Inside the history of Kiwi Farms, the controversial forum invented to troll Chris Chan years before she was arrested on an incest charge

Kiwi Farms, the forum that has been linked to 3 suicides, was made to troll Chris Chan years before she was arrested on an incest charge

Kiwi Farms originated as a forum dedicated to Chris Chan — who was arrested Sunday on an incest charge — before the site rebranded in 2015.

www.insider.com

Kiwi Farms, an image-sharing website and forum where users discuss online personalities, describes itself on its homepage as a "community dedicated to discussing eccentric people who voluntarily make fools of themselves."

But the internet forum was initially launched in 2009 as an imageboard called CWCiki to catalog the online history of Christine Weston Chandler, who is also known as "Chris Chan" or "Sonichu" online.

Chandler was arrested on Sunday and charged with incest two days after an audio recording originally posted on Kiwi Farms purported to include Chandler discussing raping her mother, as Insider previously reported.

According to New York Magazine, CWCiki began after people trolled Chandler since her homemade "Sonichu" drawings and comics started to go viral among communities on 4chan, an imageboard popular on the far-right. It was founded when Chandler was added to the "troll archive" Encyclopedia Dramatica, New York Magazine reported.


CWCiki users built up an archive of what New York Magazine called "every drawing, video blog, tweet, Facebook post, eBay listing, Etsy item, and PSN purchase Chandler [has made]" since its launch in 2009.

In addition to archiving and documenting Chandler's digital footprint, CWCiki users played an active role in hacking and leakingChandler's personal details and taking photos and recordings of Chandler, New York Magazine reported.

According to KnowYourMeme, the site was renamed Kiwi Farms in February 2015. This renaming came after the site shifted focus from not just discussing Chandler, but any online figure or personality that users classify as "lolcows" — in other words, people who could be "milked for laughs," usually without their knowledge or awareness.


Still, documentation of Chandler's life continues to have a major presence on Kiwi Farms.

Here's how the platform got started.

Kiwi Farms has been run by Joshua 'Null' Moon since 2013​

Although there is no known founder for the initial CWCiki site, Joshua Moon, who goes by the name "Null" online, started hosting the site in 2013 before transforming it into Kiwi Farms two years later.

Moon is colloquially referred to by CWCiki moderators as one of Chandler's "Guard Dogs," with them noting how he often tries to help Chandler. Most recently, it is alleged that Moon launched a GoFundMe to help Chan attend a convention.

Posting on his admin account as "Null," Moon said in a Kiwi Farms post on July 31 that he was cutting off contact with Chandler.

Moon did not respond to inquiries from Insider.

Three people identified as 'lolcows' on Kiwi Farms have died by suicide​

Between 2016 and 2021, at least three suicides were linked to Kiwi Farms.

Friends of indie game developer Chloe Sagal, who took her own life in June 2018, told Oregon Live that she had been subject to harassment by Kiwi Farms users after it was revealed in 2013 that a crowdfunding campaign Sagal claimed was for metal poisoning was actually for sexual reassignment surgery.

The death of Julie Terryberry, who took her own life in 2o16, has been linked to Kiwi Farms by news outlets like Vice and Gizmodo.According to Vice, Terryberry was targeted by Kiwi Farms users prior to taking her own life due to her polyamory and appearance.

On June 27, a software developer posted a Twitter thread accusing Kiwi Farms of "making the harassment orders of magnitude worse. It's escalated from attacking me for being autistic to attacking and doxing my friends, and trying to suicide bait another, just to get a reaction from me."

It was later reported by USA Today that Near had taken their own life. Moon, the founder of Kiwi Farms, later posted a statement on the site denying responsibility for the death.

Vice reported on July 13 that Kiwi Farms had lost its domain registrar, with DreamHost allegedly giving the site fourteen days to find a new home. The site then moved to a Russian domain before finding a new US-based one, but remains live.

Kiwi Farms was also linked to the 2019 Christchurch terror attack​

Brenton Harris Tarrant, the shooter who opened fire on dozens of worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, allegedly posted on Kiwi Farms before carrying out the attacks.

The New Zealand Herald reported that police asked Moon to turn over all posts by Tarrant, but he declined to release the records.

Moon did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.


Archive.

 

[Snekposter]

"There is no past or future. Only an eternal present in which the Farms are always at fault." God, I love that I signed up when I did, knowing that I am helping to fight the journo menace even indirectly.

 

[Iceland Heavy]

In a few years journoscum will be saying that Null encouraged Chris to rape Barb and gave him $750 to try and flee justice after he was outed.

 

[Cyclonus]

That's why they're called "Insider". "We're insider own ass!"

That's one way to get round the ratings ban.

 

[DrunkJoe]

In a few years journoscum will be saying that Null encouraged Chris to rape Barb and gave him $750 to try and flee justice after he was outed.

Scary to think this could be true look at the effort they are doing for the LA spa troon flashing

 

[BooneHelm]

Journos have to find a way to hit their quota of buzzwords:
4chan. Check.
Far-right. Check
Suicide. Check
*insert name of massacre* Check.

