H h, well I did it. That was yeah, please absolutely, Chris make it horny, like like really horny. Well, this is Behind the Bastards podcast that is introduced the way I just introduced it. What are you going to do about it? Find another show. I'm gonna listen to someone else. No, you're not. You're stuck here. You're stuck here with me, with me and with Margaret Kiljoy. Margaret, welcome to the show. Hello. How are you doing, Margaret? I'm doing great. Nothing bad or sad as happened, and I'm sure that we're gonna be talking about sunny sunshine roses. Yeah. I like thinking about good things. You know, did a lot that makes me angry in the world, Like, for example, Hollywood didn't really do anything good with didn't do enough good with Bruce Campbell when he was like young and super hot. What's what's up with that? How could you not? I just someone wants to talk about this on Twitter and they're right, like, how was he not in more stuff when he was like, you know, army of darkness young? Like, how do you not make maximum use of that guy? It's unbelievably infuriating. Yeah, his jaw is just left incredible on Yeah, you could bludgeon people to death with that jaw and they'd be happy about it. And you can almost kill him in every movie. Sam Raimi nearly murdered that man like thirty times, and Bruce just kept coming back for more, Like what a hero? Anyway a hero? I feel like we really lost out on some great Bruce Campbell movies, like why not just kidd no no, But just like when he was like super young, right, he's been great. He's he's aged into a wonderful career. Is like the old guy kind of aging action hero type character. He does that in a lot of that and burn notice and in the in the Ash Versus the Evil Dead show, Like he's had a wonderful career. I'm sure he's very happy. But like young Bruce Campbell, think about like why not why not try him as a superman, Like just throw it in there, just see what we get, you know, just cast Bruce Campbell is Superman and let it happen um and have Sam Raimie directed, Like my god, can you imagine that movie? That would have been nuts. I'm trying to delay us getting back to a very uncomfortable series of conversations. Yeah, because it's about to get a lot worse. Um. Thanks, thanks everyone for tuning into this episode where there's absolutely like no no, no joy, Like we can't, we don't even get like the moment of laughing at at Hitler being given fucking cocaine by his doctor who's angry at the other doctor for giving him herold, like, those are the good moments, Those are the ones that made this show with it. None of those in this story. So yeah, when we last left off Christine, she had provided four chan with evidence of that she was not you know that she was straight by giving hand drawn pornography of one of her few real life friends, which is bad bad call, um, generally bad call. Not generally a bad call, always a bad call. Don't what if it had worked, though? What if the friend had been like, it's true, I've been thinking about you this whole time. That's not a zero percent chance, but it's not a betting chance. Like someone out there there kink would be realizing that their friend had had, without asking for their consent, written pornography about them and handed it to fortune. That person exists, right, but yeah enough, yeah, um, but that person is also on four chan. Right, so there is a there is a um. Yeah. Anyway, so this goes bad and it also kind of super charges this growing fandom. It is kind of a fandom. I think you have to look at it that way. Um. Around Christian like people realize not only does this person respond when you poke them, which is like the number one thing that lets a bully no, it's time to keep on bullying, um, but that you can get incredible content out of like lying about them on the internet and waiting for them to correct you in ways that make their entire life worse. Um. So you know she has she has basically proven herself to be like a comedy pinada for these people, right, That's that is how they're looking at it. Um. So yeah, um it's not great. This all sets off a three year period of near constant baiting by trolls, most of whom would pretend to be women um interested in dating Christine. Um, so they would they would reach out to her and like they would cat fish her with like photos and messages with the goal of getting her to like reveal shameful things to them. And again, this is a thing that happens a lot to all sorts of people. Now, this didn't really happen much like two eight, two nine. This is not as nearly as common as it would be. Um, and especially it was not a thing that people did to create content for huge anonymous masses of Internet users. Like this is really where that begins. Yeah, one of the first of these trolls convinced convinced Christine to mail them her beloved sonnet U medallion, this thing that she's like made, that she wears everywhere. That's like her most valued possession in the world. So this person pretends to be a girl who's interested in her and like asks for the medallion is like a token of love. And then when they get it, they post a video of themselves smashing it and lighting it on fire. Um cool, Yeah, good, we we really made a good thing with the Internet. You think back to like people saying like, oh, this is when people are connected. It's going to make some of the evils of the twentieth centre impossible to repeat. No, it's it's just gonna mean that like when the evils of the twentieth century are repeated, we like throw a fucking uh whatever um trance wave or whatever filter on it and stick like a meme joke on it. We sell t shirts of it and ship like I might as well. Yeah, it's frustrating. Um. So she eventually makes another medallion. Um. And she in due time gets cat fished by another and on who this time convinces her to shove it up her ass um and like tape it and stuff. Um. On another occasion, she gets tricked into driving across the state for an orgy that never happens. Um. And these are all like some of these are the same people over and over again. These are a lot of different people. Um. Yeah. Yeah. So the worst of her cat fishers, I think, the person who like breaks her medallion and lights on the fire and ship goes by the name of Blue Spike. Um. And this person who is like carrying out what I think we can say is like profoundly almost psychotically abusive capers is thirteen years old. Oh fuck yeah yeah yeah that's scance. Um. Oh god. And because Christian is like what six or something, she's in her like mid twenties at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Well, And I guess one of the things that this kind of reveals is that the way the Internet enables abuse means that if you're if you're the kind of person who is incapable of disengaging in the way that Christine is. High school never ends, middle school never ends, you know whatever, that's good Like, so no one is so you have there's no one's that I mean, everyone's at fault, No one's yea, every everyone's like everyone's bad. Also everyone has something that means like, well, this thirteen year old can't really know the full limp locations of what they're doing, right, and Christine is awful, but also can't really fully know the full ramifications of the decisions they're making. It's just this horrible engine that has been built kind of by accident that is now like churning these people towards calamity, which is the ghost machine. Oh my god, because the thirteen year old could have been because like when I when I think about my