You have to becareful, you have many enemies that will do what they can to shit on whatever you settle on. There are things you will have to cut out of your life because of those adversaries and it's not weakness to do so,
As for being happy again. Happiness is brief man, that's why we treasure the happy moments we experience. Keep living in the moment indulge in things you like and maybe you'll feel a nice kick of dopamine from something as simple as a fuckin glazed donut.
Instead I’ve slowly been removing myself from the community and letting mods take over all duties, which is what Lowtax did before Something Awful began mutating into what it is today.
Whatever you choose to do, I really hope it's something that rewards you in the long run.
Some faggy shit below:
I sadly joined this site late, but I enjoyed every minute of it. Although it doesn't really mean much, I truly appreciate all the hard work you've put into the forums. There's just something so intriguing and fascinating about this community that you've help built, and I won't stop reminiscing about it. You deserve a damn well earned retirement. I wish you the absolute best and hope you find happiness in the future.
This site means a lot to me. It's become sort of a dysfunctional family even though I'm not particularly close with anyone here. It made me laugh when there were periods of my life that made me want to fall apart. You've run the site immaculately, Josh. I couldn't have asked for a better showman.
Whatever you choose to do, I wish you nothing but the best. You've earned it.
I too am feeling the same motions, Null. I've probably haven't been all that much of a help either, but as I can see and feel it, things are going through bit of a slowdown here on the Farms. Many of the lolcows I've stuck with are either thinning out like Spoony or wising up (at least internet wise), and as Weeb Wars gets to wind down on the momentum, once something seals that shut, I'm likely gone with the wind on that too. That's if the US "anime industry" decides to not get stupid and keep doing more stupid shit.
I'm probably going to admit that I am one of those "anti-fans" who is the most vocal about his a-logging, but I want to let it know that what I do here is strictly what I do here, and that's for the public to judge and take notes from. I can care less about my reactions and e-stickers and whether or not I am e-famous or whatever feebleminded shit lolcows actually care about in their waterbrained deluded internet "world". I came here wanting to spread information on some of the more repulsive shitheels, and bringing the beef is what I live to do here. I'm going to admit that in hindsight, I find myself to be more of a wannabe-whistleblower than anything else. Well, that and a-logger. If my actions ever hurt this site legitimately, well, sorry, and not sorry. At least I am not a colluding faggot of a bitter anime fan who is abusing new sources and trying to spread word akin to a babyfucking militant Christ cult out in the backwoods. My crusade is mine and mine alone, and you can join me in having fun when there's something to gather round for, ignore me, or rate me autistic, and if the latter you can go fuck yourself when you're away from my presence.
But a slowdown and changing times, as well as a path you'd never expected in life is always a fact of life, I've learned. You can't give up until you know that the path you're on is close to the destination, and even then, you have to go there as well. As I've said before, KiwiFarms is my leet cyberpunk getaway and you made this paradise, Null. I appreciate the sacrifices and hard won efforts to protect this place from being shitcanned by even governments the world over because that is fucking balls and knowhow. We can care less about the shit that's in the closets of the government, but it was amazing see you shut them right the fuck down when their guilt decided to get the best of them. Also, please don't feel bad about the hacking. As an admitted denizen of the net, infosec is a fundamental resource to never skip out on. As much as I feel bad, if you screwed up that and never took hints from lolcows even before this place was made, that is a hard lesson many of your members had to learn on their own. Keeping yourself safe on the internet is something that even children are taught. That warning that you put up was not meant for show. I don't regret shit because I took the necessary precautions and I do my homework. Anyone who joins worth their salt ought to respect your warnings and pay heed.
The weight of age, a venture growing not in a direction you intended, a hobby turned into not just a daily grind but world changing experience, witnessing the actions of humans online without identities or social restraint, a human need alarming out from your biological clock, government escalation of law on a widely accessed source of information and communications for a more authoritarian grasp of control, those definitely are heavy things, Null. Life is uncertain for all of us, that much I know. But I am going to be one of those guys and say don't act merely out of instinct. What the hell is life trying to say to you? Answer that. I don't have all the answers but I am taking care of my life to uncover a few of them. This essay of yours is a good start, but don't tread off into the distance so easily. You find in many ways that a new path brings as many difficulties the last half of your journey has brought in new ways.
