Part One: A Terrible Story About The Internet

I'm not laughing at your choice? How you doing my choice? That was just like the one song when I think about like goth stuff from high school, that was a song. That's the only thing I remember. You know, I actually have culture. Yeah, as soon as I left high school, I did not notice a pop culture for ten years um and I was way too elite of a goth at that time to do be even listening to God from my own era. I was far more interested Sisters of Mercy. I've never even heard of that, But I

was never gone. I was never into that stuff. I was just adjacent to it. Because the goth kids were also the kids you were most likely to be able to play d and D with so yes, yeah, that's that's how I caught. So this is Behind the Bastards and we're here with Margaret Killjoy. This is a podcast about people you can play D and D with when you are in high school, like Margaret Eldritch from Sisters

of Mercy. Yeah, pretty good DN D person. I wish, I mean, yes, yes, Margaret, how do you feel about like, what is the fifth edition versus I'm still a path finder? You know, path finder guy? Like I never got past three five. It gave me everything I wanted in terms of rules. I actually like five five more than three point five. I wasn't expecting that to be the case. I thought three point five felt done and then fourth

edition was obviously a nightmare. And um, I started playing five E and it's my favorite Dungeons and Drag and I can elitistly claim to be playing since uh a D and D. Yeah, that was my first generation was a D and D. I do remember thack. Oh by the way, this is also again behind the Bastards and we're here. What do we? What do we? What is our what is our job? Here? Are we not talking about D and D? Not not today alright? But with what we are talking with, Margaret Coo, who who is

the newest person on our network, Cool Zone Media. That's right, that's right. We have we have contractually locked you in um to producing content and entering the death spiral of content creation for podcasts. I was I was going to say, I'm really thrilled and very happy, but okay, I'm always going to call it a death spiral because it is. Um, Margaret, how are you liking the spiral? You know, all of life is a death spiral. That's right, that's right. Just

you choose which spiral to to go down. Yeah. It's like a water park, yeah yeah, or a toilet Yeah, I mean toilets and water parks very similar in a number of ways. Um. So yeah, well we'll move on. Um Margaret, how do you feel about people being harassed by the internet until the commit suicide? Generally negative? Yeah, that was a bad Yeah, that's not my not my

favorite thing that's ever happened. It's not. It's like it's really I think at this point everyone here has seen what happens when people come into the crosshairs of a digital hate mop, right, Like it's like a daily occurrence on the Internet now and yeah, so I think there is kind of some resilience that's been built up, like like we've all kind of been vaccinated from gamer Gates, So I think maybe people are a little more prepared

for it now than they used to be. But if you remember like gamer Gate times, especially to fourteen, when these mobs started going after these women who were like video game reviewers and stuff and how like, it felt really unprecedented and it was just like this this bizarre, horrible thing that we all started to realize was going to be with us forever. Um. Yeah, it's it's it's it's a problem, um and it's a problem that has

uh continues on. Like it's one of those things normally, like people talk pretty openly about like, oh, who's the main character on Twitter today? You know, who's being like harassed or whatever today. But there's like and that's kind of the side of it, I guess when I'm talking about like that there's been some kind of immunity built up.

That's the side of it where there's like, oh, yeah, you just know that like every now and then, if you have any kind of prominence on the internet, you know, you could wind up getting like yelled at or made fun of or whatever for a period of time. And that's just something, especially if you're gonna be making things for the Internet, you just accept it. Um. But even though it's gotten a little more standardized, there's this really tremendously deadly underbelly to it um. Up until June of

Near was a well loved developer of emulators. Uh Near, also known as bu b y Uu, was non binary as well as autistic. These characteristics made them an ideal target of a website called Kiwi Farms. Do you know anything about Kiwi Farms, Margaret, No, This sounds like the kind of nightmare stuff that I've avoided successfully until this moment. That's a good thing to do. It's a good thing

to avoid. Um. In brief, Kiwi Farms is a forum where people gather information on and harass individuals they call loll cows um. The name comes from the fact that the behavior of these people, specifically their reactions to harassment, provide an endless font of lolls, like a cow provides milk. Right, That's why they That's how they're looking at this, Like we have this like stable of people who we can kind of prod and poke intermittently to like make us laugh. Um,

that's the attit. Yeah, it's yeah, it's it sounds good. It sounds like a lot of people who are doing well in life and emotionally. So one of Near's friends wrote a Google doc explaining what Kiwi Farms did to Near, who seems to have been targeted for the same reason. Predators usually picked their targets um Near. He had been abused before, Um, and they were seen as kind of vulnerable quote and this is from from one of their friends.

Not to be defeated. In their pursuit of utter emotional and psychological destruction, they went after who Near treasured most their friends, doxing some directly, harassing others, and even specifically seeking out supicidal people to target. That broke Near after falling down a spiral of depression and eventually breaking off

contact with everyone last year, I feared for the worst. Eventually, they were luckily able to get help and found medication that helped them cope with the psychological scarce of abuse in late I first heard from Near again in late October, and we even started having chats. It seemed things were getting better. Unfortunately, medication can be a fickle beast. It didn't work forever. The looming threat of Kiwi Farms, of their power to destroy not just Near but also their friends,

caused them daily anxiety that just wouldn't go away. Worried that their friends would feel burdened by their condition again, Near decided to avoid the subject. I only found out about this relapse today. To the people of Kiwi Farms, this is a video game that people on the other side of the screen or real makes no difference that a light in the kill counter going up just like an FPS player would. Lacking any empathy, they have no