friends, who were you know, I mean doing some version of this stuff in the nineties on various directions, like just the Internet didn't exist in the same way that thirteen year old could have also been. Chris Chan Yeah, I'm like, wow, Engine of South yep. Okay, yep. So they reveal the fact that they're a thirteen year old to Chris after having cat fished Chris for months during one of the most horrific moments in in Christian history, which is called Chris Tery, which is legitimately funny. That's legitimately funny. Yeah. Um, but this moment is I'm just gonna play the audio of of Blue Spike, this fucking teenager revealing this to Christian um, because in the voice of this kid is something important. Do you really want to know? Yeah? My chance? Not right now? Come on, please chance, Please, Julia. I've just been to a whole lot mess for you, just like what happened. I'll say that in private, but let me what you say first from your heart. It's so hard to say you love me, don't you? I do, But there's something else I need to say. I just don't. I just don't know how to do this. I don't know how to tell you this. Travisy nuts Cluth, He's not that there's like a breakdown, Yeah, Chris, Yeah, I came back. Now when do what happened there? But this is the fans for like five minutes and then I'll tell you please, A'm ready to tell you, okay, this whole time, Chris You've been having sex for a thirteen year old boy? You sick? Fuck? What? Yeah? Yeah? So that's that's enough. In that God, that kid's voice and like the glee in it, that's that's the voice of the soul of the internet. Like that is that is the disembodied soul of digital culture speaking in that momentum. That's rough. I used to do the opposite of this when I was a teenager, Like my friends hung out at IRC and we would catfish we have catfish petals and then like get them be like, oh yeah, we're gonna like phone sex you and get them to call us and trace their number and reveal them to their workplaces. Yeah, And obviously I feel okay about that. That's fine. Yeah, but this is very different because like Christine doesn't think she's hanging out obviously does not is not aware that this is a thirteen year old like and it's that that kind of and this is occurring the reason there's other voices. This is doing like a fan called kind of like a prototype of like what twitch streamers and stuff do. Now almost we're like you have a famous person and like people are coming in and like chatting with them and stuff. Like, so this is this is a thing that is occurring where he's talking to this person he thinks is like his online girlfriend in front of a bunch of fans that she thinks are like real fans of hers aren't. But no, does she have any real fa she does? It gets It's weird. There's definitely people who like, there's after her that that that that is that would be a funny thing to start. That's a good light to teach kids. Um, you're here, it here first, its name. That's pretty bleak, right And if that had been the absolute height of how fucked up things had gotten, this would be a really sad story. Um. But this happened two thousand nine. Um, and every harassment of Christine goes on right up to this day. Um. In her father died, leaving her and her mother in an increasing increasingly desperate financial states. Into this fourteen they're fucking house burnt down along with most of their possessions. Um. This is probably due to the fact that Christine's mom is a hoarder. You know, there was a lot of bad decisions made about how to keep the house are e fire safety. Um, these are not her mom, especially after their Dad's not a very functional person, you know, um, and Christine is not a very functional person, and so like things just get out of hand in they're like, this is one of those things. I'm not a cps is probably does more harm than good in my opinion, but like somebody it should have been in any any decent society, some responsible person should have stepped in and been like, this can't continue without outside intervention. Someone needs to take care of you both, right, you're not capable of doing that, right, Like not I'm not talking about institutionalization, but like just a nice person who could like sit down with him and be like, hey, you can't keep all these newspapers stacked up next to this old coffee machine that that sparks all the time or whatever. I don't know what costs the fire, but like that's one of the things that like the people who make fun of Christine kind of don't always some of them do, but don't always take into account that, like this is a person who's in like a danger is an unhealthy living environment for reasons outside of like the weird ship they're doing on the internet. Right, it's pretty pretty she's still at home. She hasn't moved out. She's not really capable of living indentantly. Um, I think she would have been at some point. I don't think she was inherently like incapable, but like the person that she becomes in part due to this, because like this fandom and stuff like, it's this constant positive reinforcement along with negative reinforcement. So she's both getting made fun of, but she's also people are giving her money, people are like praising her work. This like community springs up around her, and she believes that she's like becoming a famous content creator, which means there's not it to the extent that she ever had any kind of positive pressure to change in a in a direction that would lead to her being able to like take care of herself more effectively. That goes away because of all this, like it's both positive and negative attention. That's all bad for her. Yeah, yeah, got that thirteen year olds a grown ass person. That thirteen year old was a grown ass person. Right now, Uh, maybe listening to this show, Maybe listening to this show maybe feels horrible about it. I really don't know much about what happens to Blue Spike afterwards. I would hope they've become a better person. Most people I wouldn't put money on it. I would because they were Internet right. Yeah. I I caught window someone from my high school who did something real bad to me, like like ten or fifteen years later, bragging about it on Facebook, like, remember that was really funny when we did this one horrible, life altering scarring thing. Yeah. Yeah, I get that kind of feeling like that, that there's so much cruelty in that voice. Yeah, and maybe I'm wrong, maybe, and maybe if you're listening, you should reach out and pretend like you're better and then be really horrible to Wait, No, don't do that. You should do that if you're willing to meet us in a secluded would without leaving any information about where you're headed. Um uh so yeah, um. All this financial desperation like one of the ways in which Christine solves it as she starts taking commissions from fans, And a lot of these are like ironic people making fun of her or trying to get her to illustrate like horrific things, scenes of like violence, and I think there's some sexual abuse and stuff in there. You know, it's four chance stuff, right, can your mind can put the rest together. Um, but a decent amount of it is genuine and and this is the thing that's I think it is also toxic for the reasons I've outlined, But a lot of people I think increasingly appreciate her and kind of the same way people do Edwood, if that makes sense, where it's like, this is a good artwork. These aren't good comics, but there's so much heart in them in such a specific and unique way that people gain a sort of enjoyment from it that's