Kiwi Farms History - Autism to document autism

[Xarpho]

Inspired by Null's lament about the "old guard" and how the Kiwi Farms has changed over the last five years, I've hammered out a brief history of Kiwi Farms, which I hope to make a comprehensive history about all the drama and everything happened since. It's not externally hosted yet (except for the original file on my computer), so any major additions/corrections will be appreciated.

Spoiler: The story thus far

January 2013: The "new" CWCki Forums is founded by Null with champthom, the moderator of the old CWCki Forum, which were a place created to continue to talk about Chris following the closure of the PVCC to new users, despite the lull in content. Kengel and A-log, which were banned from the old forum, were declared persona non grata.

Sometime in 2013: People begin talking about alternate "lolcows" in Off-Topic, including an on-going search to find the "next Chris". Null attempts to create a forum to split off this discussion, it is shot down by champthom, but a permanent subforum is created.

January 2014: Chris' house is involved in a large house fire, Null organizes drive to send Chris a care package. Null releases tracking number publicly, trolls attempt to cause chaos.

Early 2014: A lolcow, Jace Connors, comes into CWCki Forum's radar as a lolcow, of this, a user trying to create a "Liquid Jace saga", PvtRichardCranium, is banned. A new user, DeagleDad420, essentially runs the thread. Gamerfood, a small griefing group trying to troll Jace, runs ops on the site to try to compromise Jace but DeagleDad420 helps Null protect the site. The "Deagle Nation" (or "Grilled Cheese" subforum) is created.

May 2014: Moleman9000 subforum started.

August 2014: Golden Knight subforum started. Sometime around this era, it is revealed Null was aware of another trolling operation on Chris with user skyraider and another unidentified party. There was also another subforum established in this timeframe, Blue Pill, but it is folded back in to main Lolcow forum.

Sometime around September 2014: Ratings are introduced, previously there was only an "Mm, Yeah" (and "QUOTE ME NOW") button. The Horrifying rating comes in soon after when Chris pierces his taint.

November 2014: Null announces a rebranding of the site. A popular choice is "Kiwi Farms", based after Jace mispronounced it in a video earlier that year. [https://kiwifarms.net/threads/rebranding.5801/] This thread is also where a random.txt quote originates from ("if nigge.rs was available we'd totally be nigge.rs tomorrow and nobody would have any say in it"). Kiwi Farms launches with new software, but the same content as CWCki Forum. The "beta" Kiwi Farms looks very different than what the modern KF looked like, with "Beryllium" as the logo.

December 2014: Marjan Šiklić joins. Soon after, over three days of bizarre posts on chat and many forum posts earn him the mostly highly-rated in negative user ratings.

February 2015: Jace Connors revealed to be a hoax. The Entersphere subforum is launched.

May 2015: The Entersphere subforum is closed.

July 2016: A new subforum, Lolcow News, is created to create a series of articles independent from the Kiwi Farms forums on a Wordpress site. Loveshy Therapy Center subforum is shut down and archived.

September 2016: Sometime around this time, the True Capitalist Radio subforum is archived.

December 2016: Events & News subforum is archived. Beauty Parlor is created, initially with a set theme of purple and black (as opposed to normal green and black). Most Beauty Parlor threads were long-running lolcow threads.

January 2017: Kiwi Farms is shut down following serious threats on Null's family.

February 2017: Kiwi Farms reopens.

August 2017: Lolcow News is archived and plans for the Wordpress site are abandoned.

September 2017: Tired of the hijinks in the Amberlynn Reid thread (started in August 2016), the Amberlynn Reid subforum is created.

"Perpetual, paper-thin shielding. Violent, frothing-at-the-mouth rage for no particular reason. Indignant outrage at every possible attempt to contain, control, mitigate, or in any way improve the Amberlynn thread. You've driven out my Beauty Parlor mods by being awful, constantly, and none of the other staff even want to read it."
The subforum is completely unmoderated, but it works, and all the problem users eventually disappear.
[https://kiwifarms.net/threads/trial-of-the-amberlynn-reid-board.34192/, Amberlynn stream]

Late 2017: A Russell Greer subforum is created but archived within the period of a few months.

March 2018: Salt Mine closes, with the Trump fallout thread moved and eventually renamed.

September 2019: Site hacked, revealing many PMs and user emails. Despite passwords remaining secure and no content lost, many users end up deleting their accounts.

 

[Recoil]

It's easy to write off this sort of effort as masturbatory autism but this site does have a real role in culture and as such its history should be documented somehow.

I've said it before - I believe that in future years literature studies will dive into the morass of internet shitposts with great aplomb and use sites like this one to document the evolution of culture and ideology. What we do here matters, in that sense. A scribe of some sort should be appointed.

 

[SigSauer]

>September 2019: Site hacked, revealing many PMs and user emails. Despite passwords remaining secure and no content lost, many users end up deleting their accounts.

I wonder if it was Michael Horowitz Foster that hacked the forums?

 

[Logan]

Mad at the Internet: The History of Kiwi Farms

 

[Wake me up]

I don't see anything about Greta coming to visit Null, the update to XenForo 2 (including pranking Tooter for uberlulz) or Null recently buying his own range of IPs or whatever technicality (but majorly relevant) that was. These are all things from the top of my head too so I doubt that timeline is even 50% complete. No mention of the lolcow wiki at all either or other services like lolcow.email or git.kiwifarms.net .

I commend OP for his intention but feels very lackluster from a single speedreading and a couple CTRL+F queries.

