0:00:09
Jesse: Katie, how was your Hanukkah?

Katie: I have never celebrated Hanukkah. I never intend to celebrate Hanukkah.

Jesse: So help me God, I never will.

Katie: I am not a Satanist nor a pagan. I celebrate Christmas, the real holiday.

Jesse: Which is free of all pagan traditions like bringing fucking trees inside. How was your Christmas?

Katie: Well, Jesse, they're plastic trees. Come on.

Jesse: That's true.

Katie: My Christmas was fine. I did, for the first time I believe ever, attend a Christmas Eve church service. I went to the candlelight service at the church near my house. I was not coerced into doing this. What? I did it of my own volition. It was actually my idea.

0:00:44
Jesse: Are you finding God? Because that could be bad for the podcast. Or good, depending. I'm turning into a trad wife.

Katie: No, I... So we live very close to this very cute from the outside country church. Like...

Katie: picture the kind of classic steeple white you're picturing it yeah vividly yeah uh so it's just it's very cute and they had a sign outside that said candlelight service everyone welcome and i thought i'm everyone um so i took a few edibles and i went to church you defiled jesus's house you think jesus has a problem with a few edibles actually no jesus would be pro edible Yes. I mean, he's famous for turning water into wine. First miracle. I did not drink any wine, but I did take a few edibles, went to the church service, and I expected it to be sort of contemplative and beautiful. You know, what is prettier than candles in a darkened church? But I was disappointed to find when we got there that they don't have real candles. They use fucking plastic candles, like LED candles. I know. I know. Absolutely.

0:01:26
Jesse: It's like... Nothing is sacred anymore, you know? Right, right. And that's fucked up. It is fucked up.

0:01:56
Katie: Like, I just want to do a few edibles, get a little high and go to church. And church isn't even church because they're using, everything's plastic. Plastic's everywhere. Even the candles, plastic. So that was a disappointment. I also was like, you can get, I assume that you can get little plastic candles that have like a nice yellow glow. These were like blue light candles. Just not good, not good. And then the choir, it was like a children's choir. Jesse.

Jesse: Animatronic or real.

Katie: No, they were real, but they were dog shit. Just terrible.

Jesse: Katie, you're at the point where you're effectively doxing children. Doxing them. Because it's going to be very... You're literally... And HIPAA violations. It's going to be very easy for anyone... Because you're not shy about your identity. People are going to be able to track down the church, the choir, go to these kids' houses, show up and yell at them for being bad at singing. Your deranged fans are guaranteed to do that. I cannot...

0:02:32
Jesse: I can't be party to this. I hope they do, because the parents weren't scolding them. Okay, fine. Everybody go harass the members of this Asheville, North Carolina Children's Choir.

0:03:04
Katie: I don't live in Asheville. I live north of Asheville, so it's not there. Anyway, there was one kid in particular, Miles. Miles was terrible. Wait, is this his real name? Yes, I think so, because some of the-

Jesse: Miles' address is 3420.

Katie: Look, I don't know where Miles lives, but Miles was so poorly behaved. He just wasn't still. He was running around during the service. How old was he? Terrible voice. Three or four.

Jesse: Here's the thing. Get your shit together, Miles. What the fuck, dude?

0:03:35
Katie: I think that if Miles had been forced to hold a real candle, a flaming candle with one of those little paper things on the bottom so the wax doesn't get on your hand. You know what I'm talking about? Do Jews do candles? That's one thing Jews do, right? Candles?

Jesse: Do we do candles? Yes, we do candles. Okay, so...

Katie: If Miles had been forced to hold a candle, it would have taught him a little responsibility. He would have had to stand there straight. He would have probably been singing from his diaphragm. But instead, like this little annoying high pitched voice running around the whole. You know what? I was considering joining. And then this happened. And then I was like, fuck it. I'm staying with Islam. I am just I'm not going to be a part of this. But then they gave us a big bag of candy on the way out. So now I'm on the fence.

0:04:06
Jesse: Your anecdote leaves me extremely confused about what Christianity is. Me too. There's fake candles. You can go while you're high. You dox the children. I don't know if I can be part of it. Yeah, I'm not. Not for me. Well, how was your Christmas? Well, I say not for me. I actually, for the first time ever, and without getting into too much detail, because there's a small group of people on Blue Sky trying to say they're trying to kill me. I hope they don't, because that would suck.

0:04:42
Jesse: I had my first ever actual Christmas, like with the tree.

Katie: Wait, wait, wait. First Christmas? First ever.

Jesse: You're an American. You have never...

Katie: you've never had christmas this just shows how jewish i am wait you're not that jewish though you really like as a kid you guys didn't even get a tree i mean i'm not my family is not really so at all we still celebrate christmas it's really not a christian holiday no some jewish families do i you know what i well a couple things first of all the christmas i experienced was just this sort of um

0:05:16
Jesse: cavalcade of warmth and family and presence and love and joking togetherness, all of which made me really uncomfortable. That's just not my scene. It's just normal, well-adjusted people. As a Jew, we did not have a tree. There's a divide. Some Jews do have trees. It's been going on forever. Some don't. We didn't. We would like... lie around, watch TV, get Chinese food, get into several screaming arguments. Like that was, that's a Jewish Christmas. That's what I'm used to. This was really nice. But the level of like,

Jesse: Highly functioning people who don't have major problems. It was alien to me, but I'm glad I got to experience it. It was very pleasant. I don't think that's a Christian thing. Highly functional people. I mean, it depends.

0:05:55
Katie: Based on my experience with Miles, that's not a Christian thing.

Jesse: Miles is... You know what? Fuck you, Miles. Like, seriously, do better. He can't even read. What a loser. Katie, we could talk about... Wait, before we move on, can I complain about one other thing with the church? Naturally.

Katie: Okay, the church from the outside, so charming, so quaint. From the inside, it clearly had been remodeled. I wish. It was not a megachurch. It had clearly been remodeled in the 80s. It had a drop ceiling with fluorescent lighting, and then it had paneling around the inside. And I feel like if you're going to have a really charming church that looks like there's snake handling going on inside... The inside should reflect the outside. Just lies. All lies.

0:06:26
Jesse: Okay. Well, this has been Katie shits on literally everything, including three-year-old kids who don't sing high enough for her exacting standards. He could have been four. Should we move on, Katie, or should we just talk about holidays the whole episode?

Katie: Let's move on. Did you see the very interesting email that we got this morning?

0:07:01
Jesse: Yeah. I'm going to... This is from...

Katie: Let me introduce this. We got an email today from Alyssa Shoup. Now, this name will probably... Alyssa Ray Shoup.

Jesse: Alyssa Ray Shoup, a.k.a.

Katie: James, a.k.a. Jamie Shoup.

Jesse: So, this name will... Can I just say, in a cowardly fashion...

Jesse: I feel morally icky about this whole thing. But go ahead, Katie.

Katie: Okay, so you feel morally icky about talking about it or the fact that you received the email?

0:07:34
Jesse: Both. Just everything at this point. My whole life feels morally icky.

Katie: All right, so this character will be familiar to longtime listeners. Alyssa Rae Shoup, a.k.a. James Jamie Shoup, is a transgender person who was the first American to get an X marker on his slash her slash their. And I'm using all of the pronouns because this person goes back and forth about which pronouns they use on seemingly a monthly basis.

Jesse: Also... And they said in the email, we can use whatever pronouns we want.

0:08:05
Katie: Oh, oh.

Jesse: Oh, you didn't even read it.

Katie: I know I did read it, but it was long. And I skipped to the video.

Jesse: I encourage you to mention all three of my names for maximum search exposure. And you have free speech regarding what pronouns you use when describing. Thank you. We have free speech. I bestow upon you free speech.

Katie: So long time listeners might remember this character because we've discussed this person on a couple of episodes.

Katie: And most recently, we discussed them because we got an email that I thought was from Shoop themselves. I think it was actually from Shoop's wife. It said it was from Shoop's wife. And this was a legal threat, right, Jesse?

0:08:37
Jesse: In a certain sense of the phrase legal threat, a certain very loose sense, it was a collection of words that threatened to do legal things, right?

Katie: Okay, so we did an episode on this. I'll post a link to it in the show notes. This was, I think, one of our most... Responding to this legal threat was one of our most popular episodes, certainly of the year. Well, it was... I keep interrupting you, but...

0:09:10
Jesse: When you get an email, and we're not doing that with this one for reasons I'll explain. When you get a long, crazy email and you're like, oh, this is our next episode. We can just read and react to that. Podcasters are lazy by disposition. That is the greatest gift you can give to a podcaster. And if you think you're scaring them with it, you should just make sure that it's actually a legal threat rather than something they will just laugh it on the air. But this email was very different and more conciliatory.

