shout people down and they are absolutely shameless. And if you are like nu huh shakes head: ...they got kiwifarms completely taken off the normweb. I think people have the power dynamics backwards here.
And to boot: afterward this person and their cadre proceeded to parade around about their ‘win’ and further dramatize the situation for the clout and likes with all their other internet obsessives like lorenz to further cement their alpha culture status. What they say goes. What they believe is right and don’t you forget it. If you do: you’re a literally nazi.
Also I’ll point out again: there is absolutely no proof there is any actual harassment of this keffals person and as katie cautiously points out it 100% does not match the pattern of most actual harassment. It’s entirely plausible - like all the faked hate crimes - that keffals is making it up (‘calling the police about death threats constantly’ etc) or doing it to themselves for the clout.
Maybe I’m a cynic but it all smells fishy to me.
I don't know if Kiwi Farms was making any money (did it have ads?) but I would imagine the one party who might want to actually dig into this and prove things one way or another would be the owner of that site. Maybe we'll see something come from that camp in the near future?
Also, I know it's been raised in another thread here but this could not be more clear... that kind of "domming", as you call it, that behavior is just so, so male. To quote Nat King Cole "I know it's been said, many times, many ways, but KEFFALS IS A MAN AND IS ACTING LIKE ONE". Sorry.
I saw when they were in the .ru domain (sorry I’m not downloading tor for this) that a thread was posted trying to lay out their defense but that seems about it. they don’t seem to have any power to get their message out... if they even want to? I don’t even see their users popping up in articles and threads to present a different narrative - it’s completely drowning in people repeating ad naseum ‘ALT RIGHT DOXXING SWAT COORDINATING HARASSMENT SITE’ or ‘YAAAAAS’ ing.
My probably too generous interpretation is kf people just want all the attention to go away and are trying to lay low until everyone forgets and they find a new ddos and dns provider or whatever.
They want to watch *other* people have drama and meltdowns haha.
Null is basically blacklisted from the financial system, as far as raising money for KF goes. Like any patreon-esque site will get a letter from Visa/Mastercard/etc that they have to drop his account or be blacklisted themselves from accepting credit cards in the future. He lost his personal paypal account as well.
I think it's pretty much only federal regulations that keep Visa/Mastercard from pressuring banks to drop his account and keep him from being able to use a debit card.
One of the more outrageous things I've seen regarding KF and money is some KF users tried to donate bitcoin to him from their Coinbase account. If you're not familiar, Coinbase is a website where you can put in your bank details and buy bitcoin. From there you can transfer your bitcoin to an address housed on your computer or other computers. Anyone trying to send bitcoin directly from their Coinbase account to Null's address got their Coinbase account banned.
I don't think Null wants to run ads because they'll basically be like porn site ads.
boy oh boy that monotone speaking voice makes me really trust her
Great job Jesse! Thank you for all your hard work investigating the internet’s arsecrack so we don’t have to!
1) Fabulous episode, guys. Major props to Jesse for researching it.
2) Cormoran Strike combing through Twitter in the new Galbraith book, and also Jesse researching this ep: “He was starting to feel like a truffle pig trying to do its job in a room full of incense, dead fish and strong cheese.”
3) “Heil Josh the Corn Lord”?? 🤣
I'm about two thirds of the way through the book now- I love it!! I can't put it down.
The greatest moment of this podcast's history is Jesse Singal saying 'catboy Ranch' absolutely made my day.
1. What is Hitler’s Mountain rereat?
2. I didn’t vote for cliffhangerss.
Give me a three-hour episode now. Call yourselves a Fifth Column tribute act?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berghof_(residence)
The last thing I listened to Sunday night was this podcast. The first thing I listened to Monday morning was NPR which presented keffals claim about a gun in her face as fact. I could hear Katie's voice telling Morning Edition to DO BETTER!
>I need help deciphering a 4chan shitpost
:^)
As soon as the site went down, I was giddy for the B&R breakdown.
If you want an insight into Keffals online personality, here is a 30 min. interaction with political streamer Stardust.
https://youtu.be/NZiAAnMHcps
The full 30 isn't necessary as things go 0-100 very early on.
Yes this poor defenseless trans lady definitely doesn’t have the narcissistic rage of a man with a hurt ego. Really illustrates the type of person the trans community and it’s media handmaidens think is a representative.
Lots of these too online trans women seem to really enjoy calling other women cunts and bitches and stupid. sort of a lot like misogynistic men also like to do but wouldn’t be able to get away with in mixed company. Hmm.
Yeah, I can’t see how so many people are taking her side when videos like this make her look like a complete nutjob.
