Byuu, Developer Of SNES Emulator, Allegedly Dead By Suicide After Citing Cyberbullying On Kiwi Farms
Content Warning: Portions of this article make mention of suicide, which some may find difficult or upsetting. If you need support or are dealing with suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline's website or call 1-800-273-8255.
Kiwi Farms, the discussion forum and online community dedicated to gossip about various internet users, has once again found itself in hot water this week after reports of BSNES emulator creator Byuu's alleged suicide on Sunday led to an immense outcry online.
This past Sunday, a tweet from the account @marcan42 (Hector Martin), a security consultant and hacker, was posted on Twitter with a document attached that contained a personal account of someone claiming to be a mutual friend of Byuu, detailing their final interaction before they died. The post pointed out a long-standing history of abuse online aimed at Byuu (more recently at the hands of Kiwi Farms) and cyberbullying, resulting in the apparent suicide.
Byuu, called Near in other parts of the internet, was a prolific figure in the world of emulation making. At a young age, Byuu had always expressed interest in translating retro games and in 2004 decided to create the most accurate SNES emulator possible, ultimately finishing this task in 2011. After finishing the Higan emulator, which was also allegedly used in helping to give Stephen Hawking his voice, Near turned their attention to the collecting and dumping of retro video games online.
While many have been using this time for mourning, others have been skeptical while calling into question certain parts of the story as well as the suicide itself. Twitter user @1800Cntbust replied to one of @marcan42's original tweets, asking for the number of the police department for verification, and was quickly blocked.
Other users online took umbrage with the document and said that the person who wrote it, and @marcan42 himself for knowing these things and not attempting to help Near, indicates that they should have more to answer for.
A call to action was proclaimed on a retweet of the original thread, with Twitter user @Eevee serving as the main hub tweet for people to air their frustrations about Kiwi Farms, as well as openly make plans for attacking the site for what they perceive to be the cause of the alleged suicide.
Article by Brandon Wink
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Hysteria98
This is absolutely tragic to see. I was aware many years ago now that he was really struggling with some kind of depression, barely able to continue work on his fantastic emulator and it's only the sheer outcry of users and their respect he commended from it that he continued to do so with help and support. Hero to video game preservation.
bingbongyahoohio
I think we need to hear the story from the kiwi farms side.
Timey16
Ah yes, if there ever was a greater hive of scum and villainy on the internet than 4chan or Twitter… it's fucking Kiwifarms.
ZiggyZig
"Alledgedly" dead? Is that Schrodinger's version of internet shenanigans?
katakis
Allegedly because so far the only proof of the death we have is a google doc post. What we do not have is any other proof that was supposed to be shown within hours of his suicide.
Now I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm saying we don't know if it happened and have no way of checking if it did because the only person with (alleged) direct contact with him, the one who posted that google doc, refuses to elaborate.
Leon90210
If anyone wants to or is able to get into Kiwifarms to read thread, sometimes its down because of DDOS attacks or high traffic, here is the link.
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.43056/
Here is a small list of what I consider the most important parts of the Thread.
Page 1: Summary of Byuu and his history. Archive of Page1: https://archive.vn/MfUhq
Page 6: Byuu posting on Kiwifarms about his history. Archive of Page6: https://archive.vn/FJw0B
The user Near Throwaway is Byuu, keep in mind he does have more than one post/reply on this page.
Page 14: Email back and forth between Null and Byuu. Archive of Page 14: https://archive.vn/R1oRN
Page 92: Null locks the thread and convorsation has been moved to this thread https://kiwifarms.net/threads/the-great-twitter-meltdown-of-2021.93623/ Archive of Page 92: https://archive.ph/XoNOT
Revic
Not saying that's necessarily the case here, but it's worth bearing in mind: The real action with any harassment campaign centered on some sort of hub or community is often off-site, in that twilight realm of disassociation and anonymity that the main hub can dismiss as unspecified "bad actors" or third parties under plausible deniability. Not always, of course – 4chan comes to mind as a regular exception, which is a big part of how a lot of hoaxes originating there get caught out. But quite a few harassers know better than to shit where they eat. Is that the case here? No way for me to say. But looking at an official thread and concluding that's all that came of it ignores a lot of precedent. Looking at that alone, you don't see things like e-mails, phone calls, or other ways that someone might have been harassed besides just posts on a forum thread.
A Concerned Rifleman
Kiwifarms has been super strict about harassment ever since the previous incident that could be directly attributed to the message board, it's in their TOS if you sign up. A more likely scenario is one of two things:
-Byuu died due to mental instability, either indirectly provoked at worst or unrelated to the Kiwi article at best. His friend then decided to use his death to flame the Kiwis, as they still haven't shed their "troon killer" moniker since the previous suicide despite that being years ago and now strictly enforced against, likely for retaliation against the article as normies won't bother to check and the woke will be validated.
-Byuu is alive, and his friend decided to just fake his death to flame the Kiwis for the same reason above.
Revic
That's kinda my point. I am not saying KF is necessarily to blame or directly implicated or anything here. I genuinely don't know. But the "denounce harassment on-site, but paint people as 'lolcows' with a wink and a nudge" is the kind of dynamic I'm talking about. It's pretty easy to facilitate/encourage harassment while paying lip service to discouraging it on official channels. Look at Alex Jones whipping up frenzies against purported "crisis actors," for example. Stormfront also has "no harassment" policies, while still (essentially) compiling lists of targets, information on them, etc. while sending people off with a nudge and a wink to do whatever they please with this information off-site.
I can't overstate that I do not know if Byuu/Near was reacting to something that cropped up outside of the KF posts. That really may be the extent of it. Then again, maybe it's not. It's just very, very easy to set people up with motivation and resources for harassment campaigns while swearing up and down that they had no idea "bad actors" would take this kind of action. All it comes down to is the post claiming that this was entirely over a "dead thread" is definitely looking at the situation with blinders on. That could possibly be all it is, but it's a pretty egregious thing to assume it.