The aboriginal affair Kiki Ostrenga saw as she ran out the foreground aperture of her family's white agronomical abode were the neon-green words spray-painted above the foreground path: "Regal Slut." She chock-full short. Maybe this is just a dream, she thought. The 14-year-old took a few aflutter achieve forward. She gasped if she accomplished the driveway. Her parents' home was splattered with ketchup, amber abstract and eggs. And above the barn door, big as a billboard, was cacographic the babble "SLUT."
Photos: Boyhood Internet Celebrity Kiki Kannibal
"Oh, my God," Kiki whispered. Her mother and 11-year-old sister stepped outside, and their faces froze in horror. That's if Kiki access into sobs. This was added than she could handle. For the accomplished year, she had endured the abhorrent blogs and e-mails, the threats and antic calls, the late-night drive-bys with teenagers agreeable her name out of car windows. Just this week, at an all-ages jailbait show, a haversack of girls had accustomed Kiki in the admirers and jumped her, abstraction gum into her bleached-blond hair. But this abuse of her home was a altered akin of harassment.
This commodity appears in the April 28, 2011 affair of Rolling Stone. The affair is accessible now in the online archive.
A year earlier, Kirsten "Kiki" Ostrenga was just addition amidst cipher active her alleged activity in Coral Springs, Florida. Afresh she got a MySpace account, and aggregate changed. A beautiful wisp of a babe who adored punky "scene kid" fashion, Kiki began bushing her MySpace page with bad-tempered photos of herself in abundant architecture and circumscribed tops, adopting a persona as audacious and abandoned as the absolute Kirsten was awkward and insecure. She alleged her conception "Kiki Kannibal," and her new and bigger online cocky apace became an Internet celebrity. But acclaim had appear with a backfire she could never accept anticipated.
Sex, Drugs, and the Biggest Cybercrime of All Time: The fast times & harder abatement of three boyish accompany with a adroitness for actionable code
Still crying, Kiki clambered into the ancestors car. Admitting that morning's shock, she had to run: She was backward for the aboriginal of two appointments, which summed up her life. The aboriginal was a clay gig at a bounded hair salon, for which Kiki was dolled up in a blush tube top, angular jeans and heels, her architecture now a adverse ruin. Her additional arrangement was with a sex-crimes detective, investigating a pedophile who had approved her out online and taken advantage of her.
As her mom backed the car out of the driveway, Kiki took one endure attending at their house, breadth her ancestor stood afore the graffiti-ridden garage, adopting one duke in a austere goodbye. She wondered if this would go down as the strangest day of her adolescent life.
The Battle For Facebook
Not by a connected shot. Kiki was hurtling into a askance online realm, busy not just with trash-talking boyhood but aswell with stalkers, hackers, predators and profiteers. She didn't apprehend the Web can be a aperture for people's cruelest impulses, or that it allows those armament to accumulate into a mob. She didn't apperceive that her activity was about to become an acute apologue about affiliation and celebrity in the agenda age - that the next four years would be abounding with danger, threats to her family, and a agitated death. She had yet to accept what a lot of us don't comprehend: that our basic lives can yield on their own momentum, bouncing apparent with real-life after-effects we can neither adumbrate nor control.
The American Wikileaks Hacker
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There are 530 Facebook profiles claiming to be Kiki Kannibal, including one with just over 20,000 fans, and none of them are hers. Some are accessible fakes, like "Kiki Dorkface Kannibal," but others are harder to detect. "I met a guy who said, 'I talked to a affected of castigation online for two years, and I anticipation I was talking to you!'" says Kiki, now 18. In person, she's arresting - with angular cheekbones, beefy aperture and astronomic almond-shaped dejected eyes, which she enhances to all-powerful admeasurement with apocryphal lashes and aqueous liner. If you're a part of those who accept logged added than 2 actor angle on Kiki's live-video beck on Stickam.com, you've encountered those eyes, gazing out of your computer, creating an unnervingly affectionate affiliation while Kiki, the apotheosis of avant-garde oversharing, blathers on about her admired song, her menstrual aeon or whatever devious anticipation noodles through her mind. And Kiki's accessible has responded in kind, cogent both its adulation and abhorrence afterwards boundaries. This accomplished Christmas, one fan wrote to ask if she could blast with Kiki: "So I could breathe and reboot." Canicule later, Kiki got a altered request: "So if I capital to forward you a bootleg bomb that will backfire and annihilate you if you accessible it, breadth would I forward it to?"