I'm really stuck on the point Keffals keeps trying to make about how her family has to lock their doors at night because of all the harassment. She's saying it like it's some kind of profound hardship. Meanwhile all I can think is, are there really people out there who DON'T lock their doors at night? That's, like, completely unfathomable to me. Why would you go to sleep without locking your doors? It seems as self-evidently stupid as leaving a fire going in the back yard overnight or leaving your car windows open in the rain. Props to this Stardust chick for keeping her cool throughout that thoroughly nutty conversation.
For what it's worth, an official Trans Lifeline post on Medium confirmed that one of the founders showed up at Joshua Moon's house:
https://translifeline.medium.com/debunking-dispelling-myths-a-response-to-a-recent-tumblr-article-51ba607a4619
I read the whole article and felt sick. Like calling 911 for someone who is actively suicidal is the worst. I do suicidal assessments as part of my job and literally every organization tjatvdoes this wants to call 911 ONLY as a last resort. It is better than someone killing themselves. FFS
It makes me sad that no matter how much pessimism I cultivate, everything is *always* even worse than I imagine.
How has Keffals not been arrested for supplying minors w prescription drugs... w potential mailing inter state laws being broken?
bobposting would be the one arrested since they actually run the site
but in reality the site links to overseas markets, so it's not supplying meds
Isn't Eli Erlick doing it through the mail, too? (directly)
Nice original reporting. Most people talking about KF don't understand this at all. I knew a bit more than most people, but I learned a lot from the ep.
My 19yo son adores Keffals. I know, epic parent fail. Thx for the podcast ep. Now I don’t have to spend any time reading about this very annoying person.
LOL I feel you. My 16-year-old loves Vaush, the worst man on the internet.
Might be an opportunity to open their eyes to the real intention of debate bros (audience, money) with some Socratic questions.
Who is he debating? Are they well prepared and educated? Do people ever change their minds? Who benefits from these debates? How does the audience react?
Those are great questions, especially since this kid loves to talk about rhetoric and persuasion a lot. Thank you!
An aside: We took a family trip to Seattle last June. One night, my husband and son went down to the hotel restaurant for a late-night snack. Who was walking out as they walked in? Fucking Vaush! And my son was star-struck and had a picture taken with him. I felt like mah baybee had been defiled.
Not to seem like an asshole but when I heard about the police coming to her house and she tweeted that they dead named her, I was like....how traumatic could it have been if you are talking about them using the wrong name? OTH, after the war, when my grandfather went back to his home town, he saw people wearing his old hats, and he talked about it to such an extent that my brother and I knew about it. Of all the bad things that happened when he went back, that is what he focused on. Trauma is weird. I do wonder if that is what happened - trauma caused her to focus on weird things. Or she is lying
Wearing his old hats, as in neighbors went into his old house and stole them and wore them shamelessly so much they didn't even think "yo, grandpa LL is back in town... maybe we should take his hats off?" Because if that's the case, I see how that can be traumatizing. It's like the "moving on without you" trope combined with a "taking a part of you and saying it was really a part of us" element. Like... completely erasing your existence in a way.
Deadnaming... I don't know what that would feel like, but also the police are strangers going off the language that was used in the fake threat and/or what was on Keffals' legal documents? Like it sounds more like getting triggered that the Target checkout clerk offered you a Target credit card after you just had your identity stolen and a massive credit card debt fiasco. Like, it sucks that you're reminded of all of that, but the clerk is just following job protocols.
The police didn't deadname her. The police chief actually went through the video footage of the entire time she was in custody and released a statement because of the public accusations and threats they were getting (which is totally cool and fine when you're trans).
The only thing with her "deadname" were evidence bags because that was the name registered in the public system.
Oh. My grandfather's house had been basically destroyed and so people had stolen everything. His hats included. To be fair, no one knew my grandfather had survived. I think for my grandfather it was just proof that his old life was totally gone. But also, that people really thought he was dead.
As for Keffals. Yeah. It might be like being reminded your identity had been stolen. It might be just adding to the trauma. Also. She might not have her legal name changed.
Edited because I wrote stolen instead of changed
A write-up on the topic on Wired.
https://www.wired.com/story/keffals-kiwifarms-cloudflare-blocked-clara-sorrenti/
It starts with the "assault rifle in face" story.
Someone should alert them that that is probably not what happened.
(But I am too busy/lazy)
They don't care. "Journalists" are nothing more than aggregators of social media echo chambers at this point. Actual reporting is so hard to find you have to know who to subscribe to on substack and it's a big problem for a democracy.
