Speaker 1: We love your plants, Sofie, everyone loves your plant listeners.
Speaker 1: People on the internet find Sophie on Twitter and tell
Speaker 1: her you like her plant. It's a raven z eazy
Speaker 1: and it brings me so much happiness. It does. It's plant.
Speaker 1: It's a good plant. It seems very goth. It's like
Speaker 1: that song What's Something Goth? The Black Parade? That song
Speaker 1: was pretty goth right from from when when I was
Speaker 1: in high school. That seems go. Yeah, it was like that, Margaret,
Speaker 1: I'm not laughing at your choice? How you doing my choice?
Speaker 1: That was just like the one song when I think
Speaker 1: about like goth stuff from high school, that was a song.
Speaker 1: That's the only thing I remember. You know, I actually
Speaker 1: have culture. Yeah, as soon as I left high school,
Speaker 1: I did not notice a pop culture for ten years
Speaker 1: um and I was way too elite of a goth
Speaker 1: at that time to do be even listening to God
Speaker 1: from my own era. I was far more interested Sisters
Speaker 1: of Mercy. I've never even heard of that, But I
Speaker 1: was never gone. I was never into that stuff. I
Speaker 1: was just adjacent to it. Because the goth kids were
Speaker 1: also the kids you were most likely to be able
Speaker 1: to play d and D with so yes, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's how I caught. So this is Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: and we're here with Margaret Killjoy. This is a podcast
Speaker 1: about people you can play D and D with when
Speaker 1: you are in high school, like Margaret Eldritch from Sisters
Speaker 1: of Mercy. Yeah, pretty good DN D person. I wish,
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, yes, Margaret, how do you feel about like,
Speaker 1: what is the fifth edition versus I'm still a path finder?
Speaker 1: You know, path finder guy? Like I never got past
Speaker 1: three five. It gave me everything I wanted in terms
Speaker 1: of rules. I actually like five five more than three
Speaker 1: point five. I wasn't expecting that to be the case.
Speaker 1: I thought three point five felt done and then fourth
Speaker 1: edition was obviously a nightmare. And um, I started playing
Speaker 1: five E and it's my favorite Dungeons and Drag and
Speaker 1: I can elitistly claim to be playing since uh a
Speaker 1: D and D. Yeah, that was my first generation was
Speaker 1: a D and D. I do remember thack. Oh by
Speaker 1: the way, this is also again behind the Bastards and
Speaker 1: we're here. What do we? What do we? What is
Speaker 1: our what is our job? Here? Are we not talking
Speaker 1: about D and D? Not not today alright? But with
Speaker 1: what we are talking with, Margaret Coo, who who is
Speaker 1: the newest person on our network, Cool Zone Media. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's right. We have we have contractually locked you in
Speaker 1: um to producing content and entering the death spiral of
Speaker 1: content creation for podcasts. I was I was going to say,
Speaker 1: I'm really thrilled and very happy, but okay, I'm always
Speaker 1: going to call it a death spiral because it is. Um, Margaret,
Speaker 1: how are you liking the spiral? You know, all of
Speaker 1: life is a death spiral. That's right, that's right. Just
Speaker 1: you choose which spiral to to go down. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: like a water park, yeah yeah, or a toilet Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean toilets and water parks very similar in a
Speaker 1: number of ways. Um. So yeah, well we'll move on.
Speaker 1: Um Margaret, how do you feel about people being harassed
Speaker 1: by the internet until the commit suicide? Generally negative? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a bad Yeah, that's not my not my
Speaker 1: favorite thing that's ever happened. It's not. It's like it's
Speaker 1: really I think at this point everyone here has seen
Speaker 1: what happens when people come into the crosshairs of a
Speaker 1: digital hate mop, right, Like it's like a daily occurrence
Speaker 1: on the Internet now and yeah, so I think there
Speaker 1: is kind of some resilience that's been built up, like
Speaker 1: like we've all kind of been vaccinated from gamer Gates,
Speaker 1: So I think maybe people are a little more prepared
Speaker 1: for it now than they used to be. But if
Speaker 1: you remember like gamer Gate times, especially to fourteen, when
Speaker 1: these mobs started going after these women who were like
Speaker 1: video game reviewers and stuff and how like, it felt
Speaker 1: really unprecedented and it was just like this this bizarre,
Speaker 1: horrible thing that we all started to realize was going
Speaker 1: to be with us forever. Um. Yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a problem, um and it's a problem that has
Speaker 1: uh continues on. Like it's one of those things normally,
Speaker 1: like people talk pretty openly about like, oh, who's the
Speaker 1: main character on Twitter today? You know, who's being like
Speaker 1: harassed or whatever today. But there's like and that's kind
Speaker 1: of the side of it, I guess when I'm talking
Speaker 1: about like that there's been some kind of immunity built up.
Speaker 1: That's the side of it where there's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just know that like every now and then, if
Speaker 1: you have any kind of prominence on the internet, you know,
Speaker 1: you could wind up getting like yelled at or made
Speaker 1: fun of or whatever for a period of time. And
Speaker 1: that's just something, especially if you're gonna be making things
Speaker 1: for the Internet, you just accept it. Um. But even
Speaker 1: though it's gotten a little more standardized, there's this really
Speaker 1: tremendously deadly underbelly to it um. Up until June of
Speaker 1: Near was a well loved developer of emulators. Uh Near,
Speaker 1: also known as bu b y Uu, was non binary
Speaker 1: as well as autistic. These characteristics made them an ideal
Speaker 1: target of a website called Kiwi Farms. Do you know
Speaker 1: anything about Kiwi Farms, Margaret, No, This sounds like the
Speaker 1: kind of nightmare stuff that I've avoided successfully until this moment.
Speaker 1: That's a good thing to do. It's a good thing
Speaker 1: to avoid. Um. In brief, Kiwi Farms is a forum
Speaker 1: where people gather information on and harass individuals they call
Speaker 1: loll cows um. The name comes from the fact that
Speaker 1: the behavior of these people, specifically their reactions to harassment,
Speaker 1: provide an endless font of lolls, like a cow provides milk. Right,
Speaker 1: That's why they That's how they're looking at this, Like
Speaker 1: we have this like stable of people who we can
Speaker 1: kind of prod and poke intermittently to like make us laugh. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the attit. Yeah, it's yeah, it's it sounds good.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a lot of people who are doing
Speaker 1: well in life and emotionally. So one of Near's friends
Speaker 1: wrote a Google doc explaining what Kiwi Farms did to Near,
Speaker 1: who seems to have been targeted for the same reason.
Speaker 1: Predators usually picked their targets um Near. He had been
Speaker 1: abused before, Um, and they were seen as kind of
Speaker 1: vulnerable quote and this is from from one of their friends.