Again, I'm here until either weeb wars shit doesn't last, retard president decides to revoke all free speech rights on the net and sends out the 4Chan Party Vans on us, you shut this place down, or the entire human race and all of civilization goes out. Or something in my life spurs me to walk off out into the distance. Many of the people I've A-logged on deserved this shit. I know this might sound a bit grandiose, but you run a good service to humanity here, Null. Regain your happiness.
I lurked here for a long time before finally making an account. And even after making an account, I continued to lurk a bit. I'm not going to tout oldfag status, because that's posturing faggotry, but I at least appreciate the importance of "lurk moar". As was mentioned, the Farms has become a refugee camp. People don't take the time to learn the culture of the forum and just register and blow their load. I came here because I got tired of spending so much time sifting through the larping/trolling, and glowing of the image boards. The Farms has those elements, but there's a certain uniqueness that separates it. Perhaps it's the stickers. Stickers are life. But I agree that it is losing what made it unique. This is inevitable. It's a trend that curses the internet, music, or anything that gets popular. Once a light is shined on it, normies swarm and the charm and exclusivity is gone. It is as inevitable as time. There is only so much of it.
I think a loss of the Farms would be terrible. But I do respect and insist that if you wish to start a family, you should. I won't power level, I will simply say do it. It's worth it.
As a new fag who has been aware of this site for a long time, I gotta say that you really do need put your life first. I hold as one of the most paramount statements in my life as "don't except nothing from nobody". You can't except others to improve your life, family, work, websites, etc. Your happiness depends on yourself, so if you are feeling unhappy, you need to go about making a change. Part of you and part of us both would like to see this site stay up and go back to the glory days, but all things move like time, in one direction. this mentality is what you mention yourself, "we want today to be like yesterday". does that mean shutting the site down? Not necessarily, you could accept the fact it is different and try to the make the best of it, but again, if it doesn't make you happy, why force it? Its like a tv show or video game franchise, you can make a couple great games and leave us wanting more (see: half-life series), or you can drag it out hoping the charm will never leave (see: the simpson's).
Overall, in your position, don't see this as your life is done, but see this as a calling, this is your soul telling you that you want more from life, so do something new. Move to a country that isn't a winter hellhole and that speaks English for Christ's sake. I still don't get why you do not at least try to come back to the U.S., you could easily find happiness in fly-over states or some of the small, southern cities and find a girl that may even be decent. I am by no means in your position in life, which is why I did not try to tell you what you need to do, but just understand that sometimes, you need to swallow your pride and listen to a retarded faggot and take the leap of faith into the great unknown.
Your best bet is to make a new site dedicated to the politics. Sounds monumental but a lot of the politics only fags will go there as long as it has the same level of freedom as they have now. Right now you're dealing with a refugee crisis since every other site with a good format has cracked down on wrongthink, and some people (like me) don't have enough chromosomes to understand chan sites.
I like this idea. New site for all the politics and and current events and reduce this site back down to just lolcows.
I would certainly understand if you end up shutting down the site. You do what you think is best for you, Josh. It's going to be hard to settle down and start a family with Vordrak trying to ruin you at every turn.
Honestly, if that happens, I'd probably end up reducing my online activity to just pirating shit since I don't know of anywhere else that has this level of freedom.
When can we just do /pol/ Harbor for A&H already?
But seriously though. I think the major problem is that there are too many people on this site who have become PERSONALLY invested in the actions and lives of Lolcows and silly internet drama. Stuff like Weeb Wars, the DSP subforum, to an extent Tommy Tooter, Briana Wu, and especially Chris-chan (who basically started the site!) have too many people who have become too personally invested in the Lolcows for thier own good. They're obsessed and insane, as any of the DSP detractors will show you.
Stare at the abyss, and it will eventually stare back. We're all staring into the abyss that is Lolcowdom, without realizing we're the ones becoming the Lolcows ourselves.
Please don't shut us down Null, this site is basically the last bastion of what web culture was in the 2000s, I haven't had this much fun in an online community in years.
The world needs a site like this where people can be open and honest and vent.
Look, for what it's worth I turned 30 myself last year and yeah, I've been in an existential funk ever since, I know what you're feeling, but just trust me when I say that this is a site worth fighting for and preserving.
It's helped me and I'm sure a lot of people get through these exceptionally tough times.
