I'm getting too old for this shit.

[GreatDenverPosse]

he should follow the rules.
Do not plea for sympathy. Don't make posts about how you are leaving the forums. Just leave.

If @Null created these forums, he has the right to retire.

 

[Jane Hoe]

he should follow the rules.
Do not plea for sympathy. Don't make posts about how you are leaving the forums. Just leave.

I’d hardly call it a plea for sympathy. He’s cataloguing his thoughts and making them known to the farms, because his decision will in fact impact farm users (less so ones that aren’t as active, obviously.) It’s not like he’s obnoxiously bitching or whining about it.

 

[Dustlord]

he should follow the rules.
Do not plea for sympathy. Don't make posts about how you are leaving the forums. Just leave.

There's a big difference between the average butthurt user and the person financially responsible for the site leaving. I think its completely fair for him to be open about where he is at with the forum because his decisions about leaving or not will have consequences for everyone. If you or me leave, nothing changes so no one cares about our frustrations with the site.

 

[RetroCrab]

It is too big for its own good, too well indexed for its own good, too well known for its own good. The forum went from a small community that could playfully posit itself as the arch nemesis for dopey people that saw themselves as cartoon character protagonists of their own life, to the Internet’s Eye of Sauron. Our gaze now quickly incinerates a simple person. They go into hiding almost immediately, or the act of observing them changes who they are in a way for the worse.

That's because Kiwi Farms is the Eye of Sauron for lolcows. 50,000 registered members and ten times the lurkers. You've minmaxed your SEO game to the point that anyone not an internet celebrity will instantly have their thread as one of the top three Google results for their names. Anyone who fucks up enough at life to get a thread here will never get it removed even if they better themselves, and will never live it down. Other cows will abandon them for fear of being in the line of sight of this place. The only option is to DFE and start over with a new identity, telling only a few close friends their new name. The only people dumb enough not to are, as you say, attention whores who enjoy it. People like KhordKitty who come here and completely shit up their own threads to the point we lose interest. The remaining threads tend to be endless rehashing over the dried up husk of an inactive cow like Shmorky.

You have conflicting goals: either keep seeking out unbounded growth for this site, gaining more enemies and headaches, and watch it lose what made it special as the influx of spergs come here to try and use this place as their personal army. Let the place keep favoring quantity and have the number of low-quality threads just keep growing like a cancer. See more and more cows go instant DFE and take their milk with them.

Or scale it back to what it once was. Turn off new registrations for a while, ban all the political spergs you don't want here, put the forum behind a login wall, and wait. Once the place heals, move to an invite-only system for new members to keep the place alive. The people who truly deserve to have their reputations ruined completely on the internet, the rapists, the pedophiles, the animal abusers... keep those indexed, register domains in their names, the works. But threads on sick fucks like Kero the Wolf aren't amusing, they're soul crushing. It's a goddamn community service keeping threads on people like that, and I hope one day people will appreciate you for that.

Or less extreme, make a board for stealth cow watching that requires a high reaction score to see it, so future cows won't instantly be alerted to their threads. Dump it on the public forums later once the fun has been had if fucking up someone's public reputation still brings you as much pleasure as it does me.

If you go the unbounded growth route, don't start a family. Don't put your wife and kid(s) in the crosshairs of the craziest nutjobs on the internet. Don't neglect raising your kid because you're busting your ass to keep this place online. I think a family is a stupid idea and a woman would have to be fucking nuts to want to get with someone with a target on their back as big as you have, but follow your heart I guess.

If you do step down one day, let someone else have the name and run the place. If you dump an archive and someone tries to spin the place up somewhere else, it's unlikely to take off. If this place goes to shit without you, so what? The new owner can close it then, or not. It's not your concern anymore.

Whatever happens, thanks for all the entertainment up to now.

 

[The Sauce Boss]

I have a lot of respect for you, Null. You're one of the only people I ever knew who said 'free speech for all', and meant it. Even the speech you disagreed with, or that you thought was cringy or stupid.

You deserve a break. You deserve things that make you happy. And you definitely deserve a break. I second all the people here suggesting you take some time off.

 

[Alba gu brath]

Hm, wonder if you could create 'shell' admins or owners. Let them take the heat, if they desire the bullet that comes with it, but retain overall control. Therein, no longer being the face of the site itself, more the evil gobbly deity that might or might not even still be around. Would be a way to 'step back' without completely vanishing from the scene if that's something you're thinking about.

 

[Takodachi]

Are we approaching the season finale?
I just hope you remember to livestream your suicide.

 

[cryptidfuck]

Take a break. hand over site tasks to moderators. Distance yourself for a while.
A break is good.

But this sounds like a cry for help in some aspects, dude are you doing alright?

 

[Spoonge]

To let Kiwifarms die, in my opinion, would be a tragedy

The farms have become a linchpin of whatever is left of the free internet. There's a reason that the much decried and despised politics and happeningfags like myself came here and it's because you've got a culture based on digging and discovery and archiving, a place where it's almost impossible for the narrative to take hold and a place where mods aren't breathing down your neck for perpetrating the dreaded crime of wrongthink.