Speaker 1: Not to be defeated. In their pursuit of utter emotional
Speaker 1: and psychological destruction, they went after who Near treasured most
Speaker 1: their friends, doxing some directly, harassing others, and even specifically
Speaker 1: seeking out supicidal people to target. That broke Near after
Speaker 1: falling down a spiral of depression and eventually breaking off
Speaker 1: contact with everyone last year, I feared for the worst. Eventually,
Speaker 1: they were luckily able to get help and found medication
Speaker 1: that helped them cope with the psychological scarce of abuse
Speaker 1: in late I first heard from Near again in late October,
Speaker 1: and we even started having chats. It seemed things were
Speaker 1: getting better. Unfortunately, medication can be a fickle beast. It
Speaker 1: didn't work forever. The looming threat of Kiwi Farms, of
Speaker 1: their power to destroy not just Near but also their friends,
Speaker 1: caused them daily anxiety that just wouldn't go away. Worried
Speaker 1: that their friends would feel burdened by their condition again,
Speaker 1: Near decided to avoid the subject. I only found out
Speaker 1: about this relapse today. To the people of Kiwi Farms,
Speaker 1: this is a video game that people on the other
Speaker 1: side of the screen or real makes no difference that
Speaker 1: a light in the kill counter going up just like
Speaker 1: an FPS player would. Lacking any empathy, they have no
Speaker 1: regard for the damage they inflict on others. So as
Speaker 1: you might have guessed Near committed suicide in June, of
Speaker 1: Kiwi Farms did not have any anything to do with
Speaker 1: the suicide or of encouraging harassment against Near. Um it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that Near is the third person in recent
Speaker 1: years whose suicide has been blamed to some extent on
Speaker 1: relentless harassment from Kiwi Farms. So today we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about where Kiwi Farms comes from. Um, they're not
Speaker 1: the primary subject of our episode, though, we will be
Speaker 1: talking about their very first victim, and and not just
Speaker 1: their very first victim we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: the person I think is probably the first victim of
Speaker 1: concerted online harassment, like the first person that this happened
Speaker 1: to in any kind of sizeable way. Um. And that
Speaker 1: person is a I guess you'd call them an internet
Speaker 1: content creator named Chris Chan um, or at least that's
Speaker 1: the name she kind of has picked for herself, the
Speaker 1: first the first victim of like gamified abuse and cool. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you know what anything about this person? I know,
Speaker 1: I don't. I know a lot about people harassing people
Speaker 1: on the Internet and it causing real life impacts and
Speaker 1: bomb threats and docks and all that stuff. So Chris
Speaker 1: Chan is where that playbook started getting sketched out for
Speaker 1: the first time. Christian has been kind of continuously harassed
Speaker 1: for something like twenty years now. Uh it is. It
Speaker 1: has been going on a tremendously long time. And and
Speaker 1: I should note Christian is not a good person, um,
Speaker 1: and not a sympathetic person like they are to blame
Speaker 1: for not the harassment, but for a lot of the
Speaker 1: unpleasantness in their life because they've made a lot of
Speaker 1: horrible choices. UM. I should note here that recently, since
Speaker 1: about and we'll get into this. Christian identifies as Christine
Speaker 1: as well as Christian. They still use both names, um,
Speaker 1: but they identify as Christine Christina. They have transitioned. UM
Speaker 1: will be gendering her properly, even when we discuss her
Speaker 1: early life, and when I read quotes from other people
Speaker 1: talking about her, I'm going to do h my best
Speaker 1: to not miss gender her. Even when they do. We
Speaker 1: will still call her Christian as well as Christine, because again,
Speaker 1: she still identifies as Christian on social media. So I
Speaker 1: think that's fine. Um, But yeah, so UM. She was
Speaker 1: born on Christine Chandler was born on February night two
Speaker 1: at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her father, Bob,
Speaker 1: worked as an engineer at Western Electric. He was apparently
Speaker 1: a very gifted one, and he held patents for nine
Speaker 1: different inventions over the course of his career. He collected
Speaker 1: classic jazz music and stamps. Her mother, Barbara, was a
Speaker 1: secretary at Virginia p Hour. She and Bob both had
Speaker 1: estranged children from other marriages prior to getting together. Barbara
Speaker 1: is alleged to have been abusive, and we know her
Speaker 1: seventeen year old son I think emancipated himself before Christine
Speaker 1: was born. Um, Bob had two kids who are not
Speaker 1: really in his in his life. So both of these
Speaker 1: people had like we're fairly old when they had Christine, um,
Speaker 1: and had kids that they had kind of either abandoned
Speaker 1: or who had been like I don't want anything to
Speaker 1: do with you. So maybe not great parents. Probably not.
Speaker 1: I don't know everything about their circumstances, but you know,
Speaker 1: like if you have three kids off you and none
Speaker 1: of them wanted anything to do with you, that's maybe
Speaker 1: not the best side. Best side. Um, Barbara was and
Speaker 1: is she is still alive, a massive hoarder. Um. Christine's
Speaker 1: childhood was always going to be challenging. You know, this
Speaker 1: is a lot already we've discussed a significant amount to
Speaker 1: kind of go into as a baby. Um. At one point,
Speaker 1: Bob built a workshop for him and his to make
Speaker 1: things in together. He was very excited about, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna we're gonna have all these projects together.
Speaker 1: And they never got to use it because Barbara just
Speaker 1: like filled it up with junk. She just is this
Speaker 1: kind of like that kind of breaks my heart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: father daughter crafting time. Yeah Yeah, but but Barbara just
Speaker 1: like can't not collect ship um, which is a thing
Speaker 1: that Christine will inherit um inherent maybe the wrong word,
Speaker 1: but we'll wind up doing as well, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: Christine claimed years later that she spoke her first word
Speaker 1: monkey at two months old, which is likely not possible.
Speaker 1: She lies a lot about things, you know, she makes
Speaker 1: up a lot of stuff. Um, I don't think kids
Speaker 1: can say, uh, speak at that at that earliest date.
Speaker 1: And I've known a couple of two month olds and sure,
Speaker 1: and they're so familiar with the concept of monkey that
Speaker 1: also they can random noises. Yeah, they like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in child speech development, but well
Speaker 1: I am, And no I'm not. Well that's your previous
Speaker 1: job before this. Yeah, I'm an expert at ship talking
Speaker 1: little kids because they can't talk back, they don't know
Speaker 1: how to talk. It's real easy. Does that mean you
Speaker 1: use up your one lie on them? Like right away? Yeah,
Speaker 1: immediately immediately, But you just have to keep it going
Speaker 1: for the rest of your life. I did have. I
Speaker 1: had a person who I'm very close to, their uncle.
Speaker 1: The lie that he told her was that Star Trek
Speaker 1: the next generation was real m she was like six
Speaker 1: and then yeah, which is a nice lie. I think
Speaker 1: if you get to believe for a while that all
Speaker 1: those people are really up there, that's not a mean one.
Speaker 1: I actually might prefer that to Santa Claus. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just like the little kids the start that the starship
Speaker 1: enterprises out there, and then at age ten you sit
Speaker 1: them down and tell them that there's no joy in
Speaker 1: the world, and yeah, they have to they have to.
Speaker 1: There's no replicators. Yeah, there's nothing sorry, um that would
Speaker 1: break kids in an interesting new way. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what we need more of. Yeah, well you gotta break
Speaker 1: them some way, right, That's what we do to kids,
Speaker 1: do you That's what we do. Therefore, apparently, Sophie, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't have kids, because it seems like
Speaker 1: it's easy to funk that up. Um so um. Speaking
Speaker 1: of which, back to our story of Christine Chandler um so.
Speaker 1: Christine says that after speaking her first word at two
Speaker 1: months old, she did not say another word for six years. Um.
Speaker 1: She does have autism. The medical papers are available online
Speaker 1: a ton of her She has posted a ton of
Speaker 1: like her papers. But she gets into these like online
Speaker 1: arguments and we'll like post things to prove stuff she's saying,
Speaker 1: so that that is this is not a case of
Speaker 1: like a self diagnosis to someone who has like a
Speaker 1: medical diagnosis, and that part is credible. The idea that
Speaker 1: maybe she didn't say anything until she was six. It
Speaker 1: is not uncommon for people with autism to have kind
Speaker 1: of a delay of like when they start speaking, when
Speaker 1: they're kind of language abilities come in and stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: that's that's not an uncommon thing. Um. Now, obviously we're
Speaker 1: not particularly good as a society at taking care of
Speaker 1: autistic children now, um or any children, but particularly children
Speaker 1: with autism. UM in the mid nineteen eighties were the
Speaker 1: fucking wild West for that, Like, it was just an
Speaker 1: incredibly brutal time to to be a kid with autism.
