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Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

gerey

Arcane
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One less tranny polluting the gene pool.
 

Lutte

Dumbfuck!
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I guess it is true when people say money can't buy happiness. Dude had over 100k in the bank. Should have found a hobby that takes him outside, but if more people had that thought society wouldn't have as many problems as it does these days.

Savings != true wealth. I mean, someone who owns a large house he spends much of his earnings toward paying in a loan versus someone who doesn't understand finance and just saves the money somewhere without 1/ investing or 2/ taking a loan (so that his money doesn't end up just losing value by itself to inflation), while spending the money not saved in a stupid monthly rent, which of the two do you think is wealthier and lives better?
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
Some of you dumbfucks really don't have respect for anything, right? I shouldn't be surprised.
Yes and no.

You can’t rescue people from themselves.

And Lord knows people tried to rescue him. But every positive comment, how he should appreciate everything he accomplished, that he has plenty worth being happy about, that he should ignore the negative voices and cut them. Everything good he ignores, everything bad he amplifies.

Furthermore now he has gone over onto trying to drag people down with him as evidenced by that Kiwifarm thread. That entire *I’ll give you my life savings* and then trying to pressure him via twitter. That’s crossed the line into malicious manipulation.

I wish nothing more than that Byuu finds hapiness. But the roads he has taken only lead to a dark path.

There’s nothing bad about calling this shit out. In fact more people should have called him out earlier. Maybe then we wouldn’t have to witness a fucking tragedy.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Suicide confirmed, it seems:

At 11:45 on Sunday, I was on a phone call with Near. They’d just taken a large overdose of codeine and guanfancine. I saw a photo of the noose.

30 minutes into the call, Les Voyages De L'âme by Alcest started playing at the other end. I wouldn’t hear their voice again.

“Near took their own life”. That’s how a news article would phrase it. Suicide is a voluntary action, a problem with oneself. Implying nobody is to blame but the victim and perpetrator, one and the same.

But that’s not how human brains work. We are not cold, calculating machines. We are a product of our environment. We are shaped by our experiences. A single, powerful traumatic event can change a person forever. So can a million small ones. This is not a weakness of the mind, it is a fundamental part of what it means to be human.

Near was a brilliant mind in a corner of the web all too often rife with toxicity and harassment. Despite this, they continued to pour their life into the one thing they loved: emulation and retro gaming. Developer of the bsnes, higan, and ares emulators, Near was a relentless force for accuracy in the formerly haphazard world of emulation. Working out the most elusive hardware glitches and corner cases, they advanced the world of SNES emulation by leaps and bounds. They also recently released their ultimate labor of love, a fan translation of Bahamut Lagoon that might well be the most exacting and meticulously crafted language adaptation of a video game of the era.

Near was also an incredibly kind, funny, and welcoming person. I’d known them for several years, but after they moved to Tokyo a few years back we started talking more often. One of the most modest people I’ve ever known, they were unlikely to suggest hanging out in person, but never rejected an offer. I wish I’d done that more often. We’ve had long text conversations, and shared many stories.

Near did not commit suicide. Near was murdered. Victim of a lifetime of harassment. After an abusive childhood, and followed by community toxicity, Near was eventually targeted by Kiwi Farms. Members of that website make a sport of preying on the less fortunate, on those in positions liable to being emotionally abused. And they do so relentlessly. From the comfort of anonymity, of sitting in front of their computer thousands of kilometers away, they take glee in slowly destroying the psyche of others, bit by bit. To death, if possible.

Near survived that. Many wouldn’t, but Near was strong enough to overcome that level of emotional abuse. But Kiwi Farms is relentless. 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 suicidal 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 scars of abuse in late 2020. I first heard from Near again in late October 2020, and we again 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 videogame. That the people on the other side of the screen are real makes no difference. They delight in the kill counter going up just like an FPS player would. Lacking in any empathy, they have no regard for the damage they inflict on others.

Why do we tolerate this? “Harassment”, “online bullying”. How are these any different from terrorism, from someone grabbing a gun and taking the lives of others? Why does it matter that a physical bullet was not involved? The objective and the end result are the same. Saying Near “took their life” is giving these people an out for their actions, which directly resulted in the intentional death of a person.

Some of you may be aware of Near’s notoriously paranoid opsec. After getting to know them, it became clear this was a defense mechanism; a product of all the abuse they received over their entire life. I was perhaps one of the few lucky enough to exchange deeply personal stories with them, yet I never knew their full name - because I didn’t need to. But they’d have told me if I asked. Near is anything but cold and distant in person; those attributes were necessary façades grown in response to lifelong harassment and abuse.