The “corn lord” is in reference to Josh suggesting Ethan Ralph needed to be sacrificed for the corn harvest (as per the South Park episode with Britney Spears)
https://youtu.be/O-uaIQMNkkM
True, though Josh specifically mentioned the South Park episode as his inspiration.
https://youtu.be/JZb10C5u2io&t=2m48s
Really well done. This is one of the best deep dives in a while. I would love to hear Jesse or Katie talk about why they view Cloudflare as the "backbone of the internet". As far as I can tell when people use this phase it just means "piece of the internet I do not understand how to use". The argument seems to be if a service is sold from one corporate client to another ie DDoS protection, Cloud hosting, database management, payment processing, ect. then companies should not be allowed to discriminate against customers. All of these services are provided by "private companies" with multiple competitors, but that doesn't seem to matter. If a company bundles those services, throws on an advertising platform, and some of its clients are individual people then we magically get to use the "private company" argument and de-platforming is gross, but not a threat to the internet. I don't want to strawman the case here, but I don't understand the principle you are using to distinguish between the two scenarios.
Yeah I did a few minutes of checking into whether or not Cloudfare was even close to being a monopoly and I don't get the impression it is? It's definitely (one of?) the most well known CDN/DNS/DDoS-protection services out there though, so it's significant in that regard.
For me the distinction is these "service providers" aren't the same as social media sites that primarily provide a way to join and interact with a specific community (all the other users). AWS hosting choosing who it wants to drop (for "moral" not legal reasons) is like a bakery not wanting to bake a gay cake. Twitter banning someone is saying you can't talk in this particular public square anymore.
Not saying where I stand on any of this... #ItsComplicated Just my take on the distinction.
From what I understand Cloudflare is not a monopoly is it one of maybe a half a dozen well know companies that provide the same service ... much like there are about half a dozen well known companies in the social media space. My issue is with the "public utility" model being applied to the layer of the internet which involves corporate sales instead of consumer sales. The end result here seems to be some sort of Koch libertarian logic that ends up with corporations having more rights than individuals here. It's fine to boot an single person off a platform, even if that seriously harms their livelihood, but doing the same thing to a corporation not fair game. Ultimately I think this logic lies in the idea that using a social media platform does not constitute a commercial transaction in the same way KF paying for Cloudflare does. I think this is a largely nonsense distinction because exchanging your information instead of money for a service is completely analogous. The other hair splitting thing here is what "taking offline" means. Despite Jesse's protestations TOR is quite simple to use (you download a browser or a Firefox plugin and you're up and running in about 5 minutes). KF is not gone from the internet it's just more difficult to find. I think we agree that some level of the internet needs "public utility" protections, but I fail to understand why that ought to privilege corporate transactions over individual ones.
> From what I understand Cloudflare is not a monopoly is it one of maybe a half a dozen well know companies that provide the same service
It's a near monopoly. After Moon was booted from Cloudflare he went to DDoS-Guard and quickly dropped for violating their acceptable use policy.
https://ddos-guard.net/en/info/blog-detail/ddos-guard-terminating-services-for-kiwi-farms
He's using a combination of open source DDoS protection and VanwaTech which is AFAIK a small outlet, that protects sites like Daily Stormer. IMO the fact that he's already using Vanwa is a sign that there are nearly 0 companies willing to do business with him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Lim_(entrepreneur)
DDoS mitigation is expensive just to cover the raw network traffic that's used to attack the target. And like health insurance you want a lot of inoffensive (healthy) customers that cover the cost of the sites being attacked (sick).
Cloudflare was only used for DDoS protection. The distinction matters because nothing was "hosted" for KiwiFarms by Cloudflare. Meaning, the protection was removed for the sole purpose of allowing targeted and ongoing DDoS attacks. CloudFlare knows this and did it anyway after specifically citing why that's a dangerous precedent to set.
The claim they made about an "imminent threat" has never been proven, there have been no details about it, and there's never even been an attempt to contact the site owner. If there were a real threat, don't you think law enforcement or Cloudflare itself would want information from the site owner?
Not all providers can handle the level of attack KiwiFarms is being hit with. They aren't the only provider but at what point, in a market that's ruled by a handful of large corporations, do we stop saying "just go somewhere else?" These companies enjoy an enormous amount of protection by Section 230 specifically so they aren't held liable. They are shielded by our government and allowed to operate as carriers. There needs to be an expectation that essential services aren't yanked because an activist on Twitter doesn't like you.
I don't think most people would agree with your statement: "exchanging your information instead of money for a service is completely analogous".
Also, I think "taking offline" is true for the average Joe, but yeah, people who are visiting KF probably know how to get to it if they really want to.
I don't think I have a well thought out position on this though and I understand the points you are making.
I think the idea that exchanging information for services counts as commercial activity has grown in popularity over the last several years. Both Lina Khan and Bob Barr have expressed sympathy for the position. I don't know that a majority of people would agree with me, but I think you could persuade big parts of the DOJ and the judiciary in court.