Speaker 1: It was not even added to the d s M
Speaker 1: until nineteen eighty. It was not until nineteen eight seven
Speaker 1: that the diagnostic criteria was expanded to allow a diagnosis
Speaker 1: if symptoms became apparent after thirty months of age, and
Speaker 1: most kids are over two years old when they are diagnosed.
Speaker 1: So a lot of yeah, funked up stuff kids are
Speaker 1: dealing with who are born around the time that Christina
Speaker 1: is now The papers that we have showing a diagnosis
Speaker 1: for her are from two thousand four. She claims to
Speaker 1: have been diagnosed for the first time at around age
Speaker 1: five or six. If so, this would have happened right
Speaker 1: around the earliest time that such a diagnosis would have
Speaker 1: been possible. Christine claims the doctor who diagnosed her was
Speaker 1: a speech therapist at James Madison University. This doctor told
Speaker 1: her parents she had high functioning, which is not a
Speaker 1: term we use anymore autism uh, and would never make
Speaker 1: it to high school or even be able to write
Speaker 1: her own name. And of course Christine went on to
Speaker 1: do both of these things. I don't know how accurate
Speaker 1: that is, but it's certainly not out of line with
Speaker 1: other stories you hear from kids who were, you know,
Speaker 1: going through the education system with this at the same time. So,
Speaker 1: when Christine was very young, she was placed alone with
Speaker 1: a babysitter she describes as abusive UM. The specific abuse
Speaker 1: she discusses as being locked in her toy room after
Speaker 1: having all of the lights turned off. UM. As an adult,
Speaker 1: she consistently describes this experience as traumatic. Her parents continued
Speaker 1: to use the babysitter after this point. UM. Christine believed
Speaker 1: this is what gave her autism, which obviously is not
Speaker 1: the case. Um, but I believe she had some traumatic
Speaker 1: experiences with an adult's locking her away, you know, and
Speaker 1: and stuff. Um. So in nineteen ninety to nineteen one
Speaker 1: school year, Christine's parents pulled her out of class for
Speaker 1: unknown reasons. She claims now that she was forcibly restrained
Speaker 1: by the school principle in a quasi sexual manner. She
Speaker 1: also claims the principle was homosexual and that this is
Speaker 1: what inspired Christine's decades long homophobia. Um, it is unclear
Speaker 1: exactly what happened here. Um. Christine is very Christian and
Speaker 1: very has been was for most of the time she
Speaker 1: was people knew anything about her. Incredibly bigoted against gay people.
Speaker 1: So hard to say if this is like what happened
Speaker 1: here exactly. But there was apparently a court case over
Speaker 1: the matter. However, the actual court case that we have
Speaker 1: documentation on was not based in any sort of assault
Speaker 1: and was instead the county trying to have Christine sent
Speaker 1: to a special school. So some of what she's saying
Speaker 1: may have just been resentment over this whole things she
Speaker 1: was going through with the school. It is very hard
Speaker 1: to say, Um, Christine was homeschooled during the fifth grade
Speaker 1: because of all of this whatever actually happened, she was
Speaker 1: being homeschooled for a year. Um. The family eventually left
Speaker 1: their hometown and relocated to Richmond over this issue. In
Speaker 1: when Christine was eleven, she entered a Sonic the Hedgehog
Speaker 1: contest at KB Toys and won a shopping spree. Local
Speaker 1: news coverage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's actually video footage of Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that when I was eleven, I
Speaker 1: probably would have made up that I had done. No, no,
Speaker 1: we know this happened. Yeah, and there was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's every I mean, who wouldn't have wanted a KB
Speaker 1: Toy shopping spree like and have one Sonic the Hedgehog
Speaker 1: and and have Yeah, I want a Sonic the Hedgehog contest,
Speaker 1: the coolest kind of contest. Yeah, there's video this that's awesome.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately the videos mostly like it's mostly people making
Speaker 1: fun of her because she's you know, kind like an awkward,
Speaker 1: nerdy kid winning a contest and very excited and very happy.
Speaker 1: But she's clearly overjoyed in the footage, which is which
Speaker 1: is great. It's nice to know she had a nice
Speaker 1: moment in her life. This seems to have sparked a
Speaker 1: lifelong fascination with Sonic the Hedgehog. She will be obsessed
Speaker 1: with Sonic for the rest of her life up to
Speaker 1: the present day, to a degree that becomes very problematic. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think it's I'm gonna find out later, aren't I. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not great. It's not great. I think maybe
Speaker 1: it has something to do with the fact that, like,
Speaker 1: in a really difficult and largely unpleasant childhood, this is
Speaker 1: like a shining moment for her, and so she kind
Speaker 1: of latches on to this. Yeah, it's pretty bleak, Margaret,
Speaker 1: there's not gonna be a lot of happy moments. Kind
Speaker 1: of heartbreaking because she's a very easy self insert character.
Speaker 1: Oh god, at this point, she's nothing but a kid
Speaker 1: who's been unfairly harmed by every single person who should
Speaker 1: be taking care of her. Yeah. Yeah, Um it's pretty bad. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad. So in middle school, Uh, this will
Speaker 1: be the least surprising thing we say today, Christine had
Speaker 1: difficulty with bullies. Um yeah, not not super surprising. And
Speaker 1: it was you know that she has, for I think
Speaker 1: understandable reasons a really really really aggressive temper, and the
Speaker 1: particular way that kids would funk with her was by
Speaker 1: setting her off so that she would have these kind
Speaker 1: of emotional explosions and then she would get in trouble. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I think if we haven't been that person
Speaker 1: in our childhoods, we knew a couple of kids who
Speaker 1: were dealing with versions of that. The only kid who
Speaker 1: was worse bullied than me, It was the one that
Speaker 1: you could set off like that. You know. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you either like react that way to try to scare
Speaker 1: people off, or you develop the ability to just kind
Speaker 1: of turtle up and pretend you're not affected by it
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah. Um. And and Christine, you know, is
Speaker 1: the explode of type. She did have a very good
Speaker 1: teacher during this time who actually understood her and was
Speaker 1: able to help her get along in class with other kids.
Speaker 1: When she graduated middle school, this teacher wrote her a
Speaker 1: note and again the note like Christine posts the note
Speaker 1: later like this is the thing that we like. You
Speaker 1: can see it, um, And the note says, quote, the
Speaker 1: most important parting words I can leave you with well
Speaker 1: are to always remember this. You show people where your
Speaker 1: weak points are located. Then they will know how to
Speaker 1: push your button. If you never show them, they will
Speaker 1: never know. That's this teacher's advice, which I can't say
Speaker 1: is bad advice. Um no, yeah, you gotta be like
Speaker 1: next level to like. Um, I wouldn't have been able
Speaker 1: to do as a teenager. But you know, my favorite
Speaker 1: trick is pretending to show people where my weak spots
Speaker 1: are and then just being like, just kidding, I'm completely intouchable.
Speaker 1: Fuck you. Yeah, but that doesn't like showing your belly
Speaker 1: doesn't work in middle school. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Speaker 1: All of the anti bullying advice I ever got was
Speaker 1: entirely garbage. I I have. I have literally never heard
Speaker 1: good advice for kids of that age on how to
Speaker 1: deal with bullying, and I don't think it exists. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the only actual thing to do is stop
Speaker 1: kids from bullying. Yeah yeah, kind of on everyone but
Speaker 1: the child in that situation to figure out how to
Speaker 1: deal with it. Yeah. Um, I don't know. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know who doesn't bully? I don't feel confident answering this
Speaker 1: right now, am I not? I mean, I mean, you can,
Speaker 1: but I'm just horrible transition. Look when kidnaps children and
Speaker 1: puts them on an island off the coast of Indonesia
Speaker 1: to be hunted by the global one percent. I say,
Speaker 1: bullying gets censored. Yeah, I mean maybe we're we're kind
Speaker 1: of like half and half on it. Oh no, I'm
Speaker 1: saying that get censor when I yeah, absolutely, yeah, we
Speaker 1: can bleep him this time. Yeah. So obviously it's not
Speaker 1: bullying to hunt children for sport on an island off
Speaker 1: the coast of Indonesia. That's just you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like it's not bullying to hunt a deer. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just well, if you're hunting children for food, I
Speaker 1: feel like there's a different set of ethics there. I mean,
Speaker 1: elon musk is definitely like a use every part of
Speaker 1: of of the child that you hunt with a bow
Speaker 1: of Probably it's like, I take it back, hunting for
Speaker 1: sport is better. Yeah, just be evil, Just admit your evil.