Katie: Right. And so it was a surprise to get it. So this one...

Jesse: This is an hour ago as we're recording.

Katie: So this one was from Elisa Ray Shoup. And the subject is Dear All. Can I just read a little bit of it?

0:09:45
Jesse: Very little.

Katie: Okay. The transgender athlete situation is disgraceful and always has been.

Katie: I don't have worthy adjectives to describe all of the pieces of shit in the trans population that have acted as enablers, allies, advocates, or creators of junk science bogus studies. And then name some names here.

Katie: And so this email, it was surprising to get this email because this email is, this is from someone whose wife threatened to sue us. And we actually did meet with a lawyer and like have an actual discussion about this. This person is- Albeit a subsec provided one.

0:10:19
Jesse: Thanks, subsec.

Katie: I mean, it was a real lawyer. It wasn't like a-

Jesse: I mean, today's day of AI. They paid for the lawyer. This was a real lawyer who was very helpful, yeah.

Katie: Who was basically like, I'm not telling you that you can't talk about this. I'm not telling you that you should talk about this. And we disregarded the lawyer's advice on that. Anyway, so... No, I don't... Look, we...

Jesse: We didn't disregard it. It was just so. We took it into consideration.

Katie: We said we're doing this.

Jesse: Silly. Yes.

Katie: Yeah. It was a very flimsy legal threat, as we have established. And the thing you need to know about Shoop is that Shoop is a little bit mercurial. Is that the right term?

0:10:54
Jesse: Well, yeah. I mean, definitely mercurial. Shoop has a tendency to change his or their mind about many things.

Katie: Right.

Jesse: All the time. Right.

Katie: So Shoop has said some terrible things about me. This email was also addressed to Redux, a site that I am sure has. Well, it's also like if you're Lisa Shoop, what outlet can I pick that will give me a fair share?

0:11:31
Jesse: This is like at a certain point becomes a humiliation kink almost.

Katie: Yes. Yes. That might actually be what it is. Speculation here. No defamation. No defamation.

Jesse: No collusion.

Katie: So Shoop has been.

Katie: has gone from being a trans activist, first person to get the non-binary X gender marker, to switching sides and being like full on TERF, there's no such thing as a trans child, like protesting outside of gender clinics, did another full 180.

Katie: And started like leaking all of these emails that they'd had between themselves and like gender critical activists. And at that point, Jude Doyle, the award winning is Jude Doyle award winning.

0:12:09
Jesse: I'm sure someone gave Jude Doyle an award.

Katie: Yeah, I bet Jude has like a father of the year mug from their child. Jude Doyle, trans journalist.

Jesse: One of the craziest sort of... Ask like Matt and Elizabeth Brunig about Doyle. I'll leave it at that.

Katie: And Liz is offline. So you're going to have to go to her house.

Jesse: Go to her house, her address is in the show notes, and ask her about Doyle.

Katie: Yeah. So Doyle, and not just Doyle, like Mother Jones, I believe, wrote a piece using Shoup as a source. Did the New York Times?

0:12:48
Jesse: I don't think so. Well, maybe got a mention in What's Her Name's Piece. We should also say, if a crazy person leaks you documents and the documents are legit, that doesn't mean you can't use the documents.

Katie: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Oh, no. New York Times did. A few stories of regret fueled a push to restrict gender transition care. Maggie Astor. Yes.

Jesse: Wow. It's crazy that Maggie somehow knows how few stores there are, given the lack of any good data.

Katie: Anyway. Anyway, so Shoop has a tendency to switch sides. Last we heard from Shoop, Shoop was very anti-us, very pro-trans, and their wife was sending legal threats, which we took very seriously. Then we get this email.

0:13:22
Jesse: Also, air quotes their wife, because you, not me, for defamation purposes, you are

Jesse: Katie Herzog, not Jesse Singel.

Katie: No, I changed my mind on that. We did a follow-up, remember?

Jesse: Oh, you think it was the wife? I do, because of the wife's tweets.

Katie: The wife tweeted some things later, and I was like, oh, this is the wife.

Jesse: But how do you know that's the wife? I don't know. Jamie could control the accounts of every... Jamie could be Doyle. Jamie could be you. This would be like a Kaiser Sosa situation.

Katie: Okay, so anyway, it's clear from this email that Jamie has once again chainsized. Jamie is writing, you, me, I think Ben Boyce is on this, and Redux. So four outlets.

0:14:02
Jesse: The four most important journalistic entities in the world.

Katie: So she sends this email, and attached to the email is a video. And we're not going to play the video.

Jesse: We're not going to watch the video either. Oh, you didn't watch it? No, fuck no. You need to watch this. The icon is a... It's not an icon. Katie, if I sent you a video, and it was me shirtless with big man boobs, way bigger man boobs, like... You wouldn't wash it. That's what the video is about. So it's Shoop. We're participating non-consensually, well, consensually, I guess, in a humiliation fetish. It's not non-consensual. Yeah, that's what's so sick about it. It's Shoop Topless.

0:14:41
Katie: Wearing disposable underwear, and we know it's disposable underwear because the body of the email says, as for why I was wearing disposable underwear, I underwent an orchiectomy to remove my testicles on December 23rd. Orchiectomy. Orchiectomy to remove my testicles on December 23rd. Merry Christmas. That too is a testimony of the failures in transgender medicine. The VA was forced by last resort to perform the surgery because I could no longer medically tolerate any of the testosterone blockers. Lupron at a retail cost of $1,600 per month or so was swelling my brainstem and causing excruciating headaches that were on par or worse than migraines. Anyway, so this is a video of Shoop, topless, totally naked from the waist up, wearing these disposable underpants.

0:15:12
Katie: And in the video, he talks about, he like flexes his pecs. So he was in the military and he says, you know, when I was in the military, I could lift 140 pounds. I do this regularly. I'm six years old. I've been out of the military for years. I don't work out. He's got a big old beer belly. I don't work out. I try to get, I hate my muscles. I don't take care of myself. And I can still do this like pec flex dance thing with my titties.

0:15:47
Katie: And so his point is that trans women in sports, they have an obvious advantage because look at my body. I haven't worked out in 20 years, and I can still do this titty dance with my pecs. Therefore, Leah Thomas should not be swimming with women, which I agree with.

0:16:24
Jesse: This is how the matter should be resolved is –

Jesse: topless fetishy videos sent to journalists from individual people with opinions on it. So blocked reported podcast at gmail.com. Anyone who wants to send us, this is just creepy, dude. This is someone with like serious mental health problems. And we couldn't not talk about it, but can we, we couldn't not talk about it because the, the, the villain in the story, I don't actually think is shoop.

Katie: I think that shoop is, as I said, like the, one of the reasons is the miles of this story.

0:17:02
Jesse: Miles doesn't know better. Miles is going to run around and sing off key.

Katie: Shoop is not the villain of this story. I think Shoop is crazy. By Shoop's own admission, they have mental health issues. This is why I personally never used Shoop as a source in stories, because Shoop was clearly fucking nuts.

Katie: Jude Doyle had no such compunction. And so again, the point, but she has, he has the same excuse.

Jesse: It's crazy people all the way down.

Katie: I don't know if it's crazy, but anyway, my point is this is what happens when you like, there are, there are several figures within the like D trans re trans circle who do this kind of thing. I made the mistake of using one as a source, Kai Shevers, who at the time I had no idea was this like vindictive, uh,

0:17:45
Jesse: even mentioning that name is going to reignite it. You should bleep that.

Katie: I'm not going to bleep it, but, but I just like, you have to be really careful about who, who you use a source. Cause it can come by, come back to bite you in the ass. And I said, after Jude published this piece, published their piece about Shoop, I guess last year, whenever it was, I said like, just that. And I think that's, what's happening right now. Shoop has once again done another 180. And so we'll see what happens. I have a feeling that this video is going to go up on the Redux website.

Jesse: we will not be sharing it with anyone. Not if you, not unless you pay us $15. It's too, it's too hot. Uh, yeah. Okay. You said $15. That's it. Um, 50. That was, that was way too much. Uh,

0:18:23
Jesse: Too much shoot. Should we move on to the meat of the episode, Katie?

Katie: I could stick with this. There's one other line I'd like to read.

Katie: I promise not to contact any of you any further regarding this matter. It is not an attempt to make amends, etc. It is solely about doing the right thing for females. All right. That is legally binding. I promise not to contact you.

Jesse: It is. Gmail is legally binding. All right.

0:18:54
Katie: Now I can move on.

Jesse: Katie. Okay. Well, 15 or 20 minutes in.