 

[Feline Darkmage]

Yeah this is by no means everything. Even an autism compendium such as myself doesn't have it all. Pretty good as a WIP though. It's many of the largest things.

edit: it should definitely include Yaniv stuff, tumblr shit, @TranLord's "i'd like to preface this" and so on and so forth.

 

[Xarpho]

I don't see anything about Greta coming to visit Null, the update to XenForo 2 (including pranking Tooter for uberlulz) or Null recently buying his own range of IPs or whatever technicality (but majorly relevant) that was. These are all things from the top of my head too so I doubt that timeline is even 50% complete. No mention of the lolcow wiki at all either or other services like lolcow.email or git.kiwifarms.net .

I commend OP for his intention but feels very lackluster from a single speedreading and a couple CTRL+F queries.

Nah, it’s not complete yet. I wanted to get a rough draft in tonight that hit a lot of the big site changes and the ones I personally remember. I know I left out fallout from the NZ shooting, the drama of both Phils, April Fools pranks, that time where we lost about two days of posts, and a few others.

 

[skiddlez]

@TranLord's "i'd like to preface this" and so on and so forth.

im going to preface this by saying i like the idea of fucking feline darkmage. i would also like to say that i would never actually fuck feline darkmage in real life (or look at girldick porn involving real things) as that is animal abuse and the very idea of it happening irl makes me feel sick.

 

[Diabeetus]

The dumb faggots editing our Wikipedia page should take notes from you.

 

[Wake me up]

it’s not complete yet

Oh sorry, I must have missed that and in that case you're truly doing Godbear's work keep posting updates to this thread so we can keep feeding you bits and pieces as we remember them (as you know, Null appreciates all forms of feeding on the forums).

I legitimately think this is important work, even if I can't explain why. As a starting point, I think it's actually pretty good! Rock on!

 

[Oaat]

Is there an archive of all the front page announcements? I feel like that would be a fun trip through the site's history.

 

[skiddlez]

The dumb faggots editing our Wikipedia page should take notes from you.

Has anyone vandalized that thing yet? I really hope someone has.

 

[John Andrews Stan]

Maybe make it a doc others can add to/edit so it’s not quite as much work? This is a massive undertaking. off to you!

 

[Plasmapheresis]

Thank you @Xarpho , Very Cool.

 

[ωσкє вℓυє мυѕℓιм qυєєη]

I cannot fathom how grateful I am for knowing what the horrifying rating meant.

 

[Mr. 0]

I don't know how I feel about the current starting point. This forum as it is only exists because the CWCki Forums was its forerunner, so I feel that omitting the history of that version of the forum would be a slight disservice, but that's just me.

That being said, this history document requires any point in which Chris joined to be documented (@paintingatree, @LegendaryChristorian), as well as that poster campaign, which was organized here (and as we found out later, Chris noticed and flipped out about).

 

[Yotsubaaa]

I think something like this is a good idea too. Just having it all aggregated somewhere is definitely useful.

It's easy to write off this sort of effort as masturbatory autism but this site does have a real role in culture and as such its history should be documented somehow.

I've said it before - I believe that in future years literature studies will dive into the morass of internet shitposts with great aplomb and use sites like this one to document the evolution of culture and ideology. What we do here matters, in that sense. A scribe of some sort should be appointed.

Heck, Null even opined on a recent stream that the relentless attempts by people to shut the site down have made Kiwi Farms a case-study in how to keep a website up and running. So the Kiwi Farms a very unique technical history too. There aren't many other websites that have had to worry about buying all their own IPs because their data servers were pulled without warning, or being banned from Brave BAT tipping, or having various countries block DNS resolution to the site, or...

Nah, it’s not complete yet. I wanted to get a rough draft in tonight that hit a lot of the big site changes and the ones I personally remember. I know I left out fallout from the NZ shooting, the drama of both Phils, April Fools pranks, that time where we lost about two days of posts, and a few others.

That was this thing with the server hard-drive failure earlier this year, if I'm remembering right?

 

[Xarpho]

The dumb faggots editing our Wikipedia page should take notes from you.

What a hack job of an article that is. I checked out of Wikipedia editing a number of years ago, partially due to the bullshit that surrounded a number of articles. That and the desire to maintain creative control of what I did, and not get deleted for "non-notability" or something like that.

That was this thing with the server hard-drive failure earlier this year, if I'm remembering right?

The incident in question happened a few years ago with Vordrak shenanigans. I'll have to go digging to find out when exactly that happened.

I don't know how I feel about the current starting point. This forum as it is only exists because the CWCki Forums was its forerunner, so I feel that omitting the history of that version of the forum would be a slight disservice, but that's just me.

That being said, this history document requires any point in which Chris joined to be documented (@paintingatree, @LegendaryChristorian), as well as that poster campaign, which was organized here (and as we found out later, Chris noticed and flipped out about).

As the "original" CWCki Forums (not the one that started in 2013) has been lost to history, it's both difficult to find information on and also it's not truly this forum. I also wasn't part of the old CWCki Forums in that time, and a lot of what I am able to write about is only because I was fortunate enough to join as early (relatively speaking) as I did.

 

[Christ Cried]

Maybe in 2045 when he's done with the Chris-Chan doc, we can get Geno Samuel to make a video about us. Ken Burns would be my second choice.

 

[{o}P II]

Is there an archive of all the front page announcements? I feel like that would be a fun trip through the site's history.

I would love a profile picture acrchive as well
it would be easier to remember who users are with my crippling dementia a