Speaker 1: It's better. Yeah. Speaking of admitting, no, I mean just like, ah,
Speaker 1: we're back, boy, howdy. Lots of good stuff has happen,
Speaker 1: name good, real real bad stuff. This is this is
Speaker 1: I think this is. I would not go into detail
Speaker 1: about someone experiencing something like this if it was not
Speaker 1: kind of necessary for understanding the whole story of like
Speaker 1: why they become the person that this architecture of harassment
Speaker 1: gets built around. Um. And so unfortunately it is kind
Speaker 1: of necessary, although it is quite bleak. UM. Part of
Speaker 1: why I feel a little better about saying it is
Speaker 1: that we know most of this because Christine has like
Speaker 1: repeatedly posted it and discussed it and like provided original documents. Um.
Speaker 1: So this is which is going exactly against the teacher's advice.
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah they be. She does not take one
Speaker 1: one bit of this advice. Um, which you know anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Christine had a number of female friends as a child.
Speaker 1: Uh some of them were subtly abusive. Um. One early
Speaker 1: friend who lived nearby convinced her to crawl under the
Speaker 1: house into a heating duct and then locked her inside. Um.
Speaker 1: Because Christine, again this is pre transition and stuff, and
Speaker 1: is she's really desperate to be like to have like
Speaker 1: a girlfriend basically, um, to date or to be one
Speaker 1: of the girls I think to date to date, because
Speaker 1: I mean maybe there is some of that, Like it's
Speaker 1: I'll say that as a as a trans girl who
Speaker 1: dates mostly mostly women. It's blurry, Yeah, the desire to
Speaker 1: be one of the girls and to date the girls
Speaker 1: is all confused up. Yeah, and I think at this
Speaker 1: period it is really blurry, because she definitely really takes
Speaker 1: a lot of particular joy in hanging out with like
Speaker 1: groups of girls at the school. And some of it's
Speaker 1: also probably just that, like they're less likely to the
Speaker 1: extent that they make fun of her or harass her.
Speaker 1: It's like not obvious in the way that like when
Speaker 1: boys do it, like she knows what's being done. It's
Speaker 1: clear that someone's attacking her. And I guess if you
Speaker 1: don't know that people are like making fun of you,
Speaker 1: that's a more pleasant situation than knowing. Yeah, until you
Speaker 1: find out, right, like until the kid, until you get
Speaker 1: locked in a heating duct. Yeah, it's very sad. Um.
Speaker 1: She revealed later that she had another female friend who
Speaker 1: her father paid to hang out with her in order
Speaker 1: to make her look normal. Um, which is boy again
Speaker 1: Parents of the Year here, like tried. Yeah, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not how he should have tried. It's not how he
Speaker 1: should have tried. I don't know, Like it's it's he
Speaker 1: seems like he's kind of like a weird engineering dude
Speaker 1: who was not at all prepared to have a kid
Speaker 1: with the kind of needs that Christine had. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess he tried. He tried to solve it like
Speaker 1: an engineering problem. Yeah. Yeah. Um that said, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of kind of mockery, but I think
Speaker 1: it does seem like Christine had actual friends, um, who
Speaker 1: she called her Gallo pals, and some of them did
Speaker 1: care about her. Um. And I think there were there
Speaker 1: were some who kind of recognized that she's being victimized
Speaker 1: and wanted to provide her with some support. UM. So
Speaker 1: in high school she does kind of build a little
Speaker 1: community for herself. UM. It was in high school that
Speaker 1: that Christine started developing an increasingly elaborate fantasy world. This
Speaker 1: started with a school project where she had to create
Speaker 1: cartoon characters for a story. The characters couldn't be copyrighted,
Speaker 1: so she merged some of her favorite characters together, creating
Speaker 1: a mix of Sonic and Pikachu called sona Chew. She
Speaker 1: fell in love with this character and started incorporating it
Speaker 1: into a variety of cartoon art that she seemed to
Speaker 1: create almost like kind of compulsively. Um. Christine graduated around
Speaker 1: two thousand and this seems to have been the beginning
Speaker 1: of a long downward slide for her. The group of
Speaker 1: friends she'd made in high school went their separate ways.
Speaker 1: Christine went to a local community college and started studying,
Speaker 1: but she grew increasingly lonely and aware of the fact
Speaker 1: that other people were partnering off. In her idiosyncratic diction,
Speaker 1: Chris calls this her love quest dedicated to finding a sweetheart.
Speaker 1: As she started flirting with women, she found out that
Speaker 1: they all had boyfriends. As a result, Christine became obsessed
Speaker 1: with what she called the quote infinitely high boyfriend factor.
Speaker 1: She grew terrified of being confronted by the boyfriends of
Speaker 1: girls that she flirted with, and decided to instead create
Speaker 1: a special method to flirt only with boyfriend free girls.
Speaker 1: This is like the addiction she uses to discuss this.
Speaker 1: The end result of this idea was a sign that
Speaker 1: Christine created and would carry out in public that said,
Speaker 1: I am a twenty one year old single male seeking
Speaker 1: an eighteen to twenty one year old single female companion.
Speaker 1: This is like a sign that she will walk around
Speaker 1: with it like school and stuff. Um other Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's an interesting call. Other variations of the sign read
Speaker 1: I am seeking a boyfriend free girl. Um, and you
Speaker 1: get like the logic here, like she doesn't want to
Speaker 1: upset anybody, but she's very, very lonely, and so in
Speaker 1: her mind, this is the logical way to go about
Speaker 1: doing that. Right. Yeah, I wish better dating advice had
Speaker 1: been made available to her. Yeah, I do. You also
Speaker 1: have to wonder if like online dating had existed more
Speaker 1: in its present form, would maybe that have been a
Speaker 1: little easier or would people have just like picked out
Speaker 1: her profile and made fun of it on Twitter? Probably
Speaker 1: the ladder? Um. God, I'm like, I'm trying to figure
Speaker 1: out that, Like, is it better that I got my
Speaker 1: youth over with before the internet or is it definitely
Speaker 1: definitely the Internet's a nightmare. Um. Christian would sit and
Speaker 1: that she starts going increasingly by. Christian in this period
Speaker 1: of time would sit around holding or standing or stand
Speaker 1: aund holding the sign on her college campus, which did
Speaker 1: not go over well. The dean ordered her to stop
Speaker 1: doing this. Uh. She considered this behavior technically soliciting sex,
Speaker 1: which I guess it kind of is, I mean, like
Speaker 1: not in that way. Yeah, Like yeah, I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: it's definitely weird. I can't say that it's like inherently
Speaker 1: any more harmful than like the other waste people flirt
Speaker 1: on college campuses. No, it's substantially bigger than most of
Speaker 1: the things that romance and sex on college campuses. It's
Speaker 1: not the worst way people are going about doing this
Speaker 1: thing within the context of a community college. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: this was like a rom com movie, she would be
Speaker 1: a side character and then she'd feel the other really
Speaker 1: nerdy girl and it would be another kid with a sign,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it would be perfect. And that's the end.
Speaker 1: Nothing bad happens from here on, and that's the end
Speaker 1: of the show. So it's thanks for coming on and
Speaker 1: happily ever after. That's the name of the show, right, yep.