regard for the damage they inflict on others. So as you might have guessed Near committed suicide in June, of Kiwi Farms did not have any anything to do with the suicide or of encouraging harassment against Near. Um it's worth noting that Near is the third person in recent years whose suicide has been blamed to some extent on relentless harassment from Kiwi Farms. So today we're going to

talk about where Kiwi Farms comes from. Um, they're not the primary subject of our episode, though, we will be talking about their very first victim, and and not just their very first victim we're going to be talking about the person I think is probably the first victim of concerted online harassment, like the first person that this happened

to in any kind of sizeable way. Um. And that person is a I guess you'd call them an internet content creator named Chris Chan um, or at least that's the name she kind of has picked for herself, the first the first victim of like gamified abuse and cool. Yeah, yeah, do you know what anything about this person? I know, I don't. I know a lot about people harassing people on the Internet and it causing real life impacts and

bomb threats and docks and all that stuff. So Chris Chan is where that playbook started getting sketched out for the first time. Christian has been kind of continuously harassed for something like twenty years now. Uh it is. It has been going on a tremendously long time. And and I should note Christian is not a good person, um, and not a sympathetic person like they are to blame for not the harassment, but for a lot of the unpleasantness in their life because they've made a lot of

horrible choices. UM. I should note here that recently, since about and we'll get into this. Christian identifies as Christine as well as Christian. They still use both names, um, but they identify as Christine Christina. They have transitioned. UM will be gendering her properly, even when we discuss her early life, and when I read quotes from other people talking about her, I'm going to do h my best

to not miss gender her. Even when they do. We will still call her Christian as well as Christine, because again, she still identifies as Christian on social media. So I think that's fine. Um, But yeah, so UM. She was born on Christine Chandler was born on February night two at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her father, Bob, worked as an engineer at Western Electric. He was apparently a very gifted one, and he held patents for nine

different inventions over the course of his career. He collected classic jazz music and stamps. Her mother, Barbara, was a secretary at Virginia p Hour. She and Bob both had estranged children from other marriages prior to getting together. Barbara is alleged to have been abusive, and we know her seventeen year old son I think emancipated himself before Christine was born. Um, Bob had two kids who are not

really in his in his life. So both of these people had like we're fairly old when they had Christine, um, and had kids that they had kind of either abandoned or who had been like I don't want anything to do with you. So maybe not great parents. Probably not. I don't know everything about their circumstances, but you know, like if you have three kids off you and none of them wanted anything to do with you, that's maybe not the best side. Best side. Um, Barbara was and

is she is still alive, a massive hoarder. Um. Christine's childhood was always going to be challenging. You know, this is a lot already we've discussed a significant amount to kind of go into as a baby. Um. At one point, Bob built a workshop for him and his to make things in together. He was very excited about, like, oh, you know, I'm gonna we're gonna have all these projects together. And they never got to use it because Barbara just like filled it up with junk. She just is this

kind of like that kind of breaks my heart. Yeah, father daughter crafting time. Yeah Yeah, but but Barbara just like can't not collect ship um, which is a thing that Christine will inherit um inherent maybe the wrong word, but we'll wind up doing as well, you know. Um. Christine claimed years later that she spoke her first word monkey at two months old, which is likely not possible. She lies a lot about things, you know, she makes

up a lot of stuff. Um, I don't think kids can say, uh, speak at that at that earliest date. And I've known a couple of two month olds and sure, and they're so familiar with the concept of monkey that also they can random noises. Yeah, they like, I don't know, I'm not an expert in child speech development, but well I am, And no I'm not. Well that's your previous job before this. Yeah, I'm an expert at ship talking little kids because they can't talk back, they don't know

how to talk. It's real easy. Does that mean you use up your one lie on them? Like right away? Yeah, immediately immediately, But you just have to keep it going for the rest of your life. I did have. I had a person who I'm very close to, their uncle. The lie that he told her was that Star Trek the next generation was real m she was like six and then yeah, which is a nice lie. I think if you get to believe for a while that all those people are really up there, that's not a mean one.

I actually might prefer that to Santa Claus. Yeah, it's just like the little kids the start that the starship enterprises out there, and then at age ten you sit them down and tell them that there's no joy in the world, and yeah, they have to they have to. There's no replicators. Yeah, there's nothing sorry, um that would break kids in an interesting new way. Yeah. Yeah, that's what we need more of. Yeah, well you gotta break them some way, right, That's what we do to kids,

do you That's what we do. Therefore, apparently, Sophie, I don't know, I don't have kids, because it seems like it's easy to funk that up. Um so um. Speaking of which, back to our story of Christine Chandler um so. Christine says that after speaking her first word at two months old, she did not say another word for six years. Um. She does have autism. The medical papers are available online a ton of her She has posted a ton of

like her papers. But she gets into these like online arguments and we'll like post things to prove stuff she's saying, so that that is this is not a case of like a self diagnosis to someone who has like a medical diagnosis, and that part is credible. The idea that maybe she didn't say anything until she was six. It is not uncommon for people with autism to have kind of a delay of like when they start speaking, when they're kind of language abilities come in and stuff. You know,

that's that's not an uncommon thing. Um. Now, obviously we're not particularly good as a society at taking care of autistic children now, um or any children, but particularly children with autism. UM in the mid nineteen eighties were the fucking wild West for that, Like, it was just an incredibly brutal time to to be a kid with autism. It was not even added to the d s M

until nineteen eighty. It was not until nineteen eight seven that the diagnostic criteria was expanded to allow a diagnosis if symptoms became apparent after thirty months of age, and most kids are over two years old when they are diagnosed. So a lot of yeah, funked up stuff kids are dealing with who are born around the time that Christina is now The papers that we have showing a diagnosis for her are from two thousand four. She claims to have been diagnosed for the first time at around age

