Antipodean fruit grower statement

[nothingcomestonothing]

The antipodean fruit growers site is down. A statement from the owner reads in part:

What I fear more than losing my site, being sued, or dealing with police is living in a world where [redacted by me as would be against MN talk guidelines] while normal people are not allowed to even discuss it.

The mob has already planned subsequent targets. Should we stay down, they will then attack 'gender critical' communities - especially those ran by and for women. No place can exist online which criticizes [redacted], and nothing would excite them more than this power and domination struggle being inflicted on a female space instead.

Posted for info.

I've seen KF take the piss out of feminists a bit, but they seem to respect the TERFs for standing up and fighting.

There is a dedicated terf thread on KF. And Exulansic has her own thread, as does Amy Dyess. So they're not averse to mocking women. But in my view they are mocked for doing stupid things online rather than being women, feminists, or GC.

Irreverence isn't worth much if one makes exceptions for one's faves. Kiwis take the piss out of themselves constantly. It's just against the rules to make it personal, take it personal, or get mad in general. I've written up a huge essay about this that I don't know if I'll get around to editing. The tl;dr of the source of fundamental miscommunication between Kiwi Farms and the rest of the world, is most of the world takes itself seriously and means things. Inside the farms it's just the opposite.

The words kiwis write, and their real beliefs in their personal life, are uncoupled. There's no requirement to write in accordance with your real self. They believe in the ways of the old internet, when it was understood that it was role play mixed with real, before normal people showed up to use it for seriousness. The most heart-of-the-matter example must be the n-word. It has a completely different meaning inside there than out here. In particular it is not an indicator that the writer of it is racist, and no Kiwi would ever think to interpret it that way.

Out here, badness lives inside the word itself, and/or in the hurt felt by the audience, rather than in the heart of the one who uttered it. If that's what you believe, fine; but you'll be judging them by your own moral standard which they'll never adopt in 100 years, because it's no fun. Before this whole mess, they hadn't the tiniest speck of a reason to be bothered by the optics of that or anything else.

Yeah, I think GamerGate-era "feminists" are possibly what they're thinking of.

Which is quite illustrative in its own way.

Firstly, it's not because they were "feminists", it's because they were involved in online drama. As I understand it (not really following GG that closely, and not lurking KF at the time), KF weren't really on a clear side there, but the whole thing certainly dredged up a lot of lolcows on both sides for them.

Now, the other main thing KF do is look for people who have "dirt" - which is stuff they don't want people to see that matches their online persona. So crybullies are a great source of material, and there were a fair "feminist" examples during GG - Zoe Quinn being a real headliner.

But the environment's kind of changed, hasn't it? 5-10 years ago, a media woman could get quite a lot of mileage out of accusing everyone/everything of being sexist. That's kind of old hat now. Transphobia and racism is in fashion. So you still see people, including women, crybullying their way around, but it's usually not through claiming to be "feminist" and decrying "sexism". Which is why I have no recent memory of KF "harassing feminists" - the lolcows they follow aren't really using "feminism" anymore. KF hasn't changed, but the lolcows have.

Taylor Lorenz does try to use the "sexism" thing, but it doesn't really seem to work like it used to.

most of the world takes itself seriously and means things

We tend to, but we also recognise jokes.

The problem is the Woke, who don't believe in that rule except where it suits them. Usual double standards.

The whole Woke shtick is to seek sin in others.

If someone says something polite, like JKR, they claim they can see hidden nastiness. She's not permitted to "take herself seriously and mean it". Nor are any feminists.

But if someone says something apparently rude, then they claim there can be no hidden niceness, and they're "taking themselves seriously and mean it". So that covers Jerry Sadowitz and Kiwi Farms.

Yes. They always carry a spare kafkatrap in their toolbox.

IIRC Kiwi Farms didn't touch GamerGate until they exposed Alison Rapp's double life, after she kicked the 4chan beehive on purpose. The press immediately started saying KF was a GG hub. So the Farms obliged by re-theming itself as "GamerGate Farms" for a couple of weeks. They created a fake sub-forum called GamerGate HQ and filled it with parody posts pretending to suppoort GG. In reality, they thought both sides were stupid. Zoe has one of the biggest and longest running threads because she was one of the pioneering Twitter professional victims. All the dozens of notable "support my Patreon because I have proof people were mean to me" people have threads regardless of who they are or what their story is. IMO she's just a calf. She's smart and has a lot more awareness of both her side and the side of those who were "against" her. She gave talks warning people not to demonize the gators, for example. The GG movement itself has various threads mocking it as well.