The fact is we're simply running out of places to go and every site we let die is another haven we'll never get back. Managing a site like this is becoming impossible, and while I dont know all of your struggles with keeping the farms alive I do know enough to understand that it's continued existence is a miracle. If you can't keep going Null try and find someone else that can, please. Once again. letting Kiwifarms die would be a tragedy.

But some tragedies are unavoidable I suppose.

 

[Calamity]

Hey, good luck on your future. I imagine this place can be a burden at times what with being slammed with reports all the time.

Honestly, the idea of passing the torch to someone else would require extreme trust in someone to be able to not back down to such DMCA's and all that. If it was an idea you would juggle instead of just simply shutting everything down, I can imagine it being hard to find someone to follow on.

 

[UnclePhil]

I sometimes wish that KF would adapt the policy of Portal of Evil, the now very defunct site I used to post on that chronicled Web 1.0 Geocities and Angelfire lolcows. POE had a Star Trek Prime Directive which was, in essence: don't interfere in their culture. Don't e-mail them, don't post in their guestbooks, don't register for their message boards. Keep all discussion of the crazy people on the site and if the crazy people want a confrontation, they can come to the site's own forums.

I see a lot of trolling and infiltrating the people this site follows and honestly, I think they would be less inclined to disappear if they weren't engaged directly. Maybe it's already too late to move in that direction, since KF is a well-known bogeyman for the typical lolcow communities. Just a thought.

 

[RetroCrab]

I see a lot of trolling and infiltrating the people this site follows and honestly, I think they would be less inclined to disappear if they weren't engaged directly. Maybe it's already too late to move in that direction, since KF is a well-known bogeyman for the typical lolcow communities. Just a thought.

Exactly what I had in mind. Portal of Evil worked because cows very rarely found out about being discussed, and cow threads were ephemeral rather than immortal tomes. Very rarely you'd get a cow engaging, like Painterfox, but no one ever went DFE over it.

The bigger and more publicly known the farms becomes, the more it will drive cows into hiding. Pushing for more members and trying to kill their reputation in search engines will only further kill the era of the lolcow. You can't have it both ways: autists fall apart mentally when they realize you're making fun of them. Look up rejection sensitive dysphoria.

Make something like Proving Grounds, but with the goal of savoring them for a while instead of going public as soon as possible. Once the threads eventually go public, expect them to go into hiding. Simple as that.

 

[Sped Xing]

I would have bought moichandize had I known the site was doomed.

 

[Knojkamarangasan_#4]

People can call it dicksucking all they want but as others have said, the kf doesnt't really have any real alternatives these days and I think that's the hardest part. Regardless of what happens I'm immensly thankful for this site existing. All good things must come to and and someday and yes I know the site isn't cloing (yet) but you can see the cracks of stuff slipping through and the growing size is also a thing. Regardless what happens I have and will enjoy my time here. Been addicted since late 2018 when I first joined for that ball inflation cult.

Though I will add one thing, would kids help you or is it the idea of a family that sounds more compelling? I don't know maybe kids would work. I'ts not really something I'm personally invested in at all but if you do make sure to think through so it just all doesnt fall apart. It is a big commitment that not anyones cut off to be but again, think through it. I can't imagine bein kicked of stuff constantly and all must fucin suck. Regardless it was an interesting read, and I'll keep using this until it ends!

 

[Sissy]

Just shut it down dude, sites been toxic shit for years

 

[Faket0Fake]

Everything has to end sometime. All websites either die out or they end up as something completely different to how it started. It's becoming harder and harder to just sit and laugh at ridiculous people as everyone wants to pick a side in politics and right wingers look for safe spaces as their ideas are no longer welcome in places like Reddit.

It's over when the population on many boards are all of one opinion and if you laugh at ridiculous people on their side they get pissed. If you hand over the keys to somebody else it'll just be the same as what happened everywhere else, it'll become a safe haven for hard right politics.

 

[Surf and TERF]

Good luck Josh. Please go easy on your kids if they don't grow into something that aligns with your worldview.

 

[Dick Justice]

requires a high reaction score to see it,.

Fasttrack to becoming nureddit. If such a thing were to be done use literally any other criteria.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

@Null
You do you I guess. You're a dumb faggot if you think free speech isn't important anymore because you got into a retard fight with ralph and dick but whatever.

This has always been a comedy site to me. Comedy is important because it lets you criticize shit. That's the root of laughter, finding something wrong and realizing its folly.

I think there's a ton of people who have forgotten that, but not all of them. If Kiwi goes down thats fine, we'll all disperse and go torment everything for a good year. I hope it doesn't though. I like your shit and you're pretty funny. I hope you continue to do what you do. If you don't, best of luck.

 

[Gar For Archer]

Fasttrack to becoming nureddit. If such a thing were to be done use literally any other criteria.

Just a long wait time would suffice, I think. Something like 3-6 months. I don’t think most cows have the patience or attention span to wait that long just to browse the Farms.