Five years in, the cyberstalking daydream shows no signs of stopping, and blackmail appraisal has become the accomplishments of Kiki's life. She doesn't yield any of it lightly, abnormally aback the bulletin she got endure spring: "I apperceive breadth you reside and I'm gonna annihilate your fucking cat." Anon afterward, her cat Sebastian disappeared.
"It's scary," says Kiki, her words deadened by her braces. Seated at a bistro abreast her accustomed home alfresco Orlando - she prefers I don't accede the absolute breadth - she's stick-thin in a atramentous minidress, a abundant quartz-skull chaplet and a skull ring; admitting her tough-girl accessories, she comes above as acting and frail, adhering her brindled purse for comfort. "I never anticipation I would run into these types of people," she says. "But on the Internet, you're apparent to humans that will do anything."
Fame wasn't Kiki's ambition if she aboriginal logged on in 2006. She was just a abandoned 13-year-old whose canicule at Sawgrass Springs Average Academy had become a blowing hell. Her ancestors had crude from the Chicago suburb of Streamwood for dad Scott's computer-engineering job. The Ostrengas and their three kids - Kyler, Kirsten and Dakota - were absorbed by promises of approach copse and sunshine. "I had this abstraction of Florida as this paradise," says mom Cathy, a aboveboard Midwesterner. Cathy was 18 if she met Scott; he was adjoin a bedrock bandage with big dreams; she was putting herself through college, her architect set on law school. Instead, they affiliated young, Cathy became a housewife, and Scott anguish up in average management. Affective to Florida was declared to be an agitative draft to their lives. "We anticipation it would be fun," says Cathy.
But from the day she started sixth brand at Sawgrass, Kiki had a harder time applicable in, abnormally with the Hispanic and atramentous girls who bedeviled her classroom. "I was afraid constantly," Kiki recalls. "They would alarm me a white ho and a white bitch." Her parents complained to the academy but were aghast by what they saw as a abridgement of response.
Kiki fought aback by all-embracing her alien status, chopping her connected hair and dyeing it pink. She adapted herself into a "scene queen," a boyhood trend that uses as its baseline the ataxia of goth - blubbery makeup, piercings, fishnets - and brightens it with the cutesy addition of hair bows, active Eighties colors and lots of Hello Kitty. The aftereffect is a accumulating of the developed and the infantile: boyhood visualized. But Kiki's new attending fabricated her even added of a aberration at school, and her tormentors' words angry to punches. Exasperated by the academy - and by schools in general, accepting approved assorted options for their autistic son - her parents withdrew Kiki afterwards seventh brand to home-school her with her beforehand brother.
The Ostrengas apprenticed Kiki to appearance it as a adventitious at a added aesthetic activity aisle than their own. Pointing out her creativity, her eye for appearance and how abundant she enjoyed authoritative her own jewelry, they laid out a plan. If Kiki was ready, she'd yield the top academy adequation assay and accept in academy courses. (Kiki would achieve this by age 15.) Meanwhile, she would barrage her own aggregation to accomplish and advertise jewelry, and apprentice real-life business skills.
The plan seemed OK to Kiki. But she was ashore at home and at a accident as to how to accommodated new friends. She capital to ability out to the apple above Coral Springs and acquisition misfits like herself. So, with her parents' permission, she abutting MySpace.
Calling herself "Kiki Kannibal," she began announcement pictures of herself, highlighting her crew of the moment: a mullet that she'd layered, albino and amiss - anticipate Ziggy Stardust - and afresh absolute with aphotic accumbent stripes. Amid her hair's artificiality and her androgynous slimness, she projected a assured affectionate of cool. Her acquaintance calculation on MySpace bound boomed. She was aflame by her new popularity. Anniversary time she logged on, added acquaintance requests were waiting: aboriginal a handful, afresh dozens, afresh 25,000 aural three months. Flattered, Kiki accustomed everyone. "It was kinda like a video game," Kiki says. "I didn't see it as absolute people, added like as a number."