We, as the internet community, need to take a hard look at what it means to continue to tolerate the existence of these communities and the actions of those in them. Not just Kiwi Farms; sites like that serve to concentrate people like this, but they exist across all communities and social media. Being passive about this problem means being complicit.

DreamHost, you are the Kiwi Farms domain registrar. CloudFlare, you protect Kiwi Farms against attacks. You both share responsibility in not just Near’s death, but also others, as well as the pain and harassment of thousands more. Is this the image you want to maintain? Is the income worth the weight on your conscience?

I last saw Near on June 9. We had sushi in Akihabara, and then sat down for a cup of coffee. I was a bit busy that day, but I was looking forward to inviting them over to hang out again soon.

Les Voyages De L'âme kept playing on repeat at the other end of the call for another hour.

I couldn’t bring myself to hang up.

01hSOVwfbCJzqVvbhfF-KLsYnb1QU0FNSk2jBhdXFXxAHuJquUgD9CtsvIq_dg48lEbFAn17YsJ1N71FJJQEEPRBNu5V3vT0-sTykS9sUntZcQMS88G-BjSEP-Lkg_a6-Q


Published on behalf of a mutual friend of Near and I, who wishes to remain anonymous for their own protection. -marcan
 

Abu Antar

Turn-based Poster
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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
He did great things for SNES emulation. Honestly, fuck Kiwi Farm. Preying on mentally unstable people, and going after their friends is shitty behavior. A lot of people can say that cyber bullying isn't real, and you can easily ignore it. I do think most people can, but these people seem to go after easy targets. It also seems that they never give up.

Rest in Peace, your contribution to the emulation scene over the years was great.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
i wonder if the years of cyber bullying a mentally ill person contributed to their suicide? it's amazing how people can justify their abhorrent behavior

He did great things for SNES emulation. Honestly, fuck Kiwi Farm. Preying on mentally unstable people, and going after their friends is shitty behavior. A lot of people can say that cyber bullying isn't real, and you can easily ignore it. I do think most people can, but these people seem to go after easy targets. It also seems that they never give up.

Rest in Peace, your contribution to the emulation scene over the years was great.

The mentioned kiwi forums thread was dead for years before Near suddenly emailed the administrator and threatened suicide if he doesn't delete the thread.

This isn't as one-sided as this is portrayed as. This may come across as heartless, but this was part of Near's problem. He never stopped blaming everybody else, so he could never learn to love himself.

Edit: And I'm not absolving Kiwifarms here, they go waaay too far, waay too often.
 

Cat

also: ⛽
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181

Derringer

Prophet
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Messages
1,934
Did byuu actually kill himself yet or not? People on kiwifarms are saying it's possibly fake since nobody's actually posting proof.
 
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Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
i wonder if the years of cyber bullying a mentally ill person contributed to their suicide? it's amazing how people can justify their abhorrent behavior

He did great things for SNES emulation. Honestly, fuck Kiwi Farm. Preying on mentally unstable people, and going after their friends is shitty behavior. A lot of people can say that cyber bullying isn't real, and you can easily ignore it. I do think most people can, but these people seem to go after easy targets. It also seems that they never give up.

Rest in Peace, your contribution to the emulation scene over the years was great.

The mentioned kiwi forums thread was dead for years before Near suddenly emailed the administrator and threatened suicide if he doesn't delete the thread.

This isn't as one-sided as this is portrayed as. This may come across as heartless, but this was part of Near's problem. He never stopped blaming everybody else, so he could never learn to love himself.

yeah ok that sounds like some BS. responding to your previous post about how if more people called him out he might still be alive, do you think it helped to have a community like kiwifarms documenting his every move online? also the thread was posted in 2018 and had posts in it in 2019, 2020, and earlier this year updating everyone on what byuu was up to so it wasn't like it was ancient history either. i just fail to see how this is anything other than targeting outcasts for harassment

Yeah, made a (rather massive) mistake there, corrected it. Thread was still dead,.

To your question, it made no difference. The steps Near has taken already lead him on this path, kiwifarms was just the place of him to latch onto (he even posted there).
It might as well have been the rpgcodex. And considering you pointed out the recency of the thread. This descent has gone on far longer that kiwifarms. Long before 2018.
I remember his long blog posts about him having "wasted his life* just because he couldn't learn japanese that well. I remember people even then pointing out to him how much he already has accomplished, how many people he granted entertainment just with his programming skills. I remember how he dismissed them and how he closed himself off, rather choosing to listen to your typical suspects in terms of *false friends*. I remember all of it.

