Near / Byuu Suicide

Content Warning: Portions of this entry 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.

Overview

Near / Byuu Suicide refers to the event on June 28th, 2021, where it was said that the BSNES emulator creator, known as Byuu or Near online, took their own life after blaming Kiwi Farms users for cyberbullying them. Though Byuu did suffer from different afflictions, this news came as a surprise to many around the web, resulting in a widespread discussion surrounding the death. A longtime figure in the emulation, video-game archiving and online forum spaces, Byuu had both supporters and detractors online.

Background

Byuu first started work on an emulator for the Super Nintendo Emulation System back in 2004. After seven years of work, the emulator that was called the "BSNES" neared completion and was considered the most accurate emulator for the SNES at the time. From there, they continued to become a tour de force for emulation as well as retro gaming as a whole, as they started the process of archiving many old, rare video games. In the process of acquiring many rare games for archiving purposes, concerns were brought up that Byuu would not be sharing the archives with others and was essentially hoarding many games that would never see public release online, leading to controversy among some retro gaming fans. That combined with continual pressure from others online led to a post being made on December 12th, 2014, on their self-hosted website byuu.org^[1] in which they talked about having depression and declining health (shown below, click to expand).

Following this blog post, there were various incidents with fellow members of the retro gaming, emulation, game development, trans and furry communities over the next few years, which were collected and documented as a way to turn Byuu into a lolcow.

Controversial Thread

The initial reports of the suicide lay blame at the hands of the website Kiwi Farms, which is infamous for its handling of lolcows. This is because Kiwi Farms itself started as a wiki for Chris-Chan, so the community's foundation is built on bullying lolcows.

On May 14th, 2018, a Kiwi Farms user made a long forum post detailing Byuu's online life and several controversies over the years, casting them in a less than positive light. The post^[2] itself links out to multiple examples of Byuu in the wild, as well as casting a final judgment about them while posting links to every account associated with them. The thread went by for two years with users posting to it irregularly until February 7th, 2020, when Byuu posted a reply to the thread. The reply^[3] was mostly Byuu agreeing with some of the finer points of the post, and admitting that they do act out online sometimes while inviting others to poke fun at them (shown below, click to expand).

Byuu later goes on in the comment to own up to past controversies and even goes as far as to say thank you to the original poster for making the thread, as it acted as a "wake-up call". Byuu then said^[3] that they will support the thread being shared, and will personally counter-claim if it gets stricken by any legal agencies, and saying there are no hard feelings about the post (shown below, click to expand).

Aftermath

Despite this apparent acceptance of the thread, when the suicide was reported on, initially it was Kiwi Farms that was blamed. This is seen in the initial YCombinator post. The post,^[4] titled "Bsnes author Byuu bullied to suicide by KiwiFarms" is a Google Drive document that was uploaded by the user endlessmike. The document^[5] is a two-page detailed account where Kiwi Farms is continually brought up as the source of stress and contention with Byuu, called Near, and it ends with a signature from "Marcan."

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

A Twitter account by the same name, @Marcan42, also tweeted out the document and a long thread about Byuu. In the thread,^[6] Marcan said that they spoke to the police to confirm Byuu's death, that no further questions will be answered and that Near expressed wishes that charities and donations not be made in their name (shown below, click to expand).

This thread, combined with the document and YCombinator news post, led to outrage against Kiwi Farms in late June 2021. This outrage was seen within the Twitter thread itself as people replying were trying to find the host of Kiwi Farms in an attempt to get them taken off the internet in a similar manner to 8chan. These calls to action were eventually answered, as Kiwifarms became the target of a DDOS campaign, bringing the website down on June 28th.

Kiwi's Response

With Kiwifarms down, the only way to get a message out to people was on the error page. Kiwi's owner, Josh, made a long-form post on the error page of Kiwi detailing a few things before making accusations in the tail end.

In his error page,^[7] which is now unviewable as the DDOS campaign has ended, Josh claims that the allegations that Byuu is dead are dubious, citing that no one knows their true dox and that there is no other evidence existing that shows a connection between Kiwi's thread and the supposed suicide except for Marcan's Twitter post and Google Doc that admits to being a third-party account. He then goes on to show with archived links, emails and thread posts that show Byuu as the aggressor in this, and further claims that Byuu is faking this suicide to try and extort Kiwi Farms and get it to shut down for good (shown below, left and right, click to expand).

When looking back at the original YCombinator news post, the user endlessmike does prove to be an account that was created that day with only the one post and nothing else attributed to the account. This, combined with the emails that Josh (called Null on Kiwi Farms) provided (shown below),^[8] gave the users of Kiwi Farms enough doubt to call into question that the suicide even took place, making the original 13-page thread balloon into a staggering 92 pages.

To: Null <null@kiwifarms.net>
From: byuu <byuu@byuu.org>
Date: June-26-2021 12:59 PM

I can't do this anymore.

I've tried therapy, I've tried every anti-depressant available in Japan, I've erased my entire internet presence back in July. I've tried everything, but nothing works. I can't stop having panic attacks. I can't stop feeling humiliated. I can't stop spending every hour of my life worrying about what your users are going to do next to me or my friends both onsite and off. It's been a three-year nightmare for me.

I know I'm different, but I've tried my best to be a good person. To learn from my mistakes and not repeat them. To help others wherever I could. But I've always been ridiculed for being different. It's been a constant my entire life. It's unbearable.

I can't live like this any more, it has wrecked my entire life. I really can't explain why this hurts me so deeply, and I know it's irrational. I can only tell you that I can't handle this anymore. "byuu" is all I have. I have no real-life friends, no identity off the internet, this is it. There's no other reason for my being but to try and emulate game consoles for people. I put my entire life into this.

So I'll give you the choice.

If you'll take down my thread, I'll offer you my entire life's savings: $120,000 USD, as much of that as you want, however you want it. I'll further offer you my services as a 20-year software engineer, free of charge. I've done my best the past three years to better myself and make changes for every point criticized there. I'm not involved with the fandom or non-binary scene and haven't been for years, I was just desperate to fit in somewhere. My politics are centrist and kept to myself, my social media accounts are all long-gone. You won't hear of me again, I'll just post emulator releases and that's it, absolutely no internet presence otherwise, on my word. And I'll keep going to therapy to try to get past this. This is me just outright begging you with everything I have. Please give me the chance to get through this. You won, a thousand times over already.

If not, then I'll reply with my dox: a scan of my passport, a recent photo, and proof that it's mine, for confirmation. And then I'll hang myself. I live alone, I've tested my setup with a slipknot on a solid climbing rope over a door frame, I've spent weeks doing my research on this, it works. I can nearly pass out with little effort or discomfort, the carotid arteries are easily compressible. A kick stool should be all that's needed. It won't fail, but if it were to, I live on the 14th floor and have a balcony. On my reputation and honor, having had no history of ever threatening this nor of being untruthful in my 20+ years online, I give you my word that I'm serious. You can post this e-mail if you choose. I won't make a big fuss about it online though, don't worry. It doesn't matter anymore.

I really tried to avoid getting to this point, but every day has been worse than the last for too long now. Those two weeks were the only time in the past few years where I felt any happiness at all. So it's up to you. Let me know what you decide please, or if you want anything else from me.

~ byuu

This email was accompanied by a picture of a rope, a screenshot supposedly showing a bank account flush with cash and a large assortment of pills. Null/Josh replied in kind, saying that he will have to get his lawyer involved^[8] (shown below, click to expand). After this email, they continued to exchange words back and forth before they post their picture and name, and the emails end.

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External References