Animals do not laugh at their fellow humans : like crying, mockery is said to be human . Whether they manifest themselves in the form of fraternal teasing or acidic caricatures, they make people laugh everywhere, from the Amazon rainforest to the most expensive laboratories. Inuit, Pashtuns and Aboriginals practice them for the same reasons as we do: to protect themselves, to create or strengthen a bond, to underline behavior perceived as deviant and therefore dangerous, to demonstrate their independence or their power and so many other things including Doctors in anthropology and psychology are still debating. Too bad no one is interested in the Internet .
At this very moment, several thousand Internet users are browsing websites exclusively dedicated to mockery. They all work the same way. First, a member identifies a potential target and presents it to the public. Depending on the enthusiasm of the crowd, this target may be abandoned or proclaimed "lolcow". Like milk cows harnessed to an electric milking machine, those who have the misfortune of being elected "cow to lol" will then be exploited for entertainment purposes by the members of the forum. This system has been the same for almost fifteen years, when the Internet elected its first lolcow.
Mi-Sonic, Mi-Pikachu
Christian Weston Chandler was 25 years old when he caught the attention of malicious internet users. It was in 2007. This “high functioning autism” had the misfortune to create and promote a character half-Sonic, half-Pikachu called Sonichu, but also to look for a girlfriend by brandishing a questionable sign (“… seeks a “FEMALE” CUTE SINGLE WOMAN ”in various public places in her native Virginia. The release of these details in two eternal hot spots of digital nastiness, 4chan and Something Awful, signaled the start of the longest and most brutal trolling campaign in history .
Over the following months, Christian suffered countless abuses from unknown men and women. Some accused him of being homosexual, revealing his homophobia in passing, others pretended to be potential partners before simulating their death. Condemned to naivety by his developmental disorder, "Chris-Chan" has always allowed himself to be deceived. His torturers pushed him to reveal his racism, his anatomy and his sexual habits. Some trolls have even made themselves famous for their cruelty: a certain BlueSpike pushed Chris-Chan to insert his Sonichu medallion into his anus. The recording of this torture session is still available on the Internet.
The universe and the torments of Christian Chandler aroused such interest that the young man was dedicated a wiki and an affiliated forumin 2009. The "CWCki Forums" grew by diversifying quickly enough to justify a schism: without doubt brought by the development of blogs and then social networks and smartphones, the Internet had suddenly transformed into an ocean of individuals, and therefore into a fabulous showcase for lolcows. Suddenly, Chris-Chan was no longer the sole target of the CWCki Forums. The discussions involved so many different targets that a name change was required. That's how Kiwi Farmswas born .
The 1001 cows farm
"The name Kiwi Farms comes from several lolcows who couldn't pronounce" CWCki Forums "(Quicky Forums)," explains Null, the site administrator. They ended up saying Kiwi Forum or Kiwi Farms. The forum claims almost 45,000 members. Several digital subcultures known for their high content in bickering and strong personalities have their own subcategory on the site: furries , fans of Japanese culture, homosexuals, Tumblr users ... Other subcategories honor the already recognized lolcows: Christian Chandler, therefore, but also the transgender politician Brianna Wu and the youtuber DarkSydePhil .
Kiwi Farms is not the only site in its category. The Lolcow.farm imageboard has existed since at least 2014 and the Pretty Ugly Little Liar forum seems to have been created in 2015. 8kun, the reincarnation of the infamous 8chan , also has a / cow / category. The modus operandi of their users is much the same: target search, stalking, more or less contained mockery, harassment outright.
All the sites mentioned authorize the publication of personal data, or doxing. Chris-Chan's phone number and mailing address are almost public information. Kiwi Farms defends itself on its page " How can this site be legal?" ":" Publishing a name or address is not illegal. The directories have been doing it for a century. [...] You could oppose a thousand ethical arguments but none can hold water. It is your sole responsibility to manage your anonymity on the Internet. "Same policy on the side of Pretty Ugly Little Liar: with regard to personal information," Anything goes . And when it gets out of hand, these sites accept no responsibility.
General impunity
Null invokes section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, according to which a site cannot be held responsible for the information that is shared through its services, to sweep away the reproaches of Internet users who present themselves as victims of Kiwi Farms. He decides: “What [these people] claim can only be achieved by private companies. It seems that Kiwi Farms and the like have never been convicted for the murky stories of their users. The forum even has a sub-category dedicated to "frivolous judicial threats" which it receives regularly.
At least two victims of cyber-harassment by members of Kiwi Farms have committed suicide. The first, Julie Terryberry, had been singled out for her strange hairstyle and her polyamorous tendencies. "She was screwed up long before we found out," defends a forum user . Even if we never started talking about her, she would probably have committed suicide because of anything in her life that she couldn't handle. The second, a transgender artist known as Chloe Sagal, committed suicide by self-immolation in 2018 after five years of cyber-harassment. His gesture was announced on Kiwi Farms with the song Burn it down by Awolnation.
“Everyone loves drama. "
Kiwi Farms, Pretty Ugly Little Liar and all the others seem to favor "easy" targets. As in the physical world, the victims appear different from their torturers: many are transgender or suffering from psychological disorders. The obese and pretentious are also the prey of choice. However, any somewhat remarkable personality is exposed to the wickedness of the trolls. A French thread on Kiwi Farms thus proposes to transform Alain Soral into a lolcow. Null denies any form of discrimination in the choice of victims: “The forum is a system and everyone is treated the same. "
This claim to objectivity is characteristic of the least frequentable corners of the Internet. In summary, the members of Kiwi Farms and others make the same speech as certain Twitter activists: “Freedom of expression does not protect the speaker from the consequences of his speech. After all, everyone makes fun of their flock more or less violently, sometimes without realizing the harm it can cause. French internet users did not need a forum-headquarters to spoil the life of Mila or "Snoop Doggy Dog" . And even without the Internet, seemingly trivial mockery can lead a victim to suicide. Pretty Ugly Little Liar, Lolcow.farm and the others are just the digital and assumed manifestation of an extremely widespread behavior.
"The forum is about people and drama," says Null. It can make you frown but even classic literature can be summed up by people who get confused. It wouldn't exist and it wouldn't be that big if there was no demand. YouTube and Twitter are trying to stop these behaviors by moderation but it won't work. Everyone loves drama. "
Fortunately, the picture is not entirely black. The world of "lolcow hunters" is rarely consensual. Its members sometimes tear each other apart on the limits of trolling. Chris-Chan, the mother [Christian became Christine in 2015, when she revealed her transidentity, note] of all the lolcows, even ended up attracting a group of protectors who try to restore her to a semblance of normal life . Null himself took a stand for the unhappy creator of Sonichu by revealing that she had been the victim of extortion. Even in the worst confines of humanity and the Internet, there is therefore some hope.