This is so depressing to read. This site is literally one of the few places I can go and speak freely, without worry that I'm going to get banned or "canceled" for it. I know I can't be the only woman who feels like we're slowly becoming 2nd class citizens again, as we are being gaslit and forced to agree that "trans women are women!" while these mentally unstable men in dresses invade our spaces and threaten our lives if we don't agree with them.
Over the years I have watched as every single platform has toed the TRA line and banned anyone who even dares question their beliefs. Over on Twitter, J.K. Rowling made the most boring and gentle article about the TRA movement. She never said troons aren't women, and never said anything to even hint that they don't exist or don't deserve the same respect and rights as everyone else. All she said was that sex is a biological fact, and she still got shat on for it. If it weren't for the fact that she's a billionaire, she would have already been banned and maybe even got a visit from the lame ass UK police for a "hate crime".
This is the one place I come to that I know I am safe to say what is true and not be attacked for it. Even if someone here disagrees with me, I know I won't be banned for it. The more important thing is that we can document bad behavior. Anywhere else, troon's bad behavior is often hidden. Remember how almost no one was covering JY's case, and anyone who spoke about him was banned everywhere. Wordpress and twitter both changed their rules so no one could get the word out about this sick abusive fuckhead. KF was LITERALLY the only site covering it until the case became too big to ignore. Now his abusive behavior is well documented and known. I truly believe JY would still be out causing way more trouble and abuse if not for this site.
Of course, being able to speak freely about TRAs is not the only reason I like KF. I like laughing at dumb dramawhores, I like reading people's thoughtful replies as well as their dumb shitposts. There are certain areas of KF I never go to, and there are views and people I disagree with completely. Twitter and reddit would say that I should just leave this place if I don't agree with someone's views or their politics. But I understand that the cost of true Freedom of Speech means that you are going to have people who say shit you don't like or agree with. Yeah, some of these things make me deeply uncomfortable. But it's not like me staying here means I support or endorse everything that is said here.
KF is a big place with thousands of people and threads. It's kinda like living in a town. The town I live in, for example: it has bars, churches, art galleries, etc. I don't go to church, because that's not my thing. Yet no one in my town would say I endorse or support what the church says just because I live here. KF is best viewed the same way. For example, I lurk several different lolcow threads. The people I see in the Tess Holiday thread are not going to be the same people I see in the H3H3 thread, so it would be stupid for me to assume these two different communities think the same, share the same goals, and support the same views.
Null, I don't know you on a personal level, and I disagree with you on several issues. That being said, I have always admired you and am forever grateful that you created a place that people are free to say what they want. I have always wondered how you could deal with all this shit. I am sorry to read that you are having trouble, but I also understand completely how exhausting and draining this must be.
My opinion is that you should take a long break from the internet as a whole. I have had to do this myself several times, especially in these batshit times. Going offline, talking with people, interacting with nature... this shit may sound stupid and something a dumb hippy would say, but I promise you, it changes you whole perspective. You quickly realize what you see online is not what most people think or believe. You also come to know that arguing or talking offline is so much different from the bullshit online. People, in general, are much more willing to actually TALK about disagreements and even change their minds than what you see online.
Do some hard labor. Go build something, or go find a neighbor who's yard is in serious need of mowing and deweeding, etc. You will feel better. Just do something that involves serious work, and do not go online for any reason for a good two weeks. If you're worried about missing something or an emergency, give the mods here an emergency number or email to contact you by, that you can check periodically.
Once you come back, then think about where you want to go from here. I do not think this site should be closed, however, I don't think you should continue this on your own. You need help and you should ask for it. I think you underestimate how many people care and would be willing to help out if you would just ask for it.
As for this place becoming bigger and now lolcows become aware of it too quickly, I don't know a way to fix that. The only thing I can think of is having stricter rules about thread creation (as in, do not create a thread without making sure everything is archived and documented, that way the lolcows won't delete everything once they get wind that they have a thread here). I don't know how much that will help though. This may be something that is sadly unfixable.
Anyway, it's late and I'm exhausted, so I'm just going to stop here and I hope this long winded comment is readable. I hope we can find a way for you to feel better and now feel so under pressure and overwhelmed, while also not having to shut down such an important site.
This website unironically changed my life, Null. From coming here to read about Desmond is Amazing, now visiting to read every day, I have honestly learned so much in just a few short months. I agree with those who say the community is unique and cannot be replicated easily elsewhere.
