Keffals: A Case Study on Internet Terrorism and Mass Media Manipulation
Keffals: A Case Study on Internet Terrorism and Mass Media Manipulation
For the last six years, progressives and conservatives have waged vicious war with one another across cyberspace. With cultural, political, and advertiser pressure bearing down on these social media platforms, conservatives have slowly found themselves on the losing end of the digital battlefield in the ongoing culture war. As their role flips from oppressee to oppressor, progressives have sometimes found themselves embracing many of the same styles of aggression conservatives once engaged in.
This is going to be a cataloging of the past year, a demonstration of what happens when communities fail to hold their own members responsible, and what comes of the belief that “there are no bad tactics, only bad targets.” This is going to be a careful documentation of lies, scams, threats, bullying, doxxing, and an utter lack of accountability.
Over the years, I have worried about the types of tactics endorsed by progressive communities. The uncomfortable distorting of narratives, the grotesque shape-shifting of facts, and the general inability to hold themselves to a decent standard of behavioral conduct. I’ve been worried that the right combination of identity politics combined with a holy mandate from members of the media may empower deplorable actors to become the new representatives of our movements, with no one left to put the brakes on their treachery.
The prevailing narrative circling Kiwi Farms and Keffals is wrong. It is not the story of a downtrodden trans-activist supported by righteous members of the media battling against an evil empire of militant Nazis and transphobes. Rather, it is the tale of an internet bully given far too much power on a mission to seek fame and fortune by building a career through vicious conflict, borne out of lies and disinformation. We have allowed ourselves to gaze into the abyss for far too long, and Keffals is the result.
In this exposition I am looking to upend the prevailing media narrative through establishing a clear record of truth with regard to these key points:
Keffals’ initial rise to fame was through internet bullying and lies, not through righteous activism.
There is not enough evidence to support the claim that Kiwi Farms has bullied anyone to suicide.
Kiwi Farms was likely not the main culprit behind most of Keffals’ harassment.
Keffals grossly misrepresented the events justifying her GoFundMe.
The DIY HRT Directory, which had Keffals’ full social and monetary support, engages in grossly irresponsible behavior with minors.
I | The Ascension of Clara Sorrenti
II | Kiwi Farms
III | Who are the Doxxers?
IV | The Swattings
V | The GoFundMe Heist
VI | Bathtub Hormones & Spy Games
VII | “Keffals” - A Character Analysis
VIII | Call to Action
I | The Ascension of Clara Sorrenti
Clara Sorrenti, better known online as Keffals, is a twitch.tv streamer and avid Twitter user. She is known a bit for her trans activism and a lot for her aggressive brigading against social and political targets on Twitter. After a short stint in real life politics, Sorrenti began her online career in March of 2020 on twitch.tv to just a handful of viewers, streaming games such as Raft, Valheim, and Fallout: New Vegas. A wave of anti-trans legislation sweeping through the United States inspired her to switch her streaming content over to focus on politics, with her eventually raising over $200,000 for the Campaign for Southern Equality to protect trans youth. She now regularly streams to over 1,000 concurrent viewers.
Sorrenti made a name for herself on social media by directing her twitch.tv chat to brigade targets — sometimes even on her alternate accounts to get past blocks ( 1 | 2 ) — by “ratioing” them on Twitter (1). “Ratioing” is when a Twitter user interacts with another users tweet, either through a direct comment or a quote tweet, and surpasses the original tweet in likes and engagement. Sorrenti’s Twitter behavior typically involves her streaming her interactions with conservative or anti-trans individuals on Twitter, encouraging her audience to engage in bullying or harassment against whoever she set her sights on, sometimes even asking other larger creators for assistance. On March 22nd she had set her sight on Ian Miles Cheong, an active “anti-SJW” famous from before the days of Gamergate. For hours, Sorrenti would go back and forth with Ian on Twitter while coordinating the brigading on her Twitch stream. At approximately 20:50 UTC, her Twitch stream would get hate-raided, or brigaded by a group of malicious chatters, after she spent most of her stream fighting with transphobes on Twitter ( 1 | 2 | 3 ). A moderator of Keffals, Soulio (a Twitch user who has urged other streamers to cut ties with me in the past), would eventually blame my community for this. Their evidence? Seeing me quote-tweet a friend of Sorrenti’s on Twitter at 22:56 UTC, over two hours after the raid of which I was accused of causing. After noticing my quote tweet, Sorrenti quote-tweeted my tweet at 23:17 UTC in an attempt to get my account reported and banned.
The only evidence Sorrenti would ever provide for the claim that my community hate-raided her was that she shut down the raiders by auto-banning anyone who followed my channel. I was, at the time, the second largest political streamer on Twitch, with over 650,000 followers. It should be no surprise that auto-banning all of my followers would slow down any new raiders, as the same effect would likely have been achieved if she’d banned all Hasan or Vaush followers, the first and third largest political streamers on the platform at the time. Furthermore, it is not the case that every person following me on a platform where I have hundreds of thousands of followers is a fan of mine. If I were to have directed a hate raid, it would have certainly far exceeded the handful of chatters who showed up to harass her.
Sorrenti would later claim in that same stream that I don’t stand for trans people because I support “segregation” between trans women and cis women in college sports. Ostensibly, this single issue is enough to erase the numerous supportive debates ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 ) and conversations ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ) I’ve had on my stream regarding trans issues. On March 23rd, the next day, my Twitch account would be indefinitely suspended for “hate speech” due to my stance on trans women competing in women’s sports, with Sorrenti later taking credit for my suspension ( 1 | 2 ) on Twitter. My ban would propel her into the spotlight, netting her almost 30,000 Twitter followers (Before/After) over the next week, making it the single most explosive month of growth her account has ever experienced on the platform, doubling her following.
Sorrenti’s primary strategy when dealing with people online is to attack, attack, attack. Her goal is to discredit them as much as possible using half-truths or lies in order to mischaracterize their views into something unacceptable or associate them with unscrupulous actors.
Keffals would go on to utter several half-truths or blatant lies about me, including:
On March 23rd, she claimed I “stealth people, which is legitimetely a form of rape.”
I have never stealthed or raped anyone ever, this an absolutely baseless and malicious accusation stated with no evidence
She softly walks this back later
On March 24th, she claimed I said “if a trans woman does not disclose she’s trans before having sex with someone, they are a rapist.”
I have never stated that a trans person failing to disclose their trans identity before having sex with someone makes them a rapist. This claim is in reference to tweets I made ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ) saying that you should not surprise someone with a set of genitals they are not expecting. During that discourse, I explicitly made a carve-out for people who were post-op, so her framing of my take was a complete and total lie.
On March 24th, she claimed I was “literally defending a neo-nazi who called [her] a man.”
On March 24th, she claimed I was “showing support for [Kiwi Farms] while [my] chat actively attempts to dox [her].”
All forms of transphobia are banned from my chatrooms and my discord. YouTube chat is a bit harder to moderate due to limited moderation tools, but anyone making threats or comments like these are instantly banned by moderators.
On March 30th, she claimed I “mocked her for being a childhood grooming victim.”
I have never mocked her for being a “childhood grooming victim.” I was mocking her for constantly bending stories and narratives (Images: 1 | 2 | 3) to suit whatever she was currently fighting about online.
On May 17th, she claimed I “[let my] audience mock [her] genitals.”
I have never retweeted, liked nor endorsed any transphobic attacks against her. All forms of transphobia are banned from my chatrooms and my discord.
On July 18th, she claimed I was directing people to Kiwi Farms to harass her with a deceptively cut screenshot.
I have never directed people to Kiwi Farms to harass her. I’ve linked the site a single time in my offline chat on July 1st to demonstrate that the harassment she was receiving was coming from Kiwi Farms, and not my community as she’d claimed. I was doing this in response to her claiming multiple times on June 30th ( 1 | 2 ) — with no evidence — that my community was the primary one harassing her, despite her extensive and quickly growing Kiwi Farms thread.
Even in the screenshots she shows, “kiwifarms.net” is clearly a banned phrase in my chat.
On August 21st, she claimed I “actively lurk on [her] Kiwi Farms thread.” and blames me for getting doxxed and swatted.
I have never made a post in that thread, most of the information I receive comes second-hand through Discord and Twitter.
I have not posted the thread link in my chat multiple times, nor have I ever encouraged my viewers to “get involved.”
On August 25th, she claimed I am “the reason Kiwi Farms found out about [her].”
I am a victim of Kiwi Farms harassment, and have been for 5 years. It is inconceivable that I could be held responsible for other threads created on Kiwi Farms that I had no hand in creating.
Originally, on August 21st, Keffals seemed to have a completely different idea about what started the feud with Kiwi Farms, and said it was because she “started doing Twitter ratios” and that’s why Kiwi Farms is “digging up every little thing in the last 28 years of [her] life.”
On September 12th, she claimed I am “best friends with white nationalist extremists”, using a photoshopped picture of me and Nick Fuentes as evidence.