five or six. If so, this would have happened right around the earliest time that such a diagnosis would have been possible. Christine claims the doctor who diagnosed her was a speech therapist at James Madison University. This doctor told her parents she had high functioning, which is not a term we use anymore autism uh, and would never make it to high school or even be able to write her own name. And of course Christine went on to

do both of these things. I don't know how accurate that is, but it's certainly not out of line with other stories you hear from kids who were, you know, going through the education system with this at the same time. So, when Christine was very young, she was placed alone with a babysitter she describes as abusive UM. The specific abuse she discusses as being locked in her toy room after having all of the lights turned off. UM. As an adult,

she consistently describes this experience as traumatic. Her parents continued to use the babysitter after this point. UM. Christine believed this is what gave her autism, which obviously is not the case. Um, but I believe she had some traumatic experiences with an adult's locking her away, you know, and and stuff. Um. So in nineteen ninety to nineteen one school year, Christine's parents pulled her out of class for unknown reasons. She claims now that she was forcibly restrained

by the school principle in a quasi sexual manner. She also claims the principle was homosexual and that this is what inspired Christine's decades long homophobia. Um, it is unclear exactly what happened here. Um. Christine is very Christian and very has been was for most of the time she was people knew anything about her. Incredibly bigoted against gay people. So hard to say if this is like what happened here exactly. But there was apparently a court case over

the matter. However, the actual court case that we have documentation on was not based in any sort of assault and was instead the county trying to have Christine sent to a special school. So some of what she's saying may have just been resentment over this whole things she was going through with the school. It is very hard to say, Um, Christine was homeschooled during the fifth grade because of all of this whatever actually happened, she was

being homeschooled for a year. Um. The family eventually left their hometown and relocated to Richmond over this issue. In when Christine was eleven, she entered a Sonic the Hedgehog contest at KB Toys and won a shopping spree. Local news coverage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's actually video footage of Yeah, yeah, the kind of thing that when I was eleven, I probably would have made up that I had done. No, no,

we know this happened. Yeah, and there was like, yeah, it's every I mean, who wouldn't have wanted a KB Toy shopping spree like and have one Sonic the Hedgehog and and have Yeah, I want a Sonic the Hedgehog contest, the coolest kind of contest. Yeah, there's video this that's awesome. And unfortunately the videos mostly like it's mostly people making fun of her because she's you know, kind like an awkward, nerdy kid winning a contest and very excited and very happy.

But she's clearly overjoyed in the footage, which is which is great. It's nice to know she had a nice moment in her life. This seems to have sparked a lifelong fascination with Sonic the Hedgehog. She will be obsessed with Sonic for the rest of her life up to the present day, to a degree that becomes very problematic. Um, and I think it's I'm gonna find out later, aren't I. Yeah,

it's it's not great. It's not great. I think maybe it has something to do with the fact that, like, in a really difficult and largely unpleasant childhood, this is like a shining moment for her, and so she kind of latches on to this. Yeah, it's pretty bleak, Margaret, there's not gonna be a lot of happy moments. Kind of heartbreaking because she's a very easy self insert character. Oh god, at this point, she's nothing but a kid who's been unfairly harmed by every single person who should

be taking care of her. Yeah. Yeah, Um it's pretty bad. Uh, it's pretty bad. So in middle school, Uh, this will be the least surprising thing we say today, Christine had difficulty with bullies. Um yeah, not not super surprising. And it was you know that she has, for I think understandable reasons a really really really aggressive temper, and the particular way that kids would funk with her was by setting her off so that she would have these kind

of emotional explosions and then she would get in trouble. Um. You know, I think if we haven't been that person in our childhoods, we knew a couple of kids who were dealing with versions of that. The only kid who was worse bullied than me, It was the one that you could set off like that. You know. Yeah. Yeah, you either like react that way to try to scare people off, or you develop the ability to just kind of turtle up and pretend you're not affected by it

at all. Yeah. Um. And and Christine, you know, is the explode of type. She did have a very good teacher during this time who actually understood her and was able to help her get along in class with other kids. When she graduated middle school, this teacher wrote her a note and again the note like Christine posts the note later like this is the thing that we like. You can see it, um, And the note says, quote, the most important parting words I can leave you with well

are to always remember this. You show people where your weak points are located. Then they will know how to push your button. If you never show them, they will never know. That's this teacher's advice, which I can't say is bad advice. Um no, yeah, you gotta be like next level to like. Um, I wouldn't have been able to do as a teenager. But you know, my favorite trick is pretending to show people where my weak spots are and then just being like, just kidding, I'm completely intouchable.

Fuck you. Yeah, but that doesn't like showing your belly doesn't work in middle school. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. All of the anti bullying advice I ever got was entirely garbage. I I have. I have literally never heard good advice for kids of that age on how to deal with bullying, and I don't think it exists. Uh yeah, I think the only actual thing to do is stop kids from bullying. Yeah yeah, kind of on everyone but the child in that situation to figure out how to

deal with it. Yeah. Um, I don't know. Yeah, you know who doesn't bully? I don't feel confident answering this right now, am I not? I mean, I mean, you can, but I'm just horrible transition. Look when kidnaps children and puts them on an island off the coast of Indonesia to be hunted by the global one percent. I say, bullying gets censored. Yeah, I mean maybe we're we're kind of like half and half on it. Oh no, I'm saying that get censor when I yeah, absolutely, yeah, we

