Keffals: A Case Study on Internet Terrorism and Mass Media Manipulation by Steven Bonnell II part 2 of 8

[Chuck Tamzarian]

II | Kiwi Farms

Kiwi Farms is an Internet forum started in 2013 by a slightly deranged
individual known as Null, or Joshua Moon. It was spun out of a series of
4chan threads dedicated to mocking the Sonichu comics of a “special”
individual, known online as Chris Chan. These days, however, Kiwi Farms
serves as a central hub for users to collect information about eccentric
online individuals, known colloquially on the forum as “lolcows.” They
tend to target transgender individuals, as well as people who seem to be
suffering from some form of mental illness. The targets of these threads
range from far left to far right and everything in between, with no
individual being off limits to the forum. The forum has garnered a
notorious reputation for bullying and harassment, and has been blamed by
several media outlets for having driven at least two individuals to
suicide, with some claiming three were. ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 ).

It’s quite common for threads to be spun out of pre-existing threads on
Kiwi Farms, as many lolcows will come into contact with or create other
individuals that will inspire new threads. Kiwi Farms began a thread
about me on May 17th, 2017. It’s decently active and currently spans
over 360 pages. Topics ranged from users attempting to dox my wife, dox
my child’s mom, accusations of pedophilia, and baseless accusations of a
whole host of improper behavior, among other fun and exciting topics.
Other online figures would have threads created about them after
interacting with me, including Vaush, central_committee, Anavoir, and
finally, Keffals. This is the foundation of the baseless claim that
Sorrenti made when she said “Destiny is the reason Kiwi Farms found out
about me” that she later contradicted.

Sorrenti’s claims about Kiwi Farms being a hateful, transphobic
community are not without merit. It is undeniable that much harassment
has stemmed from the forum, and much of it is undeniably transphobic in
nature, with every person on the thread constantly engaging in
transphobic attacks against her. While Sorrenti is right to have her
personal qualms with Kiwi Farms, many of the largest accusations she’s
levied against the forum are unsubstantiated at best, or outright lies
at worst.

One of the largest reasons she’s been able to garner so much support for
#dropkiwifarms is because Kiwi Farms is often blamed for driving as many
as three different individuals to suicide. This claim has been
uncritically echoed by The Washington Post, Gizmodo, Insider, Daily Dot,
NPR, Forward, Vice, and NBC News, among many, many other sites.

Before we go too much farther, let’s give some thoughtful analysis to
the suicides Sorrenti et al. attributes ( 1 | 2 ) to Kiwi Farms. It is
important to note that none of the additional information I am about to
provide is an attempt at character assasination, it is done solely for
the purpose of further understanding the deeply unfortunate and complex
circumstances that may eventually lead to suicide. This is done in order
to shed light on the reality behind the claims made by Sorrenti et al.
If you or anyone you know struggles with self harm or suicidal ideation
please make use of the resources available to help.
Chloe Sagal

Chloe Sagal was known originally as an indie game developer who worked
on small, indie titles such as “Homesick” and “Super Noah Vs. The
Dinosaurs.” Her first dip into internet notoriety, however, would come
from starting a donation drive on IndieGoGo in April of 2013. According
to Eurogamer, Sagal lied about contracting “Metal Poisoning” after a car
accident in order to raise funds for sex-reassignment surgery:

“My time frame for surviving this has lowered from a few years to a few
months, with loss of many basic functions due to arrive prior to my
passing. I don’t have time to futz with the system, right now I just
need to get this thing out of me. I am a strong and independent woman, I
can handle almost anything myself, but I’m setting this aside, because I
do not want to die from this. I never wanted to resort to just donations
(as opposed to asking for donations from people who’ve enjoyed my work),
but it’s clear that this is the best option I have right now.”

There was no metal poisoning, and there was no car accident.

Allistair Pinsof, a writer for Destructoid, originally wrote an article
supporting Sagal’s IndieGoGo. After it was personally revealed to him
that the fundraiser was a scam, he revealed as much on Twitter and was
fired from Destructoid for “outing” Sagal as trans. Sagal would fight
about the funds for some years afterwards, trying to claim that PayPal
was scamming her, even reaching out to Brianna Wu in 2015 before being
shot down for help. She would later complain on Facebook to Ahuviya
Harel, a somewhat notable figure in the Gamergate era, that “the trans
community…[turned] their back on [her].”