Speaker 1: This is the story of a weird person who everything
Speaker 1: ended well for to behind the basically nice weird people.
Speaker 1: Um a podcast that shouldn't exist. Um. So, after the
Speaker 1: Dean shuts down her her love quest, Christine becomes obsessed
Speaker 1: with the Dean, whose name is Mary Lee Walsh, and
Speaker 1: starts writing the Dean into an increasingly elaborate comics as
Speaker 1: the Bad Guys. Christine slandered the Dean via an animated
Speaker 1: newsletter she distributed and was eventually expelled for a year. Um,
Speaker 1: and this it's like when I say this, like a
Speaker 1: lot of it's like weird and violent stuff happening to
Speaker 1: this character, to this this Dean character who has the
Speaker 1: exact name of the real Dean is like really specifically
Speaker 1: violent stuff. Um. So you know, maybe don't email that
Speaker 1: to random people at your college because Columbine happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is post Columbine, so yeah this. Yeah, people are
Speaker 1: people are not like chill about that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. Um So Christine graduates uh in two
Speaker 1: dozen six with an associates degree. She was briefly employed
Speaker 1: by a Wendy's for like three months, but could not
Speaker 1: get along with her manager or co workers, so she
Speaker 1: fell increasingly further into her fantasy world, building an elaborate
Speaker 1: fantasy city named after her initials, which C W C.
Speaker 1: Bill or Quickville is usually how she'll pronounce it. And
Speaker 1: she put starts putting like these drawings and stories on
Speaker 1: her MySpace and her personal website. In October of two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, one user of the Something Awful forums brought
Speaker 1: up Christine Christian at this point do during a thread
Speaker 1: about a separate online creator. Um During this time, goons
Speaker 1: would regularly find people making things online who are like
Speaker 1: weird or the stuff they're making is funny, bad, and
Speaker 1: then we're just like put up threads to marvel at it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was mean and mockering. Sometimes it was like
Speaker 1: legitimately like amazed and fascinated. Um. You can see both
Speaker 1: in the original thread, with people discovering Christian's peculiar art
Speaker 1: style and her bizarre way of phrasing things. In short order,
Speaker 1: a new thread was made by a goon who lived
Speaker 1: in Charlottesville and claimed to have seen her around. Quote.
Speaker 1: This person used to leave business cards at my school's library,
Speaker 1: where they would hang out for hours looking for a boyfriend,
Speaker 1: free girl. This is how I first learned of them.
Speaker 1: From here, I developed something of it. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: this is the point, right, Well, that's the thing that
Speaker 1: that's what people start being fascinated because it's so bizarre
Speaker 1: and like the ways of the idiosyncratic way she phrases
Speaker 1: things is just so like you kind of have to
Speaker 1: pay attention. It's just like so what um, And it's
Speaker 1: like not there's a mix of like just people being
Speaker 1: mean and people just marveling at like well that's weird,
Speaker 1: you know, And this is a different time in the internet.
Speaker 1: When you start making fun of someone or or even
Speaker 1: just like common marveling at somebody on a website. The
Speaker 1: idea is not that this is going to like bleed
Speaker 1: into the real world, right right, everyone knows that. Now
Speaker 1: this is two thousand seven, So people are just like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's this website where when we see something different, we
Speaker 1: like post it to be like, well, what's going on here?
Speaker 1: You know? Um, some of it's mean spirited, but it's
Speaker 1: not all means spirited. Um. So yeah, to continue that quote,
Speaker 1: this is how I first learned of them. From here,
Speaker 1: I developed something of an obsession, culminating last summer when
Speaker 1: I made a special trip to a gaming store and
Speaker 1: local hangout where they would had posted they would be
Speaker 1: they were every bit as and then they used an
Speaker 1: offensive slur for autistic people, as I had imagined. Um. So,
Speaker 1: this is what's interesting about this is that this is
Speaker 1: kind of the first piece of evidence you have, and
Speaker 1: one of the first ones I remember from that period
Speaker 1: of time of someone not just being like, oh, look
Speaker 1: at this weird person that we're like talking about on
Speaker 1: the internet, like going to see them exactly exactly. That's
Speaker 1: that's an escalation, right, It's it's like it's like a
Speaker 1: huge violation. It's disgusting. Yeah, it's it's like a it's
Speaker 1: a whole thing. Um that this is This is like
Speaker 1: the first sign we get of like where things are
Speaker 1: gonna go for the Internet. So goons which is what
Speaker 1: you call people on the forum this time. Um quickly
Speaker 1: fell in love with Christine, particularly the music videos that
Speaker 1: she had posted for a perrapa the Wrapper Contest, which
Speaker 1: is a rap video games. So she doesn't post a
Speaker 1: video where she's doing a rap and people make fun
Speaker 1: of it, right. Um. By this point, most of her
Speaker 1: comics focused around her quest for a boyfriend, free girl,
Speaker 1: and included strange and unintentionally revealing sexual fantasies, along with
Speaker 1: lines like these as the sign off on her website, enjoy,
Speaker 1: learn and stay straight and then in all caps, I
Speaker 1: am serious she isn't like huh gay people? Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: character for everything else that's happening about her life. M
Speaker 1: hm that she's like deeply homophobic. Um yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: she's you know, raised by these arch boomers. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: no totally. And it was like and has decided to
Speaker 1: blame homosexuality for some of the trauma or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: just it's just so interesting because like, other than that thing,
Speaker 1: you're you're sort of describing my friend group in high school. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like people deeply weird who fall into their
Speaker 1: own fantasy worlds and kind of interesting stuff. And sometimes
Speaker 1: it's really cringe e and sometimes it's really awesome, and
Speaker 1: sometimes you can't tell which of the two is happening.
Speaker 1: And yeah, but I was definitely a weird kid who
Speaker 1: drew a lot of comics in high school. Yeah, um yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like there's again, everything about her is just like one
Speaker 1: degree kind of off from a million other people, and
Speaker 1: as a result, she winds up being a spectacle for
Speaker 1: the internet, you know. Um so goons quickly latched onto
Speaker 1: the fact that Christine had lost a PlayStation rapping contest
Speaker 1: and made a fake winner page for herself on the website,
Speaker 1: along with a somewhat unhinged rant about the injustice of
Speaker 1: the fact that they were the real winner or and
Speaker 1: like so she calls the real winner the x winner
Speaker 1: um and accuses her of violating rules that existed only
Speaker 1: in her own head um. She also mentioned going through
Speaker 1: quote lonesome depression. Um and some goons in these original
Speaker 1: threads did make a note of the fact that she
Speaker 1: was dealing with some serious mental health issues. One user
Speaker 1: called Jocomo posted, I understand that Mary Lee Walsh was
Speaker 1: some sort of administrator at the community college she attended,
Speaker 1: and that she had her expelled, But what was it
Speaker 1: she did to cause that? Also? Does anyone else think
Speaker 1: that a no contact order might be a good thing
Speaker 1: for her to have? I don't want any be a
Speaker 1: person who says, oh, ship, she drew a picture, lock
Speaker 1: her up. But she does seem to have a pretty
Speaker 1: focused animus towards her sustained over a period of time.