can bleep him this time. Yeah. So obviously it's not bullying to hunt children for sport on an island off the coast of Indonesia. That's just you know, it's not like it's not bullying to hunt a deer. You know, it's just well, if you're hunting children for food, I feel like there's a different set of ethics there. I mean, elon musk is definitely like a use every part of of of the child that you hunt with a bow of Probably it's like, I take it back, hunting for

sport is better. Yeah, just be evil, Just admit your evil. It's better. Yeah. Speaking of admitting, no, I mean just like, ah, we're back, boy, howdy. Lots of good stuff has happen, name good, real real bad stuff. This is this is I think this is. I would not go into detail about someone experiencing something like this if it was not kind of necessary for understanding the whole story of like why they become the person that this architecture of harassment

gets built around. Um. And so unfortunately it is kind of necessary, although it is quite bleak. UM. Part of why I feel a little better about saying it is that we know most of this because Christine has like repeatedly posted it and discussed it and like provided original documents. Um. So this is which is going exactly against the teacher's advice. Oh god, yeah they be. She does not take one

one bit of this advice. Um, which you know anyway. Yeah, so Christine had a number of female friends as a child. Uh some of them were subtly abusive. Um. One early friend who lived nearby convinced her to crawl under the

house into a heating duct and then locked her inside. Um. Because Christine, again this is pre transition and stuff, and is she's really desperate to be like to have like a girlfriend basically, um, to date or to be one of the girls I think to date to date, because I mean maybe there is some of that, Like it's I'll say that as a as a trans girl who dates mostly mostly women. It's blurry, Yeah, the desire to be one of the girls and to date the girls

is all confused up. Yeah, and I think at this period it is really blurry, because she definitely really takes a lot of particular joy in hanging out with like groups of girls at the school. And some of it's also probably just that, like they're less likely to the extent that they make fun of her or harass her. It's like not obvious in the way that like when boys do it, like she knows what's being done. It's

clear that someone's attacking her. And I guess if you don't know that people are like making fun of you, that's a more pleasant situation than knowing. Yeah, until you find out, right, like until the kid, until you get locked in a heating duct. Yeah, it's very sad. Um. She revealed later that she had another female friend who her father paid to hang out with her in order to make her look normal. Um, which is boy again Parents of the Year here, like tried. Yeah, Yeah, it's

not how he should have tried. It's not how he should have tried. I don't know, Like it's it's he seems like he's kind of like a weird engineering dude who was not at all prepared to have a kid with the kind of needs that Christine had. And yeah, I guess he tried. He tried to solve it like an engineering problem. Yeah. Yeah. Um that said, you know, there's a lot of kind of mockery, but I think it does seem like Christine had actual friends, um, who she called her Gallo pals, and some of them did

care about her. Um. And I think there were there were some who kind of recognized that she's being victimized and wanted to provide her with some support. UM. So in high school she does kind of build a little community for herself. UM. It was in high school that that Christine started developing an increasingly elaborate fantasy world. This started with a school project where she had to create

cartoon characters for a story. The characters couldn't be copyrighted, so she merged some of her favorite characters together, creating a mix of Sonic and Pikachu called sona Chew. She fell in love with this character and started incorporating it into a variety of cartoon art that she seemed to create almost like kind of compulsively. Um. Christine graduated around two thousand and this seems to have been the beginning

of a long downward slide for her. The group of friends she'd made in high school went their separate ways. Christine went to a local community college and started studying, but she grew increasingly lonely and aware of the fact that other people were partnering off. In her idiosyncratic diction, Chris calls this her love quest dedicated to finding a sweetheart. As she started flirting with women, she found out that

they all had boyfriends. As a result, Christine became obsessed with what she called the quote infinitely high boyfriend factor. She grew terrified of being confronted by the boyfriends of girls that she flirted with, and decided to instead create a special method to flirt only with boyfriend free girls. This is like the addiction she uses to discuss this.

The end result of this idea was a sign that Christine created and would carry out in public that said, I am a twenty one year old single male seeking an eighteen to twenty one year old single female companion. This is like a sign that she will walk around with it like school and stuff. Um other Yeah, it's it's an interesting call. Other variations of the sign read

I am seeking a boyfriend free girl. Um, and you get like the logic here, like she doesn't want to upset anybody, but she's very, very lonely, and so in her mind, this is the logical way to go about doing that. Right. Yeah, I wish better dating advice had been made available to her. Yeah, I do. You also have to wonder if like online dating had existed more in its present form, would maybe that have been a little easier or would people have just like picked out

her profile and made fun of it on Twitter? Probably the ladder? Um. God, I'm like, I'm trying to figure out that, Like, is it better that I got my youth over with before the internet or is it definitely definitely the Internet's a nightmare. Um. Christian would sit and that she starts going increasingly by. Christian in this period of time would sit around holding or standing or stand aund holding the sign on her college campus, which did not go over well. The dean ordered her to stop

doing this. Uh. She considered this behavior technically soliciting sex, which I guess it kind of is, I mean, like not in that way. Yeah, Like yeah, I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. Also, it's definitely weird. I can't say that it's like inherently any more harmful than like the other waste people flirt on college campuses. No, it's substantially bigger than most of the things that romance and sex on college campuses. It's not the worst way people are going about doing this

thing within the context of a community college. Yeah, if this was like a rom com movie, she would be a side character and then she'd feel the other really nerdy girl and it would be another kid with a sign, and yeah, it would be perfect. And that's the end. Nothing bad happens from here on, and that's the end of the show. So it's thanks for coming on and happily ever after. That's the name of the show, right, yep.