not entirely based in it's not really based in mockery, even though it's like laughing. They're not consuming her the way she intended for it to be. But there are people who do just like are fascinated in a way that's not just about being mean. Um, you know how art works? No, I mean yeah, like well, I ironic engagement often leads to earnest engagement, because sometimes irony is just a defense mechanism of like something that you actually enjoy, you know. Yeah, So the same way that like ironic Nazis you're like, now you're just a Nazi, You're you actually just enjoy it and you cloak it in a shield of irony, you know, yeah, yeah, you can do that in reverse too. I guess, so that's happening too. And again I think it's part of like I'm sure Christine loves that dimension of it. I also, again, I think it's kind of like helping to keep her from ever growing as a person in ways that could I'm talking about growing out of like liking weird sonic art or making comics, but like growing out of being unable to take care of herself in basic human ways. Um, yeah, not knowing how to react and yeah, not some of these would conflict not only had like yeah, like I I don't think she was inherently incapable of growing in those ways, but I think becoming the center of this circus kind of locked her into continuing to play these roles in the way that like when you get rich and famous at age eighteen for something, a lot of times you never grow up. We've seen this a bunch. There's that there's that great line and um Bow Jack Horsemen where they make the I figet which characters but says that like whatever age you get rich at, you never like that's the age you stop developing as a human being. And I think you can make a similar case to whatever age you get like super internet famous at you just get like locked into that forever. Um, oh my god. That's yep. Especially works really well since like the whole Vampires class analysis ms kind of ghosts in the machine. Yeah yeah, yeah. So by the mid ots, most of the early places like something Awful where people had gathered to gawk at Christian life and her artwork had moved on, right, like something Awful, It is not really the center of of what actually grows into the problematic part of this is just kind of like where people start gawking. Um, A lot of people like I was someone who paid a tip, Like I've been following Christian stories since like two thousand and six or seven, you know. Um, so when I was like literally a child myself, I first became aware of this person. Um, and most of the folks who were kind of like in the were just kind of like fascinated with her eventually stopped tuning in, especially once the abuse started. When four chan gets involved, a lot of people who had initially been interested to like, well, this is really fucked up. Now you're not just gawking at like some weird outsider art. You're like abusing a person. Um, and there's this kind of growing awareness that something deeply fucked up is happening. In two fourteen, in a new forum called Kiwi Farms is created for the most dedicated trolls and observers of Christian. This is where Kiwi karms Farms comes from, is specifically to follow and mock Christian, so they escalate things even beyond what four chan had done. Some forum members took photos of the Chandler's homes from the street. At one point, Christian and her mother assaulted the owner of a gaming store with a car because Christian had been banned from the gaming store and so like, she and her mom attacked this person, which is again not great people. Like not great people. Um. When both had their court date, people from Kiwi Farms are there to document it for the lowells. Like there's like people actually show up inmport to watch this. Yeah. We should trick them into becoming war correspondence. Yeah, get them to like troll some specific Russian conscript by joining a territorial defense battalion. Yeah, or just troll the concept of like an s U twenty nine by getting bombed or something. I don't know. Um, so I'm gonna read a quote from a write up in New York Magazine. Here. Over the eight years, they've contacted Chandler, her pastor, and her parents, posing as journalists, former classmates, psychiatrists, potential business partners, and others, and the hopes that these ruses yield more confidential info. Twice, female Kiwi farmers arranged real life dates with Chandler. Both of them used fake names and wore wires to record these outings. Packages and letters are routinely sent to Chandler's residents, many of which contain obscene materials designed to unsettle the recipients. In one instance, someone sent prostitutes to visit Chandler's house, then called the family to taunt them about it. Oh my god, so we're we're well passed, just like, oh look at this weird stuff. You know. Yeah, if every day you've ever been on was a joke at your expense. Yeah, And this is happening right around the same time gamer Gate is and everyone else, and this is the kind of thing like when gamer get hit everyone around me. I remember being so surprised at what was happening, And even before Kiwi Farms, I had been seeing versions of that stuff happened to fucking Christian. I think there were few people like that who were like, oh, ship, this has gone everywhere now, like this is broken containment. You know, this is not just like how the Internet deals with their special person that they're all obsessed with. This is like now with a set of tactics that are used on a wide variety of people, but of course like the most even then, like, considering how fucked up gamer Gate is, I think Christian deals with more fucked up and targeted harassment than any of the gamer Gate victims. Not to minimize it, but like, right, this is some This is so comprehensive. And and again at the point at which gamer Gate starts, this has been going on almost a decade, right well, and it's like most of the gamer Gate people have probably had get to have real friends in their life instead of just ironic friends who are trolling them. Yeah. I hope at least for the gamer Gate people, you know, for the gamer Gate victims. Not I don't care what happens to them because of those people, but this is like, this is her entire adult life is dealing with this pretty much. Yeah, I can't even know well of co what. Yeah, it's impossible to comprehend what that would do to you. Yeah, I mean I I've talked to and I've had the experience of like, you know, the kind of high school experience of being like, oh, I've been invited to a party. I bet it's just to make fun of me, right, Yes, you know and like and and and that plays a number. You know that that messes with your sense of self twenty years later, right, But that was like once, you know, or like or over the period of a year or two or something, you know, just the idea that someone's entire life from middle school on. It's a hell. It's like literally a Dante's Inferno. I've never read Dante's Inferno, but let's pretend like I have. Yeah, it's mostly about a dude wanting to suck a chick um, but then she dies, and so he makes fun of the governor of Venice a lot something like that. If I'm remembering my Dante rights, it's really horny and it's petty grievances. It's actually not from Christian has put it together like that. How many of the greatest pieces of art and history where someone who just like I live in a private world and I'm write about it. Yeah, I'm angry this relationship didn't work out, and I have specific petty grievances about local elected officials. Now I'm going to