Jesse: Put on your... What do farmers wear? Hats? Overalls? Yeah. Put on whatever it is farmers wear. I'm a soy boy. We're going back to the farms. Kiwi Farms, that is. Katie, are you excited for another trip to Kiwi Farms?

Katie: Let's go to New Zealand. I was going to say down under, but that's both the wrong country and the wrong accent.

Jesse: Yeah, so... God, where do you even begin with Kiwi Farms? I did a 18-part series...

0:19:26
Jesse: The attempts to shut down Kiwi Farms, which were spearheaded by a wonderful young woman named Keffels. She's a Twitch streamer.

Katie: The unsuccessful attempts to shut down Kiwi Farms. Temporarily successful. Nobody seemed to report on the fact that. Just absolute.

Jesse: There's all these headlines that were like, Kiwi Farms is done. How hard was that? See, you can just make bad speech go away. Why don't we just do that? Then it comes back. Yeah. No follow-up whatsoever.

Katie: No, no, no. It's there.

0:20:00
Katie: We had a fun little thread about Jesse. Hey, they doxed me on there, by the way. There are pictures of my home on the fucking Kimmy Farms thread.

Jesse: You haven't really done a good job of that.

Katie: Wait, I've never said where I live. Okay.

Jesse: Okay, just in this episode, you said you live close to a church. You described the church architecturally. You described the name of a minor in the chorus. You described how good... You think people are going to figure out where I live based on the fact that there was a kid named Miles at the church? Weaponized... autism they're already on their way to your house seriously like you don't understand how obsessive people get the thing is i don't care i don't care well that's just because you're not worried it's because i'm not worried like a kiwi farms target no it's not because i'm not a kiwi like i don't whatever i don't care about this stuff i have been doxxed i had people calling my fucking in-laws last year and saying horrific things oh that was because of what's it what's his fuck that awful guy yeah right yeah Kiwi Farms is an online message board that is very 4chan-ish. I'll just do the, I'm sure most people will say no, but they basically, they find these figures they call lolcows and they milk them. They make fun of them. They dox them. Now, in theory, they have a don't touch the poo policy, which means don't fuck with these people in real life. Although at some point that got updated to, Katie, will you read this?

0:20:54
Katie: Don't pause hole the neg hole. Do you know what that means?

Jesse: Don't fuck the butt. Well, yeah. It basically, in true Kiwi Farms fashion, they try to make everything as offensive as possible. This appears to be a reference to gay men discussing having sex with HIV-positive partners. Oh, okay.

0:21:33
Katie: Paws hold the neck hole like an HIV-positive man. Right, right. Okay. I like that.

Jesse: Anyway, we've discussed before that we think in certain cases there's like a little bit of a moral panic about Kiwi Farms. On the other hand, they do dox people. They do like fixate on these targets and talk about them for sometimes thousands of pages. So it's a little bit disingenuous to host a messaging board – Where in the most extreme cases, everyone's like, this person should kill themselves. This person should kill themselves. Let's dock them. Do they say that? There's a lot of like, this person should kill them. Yeah. Well, depending on the target. Not always.

0:22:05
Katie: Can I tell you my problem with Kiwi Farms?

Jesse: The UX?

Katie: Well, there's that. I don't know how to use it. My other problem with it is that...

Katie: They only target left-wing figures, it seems like. There are people that I have looked up who have become very prominent on Elon's Twitter, and they don't have any mention on Kiwi Farms. And these are fucking odious people who do crazy shit who absolutely deserve full threads.

0:22:41
Unknown_01: Like who?

Katie: Okay, there's one called Captive Dreamer. He's the one who Will Stancil doxxed.

Jesse: Oh, I remember that, yeah.

Katie: And he's the one who spread this whole rumor about Haitians in, where was it?

Jesse: Ohio, eating. They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats. Eating pets.

Katie: And he's become really prominent on Elon's Twitter. And I want him to get dogs. I want to know his story and nothing about him on Kiwi Farms. So farmers, do better.

Jesse: So people sometimes say that Kiwi Farms only fixates on sort of left of center targets. And some other people say they like particularly fixate on trans targets. I think there's something to that. Now, there are some right wing people they get in beefs with. I will say, if you're going to fixate this much on Internet targets, there's definitely more worthy ones than the ones they pick. I think part of their ethos in some cases is like, oh, you want to be famous on the Internet? Here you go. And it can be very unpleasant.

0:23:12
Katie: Yeah. Okay, well, like, I just searched. I went to the site. I put it into my browser. I did all of the letters.

Jesse: Katie Herzog, confirmed Kiwi Farms user.

Katie: I searched for Chaya Rychik. She is the exact sort of person I would expect to have a thread on Kiwi Farms. Nothing.

0:23:45
Jesse: Well, I think Kiwi Farms probably agrees with her about, like, wokeness and blue-haired elementary school teachers. That doesn't surprise me.

Katie: But that's my point. Like...

Katie: Can we not get a Kiwi Farms that is a little broader? Oh, wait, actually. Okay, so there's Libs of TikTok Derangement Syndrome.

Jesse: That's the opposite. That's like a thread in favor of her.

Katie: But that's what I want. I want a more egalitarian, a more democratic.

Jesse: Why can't we get a liberal Joe Rogan? That's what you're saying.

0:24:22
Katie: Why can't we get... Trade it in a lab under DNC headquarters. I don't want to have to go to Rational Wiki to find out.

Jesse: Oh, God. Rational Wiki makes Kiwi Farms look like... I don't know what. But they would never dock.

Katie: Anyway, so I just wish they could be a little broader in scope. That's all I'm asking for, farmers. Come on.

Jesse: Right.

Jesse: Okay, so go back and listen to the episodes. There was this attempt to hashtag drop Kiwi Farms. Most prominent victim slash advocate for that was Keffels, Clara Sorrenti, politics streamer up in Canada. Second place, perhaps, went to Liz Fong-Jones. Fong Jones is a site reliability engineer. She's now at a place called Honeycomb. She's well-established in the tech world. She worked at Google in the past. She loathes Kiwi Farms, and the feeling is mutual.

0:24:57
Katie: Okay, what's that about?

Jesse: It is complicated, Katie, and I'm going to do my best to try to put this timeline together from, like, archive posts... Ancient Kiwi Farms post information about hers across multiple threads. You obviously cannot trust anything on Kiwi Farms at face value, with the exception, I would say, of screenshots and archive links, which they're just they don't. I've never seen them make up a screenshot. I do think, as we'll get to, they make up other stuff. But part of this had to do with Kiwi Farms perceiving Liz Fong Jones to be entangled with. With Trans Lifeline former executive director Greta Gustava Martel and former director of ops Nina Chowbell. Chowbell. It's Chowbell. Chowbell.

0:25:30
Jesse: It's definitely Chowbell. That's the...

Jesse: Indian pronunciation. According to their own successors at Trans Lifeline, they stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from it. So Liz Fong Jones' page on Kiwi Farms says she was in close contact with, that's a direct quote, them.

Jesse: But that's not really clear to me that that was ever the case. She claims that she was not in any sort of close contact with them. I reached out to Liz Fong Jones about this segment, and I heard back from her lawyer. Her lawyer... What?

0:26:09
Katie: Has that ever happened with a minor internet figure before you reach out and you get a response from the lawyer?

Jesse: Liz Fong-Jones, when it comes to legal stuff, as we will see, she packs some serious heat. She has money and she uses it. Where does she get the money?

Jesse: I don't know. Probably from being in tech for a while or family money. Katie, I have not yet looked into Liz Fong-Jones' finances, nor do I intend to. Anyway...

0:26:45
Katie: I thought you were going to do your job.

Jesse: This is from Liz Fong Jones, lawyer. Quote, with regard to the trans lifeline matter, Liz has previously spoken on this topic and we will point you to her statements there. See, and it's a fucking link to a podcast at approximately 25, 25 and 33, 49. Liz's donation was misappropriated the same way as every other donor. I find it very annoying to not just give me a statement, but also be like, also, check her out on this podcast. In the clips in question, Liz Fong Jones does just briefly mention this Trans Lifeline fiasco and how she herself was victimized, which was also something the attorney emphasized. And victimized in the sense that she gave them money. She gave them money, and then it was embezzled. Okay. I haven't found any evidence there was a... Sorry, was there a... Did the embezzlers, were they ever charged? I think they just got away with it, as far as I know. So it's just this open secret that they embezzled money and there were no charges ever filed. In the 2017 tax filings for Trans Lifeline, which we'll include a link to, the folks running it were just like, yeah, these two officers made away with like, I forget, $360,000 or something. I don't think it ever led to legal action. Okay.