On June 16th, 2018, Sagal would be taken to the police station after a
wellness check had been called on her. Officers had found her with a
machete when they arrived, but they were able to diffuse the situation
before taking her to Unity Center for Behavioral Health in an ambulance
where she was released shortly after. On the morning of June 19th, 2018,
Sagal limped out of her Portland apartment on crutches, making her way
to a nearby park. Once there, she read a statement about her struggle
with homeless and mental health issues before covering herself in
gasoline and setting herself on fire. Her suicide note was published by
a close friend of hers, Jasmine Barlow, which read: "My death cannot be
silent. It has to be loud and political. My entire life, my experience,
my education has led up to this moment. I can only expect trauma and
death from my existence." It added at the end, “Whoever needs my van and
the things in it should have it.” Despite the fact that harassment by
Kiwi Farms was not mentioned in the suicide note, and does not appear to
have played a crucial role in Sagal’s suicide, the The Oregonian, Daily
Dot and Variety, all mention it extensively.

Sagal had an active thread on Kiwi Farms from April 27th, 2015 to
December 12th, 2017, the thread dying 8 months before her suicide. Sagal
had attempted suicide once before in May, 2013 on her Twitch stream and
threatened it again in Twitter messages to another online figure, Zinnia
Jones, in January of 2015. Both of these attempts occurred before any
Kiwi Farms thread was ever made about her. When asked what Sagal was
like by a journalist, a close friend of hers described her as such:

“For most of her life, she'd dealt with abuse and depression. sensory
hell and executive dysfunction from autism. Chronic pain and seizures
that I'm not sure ever got fully diagnosed. In the hardest times, she
needed full-time care and support, and I didn't have the resources to
provide that. The state didn't seem to either. She'd spent time in
inpatient psych care, and they treated her like trash. She had OHP and
SNAP, but the system really isn't accessible, so she couldn't get the
diagnoses she needed for treatment. Regarding suicide, it was constantly
on her mind. She even attempted once live on streaming video. She
attempted while living with me. It was a constant shadow over her art.”

One must conclude that Sagal’s suicide was likely the culmination of
abuse, mental illness and homelessness suffered throughout her life. A
prior partner who’d dated her for two years confirmed as much on
Twitter, echoing that “her suicide note specifically referenced
systematic struggles with maintaining a home and adequate mental
healthcare with low income being the reason she killed herself to send a
message.” The claim or implication that Sagal’s suicide was driven
solely or primarily from Kiwi Farms harassment is unsubstantiated,
insensitive, and irresponsible, and it completely trivializes and erases
the political statement aimed to achieve with her suicide.

That leaves two.
Julie Terryberry

Julie Terryberry was a young, 19 year old woman who documented many of
her thoughts and much of her life on a publicly viewable OK Cupid
profile. Terryberry claimed to be dealing with “depression, ADHD,
austism[sic], aspergers, anxiety, [and suicidality].” She lived in a
furnace room in her house, complained about ants and posted pictures
that resembled those of a hoarder. By 18, she’d already had 7 cavities
from drinking too much juice and neglecting her dental health. She’d
written about her brother attempting to sexually assault her when she
was 11 years old, mentioned catching that same brother watching
beastiality rape porn on the computer, detailed her uncle shooting up
heroin and trying to show her his penis, and had made out with her step
sister when she was very young. She also spoke about her experiences
with multiple older “masters'' who would teach her BDSM on an online
dating app, IMVU, with one of them actually being arrested due to his
conduct. Terryberry would eventually begin dating Mike, officially
announcing themselves as a couple when she was 18 and he was 29. They
would go on to post many pictures of her bloody, bitten, clawed, and
bruised on her Facebook.

Kiwi Farms discovered Terryberry and created a thread about her on
February 6th, 2016. Terryberry discovered her thread a few weeks after
it was created and would continuously taunt farmers on her Facebook. She
posted on her fetlife that she’d “laughed at it” and told them to “do a
better job at getting the stories straight.”