On September 12th, she claimed I “threatened to rape women and posted burning Crucifixes in the replies of Black people” in reference to tweets I’d made back in 2016.
I have never threatened to rape anyone. I made an incredibly inappropriate tweet towards someone 7 years ago during a heated exchange, but it was not a rape threat. I’ve since apologized for it and recognize it was not an appropriate tweet to make.
The “burning crucifix” image was posted once, and it was during a period where I was fighting with black nationalists, who were trivializing historical and contemporary racism, on Twitter. While it’s an unnecessarily edgy and obviously inappropriate tweet, it was not done with racist intent, which is clear as I was in the comments arguing about the disadvantages black Americans faced in the United States.
Sorrenti has made every effort to inhibit me from covering anything related to her. She continuously attempts to discredit me by making false claims about my reporting, or repeatedly claiming that I’m associated with Kiwi Farms or its owner, Joshua Moon.
On July 18th, she claimed that “Null has [my] back,” while reading what is obviously a troll post on my Kiwi Farms account. She tweeted a similar claim on July 19th.
Joshua Null has stated “the world would be better off with [me] dead,” that he “will not talk to [me],” that he wished I would be “set on fire,” and showed up in my Kiwi Farms thread to call me a cuck.
On August 18th, Sorrenti would later admit she blatantly lied about this claim on Twitter.
Also note that while I have posted on Kiwi Farms, my reaction score of -875 should give you a pretty good idea of what Kiwi Farms generally thinks of me.
On August 21st, she claimed I had “actively facilitated all of the bad things that have happened to [her] over the past several months” and blamed me for her doxxing.
There is no proof or evidence of any of this. I cannot possibly be blamed for Kiwi Farms creating a thread on her when I had no involvement in it.
Again, the only time I’ve posted her thread in my chat was to counter the allegations that most of the harassment she received came from my community by proving the existence of a Kiwi Farms thread about her.
On August 27th, she claimed I was “considering bankrolling Kiwi Farms…[and that I have]...been known to mock trans people who have attempted suicide” and called for a mass reporting to get my Twitter account banned.
Earlier that day I’d cautiously expressed an interest in potentially donating to Kiwi Farms. The only trans person whose suicide attempt I’ve ever questioned is Doe, someone who claimed they’d taken a non-lethal dose of Benadryll in a published Google Doc before jumping back into Twitter politics a week later. This questioning had absolutely nothing to do with them being trans. I have never made transphobic attacks against Doe.
On September 12th, she pressured Brianna Wu out of having a conversation with me, saying she didn’t “want [me] to make money off a monetized video debating [Brianna].”
I offered to donate $1,000 to a trans charity if Brianna discussed Sorrenti’s claims with me. She still refused.
On September 14th, she claimed that my subreddit is “the new Kiwi Farms,” and “Kiwi Farms, when Kiwi Farms is offline.”
I have one of the largest creator subreddits on Reddit. If the level of harassment from my subreddit was even a fraction of what comes from Kiwi Farms my subreddit would surely be banned.
All of the behavior that Sorrenti calls out that Kiwi Farms is notorious for (threats, extreme harassment, doxxing) are explicitly banned in all of my communities.
On September 14th, she claimed I was a “Kiwi Farms user…[and she thinks I’m] some kind of Nazi, really seems like it.” She’s also said I’m “very upset that [my] site is gone,” in reference to Kiwi Farms.
My Reaction score (like Reddit karma) on Kiwi Farms is below -850. Getting negative Reputation at this level is considered somewhat difficult without getting banned and is usually only reserved for lolcows with accounts on the website. For reference, Near, someone claimed to have committed suicide due to bullying from Kiwi Farms, had an account as well.
I have only ever posted in my own thread. I have never interacted with any other thread on Kiwi Farms. (Post history: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 )
The allegation that I’m some kind of Nazi is patently absurd, and obviously so to anyone that has even a passing familiarity with my online prescence
In regards to the bombing claim, it wasn’t just addressed to her followers at large, but specifically her “Ukrainian followers.” ( 1 | 2 | 3 ) When she says she “posted the information” this includes the physical address of the data center. Interestingly, she also neglects to mention how she stated that “I know Joshua Moon has expressed warm sentiments to Vladimir Putin and the site has many Putin supporters on it.” At best, she takes advantage of a brutal invasion and humanitarian crisis for her own ends, and at worst she engages in an implicit call to violence.
She claimed on September 15th that I had previously shared her dox and was threatening to do the same to her family.
I have never posted direct links to her dox, nor have I ever threatened to post doxxes of her family.
As you can see, Sorrenti has a tendency to fabricate facts and events. However, her lies run far deeper than the baseless claims she makes about me. The prevailing narrative of Sorrenti is that of a fearless warrior, fighting for trans rights on the internet while armies of transphobic and hateful trolls try to tear her down. This narrative has been propagated by her, the Twitter activist community, and partisan journalists (Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post, Ahmar Khan of Global News, and Alejandra Caraballo of Slate and Wired) who uncritically amplify her lies.
I am here to present a truer, darker version of Sorrenti than that of what the media has fabricated. Before we dive much deeper into her though, we need to take a close look at the malicious and false campaign she ran to take down Kiwi Farms.
II | Kiwi Farms
Kiwi Farms is an Internet forum started in 2013 by a slightly deranged individual known as Null, or Joshua Moon. It was spun out of a series of 4chan threads dedicated to mocking the Sonichu comics of a “special” individual, known online as Chris Chan. These days, however, Kiwi Farms serves as a central hub for users to collect information about eccentric online individuals, known colloquially on the forum as “lolcows.” They tend to target transgender individuals, as well as people who seem to be suffering from some form of mental illness. The targets of these threads range from far left to far right and everything in between, with no individual being off limits to the forum. The forum has garnered a notorious reputation for bullying and harassment, and has been blamed by several media outlets for having driven at least two individuals to suicide, with some claiming three were. ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 ).
It’s quite common for threads to be spun out of pre-existing threads on Kiwi Farms, as many lolcows will come into contact with or create other individuals that will inspire new threads. Kiwi Farms began a thread about me on May 17th, 2017. It’s decently active and currently spans over 360 pages. Topics ranged from users attempting to dox my wife, dox my child’s mom, accusations of pedophilia, and baseless accusations of a whole host of improper behavior, among other fun and exciting topics. Other online figures would have threads created about them after interacting with me, including Vaush, central_committee, Anavoir, and finally, Keffals. This is the foundation of the baseless claim that Sorrenti made when she said “Destiny is the reason Kiwi Farms found out about me” that she later contradicted.
Sorrenti’s claims about Kiwi Farms being a hateful, transphobic community are not without merit. It is undeniable that much harassment has stemmed from the forum, and much of it is undeniably transphobic in nature, with every person on the thread constantly engaging in transphobic attacks against her. While Sorrenti is right to have her personal qualms with Kiwi Farms, many of the largest accusations she’s levied against the forum are unsubstantiated at best, or outright lies at worst.
One of the largest reasons she’s been able to garner so much support for #dropkiwifarms is because Kiwi Farms is often blamed for driving as many as three different individuals to suicide. This claim has been uncritically echoed by The Washington Post, Gizmodo, Insider, Daily Dot, NPR, Forward, Vice, and NBC News, among many, many other sites.
Before we go too much farther, let’s give some thoughtful analysis to the suicides Sorrenti et al. attributes ( 1 | 2 ) to Kiwi Farms. It is important to note that none of the additional information I am about to provide is an attempt at character assasination, it is done solely for the purpose of further understanding the deeply unfortunate and complex circumstances that may eventually lead to suicide. This is done in order to shed light on the reality behind the claims made by Sorrenti et al. If you or anyone you know struggles with self harm or suicidal ideation please make use of the resources available to help.
Chloe Sagal
Chloe Sagal was known originally as an indie game developer who worked on small, indie titles such as “Homesick” and “Super Noah Vs. The Dinosaurs.” Her first dip into internet notoriety, however, would come from starting a donation drive on IndieGoGo in April of 2013. According to Eurogamer, Sagal lied about contracting “Metal Poisoning” after a car accident in order to raise funds for sex-reassignment surgery:
“My time frame for surviving this has lowered from a few years to a few months, with loss of many basic functions due to arrive prior to my passing. I don’t have time to futz with the system, right now I just need to get this thing out of me. I am a strong and independent woman, I can handle almost anything myself, but I’m setting this aside, because I do not want to die from this. I never wanted to resort to just donations (as opposed to asking for donations from people who’ve enjoyed my work), but it’s clear that this is the best option I have right now.”
There was no metal poisoning, and there was no car accident.
Allistair Pinsof, a writer for Destructoid, originally wrote an article supporting Sagal’s IndieGoGo. After it was personally revealed to him that the fundraiser was a scam, he revealed as much on Twitter and was fired from Destructoid for “outing” Sagal as trans. Sagal would fight about the funds for some years afterwards, trying to claim that PayPal was scamming her, even reaching out to Brianna Wu in 2015 before being shot down for help. She would later complain on Facebook to Ahuviya Harel, a somewhat notable figure in the Gamergate era, that “the trans community…[turned] their back on [her].”
