The completion of this website and it's widespread readership are the fruits of my COVID lockdown labour, and would never have happened without the seclusion and focus of that time period.

When I initially started posting my stories more prolifically and interacting with the Neocities social network that's shared with other web developers, I came across a website that was one of the most interesting and informative I encountered when exposed to the new wave of 90's style sites that Neocities inspired. The creator of the site was covering an unique mix of topics including Kemeticism, the History of the Web, horror movies, cats, goth rock, and: Autism. Reading this person's personal reflections on coming to terms with being autistic as an adult led me to recognize that I was also an autistic person. This was hugely revelatory, and the ongoing impact of this discovery is still rippling out into my ethererosphere.

This person and I would exchange words of encouragement with each other, and it seemed like he was the only person who was thoroughly reading what I was writing, and possibly vice versa.

Tandem to being inspired and empowered by his insights about autism, I also began to pick out phrases within his writing that hinted at him being a Trump supporter, an incel, suicidal - and in one post he made on my wall he said something to the effect of "Kaczynski was right", which was disturbing; though I had to remind myself of my own obsession with serial killers as a teenager, and how sympathizing with mass murderers can be a salve for one's feelings of rejection and isolation from mainstream society. And I recognize that many of the perpetrators of mass shootings are traumatized autistic men who were unable to gain acceptance and understanding in the toxic school systems of America, or receive healing for the trauma that they were carrying. One may try to slough this off with sentiments like why don't they just join a book club, though likely it's difficult for some people to understand just how powerfully debilitating social rejection can be, and how profoundly fucked up the systems that we exist within are. And autistic people are highly sensitive, and are often conduits for the inter-generational trauma of their families and society. At the same time, there is a certain amount of responsibility that falls upon each individual not to perpetuate systems of abuse and victimize innocent people.

Throughout my ongoing communications with this Neocities person I began to recognize his distinctive writing style in several other profiles, and I realized that he had many pseudonyms, and was using these pseudonyms to create the illusion of himself having more supporters and online friends than he actually had. Perhaps he started to realize that I was putting the pieces together, as I noticed that he deleted some hints to these connections. And when our communications began to fray, he disabled posting on the wall of one of his most popular profiles.

Perhaps in his arrogance he didn't think that someone with such an acute attention for detail as himself would enter into his realm and start dissecting it. Perhaps it was sloppiness in his bouts of nightly inebriation that he spoke about. Perhaps he secretly wanted someone to figure him out. I remember him saying on several occasions that he'd like to have "IRL" (In Real Life) friends and saying that he would bake them banana bread. I genuinely empathized with him and I thought that his interest in my writing was a positive thing, as I was clearly a social and environmental activist. I would have been his IRL friend and was planning at one point to reach out and offer him an Andrew Eldritch trading card I had, as he has a whole section of his site dedicated to the Sisters of Mercy. I was also inspired by his writing style in general; and I realized that I had suppressed many aspects of myself that were similarly complex and incisive (a thing that many of us who are raised as women do unconsciously).

Things started to deteriorate when he followed me and posted from one of his profiles that included a fictional story about violently raping a woman, and many highly sexualized images that were all of Asian women. In another of his profiles he publicly proclaimed his support for a man called Richard Stallman, who is well known in the tech world for excusing the behavior of one of Esptein's friends (who was also a friend of Stallmans) and for trying to justify pedophilia. In conversations through IRC I asked him directly about this, and he excused Richard Stallman's behaviour by bringing attention to his social awkwardness. I really didn't think that that was a legitimate justification. Nor do I think that social ineptitude or neurodiversity are reasonable excuses for any kind of misogyny.

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Even though I was online in the early days of the internet using IRC and mailing lists, I never made friends online. Maybe because some of my first experiences were of men being pervos, or just that I was never able to connect with others unless I'd first met them in person. Living in isolation through COVID I ended up taking some classes on ZOOM and made Witch friends in America, and I was spending a lot of time on the Neocities comments section communicating with others. For the first time in my life I was making what seemed like sincere connections through the digital realm.

Unfortunately, my interactions with this person turned downright ugly when Russia full-out invaded Ukraine. Being part Slovakian, having many friends who lived under the Iron Curtain, and seeing the aftermath of the Soviet Union up close and personal throughout my travels, I was not sympathetic to Russia's cause (while at the same time also abhoring Western Imperialism). Koshka (the moniker of the main webpage of this person, which means "cat" in Russian) is a second generation Russian person, and he became very upset by what I was posting on my wall about the War / genocide in Ukraine. He started trolling my wall and posting Pro-Putin propaganda on there (I was called an "emotional pagan Barbie" in one post haha).

When I began posting on his profiles and bringing to people's attention that he was a pro-Russian troll, and inspired many to avoid one of this other sites (Ace Adventure), he retaliated further and shared my personal information on a scary social media site frequented by genocide deniers from Serbia and other pro-Putin propagandists. When I started to speak out about Koshka and other racist and misogynistic sites on Neocities, I was personally attacked by both sides, and I began to feel like Dib from Invader Zim.. This was the first time in my life that I had been cyber-bullied, and for a spell I became paranoid and fearful. I was also somewhat ashamed of myself for my own reactive behaviour, as I know that angry outbursts never inspire understanding or raised consciousness, however righteous they are.

Interestingly, despite Koshka's enthusiastic proclamations about free speech (and allusions to the restrictions of Trump's freedom of expression), he began censoring my comments and questions in regards to his beliefs. He eventually took down his little free speech banners that he had on his main page, and then he blocked me completely, both on his Neocities wall and on his guestbook. It seems that people who are particularly arrogant and dogmatic only want free speech for themselves and other bigots, not anyone who would intelligently question them or hold them accountable for their ignorant statements.

Anyway, fast forward... now I don't have any contact at all with this person, though I also feel rather conflicted, as his writings on autism inspired me so much and had such a hugely positive impact upon my life. Despite my strong reactions to injustice, I'm not actually into "cancel" culture. I'm into "disclaimer", "accountability", "equality" and "amends" culture. And if a person isn't mature enough to be truly accountable and make amends for their poor behaviour, then they should not be in a position of power.

So, in the spirit of true freedom of expression (which honours the sacredness of all living creatures), and in acknowledging that no one should ever be thrown in the garbage, I would like to provide a link to the autism writings of Koshka that inspired me so much. Some of what he writes is asinine, like trying to compare what autistic children go through to that of what children went through in the residential school system; and completely avoiding any mentioning of the astronomically huge amounts of trans, Queer and two-spirited autistic people that exist on the planet. Yet much of what he writes is spot-on, hilarious, and incredibly well researched.

My hope is that this person will wizen and expand his mind and heart beyond the aspects of himself that are infantile and entitled, as he could potentially be a powerful voice for the autism community as a whole. xx