Comment by sorenjan
4 years ago
With all due respect, that may be true in most cases and a good message to receive for most people in therapy, but it's not true in all cases. As has been shown time and time again, humans are very receptive to propaganda and brain washing, and there's only so much harassment a person can take. A "regular" person might need to hear that the world doesn't have an agenda against you, that you're responsible for your actions, and if there's something about your life that you don't like you can take action to change it. But if there's an actual campaign against you, that advice no longer holds, and eventually that kind of harassment can definitively drive somebody to suicide. The only time I've heard of Kiwi Farms before today was when Near committed suicide. There's plenty written about the tragic event, but you can start with their goodby thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/near_koukai/status/1408940057235312640?s...
If a US national dies in Japan, the Japanese authorities report that information to the US authorities. The state department publishes a list of all deaths of US expats living abroad, and there are no deaths anywhere close to the date when Near/Byuu allegedly committed suicide:
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...
Literally the only evidence that has been provided of his death is the statement of one of his friends and a photograph of a personalized urn. No obituaries, no police reports, etc.
The numbers provided by both countries are inconsistent with each other, and half of 2021 has no reported suicide in the State Department data. Please stop spreading this conspiracy theory based on statistics not being entirely consistent with the story, if they aren't even consistent with themselves.
https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1565311737553100800
Near is almost certainly not dead. There is no evidence of his death, he’s been seen alive by fellow foreign devs active in SE Asia and interacting with Hector’s Asahi Linux streams and Hector’s VTuber accounts, and he did not appear on any canonical government (Japanese or US) death lists.
I'm not sure that "this person only faked their suicide to escape harassment" really absolves Kiwifarms of much...
Near was dealing with way more than KF. He wanted his thread deleted because it documented him absconding with thousands of dollars of donor money and dozens of rare games he was supposed to return or donate after archiving. He further engaged in rather aggressive behavior with other developers in the emulation community. His thread had actually been dead for nearly a year when he suddenly emailed Josh asking for it to be deleted (which he offered six figures). He threatened suicide when Josh gave the email to his lawyer and asked whether or not said approach by Byuu/Near was legal. Funnily enough the email and the resulting spike in activity on his thread was actually precipitated by a few posts on here about him.
Again, my stance is as follows: KF is filled with despicable behavior and people. However we absolutely must be accurate and precise when it comes to what happens there and why certain people would rather the site not exist.
> he’s been seen alive by fellow foreign devs active in SE Asia and interacting with Hector’s Asahi Linux streams and Hector’s VTuber accounts
Source please?