0:27:21
Katie: Is there a statute of limitations?

0:27:54
Jesse: Could we sue? Can we sue civilly someone for...

Jesse: Should we sue Trans Lifeline? Crowdfund?

Katie: Yeah.

Jesse: That would be a good look. Yeah, we just need someone who was harmed by this.

Katie: So if anybody listening to this donated to Trans Lifeline in that time period, get in touch with us.

Jesse: That is definitely how the law works. So I have not found any evidence there was a meaningful relationship between Fong Jones and the founders of Trans Lifeline beyond her donating to the organization. One of the earliest mentions of Fong Jones on Kiwi Farms was in the thread for one of the Trans Lifeline founders. Gustava, I immediately forgot her name. Scrolling up, buying time. Greta Gustava Martel. So, Katie, read this from early 2017, please.

0:28:26
Katie: Okay, so this is from Kiwi Farms, right? Right.

Jesse: A Kiwi Farms poster, yeah.

Katie: Okay. Liz Fong, another Google employee, coughed up 5,000 plus to Trans Lifeline after an earlier sob story by Greta and then blocked everyone who pointed out it's a scam.

Jesse: So the next post says, quote, let's make a thread and dox all of Liz Fong's pets and children in it.

0:29:01
Katie: Does Liz Fong have pets or children? Uh...

Jesse: Actually, a pet will come into the story later, unfortunately. But someone responds to that from the looks of her ally, LinkedIn. She's a special snowflake, but not a lolcow, and seems to be under the genuine impression that Greta and friends are running a legit operation. Not gonna lie, though, I'm intrigued by her. So...

Jesse: Kiwi farmers at this point are torn on whether or not it's worth focusing on Liz Fong Jones or doxing her. But the next page in the thread, they do dox her. They pull together all this personal information about her, including her birth certificate. That was February 13th, 2017. And again, this was not in Liz Fong Jones' own thread. It was in a thread for Greta Gustava Martella, who has almost 800 pages worth of material on her now. Wow. I'm going to say something controversial that will get some people mad at me. It would suck to have your personal information posted online like that, especially in a generally menacing-seeming place like Kiwi Farms. It really would. But at first, the Kiwi farmers just weren't very interested in Liz Fong Jones. The thread on Greta Gustavo Martellus goes on for hundreds of more pages, and Fong Jones just isn't mentioned much, according to a Google search I did. That being said...

0:30:11
Jesse: Liz Fong-Jones, understandably, she does not want her personal information on this weird, menacing message board. Kiwi Farms has a sub-forum dedicated to posting and ridiculing requests for people to remove their information. Six months after Fong-Jones is doxxed, Null, aka Joshua Moons, the sort of supervillain figure who runs Kiwi Farms, he starts a new thread in that sub-forum titled, "'Liz Fong-Jones harassing people for hosting my email.'" After calling her a slur, as is apparently required by the Kiwi Farms bylaws... What slur? Is this a slur I can't say because I'm not a member of the LGBT community? I don't think you can say it either. I don't think anyone can say it.

0:30:46
Katie: Is it trune?

Jesse: No, it's worse than that.

Katie: Tranny?

Jesse: Yeah. Noel writes that... You gotta be specific, Jesse. Knoll writes that the Trans Lifeline supporters have, quote, apparently employed to harass third parties vaguely associated with me. This is to presumably help cover up that Trans Lifeline is a scam. Z, meaning Liz Fong Jones, works for Google and is using an authoritative at Google.com address to do this wet work for Kiel, who's one of the...

0:31:22
Jesse: first name of one of the trans lifeline scammers, czars at Google addresses are good for scaring small businesses. So do you get what, what moon is saying here?

Katie: Uh, let me, let me try to parse this again. I'm removing all of the silly pronouns. Okay. He's saying that because Liz Fong Jones has a Google email, she emailed him from Google. Um, she didn't email him.

Jesse: She emailed the company that hosts Kiwi farms or Josh's email.

Katie: Okay, and he calls this wet work, which is a euphemism for murder.

Jesse: Is it really? I think so.

0:31:59
Katie: Isn't that like a mob term?

Jesse: It's fine. The most important thing is he's pinning this on Trans Lifeline. He's saying that Liz Fong Jones is sort of acting on behalf of Trans Lifeline to protect Trans Lifeline. Gotcha. He continues. Katie, please read this.

Katie: This email falsely accuses me as whomever of criminal behavior. No one is blackmailing this fucking troll. The only thing I'd want them to do is fuck off. I don't know if they're intimidated. I don't care. They should be more worried of the fact that they're openly using their at google.com association for non-work related activities. such as fucking with people they don't know and who never heard of them until today. Additionally, the person they've contacted is not our host. They host our email server. This genius did an MX record lookup and assumed they hosted our entire site. What's MX record? I don't know.

0:32:35
Jesse: Just a way of looking up who owns or operates a website. So now read the actual email. Liz Fong Jones apparently sent the wrong address. This was Thursday, August 17th, 2017. Josh Moon puts this in his post.

Katie: Liz F at Google. Do you want me to not say her address?

Jesse: Well, that's not her address anymore. It doesn't matter.

Katie: Okay. Liz F at Google.com wrote, and then there's a link to a thread, the thread presumably with her.

0:33:15
Jesse: The doxing.

Katie: Doxing, which is hosted with you as posting my personal information in order to intimidate and blackmail me, which is a violation of your AUP TOS. Thanks, Liz Fong Jones. Could I do this with like the yellow pages? Yeah.

Jesse: So, having had a recent incident where people attempted to dox me, I have no doubt that this isn't fun, especially if they got her real address. But it's unclear how Kiwi Farms was trying to blackmail her. And in fact, like, after they posted the info about her, they mostly turned their attention to Gustavo Martella. So, I do think that the claim they were trying to intimidate her and blackmail her was a bit much. I also think Moon escalated things by posting it. And, you know...

0:33:48
Jesse: It's just the two are starting to really hate each other at this point. The enmity is beginning to simmer. But if you go to that thread, it's just 18 pages of them making fun of Liz Fong Jones' attempt to get her dogs taken down. That's nothing by the standards of Kiwi Farm. She still isn't really on their radar. But as you can see— She's not a low cow yet. She's not a low cow yet. Maybe a low cow. They're not milking her yet. Not producing milk yet. A low cow. As you can see, Moon told his readers that this was connected to Trans Lifeline, that Liz Fong Jones was trying to defend it from the charges of embezzlement and sort of attacking Kiwi Farms when it seems much more likely Liz Fong Jones just wanted her information taken down. Would you agree with my interpretation that if you read her, you know, two sentence email, it's just about wanting her personal information off the Internet?

0:34:37
Katie: Well, a violation of your terms of service, I mean, she doesn't say, like, I want you... I want this website taken down. She's talking about this one site. But if she was... If she was... If she had, in fact, emailed the right place and she said this company is violating your terms of service, I mean, maybe the implication there is take the whole fucking thing down. I think...

Jesse: Yeah, actually, you know what? I think there's a little bit of ambiguity there. The sense I got was she just wanted her information taken down. I don't think she's saying... Also, just given her place in the tech world, you're not getting a whole website taken down because they violated your terms of service once. My interpretation is she's trying to get her information taken down. Either way, Kiwi Farms becomes convinced that she was in with the trans lifeline scammers. I'm not seeing any evidence of that anywhere. I'm open to it. God knows weirder things have happened, but I'd have to see actual evidence of it beyond guilt by association stuff. As far as I can tell, Liz Fong Jones came onto the radar of Kiwi Farms just because she donated to a charity that Kiwi Farms had correctly pegged as scammy before basically anyone else did, to their credit. Then she fell off their radar. Then she got back on their radar because Moon got that email from her and made a big deal about it.

0:35:55
Katie: Okay, so this was a few years ago, I assume?

Jesse: I mean, the request to take down the info was 2017. It's more than a few years ago at this point.

Katie: Okay, so what's the update? Why are we talking about this now?

Jesse: So in August of 2022, Kiwi Farms does launch a dedicated thread about Liz Fong Jones. She's officially a lolcow.

Jesse: As is often the case with these threads, they basically dig up everything they can about her background, her associations. There's some claims in there that are factually questionable, like, quote, Elliot, they use dead names, also was in close contact with Greta Gustava and Kale Anderson, individuals who ran the infamous trans lifeline. Again, I don't know where this comes from. There's no evidence provided. If someone wants to prove me wrong, they can.

0:36:37
Jesse: one of the things Kiwi Farms finds in digging into her past is this deleted thread. Okay, so this is 21st of November 2019.