I'm kind of drifting around topics, but I've just found that it is in fact true that Taylor Lorenz has got her Twitter specifically filtered off of the Internet Archive. I thought people were kidding.

But no, "this URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine."

You cannot archive any of her tweets, or see any archives.

Totally normal, nothing to see here. (And yes, her uncle does work for them).

That's appalling.

They believe in the ways of the old internet, when it was understood that it was role play mixed with real, before normal people showed up to use it for seriousness.

I get this, I remember SA forums and plenty of others.
N-word is a step too far for me, it's - at best - tedious, but ye olde internet was great, to some extent.

I chose that example because I thought it the most extreme, and the way to get down to brass tacks. One need not find the word acceptable at all (though we already find it contextually acceptable for African Americans, and never mind the reasons for now). IMHO it is 100% valid to find the word unacceptable.

I'll also assert, just food for thought, that it is 100% invalid to insist that use of the word demonstrates racism, promotion of racism, or promotion of white supremacy. As I've said, the kiwis by and large do not use the word that way, and it's understood inside the forum. And ordinarily there's no reason to be bothered about what it looks like.

On the day that Jacques Derrida prevails at last, and every person agrees that the heart and intention do not count, that's the day I retire (the rest of the way) to the top of a mountain to eat popcorn and watch the world burn.

It's a bit disengenuous to say that words don't matter at all, and that anyone is free to use a certain word no matter if it hurts others. That's one extreme. The other is to suggest that all usages of the word are verboten.

Common sense, the middle way, everyday understanding, suggests that you don't use the 'n' word because so many people find it hurtful/offensive, and in common parlance there's no need to use it. We're not talking legalities, here - but if you want support from sensible people then deliberately 'edge lording' by using a recognisably offensive word with no good reason is going to lose you empathy and support.

Words are communication, they don't exist in a vacuum.

I'm sorry, I genuinely don't see anything of what I wrote in what you seem to have replied to. I'm not trying to be obtuse here. I suspect what I'm trying to say is an unavoidably foreign concept.

My deleted post has been reinstated, after prompting (thanks!), so if anyone wants to nip back to the previous page and read it, feel free.

It was a current status update, and a couple of serious articles Null wrote last year.

Thanks for linking these. Both were interesting. The first one really helps to explain just how difficult it's been to keep KF online. It had an air of resignation but I hope Null succeeds.

It had an air of resignation but I hope Null succeeds.

Null's ability to run the site has taken a few hits over the last few years, with no real sign of the situation improving. Lots of minor hits, and no respite from third parties, as of the time that piece was written.

But I get the impression that the sudden attention from this big assault has opened a few eyes and hence given him new leads and contacts.

One thing I've noticed with KF is the "invention of facts to justify the position I'm taking" again, like the thing about "JKR must be a bigot or people wouldn't be treating her like that."

For example, I saw someone passionately arguing on Twitter with Glenn Greenwald that what happened to KF is fine because people don't have to let you run stuff on their servers - KF should run their own servers.

Of course, KF does run their own servers. They're pretty much as self-sufficient as it's possible to be. I suspect the person making this argument wasn't knowingly lying - he just has this self-image of not supporting censorship, so he assumes the current scenario is "censorship-lite" so he can support it.

From what I've read recently Null seems to have renewed determination to keep the site up.

Good for him, I hope he succeeds.

The clearnet domains are basically fried. But he has really worked some magic with the onion site. It runs really well for me.

As long as any form of the site exists, all those screen shots and archives are still intact, available to anyone who wants to see.

Could someone please pm me the onion for Kiwi Farms or let me know where to find the address? I'm probably being stupid, so any help greatly appreciated.

This is from KF's Telegram channel but all I get is a "429 too many requests message" :
uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedzyqd.onion/

Great, thanks for the new thread.

Link to new thread:
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4632616-antipodean-fruit-growers-2-canary-in-the-internet-coal-mine

What was deleted, Bosky? Not the offending part obviously.

I think it was a link to the the KF status page on Telegram.