Every single time. Not to be cliche but I'm surprised she didn't work in Gamergate somewhere to get even more points.

 

[Hollywood Hitler]

According to New York Magazine, CWCiki began after people trolled Chandler since her homemade "Sonichu" drawings and comics started to go viral among communities on 4chan, an imageboard popular on the far-right.

Outside /pol/ 4chan is the furthest from "far-right". And if you want to talk '07/'08, when Chris was discovered, 4chan was a liberal safe-haven. Really, Channers are anti-establishment (sorry Lefties, you're "The Man Now, Dog". )

CWCiki users played an active role in hacking and leaking Chandler's personal details and taking photos and recordings of Chandler, New York Magazine reported.

Well, Chris gave out his information freely, without coercion. The guy doxed himself in his first YouTube video, I believe.

Three people identified as 'lolcows' on Kiwi Farms have died by suicide​

Yeah, mentally ill internet celebs, more often than not, do kill themselves. I don't like what they're implying with this heading. It's misleading, for one. Second, they give KF too much credit, to think that our diverse user-base has the power to make people kill themselves.

If you want to go after sites that cause people to kill themselves, you should look at FB and Twitter.

Kiwi Farms just observes and comments on lolcows actions. We're no different than TMZ.

Brenton Harris Tarrant, the shooter who opened fire on dozens of worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, allegedly posted on Kiwi Farms before carrying out the attacks.

AFAIK, we just refused to delete his autistic meme-manifesto and his video. Mainly because of it's journalistic value. Something whatever the publication who wrote this lacks.

 

[Niggernerd]

>She
Also this:
View attachment 2408255
clearly a clickbait article

EDIT: Journo bitch is UUUUUUGLY!
View attachment 2408261

Looks like a dude
Explains calling chris a she.
2 uglies of a feather flock together or something

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

>She
Also this:
View attachment 2408255
clearly a clickbait article

EDIT: Journo bitch is UUUUUUGLY!
View attachment 2408261

damn, you one ugly tramp.

 

[Long Tongue Silver]

>She
Also this:
View attachment 2408255
clearly a clickbait article

EDIT: Journo bitch is UUUUUUGLY!
View attachment 2408261

She's got that smug, "I know better than you" look to her. The kind that just wants you to chuck a brick at her for being such a stuck-up smarmy cunt.

 

[kcbbq]

Not one mention of the tranny run sites that preceded the farms, which actually were there for trolling CWC.

 

[Cyclonus]

As impressed as I was by Josh telling the New Zealand police to go fuck themselves, I knew he had made a mistake by not directly specifying that he was so pissed off because he didn't think some 15 year old kid should go to prison for ten years just because he watched a fucking video. Anyone who reads his reply and has heard that Kiwi Farms is a den of murderers is going to think he's protecting Brenton Tarrant.

 

[Vince McMahon]

A&H is enough of a comfy circlejerk. We don't need more /pol/ and r/The_Donald refugees shitting up the place and making it something it is not.

You just don't realize how much of a boner this would give HHH.

 

[thismanlies]

Brenton Harris Tarrant, the shooter who opened fire on dozens of worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, allegedly posted on Kiwi Farms before carrying out the attacks.

The New Zealand Herald reported that police asked Moon to turn over all posts by Tarrant, but he declined to release the records.

He actually posted his manifesto on 8chan and livestreamed the footage on Facebook. It's strange how 8chan seemed to catch all the shit for Tarrant's actions while Facebook always seems to fly under the radar.

Also I looked over the email the Christchurch Police sent to Null and nowhere does it say they believed Tarrant had a Kiwi Farms account. They did however request info about everyone who discussed the shooting. I wonder if Charlotte Colombo knows that people were getting interrogated and sometimes even arrested for discussing details about the Christchurch shooting? If she did, it probably wouldn't bother her that people were getting arrested for watching footage of a horrific crime. I mean, it's not like news outlets were playing footage of 9/11 every day for years in order to drum up support for the war in Iraq and justify the government taking away our civil liberties... oh wait.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

I would like these rags to actually define what the alleged "harassment" was.

Everything that hurts their feelings is "harassment".

They make shitposting and pointing-and-laughing sound like death threats and car bombings.

Here in the hispanic world, they have broadened the definition of what violence is, for example. And they did by adding a final "s" to the word: we don't talk about violence against women, but VIOLENCES against women, because on one side you have violence as in violent attacks and, on the other, mean words. That way, if someone says that calling a woman "dumb" isn't violence, they say "it's a different violence, because there are so many violences!"

 

[Traummaschine]

Imagine trying to write a whole article about Kiwi Farms and then summing up 4chan as "an imageboard popular on the far-right".

 

[RageCageChamp19]

Funny, that this publication calls itself "insider" and the author of this piece calls herself a "journalist", yet, Kiwifarms were the ones who actually did the work to expose Chris Chan.
This article should be rewritten into "This forum does better investigative journalism than we do, and they do it to expose sex predators, whereas we just write hit pieces on political opponents".
Seriously, how come we, a self described gossip site, do less gossip than mainstream journos.