Jesse: Liz Fong Jones. Sigh. I was hoping not to have to do this, but now that the other party in this is publicly discussing her side, I need to be transparent and accountable while defending myself and hopefully not make the situation worse. Thread. Content warning. Allegations of sexual assault. See PTSD. Those should go first, usually, right?

0:37:09
Katie: They should go first. And see PTSD. That's when you have emphysema as well as PTSD.

Jesse: That is chronic PTSD. No, it's complex. Complex, not chronic PTSD. I'm not going to name her, but she has chosen to discuss the incident and name me. So I feel I have no choice but to respond and to do so publicly in order to explain my view of the circumstances and clear my name. Every one of these has a content warning after potentially triggering material. This attempts to describe a consent accident, that phrase would become notorious among Kiwi farmers, that occurred on November 3rd in Zurich. I'm going to try to, as carefully as I can, conduct a blameless retrospective about what happened. I have known the person who accuses me of sexual assault for over eight plus years, and relevantly, she has known that I once had a psychiatric service animal, that that dog recently passed away, but that my family still has another dog.

0:37:43
Katie: You didn't tell me there were going to be dead dogs in this, Jesse.

Jesse: Now you're upset. And conversely, I have known for the eight plus years that she has an intense phobia of encountering live dogs in person. What I did not know and what she did not communicate is that her phobia also extends to encountering dog hair on clothing. You can probably see where this is going. Can we?

0:38:17
Jesse: I thought she was aware that there was a dog in my house and that there might be some residual dog hair on my clothing. I asked if I could stay with her and she said yes. Ditto playing. I guess playing in the kinky sense I would prefer not to think about. Afterwards, she noticed that there was dog hair on my clothes, which she had not noticed before and had not communicated to me was going to be a problem, despite us socializing for days prior and her seeing my clothing beforehand.

Jesse: Oh my God, this goes on forever. If I had known that her phobia of dogs extended to dog hair on other people's clothing, I never would have asked to enter her home or to play. However, there's literally... Can people stop using the term play to refer to fucking? It's so fucking creepy. Well, it's not always fucking. It can be like other... It's like kinky, whatever.

0:38:50
Katie: It's sex stuff.

Jesse: Sex stuff.

Katie: However... They're not talking about video games, I don't think. Or maybe they are.

Jesse: I hope so. I hope this is about Mario Kart. However, there was literally no way I could have known and she did not communicate that need. So her CPTSD was triggered. She reacted as if I had sexually assaulted her. And here we are. Rather than letting rumors spread, I'd rather be proactive and communicate exactly what happened. Why someone might accuse me of assault. She genuinely believes that I have sexually assaulted her, and I consider her a friend, and I'm genuinely sorry for what she's going through, but feel that a blameless perspective would try to examine how the miscommunication happened. In my view, this was neither foreseeable nor deliberate. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'll go to the end. In short, and maybe she should have started with the short part. One, Liz lives with a dog. Liz's clothing has dog hair on it.

0:39:30
Jesse: Three. Where's the two? Liz had consensual sex with someone. Four. That person has phobia of dog hair. Didn't say so. Five. That person thinks Liz deliberately maliciously got dog hair on her. Six. She accuses Liz of sexual assault. So this does not happen when you have a hypoallergenic dog.

Jesse: Or when you hang out with normal people. So various elements of this get screenshotted in different ways. I embarrassingly only had partial thread. You found it embarrassingly easily. When you read the whole thing in full context, if that's all there is, and as far as I can tell, that's all there is, there is nothing here. There's nothing here. It sounds like a genuinely disturbed person overreacting to dog hair. Now...

0:40:02
Katie: dog hair is gross okay dog hair is gross especially if you're the sort of person who a has complex ptsd and b right is hanging around playing with liz fong jones why do we think that the the cpsd cptsd is triggered by the dog hair do we have any theories there no

0:40:47
Jesse: We don't. It's not good.

Katie: Anywhere I'm going, it's not good.

Jesse: No, there's like... There's no... Maybe it starts with a furry convention, an incident there.

Jesse: Now, on the one hand, Liz Fogg-Jones chose to publicly tweet a defense of herself against sexual assault. And I would argue maybe not in a way that foregrounds most of... She's like... There's all this wind-up of like, I was accused of sexual assault. I must defend... And like, she should have just been like, this whole thing is about dog hair. And... As far as I can tell, it is only about dog hair because no one has presented any other evidence there's more to it than that. Kiwi Farms has scoured this woman's entire life and social media presence for years now. If they had any smoking gun, even just like the victim saying no, it was about more than that, they would say so. As far as I can tell, this is a totally bullshit rumor. I should say that I did reach out to Joshua Moon, the Kiwi Farms mastermind, via email as well. He responded and he re-emphasized his dislike of Liz Fong Jones in very colorful language, but he did not provide any substantive new evidence on these factual questions about the quote-unquote consent accident or Fong Jones having a meaningful relationship to Trans Lifeline other than as a donor. Now, having heard the thread, do you agree with me? Am I being too credulous?

0:41:58
Katie: Well, I mean, assuming that Liz Fong Jones isn't lying, which we have no reason to assume that, but let's just, like, good faith, let's just assume that. I mean, this seems like a very stupid story. What I'm curious about— What I should add is that especially in, like, 2019-ish, there was this thing, was there not, of calling everything sexual assault.

Jesse: Everything.

Katie: Everything. This was the legacy of the Me Too movement.

0:42:31
Katie: Okay, so what I'm curious about is, so Liz Fong Jones said that this person was making, that she's responding to a public accusation. So it just seems bizarre that Kiwi Farms, who are genuinely good detectives, they are very good at digging shit up, has never been able to find the accuser.

Jesse: So because I'm not looking...

Jesse: at all... I could devote the next three years of my life to looking at everything they've said about Liz Fong Jones on Kiwi Farms, which I am, thanks to a grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

Jesse: It could be there's a screenshot somewhere. I will say... They tend to post certain things a lot, including the consent accident language Liz Wong-Jones used at one point, parts of this thread.

0:43:15
Jesse: I just think I would have seen it by now if there was anything more to this. I don't think there's more to this. Kiwi Farms has a tendency to... They don't make up screenshots, but once they develop a meme about someone, they just sort of repeat it over and over and over. And long story short, what happened here is they start calling her... a rapist, as though that's an established fact. Now, before we move on, I should say that Liz Fonker Jones, ironically, once leveled what I think is a questionable accusation against someone else. And it's it's I don't want to make light of it, but it's too colorful for us to not mention. So, Katie, read this. I've blacked out the name of the person and his company.

0:43:49
Katie: Whoa, so this is a tweet. Whoa, I've healed enough that I momentarily blanked on my rapist name. And then she writes, it's, and then you blanked it after resigning from, it's blank after resigning from blank, deleting his Twitter after that story. He's back on tech Twitter and is the blank called blank. This is not helpful, Jesse. You blanked out too much.

Jesse: Okay, then Riot Squirrel responds, wait, was he involved? I don't know, some asshole. Wait, was he involved in the Hypno Kink World 2? Head Crash, yes, that one.

0:44:22
Katie: What is Head Crash?

Jesse: I don't know, just read the rest.

Katie: He sexually assaulted me during a scene, and because it was Hypno, yeah, I'm not going to be pressing charges. What does the name of this mean?

Jesse: So she's saying, if my understanding is correct, hypno kink is a kink situation involving hypnosis. She is publicly naming someone who she says raped her during a kink scene in which she was hypnotized.

Katie: And she's not going to be pressing charges because hypnotism is consent?

Jesse: She was... I mean, look, I've got to say, to be clear, I have a number of female friends and exes who have been actually sexually assaulted.

0:44:53
Jesse: I'm not making light of it, but you can't really go online and say someone raped you and name them. And then be like, oh, but I'm not pressing charges because I was hypnotized. I don't think you can do that. You can. Or not if society is going to... I mean, you can, yes. Twitter circa 2020, you could do a lot of stuff. I think this is questionable. Do you agree?

Katie: I have no idea. I need to know more of the details. I need you to send me the screenshots without the names redacted so I could look into this alleged rapist. I need to see his LinkedIn.

0:45:33
Jesse: I think the key takeaway here is do not ever get involved in communities involving people with social media addictions. Like never, ever, ever, not even once.

Katie: I absolutely have no problem agreeing with that. I will never be involved with any of these people in any communities. Agreed.

Jesse: So this beef between Liz Fong Jones and Kiwi Farms heats up further because it really does become Kiwi Farms lore. That she's a rapist. That she's a rapist. Many of them repeat this over and over. I think it's a ridiculous accusation given the lack of evidence. Are they saying rapist ironically? Well, they do that sort of shanty smirking thing where I mean, a lot of the posts you would think that they actually believe she was a rapist. It's like you can't know what's going on in the heart of a Kiwi Farms poster, if anything. That's really irresponsible.