I understand the concerns you have about being the face of this site and yet feeling that it is not worth the work you have put into it. But I also feel that you should ultimately be really proud, for what you have created and the people you have given a community to. Everyone who accomplishes something great will be hated, especially when things get controversial. You have done something truly amazing with this site no matter what kind of fuckery sometimes occurs in here. I must say that upon finding the farms, I was so impressed by its fluidity of performance (especially on mobile, holy shit) and on how well organized it is. This has become the site I use more than any other, with the exceptions of google and perhaps neopets. I feel like I don't need to go anywhere else, and I genuinely don't want to.
I think it is not a bad idea to charge members for access to certain areas of the site, whether to supplement your income, or to just weed out the people who are not serious from certain discussions. I would pay for it, and I hardly sign up memberships for anything. But for the farms, I would, because it is special to me. It is special to many of us, even if we don't say it.
It is also not a bad idea to take a break. You deserve it. I will always have respect for you and the platform you have created, may it be the foundation that inspires many forums in the future.
Instead I’ve slowly been removing myself from the community and letting mods take over all duties, which is what Lowtax did before Something Awful began mutating into what it is today.
If that is the case, it might be time to hide the General Discussion forums, at least A&H and Happenings, force them to produce relevant content first. Or say fuck it and delete those two.
Its a shame that the site has taken on an intellectually lazy userbase.
Politics being inescapable is an unfortunate reality of the now but I think it could be mitigated well with more aggressive gatekeeping of the site. Forums are at least a lot easier to gatekeep than imageboards. To that end I second what some others have said: shutdown 9chan if you're not having fun keeping it up.
Kiwi Farms has become something of a home site to me since I started browsing regularly but I would understand if you decided to sacrifice it to the corn one day and move on. I made peace with the fact that it'd have to come to an end eventually around a year ago.
I've been in a similarly difficult situation in terms of things. Several years back I aimed to go to college. A nightmarish combo of having to deal with a group of e-beggars I pissed off for 3 years before 2016 who's behavior was rather similar to some of the people that have tried taking down this site in the past, combined with the weird spur of politics shit the last 4 years pretty much killed any chance I have at being successful in life, at least in a traditional career sense that I had intended to follow.
This shitty situation has almost stolen an entire decade from my life. Not gonna go too deep into the whole situation of things because that'd be fucking stupid. The point I'm trying to get at here is the only reason I haven't fucking blown my brains out yet is I've been actively trying to have at least some form of fun with all of this, and the main way I've been doing that is via hobbies like creating art and shitty wacky image edits.
I've been mainly lurking the past few months compared to how active I was a few years ago because I've been in a bit of a greater slump than usual, possibly due to a combo of the politics getting more shitty and disingenuine amongst social media circles. there's far less places where you can just chill and shoot the shit without a collective corporate approved unpersoning program kicking in. Though that risk isn't really on this forum there just hasn't been too much actually interesting and funny content lately save for a few small weird fucking things I've seen in here.
This text mound is probably jumbled and incoherent to some degree because I'm kinda out of it right now but I really Know the feeling of whats going on, mainly because I share some of it. mainly the "funny isn't happening as much as it should on here" bit. As for the "era of lolcow" That's never gonna end as long as there's there's interesting unintentionally funny people out there. The term's been fucking abused to shit though I can't deny that. Fucking drama guys co-opted it to just mean "person I disagree with " and it feels so fucking unnatural whenever they use it.
TL/DR: We need to make more fun in the drought of the fun or else we're gonna fucking keep feeling like shit due to overly political douchebags being obsessed with killing the fun.
you're going to find it a lot harder to start a family and find a purpose than to run this website.
Tons of users are here because they couldn't cut it offline. kiwifarms is where we escape, look at the riot thread, the only places people can be anti-riot are here and pol. you shut this down, you're going to be wasting years finding a mate and struggling with jobs.
Instead you could understand that you're a modern day Nader, and that the life of a politcal advocate is like that of Atlas. Lonely, but you keep the people above from destroying us. look at all the stats, that family isn't going to come, the fulfilling career wont either. having said that, you have thousands of fans here, no reason you couldn't play vidya with people from here.
DSP outlasts another one of his contemporaries yet again!! 