People can be self-destructive. But there comes a moment you have to stop blaming everybody else and looking for negative impacts. A moment where you have to grab that hand that wants to help you and reject those that only hurt, openly or in a manipulative way. If you fail to do so there's no way back. And that, as hard as it sounds, is on you.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
Not sure if this is for real or not, but I thought Kiwifarms "only" documented trannies, edgelords and other freaks, instead of preying on the weak.
Cloudflare dropped OneAngryGamer, but not these guys? :decline:
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
I just fail to see how this is anything other than targeting outcasts for harassment

Because that's precisely what it is. Nothing less, nothing more.

In case you haven't noticed, outcasts are outcasts because they've been... *drumroll*... cast out from society. Because any self-respecting society has standards of admission. You're supposed to strive towards them. Fail that, and you're cast out. Like it or not, it's part of society - those who follow the rules are In, those who don't are Out, and will be pushed Out if they don't Get The Memo.

In older times, an outcast would then drift around until he either died, or found another society that would tolerate him. But with the arrival of the internet, something changed in a bad way. Humanity became one big, disfunctional global society. You could be doing fine in your society in southern Europe (just to name an example) while online the global society has cast you out and wishes you gone forever because you said something stupid that one time.

Here's a crimson pill many people will need to swallow, one way or another: The global online society is not in any way comparable to the physical society existing outside your house. Talk to your neighbors, get to know them, stand with them in times of need, and they'll return the favor when you're in need. Regardless of your viewpoints, political affiliations and preference for pineapple on pizza. The global online society cares naught for any of that. To repeat one of the greatest tweets of all time:

qJFr0qe.jpeg


Note the date. Despite the time that has passed, nothing has changed. If you want to be rid of the global society, just do as Tyler says. Log off. Turn off the computer. Unplug it. Walk away. If Near/byuu had decided to just walk away from it all, go Offline for good and engaged with his physical society, he may still be alive today. The exception to this only highlights the problems of the global online society: Far too many of us are mentally unstable to begin with, and because we don't fear personal reprisal we don't know when to quit. So inevitably there would be people who would not accept Near/byuu going Offline, and would make the stalking/bullying/harassment personal. Those kind of people need to be not just cast out, but shut down. But that's another story. Yes, it is.

Because in this particular case, we know an important fact: The victim is part of the problem, it's as disfunctional as the global society it wished to be a part of.

Which brings us to Crimson Pill No. 2: You can't save everyone, especially not those who do not wish to be saved. Humanity is in a crucible-scenario right now with all this online-stuff, we don't know what we're doing, no proper authority has written any proper rules. We're making it up as we go. And sadly that will result in loss of life. Of those who couldn't adapt, of those who couldn't take the heat, and just melted away like everyday detritus.

(And all of this comes before we get to the point that the internet attracts mentally unstable people like moths to a flame.)

Near/byuu was a brilliant programmer, and did a lot of awesome things for the retro community. But at the end of the day his/her/their problems were mostly their own, amplified by hooking themselves into a network that amplified every quality of their person, including the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.

With all of this said, I just read through the reactions of a small retro community I'm part of, that caught word of this... and my heart sank at seeing what I perceived to be sane, rational people drink the liberal Kool-aid and go full retard. People who think Trump is to blame for everything, who think Hillary did no wrong, professing that they refuse to engage in conversation with anyone who disagrees with them. All that bile spewed out of them for no reason, except to virtue-signal how awesomely tolerant and open-minded they were. And naturally there was a self-proclaimed American there stating "how they're willing to listen to whomever wanted to talk them about all this" - the worst liberal honeypot there is, that line. Fun fact: 80% of people don't give a shit about your personal problems, and the remaining 20% wish to learn everything about you so that they can use it against you. In my experience only the 20% use the phrase of "I'm there for you" in an online community. Do not fall for it.
 
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Latro

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Vita umbratilis
Some of you may be aware of Near’s notoriously paranoid opsec. After getting to know them, it became clear this was a defense mechanism; a product of all the abuse they received over their entire life. I was perhaps one of the few lucky enough to exchange deeply personal stories with them, yet I never knew their full name - because I didn’t need to.
so...it's impossible to confirm if he killed himself right
 

Cat

also: ⛽
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Not sure if this is for real or not, but I thought Kiwifarms "only" documented trannies, edgelords and other freaks, instead of preying on the weak.
See, that's the thing. I'm reading the thread right now and they kinda weren't. The thread was basically dead until yesterday, and what was there was really tame. Between 2018 and yesterday the thread only accumulated about 200 posts. Now it's at almost 2000.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
so...it's impossible to confirm if he killed himself right

Correct, and this is the one ray of hope for me in this farce: He/she/it may actually have faked their own death online, to get away from all this bullshit forever.