0:46:06
Katie: They should call her a zoo file instead.

Jesse: So it's just it's funny to me because the same sorts of bizarre game of telephone rumor bullshit we've discussed in our coverage of the sorts of people Kiwi Farms makes fun of. I think a version of that is going on here. And between the.

Katie: You're going to make us make enemies with Kiwi fucking farms, Jesse.

0:46:41
Jesse: I mean, I'm just trying to report on this stuff, honestly. Report in air quotes, because I spent hours on Kiwi Farms looking into what Liz Fong Jones did and didn't do with whoever's dog hair on a coat.

Jesse: Anyway, between the doxing and a bunch of pseudonymous trolls calling her a rapist, as well as at least one incident in which she claimed someone inspired by Kiwi Farms showed up at a conference she was at. To be honest, I didn't have the time to fully track that one down. Then there was another incident where someone from a distance photographed some sort of outdoor protest she was doing about Kiwi Farms and posted that to her thread. There were instances of people like... She thinks inspired by Kiwi Farms showing up in her real life, which made her nervous, and she gets really pissed at Kiwi Farms. She participates in the successful effort to get Cloudflare to drop the site. That was why Kiwi Farms was knocked offline for a while originally. Again, go back to our two-parter if you want the background on all that. Ten-parter. She becomes a big advocate for getting rid of Kiwi Farms.

0:47:14
Jesse: Katie, read this title of a video series she posted. Scroll down a little there. You'll see it.

Katie: How Cloud Fare Enabled Kiwi Farms to Stochastic Terrorism. Did you know that Oxford named stochastic the word of the year?

0:47:49
Jesse: Did it? I wish it did. No, but Liz Wong Jones has money. She's motivated. She goes after Kiwi Farms in various ways, including on the grounds that she's being defamed. Now, in the US, it is hard to go after some troll defaming you, in part because there's this thing called Section 230 that basically keeps huge swaths of the internet online. So if a Facebook troll defames Katie Herzog and says Katie Herzog is obsessed with Miles... the child choir singer, and has a purient interest in him, you, Katie Herzog, cannot sue Facebook for that, right? Yeah, because it's true.

0:48:23
Jesse: First of all, because truth is an ultimate defense against a defamation claim, but also because...

Jesse: Think about it for a minute. If you could sue Facebook over anything any asshole posted on Facebook, Facebook would cease to exist.

Katie: The internet would cease to exist. The internet as we know it.

Jesse: Which would be good. So I'm saying we should change the law.

Jesse: Now, there are some backwards, barely developed countries run by warring militias. They don't have sophisticated internet law like we do. One of those countries is Australia. That's where Liz Fong Jones lives at least part of the time. Katie, read the top of this October 2023 article in The Guardian.

0:49:00
Katie: An Australian company found to have helped keep the notorious forum Kiwi Farms accessible online has been ordered to pay more than $400,000 in damages after a successful defamation action in the Victorian Supreme Court. The case is just the latest installment of a long-running saga that has pitted activists against the website that will not stay down, raising sticky questions about who is responsible for harmful online speech.

Jesse: Okay, dot, dot, dot. It continues, the case claimed that a Brisbane-based company, Flow Chemical, and its sole director, Vincent Jen, Z-H-E-N, were, quote, instrumental to its publication and for keeping it accessible. This is the defamatory information about Liz Fong Jones, even though they were not the authors of the defamatory Kiwi Farms thread. Because the matter was undefended, an interlocutory judgment was made against Flo Chemical and Zen in July, and Fong Jones was awarded damages of $445,000 plus costs this week.

0:49:42
Katie: Whoa. Okay, so let's back up. So Fong Jones sued Kiwi Farms in Australia or sued... No, Flo Chemical and its director, Vincent Zen, which is the internet service provider Kiwi Farms used. Jesus. So they're being held responsible for...

Katie: Shit that other people, whoever they are, wherever they are, posted on Kiwi Farms.

0:50:23
Jesse: This is why it is good that Section 230 exists, to prevent outcomes.

Katie: Damn, I was going to propose that we move to Australia, but I don't think we can.

Jesse: I think you can understand from Liz Fong Jones' perspective why she'd want to pursue action against Kiwi Farms. And she's doing so totally within the laws of Australia. But you can also understand how chilling this is from a free speech and sort of basic internet discourse perspective.

Katie: Absolutely. So did he end up having to pay?

Jesse: So the current status of the case is unclear. Here's part of the statement Fong Jones, American lawyer, sent me. Quote, the Kiwi Farms threat about Liz was found to be defamatory in the Australian courts in the interest of full transparency. The finding that the named defendants were liable for that defamation was set aside pending further proceedings. Blah, blah, blah. He points out everyone. The courts did find this defamatory. No one is contesting that. I asked him.

0:51:00
Jesse: what that means set aside. Could he tell me anything about that? He was like, dude, I'm an American lawyer, not an Australian lawyer. I was like, touche, and that was that. So I don't know exactly what that means, but yes, the Australian court found this company liable for the defamation that occurred on Kiwi Farms.

Katie: So in Australia, you're not allowed to... lie on the internet well apparently you're putting yourself in at legal risk if you run a site where someone else lies on the internet that's crazy although i will say just parting thought on the section 230 stuff imagine if i could sue blue sky over what blue sky users said about me there would be no more blue sky and there'd be no more blocked reported True. It would be so much money.

0:51:56
Jesse: No, it is very good that you cannot do that. And I do think one difference I want to make clear is like our whole thing, we were accused of, quote unquote, defending Kiwi Farms. In a sense, we were because we said they should not be knocked offline unless they've done something seriously illegal. And that a lot of the behavior on Kiwi Farms, with the exception of the doxing, which also isn't illegal in most jurisdictions, was just similar to like online pylons on places like Twitter and now Blue Sky. So... Anyway.

0:52:27
Katie: How much of this stuff bothers Liz Fong Jones because she goes to Kiwi Farms and reads the thread about her? I mean, is her reputation... Do people outside of this small troll community actually think that she's a rapist?

Katie: you know what i mean i just people say shit on the internet and and to quote the poet tyler the creator ha ha ha ha ha ha how the fuck is cyber bullying real ha ha ha ha blank just walk away from the screen like blank close your eyes ha ha what was blank sorry what was blank i'll use the um i'll use the the white version of the term nilla that's what you call a a slur for a white person like vanilla nilla yeah i just made it oh vanilla that's great yeah

0:53:10
Jesse: Wait, that should catch on. Yeah, let's coin that. What up, my Nillas? Yeah, what up, my Nillas?

Jesse: Look, I mean, I don't know. They're calling her a rapist, and the Australian courts were convinced that it did enough. I mean, I don't know what their standards are. For a public figure like Liz Fong Jones, you would have to...

Jesse: prove well it gets complicated if calling someone a rapist is is per se defamation and you wouldn't necessarily have to prove damages but your argument is like she could just ignore this and maybe be in her interest not to yes i mean clearly it's in her interest not to ignore it because she got almost half a million dollars or might get almost a half a million dollars uh from this australian thing but yeah i don't know i mean just the sauce is australian thing you'd be the australian i'm looking at her kangaroo that runs australia i'm looking at her wikipedia right now damn she does have a lot of money um it says so on there she it says 2019 she left google where her compensation totaled about eight hundred thousand dollars a year and half a million in invested restricted stock the only thing about this is that is there's a section about kiwi farms about her defamation suit there's nothing about even the allegation i just i don't just come on walk away i You've had people call you a transphobe and put up posters of you. It's been fantastic for my career. Well, but let's say they got into really defamatory territory with you. Something that stuck and that you thought was spreading. At some point, that would start to bother you. It's not like it wouldn't affect you.

0:53:55
Katie: That has already happened to me. With what? Transphobia. I lost a shit ton of friends because of all of this stuff. Yeah, it bothers me. Do I want to get a website taken down because of it? No, I don't. Because I think that the principles of free speech are more important than the fact that people call me names online.

0:54:55
Jesse: Yeah. Well, I just mean more of the question of like, at what point would you intervene? Like, could things get bad enough?

Katie: There is at no point. I think that at no point would I intervene.

Jesse: What if I said you murdered Miles, the innocent choir boy?

Katie: All right, well, I'm going to. So again, truth is the ultimate defense. I mean, it depends on what you mean by intervene. If we're talking about suing a platform or suing a random person on the internet, I just don't think I would ever do that. And honestly, I think this question is a lot easier for me because I'm a woman. This is female privilege. It takes the worst category of of false accusations just off the table. Like if someone called me a pedo or a rapist, it's like, who cares? It's obviously not true. I don't think anyone would believe it. So I'd be very unlikely to sue someone for online speech, partly because I don't think I would win. The bar to prove defamation is so high in the US. And the suit itself would probably do just as much to damage my reputation.