create one of the most infamous works of art in the history of human learning. It's pretty it's pretty funny, it's pretty dope. Yeah, alright, you know what else he's doe products and services that people can spend money at. Oh my god, there's nothing as good as a product and a service. Yeah, that wasn't my best transition. I'll figure it out for the next one. All in sight can be so good. Violence against a him or something. I don't know, we'll figure it out. Here's ads. We're back. You know. I'm thinking about like getting bullied. And some of the worst ship I ever had to deal with was like from one of my teachers. We had this fucking in Texas, you have to take Texas history class, right, which because it's always a nation, so that horseshit, like always horseshit. In my experience, it was nothing but nonsense. Um, and they really gloss over the slavery stuff, by the way, especially since my Texas history teacher was also the I think it was the volleyball coach. It might have been tennis. It's been a long time at this point, but he was a coach, right, He was one of these, like like more, most of my history teachers were mainly coaches who then they got stuck teaching history. And I would, like, you know, I played D and D and ship as a kid, and so I would like take my D and D books with me around and like read them in between classes and stuff when I had free time. And this fucking day he like see it. I'm not like reading it in class. It's just like below my stack of books, and he like grabs it and he walks to the front of the class and he starts like reading from it and making me explain things and laughing at me in front of the class. I know, I mean, I I it's entirely possible. I said some things that would have gotten me arrested if my friends hadn't been such good friends, because I definitely like said some column biny shit about that, dude, you know, yeah, because when you're a teenager and you don't know how to deal with conflict. Yeah, fucking a god, damn, I fucking hate uh, Texas schools. My my gym teacher made fun of my duck boots in front of the entire class. Jesus, and I never wore duck boots again. I still haven't worn duck boots again. They're really they're great boots. But I'm sure you look excellent duck boots. Yeah, I need a good pair it with a nice heal on it. Man, anyway, we need to like No, that's that's legally excitement. Um So, Christine, at no point in the story has been a particularly healthy person. Obviously, you know, even before the Internet really got involved, she expressed homophobia and racism. But years upon years of ceaseless, demented harassment did not help matters. Over the years, a group of trolls started working in a concerted fashion to convince Christian, who always had a tenuous grip on reality, that other dimensions existed, and that her cartoon characters and cartoon girlfriends and cartoon child that she had all created for this cartoon series she's been drawing for years were real somewhere in the universe. Now there's a whole timeline you can read online in painful detail if you want to. Um, I want to quote now from a section from Chris Chan's absolutely Voluminous Dedicated WICKI hosted on Sanna Chew dot com for some reference as to the scale of the obsession we're dealing with here. Now the Quickie, you know, the wiki dedicated to the c w C. That's that's her initials currently has two thousand, one ninety seven articles. The okay, it's out of it's mind. How have I not heard of the most famous person in history? It's it's it's you had to Yeah, we'll get to that quote. In September two seventeen, Joshua Wise contacted Christine to commission artwork with the two win contact why Is decided to see for himself Christine's gallibility. In late October two seventeen, he again contacted Christine, posing as John Yamata. As Yamada Why Is claimed to be a soldier from Game Industry, a location set in the franchise Hyperdimension Neptunia, and inquired if Christine still had her old Sega Dreamcast console, telling her it contained a partial portal into quick Fill, which is like the fake version of Charlotte' Fille She's created for her comics. Why Is used the lore from Neptunia to play into Christine's existing preconceptions about reality and her belief that fictional worlds exist in alternate dimensions, giving her validation over those beliefs, which would both prime Christine for following under Wyse's spell and eventually encourage her to retreat further into his fantasy world to cope with her real world problems. So this snowballs into a group of which is like, this is like mental abuse, so of really like kind of hard to fathom scale. It's snowballs into a group of trolls, convincing Christian that they could destroy Quickville, her fantasy world, which is basically the only thing good going on in her life. Um, So they put the fantasy city that she's created up for ransom, and they start making her do a variety of horrible things to stop it from being destroyed. They had her confess to being a pedophile and confessed to raping her own mother. Then they threatened to release those confessions publicly if she didn't record herself shooting on the floor and punching herself in the face until she cried. At one point, they asked her to punch her mother, which she did. Oh my, so black Mirror is just a pale imitation Black Marrying got shipped on the stuff people have been doing to Christian for like fifteen something years. Um. So these trolls who are known kind of in the Chris Chan uh fandom. I don't know what you want to call it, but these trolls are referred to as the Idea guys, and they eventually blackmail Chris Chan out of a bunch of money, like six thousand dollars. I'm sure she has a lot of yeah, which she Yeah, this is like, I think money that her and her mom need to exist. Um. This abuse is actually so horrific that it pisces off people on Kiwi Farms who think this is going too far and is no longer funny. So a group of these again pretty psychopathic folks on Kiwi Farms start dedicating themselves to dismantling these plots and even trying to force some of the Idea guys to face legal action. Um. The leader of this group, Null is also the main mod on Kiwi farms. I think he might have found it. I'm not as up on that stuff, and he's like was big into gamer Gate. He's extremely anti Semitic. He believes in like white genocide theories. He uses the in word a bunch. He's like a very gross dude. And the fact that this guy and people like him are horrified enough by the abuse level that has grown that they start to defend. Christine says something significant about how bad things have gotten that like this, this this motherfucker's like, okay, well that people are going too far. Um, it's it's it's it's pretty bleak. Now. I don't know how much detail to get into. We could talk for tens of hours about this story, and some people have, which is part of what I find so unsettling. Coverance of Chris Chan ranges from the obviously hateful. The rite up of her life on Encyclopedia Dramatica is basically just non slot stop slurs focused around the fact that she's now transgender. Um. She comes out in two thousands, seventeen, UM. So this is like, if you've been following the Christian story most of the time this has been going on, that has not been like a factor in it. That's a fairly recent thing for her, um. But not all of it is like super hateful. The Chris Chan wiki is weirdly neutral. Um, I think they still miss gender her. But it's otherwise written basically like a history wold document Like it's