Don't know that my comment was clear enough. I am not trying to apologize for Cloudflare or throw my hands up and say "let the market take care of it". What I am saying is the same logic that leads you to object to Cloudflare refusing service to a corporation ought to apply analogously to corporations refusing to host a particular person's blog.
As I said above we both agree on the desirability of the "public utility" model being applied at some level of the internet. What you seem to be suggesting is that only corporation sales should be given that protection. I think both individual and corporate layers should be protected in the same manner. The idea that the average person can "go build their own social media company" is as ridiculous sounding as KF building their own CDN.
KF is a social media company that an average person just built.
And the issue isn't that KF needs a CDN, it needs DDoS protection. Really, DDoS attacks are serious federal crimes that the federal government effectively just doesn't police. Really, the average site shouldn't need DDoS protection services like CloudFlare because the government should be pursuing and prosecuting people who commit these attacks. It's the software version of fucking with telephone exchange stations; it's an attack on infrastructure.
DDoS attacks are extremely cheap. For like <$100, you can get a month-long 10gbps DDoS attack on the dark web. In order to mitigate that attack, you basically need a computer that can slurp up all that traffic and filter out the dud nonsense traffic from the legitimate users. So you need a 10gbps line. Those cost like $750/month.
I think we are just going to agree to disagree here. Again my issue is drawing this line in a manner which privileges corporations over individuals. I'm not quite sure why you think both CDN's and social media companies function like utilities, and then come to the conclusion they ought to exist under separate regulatory frameworks.
I really can't sympathize with Jesse getting all indignant that people are giving him shit on Twitter for white-knighting Kiwifarms of all things, it's a bizarre hill to die on. Yes, they sometimes pick targets who are awful people, but it's a website dedicated to cruelty that has brought misery to tons of people. Buying into their "we don't touch the poop" line is laughable too. The site is basically whole threads of "Look at this person we think is terrible, by the way, here's their full legal name and their home address and their place of work, just thought that was interesting information to have, we wouldn't condone anyone *doing* anything with that information though, oh no, that would be a shame". Come on, man.
Even if you think Keffals is the worst person ever, KF is a terrible place and we shouldn't be shedding any tears over it being shut down. "But the doxxing site run by the totally-not-right-wing guy who incorporated under the name 'Final Solutions Inc.' was a useful resource for journalists looking for receipts on Important Internet Drama, so who is to say if it was good or bad really?" Man, fuck off with that.
Always with the "hill to die on" argument. That's called "principles." I know that's so 1990's but some of us old people remember when the internet wasn't dominated by corporations and activists pretending to be "journalists."
If you want a nice sanitary controlled environment there are tons! Like Facebook (except for all the nasty things it does of course), or Reddit (oh wait, there are actual pedophiles running subs and cute rape and underage porn). Ok then maybe Twitter? Just kidding hahaha. It's the most public harassment forum you can find!
You see where I'm going with this? Don't pretend to give a single shit about online discourse because every single platform is used to dox, harass, and stalk people. We won't even get into the live-streaming of actual rape and murder. Sounds like you think concentrated power deciding what words people can use is the way to go!
I also found the reporting on how bad KF is to be pretty milquetoast. Keffals somehow seems even worse.
My main takeaway from this episode is that we need to roll back or get rid of section 230. If tech companies faced derivative liability for libel, cyberstalking, solicitation of the commission of a crime, etc, KF and Keffals and all the worst parts of social media would pretty quickly go away. People treat section 230 like it's part of the Constitution, like all our rights depend on it. Just not the case. I remember life before the internet, and in many ways people were freer.
I hate how the tech companies (not just FAANG and Twitter but the various hosting companies, ISPs, etc) have convinced people that our freedom depends on giving THEM a liability shield! That our rights depend on a corporate handout to social surveillance companies. Such a perversion of the idea of freedom.
Whenever you guys do the episodes where you defend people that no one much likes it always makes me think of the Tegridy farms episodes of Southpark.
Also, its why I subscribe.
*my tegridy farms is when you defend people who are probably pedophiles but innocent of some specific charge levied against them and I stay subscribed
Me too. I always admire people with blind principles.
Even when I think “not a hill to die on, guys!” I always admire their integrity.
Exactly
Only people in media who I can trust to tell me stuff I don’t want to hear. I just wish their ambitions were higher than internet stuff.
I know right? Maybe when they get older… I trust The Fifth Column guys in what they’re willing to talk about. They play it pretty safe with the verboten subjects though. Ah well, they can’t all be bravely cancelled lesbians and lumbering vegetarians ;)
I’m low key praying they have kids since I didn’t really care about the world burning down around me (except in a very distant academic sense) until I had to imagine my kid growing up in it.
