२६ फेब्रुवारी, २०२३

"Kiwi Farms harvests anguish. It thrives on pain and revels in death. Users of the innocuously named forum prey on the vulnerable and marginalized..."

"... with persistent and twisted harassment campaigns. Despite its penchant for destroying lives, Kiwi Farms has been mostly overlooked by the media for much of the site’s existence. That is partly because of who it attacks, but also because reporters are wary of becoming targets themselves. The users call their victims 'lolcows' because their pain can be milked for laughs. The group made its purpose clear on its Twitter page before it was taken down: 'Gossip and exploitation of mentally handicapped for amusement purposes.'..."

From "The Website That Wants You to Kill Yourself—and Won’t Die/How the trolls on Kiwi Farms hounded people to commit suicide and created the online culture we have today" (Mother Jones).

When journalists have covered Kiwi Farms, they’ve tended to label it a far-right forum, which is true but incomplete. Its members both love and detest figures like former President Donald Trump and white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Not necessarily because users disagree with either, but because both can be “cringe”—online parlance for corny. 

Kiwi Farms posters have ridiculed trans Twitch streamers, and troubled teens, and even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. They are deeply reactionary—many hate women, people of color, neurodivergent people, queer people—but they torment them as much for the need of a soft target as a political project. 

“They were systematically trying to cause suicides,” Yonah Gerber, an archivist in the video game industry who has spent the better part of a decade advocating for Kiwi Farms to be shut down, told me. “I was almost another—because I tried to kill myself twice.”...

२२ टिप्पण्या:

Tarrou म्हणाले...

Singal has covered this story, there's no evidence anyone has committed suicide due to Kiwifarms, but there has been a concerted effort to remove them from the internet by some very sketchy characters.

tim maguire म्हणाले...

Journalists won’t report on it because, if they do, strangers on the internet might make fun of them? That’s pathetic.

Enigma म्हणाले...

Schadenfreude is not a new concept. It's not even an English word.

Celebrity roasts and politician roasts are not new either.

A generation ago this stuff would have been polished up for an annual CBS or NBC special. That was before the politically-correct woke left banned humor and gave everyone a gold star because they were special and unique snowflakes.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

I'm seeing a lot of arguments for censorship that are based on the idea that speech will motivate someone else to kill themself. Notably, any statement not in line with the announced dogma about transgenderism is portrayed as killing people, because it could be causally related to suicide.

This is like that "stochastic terrorism" idea, except that it's about suicide rather than murder.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Why isn't teaching people that they are hated also regarded as causing suicide? Yet that's mainstream now, burdening youths with the "information" that they are systematically reviled.

Michael McNeil म्हणाले...

Schadenfreude is not a new concept. It's not even an English word.

“Schadenfreude” is an English word. It appears in English dictionaries, therefore it's an “English” word.

That fact that the term was originally borrowed from another language is irrelevant. It has been a historic characteristic of English that it happily borrows from other languages. The resulting words are words of English.

gilbar म्हणाले...

Ann Althouse said...
Why isn't teaching people that they are hated also regarded as causing suicide?

Nobody is teaching People that they are hated.. that would BE hate speech.
You're confusing teaching whites that they are hated, with teaching People that they are hated.
whites are NOT people

Temujin म्हणाले...

Ugh. What a mess. What a weak-minded generation of kids we've managed to create, to screw up. What person of any character would be driven to give a whit about a site who's goal is to get you to kill yourself? In another era, those behind the site would have simply had a demonic club of some sort and nobody would have given them the time of day. A few parents might have been concerned enough to question it.

Today? The kids (and many adults) are under the spell of whatever comes across their phones. I cannot get worked up over this in any way other than to say we are wallowing in molasses and seem unable to move forward as a society. We are stuck in nonsense and that nonsense is 'killing' our civilization. So, in a sense, Kiwi Farms is part of that killing. They're succeeding.

samanthasmom म्हणाले...

If we're going to ban sites because they might cause people to harm themselves or others, there's a mighty long list. Sites that promote the idea that fat is healthy, or anorexia is healthy, killing your unborn child is the best outcome for both of you, how to make drinks that contain alcohol, sexual mutilation or the taking of hormones, ski vacation resorts, owning aggressive dogs, that breathing the air or drinking the water in East Palestine is safe. The list is endless. Do we each get to choose one we'd like to have banned?

JAORE म्हणाले...

Oh no, there will likely be a rash of suicides for those on Kiwi Farm.

OK, never heard of them.