Godspeed if that's the case.
 

Latro

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so...it's impossible to confirm if he killed himself right

Correct, and this is the one ray of hope for me in this farce: He/she/it may actually have faked their own death online, to get away from all this bullshit forever.

Godspeed if that's the case.
i just saw his suicide twitter note...and again, he refuses to release his full name. just "dave". wasn't he supposed to be transitioning?
 

Latro

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Unless there's a legitimate obituary there is no proof that he's even dead.
I get the impression the anonymous friend who wrote about byuu's passing was probably byuu.

Working out the most elusive hardware glitches and corner cases, they advanced the world of SNES emulation by leaps and bounds. They also recently released their ultimate labor of love, a fan translation of Bahamut Lagoon that might well be the most exacting and meticulously crafted language adaptation of a video game of the era.

lol?
 

Derringer

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I imagine he likes shoving a cartridge of Bahamut Lagoon up his asshole because an old man keeps saying he wants to fuck the mc like a faggot.
 

Duraframe300

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Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
Lots of interesting words

I agree with a lot of this, but I do want to mention that quite a bit off it applies even outside the internet. It just makes it so much worse and as you said, without the things holding us back.

Especially mentioning which I highlighted before being this:

You can't save everyone, especially not those who do not wish to be saved.

Because at some point its always this. How I fucking wish this wasn't true. Even outside of suicides. I've lost friends, family, school comrades (death by train on one occasion which haunts me to this day). If you cross that line, its a straight path down. And the only solution we as a society have found to this day is putting you full of drugs. Nobody wants that.

*Special note here also: Of course, to 99% these cases are long, drawn out processes. You absolutely can bully someone to death without him having the chance to retort or seek help. (or lack of help), In most cases this is either A: Quick, targeted bullying where that process sets one fast over the edge. B: Silent suffering. Sadly the case for the aforementioned (female) school friend. Even though I'm probably far from the first person to feel guilty (I wasn't that close), I still blame myself for missing it.

BTW: What I'm writing and my opinions are based on personal experiences. That's all. I've never had formal education on the matter nor did I do any studies.
 
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Just give up. The trannyfur suicide rate will never be addressed as anything other than the result of bullying.

There's hope it's all a clever ruse, at least.

null said:
As it stands there is no evidence that Byuu has killed himself. He promised a scan of his passport within 5 hours of his death, but no such material evidence has come about. There are no news articles, no recordings, no pictures, nothing. The source claiming he is dead is anonymous.

edit: Okay I read that last email he sent to null and my bait sense is tingling. Way too edgy and eloquent for what is essentially a suicide note written by someone who already took meds and alcohol.
 
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Lutte

Dumbfuck!
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Just give up. The trannyfur suicide rate will never be addressed as anything other than the result of bullying.
Add internet addiction to the mix. It's a real thing and it's an understated plague. Dude in his own words had no real life friends. Human beings, even the most introverted, were not made to exist with level 0 human interaction. Fake internet bullcrap doesn't replace real human contact.

Now I know there'll always be a percentage of people who could never have been saved even if they had been born in a pre-internet era but I think the internet adds that one drop of water more to the overflowing bowl of frailty that can push many of the weaker minded toward a point of no return where they fall into complete isolation and lose the ability to at least push themselves even a little toward making an effort to integrate with others.

All those fringe, marginal communities ala furry or trannyshit would also have dramatically lower rate of occurrences without the internet to spread it like a plague. I mean just look at that byuu/near guy, he's clearly not intensely into the stuff, wasn't very vocal about it, an isolated autist finding himself into these communities and suddenly having these "internet friends" to interact with who are also always online.

We are living in the always online, always connected era and it's impacting even """normies""" in negative ways, is it even a surprise if mentally ill people succumb? I mean for god sake, just look at this generation of people who can't fucking eat at the restaurant without having their nose glued to their goddamn phone. Not so long ago, not having any table manners, at least in a public setting, would get you bitchslapped by your parents/grandparents until you learned to behave.

When I see the generation of my nephews growing with iPads in hands at 5yo I don't even want to imagine the human future.

You have all these people posting all sorts of things under real name too for everyone to forever know in posterity, employers looking at people's facebook profiles and so on.. there's a madness brewing on.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
Some would say this madness is intentional to control people further. Hopefully it ends up with the Internet one day going down for some time for whatever reason, and then thousands of these zombies going berserk, ripping each other apart in despair.

Also, IMO the "just walk away bro!" advice no longer works as well as it did, as particularly persistent assholes can attack instead your loved ones, or send fake stuff to the police and such (the favorite tactic of SJWs and other psychos), which means you have to get back in to stop the slander from going out of control.
 
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