Keffals: A Case Study on Internet Terrorism and Mass Media Manipulation by Steven Bonnell II part 6 of 8

[Chuck Tamzarian]

VI | Bathtub Hormones & Spy Games

Sorrenti and Chloe (@bobposting on Twitter) have worked together to
promote the DIY HRT Directory, a wiki that has been the subject of much
mystery and controversy over the past few months. There have been many
claims made about improper behavior and questionable services offered by
the DIY HRT Directory. After some thorough investigation, I am able to
offer a bit more insight into some of the problems that exist with this
service. Before I dive too deeply into this, however, I would like to
reaffirm that I am a strong believer in making safe access to hormones
and other appropriate medical interventions available to trans people
who need them, including minors. We must be cautious, however, when we
allow questionable individuals with shady histories and deceitful
messaging to be the people illicitly offering these treatments online,
especially when it may harm the minors in question.

Firstly, it’s important to recognize that Sorrenti was a big supporter
of the DIY HRT Directory.

Sorrenti began supporting the DIY HRT Directory on June 26th, 2022,
tweeting that she is “donating thousands of dollars a year” to the
website so people can access “hormone replacement therapy before the age
of 18,” and follows it with another Tweet saying she will never back down.

Chloe acknowledges and thanks Sorrenti for the sponsorship.

On a September 14th stream she says she “stands by supporting the
DIY HRT Directory” and compares it to AOC supporting abortion drugs.

Up until September 19th, Sorrenti had a link to the DIY HRT
Directory on her website at keffals.gg, with an accompanying chat
command to promote the website

As a final side note, Sorrenti and Chloe have a long history of
friendship with one another.

On September 9th, Sorrenti was invited as a guest on the H3H3 podcast
and was questioned about the DIY HRT Directory. She was incredibly
evasive during the interview, too nervous to offer up much information
unless directly asked, and ended up telling a couple of embarrassing
lies about the site itself.

Original Claim: Ethan asks Sorrenti where they “do” the DIY HRT
Directory promotion; Sorrenti claims it’s just a “Twitch stream open and
in the public.”

Later on in that same show she’s pushed to admit there’s a
separate directory she links to from her own website.

Original Claim: Ethan asks about “homemade hormones.” Sorrenti
exasperatedly replies with an “oh my God” and exclaims that she doesn’t
know how to make homemade hormones. She goes on to make fun of people
making hormones in their bathtub, making it sound as though the notion
is absurd.

While it sounds like an extreme claim, Chloe has actually given
tips on brewing testosterone and estrogen in a bathtub, as well as
making several jokes and references to doing so. She’s also referenced
minors and “pinkpilling” - the act of convincing someone they are trans
- on multiple occasions as well.

If Sorrenti has gone on the record claiming she supports the directory
and supports minors using it to acquire hormones, why was she so dodgy
during this interview? A website offering medical guidance to minors, or
linking to people offering to ship them illegally manufactured and
obtained drugs, deserves far more scrutiny than Ethan was willing to
provide. Things get even more strange when you examine the directory’s
ties to OtokonokoPharma and Lena Kiev.

On September 13th, 2022, a user on my subreddit, u/MrWhiteRaven, made a
subreddit post criticizing Sorrenti and the DIY HRT Directory. The
poster was able to provide a screenshot of a bathtub HRT guide, though
he doesn’t link to it or explain how he was able to find it in his post.
After some investigation, my team managed to track down the exact guide
the poster was referring to. It was written by a user who goes by the
online alias nerotard. This guide originates from two posts ( 1 | 2 )
that nerotard created on 4chan on April 18, 2020 to promote their
website. This guide gives explicit instructions for how to brew your own
hormones, including sourcing all of the supplies from various sites on
the internet as well as how to actually manufacture your own hormone
solutions for injection.

There are no longer any public links to this particular guide on the DIY
HRT Directory, and the paste was created long enough ago to have the old
Otokonoko Pharmaceuticals website. Through some more investigation,
however, we were able to determine that the link to this site is still
being given out. Firstly, the creator, nerotard, is still active on
GitHub as of September of 2022, and this is exclusively the type of
content they engage with. Secondly, we were able to find a random GitHub
account, Rexicide, that was created on October 26th, 2021. This account
has starred (favorited) the gist (repository) on GitHub, after all
public links to this guide were already taken down from the public
facing DIY HRT Directory. Therefore, this guide to brew your own
hormones must still be being sent out privately in DMs, probably after a
purchase is made on the OtokonokoPharma website.

