This CookieEngineer person has clearly had a bug up their arse about 4chan for years and gleefully exploited the opportunity to be the victim.
Crazy person does crazy shit. Whatever. What really bothers me about this is ... that it actually worked. The claims are ridiculous and exaggerated: 600 phone calls? Someone trying to kill you? Really? Over some stupid trolling about a name? 6 phone calls I could believe. Someone putting a box of shit in your mailbox I could believe. But this? Extraordinary claims require at least some evidence.
He really wants us to believe that some trolling over a stupid name escalated to a murder attempt because 4chan people are in fact not people at all but being of pure evil and malice, sent by the dark lord of hell Trump himself, with hearts blacker than the blackest black times infinity. FACT!
This does not pas my sniff test at all, and I'm sick with 16 corona mutations. And even the most casual of looks will reveal it's full of shit.
Yet many people seem to gobble it up uncritically, even smart people. It's not even that I like 4chan: they're a bunch of idiots. But this is just stupid.
I pushed back a bit on the Byuu/Near story when it broke. Tragic as it is, clearly KiwiFarms didn't "drive them to suicide". That was just a silly claim, and the thread is *right there* for anyone to read. It's not even a long one (or at least wasn't until the suicide); it just takes a minimum of effort. But I received sufficient insults and border-line harassment over that that I'm not going to try that again. The irony of it: "well, I don't think this really constitutes harassment", "whaaaaat!!! Let's harass this person until they shut up!!!!"