Her and Mike’s relationship became more tumultuous as time went on, with
her wishing they lived together and simultaneously having outbursts
regarding their fights. He would cheat on her many times, but when she
cheated on him she was forced to write an essay in order for them to
stay together. She would finally commit suicide by hanging herself in
her grandmother’s furnace room after Mike finally broke up with her.

An individual wishing to remain anonymous who attended the same school
as Terryberry reached out to me to add her experience with her: “I only
knew her when she was a kid, we went to elementary school together. She
was a couple years younger than me. I rarely interacted with her, but I
remember a few weird things. She was a sweet girl, but kinda off, would
act out and would just exhibit weird behavior for a kid. She really
didn’t have a lot of friends, if any. She basically just kept to
herself. I know she came from a very poor and troubled home, her
parents, I suspect, were doing drugs and were pretty uninvolved in her
life. I grew up across the street from our elementary school and my mom
would take me and a couple of my friends to the playground there on
weekends and I remember we saw her there a few times all by herself
without her parents or anyone watching her. My mom became pretty
concerned about her. I remember we gave her and her family some of my
hand-me-down clothes and toys. After I went to high school I never saw
or heard about her again until she died. I didn’t have her on social
media, and neither did any of my friends so I didn’t know what she was
posting, I didn’t even know that she was being posted about on Kiwi
Farms until like two days ago when I read a post on your subreddit that
mentioned her name. I was completely mind fucked by it. My friends and I
had all just assumed her death was a suicide or something drug related
but we never looked into it. So again, I really wasn’t close to her,
especially in later years when all of this was happening, so I can’t
tell you with 100% confidence that Kiwi Farms had nothing to do with it,
but I can tell you she was clearly mentally ill and troubled even from a
young age and didn’t have a support system around her. So, in my
opinion, just from what I knew of her situation, this was going to
happen with or without Kiwi Farms. It makes me feel sick that Keffals
and other people are using her to push some weird agenda. Julie had a
very hard life. She doesn’t need to be used as some pawn in some weird
fucking clout game. People just need to leave her alone and let her
memory rest.”

Julie’s life was a mess, likely from birth. She’d been sexually
exploited by multiple family members, likely had drug problems
throughout her entire family, had an unstable living condition and
chased horribly one-sided relationships her entire life, with previous
partners enacting physical abuse on her as part of her lifestyle. The
claim or implication that Julie’s suicide was driven solely or primarily
from Kiwi Farms harassment is unsabstantiated, insensitive, and
irresponsible.

That leaves one.
David Ginder

The third death attributed to Kiwi Farms, David Ginder, is the most
contentious of them all.

Ginder was considered somewhat of a programming savant. Under the alias
Byuu, they single-handedly created the first cycle-accurate SNES
emulator, higan (originally called bsnes). It was the first
multi-emulator capable of emulating every single component of the SNES.
The name Byuu was chosen due to Ginder’s obsession with an old SNES
JRPG, Bahamut Lagoon.

Despite Ginder’s success in the emulation scene, they were frequently
involved in drama across several mediums. They were almost scammed in
2011 by an admin of AssemblerGames, Kevin, over a monitor on eBay. In
2012, Ginder tried to auction off their complete collection of SNES
games for $20,000, though they received no acceptable bids. In 2014 they
began to post about their mental health, complaining about their lack of
progress in learning Japanese or drawing and begging someone to reach
out and help them learn Japanese better. Ginder was also frequently
involved in fights and drama with other parts of the emulator community.
In 2016 they posted about being fervently anti-Trump and In 2017 they
revealed their rather young looking fursona on Twitter. They expressed
concern about their failing health and losing too many productive years
of their life without meaningfully progressing in any areas beyond
programming.