After creating a dummy account for the OtokonokoPharma site, we noticed
a downloads section, which could be one place where this guide is
distributed after making a purchase. We’ve also managed to track down
multiple old 4chan posts, as well as a deleted reddit thread where the
link was given out by anonymous users and the author themselves ( 1 | 2
). Analyzing all of these submissions is how we were able to determine
nerotard (AKA GC146/Lil_lily/yukinogc/Lillian, founder and current owner
of OtokonokoPharma), is the one distributing the link. nerotard has
confirmed they’re from Brazil, has made posts about learning DIY HRT and
written a guide to it as well. Their legal info also lines up with
OtokonokoPharma CNPJ (the Brazilian National Registry of Legal
Entities). It’s also worth noting that OtokonokoPharma is illegally
registered as a “retail seller of food products” (CNAE 4729-6/99 -
COMÉRCIO VAREJISTA DE PRODUTOS ALIMENTÍCIOS EM GERAL OU ESPECIALIZADO EM
PRODUTOS ALIMENTÍCIOS NÃO ESPECIFICADOS ANTERIORMENTE) and does not have
a license from Anvisa (the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency) to sell
products “intended for therapeutic or medicinal purposes.”

We decided to further investigate the Lena Kiev site listed in the DIY
HRT Directory, which led us right to another bathtub HRT guide. Lena had
already written a DIY guide years ago, with a better formatted version
being distributed in 2022 on 4chan. These sites have clear instructions
for making hormones from scratch in your home and have material sourcing
directly linked. The guide was also linked at least once in Sorrenti’s
Discord, though many channels are locked down, making it hard to know
how many times it’s been linked privately. It’s also interesting to note
that they link to a guide giving step by step instructions on how to
cook your own mixes while simultaneously advising you to ignore some of
the dosing guidelines by the guide’s author, Lena. After discovering at
least two guides posted on the DIY HRT Directory in regards to brewing
your own hormones, one must ask, why has Sorrenti continually
misrepresented the information present on the wiki, especially when
Chloe herself claims to personally know all of the providers on the
directory?

On September 14th, the day after the subreddit post goes up about
OtokonokoPharma, the DIY HRT Directory silently delists OtokonokoPharma
& Lena Kiev’s site from the wiki (Before/After). That very same day,
Sorrenti admits to browsing my subreddit for posts about herself, making
it clear that they are monitoring my community to determine their next
moves.

On September 15th, the DIY HRT Directory was updated once more. Two
crucial updates are added this time:

A web crawler check is added to the website to keep track of links
that my team and I are archiving on archive.org.

From this point onward, it’s clear to my team and me that they
are working in the background to bring down questionable
websites/gits/tweets based on what we’re investigating.

An age warning is added to the DIY HRT Directory after seeing we’d
archived many links relating to their activities and DIY hormone guides
on the internet.

This is incredibly strange, given how much Sorrenti and Chloe
have explicitly advocated for this site to be used by minors ( 1 | 2 | 3
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 ).

It’s also strange to add an age disclaimer when she’s claimed
that the website is simply “an information guide.”

Within the next week, they would remove more language from the
website advising minors to seek adults who can purchase Bitcoin for
them. (Before/After)

On September 17th, 2022, Chloe reached out to me in DMs — after seeing
our activity on archive.org — in an attempt to limit the information
shown in this document. She also connected me with Sorrenti herself, and
for the first time ever, I had a direct conversation with her in which
she implored me not to release any additional information about her,
subtly remarking that it would be incredibly damaging for both of us,
and would likely cost my YouTube channel in the process.

That very same night, josikinz, the psychonaut wiki founder, reached out
to me claiming that she and someone else initially started the DIY HRT
Directory. She appeared to be mining me for information relating to any
research I was doing relating to the wiki and Sorrenti. Just minutes
after leaking one of nerotard’s AKAs to her, the DIY HRT Github repo is
brought offline in order to hide any future changes to the site. Future
snaps of the site are also blacklisted ( 1 | 2 ) from appearing on
archive.org, something only possible if requested by the owner of the
domain. If the website was merely a wiki listing other resources, as
Sorrenti claimed, why so much secrecy surrounding the Github and the
website? Why would they begin to track our archiving movements, and why
would they take things down?

Two days later, On September 19th, Chloe tweets that “harassment” has
forced her to shut down her Twitter and step away from the DIY HRT
Directory. In the same thread, she claims that Sorrenti had absolutely
nothing to do with the decision and had no input on anything relating to
the website. This seems suspect, given the level of coordination
publicly and behind the scenes between Chloe and Sorrenti. But even if
this was the case, that is no excuse for sponsoring the directory. It is
the responsibility of Sorrenti to do her due diligence before sponsoring
or endorsing any entity, particularly when it’s something so intimately
tied to the health and safety of minors. Immediately after, the DIY HRT
Directory link is removed from Sorrenti’s website (Before/After) but the
chat command was kept ( 1 | 2 ).

On September 20th, Sorrenti spoke of the site on her stream, claiming
the harassment after the H3H3 podcast was too much for Chloe to bear.
She then explains that she will no longer be publicly involved with the
DIY HRT Directory because she’s too high profile and will direct too
much harassment towards the site, a strange thing to say after comparing
herself to AOC supporting abortion drugs.

--
continued in part 7