Speaker 1: She seemed to have a hard time letting go. If
Speaker 1: she sees herself as unfairly thwarted, maybe she will stick
Speaker 1: with making silly videos and comics for revenge, which is
Speaker 1: like not an unreasonable like the degree of obsession over
Speaker 1: this person not an unreasonable like fear to have UM
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's it's worth noting that, like if someone
Speaker 1: were on the internet doing this stuff, if you just
Speaker 1: like suddenly became aware of someone posting and saying a
Speaker 1: lot of the same things that Chris Channon was posting
Speaker 1: this period today, you would think they were like in
Speaker 1: sel Adjason, Right, there's a lot of violent fantasies about
Speaker 1: harm coming to her enemies. There's a lot of obsession
Speaker 1: with sex. Yeah it is, yeah, and it is um,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't a thing back then. Again, it's like
Speaker 1: two seven or so, and this is the only example
Speaker 1: of that concern that I found. UM. Other posters did
Speaker 1: note that Christine engaged in some semi stockery behavior, and
Speaker 1: this is from someone who apparently lived in the area. No,
Speaker 1: I think they just went to the beau. She's she's show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: both sides of this are stalkers so far. Sure, this
Speaker 1: is someone who just says that, Like I have seen
Speaker 1: her around campus. I thought she was just I just
Speaker 1: thought she was in an anime club or something. I
Speaker 1: never saw her with signs. I learned a lot more
Speaker 1: about her when she messaged my sister on my Space
Speaker 1: and invited her out for a soda. She she declined,
Speaker 1: and she became increasingly more harassed towards her until she
Speaker 1: walked her. So, yeah, you know, that's that's where this
Speaker 1: story is going. That's right. Yeah, just be less creepy
Speaker 1: and you'll do much better. That's my dating advice to one.
Speaker 1: Lame listeners speaking of advice that like never helps anybody
Speaker 1: be less creepy doesn't seem to work much either. Yeah, okay, fine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think honestly, I think both with dealing with bullies
Speaker 1: and not being creepy, the best thing that works is
Speaker 1: having good role models, like people that you admire, who
Speaker 1: like are better at handling those situations than you, that
Speaker 1: you then like can see like, oh that's a better
Speaker 1: way to do things than the way my brain is
Speaker 1: telling me to do things, and then you become a
Speaker 1: better person. No, that's true. That's part of cognit behavioral
Speaker 1: therapy actually is modeling. Yeah, that's so, that's what everyone
Speaker 1: that will solve all problems figure that out. No, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna crowdfund thing where we do just that and ignore
Speaker 1: all other possibilities for dealing with these problems, because that's
Speaker 1: how we solve problem. It is it is actually a
Speaker 1: good solution. I'm not trying to minimize that. I'm just ye,
Speaker 1: all of these things are. Like, I do think part
Speaker 1: of why she's having so much trouble is that her
Speaker 1: parents seem to be completely withdrawn from the world Um,
Speaker 1: you know, her dad is retired pretty early on in
Speaker 1: her life. Her mom is this like quarter who hides
Speaker 1: at home. I don't think she gets any kind of
Speaker 1: adult modeling of like how to be in the world. Yeah. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone. I don't think she has anyone
Speaker 1: who like she can look at and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is like how you deal with a conflict, Like
Speaker 1: this is how you negotiate, like when you're having a
Speaker 1: disagreement with a person, you know, this is how you
Speaker 1: approach someone that you're interested in in a way that's
Speaker 1: like not threatening or or kind of harassing. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't think that exists for her at all, which doesn't
Speaker 1: excuse the fact that she is now stalking people and
Speaker 1: doing something like really gross ship. But it's also it's
Speaker 1: hard to see how this person could have easily learned
Speaker 1: like good ways to deal with stuff either. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: when your friends are in high school, you're all making
Speaker 1: terrible decisions and doing things terribly. But if you stay
Speaker 1: friends with them, then at some point you can be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's how you date. Yeah, you know. Yeah. And also
Speaker 1: I think if you're like everyone's going to be a
Speaker 1: shitty person at a certain point in their life because
Speaker 1: it's hard to be a person who's not shitty. It's
Speaker 1: a learning process for all of us. And I think
Speaker 1: the fact that Christine is going through these learning processes
Speaker 1: and posting everything that she is experiencing online and it
Speaker 1: is increasingly being consumed by people who are now obsessed
Speaker 1: with her, makes it kind of impossible for her to
Speaker 1: change in positive ways. Speaking of death spirals, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking of death spirals. So the thing that commenters and
Speaker 1: it's it's just something awful right now that's kind of
Speaker 1: obsessed with there. But the thing commenters are particularly delighted
Speaker 1: by is her Sauna Chuw medallion. This is like a
Speaker 1: medallion she's made out of some sort of like it's
Speaker 1: one of those kind of platoes that you can like
Speaker 1: fire in an oven to actually harden it. She makes
Speaker 1: like a medallion shape like the yeah sculpe something like that.
Speaker 1: She makes a medallion shaped like the face of this
Speaker 1: cartoon character she's created, and she wears it everywhere, um
Speaker 1: generally while dressed is ash catch them from Pokemon, Like
Speaker 1: she's like wearing specifically that outfit like the striped shirt
Speaker 1: and everything. Um, so goons are endlessly entertained by this
Speaker 1: um and they also find her MySpace page, which is
Speaker 1: filled with injuries like this. To those who are reading
Speaker 1: this today, I was at the new Target store across
Speaker 1: from Forest Lakes, just hanging around, not bothering anyone, and
Speaker 1: from out of the blue, these two jerks asked me
Speaker 1: to leave because they said that I was loitering. I
Speaker 1: was not. I was there hoping to find an eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty three year old boyfriend free girl like I
Speaker 1: usually do. That is that is loitering. I'm pro loitering,
Speaker 1: but that is definitely loitery. Yeah. Then, from out of
Speaker 1: the blue, after I told them off, they came back
Speaker 1: with two cops. I was slightly intimidated, but mostly annoyed
Speaker 1: and ready to strike back on them. They asked me
Speaker 1: to leave and never return. I did not want to leave.
Speaker 1: I would have left peacefully. In fact, I was ready
Speaker 1: to go, but I had one thing to say to them,
Speaker 1: and during the middle of my speech, they chased me,
Speaker 1: pulled my pants, and pinned me to the floor. As
Speaker 1: I struggled, they handcuffed my wrists and legs, and they
Speaker 1: hog tied me. Not only did I feel humiliated from
Speaker 1: being the victim, but I was angry at them not
Speaker 1: only for handcuffing me, but for once again thwarting my
Speaker 1: efforts and trying to find a boyfriend free girl. They
Speaker 1: drove me to the county jail, but fortunately they did
Speaker 1: not keep me there. I was released to my family. UM,
Speaker 1: so I gotta admit that's yeah, heartbreaking. Fuck the cops, uh,
Speaker 1: definitely not making the situation better. Um, And I should
Speaker 1: note that I have edited this slightly, like, for example,
Speaker 1: she never says cops, she calls them jerk ops. But
Speaker 1: and she has like different little terms like this for
Speaker 1: for people that she dislikes. If you read it all
Speaker 1: this way without being completely up to date on your
Speaker 1: your Christian lore, it it sounds like nonsense. So I'm
Speaker 1: I'm altering it somewhat for this to be understandable. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a blique story, right. Yeah. Like, obviously a discussion
Speaker 1: should be had about when it is appropriate to walk
Speaker 1: around asking random people if to have the boy boyfriend
Speaker 1: free girls. Yeah, Like that's certainly not ideal behavior. But
Speaker 1: I think being tackled and hog tied is not going
Speaker 1: to make that situation any better, because she would have
Speaker 1: left like she's Yeah, based on the way that her
Speaker 1: mental state was working, she just had to call them
Speaker 1: jerk cops probably first. And yeah, she had to like
Speaker 1: say some ship because she's that's kind of what's going
Speaker 1: on with her. But of course their cops, so obviously
Speaker 1: they use egregiously excessive force on a mentally ill person. Um. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you know who isn't a cop unless it's the Washington
Speaker 1: State Highway Patrol again advertising on the show, in which case,
Speaker 1: definitely cops. Definitely. Do you think they do it ironically?