On June 16th, 2018, Sagal would be taken to the police station after a wellness check had been called on her. Officers had found her with a machete when they arrived, but they were able to diffuse the situation before taking her to Unity Center for Behavioral Health in an ambulance where she was released shortly after. On the morning of June 19th, 2018, Sagal limped out of her Portland apartment on crutches, making her way to a nearby park. Once there, she read a statement about her struggle with homeless and mental health issues before covering herself in gasoline and setting herself on fire. Her suicide note was published by a close friend of hers, Jasmine Barlow, which read: "My death cannot be silent. It has to be loud and political. My entire life, my experience, my education has led up to this moment. I can only expect trauma and death from my existence." It added at the end, “Whoever needs my van and the things in it should have it.” Despite the fact that harassment by Kiwi Farms was not mentioned in the suicide note, and does not appear to have played a crucial role in Sagal’s suicide, the The Oregonian, Daily Dot and Variety, all mention it extensively.
Sagal had an active thread on Kiwi Farms from April 27th, 2015 to December 12th, 2017, the thread dying 8 months before her suicide. Sagal had attempted suicide once before in May, 2013 on her Twitch stream and threatened it again in Twitter messages to another online figure, Zinnia Jones, in January of 2015. Both of these attempts occurred before any Kiwi Farms thread was ever made about her. When asked what Sagal was like by a journalist, a close friend of hers described her as such:
“For most of her life, she'd dealt with abuse and depression. sensory hell and executive dysfunction from autism. Chronic pain and seizures that I'm not sure ever got fully diagnosed. In the hardest times, she needed full-time care and support, and I didn't have the resources to provide that. The state didn't seem to either. She'd spent time in inpatient psych care, and they treated her like trash. She had OHP and SNAP, but the system really isn't accessible, so she couldn't get the diagnoses she needed for treatment. Regarding suicide, it was constantly on her mind. She even attempted once live on streaming video. She attempted while living with me. It was a constant shadow over her art.”
One must conclude that Sagal’s suicide was likely the culmination of abuse, mental illness and homelessness suffered throughout her life. A prior partner who’d dated her for two years confirmed as much on Twitter, echoing that “her suicide note specifically referenced systematic struggles with maintaining a home and adequate mental healthcare with low income being the reason she killed herself to send a message.” The claim or implication that Sagal’s suicide was driven solely or primarily from Kiwi Farms harassment is unsubstantiated, insensitive, and irresponsible, and it completely trivializes and erases the political statement aimed to achieve with her suicide.
That leaves two.
Julie Terryberry
Julie Terryberry was a young, 19 year old woman who documented many of her thoughts and much of her life on a publicly viewable OK Cupid profile. Terryberry claimed to be dealing with “depression, ADHD, austism[sic], aspergers, anxiety, [and suicidality].” She lived in a furnace room in her house, complained about ants and posted pictures that resembled those of a hoarder. By 18, she’d already had 7 cavities from drinking too much juice and neglecting her dental health. She’d written about her brother attempting to sexually assault her when she was 11 years old, mentioned catching that same brother watching beastiality rape porn on the computer, detailed her uncle shooting up heroin and trying to show her his penis, and had made out with her step sister when she was very young. She also spoke about her experiences with multiple older “masters'' who would teach her BDSM on an online dating app, IMVU, with one of them actually being arrested due to his conduct. Terryberry would eventually begin dating Mike, officially announcing themselves as a couple when she was 18 and he was 29. They would go on to post many pictures of her bloody, bitten, clawed, and bruised on her Facebook.
Kiwi Farms discovered Terryberry and created a thread about her on February 6th, 2016. Terryberry discovered her thread a few weeks after it was created and would continuously taunt farmers on her Facebook. She posted on her fetlife that she’d “laughed at it” and told them to “do a better job at getting the stories straight.”
Her and Mike’s relationship became more tumultuous as time went on, with her wishing they lived together and simultaneously having outbursts regarding their fights. He would cheat on her many times, but when she cheated on him she was forced to write an essay in order for them to stay together. She would finally commit suicide by hanging herself in her grandmother’s furnace room after Mike finally broke up with her.
An individual wishing to remain anonymous who attended the same school as Terryberry reached out to me to add her experience with her: “I only knew her when she was a kid, we went to elementary school together. She was a couple years younger than me. I rarely interacted with her, but I remember a few weird things. She was a sweet girl, but kinda off, would act out and would just exhibit weird behavior for a kid. She really didn’t have a lot of friends, if any. She basically just kept to herself. I know she came from a very poor and troubled home, her parents, I suspect, were doing drugs and were pretty uninvolved in her life. I grew up across the street from our elementary school and my mom would take me and a couple of my friends to the playground there on weekends and I remember we saw her there a few times all by herself without her parents or anyone watching her. My mom became pretty concerned about her. I remember we gave her and her family some of my hand-me-down clothes and toys. After I went to high school I never saw or heard about her again until she died. I didn’t have her on social media, and neither did any of my friends so I didn’t know what she was posting, I didn’t even know that she was being posted about on Kiwi Farms until like two days ago when I read a post on your subreddit that mentioned her name. I was completely mind fucked by it. My friends and I had all just assumed her death was a suicide or something drug related but we never looked into it. So again, I really wasn’t close to her, especially in later years when all of this was happening, so I can’t tell you with 100% confidence that Kiwi Farms had nothing to do with it, but I can tell you she was clearly mentally ill and troubled even from a young age and didn’t have a support system around her. So, in my opinion, just from what I knew of her situation, this was going to happen with or without Kiwi Farms. It makes me feel sick that Keffals and other people are using her to push some weird agenda. Julie had a very hard life. She doesn’t need to be used as some pawn in some weird fucking clout game. People just need to leave her alone and let her memory rest.”
Julie’s life was a mess, likely from birth. She’d been sexually exploited by multiple family members, likely had drug problems throughout her entire family, had an unstable living condition and chased horribly one-sided relationships her entire life, with previous partners enacting physical abuse on her as part of her lifestyle. The claim or implication that Julie’s suicide was driven solely or primarily from Kiwi Farms harassment is unsabstantiated, insensitive, and irresponsible.
That leaves one.
David Ginder
The third death attributed to Kiwi Farms, David Ginder, is the most contentious of them all.
Ginder was considered somewhat of a programming savant. Under the alias Byuu, they single-handedly created the first cycle-accurate SNES emulator, higan (originally called bsnes). It was the first multi-emulator capable of emulating every single component of the SNES. The name Byuu was chosen due to Ginder’s obsession with an old SNES JRPG, Bahamut Lagoon.
Despite Ginder’s success in the emulation scene, they were frequently involved in drama across several mediums. They were almost scammed in 2011 by an admin of AssemblerGames, Kevin, over a monitor on eBay. In 2012, Ginder tried to auction off their complete collection of SNES games for $20,000, though they received no acceptable bids. In 2014 they began to post about their mental health, complaining about their lack of progress in learning Japanese or drawing and begging someone to reach out and help them learn Japanese better. Ginder was also frequently involved in fights and drama with other parts of the emulator community. In 2016 they posted about being fervently anti-Trump and In 2017 they revealed their rather young looking fursona on Twitter. They expressed concern about their failing health and losing too many productive years of their life without meaningfully progressing in any areas beyond programming.
Ginder’s Kiwi Farms thread was created on May 14th, 2018. The thread was, by Kiwi Farms standards, a relatively inactive thread. After only a week after creation the thread died until September 12th, 2019. After another week of posting, the thread died again until February 2nd, 2020. On February 7th, 2020, Ginder shows up and begins posting in their own thread, explaining why they created their Near persona and their attempts to separate their programming achievements from their personal oddities. Ginder even goes as far as to thank some of the posters for the “wake-up call” they saw in the thread:
“I'm not going to condone anything here, but honestly ... I appreciate that this thread was made. I really do. It put all my bullshit in one place and it was a bit of a wake-up call for me. I'm not perfect, but I've been trying to get my shit together as much as I could these past two years now. I'm not going to dismiss my friends, or those who happen to be trans, or furry, or on the spectrum, or whatever it is you guys dislike to fit in here. So I'm sure it's never going to be good enough. I *do* dismiss anyone who hurts another child or animal, though. Putting those people in jail is the one thing I support from here.
I took the valid criticisms to heart and I've been making changes. I took down my old articles, I stay out of politics and online arguments, and I'm keeping my head down and staying productive instead. I'm working on making software now that people don't hate, and that aren't filled with my own bizarre hangups. I'm trying to pass on my knowledge so that someone can take the torch when I'm gone.
