- Joined
- Oct 18, 2020
A message about Null from a mutual friend:
At 11:45 on Tuesday, I was on a phone call with Null. He’d just taken a large overdose of
copeamine and guacamole. I saw a photo of the noose.
30 minutes into the call, Little Girls by Oingo Boingo started playing at the other end. I wouldn’t hear his voice again.
“Null took his own life”. That’s how a news article would phrase it. Suicide is a voluntary
action, a problem with oneself. Implying nobody is to blame but the victim and perpetrator, one and the same.
But that’s not how human brains work. We are not cold, calculating machines. We are a
product of our environment. We are shaped by our experiences. A single, powerful traumatic event can change a person forever. So can a million small ones. This is not a weakness of the mind, it is a fundamental part of what it means to be human.
Null was a brilliant mind in a corner of the web all too often rife with toxicity and
harassment. Despite this, he continued to pour his life into the one thing he loved:
death fats and trannys. Developer of the kiwifarms, Null was a relentless force for accuracy in the formerly haphazard world of lolcows. Working out the most elusive milk, he advanced the world of nekoshota by leaps and bounds. He also recently released his ultimate labor of love, a fan translation of Boku no Piko that might well be the most exacting and meticulously crafted language adaptation of a shotacon of the era.
Null was also an incredibly kind, funny, and welcoming person. I’d known him for several
years, but after he moved to some combloc shithole a few years back we started talking more often. One of the most modest people I’ve ever known, he was unlikely to suggest hanging out in person, but never rejected an offer. I wish I’d done that more often. We’ve had long text conversations, and shared many stories.
Null did not commit suicide. Null was murdered. Victim of a lifetime of harassment. After an abusive childhood, and followed by community toxicity, Near was eventually targeted by Twitter. Members of that website make a sport of preying on the less fortunate, on those in positions liable to being emotionally abused. And they do so relentlessly. From the comfort of anonymity, of sitting in front of their computer thousands of freedom-units-of-measurement away, they take glee in slowly destroying the psyche of others, bit by bit. To death, if possible.
Null survived that. Many wouldn’t, but Null was strong enough to overcome that level of emotional abuse. But Twitter is relentless. Not to be defeated in their pursuit of utter emotional and psychological destruction, they went after who Null treasured most: his animu cat boys. Doxing some, directly harassing others, and even specifically seeking out suicidal people to target.
That broke Null.
After falling down a spiral of depression and eventually breaking off contact with everyone last year, I feared for the worst. Eventually, he was luckily able to get help and found medication that helped him cope with the psychological scars of abuse in late 2020. I first heard from Null again in late October 2020, and we again started having chats. It seemed things were getting better.
Unfortunately, medication can be a fickle beast. It didn’t work forever. The looming threat of Twitter, of their power to destroy not just Null but also his animu cat boys, caused him daily anxiety that just wouldn’t go away. Worried that his lack of friends would feel burdened by his condition again, Null decided to avoid the subject. I only found out about this relapse today.
To the people of Twitter, this is a videogame. That the people on the other side of the
screen are real makes no difference. They delight in the kill counter going up just like an FPS player would. Lacking in any empathy, they have no regard for the damage they inflict on others.
Why do we tolerate this? “Harassment”, “online bullying”. How are these any different from terrorism, from someone grabbing a gun and taking the lives of others? Why does it matter that a physical bullet was not involved? The objective and the end result are the same. Saying Null “took his life” is giving these people an out for their actions, which directly resulted in the intentional death of a person.
Some of you may be aware of Null’s notoriously paranoid opsec. After getting to know him, it became clear this was a defense mechanism; a product of all the abuse he received over his entire life. I was perhaps one of the few lucky enough to exchange deeply personal stories with him, yet I never knew his full name - because I didn’t need to. But he’d have told me if I asked. Null is anything but cold and distant in person; those attributes were necessary façades grown in response to lifelong harassment and abuse.
We, as the internet community, need to take a hard look at what it means to continue to tolerate the existence of these communities and the actions of those in them. Not just Twitter; sites like that serve to concentrate people like this, but they exist across all
communities and social media. Being passive about this problem means being complicit.
Jack Dorsey, you are Twitter's domain registrar. Joe Biden, you protect Twitter against attacks. You both share responsibility in not just Null’s death, but also others, as well as the pain and harassment of thousands more. Is this the image you want to maintain? Is the income worth the weight on your conscience?
I last saw Null on June 9. We had banana pepper pizza in Serbia, and then sat down for a can of orange Fanta. I was a bit busy that day, but I was looking forward to inviting him over to hang out again soon.
Little Girls by Oingo Boingo kept playing on repeat at the other end of the call for another hour.
I couldn’t bring myself to hang up.