not full of like insults and stuff. Um, there's some editorializing and judgment, but it's pretty straightforward. And then there are the documentaries. You can find numerous YouTube videos about Christian's life, but by far the most detailed is Christian A Comprehensive History, which is currently at part fifty nine. At present, there are more than twenty hours of content. Now I want to play you the opening to the most recent of it's these videos, which to its credit, does not miss gender her. These are not like disrespectful or mean, They're just profoundly unsettling in their detail. What made her this way? What is the attraction? What keeps us fascinated? This is the story of Christian Ah. On October sixteen, Christine published the final pages of Sana Chu issue twelve, marking its completion. The comic begins with episodes five to Be or Not a tom Girl told from the perspective of Sanachus, then son Robert sana Cheu. So that's like just analytical, almost like scientific in its level of dissection. They cover every moment of her life. And again it's almost there's a degree to which is almost more unsettling than the hateful stuff, like that you're not gonna find anything cool in there. They are careful once she transitions, because this starts, you know, before that point, but once she does, they're very careful about gendering her properly. Um, it's not mean, it's just detailed to an extent that I don't know anyone else's life has ever been documented. Um. And I mean it's interesting because it's like if says that in the opening, it's like, well, what makes us so obsessed? It was like, that's the people who have a problem here. Like I mean, Christian has a problem, she's living in hell, but like, but these people, they have a problem. Yeah, this is this is a problem. Right. If a friend were to be like, so I finished our twenty of my documentary on this person whose most notable attribute is that they make kind of off putting comics, I would be like, so, we gotta get you help, right, Like, we gotta get you out of this, Like whatever you're doing, you're not in a good place, Like do you need to talk? Um, it's pretty pretty good stuff. Um, but it is. It is kind of worth noting that the obsession is not like entirely hateful. Um yeah, it's weird. Well, and it also that piece also shows that she's come around on LGBT issues. Yes, she's she's not come around. I think maybe some I I can't there's a lot of Chris Terry to get into. I could not tell you the extent to which she has come around on race. I certainly hope so, but I'm not aware of that happening. Um. Yeah. Uh. And there's like weird little fractures within these communities, like an encyclopedia dramatic at the people who document her like mock and deride the people who are like sending her money and making documentaries about her and like defending her and stuff. Um. So there's even like weird little fractures in this fan community. Um. And it's weird because like a lot of the folks, even with these kind of impartial documentaries, the people who follow them are a lot of the trolls who torment her. So it's all this like weird riberose of the Internet being a mistake. Um. Obviously, you know at this point, Kiwi Farms has largely moved on from Christian She's still a topic of discussion and from time to time. But um and in fact, she's like the kind of the first loll cow, you know, the first person they treat this way, Um, but they have a bunch of other They spend a lot more of their time focusing on other folks. I think at this point, Um, she's kind of beneath interest for a lot of them, they're kind of bored of it. U four chan is also more or less over her. But the years of obsession in the different pranks and ons played on her are part of the site's DNA. Now, in fact, the harassment of Christine Chandler has been going on for so long that it has it has had an influence on the DNA of the entire modern Internet. Like there is ship that like Russian troll farms were doing that was pioneered in the campaigns of harassment against this person. Um and yeah, it's it's this kind of architecture of harassment that is such a mainstay of online discourse, was built in large part to funk with this one person. And that brings me to the end of the story for now. This well, uh, late in um a user on Kiwi Farms posted a phone call with Chris Chan. The audio is a woman clearly a member of Kiwi Farms rolling Chandler talking to her about Chris Chan's desire for an incestuous relationship with her mother and if you remember, they as a threat got her to like claimed and yeah, exactly, um. Business Insider notes that quote. In August two sixteen, Chandler wrote a Facebook status defending a mother and son in Mexico who reportedly said they were in love, which The Daily Mail reported at the time. Although incest is quite a controversial topic, these are circuit There are circumstances where there would not be so much harm as one may think, feel, or believe. She said, unless the sex act was abusive, hurtful, or would result in an unwanted birth of a physical or mental challenge child, I would not judge or persecute the parent and child. Chandler wrote that she herself had dreams of having sex with her mother, although she never acted on them, and like, who knows the degree to which this is true? Um, because she also just says ship for reactions, But like, she's also getting pretty detailed in this. In this call with this Kiwi Farms member Chris chan states that the fan fix these like things she said to her fans on the internet about wanting to have a relationship with her mom, had become a reality. Now. I am not going to play any graphic details from this call in which Christine discusses molesting her very elderly mother. Um, but I will play a segment where the person calling her explains her interest in Christery because it provides some insight into how these people keep tricking christine relationship. But I just thought, because I'm not huge on Christie and you know whatever, I just thought that the hostntry franchise is really interesting. And that's how I got into you when I was younger, Right, but I had I hadn't had any idea that Barbara was that Barbara and you had that sort of relationship. I never got any of those vibes. But um, how did you approach her? I'm not sure, but care and cautious. It was a time, it was a time prost So I just gave her comfort to talk with her justly out slow and today and then I and I heard her positively like her make the first move she want, so she did really she made the first move. You hear that excitement in her voice when she gets Chris to admit to that, Like, yep, you get what's she's doing here, right, the degree to which she is fishing for responses. Um, And that's pretty clear. I think if you listen to the whole tape, it's pretty clear. Um. So it goes on. The audio was subsequently shared by null of Kiwi Farms, and in short order it goes viral on Reddit. Now that audio contains claims by Chandler again that she's molested her seventy year old mother. I have no idea whether or not Christine actually did anything with her mom. It is certainly not impossible, right, Um. But there's again numerous documented instances of Christian being convinced or led to lying about things, or even fantasizing about things that never happened as if they had happened, because again, she's been convinced that like all these sort of fan to sees of hers are real by like people who often pretend to be character she's created, breaking through some dimensional barrier and then