Sometime in 2008, a neurodivergent, transgender woman called Christine Weston Chandler, or CWCki, caught the internet's attention. 

She was a comic artist, best known at the time for a comic called “Sonichu”, a combination of Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog, that she drew during her time in college (Wikitubia, 2023). Her personal life was messy, to say the least, but people were fascinated with her—morbidly so. She posted Youtube videos on a channel called "CwcvilleGuardian", sometimes engaging with fans who went out of their way to exacerbate her issues and trick her (Colombo et al., 2023). A wiki page was created for her called “CWCki”. Users documented her extensively. “CWCki” became an archive of her entire life, detailing everything she had ever shared. Personally identifying information, stories, embarrassing photos and details—everything was on the site (Pless, 2016). To the point where, to this day, she is considered one of the most well-documented people on the internet. But the CWCki forum wasn’t your regular fan page, it was a hate site. And when Josh Moon, creator of 6Chan and 18Chan (a hot spot for paedophilia), took it over in 2013, it became something more—something far, far worse.

Josh Moon turned "CWCki" into "Kiwi Farms": an online forum, home to anything and anyone that had probably been banned on mainstream media sites. It evolved into a platform for targeted harassment. 

The way they chose their targets was methodical. The victims were vetted on a sub-forum called the ‘prospering grounds. There, users would raise new potential targets, called 'lolcows'—"people who could be 'milked for laughs'" (Colombo, 2021)—and the rest of the forum would judge whether the person was worth dedicating a thread to (Sorrenti, 2022). Although the victims varied, Kiwi Farms users were particularly fond of targeting people like Christine Chandler: neurodivergent, queer and gender-queer individuals, who demonstrated mental health issues, with a platform on social media (Colombo, 2021). Oftentimes, the suggesting user would create an extensive thread, including images, addresses, family, friends, and embarrassing details—years and years of information that was some combination of truth and fiction (Sorrenti, 2022). But it didn’t matter if what they were saying was true or not. In the end, none of the victims were ‘human’ to these users. Embarrassing, harassing, and killing them was a hobby, a pastime they were proud of—bragged about, even. 

And people were killed. 

By 2022, three of Kiwi Farm’s 'lolcows' committed suicide due to the online harassment they were facing (Colombo, 2021). 

No one was ever held accountable.