So sincerely, and only in my case and no one else's, thank you for the wake-up call here OP. No hard feelings. I'm not asking you to take it down, and I know you never would anyway. Keep it. Mirror it. Put it on a titanium disk and ship it into space. I'll own all of my mistakes. If you ever get a DMCA or GDPR request or some bullshit on this, it's not me. Send me an e-mail and I'll counter-claim it myself. People do impersonate me (eg on Stormfront), so keep your guard up against any false flagging or white knighting, please. I support free speech absolutely, even when it's speech I don't like, because silencing it only makes things worse. I even defended Tom in the recent Goemon translation controversy, knowing that'd lose me support among my friends. And I'll lose a lot of support by simply posting here at all. So be it.
In any case, this has nothing to do with you folks, but I've been planning to retire at the end of the year or so. I did what I set out to do with SNES emulation, and now I've mostly outlived my usefulness. Let me wrap up my last few projects, and then I'm out.”
Many of the replies were positive, with Near themselves expressing their surprise at the response their post received.
The thread lay dormant again until March 21st, 2020, following another announcement from Ginder of an indefinite break from the internet. They would show up on Kiwi Farms on April 2nd to explain the reason, citing “real-life issues” and “anxiety issues” for their indefinite break. Then on July 24th, 2020, Ginder deleted/deactivated every account they own, causing both Kiwi Farms and Reddit to take notice. While some Redditors in the thread seem to blame Farmers for the disappearance, Kiwi Farms users point to Ginder’s interactions in the thread and disagree. On July 25th, the next day, Ginder’s website would reappear but only to announce they were permanently quitting. On July 26th, Ginder returned to using the Byuu account, posting a somber farewell message on their Twitter. The main issue they cited was that an anonymous individual had made a massive dox list of every person Ginder was associated with, causing immense stress and forcing them to remove themselves from public life. Reddit attempts to weave a narrative on r/emulation that Kiwi Farms is responsible for the dox, but Kiwi Farms users point out that there were posts on the emugen board on 4chan well before any threads were ever created on Kiwi Farms. Ginder had even written a thread in 2017 on their message board about the harassment they were receiving from the lead developer of Retroarch, complaining about harassment they’d received since 2010.
On October 16th, 2020, Ginder returns once again spilling drama related to their previous doxxer. They create a new Reddit account to work on emulators and games while also revealing they believe they have RSD. On June 26th, 2021, Ginder sent an email to Joshua Moon requesting for him to take down their thread on Kiwi Farms, claiming that the doxxing stemmed from the forum. If Moon accepts, they’ll give him ~$120,000 USD and offer their services as a software developer for the site. If he refuses, Ginder claims they will reply with a scan of their passport, a recent photo, proof that it’s theirs, and then hang themselves. Ginder and Moon go back and forth over several emails, with Ginder sending four emails within a thirteen hour timespan before finally stopping, claiming they are going to commit suicide. They said that they had “given [their] passport scan to a trusted friend who will post it anonymously in a few hours, so that you guys can confirm it’s legitimate.” They then said to “look for news in the Arakawa ward of Tokyo in a few days.”
No passport scan of David Ginder nor news of an American suicide in Tokyo ever emerged.
On that same day, Ginder posted a Twitter thread, laying the entire blame for their suicide on the 13 page thread about them on Kiwi Farms. A friend of Ginder’s, Hector, posts a note on behalf of an anonymous mutual friend of Ginder and him who claimed to be on the phone when Ginder committed suicide. The identity of this anonymous individual has never been identified, and they also lay the entire blame for Ginder’s death on Kiwi Farms. They never mention the 500+ posts on 4chan’s /vg/ board (most coming from the /emugen/ general thread) on Ginder. Interestingly, they also claim to have frequently gone out to eat and seemed to have hung out with Ginder, despite Ginder claiming just that same day they had no real life friends. Hector tweeted the next day that they had “confirmed that Near passed away yesterday” with “the police department in charge of the investigation.” No further proof is posted.
Of the three suicides blamed on Kiwi Farms, Ginder’s seems to be the most attributable, given they call out Kiwi Farms specifically in their final tweets. The problem?
There is no conclusive evidence that Ginder is actually dead.
The evidence given for Ginder actually having committed suicide is scant. Their friend, Hector, tweeted that they “confirmed” with police that Ginder was dead, then posted a note from an anonymous friend claiming that had been on the phone when Ginder died. No police statement, no obituaries, no death certificate, no news articles, and no US State Department logs (standard practice) were ever made public. Ginder’s passport, the one they’d claimed in an email to Moon would be released posthumously, was never posted. Suicides are taken quite seriously in Japan too, with some apartment complexes even requiring purification rituals due to the stigma. It seems odd that a somewhat noteable foreigner killing themselves in Japan would draw absolutely no attention to itself.
Ginder claimed to be ready to give their life savings of $120,000 to Null. Where are the proceedings to settle Ginder’s estate? Ginder’s widower husband hasn’t made any public statements about their death. Neither has Ginder’s family. The only two people who have confirmed the death are Ginder’s “friend,” Hector, and an employer who’s provided zero evidence of death. All we have from Hector are ambiguous Tweets, and all we have from Wayne Beckett, Ginder’s employer, are bizarre ramblings on Kiwi Farms. In these ramblings, Becket attempts to “debate” KiwiFarmers into believing that Ginder is dead, as well as utilizing really out of place terminology given the subject matter, such as “Crikey” and “<mike drop>”.
Kotaku, ClutchPoints, IGN, GameSpot, Game Rant, and Vice all reported that Ginder was deceased…however, every single publication was simply uncritically reporting on the same tweets by Hector, where Ginder was proclaimed deceased with zero direct evidence provided. USA Today at least included a statement by Ginder’s previous employer, Wayne Beckett, about his death. But, oddly, Wayne stated that Ginder “didn’t explicitly name Kiwi Farms” when opening up about the online harassment they were receiving. Unless some evidence is presented, or someone credible comes forward, it’s difficult to conclude with any certainty that Ginder is actually dead. It’s plausible that they “suicided” the online Near personality to escape the pressure they were facing online, which is consistent with their history of deleting and recreating accounts in the past. All that would be needed to prove that they actually did pass away would be if Hector, or some close friend of Ginder’s, posted any form of official documentation proving their passing.
It’s incredible to think so many journalists, spanning so many years, have so thoughtlessly attributed three suicides to Kiwi Farms. Hardly any of the research done on any of these three individuals was gathered via any media sources, instead I had to dig through archives of 4chan and Kiwi Farms threads to understand what was really going on. Not a single journalist seemed willing to do any homework beyond copying the work of other journalists before them. In the end, the “three suicides” caused by Kiwi Farms ended up being two misrepresentations and one uncomfirmed case.
III | Who are the Doxxers?
Let’s be clear: Kiwi Farms is not a happy place. The site undoubtedly collects and organizes personal information about people, known colloquially as doxxing, and Sorrenti’s thread is no exception to this. She has every reason to be upset with the site, and there is much to be said about the accountability that websites should have when it comes to curating people’s personal information. However, Kiwi Farms, is not unique in this, and it may not even be the main culprit in regards to Sorrenti’s multiple doxxes and swats. Is it fair that Kiwi Farms takes the blame for every single bad actor harassing Sorrenti? What if Sorrenti knew for a fact that other websites existed that were involved in her harassment? What if she blamed all of the harassment on Kiwi Farms because it was a softer target that gave her more of a positive spotlight instead?
There’s another website we’re going to be discussing extensively in this section. I don’t want to give more spotlight to a potentially harmful website that hosts personal information, so I’ll be referring to it as website ZERO.
While it’s true that Kiwi Farms has hosted her doxxes, is there any evidence that any of the “swattings” came from Kiwi Farms, or that it was even Kiwi Farms who originally produced those doxxes? A careful reading of her thread would show that Kiwi Farms users don’t find out about Sorrenti’s raid until she’s actually announced it on her GoFundMe. It’s possible that one could think Kiwi Farms users would attempt to swat her secretly, but does it really make sense when it’s been claimed that users on the site are publicly threatening Sorrenti? It seems reasonable that we would need a high bar of proof that serious harassment like swatting is actually originating from a website before attempting to wipe it from the internet.
Sorrenti’s actions have been continuously and needlessly reckless for somebody in her position. She announced that she’d be staying in a hotel on August 13th, and then took a picture of her cat on the hotel sheets. This hotel is doxxed within hours. Sorrenti then claims that she starts receiving pizzas from various locations to her hotel room, which then prompts her to move to a new hotel.
On August 18th, Sorrenti decided to taunt the doxxers on Twitter after moving to the new hotel. Shortly after on August 21st, website ZERO hacks into her Uber account and orders 131 dollars worth of food to her new hotel. When retelling this story Sorrenti claims that it was “at least 500 dollars worth (of food)”, though website ZERO only posts a single order receipt (it’s possible they placed multiple orders to reach the $500+ price, however) the next day. After the food shows up at her hotel, Sorrenti posts a picture ( 1 | 2 ) of it on the new hotel’s bedsheets. Predictably, the new hotel is doxxed in a few hours. Note how she reflexively blames Kiwi Farms for this.