like catfishing her like she doesn't have a great grasp on what is actually happening in physical reality anymore, um her lawyer, because this hall winds up being a big court case. Her lawyer seems to be making this claim, saying quote, Miss chandlers frequent and sometimes over the top presence on the Internet is partly a product of mental health issues causing misguided attention seeking and often provocative engagement with others. Um. So, within hours of this call going viral on Reddit, Chris Chan starts to trend on Twitter. Leaked text messages begin to go viral at around the same time. Um And in response to some of these Chandler tweets, quote, there is drama in the air today, Each and every one of you are all encouraged to withdraw from any and all dramas, gossip, rumors and whatever else will and already has approached your way today. So she's trying to like clamp down on some of the stuff. It doesn't work. She gets arrested on August one on suspicion of incest, which is a fifth degree felony in Virginia. Additional charges are noted to be pending. Her arrest was, of course live streamed by a right wing troll named Ethan Ralph in the video, Chandler was heard telling Ralph everything is going to be all right. The Green County Sheriff's Office later states that Chandler was being charged due to allegations of sex crimes against a family member. As you might expect from Central Virginia law enforcement, the fact that chris Chan was trans immediately becomes an issue. She was initially listed as female in the jails online system, but her gender was changed to mail a day or so later. The jail gave no reason for the change, and hooray, hooray, what's the that's the you know, most of the time when you think about like um uh, people who are in hell because of the way that their um nerdive urgence is treated by society, usually think about psychiatric institutes, right, and you think about how like M. P. Pull in psychiatric institutes, the you know, we'll put people in hell mentally. It's the democratization of that. It's the decentralization of you no longer need an institute to um completely ruin a nerd of viurgent person's life. Everyone can have yeah, part of them. We have essentially create allowed random thirteen year old kids in forums to craft little mental asylums that we they can then trick people into being in or force them into being in and locked them into using the internet. Cool, good, good, good thing we've built. Yeah, it's it's just Um, this is but this is like why I think people have to look at this and what has happened, because I don't think people often see that like that is what's going on online, Like this is a seedy underbelly. And from this kind of this gross little under billy that doesn't get much attention, the tactics that are pioneered here filter up and do get used by institutions and organizations on a grander scale to carry out targeted harassment for often political purposes. Um. And that's that's a story worth telling. And you know what other stories worth telling? Margaret? What's that? The story of how has an island off the coast of Indonesia where you, assuming you have several hundred thousand dollars to spend um, and your friends, assuming they are equally financially well off, can hunt children for sport and for food. You know, I'm I'm vegan. Do they have options where they provide after I hunt the child, where they provide other other they actually have a Tempe version of of child brisket that that's quite actually quite good. Often when I'm there, I sometimes prefer the Tempe you know, not bad. You know, you can get and and and they'll they'll they'll mount your trophy while you eat, so you know, it's really great. Everything is good in the world. This bit is getting old. I feel good about old Sophie. This one's getting there. You have to go old Dorito's days when you when a bit gets old, you gotta keep it going for two to three weeks at least after it's old and many. Yeah, you got to really make it be a problem for folks, to be fair, it was old three weeks ago. Yeah, but I never listen. But does listen these products and services? Yeah, uh, we're back and I'm thinking about what the next bit will be. I can always judge because I cycled through a few and and really it's the one that makes Sophie react like she wants to hit me. That's when I know I found a good new bit, which I would never do. Never ever. You did throw a thing at me once you you harmed Anderson. I didn't harm Anderson. I accidentally cut you with a machete. Yeah, but you were swinging it Anderson. Yeah, but I didn't harm Anderson. She's traumatized. She's fine, she loves machete's Anderson knows she's always safe around me with a machete. Yeah, but her mom is all right. Well that was Look, there was a lot going on, and in fairness to me, I was on a lot of painkillers. So I feel like that's fair Sophie. And you threw you threw things at me, Yeah, but I didn't make contact. Unfortunately. Is this all just like a little life lesson and about complicity and culpability? Yes, everything, every thing is. And now you're all culpable and complicit for listening. So thank you, thank you for thank you. That's the beauty of complicity. Um, speaking of complicity, the jail system, the criminal justice system. But they'll be so good about both trans issues and mental health issues, right, Yeah, this is definitely going to make everything better for Christine being incarcerated. So the judge decides to hold her without bond um, both for her safety and for public safety, largely due to the fact that there's like immediately immediate circus around the fact that she has been arrested. Um, the online ship show that's just always around her accelerated mightily after her arrest. In Local Virginia News, she was listed as a quote transgender internet personality. Now this is fucked up for a number of reasons, including the fact that, like the fact that she's trans is almost no part of this story up until it gets made that by the conservative media. Like it's pretty late in her career as a public person, and it's never really the focus of any of like the ship she does that's like like you know, trying to run down the run owner for video game store or something like it. Only it becomes the central part of the story once mainstream conservative media picks it up. Um. Now, that local Virginia news article I found on k v i A did go into detail about her background as an internet personality, but the article is still framed in such a way as to allege that like she is, like being trans is a a central part of her identity as a creator, like that, like like you see what they're doing there, right, Like I'm trying to like there, that's the thing. The I think that kind of more mainstream sources don't know what to do with someone who's with Christian's actual story, which is very complicated and very weird, has a bunch of things in it. But trans people are always a culture war thing the right can grasp onto, and so that's just what they do here. And it's I mean, it's I can't speak for all trans people, but I know that, like, being trans is like not a huge part of my life, Like I mean it it is because it has to be, because I have to think about my safety everywhere I go. I have to think about how people are going to treat me, whether or not I'm actually in a good place. You know, all of these things right that people who are marginalized along a lot of different axis have to every day. But it's like I I totally understand the like, no, I just happened to be