A controversial blip on the radar

A couple of days ago a new user joined Lemdit, started a new community called “Controversial ideas” and began posting content.

I originally took it at face value and was interested to see what came next. The first couple of posts appeared to check out. They were somewhat controversial but nothing rule breaking.

This one argued that we are sexual just like any other animal and “Sexualization” is bullshit:

This other one described how infantilizing young adults and treating them like children to ever higher ages is creating bad outcomes:

This third one argued it’s a myth that brains develop until we’re 25, they’re actually mostly baked by the time we reach 14.

Wait a moment, I think I spot a pattern here…

The controversy grows

Over the next couple of days, posting intensified:

There was certainly decent engagement, many people against, some people for, votes in every direction, so I was naturally intrigued. It turns out, the angles were different but the destination was always the same.

Here’s a summary of each (other) post:

• Enforcing taboos - Heartwarming video about a young mother whose life was ruined because she had a drunken romp with a 14 year old at a party.
• Child Beauty Contests - They don’t hurt anyone, it’s just kids playing dress-up.
• What’s the real goal of neurology - Scientists are just using it as an excuse to treat teens as inferior by suggesting they are children - apparently comparable to nazi scientsis.
• Puritan Revival - “some totally normal things like 5 or 10 year age gaps between partners is extremely disturbing to Gen Z.” (actual quote)
• Very Strong Kool-Aid - There are enough people on the planet, there is no fertility crisis. This is the outlier. I’ve noticed he will weave in an unrelated post every now and then to make the whole charade more believable - more on this later.
• Widespread Delusion - We have thousands of 22 and 24 year old cops, nurses, etc, but people claim the brain only stops developing at 25, which is absurd.
• Revolutions are scary - Gives some examples of past “revolutions” like the printing press or the Internet, then makes the connection: “The parallels are clear. Today peeps scream about wanting to lynch anyone who dares to date anyone younger than them. They need no evidence. Just like nobody needed evidence to know a witch needed to be executed. In times of great change people look for a scapegoat. Then it was alleged witches. Now it’s alleged pedophiles.”
• How we got teen pregnancy all wrong and made it much worse - A long wall of text that is trying to justify that it all went wrong when we criminalized relationships between adults and minors. "

Uncovering the agenda

By this point it was obvious that there is an agenda at play. None of this is random, which probably means none of this is unique to us either.

I didn’t have to dig far to uncover a very prolific and frankly dedicated campaign spanning several instances, all following a similar modus operandi:

• Female username (probably because people are quicker to judge a male they suspect of being a pedophile)
• Seemingly legitimate “controversial” communities that encourage healthy debate
• Posts that challenge various aspects of why it’s illegal for adults to have sex with young teens (14-18).
• Occasionally an unrelated post or two to keep up the charade.
• Upvotes his own posts and arguments using his alt accounts.

He uses 4 main angles for the communities he creates:

• Controversial Ideas - “These things are just taboos created by puritans”
• Sexualisation - “It’s not a thing, the puritans again”
• Common Sense - “Think about it, them laws and science don’t make sense”
• Fighting Bigotry - “It’s bigotry to not treat 14-18 year olds as adults, in every way ;)”

Here’s a list of the communities I found, there are probably more:

• https://lemdit.com/c/controversy (removed)
• https://sopuli.xyz/c/fightingbigotry (removed)
• https://lemm.ee/c/sexualization (removed)
• https://lemmy.tf/c/sexualization
• https://lemmy.tf/c/commonsense
• https://exploding-heads.com/c/controversy

These are all the same person:

…and it doesn’t stop here.

Following the rabbit hole

By this point you’ve probably figured out that Lemmy is not where it begins, nor where it ends. This individual has an entire portfolio of accounts to support his diddler’s crusade.

Conveniently, he lists most of them here: https://about.me/wild_heather_860

His YouTube channel is prolific, but thankfully not very successful. He spends considerable effort making shitty animation videos to prove the same kind of points:

One of his Twitter accounts was banned, but not before someone captured these gems:

Shock and outrage at the accusations

Naturally, I could be one of the puritans. In fact, I must be. Too closed minded to understand, and too brainwashed to allow for healthy debate.

This has all been explained to Mr Kapow:

I stand accused of being a false accuser, but I reject this accusation and accuse right back.

So who is this masked crusader?

Naturally, the star of this story takes some steps to protect himself:

• He uses Surfshark VPN to hide his IP
• E-mail addresses he uses for account sign-ups are obvious throwaways.
• He doesn’t use his real name (or gender), doesn’t appear in any videos, doesn’t use his own voice to narrate the videos either.

However, there are some clues:

Based on this, we know that the protagonist is:

• Male (this one’s mostly based on his writing style and language)
• In his 50s
• With a squeaky voice (I just know it)
• Most likely overweight (I’m just running with the stereotype here).

I asked DALL-E to produce an image of our protagonist based on these descriptors:

I think it nailed it. Never forget that this guy thinks it should be OK for him to have sex with your 14 year old daughter.

I’ll take my puritan badge now, thank you.