0:55:28
Katie: as whatever the actual defamation was. I don't think Stephen Elliott's reputation is any better for suing Moira Donegan. In fact, it's probably worse. Now, I mean, it's different if a publication did. If the New York Times published an article claiming that I'm an ABDL, then I might sue. But just some person on the internet, I can't imagine a case when I would actually pursue legal action. And the other thing that I do online to protect myself is I have really good... internet hygiene. I never Google myself. I never search myself. I never seek out shitty things that people say about me because I can't control it. It doesn't help me. It just makes me mad. So I live my life in this way so that I protect myself as much as possible. And I think that's good for me. And I think it would be good for you if you took my advice.

0:56:35
Jesse: If you thought... Liz Fong Jones overreacted by suing, if my understanding is correct, every single person in Australia.

Jesse: You might like this last bit or it might interest you.

Katie: Wait, wait. Let me say one more thing about this. This is how I feel about it. There are exceptions. I think that Patrick Tomlinson, who we did a two-part series on... who's been targeted in ways that go well beyond the shit that people say on the internet. Like he is, he's not, hasn't just been doxxed. He has been swatted dozens of times. That to me is different. That crosses once shit goes, goes from the realm of just like shit talking online on various forums and threads. I put that in a separate bucket than I do people calling in bomb threats in your name and stuff like that. That's, that's criminal. Yeah.

0:57:09
Jesse: Yeah. But that's like criminal, that's criminal behavior. No, I don't think anyone's saying you should ignore bomb threats. And Patrick has, he attempted to sue because he attempted to unmask his tormentors and failed.

0:57:48
Katie: And now he owes money to the, to the owners of the sites where people target him. Very different laws in the United States. He should move to Australia.

Jesse: Well, uh, okay. So actually on that very subject, our last little twist here, um,

Jesse: Shortly after Liz Fong Jones' thread started on Kiwi Farms, someone who goes by Mail Fraud, M-A-I-L-F-R-A-W-D, shows up on the thread. Here's his first post, Katie. My throat is dry, so I guess you're going to have to read this one.

Katie: I've met and interacted with this faggot in person on multiple occasions, and he's as annoying as this thread reports. One thing Kiwi Farms has already caught on is that he is an extremely public figure, and bringing his rape confession up in front of conference organizers may be the one thing that will push this retard over the line into the 41%. What does that mean?

0:58:25
Jesse: Kill herself. Kiwi Farms has a thing about 40% of trans people being suicidal, so they use that as a super cute way to call for people to kill themselves. Right.

Katie: bunk statistic guys where did you get that uh this asshole's entire job is convince organizers of these events to invite him to speak and if they think he's going to draw a bunch of negative attention they'll eventually stop inviting him keep it up so this attracts the attention of some kiwi farmers who are like oh like you know this person we hate tell us more he also posts this again katie dry throat and i'm asking you to read a lot but this is important so just do it katie Personal story-wise, definitely not without outright toxic myself, but all I have are anecdotal stories about this degenerate's behavioral issues. He is definitely on the spectrum, but everyone here probably knows this. Personal aside from me, Katie Herzog, everyone reading this is probably also on the spectrum. I was going to say, yeah. However, I am deeply familiar with conference speaking, so I can probably share some additional details around how we can disrupt this faggot's existence. I've witnessed multiple speakers get canceled once they were invited and some controversy was brought up. It's not rocket science, and tech conferences publish their speaking schedules ahead of time. It might be worth trying to reach out to the organizers to express outrage at his invitation and indicate you're unwilling to attend since his presence make you feel unsafe. Be sure to use the true trigger words as much as possible. However, the, and Trune is a slur for trans. However, the only time I've seen speakers preemptively canceled was after public outreach.

0:59:54
Jesse: So yeah, isn't Trune more of like a slur against like quote unquote fake trans people or is it just a transphobic slur in general? No, it's a transphobic slur. I think all trans people. Okay. So he then goes on to list specific conferences that Kiwi farmers should reach out to and be like, help, help. This person's a rapist.

Katie: So Kiwi farms does a cancel culture.

Jesse: Well, that's what's interesting. This post gets deleted, but it survives because another farmer responds to it.

1:00:26
Katie: It gets deleted by someone at Kiwi Farms, by a mod. Okay. Interesting.

Jesse: But another Kiwi farmer quotes it and responds to it.

Jesse: They say, and I'm going to need you to try to translate this from Kiwi Farms. I'm curious if you can do it. I'm sorry. Are you saying we should commit gay ops and pause neg holes? No, we are not the autistic Illuminati. It's cool that you might know him, and I'd love to hear more stories, especially if you can verify them. But we don't fucking touch feces here.

Katie: Okay, so what this person is saying, again, don't touch the poo. Just don't mess with this. Don't call in conferences. We are observers. We are unbiased observers. Unbiased.

1:01:02
Katie: We are the, what's it called? The galley, we are the peanut gallery. We are not the poo touchers.

Jesse: And again, every time this comes up, I need to say it's a little bit disingenuous because Kiwi Farms boards are inevitably going to cause, in the most extreme cases like Liz Fong Jones, some real world harassment. But the way this guy was- Do you have evidence of that?

Katie: I just, no. Or do you just think like the numbers?

1:01:34
Jesse: The numbers and the vitriol and also there is like some sly stuff. I think some of it is winking, but I think generally speaking, the ethos of the site is do not touch the poo. So what this guy posted here... Okay, wait, wait.

Katie: What if someone... What if... If what's your take on like so Kiwi Farms, what if the farmers themselves aren't touching the poo, but other people come onto the site who aren't who like don't have have accounts who are just reading it?

Jesse: Right. I think that I think often what happens is someone. becomes a subject of controversy they are doxxed anyone there's like locked portions of the site that I haven't seen but like most of it is unlocked and anyone can find a controversial figures info on Kiwi Farms that being said there's other ways to get that info too

1:02:21
Katie: So the question is, does that count as Kiwi Farms touching the poo or?

Jesse: No, that's someone else touching the poo. But that's the whole thing is like there's plausible deniability. You never know who's doing what. But the point is.

Katie: You know what they should do is they should just have everybody who joins who reads the site, like make lock the whole thing, make the whole thing private. And if you want to participate, you have to show Joshman your ID.

Jesse: And your penis. You have to give him a photo of your penis. So this initial post, the one that it got deleted because mail fraud, this user was acting in an unusual way. Basically, it came across as Fed posting. Do you know what that is?

Katie: Yeah, Fed posting would be like someone trying to trigger an action to get somebody else in trouble. Like you're a Fed.

1:03:01
Jesse: Yeah, it's like if an FBI agent goes into a Black Lives Matter chat telegram group. It's like, who wants to come kill some honkies with me?

Katie: Yeah, or more likely a January 6th meetup.

Jesse: Right. So...

Jesse: That post is removed. Mail fraud back channels with a moderator and confirms he is who he says he is, someone who knows Liz Fong Jones in real life. Katie, describe how his name currently is listed on Kiwi Farms.

Katie: Okay, the name mail fraud and then the little tagline is met Liz Fong Jones in real life.

1:03:37
Katie: Honest and true fan, verified Kiwi leak. What's that?

Jesse: Verified Kiwi leak just means he leaked information that the moderator found valuable. So...

Jesse: Even though he's initially met with some skepticism, soon people are intrigued because this guy knows one of Kiwi Farm's villains. Along the way on this thread and elsewhere, Mail Fraud provides a fair amount of detail about his personal life, including information that can be tied to his location and his family and stuff like that.

Unknown_02: Super smart. Give the Kiwi Farms your personal information.

1:04:12
Jesse: Right. Well, yeah. And especially given that, again, Liz Fong Jones has a bit of money to throw around. So Liz Fong Jones launches an investigation about mail fraud because this is someone who claims to know her in real life.

Katie: And when you say mail fraud, not the crime of mail fraud, the name of mail fraud.

Jesse: I hope she investigates both, but I mean mail fraud as KiwiFarm user. Her American counsel works with a law firm called Kamerman Unksoniker. It sounds made up. It's a real law firm. I looked it up. She hires that firm to conduct an investigation trying to unmask mail fraud. Jesus. The task falls on a paralegal named- Again, this is a post that was deleted.

1:04:43
Katie: Okay.