This is the story of a weird person who everything ended well for to behind the basically nice weird people. Um a podcast that shouldn't exist. Um. So, after the Dean shuts down her her love quest, Christine becomes obsessed with the Dean, whose name is Mary Lee Walsh, and starts writing the Dean into an increasingly elaborate comics as the Bad Guys. Christine slandered the Dean via an animated

newsletter she distributed and was eventually expelled for a year. Um, and this it's like when I say this, like a lot of it's like weird and violent stuff happening to this character, to this this Dean character who has the exact name of the real Dean is like really specifically violent stuff. Um. So you know, maybe don't email that to random people at your college because Columbine happened. Yeah,

this is post Columbine, so yeah this. Yeah, people are people are not like chill about that kind of thing, you know. Yeah. Um So Christine graduates uh in two dozen six with an associates degree. She was briefly employed by a Wendy's for like three months, but could not get along with her manager or co workers, so she fell increasingly further into her fantasy world, building an elaborate fantasy city named after her initials, which C W C.

Bill or Quickville is usually how she'll pronounce it. And she put starts putting like these drawings and stories on her MySpace and her personal website. In October of two thousand seven, one user of the Something Awful forums brought up Christine Christian at this point do during a thread

about a separate online creator. Um During this time, goons would regularly find people making things online who are like weird or the stuff they're making is funny, bad, and then we're just like put up threads to marvel at it. Sometimes it was mean and mockering. Sometimes it was like legitimately like amazed and fascinated. Um. You can see both in the original thread, with people discovering Christian's peculiar art

style and her bizarre way of phrasing things. In short order, a new thread was made by a goon who lived in Charlottesville and claimed to have seen her around. Quote. This person used to leave business cards at my school's library, where they would hang out for hours looking for a boyfriend, free girl. This is how I first learned of them.

From here, I developed something of it. It's it's it's this is the point, right, Well, that's the thing that that's what people start being fascinated because it's so bizarre and like the ways of the idiosyncratic way she phrases things is just so like you kind of have to pay attention. It's just like so what um, And it's like not there's a mix of like just people being mean and people just marveling at like well that's weird, you know, And this is a different time in the internet.

When you start making fun of someone or or even just like common marveling at somebody on a website. The idea is not that this is going to like bleed into the real world, right right, everyone knows that. Now this is two thousand seven, So people are just like, hey, here's this website where when we see something different, we like post it to be like, well, what's going on here? You know? Um, some of it's mean spirited, but it's not all means spirited. Um. So yeah, to continue that quote,

this is how I first learned of them. From here, I developed something of an obsession, culminating last summer when I made a special trip to a gaming store and local hangout where they would had posted they would be they were every bit as and then they used an

offensive slur for autistic people, as I had imagined. Um. So, this is what's interesting about this is that this is kind of the first piece of evidence you have, and one of the first ones I remember from that period of time of someone not just being like, oh, look at this weird person that we're like talking about on the internet, like going to see them exactly exactly. That's that's an escalation, right, It's it's like it's like a huge violation. It's disgusting. Yeah, it's it's like a it's

a whole thing. Um that this is This is like the first sign we get of like where things are gonna go for the Internet. So goons which is what you call people on the forum this time. Um quickly fell in love with Christine, particularly the music videos that she had posted for a perrapa the Wrapper Contest, which is a rap video games. So she doesn't post a video where she's doing a rap and people make fun

of it, right. Um. By this point, most of her comics focused around her quest for a boyfriend, free girl, and included strange and unintentionally revealing sexual fantasies, along with lines like these as the sign off on her website, enjoy, learn and stay straight and then in all caps, I am serious she isn't like huh gay people? Yeah yeah, character for everything else that's happening about her life. M hm that she's like deeply homophobic. Um yeah, I mean

she's you know, raised by these arch boomers. Oh yeah, no totally. And it was like and has decided to blame homosexuality for some of the trauma or whatever. It's just it's just so interesting because like, other than that thing, you're you're sort of describing my friend group in high school. Yeah, you know, like people deeply weird who fall into their

own fantasy worlds and kind of interesting stuff. And sometimes it's really cringe e and sometimes it's really awesome, and sometimes you can't tell which of the two is happening. And yeah, but I was definitely a weird kid who drew a lot of comics in high school. Yeah, um yeah, yeah, Like there's again, everything about her is just like one degree kind of off from a million other people, and as a result, she winds up being a spectacle for

the internet, you know. Um so goons quickly latched onto the fact that Christine had lost a PlayStation rapping contest and made a fake winner page for herself on the website, along with a somewhat unhinged rant about the injustice of the fact that they were the real winner or and like so she calls the real winner the x winner um and accuses her of violating rules that existed only in her own head um. She also mentioned going through

quote lonesome depression. Um and some goons in these original threads did make a note of the fact that she was dealing with some serious mental health issues. One user called Jocomo posted, I understand that Mary Lee Walsh was some sort of administrator at the community college she attended, and that she had her expelled, But what was it she did to cause that? Also? Does anyone else think that a no contact order might be a good thing

for her to have? I don't want any be a person who says, oh, ship, she drew a picture, lock her up. But she does seem to have a pretty focused animus towards her sustained over a period of time.

