Overview

Keffals Catboy Ranch Controversy refers to contentious events surrounding Canadian Twitch streamer and YouTuber Keffals and her actions relating to the transitioning of minors through the promotion of DIY hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and her Discord server called the "Catboy Ranch." The controversy, dating back to 2022 with threads on Kiwi Farms, was later revived in early 2024 through content creators Mutahar (SomeOrdinaryGamers) and H3H3 covering it after earlier claims by Kiwi Farms saw a resurgence in online discourse. The resurgence also notably coincided with Keffals receiving backlash for her statements related to Vaush opening an explicit folder during a stream in early February 2024.

Background

On March 22nd, 2022, the website Kiwi Farms created a thread for Keffals (real name Clara Sorrenti), which was started as a result of Keffal's creating social media posts about fellow streamer Destiny being removed from the platform and allegedly taking credit for his ban from Twitch. Keffals was also temporarily banned from Twitch around the same timeframe, blaming Destiny and his followers for the incident.

In the initial thread on Kiwi Farms, a post purportedly made by Keffals on March 12th, 2022, is singled out in which Keffals^[1] advertised her Discord server as a place for young trans kids to join, which would later be known as the "Catboy Ranch" (shown below, left). As of February 18th, 2024, the "Catboy Ranch" Discord server can still be found linked on Keffal's Twitch^[2] page (shown below, right).

On June 26th, 2022, Keffals then created two social media posts in which she proclaimed her support and direct sponsoring of a website designed around "do it yourself" transitioning with hormones, stating that she want to help kids who are affected by anti-trans extremists.

In the series of X / Twitter posts, Keffals^[3] detailed how teenagers in her chat supposedly started the transitioning process because of the streams and that using the resources of the DIY HRT (hormone replacement therapy) Directory,^[20] underage teens would be able to start the process in states where it is medically not allowed through an official route (shown below).

Developments

Following a doxxing incident that allegedly took place on August 5th, 2022, Keffals blamed the thread on Kiwi Farms as the main cause and began the "#DropKiwiFarms" campaign. At the same time as posting to have the website dropped from Cloudflare's protection, Keffals made two social media posts^[4] in which she allegedly posted personal information of Kiwi Farms owner Joshua Moon and his mother, claiming that she was fired for her connection to the site and posting her mugshot from a prior incident, adding to the controversy (shown below, left and right).

Renewed Interest in Early 2024

After the #DropKiwiFarms campaign, the situation over Catboy Ranch somewhat dwindled online, with little attention or new info coming out. Then, as part of the Vaush Opens Porn Folder controversy in early February 2024 that led to many people denouncing Vaush for allegedly having images depicting lolicon and similar contentious content, Keffals made statements and videos defending Vaush, which brought her back into public attention.

For example, on February 14th, 2024, X user @JesskaPizzle^[12] claimed that Keffals had deleted all posts mentioning Vaush from her X account, retracting the original support and defense of Vaush that she had posted earlier in the day (shown below).

In a series of back-and-forth videos^[5][6] between Keffals and H3H3 Productions released on February 16th, the topic of grooming came up, with H3H3's subreddit^[8][9] then starting to dig into the history and raise issues about the Catboy Ranch Discord (Keffals video shown below, left, H3H3 video shown below, right).

On February 17th, 2024, YouTuber Mutahar / SomeOrdinaryGamers released a series of posts^[7] on X in which he did a quick recap of Keffals before declaring that he was soon to release a video going more into detail about the Catboy Ranch and what he found after doing an investigation into everything from the years prior, reigniting the debate on Keffals and bringing it back into public scrutiny (shown below).

On February 19th, The Publica^[10] published an article on the controversy titled "Transgender Streamer Under Fire Once Again After Admitting To Sponsoring 'DIY' Hormone Directory Accessed By Minors," which it also tweeted from its official X / Twitter^[11] account, receiving over 200,000 views, 1,500 likes and 110 replies in one day.

Keffals Announces She's Leaving X / Twitter

On February 19th, 2024, after a rise in discourse about Catboy Ranch and social media backlash from some, Keffals made a post^[13] in which she said she was leaving X to go to Bluesky after facing harassment.

In a series of posts made on Bluesky^[14] on February 20th, Keffals said that she would be permanently staying on the site while claiming that it was much better in terms of moderation and wasn't "filled with nazis" (shown below).

On February 20th, 2024, one hour after posting about staying on Bluesky due to the ongoing drama and harassment, Keffals made another post on Bluesky^[15] claiming that she was returning to X out of spite and not letting Nazis believe that they had successfully bullied Keffals off the platform (shown below).

The following post^[16] on X, which notably included the headline from The Publica talking about the ongoing drama, was captioned by Keffals saying that she was "in the news again for being based" (shown below).

Online Reactions

Online, numerous content creators began to make videos detailing the background information between Vaush and how Keffals fit into the controversy as it garnered more attention in mid-to-late February 2024. This can be seen in the two videos uploaded on February 18th and 20th, 2024, by the YouTube channels Bowblax^[17] and Chud Logic,^[18] with each talking about the Keffals situation from different angles, garnering over 86,000 and 26,000 views, respectively, in roughly two days (shown below, left and right).

Shortly after Catboy Ranch was brought back up and pushback began, memes made about Keffals from previous incidents and this one began to resurface online. For example, on February 18th, 2024, Redditor u/BrainyBiscuit^[19] uploaded an Endless Cycle meme to the subreddit /r/YouTubeDrama, in which they attempted to explain that Keffals is in the middle of a cycle she supposedly repeats often (shown below). The post received over 670 upvotes and 120 comments in two days.

Mutahar's Video

On May 11th, 2024, the video teased by Mutahar^[21] earlier in the year was released. In the video, which is a longform chronicle of several Keffals controversies, Mutahar goes more in-depth on the GoFundMe and Catboy Ranch. While early reactions to the video have been about the thumbnail used, calling it a transphobic caricature of Keffals, the video itself has earned over 472,000 views in one day (shown below).

Search Interest

External References