The next day, a post on website ZERO is made with proof that it was them that doxxed Sorrenti’s Uber account. This post includes phone numbers, accounts, addresses, emails, and passwords of Sorrenti and the same for many of her family members. Website ZERO has apparently been working on this list since March 28th, with links to 35 different personal accounts belonging to Sorrenti, her mother, and her partner. This collection included account names, half completed phone numbers, unfinished passwords, and more email addresses. This page was listed as a Work in Progress, with the members actively calling for users to track her down.
From here, Sorrenti makes the decision to move to Northern Ireland to “flee” from the internet harassment she had been receiving. She starts tweeting out information specific to her travels, with some commenters even calling her out for her recklessness. One among many questionable decisions,, is that she chose to move in with a friend who she knew had already been doxxed in the past, despite raising money on her GoFundMe explicitly for escaping the harassment from Kiwi Farms. Website ZERO identifies the new location on August 26th thanks to a doorknob, and takes credit for it once again before it makes its way over to Kiwi Farms. It is important to note that Kiwi Farms was down from August 26th to August 29th, while this dox took place. Sorrenti’s dox was also pinned to the top of website ZERO from the date it was created until September 4th. Once more, Sorrenti blames only Kiwi Farms, calling them out by name, on August 29th. Still not a single mention or allusion to website ZERO.
So why does Sorrenti never mention website ZERO? It can’t be due to lack of knowledge: she tweeted out to another journalist, Jesse Singal, asking him to “stop making allusions” to website ZERO because she didn’t want anyone to find out about it. While it’s reasonable to not want others to find it, that does not justify blaming Kiwi Farms for the actions of another, separate, community. Ironically, it is her refusal to acknowledge the actions of website ZERO as the actions of website ZERO that necessitates its mention. In a private message she sent to me on September 17th, she expressed concern about me reporting on her doxxing claims (proof of this exchange will be provided later in the document):
“When you started talking about doing a second manifesto stream and alluded to my [ZERO] paste, I was scared. [ZERO] users aren't stupid like Kiwi Farms users. They simply post the dox and are smart enough to know how to hack accounts, collect info from data breaches, and use social engineering to get the information they need. [ZERO] retaliated against me when I started the campaign to get cloudflare to drop Kiwi Farms, and they did a more comprehensive dox of my family and friends than KF did.”
It would seem that she was aware of the existence of this website from day one. Sorrenti seemed so afraid of me covering this information she falsely accused me of threatening to share her dox multiple times ( 1 | 2 ), and called for mass reports on my Twitter account until it was banned.
Sorrenti would also go on to blame Kiwi Farms for the hacking of her UberEats account, even directly calling for Cloudflare to halt services for the website in response to the hack ( 1 | 2 ). However, her UberEats hack was posted, and taken credit for on website ZERO on August 22nd. Despite knowing this, she places absolutely no blame on the website and funnels the attention into her campaign against Kiwi Farms. Why is there still no mention or even allusion to website ZERO when they are actually known for doxxing, swatting, hacking, and harassment?
Let’s review.
Keffals has claimed, insofar as doxxing goes, that:
August 18th - Kiwi Farms posted a dox of her hotel room and the house she used to live at.
Kiwi Farms did post her old house (parent’s house) on March 27th, but website ZERO also posted her old house on April 2nd, August 14th, and again on August 22nd. Her first hotel was posted on Kiwi Farms, though the leak was a result of investigations of a picture that she posted herself on Twitter.
August 18th - She is now in between homes because Kiwi Farms keeps attempting to dox and swat her.
Sorrenti’s hotel was doxxed as a result of her picture, though there was no room number posted.
August 28th - Kiwi Farms doxxed her “entire family.”
Sorrenti’s family had all of their information hosted together on website ZERO on August 22nd, and it had been in the works since March 28th.
August 31st - Kiwi Farms posted a dox of her address in Northern Ireland.
Website ZERO took credit for, and hosted her Northern Ireland address while Kiwi Farms was down on August 26th.
September 9th - Kiwi Farms doxxed her for the third time and hacked her Uber account.
Kiwi Farms did post her hotel dox, but the Uber hack was done by website ZERO. She also claims that the food showed up “at her doorstep”, despite the receipt showing that the food was taken to her second hotel, in which no room number was posted.
September 12th - Kiwi Farms posted a dox of her and her loved one and had the police point guns on her.
Sorrenti’s parent’s address was posted three times on website ZERO up to this point and once on Kiwi Farms, five months before the raid. Website ZERO posted the full family dox on August 22nd. There is no evidence of Kiwi Farms being behind the raid either.
September 15th - Kiwi Farms has doxxed her and her family, and then impersonated her to cause the raid.
Again, Sorrenti’s family had all of their information hosted together on website ZERO on August 22nd. Her parent’s address was posted a single time, five months before the raid, and three times on website ZERO. Once again there is no evidence that Kiwi Farms was behind the raid.
It is undeniable that Kiwi Farms hosted Sorrenti’s doxx multiple times, but they were not responsible for the Uber hack, there is no evidence that they were behind any of the swattings. Website ZERO is a far likelier culprit, given that it has a reputation for all of these things. So why does she act so recklessly in the face of all of this danger, and why has she never once called website ZERO out, or even alluded to its existence?
IV | The Swattings
London, Ontario Swatting
On August 9th, Sorrenti opened a GoFundMe and posted a video speaking about an incident with the London, Ontario police that occurred on August 5th. The narrative set forth by the initial video was one of terror and transphobia. Sorrenti claimed several times that she had awoken to “police services pointing an assault rifle at [her] face,” and that the police engaged in transphobia multiple times against her for no reason, other than “the prejudice [they] have towards transgender people.” She claimed she felt “traumatized” in her closing remarks.
Sorrenti made several claims in that video that would slowly mutate over the following days and weeks. The London police Chief, Steve Williams, put out a statement clarifying some of the accusations made by Sorrenti. Despite her initial media blitz on the 9th, which included an entire Press Kit linked in a Google Drive beneath her GoFundMe video, “Sorrenti has not responded to CBC’s request for comment” on Williams’ statement regarding her arrest.
Let’s analyze the evolution and veracity of these claims, based on her statements over time.
Original Claim: “I was woken up by London police services pointing an assault rifle at my face.” & “When I was woken up by police officers and saw the assault rifle pointed at me, I thought I was going to die.”
August 10th interview: “When I went into the hallway and then saw that assault rifle, I screamed and I thought I was going to die.
September 15th stream: “They did not go into my apartment until after I was in custody and they had a search warrant signed.” but also “They actually had to go inside the apartment…almost right to our bedroom door, and they yelled to Clara while she was in bed.”
There is another claim in this stream that Alex, Sorrenti’s fiance, saw “lasers from rifles trained on the front of the door,” despite no LE or military utilizing lasers on rifles for daytime operations recorded anywhere in Canada or the US.
September 15th stream, Alex, her fiance, says: “Someone did not wake her with a rifle pointed three inches from her face. But, essentially as soon as she woke up…”.
Right after, there’s also a claim that they had a gun pointed directly at her within seconds of waking up, but that she also had time to put on some pajamas on the floor before she exited her bedroom.
August 11th Police Statement: “At no time while she was in our holding cells did members of our police service address Ms. Sorrenti by her deadname and gender.”
September 15th stream, Alex, her fiance, says: “They were saying ‘Clara Sorrenti’, note that they did not use her deadname at this point either.”
September 15th stream, Sorrenti then contradicts Alex: “During my initial arrest…that’s [when they used my deadname.]”
Original Claim: “I was booked in the station under my dead name.”
August 11th Police Statement: “At no time while she was in our holding cells did members of our police service address Ms. Sorrenti by her deadname and gender.”
September 15th stream, Sorrenti says: “I never made a statement about any bad things that happened while I was in custody.”
Original Claim: “The fact that a fake email lead to London police services booking me under my dead name, reveals the prejudice many police have towards transgender people.” & “The only reason Roberts is on my property bag is because I was booked under my dead name.”
August 11th Police Statement: “The reference to Ms. Sorrenti’s former name appears to stem from the existence of prior police reports. When an individual comes into contact with police for whatever reason, an entry is made into our records management system using the name provided at that time.“
Note: Deadnaming typically refers to using a prior name a trans person has that is generally associated with their gender assigned at birth. Her former first name was not written on any evidence bags, and no evidence has been given that she was referred to as her prior first name.
Original Claim: “I have spent thousands of dollars replacing our computers and cell phones.” & “I started a GoFundMe to move immediately, recoup my losses, and build a legal fund to protect my rights.”
August 10th: Video of her receiving her computer back on the 10th.
September 7th: A message leaked from a conversation with her threatening to blackmail a Kiwi Farms user states that “the GFM [money] is currently in savings until [she needs] to use it.”
September 9th: “I eventually got my stuff back in like 3 days,” this is despite her “Lawyer advis[ing her this] could take months”
September 14th: In a leaked series of TwitterCircle tweets, Keffals reveals that she’s using the money to travel around Europe, “staying in Ireland until the 27th…then…heading to Spain until the 11th,” then returning to Canada after.