Ginder’s Kiwi Farms thread was created on May 14th, 2018. The thread
was, by Kiwi Farms standards, a relatively inactive thread. After only a
week after creation the thread died until September 12th, 2019. After
another week of posting, the thread died again until February 2nd, 2020.
On February 7th, 2020, Ginder shows up and begins posting in their own
thread, explaining why they created their Near persona and their
attempts to separate their programming achievements from their personal
oddities. Ginder even goes as far as to thank some of the posters for
the “wake-up call” they saw in the thread:

“I'm not going to condone anything here, but honestly ... I appreciate
that this thread was made. I really do. It put all my bullshit in one
place and it was a bit of a wake-up call for me. I'm not perfect, but
I've been trying to get my shit together as much as I could these past
two years now. I'm not going to dismiss my friends, or those who happen
to be trans, or furry, or on the spectrum, or whatever it is you guys
dislike to fit in here. So I'm sure it's never going to be good enough.
I *do* dismiss anyone who hurts another child or animal, though. Putting
those people in jail is the one thing I support from here.

I took the valid criticisms to heart and I've been making changes. I
took down my old articles, I stay out of politics and online arguments,
and I'm keeping my head down and staying productive instead. I'm working
on making software now that people don't hate, and that aren't filled
with my own bizarre hangups. I'm trying to pass on my knowledge so that
someone can take the torch when I'm gone.

So sincerely, and only in my case and no one else's, thank you for the
wake-up call here OP. No hard feelings. I'm not asking you to take it
down, and I know you never would anyway. Keep it. Mirror it. Put it on a
titanium disk and ship it into space. I'll own all of my mistakes. If
you ever get a DMCA or GDPR request or some bullshit on this, it's not
me. Send me an e-mail and I'll counter-claim it myself. People do
impersonate me (eg on Stormfront), so keep your guard up against any
false flagging or white knighting, please. I support free speech
absolutely, even when it's speech I don't like, because silencing it
only makes things worse. I even defended Tom in the recent Goemon
translation controversy, knowing that'd lose me support among my
friends. And I'll lose a lot of support by simply posting here at all.
So be it.

In any case, this has nothing to do with you folks, but I've been
planning to retire at the end of the year or so. I did what I set out to
do with SNES emulation, and now I've mostly outlived my usefulness. Let
me wrap up my last few projects, and then I'm out.”

Many of the replies were positive, with Near themselves expressing their
surprise at the response their post received.

The thread lay dormant again until March 21st, 2020, following another
announcement from Ginder of an indefinite break from the internet. They
would show up on Kiwi Farms on April 2nd to explain the reason, citing
“real-life issues” and “anxiety issues” for their indefinite break. Then
on July 24th, 2020, Ginder deleted/deactivated every account they own,
causing both Kiwi Farms and Reddit to take notice. While some Redditors
in the thread seem to blame Farmers for the disappearance, Kiwi Farms
users point to Ginder’s interactions in the thread and disagree. On July
25th, the next day, Ginder’s website would reappear but only to announce
they were permanently quitting. On July 26th, Ginder returned to using
the Byuu account, posting a somber farewell message on their Twitter.
The main issue they cited was that an anonymous individual had made a
massive dox list of every person Ginder was associated with, causing
immense stress and forcing them to remove themselves from public life.
Reddit attempts to weave a narrative on r/emulation that Kiwi Farms is
responsible for the dox, but Kiwi Farms users point out that there were
posts on the emugen board on 4chan well before any threads were ever
created on Kiwi Farms. Ginder had even written a thread in 2017 on their
message board about the harassment they were receiving from the lead
developer of Retroarch, complaining about harassment they’d received
since 2010.

On October 16th, 2020, Ginder returns once again spilling drama related
to their previous doxxer. They create a new Reddit account to work on
emulators and games while also revealing they believe they have RSD. On
June 26th, 2021, Ginder sent an email to Joshua Moon requesting for him
to take down their thread on Kiwi Farms, claiming that the doxxing
stemmed from the forum. If Moon accepts, they’ll give him ~$120,000 USD
and offer their services as a software developer for the site. If he
refuses, Ginder claims they will reply with a scan of their passport, a
recent photo, proof that it’s theirs, and then hang themselves. Ginder
and Moon go back and forth over several emails, with Ginder sending four
emails within a thirteen hour timespan before finally stopping, claiming
they are going to commit suicide. They said that they had “given [their]
passport scan to a trusted friend who will post it anonymously in a few
hours, so that you guys can confirm it’s legitimate.” They then said to
“look for news in the Arakawa ward of Tokyo in a few days.”

No passport scan of David Ginder nor news of an American suicide in
Tokyo ever emerged.

On that same day, Ginder posted a Twitter thread, laying the entire
blame for their suicide on the 13 page thread about them on Kiwi Farms.
A friend of Ginder’s, Hector, posts a note on behalf of an anonymous
mutual friend of Ginder and him who claimed to be on the phone when
Ginder committed suicide. The identity of this anonymous individual has
never been identified, and they also lay the entire blame for Ginder’s
death on Kiwi Farms. They never mention the 500+ posts on 4chan’s /vg/
board (most coming from the /emugen/ general thread) on Ginder.
Interestingly, they also claim to have frequently gone out to eat and
seemed to have hung out with Ginder, despite Ginder claiming just that
same day they had no real life friends. Hector tweeted the next day that
they had “confirmed that Near passed away yesterday” with “the police
department in charge of the investigation.” No further proof is posted.

Of the three suicides blamed on Kiwi Farms, Ginder’s seems to be the
most attributable, given they call out Kiwi Farms specifically in their
final tweets. The problem?

There is no conclusive evidence that Ginder is actually dead.

The evidence given for Ginder actually having committed suicide is
scant. Their friend, Hector, tweeted that they “confirmed” with police
that Ginder was dead, then posted a note from an anonymous friend
claiming that had been on the phone when Ginder died. No police
statement, no obituaries, no death certificate, no news articles, and no
US State Department logs (standard practice) were ever made public.
Ginder’s passport, the one they’d claimed in an email to Moon would be
released posthumously, was never posted. Suicides are taken quite
seriously in Japan too, with some apartment complexes even requiring
purification rituals due to the stigma. It seems odd that a somewhat
noteable foreigner killing themselves in Japan would draw absolutely no
attention to itself.

Ginder claimed to be ready to give their life savings of $120,000 to
Null. Where are the proceedings to settle Ginder’s estate? Ginder’s
widower husband hasn’t made any public statements about their death.
Neither has Ginder’s family. The only two people who have confirmed the
death are Ginder’s “friend,” Hector, and an employer who’s provided zero
evidence of death. All we have from Hector are ambiguous Tweets, and all
we have from Wayne Beckett, Ginder’s employer, are bizarre ramblings on
Kiwi Farms. In these ramblings, Becket attempts to “debate” KiwiFarmers
into believing that Ginder is dead, as well as utilizing really out of
place terminology given the subject matter, such as “Crikey” and “<mike
drop>”.

Kotaku, ClutchPoints, IGN, GameSpot, Game Rant, and Vice all reported
that Ginder was deceased…however, every single publication was simply
uncritically reporting on the same tweets by Hector, where Ginder was
proclaimed deceased with zero direct evidence provided. USA Today at
least included a statement by Ginder’s previous employer, Wayne Beckett,
about his death. But, oddly, Wayne stated that Ginder “didn’t explicitly
name Kiwi Farms” when opening up about the online harassment they were
receiving. Unless some evidence is presented, or someone credible comes
forward, it’s difficult to conclude with any certainty that Ginder is
actually dead. It’s plausible that they “suicided” the online Near
personality to escape the pressure they were facing online, which is
consistent with their history of deleting and recreating accounts in the
past. All that would be needed to prove that they actually did pass away
would be if Hector, or some close friend of Ginder’s, posted any form of
official documentation proving their passing.

It’s incredible to think so many journalists, spanning so many years,
have so thoughtlessly attributed three suicides to Kiwi Farms. Hardly
any of the research done on any of these three individuals was gathered
via any media sources, instead I had to dig through archives of 4chan
and Kiwi Farms threads to understand what was really going on. Not a
single journalist seemed willing to do any homework beyond copying the
work of other journalists before them. In the end, the “three suicides”
caused by Kiwi Farms ended up being two misrepresentations and one
uncomfirmed case.

--
continued in part 3