a woman, Like it's not the center of my like being, you know. It's it's like three weeks ago or so, people in Ukraine were just as vulnerable to getting shot by artillery as they are now, but it was less of a factor in their life because people weren't shooting at them. Yeah. Yeah, So The Daily Mail also identified her as trans YouTuber Christian Um, also calling her a YouTuber is not really particularly accurate because that's not really the primary thing that she did anyway. But again, this is the Daily Mail, so did the Blaze who? And The Blaze, as it describes her this way, describes Ethan Ethan Ralph, that that right wing videographer as a podcaster and streamer. It does not know that Ethan Ralph was arrested in two thousand sixteen for felony assault on a police officer and had a warrant for his arrest sent out in November one for violating a restraining order. He's just a podcaster and streamer. Yeah. Um. The corners of the Internet, who had been mocking or obsessively following Chandler for years at this point, reacted in predictable ways, and for them this became yet another chapter in her weird and winding story. But for the right wing media, Chandler was a perfect example of the danger of the trans menace, a suitably bizarre individual they could use as a scapegoat. On August six, while Chandler sat in jail, Tucker Carlson devoted an entire segment of his show, more than five minutes of primetime coverage to Christine Chandler. I really do apologize, but I feel the need to play some of Tucker's coverage here so you can see where he takes this. A YouTube personality called Chris Chan has just been arrested in Virginia on of all things, incests charges. Authorities say Chan was having sex with his seventy nine year old mother, who has dementia. Chris Chan is a biological man, but he identifies as a woman. Reportedly, Virginia authorities initially went along with that. They classified Christian as a female, and that means Chris Chan, who is an accused sex criminal, would have been housed in a women's jail. We understand this decision has been reversed, likely due to public pressure. It became public unfortunately for the state of Virginia, and Chan is now being considered a man by the jail. But this is not an isolated incident. Many prisons in this country do house biological men with women. This is something we subpected. I think that's about enough, so you see what's happened here, right This story has been turned into what you know, a culture war issue over like the danger of trans people and women like in women's presence, like that's that's that's what Tucker finds useful in it, right, Um, And that's where it immediately gets turned Um. And obviously, the real story of Christian is of a an individual who is profoundly sick um and has been for a long time in ways that have nothing to do with their gender identity. Um. They are primarily the victim of abusive parenting, of bullying from peers, of an inadequate educational system, and of course of her own bad choices and bigotry. Um. All of these problems were exacerbated by an unprecedented campaign of online harassment, probably more significant and encompassing than any other single individual on Earth has endured. Um. There are a lot of things to take out of the story of Christian, But of course, once she went viral enough for the mainstream conservative media to focus on her, everything about her story gets boiled down to a trans ultrue war thing. Yeah, it's funny, as if it happened in the UK would be uh, you know, people claiming to be on the left who would be making this same cultural war arguments about sexual assaulting men and women's jail or whatever. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you can find folks on the left here who made that argument. I tried not to delve too much into the YouTube discourse around this arrest, because who needs that ship. Um. Chandler's time in prison or in court was as surreal as you'd expect. Um. She repeatedly has to go home to get some of her things, like her video games and stuff. Um. Yeah, yeah. She told the judge, I'm famous on the internet, like interrupted him at one point when he was talking about his concerned that people would seek at her location, which is like why he justified keeping her on bond. Um. Chandler was present at hearings in November of one in February of two where her case was subject to continuances. Her next court case is July two. She remains incarcerated and her only connection to the outside world has been through written correspondence and phone calls, all of which have been dutally analyzed and shared with the community of people who follow her every move. A large reason for the continuances seems to be that her defense attorney is attempting to get her mental health evaluated. I think he's going for a like she is not competent to stand trial. I don't think she is Yeah, easy to prove, um, but so because these people are still reaching out to her and stuff, and because she is the person that she is at this point and has been kind of trained in the way she has been. Three days after her first continuance, she writes a letter to knowl from Kiwi Farms and her defense lawyer, in which she defends incests and claims to be Jesus Christ's reincarnation. Um yep, which is both like you could see as admitting that she carried out the behavior she's accused of, but also, I would argue, is pretty good evidence that she has not at all competent to stand trial. Um. I don't know what's actually going to happen with this case. I there's not much to hope for I. I because I don't have a lot of faith that like there's an institution that knows how to deal help her at all. Like I don't know what. Like this is like a tragic case where the thing that's actually needed is a very patient, very emotionally intelligent, nice person to help her. Social workers. Yeah, a team of very well paid social workers, right right, Like that's if we actually if those existed anywhere in the United States. Yeah, those are contradictory. And what I know is in social work wants out just because they can't afford rent. Yeah, but but that's what's necessary, is like a team of people who care need to like help the radicaliz is in't the right word, like, but like need to try and help undo some of the damage and help her break some of these terribly toxic patterns that she's gotten into. Um, she needs to not I'm not I don't think like banning anyone from the Internet is going to help, but she needs to not be online. Right. I'm not saying I don't believe that a judge should order her off the internet forever. I think that would be more harmful than any than helpful. But like what she definitely part of what she needs is to not be so fucking online, um, because that ain't doing any favors for or to somehow be disconnected from the like um yeah, like like I have a feeling that for her, and I'm so not a mental health expert or anything, um, but I have a feeling that the ability to continue to post content probably is like very important for her, right and like and probably very important for some people who earnestly like what what she does, um, but some way to keep the online coming, like if the internet became a one way thing for her somehow, like she has these people to like, I mean, I've had to do this where like you know, if I have an article go up on a website with real bad trolls, my friends are just like, uh, don't read the article, don't read the comments here, I'll tell you the good ones and just don't look. Yeah, I'm not saying