Speaker 1: Do you think that they're just like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: they're spending money much what they get so much of it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really weird. Um, just like hate. Yeah, here's
Speaker 1: the Washington State Highway Patrol to tell you how to
Speaker 1: bully people who can't fight back. Ah. That was some
Speaker 1: great tips from the Washington State Highway Patrol on how
Speaker 1: to be brutally cruel to people who don't have the
Speaker 1: ability to fight back. I love it, do you no?
Speaker 1: What do you? It was probably just adds for other
Speaker 1: podcasts well, like the newest show on our network, the
Speaker 1: Washington State Highway Patrol cast. That's why that's actually a week.
Speaker 1: That's Margaret's podcast. It's It's It's every week a new
Speaker 1: Washington State Highway Patrol officer talks about their job while
Speaker 1: Margaret tells them inly elaborate ways they can flee themselves
Speaker 1: off the top of a building. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I can't even take this bit seriously because it's because
Speaker 1: they suck so much. Listen to her. It could happen
Speaker 1: your episode on the Washington stoop Roll, or are like
Speaker 1: three episodes on the Chicago pet or the two behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards as we did on Border Patrol. All we're
Speaker 1: saying is that every city in America you could you
Speaker 1: could dedicate weeks and weeks and content and not at
Speaker 1: the bottom. Yeah, every city in America has a bunch
Speaker 1: of dudes with guns who would see a kind of
Speaker 1: weird kid with a sign and a medallion that they
Speaker 1: clearly made themselves and decide hog tying is the right
Speaker 1: answer to this this problem. Um so yeah, obviously something
Speaker 1: awful in two thousand seven. Compassion is not at the
Speaker 1: top of anyone's list. And when people start finding this
Speaker 1: stuff out reading these stories, there's this kind of like
Speaker 1: awe at her peculiarities. In particularly her quest for a
Speaker 1: boyfriend free girl. On my Space, Christian wrote in detail
Speaker 1: about her desire to find a quote soulmatee slash soul
Speaker 1: lover slash mother of future daughter UM who she would
Speaker 1: name Crystal. Christine's requirements for her girlfriend were specific and
Speaker 1: deeply offensive, stating that she must be white or sometimes
Speaker 1: white bodied, and normal sized to thin. Real ugly women
Speaker 1: need not apply, nor should the quote low functionally mentally
Speaker 1: handicapped or autistic people, although quote I myself am high
Speaker 1: functionally autistic. But that's beside the point. Definitely beside the point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there goes my like shred of she's not a
Speaker 1: good person. Um. She does fall into my category of like, well,
Speaker 1: how could she have been much better than this? Um?
Speaker 1: But not a just I think there's a lot of blame.
Speaker 1: She has to be hearing this from her dad and
Speaker 1: her mom right, Like. I don't think she would have
Speaker 1: picked up from fucking Sonic video games saying ship like
Speaker 1: this about people who aren't you know, because you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be blue in that game. I think there's gotta
Speaker 1: be a lot of racism she was encountering as a kid,
Speaker 1: UM and she just didn't get over it, which is
Speaker 1: an adult now, but yeah she should. At this point,
Speaker 1: I guess messy. I don't know how to say yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not enough of an expert pine about this is
Speaker 1: this is part of why people get obsessed with her
Speaker 1: because it's this mix of like, this is what stops
Speaker 1: you when you when you start like making fun of
Speaker 1: her and you start like these, even these harassment campaigns,
Speaker 1: she'll always say or do something really awful that makes
Speaker 1: it easy to keep going because then you don't have
Speaker 1: to feel as bad. You know, if she weren't a
Speaker 1: person with some really fucked up, unpleasant things that she
Speaker 1: was doing and saying, it would have been a harder
Speaker 1: for so many people to to keep this up, you know,
Speaker 1: which gets into really dark stuff about the ways that
Speaker 1: we choose to people to demonize based on this is
Speaker 1: Kiwi farms and when we talk about like that kind
Speaker 1: of harassment is mostly a bunch of terrible people picking
Speaker 1: people who are general really not terrible and harassing them.
Speaker 1: But there is in the germs of the Christian in
Speaker 1: the Christian story, there are the germs of like every
Speaker 1: time you get people forming Twitter mobs over some like
Speaker 1: stupid bullshit to like destroy a person's life because like
Speaker 1: they didn't quite phrase something the way you liked it
Speaker 1: her because like like the same, like all of it
Speaker 1: has its genesis here. You can see every piece of
Speaker 1: it here, and some of it is just that like, oh,
Speaker 1: well she's racist, so let's let's keep making fun of her,
Speaker 1: you know. Um yeah, which for some people is perfect
Speaker 1: like there there that's easy to justify and not necessarily
Speaker 1: in a bad way. I mean, like sometimes it but
Speaker 1: you can't make fun of someone for like the sonic Pikachu.
Speaker 1: You have to make fun of them for being white supremacist.
Speaker 1: But but it all just kind of blurs together for
Speaker 1: Christine and and more than anything, what people are laughing
Speaker 1: at is the fact that she's different, you know, like
Speaker 1: the fact that she's racist and stuff is a part
Speaker 1: of it, but it's it's not the primary thing that
Speaker 1: she gets harassed over. So once this is posted, Agon
Speaker 1: decided to reach out to Christian, writing quote, I just
Speaker 1: sent a little message to her on my Space. Nothing mean,
Speaker 1: I'm genuinely curious on what she thinks about some things.
Speaker 1: Hopefully she'll reply pretty soon. Although I have no ideas
Speaker 1: of time zones or anything. Um. So this was immediately
Speaker 1: followed up by another gooon expressing what a bad idea
Speaker 1: this was, and quite by accident, summing up the next
Speaker 1: fourteen years of Christine's life. I know this is something awful,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, she does have
Speaker 1: a disability. I took a quick glance at this and
Speaker 1: immediately felt sorry for her. It's the words and all
Speaker 1: window into her lonely life. Her childish innocence clashes with
Speaker 1: her misguided attempts of acting grown up so badly it's
Speaker 1: disturbing and sad. Unfortunately, she can post on the Internet,
Speaker 1: which means she can be ridiculed. Yeah yeah, there's people
Speaker 1: who get what's going on, you know. Um yeah, pretty bleak.
Speaker 1: So this is like before troll culture, really the birth
Speaker 1: of troll culture as a And see how like some
Speaker 1: of the people involved in the birth of try culture
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily coming out it m hm, and they were
Speaker 1: coming at it from like, look at this person, this
Speaker 1: is weird, this is interesting, Like this art is strange
Speaker 1: these because she has all these elaborate comics and people
Speaker 1: like just want to read them, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: you can discuss like whether or not it's cool to
Speaker 1: do that, but it's not harassment to like find this
Speaker 1: person's posted their weird comics. Let's like laugh at them.
Speaker 1: You know. That's not necessarily abusive or harassing. It's just
Speaker 1: like consuming someone's content, maybe in a way they wouldn't like,
Speaker 1: but they put it out there, and you have a
Speaker 1: right to like feel how you do about it. Then
Speaker 1: it starts to expand to like, well, let's reach out
Speaker 1: to her in person. I want to talk to her,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to like see her. And there
Speaker 1: are people who were into the ground floor of this
Speaker 1: where you're just like marveling at this person's kind of
Speaker 1: weird behavior, who are like, this is a disabled person.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be like reaching out to them and like
Speaker 1: finding them in the real world, and like you, we
Speaker 1: could do a lot of damage here. There's like that, right,
Speaker 1: you've see that post someone being like, we could really
Speaker 1: do some damage here. This is a person who should
Speaker 1: not be fucked with, you know. So folks are aware
Speaker 1: of what some folks at least are aware of what
Speaker 1: could happen, and it keeps happening. While there were more
Speaker 1: something awful threads about Christine over the years, it was
Speaker 1: four Chan, we're following her would develop into a subculture,
Speaker 1: and being four chan, people immediately took things way too far. Now,
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia dramatic A was was new back then, and an
Speaker 1: onns created a page for her. Christian found out about
Speaker 1: her Encyclopedia dramatic A page, And if you know anything
Speaker 1: about this person, the worst thing that could happen is
Speaker 1: that she become aware that she has a page on
Speaker 1: e D because she's not going to handle that well. Um.