Jesse: Well, no, but then Mail Fraud kept posting about her and kept saying fucked up shit about her. I should have been clear about that. The task falls of unmasking Mail Fraud falls on a paralegal named Catherine Tooson, who also happens to be extremely online on Blue Sky in a fairly cringe way. Katie, I can't resist. Read this one quote reskeed of a deleted post.

1:05:14
Katie: This, if you want to come for trans people, you're going to have to go through me.

Jesse: So Tucson has a fair amount to work with and she does a good job because mail fraud provided so many details about the conferences he attended and other aspects of his life. She's able to narrow things down pretty easily. Opsec. Non-existent Opsec. She identifies the culprit. I'm torn. This is all public now. I'm just going to say his first name. A guy named Kevin who lives in Tennessee and worked at Meta actually. Or he worked for some company that was acquired by Meta. So I don't think he was an original hire.

1:05:48
Katie: Okay, so she basically kiwi farmed a kiwi farmer.

Jesse: Yeah, and we'll get back to the ethics of that in a minute, but in my view, they basically used the same tactics. And about a month ago, Liz Fong Jones posted to LinkedIn, a real-life case study in anonymous internet harassment, an insider threat. I have previously vouched for Kevin, last name, as a skilled communicator and technologist. While I have no reason to doubt his technical skill, I have learned new... Yeah, I have learned new information about him as a person. As a result, I must sadly retract my endorsement of him as a warm, gracious, collaborative individual. I can no longer recommend that anyone hire him in any capacity. And indeed, I believe he may pose a safety risk to his colleagues or even to his employer.

1:06:22
Katie: Okay, is this like, you know how on LinkedIn you can endorse people? Is this like the answer?

Jesse: I think it might have been literally a retraction of a LinkedIn endorsement. So, It turns out that like they had interacted with each other warmly in the past and she'd even recommended him for a job. I think a job he got and his present employment at the time they looked into it was meta.

Jesse: And she attaches to her LinkedIn post the actual report, which I read. It goes into all the details were included in the show notes. And it basically just explains both what this Kevin guy said about her on Kiwi Farms, which was heinous stuff, but also includes some pretty intense claims. Will you just read these two quotes?

1:06:56
Katie: Viewing Mail Fraud's post on Kiwi Farms and Context makes it clear that he intends Ms. Fong Jones a great deal of physical, emotional, and reputational harm. From his first day on the site, he encouraged other users to defame and harass Ms. Fong Jones with the goal of driving her out of her industry and or to harm herself. I believe Kevin, and his last name, represents a grave risk to Ms. Fong Jones' safety, well-being, and personal and professional reputation. I do not believe he will stop his harmful conduct unless... Some outside force compels him to stop, and I believe that if he gains physical proximity to her, he very well may take steps to threaten or even harm her.

1:07:31
Jesse: Wow. What do you think of the idea that Kevin poses her a physical threat?

Katie: I mean, come on. People who spend all of their time online, with the exception of Luigi Mangione, I guess he was kind of offline. I don't know, man. It's probably not a Thomas Crook situation.

Jesse: Yeah. On the other hand, like, I don't know. There's no way to know for sure if someone who posts crazy stuff online is actually crazy or not.

1:08:04
Katie: True. But this also seems to me like the ramping up of online reputational damage to physical harm because people take that more seriously.

Jesse: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's part of it. Um, especially like, look, Fong Jones has a pretty clear case of him posting horrible stuff. Um, I reached out to this Kevin guy. He didn't respond.

Katie: Has he said anything on Kiwi farms?

Jesse: Yeah. Click this post of his on Kiwi farms from right after the docs and describe it.

Katie: He's the only thing I have to say is pretty much. And then there's a gift. I don't know who that is. What is that?

1:08:39
Jesse: It seems like the genuine general takeaway is like, I don't give a fuck. I'm not worried.

Katie: Did he get fired from his job?

Jesse: Well, so it's slightly mysterious. A few days ago, Liz Fong Jones posted this to blue sky, the meta employee relations department's investigation into Kevin last name has concluded separately. I've learned from industry sources that Kevin is no longer employed by meta being a member of Kiwi farms and engaging in racist and transphobic tirades is bad for one's career. She includes, um, some sort of chat or good. Depends. It depends.

1:09:10
Jesse: Um,

Jesse: What about that guy you mentioned, the cats and dogs guy? Or Miles, who's also racist.

Katie: The cats and dogs guy?

Jesse: Yeah, the guy who made up the line about Haitians. Oh, Captain Dreamer. Liz Fong Jones includes a screenshot of some sort of interaction with someone at Facebook.

Jesse: What the Facebook person says is, thank you for following up. No further information is needed. The matter is now closed. And you're correct that we can't share the outcome. Greatly appreciate your participation in the process. So if you read her post closely, it doesn't quite say Kevin was fired for this, but it also doesn't say he wasn't. I'd say it's ambiguous. The wording, separately, I've learned from industry sources that Kevin, last name, is no longer employed by Meta. How do you interpret that?

1:09:40
Katie: He's no longer employed by Meta.

Jesse: I mean, right. It just, why would it, if, if, if he was fired for this, why wouldn't she just say so? Right.

Katie: But there could also be, I mean, it's possible he got, he quit who fucking knows.

1:10:13
Jesse: Yeah. Let's assume for the sake of argument that this is the guy, which I think he is, and that he was fired.

Jesse: News of this was posted to the front page of Kiwi Farms. A lot of Kiwi farmers were outraged that Liz Fong Jones would stoop this low, especially on Christmas and during Christmas. There was some debate among the farmers about about this, but I'm curious to get your take first. Do you think that like setting aside whatever else you think about Liz Fong Jones, dog hair, drop Kiwi farms, everything else. Do you think she did anything wrong?

1:10:47
Jesse: No. Well, expand on that.

Katie: Do I think she did anything wrong? Okay. So I do not find her to be a sympathetic figure whatsoever. I also think if you're going to post a bunch of personal information online, like if you're going to have really bad OPSEC and you're going to encourage people to, he went beyond just making fun of this woman. He actually did encourage people to get her canceled from conferences. I don't know. I don't have a lot of sympathy for him. Yeah.

1:11:18
Jesse: Yeah. So that's why like – No.

Jesse: I don't – I think he went – he was in like an online hothouse and he went a little bit crazy. I hope this doesn't – like he's got a wife and kid. I hope they're not like – he's not permanently unemployable. But if you post incredibly inflammatory stuff online about a named individual –

Jesse: I don't really think you have a right to like some sort of inalienable right to privacy, especially if you're this sloppy about it. You make it this easy to track yourself down. Now, Liz Fong Jones is a somewhat obsessive person and she happened to have money. This like, I don't know what this costs. They gave it to a paralegal. It's not like she was paying lawyer fees and it was, I think, a friend of hers. But like, I don't know. Some of the Kiwi farmers were basically like, this is a faffo, a fuck around and find out situation. We're like, this is why Kiwi Farms has that ethos of not revealing much about who you are.

1:11:51
Katie: Yeah, I think I would be more comfortable about this if she had targeted someone who was just like making fun of her online.

1:12:25
Jesse: Wait, if you're saying if you'd be more comfortable with which part of it?

Katie: I'd be more uncomfortable, like getting someone fired for just like, Jesse's fat or whatever, posting that kind of thing around. Hey, that's liable.

Katie: uh no it's not truth ultimate ultimate defense well that was that was the interesting thing is the some of the kiwi farmers did the same thing where they're like oh she got this guy fired just because he posted to kiwi farms which is not what happened right right oh i don't know i don't i don't want to be on her side but honestly like he not to blame the victim but his short his skirt was really short

Jesse: He was wearing a very short skirt, metaphorically, this whole time. I still hope to hear from him. I have that email out to him. I got the email address from Liz Fong Jones' docs. Think of him.

1:13:03
Jesse: Yeah, so that is the story. I will say Liz Fong Jones, I saw an argument between her and someone named Naomi Wu, a whole other figure. Story for another day. I can't remember if she's come up before. But basically, Liz Fong Jones. Big titties, right?

Katie: Big titties.

Jesse: Big fig titties. You said it, not me. Giant. Tiny waist. None of it's real.

Jesse: Liz Fong-Jones basically posited a distinction between doxing and unmasking. With unmasking, you're basically publicizing a user's name and city-level location, whereas doxing, you're providing their exact address.

1:13:34
Katie: Right.

Katie: If I knew who posted pictures around Seattle with pictures of my face, if I knew who that was, I would feel no fucking compunction about posting their identity online. No compunction at all. Yeah. Would you?

Jesse: This could be an interesting conversation for a later day. Okay. That is the story of Liz Fong Jones and Kiwi Farms. Katie, any questions?

Katie: No. Thanks, Jesse. Bye, everyone. Bye. Bye.