She seemed to have a hard time letting go. If she sees herself as unfairly thwarted, maybe she will stick with making silly videos and comics for revenge, which is like not an unreasonable like the degree of obsession over this person not an unreasonable like fear to have UM And yeah, it's it's worth noting that, like if someone were on the internet doing this stuff, if you just like suddenly became aware of someone posting and saying a lot of the same things that Chris Channon was posting

this period today, you would think they were like in sel Adjason, Right, there's a lot of violent fantasies about harm coming to her enemies. There's a lot of obsession with sex. Yeah it is, yeah, and it is um, but that wasn't a thing back then. Again, it's like two seven or so, and this is the only example of that concern that I found. UM. Other posters did note that Christine engaged in some semi stockery behavior, and this is from someone who apparently lived in the area. No,

I think they just went to the beau. She's she's show. Yeah, both sides of this are stalkers so far. Sure, this is someone who just says that, Like I have seen her around campus. I thought she was just I just thought she was in an anime club or something. I never saw her with signs. I learned a lot more about her when she messaged my sister on my Space and invited her out for a soda. She she declined, and she became increasingly more harassed towards her until she

walked her. So, yeah, you know, that's that's where this story is going. That's right. Yeah, just be less creepy and you'll do much better. That's my dating advice to one. Lame listeners speaking of advice that like never helps anybody

be less creepy doesn't seem to work much either. Yeah, okay, fine, Yeah, I think honestly, I think both with dealing with bullies and not being creepy, the best thing that works is having good role models, like people that you admire, who like are better at handling those situations than you, that you then like can see like, oh that's a better way to do things than the way my brain is telling me to do things, and then you become a better person. No, that's true. That's part of cognit behavioral

therapy actually is modeling. Yeah, that's so, that's what everyone that will solve all problems figure that out. No, I'm gonna crowdfund thing where we do just that and ignore all other possibilities for dealing with these problems, because that's how we solve problem. It is it is actually a good solution. I'm not trying to minimize that. I'm just ye,

all of these things are. Like, I do think part of why she's having so much trouble is that her parents seem to be completely withdrawn from the world Um, you know, her dad is retired pretty early on in her life. Her mom is this like quarter who hides at home. I don't think she gets any kind of adult modeling of like how to be in the world. Yeah. Yeah, Like,

I don't think anyone. I don't think she has anyone who like she can look at and be like, oh, this is like how you deal with a conflict, Like this is how you negotiate, like when you're having a disagreement with a person, you know, this is how you approach someone that you're interested in in a way that's like not threatening or or kind of harassing. Um, I don't think that exists for her at all, which doesn't excuse the fact that she is now stalking people and

doing something like really gross ship. But it's also it's hard to see how this person could have easily learned like good ways to deal with stuff either. Yeah, because when your friends are in high school, you're all making terrible decisions and doing things terribly. But if you stay friends with them, then at some point you can be like, oh, that's how you date. Yeah, you know. Yeah. And also I think if you're like everyone's going to be a shitty person at a certain point in their life because

it's hard to be a person who's not shitty. It's a learning process for all of us. And I think the fact that Christine is going through these learning processes and posting everything that she is experiencing online and it is increasingly being consumed by people who are now obsessed with her, makes it kind of impossible for her to change in positive ways. Speaking of death spirals, yeah, yeah,

speaking of death spirals. So the thing that commenters and it's it's just something awful right now that's kind of obsessed with there. But the thing commenters are particularly delighted by is her Sauna Chuw medallion. This is like a medallion she's made out of some sort of like it's one of those kind of platoes that you can like fire in an oven to actually harden it. She makes like a medallion shape like the yeah sculpe something like that.

She makes a medallion shaped like the face of this cartoon character she's created, and she wears it everywhere, um generally while dressed is ash catch them from Pokemon, Like she's like wearing specifically that outfit like the striped shirt and everything. Um, so goons are endlessly entertained by this um and they also find her MySpace page, which is

filled with injuries like this. To those who are reading this today, I was at the new Target store across from Forest Lakes, just hanging around, not bothering anyone, and from out of the blue, these two jerks asked me to leave because they said that I was loitering. I was not. I was there hoping to find an eighteen to twenty three year old boyfriend free girl like I usually do. That is that is loitering. I'm pro loitering,

but that is definitely loitery. Yeah. Then, from out of the blue, after I told them off, they came back with two cops. I was slightly intimidated, but mostly annoyed and ready to strike back on them. They asked me to leave and never return. I did not want to leave. I would have left peacefully. In fact, I was ready to go, but I had one thing to say to them, and during the middle of my speech, they chased me,

pulled my pants, and pinned me to the floor. As I struggled, they handcuffed my wrists and legs, and they hog tied me. Not only did I feel humiliated from being the victim, but I was angry at them not only for handcuffing me, but for once again thwarting my efforts and trying to find a boyfriend free girl. They drove me to the county jail, but fortunately they did not keep me there. I was released to my family. UM, so I gotta admit that's yeah, heartbreaking. Fuck the cops, uh,

definitely not making the situation better. Um, And I should note that I have edited this slightly, like, for example, she never says cops, she calls them jerk ops. But and she has like different little terms like this for for people that she dislikes. If you read it all this way without being completely up to date on your your Christian lore, it it sounds like nonsense. So I'm I'm altering it somewhat for this to be understandable. But yeah,

that's a blique story, right. Yeah. Like, obviously a discussion should be had about when it is appropriate to walk around asking random people if to have the boy boyfriend free girls. Yeah, Like that's certainly not ideal behavior. But I think being tackled and hog tied is not going to make that situation any better, because she would have left like she's Yeah, based on the way that her mental state was working, she just had to call them

jerk cops probably first. And yeah, she had to like say some ship because she's that's kind of what's going on with her. But of course their cops, so obviously they use egregiously excessive force on a mentally ill person. Um. Yeah, um, you know who isn't a cop unless it's the Washington State Highway Patrol again advertising on the show, in which case, definitely cops. Definitely. Do you think they do it ironically? Do you think that they're just like, I don't know,

they're spending money much what they get so much of it? Yeah, it's it's really weird. Um, just like hate. Yeah, here's the Washington State Highway Patrol to tell you how to bully people who can't fight back. Ah. That was some great tips from the Washington State Highway Patrol on how to be brutally cruel to people who don't have the ability to fight back. I love it, do you no? What do you? It was probably just adds for other podcasts well, like the newest show on our network, the