Then it was like “WTF?!? You were *serious* about all that shit coming to pass?”
Oooh little Jesselings or Katiedids! Slightly terrifying but I’m in for the podcast.
It does seem like we’re hurtling ever faster toward doom. Hopefully it just seems that way because we get full exposure to the rainbow of personality disorders and antisocial behavior on social media etc. I’m cheerfully betting it’s an illusion and in 1000 years little Jesselings and Katiedids will be talking about Some Guy’s descendants who helped colonize Mars. They’ll be shamed of course… filthy colonizers ;)
I’m a full blown weirdo on this but I think what has to happen is a democratic republic system for the internet that apportions attention in ways we all agree are helpful and nudges along the productive path. If nobody makes that, in a way that works, it’s just expanding chaos.
Thanks for taking the time to research all of this. Must have taken a long time, especially with KF being only available via TOR in the last week.
On the subject of who doxxed who, it was certainly not destiny's community (DGG) or the quartering. Destiny keeps his community in check. The word "keffals" and "kiwifarms" are banned in his chat. The quartering produces lazy passive content. He doesn't have a community that cares enough about him to harass keffals on her behalf and he's somewhat of a lolcow himself, originating back when he made 30+ videos on brie larson playing wonder women.
Quartering led pileons for weeks of harassment against a MRA conmam who was doxxed as a secret liberal and cuck are you sure about this description of his content? Not what I remember.
I just googled this now. L M A O. While he certainly amplified the drama, it was other people who started it, did further research, provided new updates and doxxed the guy. Jeremy is capable of getting his audience to ratio people on twitter or review bomb movies but I think that's as far as he and his community will go.
Haha yeah it was pretty amazing to watch the meltdown, I just happened upon it and got aware of that little pocket of twitter - the quartering and raiketa (sp?) and tim pool which seems to have a large overlap of followers and interests.
I'm laughing at how Jesse has to explain glownaggers for the normies
e: this is the source
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbG6u86t4bA
The full quote: "CIA n*****rs glow in the dark. You can see them if you're driving. You just run them over. That's what you do." Hence glowies.
For the uninitiated, this is Terry A Davis, a brilliant computer programmer and paranoid schizophrenic who was best known for his online presence and Temple OS, his hand coded operating system which is an incredible piece of outsider art.
He's a modern Francis E Dec, another infamous paranoid schizophrenic whose bonkers letters to radio stations and newspapers live on to this day through enthusiasts (see: https://www.bentoandstarchky.com/dec/intro.htm )
If you've ever heard a joke about the "Gangster Computer God Worldwide Secret Containment Policy" that's classic Dec.
(Another similar tragic figure you may have heard of is Gene Ray of Time Cube infamy, who went viral in the early aughts)
Terry's a beloved figure on KF, and has basically achieved the equivalent of sainthood there. In between the disjointed rants and copious use of slurs during his long livestreams, he had moments of lucidity where he expressed childlike wonder and a beautiful, almost zen view of the world. Look up the videos of him and his birds or when he demos his elephant drawing, they're delightful.
I came across Terry in a Down the Rabbithole youtube (I think?) and read some of the KF thread on him. People were really rooting for him to get help. To this day, every year kiwis post in honor of Terry on his yahrzeit.
Here's an arrangement of a hymn he created in Temple OS, Risen, that's achieved fame and noteriety of its own because of how hauntingly beautiful it is.
https://youtu.be/oY33uoBSw3w
Eta: Some clarification and the quote added
It was wild finding out he's also beloved by zoomers after I came across some tiktoks. Folx are also selling unlicensed TempleOS merch. I've thought about buying a hoodie.
There is so much ridiculous internet merch I'd own if not for the terrible import duties to the EU. I just wish Terry could have capitalized on it while he was with us, have a comfortable place to rest his head while talking to Mr God and his birds.
TempleOS is public domain. You don't need an expensive license or anyone's permission to sell TempleOS merch.
That's the really great thing about open source software. You rarely need anyone's permission to do what you want with the software. Also, you don't have to worry about being fired as a customer because of what you did.
open source doesn't mean that no one owns the logos etc, even if that someone is a foundation. usually, you can't just make merch for something and use their trademarks/whatever to sell merch of your own.
That is generally true. However, in this specific case, the logo is public domain and TempleOS is not a registered trademark.
From what I've seen, it seems pretty easy to talk to his estate and sell merch so long as 30% of profits are donated to NAMI.
Love it when two of my favorite terminally online people, Jesse and Destiny, cross streams. Also Katie was there.
The irony about taking him down over Lia T is that in all other respects, he's very much in the TWAW camp.