![the GFM [money] is currently in savings until [she needs] to use it.](https://files.catbox.moe/qvfc9w.png){kind=link}
I would also like to bring attention to the impossible level of detail that her fiance, Alex, on their September 15th stream, seems to give regarding her arrest, despite the fact that, by their own admission, they were outside of the apartment because they were forced to “wait in the hallway” while all of this was happening.
How does Alex know how close they got to the bedroom door? How do they know that Sorrenti wasn’t awoken by the pounding on the front door earlier, or the commotion of the police entering the apartment? How do they know specifically what woke her up? How can they know if a rifle was pointed right at her? How can Alex possibly know that she “jumped” and “made a sudden move” if they were detained outside of the apartment in the hallway? This is clear evidence that they are reciting events as Sorrenti has previously dictated to them, rather than presenting their own eye-witness testimony that they were brought on to give.
No evidence has ever been presented linking this swatting to Kiwi Farms by neither Sorrenti nor by any of the articles claiming them to be linked.
Northern Ireland Swattings
After launching her successful GoFundMe, Sorrenti decided it was time to pack up and move to Northern Ireland. No journalist seemed to question the paradox of “running” to Belfast from a group of people that exist solely on the internet, but alas. Within 10 minutes of setting up and beginning her first stream on August 26th, Sorrenti announces the country she’s in and that she’s staying with a friend. This friend, Ellen, had already been doxxed months earlier on May 16th, so it was no surprise that Kiwi Farms quickly figured out who she was living with and where she was.
On August 26th, Sorrenti’s new dox is posted to website ZERO, a website she’s aware of but still has yet to mention. It’s important to note that Kiwi Farms would be down from August 26th to August 29th. A few days later, on August 29th, Sorrenti claimed that “a Kiwi Farms user [had] identified [her] location and threatened to show” up the next morning, despite knowing the site had been down for the past three days. She also claimed to have identified the user and forwarded their information to the police. If this is true, and she was able to identify this individual, then there is absolutely no reason for her to believe this individual had any association with Kiwi Farms; in fact, she already knew he was from 4chan, she literally posted the 4chan thread in one of her tweets. This is further compounded by the fact that the user chose to post the note on 4chan on August 30th, when Kiwi Farms was fully operational, and could have been used instead.
The individual who showed up and threatened Sorrenti’s address is a Foodist, someone who follows “Foodistzen, a grotesque YouTuber whose shtick is saying outrageous and defamatory things about people who have recently died.” This user has been very active across 4chan and the rest of the internet on a variety of easily identifiable accounts, according to another investigation done by Jesse Singal. This individual has also explicitly stated that they have no connections with Kiwi Farms.
Sorrenti would also claim on August 31st that “Northern Ireland police came to the apartment I’m staying in because someone had attempted to swat me,” but she notes that this time “the police were very friendly.” She would later talk about this same incident on September 2nd, claiming “the same thing repeated itself…except Northern Irish police did not pull a firearm on me.” Police were more calm during this incident because Sorrenti was not swatted, nor was there an attempted swat. This was a lie. The person who originally contacted the police reached out to me to explain their frustration with Sorrenti’s characterization of the event:
“I was the one that called the police to report who their stalker was, and they attended after that…I am also really fucking pissed off that they portrayed an act of genuine concern and kindness as an 'attempted murder.’...The expanded call is to [redacted] police station where I spoke to the desk seargent. During that 17 minutes I tried to add information to an ongoing investigation, as I had given Keffals time to report it themselves. I didn’t speak to anyone actually investigating, and I reported where the threat had been made, the Kiwi Farms page that contained his dox and the Kiwi Farms page that contained his picture. At no point did I indicate that keffals had committed a crime, however it is likely that I had reported that someone had reported a threat against keffals.”
This person also added:
“On the h3h3 podcast, keffals said that the 'swatting' had mentioned a stabbing but that there were no guns when they visited. This link shows the armed response unit which is deployed for when someone reports a stabbing and active situation. There's a picture there that shows a dynamic entry. Someone with Ellen’s background wouldn't realize that Northern Ireland does actually have a history of armed violence and the PSNI response to that violence is equivalent to the USA. The evidence strongly supports that the story Keffals gave on the H3H3 podcast about being swatted here is utter horseshit.”
___
Sorrenti has given multiple versions of events concerning the attempted swatting of her apartment in London, Ontario. The initial version paints the police force as reckless and transphobic, but later clarifications paint them in a much softer light, with none of the initial accusations of transphobia being verified. There was never any proof linking the initial swatting to Kiwi Farms.
Sorrenti has lied about at least one swatting incident in Northern Ireland, and painted the visitor who held the sign in a knowingly false light. She was aware of who the individual was, referencing his Twitter account and even possibly reporting his Discord server. There was plenty of proof to the contrary that the visitor in Northern Ireland on August 29th who posted the photo outside of Sorrenti’s apartment had nothing to do with Kiwi Farms.
V | The GoFundMe Heist
It’s been mentioned a bit so far, but it’s worth going into the details surrounding Sorrenti’s GoFundMe. Many of the claims surrounding the purpose of the funds raised from the GoFundMe are exaggerated in an effort to raise as much money as possible. This is especially egregious given that Sorrenti has bragged about how much money she makes and given how much financial support is needed for at-risk members of the trans community. The original GoFundMe goal was for $20,000, though she continues to raise the goal as more and more money has been raised, despite the fact that GoFundMe allows you to raise more money than the original goal. While she would be fastidious about increasing the goal every time the previous one was hit, she would never add any further clarification to some of the demonstrably false claims made in the initial video, nor would she adequately justify the progressive increase of the goal.
Sorrenti claims that they started a GoFundMe to: 1) move immediately, 2) recoup her losses, and 3) build a legal fund to protect her rights.
In the GoFundMe video:
Sorrenti claims ( 1 | 2 | 3 ) that the police dead-named her several times during her arrest and when booking her, though she and her partner, Alex, would go on to make claims ( 1 | 2 ) contradicting both of these statements later on in a September 15th stream, as well as an official statement released by the police chief claiming that Sorrenti was never dead-named once in custody. Sorrenti claimed the incident “reveals the prejudice that many police have towards transgender people,” despite them initially confronting her using her given name and apparently never using her dead-name while she was in custody. There is no evidence that police used her pre-transition first name, which is what is most commonly referred to as a “dead-name.” The only evidence Sorrenti has ever posted are evidence bags showing her previous last name.
Sorrenti claims that, “because of the negligence of the police, [her and her fiance] were both left functionally unemployed. And [she has] spent thousands of dollars replacing [their] computers and cell phones.” She has never posted proof of repurchasing any cell phones or computers. Her phones and computers were returned to her in 3 days, as well. She suffered no losses, yet never updated the GoFundMe to reflect this.
In a leaked conversation, Sorrenti admitted to keeping the money she’d raised in her savings account “until she needs to use it,” and she publicly stated that she will “never do a GoFundMe breakdown for bad faith actors.” It’s also been leaked from her Twitter messages that she is currently vacationing around Europe.
On an August 10th stream, when speaking about why she is continually raising the goal of the GoFundMe, she reaffirms that “once [I’m] safe, the rest of those funds are going to be used for legal expenses, because I’m not just moving, I’m also taking legal action, I already have one lawyer and I’m consulting with two more. I’m going to get justice for what happened to me, and for every other marginalized person in this country who has been victimized. Legal fees are incredibly expensive, and I feel very fortunate that I was able to raise this much money, because I would not be able to take legal action if it wasn’t for that.” Note that this is not a reasonable explanation for the continual raising of the goal. The goal moved up as the money was coming in, and was never set at the amount that she would need to cover such legal expenses. The goal seems to always track the money in, rather than any fixed cost. At this point, the GoFundMe had raised about $74,300. However, on August 21st, she was more careful with her language, stating now that “[she] wanted to even potentially pursue legal action against them, but they’ve taken the threat against [her] life very seriously,” casting doubt on whether she’d pursue legal action against them. And then finally, on September 14th, she claims that “the thing that they say with this is that I said that this money was for suing the police, which I never did.” She also claims that she wanted to raise $100,000 from the beginning, so she “kept raising the cap until [she]” got there, and she’s also claimed that she simply just wanted to raise as much money as possible.. She goes on to claim that she’s used the GoFundMe money to pay an entire year’s worth of rent.
So let’s review, from her original claim:
Move immediately
She has used the money to pay for 12 months rent in advance, but rather than move immediately, she seems to have taken a vacation around Europe.
Recoup her losses
There were no financial damages to recoup.
Build a legal fund to protect her rights
Sorrenti is now claiming she is not going to sue the police.
According to GoFundMe’s fraudulent campaign policy, “examples of expressly forbidden fraudulent activity” include: “Posting misleading statements in the fundraiser story.” It’s up for them to decide if anything thus far is misleading, though the answer seems obvious.