Washington State Highway Patrol cast. That's why that's actually a week. That's Margaret's podcast. It's It's It's every week a new Washington State Highway Patrol officer talks about their job while Margaret tells them inly elaborate ways they can flee themselves off the top of a building. But here's the thing. I can't even take this bit seriously because it's because

they suck so much. Listen to her. It could happen your episode on the Washington stoop Roll, or are like three episodes on the Chicago pet or the two behind the Bastards as we did on Border Patrol. All we're saying is that every city in America you could you could dedicate weeks and weeks and content and not at

the bottom. Yeah, every city in America has a bunch of dudes with guns who would see a kind of weird kid with a sign and a medallion that they clearly made themselves and decide hog tying is the right answer to this this problem. Um so yeah, obviously something awful in two thousand seven. Compassion is not at the top of anyone's list. And when people start finding this stuff out reading these stories, there's this kind of like awe at her peculiarities. In particularly her quest for a

boyfriend free girl. On my Space, Christian wrote in detail about her desire to find a quote soulmatee slash soul lover slash mother of future daughter UM who she would name Crystal. Christine's requirements for her girlfriend were specific and deeply offensive, stating that she must be white or sometimes white bodied, and normal sized to thin. Real ugly women need not apply, nor should the quote low functionally mentally handicapped or autistic people, although quote I myself am high

functionally autistic. But that's beside the point. Definitely beside the point. Yeah, there there goes my like shred of she's not a good person. Um. She does fall into my category of like, well, how could she have been much better than this? Um? But not a just I think there's a lot of blame. She has to be hearing this from her dad and

her mom right, Like. I don't think she would have picked up from fucking Sonic video games saying ship like this about people who aren't you know, because you're supposed to be blue in that game. I think there's gotta be a lot of racism she was encountering as a kid, UM and she just didn't get over it, which is an adult now, but yeah she should. At this point,

I guess messy. I don't know how to say yeah, I'm not enough of an expert pine about this is this is part of why people get obsessed with her because it's this mix of like, this is what stops you when you when you start like making fun of her and you start like these, even these harassment campaigns, she'll always say or do something really awful that makes it easy to keep going because then you don't have

to feel as bad. You know, if she weren't a person with some really fucked up, unpleasant things that she was doing and saying, it would have been a harder for so many people to to keep this up, you know, which gets into really dark stuff about the ways that we choose to people to demonize based on this is Kiwi farms and when we talk about like that kind of harassment is mostly a bunch of terrible people picking people who are general really not terrible and harassing them.

But there is in the germs of the Christian in the Christian story, there are the germs of like every time you get people forming Twitter mobs over some like stupid bullshit to like destroy a person's life because like they didn't quite phrase something the way you liked it her because like like the same, like all of it has its genesis here. You can see every piece of it here, and some of it is just that like, oh, well she's racist, so let's let's keep making fun of her,

you know. Um yeah, which for some people is perfect like there there that's easy to justify and not necessarily in a bad way. I mean, like sometimes it but you can't make fun of someone for like the sonic Pikachu. You have to make fun of them for being white supremacist.

But but it all just kind of blurs together for Christine and and more than anything, what people are laughing at is the fact that she's different, you know, like the fact that she's racist and stuff is a part of it, but it's it's not the primary thing that she gets harassed over. So once this is posted, Agon decided to reach out to Christian, writing quote, I just sent a little message to her on my Space. Nothing mean, I'm genuinely curious on what she thinks about some things.

Hopefully she'll reply pretty soon. Although I have no ideas of time zones or anything. Um. So this was immediately followed up by another gooon expressing what a bad idea this was, and quite by accident, summing up the next fourteen years of Christine's life. I know this is something awful, but at the end of the day, she does have a disability. I took a quick glance at this and immediately felt sorry for her. It's the words and all

window into her lonely life. Her childish innocence clashes with her misguided attempts of acting grown up so badly it's disturbing and sad. Unfortunately, she can post on the Internet, which means she can be ridiculed. Yeah yeah, there's people who get what's going on, you know. Um yeah, pretty bleak.

So this is like before troll culture, really the birth of troll culture as a And see how like some of the people involved in the birth of try culture weren't necessarily coming out it m hm, and they were coming at it from like, look at this person, this is weird, this is interesting, Like this art is strange these because she has all these elaborate comics and people like just want to read them, and like, you know, you can discuss like whether or not it's cool to

do that, but it's not harassment to like find this person's posted their weird comics. Let's like laugh at them. You know. That's not necessarily abusive or harassing. It's just like consuming someone's content, maybe in a way they wouldn't like, but they put it out there, and you have a right to like feel how you do about it. Then it starts to expand to like, well, let's reach out to her in person. I want to talk to her,

you know, I want to like see her. And there are people who were into the ground floor of this where you're just like marveling at this person's kind of weird behavior, who are like, this is a disabled person. You shouldn't be like reaching out to them and like finding them in the real world, and like you, we could do a lot of damage here. There's like that, right, you've see that post someone being like, we could really do some damage here. This is a person who should

not be fucked with, you know. So folks are aware of what some folks at least are aware of what could happen, and it keeps happening. While there were more something awful threads about Christine over the years, it was four Chan, we're following her would develop into a subculture, and being four chan, people immediately took things way too far. Now, Encyclopedia dramatic A was was new back then, and an