this is the magic solution to seventeen. No, no, there's there's no magic solution. Um, but yeah, something some fucking thing like that, right, um yeah, or I don't know. Yeah, boy, it's quite a pickle, this, this whole situation, um, and I don't know what's to be done about it, but like it's it undergird's everything that the internet is today. Yeah, yeah, it's all the things that people could do because I mean, you know, people I know, or people would do to me things that they would then laugh about amongst ten people, and so those ten people would find it funny that, you know, whatever happened or whatever. And then I mean it's also one of those things where it's like I think things happen and this is a little bit projection or something, but like things happen to trans women before we come out, that mostly only happened to women, like to women who are known to be women at the time of the harassment or something like that. And so I, you know, I don't think it's a coincidence that game or Gate, uh you know, the first large scale, to my understanding, large scale, systematic um use of this type of thing over more than one person. I don't think it's a coincidence that it first happened to a woman, um who, even if no one involved knew that it was happening to a woman. And maybe it is a coincidence. And maybe I'm just like you know, looking out for like even my home of I don't know, it really depends on how she feels about still racist O kind I think she might still be. I don't know. I think it's certainly less less like of a thing than it used to be. Um she I don't think she's uh anti gay anymore? Yeah, But which which does show, like I guess some of like and this is both positive and negative because like the good thing is that Okay, so she's clearly capable of growth and change. But the ugly side of that is that, like all of her growth and change has occurred within the context of this bizarre world of internet harassment, that she's really the only person who has ever endured to this extent um. And so yeah, this is a hard sell when you were like the person who has been harassed more than and I'm like, I know some people who had to like move houses and like, you know, yeah, I've had like you know, And then I'm like, oh, yeah, no, okay, okay, Yeah, Fortunately she hasn't to my knowledge. Software I guess she's I don't know, the story that you brought up at the very beginning of someone being driven to suicide by bullo, yes, you know, um, and that happening with maybe increasing frequency or maybe I'm just aware of it. Yeah, I mean it's hard to like rate that from like is it getting more common or not? I don't really know, um, but yeah, I yeah, I hope she gets that, like uh unicorn social worker who uh can figure out some way to better enable her to exist in the world without being as prone to the harms that have befallen her as she currently is. Yep, Yeah, it is weird. Like I think if she had never it's that it's the kind of question like if she had never engaged with the people making fun of for stuff online, would this still be happening? And obviously you can't do that, But so much of it is because um, she never learned that kind of lesson that clearly people in her early life. We're trying to treat you the teacher that like you. Um, if you show people where you're vulnerable, that's where they're going to attack you. Yeah, And it's I mean it's heartbreaking though, right, because like, if we have a culture where in order to produce content you have to have a thicker skin, you are creating a culture where people who um are prone to having a thicker skin are the people who are going to come forward and be being held up. And you're also gonna have like people, you know. I feel like we've probably all known people who started off kind of cool and then as they got more famous and they started like not listening, they had to stop listening to their haters, because if you listen to people hate you all day, nothing good going to come with that. But then they stopped listening to reasonable critique as well. You know, there's like there's so many reasons why vulnerability should be a possible a thing that we can do, you know, um as as creators. And it's just I mean, I don't know, I have so many thoughts about this, and some of it is even just like the way that like like walking down the street as as as a woman is more vulnerable than walking down the street as a man, just like in general, right, you are like basically saying like I am more vulnerable, but if you do it right, it's a position of strength. It's a position of like I'm so strong that I can be this vulnerable, And I I wish I knew how to like cultivate that in in culture to allow that to happen more. Yeah, that's some I agree with you about the importance of that. I have no idea da how you because I think most of the people I know who have that it was kind of a process of um endurance that was produced by endurance eventually, you know. Um. And I because I don't want to be like the sociopathic boomer responsive like well that's that's because what they actually need to do is just like tough at out you know, and that's the only way anything good ever happens. And it's like, no, I don't think kids have to tough out psychopathic things being done to them by cruel people. And I actually don't think that's a good basis for like an ongoing understanding of how society should work. Yeah yeah, um, I don't think people should have to endure any of the things that Christian has endured. Um uh. And I don't think that the answer to like what's happened to her, what's happened to other people who have been in variations of this is like, well, they just needed to like get harrassed enough that they got over it. Yeah, yeah, ah cool. All right, well Margaret, Margaret, it's time for the plug. How you doing. Yeah, Well, if you want to hear about good things, that's an excellent no, Margaret, Margaret, what's that first word? If no? No, no, no, good good good good. Sorry, Robert's not familiar type dictionary dot com in the Google it's g g U D Robert. It's that thing that we do every once in a while around Christmas, get really drunk on mold wine. That too, But I mean that is a good thing. If avery an alligator in the dirt and start a fire over it. That is a good thing, depending on your choices. Just you, Robert, Okay, please continue, Margaret, I think I understand. Yeah, So I am a host of a new podcast on I forget the name of the network. It's like a refrigerator zone is something about like a place that things are cold, a place that things are cold. You mean freezing yeah, on freezing media on cool Zone Media. I'm I'm I'm starting a new podcast called Cool People Did Cool Stuff. And it will not well, actually, I'm sure there will still be horrible tragic things that happen, because lots of bad things happen to good people also, um, especially when people are trying to do cool stuff. But it is a show about cool people who are trying to do cool stuff or did cool stuff. And it launches May second. And then I also have like a bunch of books and music and all kinds of other things. And um, I am on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy and I on Instagram at Margaret Killjoy. We're off following Margaret. What you doing? Yeah, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? Come on, come on, it's just weird. Yeah, sunk off, Well, funk over to Margaret's Twitter account. Fix your error? Yeah, and uh you know that's the episode. 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.