Supporting the Kiwi Farms - Options are cryptocurrency and check in the mail. Read this for how to do it.

  • 🏰 The Fediverse is up. If you know, you know.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
On the latest feature, please don't use cheese. The dog was murdered, and my day is now fucked.
 
P.S. Of the new payments, one for $20 was written so wrong (8 digits) that it matched an active user that wasn't them. If you're missing your payment please check your billpay id. If you entered in an 8 digit number that's probably you.
 
Josh I will donate you 5 months of kiwi gold if you give users (even if only for supporters) the ability to have up to a 10 second loop of audio play on their profile page.

 
Jotch said:
Josh I will donate you 5 months of kiwi gold if you give users (even if only for supporters) the ability to have up to a 10 second loop of audio play on their profile page.

1683_newgrounds_lhm__e.mp3
Click to expand...
This would be very cool. I guarantee that more supporter-only profile page customization features would draw in more gold subscribers, people LOVE their vanity.
 
Screenshot 2026-05-09 105511.png
What the fuck.

Is that Slav Power?
 
For $12,000 per month I need to see an itemized breakdown of costs, otherwise I will ruthlessly slopify your shitty little forum that also renders you unemployable.

Markdown (GitHub flavored): 
The individual you're describing, Joshua "Null" Moon, is a unique case study in the intersection of "internet infrastructure" and "personality-driven funding."

In the context of Kiwi Farms, the $20-a-month model isn't just a business plan; it is a survival strategy for a site that has been systematically removed from the "clean" internet. When you analyze his specific request for 600 users at $20/month, you are looking at a model built to survive **Total Deplatforming.**

### 1. Why the "Ask" is $20 (The Hardship Premium)

For a normal forum, $20 is absurd. For Moon, it covers the "DIY" nature of his setup:

* **Colocation & Bare Metal:** Moon has famously pivoted toward owning his own physical servers ("bare metal") and finding data centers that won't kick him out. This is significantly more expensive than renting a cloud server from Amazon or DigitalOcean because you have to pay for rack space, power, and high-tier "unfiltered" bandwidth.
* **The "Kiwiflare" Factor:** Since being dropped by Cloudflare, he has had to build or pay for custom DDoS mitigation. Most providers who are willing to shield a site with that reputation charge a "risk premium" that can be 5x to 10x the market rate.

### 2. The $100k Salary vs. The "Sole Provider"

Moon’s role is unique because he is effectively the **Systems Administrator, Lead Developer, Legal Clerk, and Content Moderator** all in one.

* **The Argument for the Salary:** If the site generates $144,000 a year, and $40,000–$60,000 goes to hosting/bandwidth, the remaining $80k–$100k is what he lives on. From his perspective, this is a "modest" wage for someone who is on-call 24/7 to fight off state-level cyberattacks and legal subpoenas.
* **The Counter-Argument:** For the users, it means the entire existence of the platform is tied to one person's personal bank account. There is no board of directors or transparency. If he decides to spend the "legal fund" on a new car or a move to another country, the users have no recourse.

### 3. The "Personality Cult" Logic

The hostile relationship you mentioned is a documented part of the site's culture. Moon often utilizes a **"Benevolent Dictator"** (or sometimes just "Dictator") persona.

* **The Loyalty Test:** By setting the price at $20, he filters for the most dedicated followers. This makes the funding "lumpy" but "sticky"—the people paying are those who feel they are part of an exclusive club or a "cultural pillar," as the text says.
* **The "Hate" Dynamic:** Moon has a history of banning his own donors or mocking the people who fund him. This reinforces the "cult" aspect: the followers aren't paying for a service; they are paying for the *existence* of the space, even if the "landlord" treats them poorly.

### 4. Summary of the Financial Modeling

| Factor | Standard Forum | Moon's "Kiwi Farms" Model |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Hosting** | $100/mo (Cloud) | $3,000+/mo (Colocation/Protected) |
| **DDoS Defense** | $20/mo (Cloudflare) | $2,000+/mo (Custom/High-Risk) |
| **Legal** | $0 (TOS/Standard) | $2,000/mo (Retainers/Defense) |
| **Staff** | Volunteers | One Paid Admin (Moon) |
| **Revenue Need** | ~$2,000/mo | **~$12,000/mo** |

### The "Out of Pocket" Reality

When Moon says he needs this "to keep going," he is essentially admitting that the site has no commercial viability (no ads, no mainstream sponsors). It is a **closed-loop economy** where a few hundred people fund one man's lifestyle in exchange for him maintaining a digital fortress that the rest of the internet has tried to tear down.

If he truly "hates" the people paying him, it creates a bizarre economic standoff: the users fund the platform because they value the community, and he maintains the platform because it is his only viable career path—even if he finds the "cult" around him distasteful.
 
Jotch said:
Josh I will donate you 5 months of kiwi gold if you give users (even if only for supporters) the ability to have up to a 10 second loop of audio play on their profile page.
Click to expand...
what's next? animated avatar borders like MSN used to do?
 
reptile baht spaniard rid said:
how do people not realize that when asking AI shit like this it's just going to play back what you told it to do?
Click to expand...
Obviously. I'm trying to justify a $12k monthly spend and the internet isn't helpful. It seems like a lot, even operating in an elevated threat landscape and under economic sanctions. It would be genuinely interesting to see a detailed breakdown showing what portion of the operating budget goes toward things like colocation, bandwidth, legal and financial services, hardware attrition, Null paying himself a median household income (I see nothing wrong with this), building savings or a "war chest," etc.

At this point I've seen enough calling people "retards" and "faggots," while complaining about being the "nigger of the world" because some idiot rudely said he dislikes a minor user interface change, that I'm morbidly fascinated by this strange vision of a professional peer whose cumulative life choices basically led him to a position of running a Russian small business whose value proposition is "коуп и снид." It is very interesting and not out of line to ask, since I'm being asked to donate money and have not forgotten the "furnish my apartment" fundraising campaign.

I do notice and appreciate various improvements like Ajax requests rarely timing out, the new top and bottom navigation buttons, the improved search engine, the new forum icons and thread badges, the new media player powered by a cluster of RTX 4000 SFF GPUs (good choice because the donation was earmarked for that), and whatever else I'm forgetting since I last used the forum. So I'm not coming at this from a position of, "you're asking for $12k per month and I hate this extremely minor feature like a CSS border around someone's avatar."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom