Unless we can link to a status page or other discussion of Kiwi Farms, linking to them here seems to only make things worse.
I'd never heard of it so here goes (from [1]):
> Kiwi Farms, formerly known as CWCki Forums, is an American Internet forum dedicated to the ongoing harassment and stalking of online figures and communities it deems "lolcows": the eccentric, artistic, or mentally ill.
It's likely a target of DDoS related to the mass shootings here in the US this past weekend. Is there a specific role they played in these specific events or is it just retribution for their rejection of norms?
"lolcow" is a way to denigrate someone who is excessively dramatic or responsive on the internet and should be 'milked' for reactions for the amusement of others ('lols').
This is a very common rationalization for provoking people, which admittedly has some legs, IMO (i.e. I think there are excessively reactionary people who perhaps deserve to be challenged - this is something late night comedy shows frequently do, or did). However, frequently, in practice, the definition of "excessively" is pushed until it means "has any reaction". I.e. "the fact that you reacted negatively when I insulted you means that I'm retroactively justified and will continue to escalate insulting you."
So this is yet another anime / comics / gaming fan-site that's transformed into a hotbed of misogyny, fascism, and borderline terrorism advocacy?
The link between geek culture and the latter things is something I am still trying to wrap my head around. I don't get the connection at all. If you'd told me that anime fan-sites would become important recruitment grounds for terrorism ten years ago I would have laughed at you, yet here we are.
They're echo-chambers of extreme beliefs and ideology with no influence from outside sources. Due to their ironic and sometimes inane nature, it seems like they've gotten extremely out of control and the results are what we're seeing today. 4chan 10 years ago was a pretty insane place, and personally seemed dangerously close to being what these sites have become.
Yeah but why does this stuff take root so aggressively in sites dedicated to these specific things?
Anime seems like the most ubiquitous common denominator here. These days when I see an Anime avatar and the person is not Japanese, it seems like 90% of the time if I look at their messages it's all misogyny, fascism, racism, etc.
Selection bias can factor into it - watching anime isn't (didn't use to be?) very socially acceptable, so people who don't mind flaunting it on an avatar might be those who don't have much to lose anyway.
Basically, some people who liked posting edgy stuff for lulz, some people had the root racist or misogynist views or gained them during impressionable years of their early lives due to that.
This was a small portion, but once you have that small portion the less crazy people leave the site or the crazier users get banned and start their own site, as is what happened from 4chan -> 8chan.
It's been pushed into progressively smaller niches that have accelerated their views into more and more insane stuff. Ridiculous conspiracies like QAnon are still something readily being discussed on 8chan. I'm ashamed to admit but I'd actually hit 8chan up for that edgy ridiculous humor when awful shit happened sometimes, but it's clearer than ever that a significant chunk of the community now actually believes it, a feeling I never quite got from 4chan and I suspect it's the nature of being pushed into a smaller niche. A tiny echo chamber of crazy views quickly propagates more crazy views.
Roughly, geek culture has always been toxic masculinity by the back door.
You can get perhaps the clearest insight into this by looking at geeky films from the 80s before they started to bury the unpalatable stuff. "The girl" is the reward. The geeky hero (a boy/teen/manboy) gets to win by virtue of geeky skills. Often, humiliating one dimensional "jock" bullies through gained abilities is a payoff too (cf: the Neverending Story, scaring the bullies into a dumpster with a dragon).
Geek culture more broadly, including the adult programmer-gamer culture, has long believed of itself "we see ability, not appearance" but (1) this has always been untrue in reality, it was racist and sexist and still is, and (2) the things the culture has valued as "winning" have never been different in fundamentals from the mainstream of toxic masculinity - money, women, possessions and power all seen as more or less fungible commodities.
What you're seeing now is the reaction of angry white men who are profoundly frustrated at receiving "less than their due". They blame women, they blame minorities, because they should be winning - are they not the very pattern of a hero, a young white man with geeky interests? And yet inexplicably they are not. (It's very explicable, geeky skills aren't special.)
Anger turns to attempts to put things "right" with terroristic murder.
> You can get perhaps the clearest insight into this by looking at geeky films from the 80s before they started to bury the unpalatable stuff. "The girl" is the reward. The geeky hero (a boy/teen/manboy) gets to win by virtue of geeky skills. Often, humiliating one dimensional "jock" bullies through gained abilities is a payoff too (cf: the Neverending Story, scaring the bullies into a dumpster with a dragon).
Isn't this more or less the standard issue "hero's journey" plot template?
The hero's journey is broad brush enough that what counts as heroic behaviour, what counts as growth in the face of adversity, what counts as victory, and what counts as a reward are entirely up for grabs. So it's THJ with a crude form of masculine power fantasy woven through it. Importantly, it's very similar in all but superficial form to the "jock" power fantasy that it is by subcultural convention held up against. Geek culture has been this since the beginning.
For those who don't know: Kiwi farms is a forum dedicated to being mean to people, particularly women who have an Internet presense, in weirdly obsessive threads that go for thousands of posts.
It's a gossip site dedicated to ppl who made THEMSELVES internet celebrities. And outside of munchy-moms very few women breach the LOLcow barrier. Unless you really mean transwomen, and even then the barrier is high, like Jessica Yaniv who sued women for not waxing its balls, for sexting 12-yos for a decade, who finally got uncovered b/c KF was keeping receipts.
> Kiwi Farms, formerly known as CWCki Forums, is an American Internet forum dedicated to the ongoing harassment and stalking of online figures and communities it deems "lolcows": the eccentric, artistic, or mentally ill.
I wonder if we'll see a big move of such sites to ZeroNet or similar, it's fast and supports distributed databases, there's already a few imageboards on there looking to replace 8chan - 08chan and millchan. I'm sure it's hard for them to get users existing exclusively there, but adding clearnet portals to such services might do the job.
Why is Hacker News allowing this on the front page? If it's down, it's down—we shouldn't be encouraging the dissemination of more hate by raising their awareness.
Raising awareness of KiwiFarms is what is necessary.
The more the general public is aware of the existence of that place, the more pressure the general public will exhibit to ensure it is razed to the ground.
This kind of thing is fighting an Hydra. Not saying this kind of place deserves to exists, but shutting down one system makes them willing to open more and keep trying.
Obviously a Ddos is of some interest to the HN community, but is this story of interest to people? Seems like a site dedicated to harassment is under attack. Is anything interesting about this?
It is highly contextual to the recent stories that have made it to HN frontpages: 8chan getting banned by Cloudflare[1], and subsequently, by its hosting provider[2].
Kiwifarms, as someone else pointed out, is primarily a gossip site that also really enjoys doxxing pedophiles and zoosadists. It has roots in trolling, but these days it actively discourages harassing subjects on the grounds that these people don't need to be prodded to be entertaining, they do that themselves via their own terrible behavior.
It tends to lean right as a general rule, but the members are all over the place politically and ideologically, and where they congregate differs hugely depending on which thread you're in.
In short, it's a site full of shitty people sitting around laughing at even worse people.
39 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 91.8 ms ] threadI'd never heard of it so here goes (from [1]):
> Kiwi Farms, formerly known as CWCki Forums, is an American Internet forum dedicated to the ongoing harassment and stalking of online figures and communities it deems "lolcows": the eccentric, artistic, or mentally ill.
It's likely a target of DDoS related to the mass shootings here in the US this past weekend. Is there a specific role they played in these specific events or is it just retribution for their rejection of norms?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
The link between geek culture and the latter things is something I am still trying to wrap my head around. I don't get the connection at all. If you'd told me that anime fan-sites would become important recruitment grounds for terrorism ten years ago I would have laughed at you, yet here we are.
Can someone explain this?
Anime seems like the most ubiquitous common denominator here. These days when I see an Anime avatar and the person is not Japanese, it seems like 90% of the time if I look at their messages it's all misogyny, fascism, racism, etc.
This was a small portion, but once you have that small portion the less crazy people leave the site or the crazier users get banned and start their own site, as is what happened from 4chan -> 8chan.
It's been pushed into progressively smaller niches that have accelerated their views into more and more insane stuff. Ridiculous conspiracies like QAnon are still something readily being discussed on 8chan. I'm ashamed to admit but I'd actually hit 8chan up for that edgy ridiculous humor when awful shit happened sometimes, but it's clearer than ever that a significant chunk of the community now actually believes it, a feeling I never quite got from 4chan and I suspect it's the nature of being pushed into a smaller niche. A tiny echo chamber of crazy views quickly propagates more crazy views.
You can get perhaps the clearest insight into this by looking at geeky films from the 80s before they started to bury the unpalatable stuff. "The girl" is the reward. The geeky hero (a boy/teen/manboy) gets to win by virtue of geeky skills. Often, humiliating one dimensional "jock" bullies through gained abilities is a payoff too (cf: the Neverending Story, scaring the bullies into a dumpster with a dragon).
Geek culture more broadly, including the adult programmer-gamer culture, has long believed of itself "we see ability, not appearance" but (1) this has always been untrue in reality, it was racist and sexist and still is, and (2) the things the culture has valued as "winning" have never been different in fundamentals from the mainstream of toxic masculinity - money, women, possessions and power all seen as more or less fungible commodities.
What you're seeing now is the reaction of angry white men who are profoundly frustrated at receiving "less than their due". They blame women, they blame minorities, because they should be winning - are they not the very pattern of a hero, a young white man with geeky interests? And yet inexplicably they are not. (It's very explicable, geeky skills aren't special.)
Anger turns to attempts to put things "right" with terroristic murder.
Isn't this more or less the standard issue "hero's journey" plot template?
I think the comment you've quoted says a lot about how a postmodern society views heroes. Those story themes date back to the Brothers Grimm.
This is a problem why?
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/07/kiwi-farms-the-webs-b...
> Kiwi Farms, formerly known as CWCki Forums, is an American Internet forum dedicated to the ongoing harassment and stalking of online figures and communities it deems "lolcows": the eccentric, artistic, or mentally ill.
I, uhh, what?
The more the general public is aware of the existence of that place, the more pressure the general public will exhibit to ensure it is razed to the ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_effect
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20616055
It tends to lean right as a general rule, but the members are all over the place politically and ideologically, and where they congregate differs hugely depending on which thread you're in.
In short, it's a site full of shitty people sitting around laughing at even worse people.