VI | Bathtub Hormones & Spy Games
Sorrenti and Chloe (@bobposting on Twitter) have worked together to promote the DIY HRT Directory, a wiki that has been the subject of much mystery and controversy over the past few months. There have been many claims made about improper behavior and questionable services offered by the DIY HRT Directory. After some thorough investigation, I am able to offer a bit more insight into some of the problems that exist with this service. Before I dive too deeply into this, however, I would like to reaffirm that I am a strong believer in making safe access to hormones and other appropriate medical interventions available to trans people who need them, including minors. We must be cautious, however, when we allow questionable individuals with shady histories and deceitful messaging to be the people illicitly offering these treatments online, especially when it may harm the minors in question.
Firstly, it’s important to recognize that Sorrenti was a big supporter of the DIY HRT Directory.
Sorrenti began supporting the DIY HRT Directory on June 26th, 2022, tweeting that she is “donating thousands of dollars a year” to the website so people can access “hormone replacement therapy before the age of 18,” and follows it with another Tweet saying she will never back down.
Chloe acknowledges and thanks Sorrenti for the sponsorship.
On a September 14th stream she says she “stands by supporting the DIY HRT Directory” and compares it to AOC supporting abortion drugs.
Up until September 19th, Sorrenti had a link to the DIY HRT Directory on her website at keffals.gg, with an accompanying chat command to promote the website
As a final side note, Sorrenti and Chloe have a long history of friendship with one another.
On September 9th, Sorrenti was invited as a guest on the H3H3 podcast and was questioned about the DIY HRT Directory. She was incredibly evasive during the interview, too nervous to offer up much information unless directly asked, and ended up telling a couple of embarrassing lies about the site itself.
Original Claim: Ethan asks Sorrenti where they “do” the DIY HRT Directory promotion; Sorrenti claims it’s just a “Twitch stream open and in the public.”
Later on in that same show she’s pushed to admit there’s a separate directory she links to from her own website.
Original Claim: Ethan asks about “homemade hormones.” Sorrenti exasperatedly replies with an “oh my God” and exclaims that she doesn’t know how to make homemade hormones. She goes on to make fun of people making hormones in their bathtub, making it sound as though the notion is absurd.
While it sounds like an extreme claim, Chloe has actually given tips on brewing testosterone and estrogen in a bathtub, as well as making several jokes and references to doing so. She’s also referenced minors and “pinkpilling” - the act of convincing someone they are trans - on multiple occasions as well.
If Sorrenti has gone on the record claiming she supports the directory and supports minors using it to acquire hormones, why was she so dodgy during this interview? A website offering medical guidance to minors, or linking to people offering to ship them illegally manufactured and obtained drugs, deserves far more scrutiny than Ethan was willing to provide. Things get even more strange when you examine the directory’s ties to OtokonokoPharma and Lena Kiev.
On September 13th, 2022, a user on my subreddit, u/MrWhiteRaven, made a subreddit post criticizing Sorrenti and the DIY HRT Directory. The poster was able to provide a screenshot of a bathtub HRT guide, though he doesn’t link to it or explain how he was able to find it in his post. After some investigation, my team managed to track down the exact guide the poster was referring to. It was written by a user who goes by the online alias nerotard. This guide originates from two posts ( 1 | 2 ) that nerotard created on 4chan on April 18, 2020 to promote their website. This guide gives explicit instructions for how to brew your own hormones, including sourcing all of the supplies from various sites on the internet as well as how to actually manufacture your own hormone solutions for injection.
There are no longer any public links to this particular guide on the DIY HRT Directory, and the paste was created long enough ago to have the old Otokonoko Pharmaceuticals website. Through some more investigation, however, we were able to determine that the link to this site is still being given out. Firstly, the creator, nerotard, is still active on GitHub as of September of 2022, and this is exclusively the type of content they engage with. Secondly, we were able to find a random GitHub account, Rexicide, that was created on October 26th, 2021. This account has starred (favorited) the gist (repository) on GitHub, after all public links to this guide were already taken down from the public facing DIY HRT Directory. Therefore, this guide to brew your own hormones must still be being sent out privately in DMs, probably after a purchase is made on the OtokonokoPharma website.
After creating a dummy account for the OtokonokoPharma site, we noticed a downloads section, which could be one place where this guide is distributed after making a purchase. We’ve also managed to track down multiple old 4chan posts, as well as a deleted reddit thread where the link was given out by anonymous users and the author themselves ( 1 | 2 ). Analyzing all of these submissions is how we were able to determine nerotard (AKA GC146/Lil_lily/yukinogc/Lillian, founder and current owner of OtokonokoPharma), is the one distributing the link. nerotard has confirmed they’re from Brazil, has made posts about learning DIY HRT and written a guide to it as well. Their legal info also lines up with OtokonokoPharma CNPJ (the Brazilian National Registry of Legal Entities). It’s also worth noting that OtokonokoPharma is illegally registered as a “retail seller of food products” (CNAE 4729-6/99 - COMÉRCIO VAREJISTA DE PRODUTOS ALIMENTÍCIOS EM GERAL OU ESPECIALIZADO EM PRODUTOS ALIMENTÍCIOS NÃO ESPECIFICADOS ANTERIORMENTE) and does not have a license from Anvisa (the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency) to sell products “intended for therapeutic or medicinal purposes.”
We decided to further investigate the Lena Kiev site listed in the DIY HRT Directory, which led us right to another bathtub HRT guide. Lena had already written a DIY guide years ago, with a better formatted version being distributed in 2022 on 4chan. These sites have clear instructions for making hormones from scratch in your home and have material sourcing directly linked. The guide was also linked at least once in Sorrenti’s Discord, though many channels are locked down, making it hard to know how many times it’s been linked privately. It’s also interesting to note that they link to a guide giving step by step instructions on how to cook your own mixes while simultaneously advising you to ignore some of the dosing guidelines by the guide’s author, Lena. After discovering at least two guides posted on the DIY HRT Directory in regards to brewing your own hormones, one must ask, why has Sorrenti continually misrepresented the information present on the wiki, especially when Chloe herself claims to personally know all of the providers on the directory?
On September 14th, the day after the subreddit post goes up about OtokonokoPharma, the DIY HRT Directory silently delists OtokonokoPharma & Lena Kiev’s site from the wiki (Before/After). That very same day, Sorrenti admits to browsing my subreddit for posts about herself, making it clear that they are monitoring my community to determine their next moves.
On September 15th, the DIY HRT Directory was updated once more. Two crucial updates are added this time:
A web crawler check is added to the website to keep track of links that my team and I are archiving on archive.org.
From this point onward, it’s clear to my team and me that they are working in the background to bring down questionable websites/gits/tweets based on what we’re investigating.
An age warning is added to the DIY HRT Directory after seeing we’d archived many links relating to their activities and DIY hormone guides on the internet.
This is incredibly strange, given how much Sorrenti and Chloe have explicitly advocated for this site to be used by minors ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 ).
It’s also strange to add an age disclaimer when she’s claimed that the website is simply “an information guide.”
Within the next week, they would remove more language from the website advising minors to seek adults who can purchase Bitcoin for them. (Before/After)
On September 17th, 2022, Chloe reached out to me in DMs — after seeing our activity on archive.org — in an attempt to limit the information shown in this document. She also connected me with Sorrenti herself, and for the first time ever, I had a direct conversation with her in which she implored me not to release any additional information about her, subtly remarking that it would be incredibly damaging for both of us, and would likely cost my YouTube channel in the process.
That very same night, josikinz, the psychonaut wiki founder, reached out to me claiming that she and someone else initially started the DIY HRT Directory. She appeared to be mining me for information relating to any research I was doing relating to the wiki and Sorrenti. Just minutes after leaking one of nerotard’s AKAs to her, the DIY HRT Github repo is brought offline in order to hide any future changes to the site. Future snaps of the site are also blacklisted ( 1 | 2 ) from appearing on archive.org, something only possible if requested by the owner of the domain. If the website was merely a wiki listing other resources, as Sorrenti claimed, why so much secrecy surrounding the Github and the website? Why would they begin to track our archiving movements, and why would they take things down?
Two days later, On September 19th, Chloe tweets that “harassment” has forced her to shut down her Twitter and step away from the DIY HRT Directory. In the same thread, she claims that Sorrenti had absolutely nothing to do with the decision and had no input on anything relating to the website. This seems suspect, given the level of coordination publicly and behind the scenes between Chloe and Sorrenti. But even if this was the case, that is no excuse for sponsoring the directory. It is the responsibility of Sorrenti to do her due diligence before sponsoring or endorsing any entity, particularly when it’s something so intimately tied to the health and safety of minors. Immediately after, the DIY HRT Directory link is removed from Sorrenti’s website (Before/After) but the chat command was kept ( 1 | 2 ).