It's more proof that the TRA lobby wants absolute control of all discourse and at this point, the government and tech industry seems to be happy to wield that weapon. I'm hoping we hit a tipping point because I've never felt so politically homeless and hopeless.
It was Trace, wasn't it?
"Episode 132: How Our Assistant Trolled Cloudflare Into Dropping a Website"
Inject it straight into my veins....this episode is sooooo good.
I’m not sure what makes me angrier, Keffels arranging drugs for minors or this new crop of “worker” who feel so entitled that they have the right to steal your business. It’s obvious they’ve only studied Judith Butler and Kim Crenshaw and have never stepped foot into a microeconomics class!!!
I have a humble request.
Can we just stop talking about these self-obsessed, petulant, trans-rights lunatics?
For a few months, at least?
I got 20 minutes in, and had to turn it off. I love you guys, but its abundantly clear at this point that the attention only encourages them.
It's worth discussing when these trans-rights lunatics are shoving anyone who disagrees with them off platforms and in this case, off the clearnet completely. It may hurt your head to think about the threat this poses, but maybe it'll matter when you can't say things like "a man isn't a woman" without losing your livelihood.
I liked having never known what kiwi farms was until you all talked about them in an earlier pod.
Excited to hear the Cancel Me, Daddy response podcast 🤣
The paywall for this episode and the next should be removed if it's getting contentious online from people imagining the worst version of what it could be.
The type of people who are upset online about this without having listened to it are also the type who were never going to listen to it anyway, even if immediately available to them.
This is a free episode. The haters will get their chance to hear it tomorrow, I believe.
Loved the long episode! Congrats on selling out the live show!
Hang on - sincere question - how are people already commenting on this episode? I may be reading the timecodes incorrectly, but it almost seems as if some comments have been made in a shorter time than the episode duration - ie, before anyone who isn't Superman or Doctor Who would be able to ingest the content. Apologies if I'm misreading timestamps, I'll see myself to the EuthanasiaDome if I'm wrong here
No you’re right, it just popped up, but sometimes people comment as they listen rather than wait until the end. The excitement cannot be contained.
I admire anyone who could multitask by commenting and listening on this one at the same time. I’ve concentrated fully on listening and think I still need another two runs through to get the details.
I’m always popping into the comments to see if anyone has answered whatever question I have in my head. This one was crazy detail packed!
I should add, I haven't heard this ep yet. In fact, I'm on a Futurama binge right now and hope to catch up with the pod tomorrow, when I'm hungover. So, should any of you lovely BAR folk honour me with a response of any kind, please forgive me if I don't reply for 10 - 18 hours. X
*eight minutes into episode*
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
Futurama binge sounds waaaay better than internet drama, even when commentary on said drama is delivered by the BARpod team. Keep doing you.
Futurama binge fest.... reminds me of my honeymoon. Enjoy!
My brother and I communicate exclusively in Futurama and muppets references.
I didn’t wait until the end of the episode to complain about alligators in the Hood Canal. Much like the management of Cloudfare, I felt the level of “revolting content” surmounted the need for due process (ie finishing the episode before commenting).
If I wanted alligators in my backyard I’d live in Florida.
IIRC Jesse said Keffals' beefs with people like The Quartering and Destiny raised her profile for internet drama and led to this current kerfuffle. If you want a succinct timeline on the involvement of Kiwi Farms
Keffals declared taking away Destiny's source of income (Twitch) on March 23rd
https://archive.ph/kqdHb
In Josh Moon's "Mad at the Internet" stream where he covers the week's internet drama, he talked for a few minutes about Keffals on March 25th
https://odysee.com/@mati:c/mad-at-the-internet-2022-03-25:1?t=2660
This obviously got the attention of KF's audience and a day later Keffals post was live on KF
https://archive.ph/uLpNt
This is pretty tangential to the Keffuffle, but does anyone know where the name Keffals came from? It sounds like an adorable goat or a children's entertainer (Keffals the Klown?), not a confrontational trans activist/influencer. (Apologies if this was discussed somewhere in the episode or show notes/links and I missed it.)
Not so adorable - it’s an abbreviation of “Cockwaffles”
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cockwaffle
Thanks for explaining. It's such a mangled abbreviation that I still think it would be a cute goat name.
Dang, a cliffhanger. Also, I'm really looking forward to the advice segment. That needs to be a thing.
Uh. Couldnt follow this story
The Marjorie Taylor Green clip makes very clear that the impulse on the left to make everything about their particular enemies/fight du jour is not exclusively a feature on the left.
Yes - both sides have their share of unhinged lunatics at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Think about those poor people in that Florida congressional district: Matt Gaetz v. Rebekah Jones.