Speaker 1: I think she finds out because of one of her
Speaker 1: stalker's emails her about it. And this is going to
Speaker 1: be the first time where she really fails to follow
Speaker 1: the good advice her middle school teacher gave her. Instead
Speaker 1: of ignoring the trolls, Christine starts making dozens and dozens
Speaker 1: of corrections to the Encyclopedia dramatic Age. Which is that
Speaker 1: rules a good call? Yeah? Um, obviously, if you know
Speaker 1: anything about this particulation of the Internet, this is the
Speaker 1: best thing you could have done for the folks making
Speaker 1: fun of her. Unfortunately, they are over the moon about
Speaker 1: this stuff right because now they get to like make
Speaker 1: fun of her attempts at like defending herself and like
Speaker 1: what she says and all this stuff. Um, they found
Speaker 1: it hilarious. Like every difference she has, she would respond
Speaker 1: to incorrect claims about, for example, her sexuality by providing
Speaker 1: evidence to prove them wrong. So people would like joke
Speaker 1: that she was like gay or I think a sexual
Speaker 1: and so she would like provide evidence of her sexual
Speaker 1: fantasies to for Chan in order to yeah, yeah that's bad, um.
Speaker 1: And and yeah, it's comprehensively bad because some of the
Speaker 1: evidence she has, like a female friend at this point,
Speaker 1: like one of her first, like one of her few
Speaker 1: like people that she actually can hang out with and
Speaker 1: be so with. And the evidence she provides to Fortune
Speaker 1: to show that she's straight is pornographic drawing she's made
Speaker 1: of this friend of hers. Um, that was probably really
Speaker 1: good for the friendship. Yeah, it does not go over well, um,
Speaker 1: because Christine had previously like kind of expressed romantic interest
Speaker 1: in this person, and the friend had very gently been like,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't you know, see you that way.
Speaker 1: I don't want to, but I want to be your friend. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course she's rightly horrified when she finds out
Speaker 1: that her friend has provided pornography that she drew of
Speaker 1: them to thousands of strangers. That's a thing you you
Speaker 1: should be a great about. Bob's Burgers. Bob's Bob's Burgers
Speaker 1: has erotic friend fiction, Louise, I think is oh yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: a lot of friend fiction is not a winner in
Speaker 1: social circles. Don't post it online, you know, whatever you're
Speaker 1: gonna do, certainly, don't hand it to four chan to
Speaker 1: proof that you're straight. Right, um and yeah, Christine loses
Speaker 1: this friend forever. And of course it is the funniest
Speaker 1: thing that these people who are now stalking here have
Speaker 1: ever ever experienced. Um and and all of the terrible
Speaker 1: things only kind of escalate from there. But you know
Speaker 1: what doesn't escalate from here, Margaret the episode because this
Speaker 1: is this is the end of part one and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: time for your um your plugables. How you feeling, Margaret, I,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's not that I feel like I
Speaker 1: got tricked into coming on to whatever. It's fine, it's fine.
Speaker 1: It's not like I'm really close to home someone exactly
Speaker 1: my age who Yeah, weird shitty like behavior from like classmates,
Speaker 1: and like, well here's the thing you can find. Literally,
Speaker 1: there's probably more we were building this, There's probably more
Speaker 1: written about Christine than any other figure in history, like
Speaker 1: in terms of biographical information, I doubt there is more
Speaker 1: biographical information about like people like fucking Hitler out there,
Speaker 1: and more like it is, the degree to which people
Speaker 1: obsess over her life is insane. Um and nearly all
Speaker 1: of what you're going to find is like really grossly
Speaker 1: voyeuristic and like mocking. And I think this is an
Speaker 1: important story because it is kind of foundational to why
Speaker 1: the Internet is the way that it is and why
Speaker 1: Internet culture is the way that it is. But like
Speaker 1: it's also really it was really important to me in
Speaker 1: telling this story, you have to get into an uncomfortable
Speaker 1: level of detail, and it I don't want it. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to just like make fun of this person,
Speaker 1: because I don't think that's good. Um. I just I
Speaker 1: do think the story is important because it builds to
Speaker 1: everything we're dealing with right now. I don't think you're
Speaker 1: making fun of her, it's just it's and then yet also,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole racist, homophobic thing is not It's
Speaker 1: not a good look for anybody, regardless of what they're dealing.
Speaker 1: I yeah, I wanted someone else who I felt like
Speaker 1: would uh kind of identify with the being like harassed
Speaker 1: and made fun of, Like I was a weird kid
Speaker 1: who drew cartoons who had like the cartoons taken away
Speaker 1: from me from like a kid in class who would
Speaker 1: like read them and ship Like like I get it,
Speaker 1: I get like some of the ship that she must
Speaker 1: have been going through. Um, and so I I have
Speaker 1: actually a lot of compassion for this person who is
Speaker 1: not a good person. I think you have to approach
Speaker 1: in a complex way. And um, it's unfortunate that like this,
Speaker 1: this should never have been a person who like needed
Speaker 1: to be a figure of kind of national attention. That
Speaker 1: is where this story ends. It ends with her on
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson as it heads up. Yeah, like like this
Speaker 1: this is this is blown up to the point and
Speaker 1: it and it's found again. It's so foundational to like
Speaker 1: internet culture that I think you have to get into it.
Speaker 1: But like it would be really easy to do that
Speaker 1: and just be like another two hours of people making
Speaker 1: fun of this person on the internet. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: documentary series that's like a couple of hundred hours in
Speaker 1: length on YouTube that you can find, Like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's fucking crazy. How much ship there is about this?
Speaker 1: This is um which is which is anyway? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't even know what. Well we'll explain all of that
Speaker 1: part two, Margaret, But but for now, you gotta plug anything. Well,
Speaker 1: I have a show coming out. Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: whether I don't know whether it's announced yet. Um is
Speaker 1: it announced yet? Can I can I announce? We can? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it fun funk our corporate overlords, let's do it. Literally,
Speaker 1: they have no say in this. Are you talking about? Well,
Speaker 1: le's perstend like we're sticking it to the man by Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I'm signing a contract to do it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the man coming out called cool people who did cool stuff,
Speaker 1: and cool people did cool stuff is about well, it's
Speaker 1: about cool people who did um cool stuff. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and um and so people who like behind the bastards.
Speaker 1: But I don't like the bastards. You know, I'm really
Speaker 1: I'm work shopping how to pitch this. But yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: So I have a new podcast coming out on May
Speaker 1: second on Cool Zone Media. Um. And other than that,
Speaker 1: you can find me on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy
Speaker 1: or Instagram at Margaret Killjoy. On Twitter, I stir up
Speaker 1: fights that I now feel slightly more guilty for stirring
Speaker 1: up after listening to this episode and on Instagram, I
Speaker 1: talk about how much I love my dog. That sounds
Speaker 1: much better than literally anything we've talked about today. Go
Speaker 1: find a dog, take care of a dog. Margaret's dog
Speaker 1: is exceptionally beauty. Dog is good. Your dog exceptionally beautiful
Speaker 1: inside and out. Oh my god. Thanks, Well, this has
Speaker 1: been fun. I'm glad we got to throw in a
Speaker 1: little middle finger to our corporate overlords. Take that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the man people who give us money whenever we ask
Speaker 1: and let us do whatever we want. That'll teach you,
Speaker 1: that'll learn you. Um all right, Go hug a dog.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: zone media dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.