On September 20th, Sorrenti spoke of the site on her stream, claiming the harassment after the H3H3 podcast was too much for Chloe to bear. She then explains that she will no longer be publicly involved with the DIY HRT Directory because she’s too high profile and will direct too much harassment towards the site, a strange thing to say after comparing herself to AOC supporting abortion drugs.
VII | “Keffals” - A Character Analysis
In the media, Sorrenti is widely regarded as an online trans activist hero, waging fierce wars against hateful adversaries across the battlefield of the internet. David Gilbert of Vice regards her as a “transgender activist.” Ahmar Khan of Global News remarks that “Keffals is a proud trans woman who advocates for transgender rights and often covers issues in the news through a critical lens. Her existence has led to her being attacked online, with trolls mass reporting and getting her suspended from Twitch and Twitter for breaking down issues facing the trans community.” Taylor Lorenz of The Washington Post remarks that Keffals “has become known among her audience as the ‘ratio queen.’” Article after article seems to shower Sorrenti with praise, and, in their mind, the only reason she ever seems to get any push back online is due to her identity as a transwoman.
Is this really a fair analysis of why she’s so widely regarded with ill repute?
Internet Bullying
Sorrenti is widely regarded online as an internet bully. Her behavior at times can be abusive, both publicly, and privately, to the point where she almost comes across as a sociopath.
Body-shaming Joshua Moon, the founder of Kiwi Farms.
She doxxed Joshua’s mother, and then threatened to dox every single person with a Kiwi Farms account.
“Faildoxxed” (incorrectly doxxed) a user via private investigator and threatened to send his post history to his boss.
After being exposed by the user on Telegram, Sorrenti deletes the tweets from her timeline and then claims the leaked logs are faked, despite Chloe later confirming to me in our private interaction that Keffals had indeed spoken to this user on Discord.
An entire log dump of the conversation exists on Odysee. Within this log dump, Sorrenti:
Posted pictures of whom she thought was his mother.
Threatened to send his information to his family members.
Tries to blackmail him into deleting his Kiwi Farms account.
Makes fun of him because she believes he went to military school for selling drugs.
Makes fun of him for what she believes is the divorce of his parents.
Posts pictures of whom she thought was his brother and pregnant girlfriend.
Says he’s acting “like a retard.”
Calls his life pathetic compared to hers.
etc…
Publicly faked DMs to tweet about TheQuartering.
After TheQuartering responded negatively to her faking DMs, she claimed she would try to email his sponsors to get him dropped.
Sorrenti became abusive with someone in DMs just because they unfollowed her on Twitter.
She tried to bully Jesse Singal from reporting on website ZERO.
She goes on an unhinged rant and calls Stardust a “fucking bitch” because Stardust was questioning her about false accusations relating to Flamenco participating in doxxing Keffals (he did not).
She goes on another unhinged rant and calls Hunter Avallone a “fucking cuck” during his apology for accidentally showingpart of a Kiwi Farms thread that had a dox of Sorrenti posted on his stream.
Wish people she doesn’t like would get swatted.
She gleefully celebrates my ban from Twitch
Baseless Accusations
Sorrenti will make whatever random accusation pops into her head at the time, sometimes quickly walking it back, sometimes not.
She claimed I was a rapist, then later walked it back once chat pushed back on her.
She claimed Dylan Burns, a progressive YouTuber and Twitch streamer, was transphobic because he kept hosting me on his shows.
She claimed my wife was transphobic, with no evidence, leading to a large amount of harassment from her community of bullies.
She claimed Sondsol was transphobic and that she was going to try and get him banned from Twitch.
She accused Flamenco of “taking part in doxxing [her] mom,” just because Flamenco posted on Kiwi Farms.
She randomly accused Chudlogic of being a pedophile, but walked it back once chat corrected her.
Canceling Obsession
Sorrenti is never interested in engaging in honest dialogue or having critical conversations on the internet. Rather, her goal is to mobilize her community to spam report as many people as possible in an attempt to have them banned off of whatever platforms they oppose her on.
After TheQuartering responded negatively to her faked DMs, she claimed she would try to email his sponsors to get him dropped.
After some back and forths with Nick Rekieta, she tried to get people to report him to the Minnesota bar. After mass reports on Twitter, his account was later suspended.
She called for spam reports on Mister Metokur’s account after he negatively covered her on YouTube. After mass reports on Twitter, his account was later suspended.
She called for spam reports on my Twitter account several times every time I was critical of her. After mass reports on my Twitter, my account was later suspended.
She supported mass reporting Nicholas Deorio after he was critical on Twitter about her.
Sorrenti puts together a “banned streamer list” on her stream, so she could auto-ban all followers of these streamers in her Twitch chat. This led to GappyV, someone who was added to the list just for arguing with Sorrenti on Twitter, receiving harassment from Sorrenti’s community in an attempt to get Twitch to drop his front page sponsor. This was an opportunity given to GappyV to celebrate Indian diversity on Twitch during AAPI month.
GappyV asked her to drop him from the list and instead she made fun of him, angrily yelling “you’re a fucking loser, you know that? I hope more people in your life tell you that.”
She encouraged people to vandalize my Wikipedia account.
She implicitly threatens ( 1 | 2 | 3 ) attacks on Ukrainian servers by posting the address to the server building and telling her followers to “do your thing,” while adding that “Joshua Moon has expressed warm sentiments to Vladimir Putin.”
Dox/Swat Baiting
Despite being “traumatized” by her initial swatting, Sorrenti seems to be constantly tweeting and talking about her plans for travel.
On August 14th, she needlessly posts images of her hotel room, something she does again on August 21st
On August 18th, she taunts the people trying to dox her.
On August 25th, she needlessly divulges an absurd amount of information about her travel plans
On August 26th, during her first stream in Northern Ireland, Sorrenti immediately revealed which country she moved to.
On September 14th, Sorrenti tweets about doing an IRL stream at a poutine truck that Kiwi Farms had allegedly threatened to bomb.
On September 14th, Sorrenti showed a tweet about going to Spain on September 27th.
On September 15th, Sorrenti’s roommate, Ellen, asks for suggestions for future IRL stream locations in Ireland.
On September 28th, Sorrenti tweeted that she was at a theater in London the previous night seeing a play.
VIII | Call to Action
Sorrenti is an incredibly divisive figure online. While there are certainly malicious and transphobic actors that attack her due to her status as a trans woman, she is a uniquely vitriolic individual who has built her brand on bullying and harassment. Her entire “claim to fame” has been via coordinated harassment campaigns from her Twitch chat against individuals on Twitter, and through the mass reporting of anyone who stands in her way until their accounts are banned.
Many of the mainstream narratives surrounding Kiwi Farms are completely incorrect. The media has been asleep at the wheel because they wanted a story where a website could be painted in an evil light, and Kiwi Farms is, admittedly, an easy target to bully. It is a forum filled with some of the most obsessively hateful people on the internet, but there is no definitive proof that any suicides can be primarily blamed on the website. No proof has been provided that the original swatting, nor the visitor that showed up in Northern Ireland was from Kiwi Farms. Despite this, Cloudflare found it necessary to drop Kiwi Farms from its service, leaving the entire Internet wondering “who’s next?”
Sorrenti has also abused her figure as a representative of the online community and stolen over $100,000 in donations on GoFundMe. She did not need money to repurchase supplies, she has no intention of suing the London, Ontario police force, and she seems to have spent a good chunk of change vacationing around Europe. Her move to Europe was entirely unnecessary, especially when you consider doxxing is done by internet people in an online forum, moving to another country does not make you any harder to dox. On the contrary, she moved into an already doxxed friend’s house and immediately announced the country she was in, allowing her to get doxxed almost immediately.
The DIY HRT Directory is also an incredibly sketchy wiki. While it’s nice that Sorrenti has distanced herself from it now, it seems it only happened due to the heightened scrutiny she attempted to suppress by reaching out to me in a private conversation, imploring me to stop with my investigation. Chloe has made far too many questionable statements about minors to be at all associated with a wiki like this, and any website that links you to guides for literally creating your own medical solutions demands an incredibly high level of transparency and scrutiny, both things that Sorrenti and Chloe have desperately tried to avoid.
It would be my hope, after this document, that
Journalists stop treating Sorrenti with kid’s gloves, and do their homework when researching her.
Cloudflare releases a more concise statement for dropping Kiwi Farms, or else reinstates their service.
GoFundMe releases a statement regarding Sorrenti’s misrepresentation of her situation, or else returns the funds to the original donors.
There are many stories we want to believe.
There are many facts we want to uncritically accept.
I don’t believe this is borne out of maliciousness, or laziness. I believe this stems from a natural bias all people have that predisposes us to believe information that seems more correct because it coincides with the view we want to have of the world. It’s our responsibility as rational, capable people to not fall prey to these biases. We can, and should do better to evaluate stories presented to us in the future, especially the stories we want to believe.
Extremely thorough and persuasive. Thanks.
The risk is probably higher than any reward you might get from writing this. I agree it is the right thing to do but I'm not sure enough people will care. Unless it's picked up by a louder voice, only the terminally online will even know.