(I know the voters there elected Gaetz previously and he more closely aligns to their beliefs, but he has made a total fool of himself while in office).
*takes a long drag on a cigarette*... in this episode, we learn that in her 20s, Katie had a blog which had enough content on it that she felt the need to request archive.org remove it from their... well, archive. that's probably pretty common and whatever, who cares...
however, I remember *multiple* episodes of this very podcast where Katie strongly insists that she was not online at all during her ~20s. I've always found this claim to be pretty hard to believe, and it always had a weird kinda "thou doth protest too much" vibe to it. what dark secrets lie hidden in this mysterious era of Katie's past??
I have not looked at comments yet so this may have already been said, but Overcast removes silences so, in my listening experience at least, Katie got her way.
All of this almost distracted me form the fact that Destiny is a girl's name.
This might be tangential but I fell asleep because it was really late when I listened to this episode and I kept dreaming about giving Katy advice about how to be a good van lifer. The biggest tip that I remember from the dream is that she should make a video of her shaving her legs in the van because that is a real van Lifer moment
there is legitimate debate about using pronouns when Jesse knows it makes him look bad.
This podcast produces laffs at so many levels.
thank god it's football season again so I have something else to think about
Speaking as a “normie” (not crazy about that term, btw), this seems like an ugly, moronic hill to die on. Just because K seems to be an unstable, unlikeable person doesn’t automatically mean KF deserves even a half-hearted defense. They fucking dox people and send swat teams to their homes? Fuck those racist, nihilist, immature assholes. I couldn’t care less that they lost their security arrangement, and hardly see it as some major blow against free speech. Go outside. Get offline. Take a nice walk. Stop engaging with Twitter jerkoffs that are making you crazy.
What's the hill they're dying on? To clarify the story?
Defending kiwi farms, goof.
Weirdos: Hitler shot MLK.
Jesse: What? That makes no sense. Hitler died years before-
Weirdos: So you're defending Hitler? Pretty revealing.
Perfect analogy. The Twitter brain rot has spilled into this comment section.
Deeply researching a murky topic doesn't make it a de facto defense. I've always appreciated (and now pay for) Jesse and Katie to take on topics other journos won't cover in depth.
What's the amount of podcast airtime dedicated to "kiwi farms is a bad place" that would satisfy you to not believe they're defending it?
Is deeply researching a serial killer and their history & motivations to produce a true crime podcast defending them?
A huge part of this episode centered on "did KF actually swat anyone?". That's part of the journalism/"defense". Just because someone says it happened doesn't mean we should automatically take them at their word. And if that's an ugly, moronic hill to die on... well, guess I'll die. [/meme]
I think that's the point and why I like this pod so much. They will defend against what they think is an unfair act even against the most deplorable people. If you are okay with mob justice just because you hate that particular group, good luck when it's your turn. If someone on there did something illegal, they should be prosecuted. Same thing with people organizing the Jan 6 events on Facebook.
I do agree that Jesse could do with less time on Twitter.
I think you need to take your own advice based on your aggressive tone!
It’s funny to listen to this again, knowing that liz fong-jones is the actual primary driver behind the drop kiwi farms campaign, and has gone as far as threatening violence against spouses of employees of internet service providers to try and cover up evidence hosted by kiwi farms of liz/Elliot being a rapist
Deleted a comment I made deeper in this thread & pasting it here bc I Have Questions & maybe some of you also have thoughts on the matter of the environmental impact of the hormones used by trans-identified ppl, which is not a shitty question bc the very same thing was an issue for birth control pills & HRT used by females getting into wastewater & having an impact on frogs, etc. 👇
I don't even know if I want to search for how Keffals is making HRT (read something about a bathtub). I remember 10 yrs ago (or more?) there was a small flurry of articles about the environmental effects of hormones from birth control pills & menopausal women using HRT, since a lot passes through into waste water. The doses for birth control pills and HRT for menopause are, as I understand, much lower than the does for trans-identified males (there was some discussion on Twitter about a shortage of HRT in the UK a few months ago, and it was being rationed, and the subject of doses came up).
Anyways, there was almost a bit of "women are using this stuff & look what's happening to the environment!" (not dismissing the environmental part at all). The Democratic Party likes to campaign as a defender of the environment, and yet now they've co-signed onto the message that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are a healthcare right. What if these two things are in conflict?
Will environmental reporters even dip their toes into this poll given the likely shitstorm that awaits? It was okay to investigate this when it was a matter of prescriptions for women. [Note👉 birth control pills and HRT for menopause are generally not decades long adventures, birth control methods can change, and there's a move towards limiting the time that menopausal women are on HRT, while using the lowest dose possible. If this isn't accurate I'm open to correction.] If Keffals was mixing up HRT in a bathtub (showing my 40-decades here and previous PETA membership & wondering where these hormones come from at all, since it used to be the product of pregnant mares that weren't treated well) -- WTF kind of toxic situation is he creating?