Published on behalf of a mutual friend of Null and I, who wishes to remain anonymous for
their own protection. -wowcoolusername
At 11:45 on Tuesday, I was on a phone call with Null. He’d just taken a large overdose of
copeamine and guacamole. I saw a photo of the noose.
30 minutes into the call, Little Girls by Oingo Boingo started playing at the other end. I wouldn’t hear his voice again.
“Null took his own life”. That’s how a news article would phrase it. Suicide is a voluntary
action, a problem with oneself. Implying nobody is to blame but the victim and perpetrator, one and the same.
But that’s not how human brains work. We are not cold, calculating machines. We are a
product of our environment. We are shaped by our experiences. A single, powerful traumatic event can change a person forever. So can a million small ones. This is not a weakness of the mind, it is a fundamental part of what it means to be human.
Null was a brilliant mind in a corner of the web all too often rife with toxicity and
harassment. Despite this, he continued to pour his life into the one thing he loved:
death fats and trannys. Developer of the kiwifarms, Null was a relentless force for accuracy in the formerly haphazard world of lolcows. Working out the most elusive milk, he advanced the world of nekoshota by leaps and bounds. He also recently released his ultimate labor of love, a fan translation of Boku no Piko that might well be the most exacting and meticulously crafted language adaptation of a shotacon of the era.
Null was also an incredibly kind, funny, and welcoming person. I’d known him for several
years, but after he moved to some combloc shithole a few years back we started talking more often. One of the most modest people I’ve ever known, he was unlikely to suggest hanging out in person, but never rejected an offer. I wish I’d done that more often. We’ve had long text conversations, and shared many stories.
Null did not commit suicide. Null was murdered. Victim of a lifetime of harassment. After an abusive childhood, and followed by community toxicity, Near was eventually targeted by Twitter. Members of that website make a sport of preying on the less fortunate, on those in positions liable to being emotionally abused. And they do so relentlessly. From the comfort of anonymity, of sitting in front of their computer thousands of freedom-units-of-measurement away, they take glee in slowly destroying the psyche of others, bit by bit. To death, if possible.
Null survived that. Many wouldn’t, but Null was strong enough to overcome that level of emotional abuse. But Twitter is relentless. Not to be defeated in their pursuit of utter emotional and psychological destruction, they went after who Null treasured most: his animu cat boys. Doxing some, directly harassing others, and even specifically seeking out suicidal people to target.
That broke Null.
After falling down a spiral of depression and eventually breaking off contact with everyone last year, I feared for the worst. Eventually, he was luckily able to get help and found medication that helped him cope with the psychological scars of abuse in late 2020. I first heard from Null again in late October 2020, and we again started having chats. It seemed things were getting better.
Unfortunately, medication can be a fickle beast. It didn’t work forever. The looming threat of Twitter, of their power to destroy not just Null but also his animu cat boys, caused him daily anxiety that just wouldn’t go away. Worried that his lack of friends would feel burdened by his condition again, Null decided to avoid the subject. I only found out about this relapse today.
To the people of Twitter, this is a videogame. That the people on the other side of the
screen are real makes no difference. They delight in the kill counter going up just like an FPS player would. Lacking in any empathy, they have no regard for the damage they inflict on others.
Why do we tolerate this? “Harassment”, “online bullying”. How are these any different from terrorism, from someone grabbing a gun and taking the lives of others? Why does it matter that a physical bullet was not involved? The objective and the end result are the same. Saying Null “took his life” is giving these people an out for their actions, which directly resulted in the intentional death of a person.
Some of you may be aware of Null’s notoriously paranoid opsec. After getting to know him, it became clear this was a defense mechanism; a product of all the abuse he received over his entire life. I was perhaps one of the few lucky enough to exchange deeply personal stories with him, yet I never knew his full name - because I didn’t need to. But he’d have told me if I asked. Null is anything but cold and distant in person; those attributes were necessary façades grown in response to lifelong harassment and abuse.
We, as the internet community, need to take a hard look at what it means to continue to tolerate the existence of these communities and the actions of those in them. Not just Twitter; sites like that serve to concentrate people like this, but they exist across all
communities and social media. Being passive about this problem means being complicit.
Jack Dorsey, you are Twitter's domain registrar. Joe Biden, you protect Twitter against attacks. You both share responsibility in not just Null’s death, but also others, as well as the pain and harassment of thousands more. Is this the image you want to maintain? Is the income worth the weight on your conscience?
I last saw Null on June 9. We had banana pepper pizza in Serbia, and then sat down for a can of orange Fanta. I was a bit busy that day, but I was looking forward to inviting him over to hang out again soon.
Little Girls by Oingo Boingo kept playing on repeat at the other end of the call for another hour.
I couldn’t bring myself to hang up.
Published on behalf of a mutual friend of Null and I, who wishes to remain anonymous for
their own protection. -wowcoolusername