But NOW I know all I need to know about them (Mother Jones? MUST be true). I know they want people to kill themselves. I know, again per MJ, that they WON'T die (how obstinate of them). I know they are right wing (horrors) even if they dump on conservative icons (must not let doubt intrude on MY truth).

Therefore I HATE, HATE,HATE them.....

Hence the suicides.
/sarc

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

I assert that Mother Jones is probably responsible for 1000s of times the numbers of death than "Kiwi Farms".

n.n म्हणाले...

You're a "burden". You're a profit. An ethical sanction. Self-abort.

n.n म्हणाले...

A forum denied. An unarmed woman aborted in a prone position. A transition reinforced with friendly fire. A select committee. Demos-cracy is aborted in darkness.

Xmas म्हणाले...

Temujin,

Usually the ForTheLulz type of people use harrassment tactics that are criminal. Things like releasing private medical or psychological information about a target, SWATting or continuously contacting the target's friends, customers and employers to try to isolate the target from society.

That is on top of other dumb shit like spamming the target's phone and email with Killyerself messages. Signing up the person for offensive websites, mailing lists and publications. Stealing their identity and performing credit card and other financial fraud in the target's name.

They are picking a target that is already vulnerable and performing a mob harrassment campaign.

That said, sometimes their targets are awful people. But 17000 wrongs don't make a right.

boatbuilder म्हणाले...

"The tactics pioneered by Kiwi Farms have also influenced QAnon-inspired crusades against hospitals treating trans children; Trumpers baselessly accusing a Texas butterfly sanctuary of human trafficking; and an anti-LGBTQ campaign spearheaded by Twitter account LibsofTikTok."

"QAnon-inspired" (very clever) "Trumpers", LibsofTiktok, Emmanuel Goldstein.

Remember the big Mother Jones piece objecting to the WaPo columnist's doxxing and personal harrasment of the person who published transactivists' own posts and videos about grooming children?

Yeah, I missed that too.

B. म्हणाले...

Becky Gerber is a complete joke—she’s married to a lawyer from moderately well-off family, has another “ husband” in the gaming industry, claims to be trans, despite undergoing IVF. She’s always on Twitter whining about something, and thus, is perfect fodder for anyone who likes to find something to mock.

JaimeRoberto म्हणाले...

I bet the panic mongers at CNN and other mainstream media have influenced more people to commit suicide than some website I've never heard of.

Narr म्हणाले...

I'm old enough to remember when young morons were encouraged to off themselves by the lyrics to songs. One doofus even got 15 minutes of fame after he survived a shotgun blast that blew his face off--and was suing the band and record company.

I'm also old enough to recall that a hit TV sitcom (which I almost never watched--some people loved it) featured opening music about painless suicide.

takirks म्हणाले...

It's humorous to observe how few people recognize the typical spin-up to "moral outrage" going on around them. The whole thing is scripted; these "concern trolls" are usually the first phase of the operation. And, operation it is--This crap is too closely coordinated to be anything else. Note the lockstep language suddenly appearing everywhere, a la the supposedly abandoned "jornolist" crapfest we used to see.

The problem with all of this is that it's just like the 'Boy Who Cried Wolf'. When the inevitable does come, everyone is going to be too jaded to recognize or acknowledge any real problems that are manifesting.

The whole thing is quite nuts, to be honest. I remain skeptical of the proposition that the Gramscian "Long March Through" is really going to accrue anything for the left, over the long haul, because the essential result of that "long march" is the utter discrediting of said institution... Leaving it questionable just what the hell they've gained by it all.

n.n म्हणाले...

Incel, toxic masculinity, rape... rape-rape culture, back... black holes... whores, conflation of sex and gender, a sanctuary State, redistributive change, a wicked solution, etc. Some people take expert opinion, popular consensus, and braying seriously.

n.n म्हणाले...

DIEversity, phobic projection, phobic displacement, class-disordered ideologies, etc. Could'a, would'a, should'a got a clue. Viability can be fragile with progressive conditions.

KellyM म्हणाले...

This sort of stuff goes on over at 4chan as well. I lurk on the /pol/ subsite (politics) and whenever someone posts something really absurd or just plain stupid, others pile on, making fun or otherwise advising the poster to KYS (kill yourself). You can imagine the eyerolls happening since I'm doing the same thing.

Since the vast majority of posters on these sites are young males, it's part of their interaction process. Does anyone think that if these individuals were together in meatspace (in person) this wouldn't happen? Of course it would. Random journo-idiots getting their knickers in a knot over it need to chill out.