That is a very interesting question. Also, are you serious that this dude was brewing hormones in a bathtub? Wow.
I’ve read it mentioned. Not sure of the specifics but hoping J & K document whatever happened. Saw this on Twitter, unfortunately searching for this is hard now bc KF was scrubbed & links don’t work now. https://twitter.com/WhyDoesThisNLSA/status/1569900925094969351?s=20&t=wdwFiBOOUvThRWdR7qskRA
Is it possible that the reduced fertility of the population offsets the environmental impact of the hormones? Like, yeah, extra estrogen but also fewer disposable diapers?
This is a pretty awful definition of "offsets". The reduced fertility IS the environmental impact.
I'm not thinking about humans -- the articles I saw 10+ yrs ago were about what the effects of BCP and HRT for menopausal women were having on fish, frogs, etc. Just because we're fucking up our fertility doesn't give us the right to destroy theirs.
I’m completely lost but I assume all will be explained in part 2
Trigger warning: A promo for today's NPR ATC story about the stunning and brave takedown of Kiwi Farms includes audio of the assault-rifle-in-my-face statement.
I had never heard of kiwi farms, nor the sick characters I learned about in the first 15 minutes of this podcast, at which point I turned it off. I’m tapping out.
I discovered Kiwi Farms after I heard Grace Lavery on Heterodorx and was like, "Who is this crazy bitch?" Googled her and voila, kiwi farms. Most of the posts I saw did mot seem to come from right wing people at all. Some yes. But I would say much more TERF people, which I would say is the antithesis of right wing. They were 100% radical feminists and I would say radical feminism and right wing do not go together.
Shhhhhh, don't let the narrative bubble pop. There's no way a range of opinions and interests can exist in one place. It's definitely ALL terrorist nazi's.
I never had a KiwiFarms account but I would occasionally read the Lavery thread (which was extremely entertaining). It did seem to be mainly feminists and former fans of Mallory from the Toast era.
I never did either but once I discovered it, I spent lile days reading the threads. Stopped for months. Then started again when I heard about the Lavery debate that never happened. I haven t been on the site in months BUT i was gonna check it out again because this youtuber I used to lile then hate watched then just watched reaction channels on (I know how this sounds) - she had threads on kiwi farms and I was thinking of checking it out.
But yeah. With Grace, it was Terfs, I saw some conservatives and yeah a lot of people who blamed Grace for what happened to Mallory
And I have no.idea when I realized that Grace's husband was Mallory from Slate. I think it was Kiwi Farms. I liked her writing but then she became insufferable. I stopped reading and when I came back it was a dude columnist. Took me an hour or so to realize that Daniel Lavery was Mallory.
And they were VICIOUS on kiwi farms. I felt sometimes bad. But I was truly astounded by her.. Lile her definition of woman was what the Fuck ever. The way she spoke about menstrual cramps. Ugh. She is the worst
I REALLY miss the U.S. Politics thread. Gehenna was the best.
You can do that right now on info lookup sites. Sure will be weird when doxing and swatting continues despite the notorious nazi terrorist gang known as KiwiFarms is memory-holed.
And they could get that same non-pii public information other places right?
Obviously I speak for myself only, but I no longer care about people seeing my comments and knowing where I stand on freedom of expression issues. If anything, I'm slightly ashamed of myself for spending the last few years nodding, smiling, and being polite as the world around me became increasingly wackadoodle on this issue.
Thanks, lemme figure out best way to correct
not katie, but, i do have to say that it is almost exactly the same as moving to a different neighborhood within a city. there are also rentals outside of urban centers if you don't have the capital for a house!
also: the longer time you spend away from the city, the less attachment you'll have to the "cultural opportunities"
just my 2 cents as a new suburbanite
Does the word Lesbian refer to the young women’s finishing schools on the isle of Lesbos in Ancient Greece?
I learned in college- dark ages now- that the term comes from Sappho, the poet who was a teacher in Lesbos, and wrote many love poems made famous by the Roman poet's Catullus who translated them. I think it's true?
I wonder if Romans/Greeks of the time said they were sending their children off to get radicalized by the Lesbos.
Do you want the good primos of B and R to get liver cirrhosis?
Okay but I'm sending my rehab bill to YOU.
Which one has the best secret bar? (*whispers* I've heard things about rehabs...)
I guess "we'll get to that" has supplanted "it's complicated" as Jesse's catchphrase. Now we'll have to reprogram all of his action figures.
But he really did get to it! Great episode Jesse.