onns created a page for her. Christian found out about her Encyclopedia dramatic A page, And if you know anything about this person, the worst thing that could happen is that she become aware that she has a page on e D because she's not going to handle that well. Um. I think she finds out because of one of her stalker's emails her about it. And this is going to be the first time where she really fails to follow

the good advice her middle school teacher gave her. Instead of ignoring the trolls, Christine starts making dozens and dozens of corrections to the Encyclopedia dramatic Age. Which is that rules a good call? Yeah? Um, obviously, if you know anything about this particulation of the Internet, this is the best thing you could have done for the folks making

fun of her. Unfortunately, they are over the moon about this stuff right because now they get to like make fun of her attempts at like defending herself and like what she says and all this stuff. Um, they found it hilarious. Like every difference she has, she would respond to incorrect claims about, for example, her sexuality by providing

evidence to prove them wrong. So people would like joke that she was like gay or I think a sexual and so she would like provide evidence of her sexual fantasies to for Chan in order to yeah, yeah that's bad, um. And and yeah, it's comprehensively bad because some of the evidence she has, like a female friend at this point, like one of her first, like one of her few like people that she actually can hang out with and

be so with. And the evidence she provides to Fortune to show that she's straight is pornographic drawing she's made of this friend of hers. Um, that was probably really good for the friendship. Yeah, it does not go over well, um, because Christine had previously like kind of expressed romantic interest in this person, and the friend had very gently been like, I don't I don't you know, see you that way.

I don't want to, but I want to be your friend. Um. And of course she's rightly horrified when she finds out that her friend has provided pornography that she drew of them to thousands of strangers. That's a thing you you should be a great about. Bob's Burgers. Bob's Bob's Burgers has erotic friend fiction, Louise, I think is oh yes, yes, yes, a lot of friend fiction is not a winner in

social circles. Don't post it online, you know, whatever you're gonna do, certainly, don't hand it to four chan to proof that you're straight. Right, um and yeah, Christine loses this friend forever. And of course it is the funniest thing that these people who are now stalking here have ever ever experienced. Um and and all of the terrible

things only kind of escalate from there. But you know what doesn't escalate from here, Margaret the episode because this is this is the end of part one and it's yeah, time for your um your plugables. How you feeling, Margaret, I, you know, like it's not that I feel like I got tricked into coming on to whatever. It's fine, it's fine. It's not like I'm really close to home someone exactly my age who Yeah, weird shitty like behavior from like classmates,

and like, well here's the thing you can find. Literally, there's probably more we were building this, There's probably more written about Christine than any other figure in history, like in terms of biographical information, I doubt there is more biographical information about like people like fucking Hitler out there, and more like it is, the degree to which people obsess over her life is insane. Um and nearly all of what you're going to find is like really grossly

voyeuristic and like mocking. And I think this is an important story because it is kind of foundational to why the Internet is the way that it is and why Internet culture is the way that it is. But like it's also really it was really important to me in telling this story, you have to get into an uncomfortable level of detail, and it I don't want it. I didn't want to just like make fun of this person,

because I don't think that's good. Um. I just I do think the story is important because it builds to everything we're dealing with right now. I don't think you're making fun of her, it's just it's and then yet also, you know, the whole racist, homophobic thing is not It's not a good look for anybody, regardless of what they're dealing.

I yeah, I wanted someone else who I felt like would uh kind of identify with the being like harassed and made fun of, Like I was a weird kid who drew cartoons who had like the cartoons taken away from me from like a kid in class who would like read them and ship Like like I get it, I get like some of the ship that she must have been going through. Um, and so I I have actually a lot of compassion for this person who is not a good person. I think you have to approach

in a complex way. And um, it's unfortunate that like this, this should never have been a person who like needed to be a figure of kind of national attention. That is where this story ends. It ends with her on Tucker Carlson as it heads up. Yeah, like like this this is this is blown up to the point and it and it's found again. It's so foundational to like internet culture that I think you have to get into it.

But like it would be really easy to do that and just be like another two hours of people making fun of this person on the internet. Um, there's a documentary series that's like a couple of hundred hours in length on YouTube that you can find, Like it's it's it's fucking crazy. How much ship there is about this? This is um which is which is anyway? Yeah, I don't even know what. Well we'll explain all of that part two, Margaret, But but for now, you gotta plug anything. Well,

I have a show coming out. Um, I don't know whether I don't know whether it's announced yet. Um is it announced yet? Can I can I announce? We can? Yeah, let's do it fun funk our corporate overlords, let's do it. Literally, they have no say in this. Are you talking about? Well, le's perstend like we're sticking it to the man by Yeah. Yeah,

that's why I'm signing a contract to do it. Yeah. Well, the man coming out called cool people who did cool stuff, and cool people did cool stuff is about well, it's about cool people who did um cool stuff. Yeah yeah, and um and so people who like behind the bastards. But I don't like the bastards. You know, I'm really I'm work shopping how to pitch this. But yeah, but yeah, So I have a new podcast coming out on May

second on Cool Zone Media. Um. And other than that, you can find me on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy or Instagram at Margaret Killjoy. On Twitter, I stir up fights that I now feel slightly more guilty for stirring up after listening to this episode and on Instagram, I talk about how much I love my dog. That sounds much better than literally anything we've talked about today. Go find a dog, take care of a dog. Margaret's dog is exceptionally beauty. Dog is good. Your dog exceptionally beautiful

inside and out. Oh my god. Thanks, Well, this has been fun. I'm glad we got to throw in a little middle finger to our corporate overlords. Take that. Yeah, the man people who give us money whenever we ask and let us do whatever we want. That'll teach you, that'll learn you. Um all right, Go hug a dog. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.