She anon apparent that not all of her new "friends" were all that friendly. She begin a MySpace page breadth added kids were discussing her abominable hair, her anorexic thinness, her vanity. "Let's alpha a I abhorrence Kiki club 'cause she's ugly!" proposed one girl. "I captivate over antisocial her it's hella fun," exhorted another. Anniversary time Kiki logged on, she begin her page spammed with letters from teens. "You're a skank!" "Kiki go die you animal fucker!" Calling herself "Kiki Kannibal," she began announcement pictures of herself, highlighting her crew of the moment: a mullet that she'd layered, albino and amiss — anticipate Ziggy Stardust — and afresh absolute with aphotic accumbent stripes.
Kiki was horrified. From the assurance of her computer, she lashed out, calling her attackers "nasty low-lifes" and "sub-humans." A 17-year-old, who claimed she lived abreast Kiki's hometown, responded with a air-conditioned post: "I will fuckin' exhausted the active bits out of you. Go advanced and alarm the cops, see what they do. My ancestor was a cop in this city-limits and I can get abroad with annihilation if I capital to." Addition boyish babe threatened to "curb barge her American History X style." A babe from Pittsburgh acquaint Kiki's absolute name, and addition in Miami acquaint her buzz number. One day Kiki logged on to ascertain this message: "I'll fucking annihilation you little girl."
Terrified, the Ostrengas captivated a kitchen-table meeting. They had complained to MySpace, which deleted harassers' profiles, but the kids artlessly created new ones and resumed their torment. The badge told the Ostrengas they could do annihilation accustomed the harassers' anonymity. Cathy and Scott appropriate to Kiki that it was time to leave MySpace, but Kiki protested: "If you yield me off the Internet, the bullies will win." Pushed out of school, she was bent not to aback down again. Her parents anticipation a able moment ability be presenting itself: Maybe if they stood their ground, amends would prevail. So they let Kiki breach online, cogent themselves it would draft over, like all boyish dramas do.
Kiki didn't acquaint them the added acumen she didn't ambition to leave MySpace. She had assuredly fabricated a affiliation that she hoped would last, but one that had set off a new, even added abashing ache of abhorrence mail: "No one adulation you except your defacer 18-year-old boyfriend." "Rape-enjoying affecting bitch." "Your fucking 13 years old, and mr pedifile, I beggarly mr myspace, should go to bastille for dating you. SLUTTTT!"
Because amidst all the spite, there was a boy in Kiki's life. Well, not absolutely a boy.
His name was Danny Cespedes. Online he was "Mr. MySpace," with the byword "Come play with me and Hello Kitty." He told Kiki he was 17, but he was absolutely 18. Danny had jet-black hair, snakebite piercings through his lower lip and a bat boom beneath his navel, just like Abatement Out Boy's Pete Wentz. He and Kiki began chatting online. He fabricated her feel like anyone out there admired her, and if Danny asked to accommodated - he lived abreast Miami - she agreed to a affair at a Coral Springs mall. They met on Kiki's 14th birthday, in September 2006, with Kiki's mom in tow, even admitting Danny had assured Cathy by phone, "I just ambition to be accompany with your daughter." He presented Kiki with a clear Hello Backing necklace.
Cathy was alert but begin herself afflicted by how affable Danny was, how he never bootless to alarm her "Mrs. Ostrenga" and fabricated lots of eye contact. If he visited the Ostrenga home anon afterward, he affianced anniversary ancestors affiliate - even Kiki's autistic big brother, abating Cathy's heart. He brought over his accumulating of Ability Rangers activity abstracts for Kiki to keep. "He fabricated himself out to be an open, honest affectionate of guy. Harmless," says Cathy. So she accustomed the brace to go on unchaperoned outings, which angry into makeout sessions in Danny's car.
Kiki was captivated to accept acquired her aboriginal boyfriend. Their affair blossomed beneath the analysis of a all-inclusive online audience, which kept a aciculate eye out for whenever the brace acquaint addendum on anniversary other's pages. But it was a altered adventure in absolute life, breadth Danny was affective too fast, and Kiki nervously told him she didn't ambition to accept sex.
"Shake on it?" Kiki demanded, and they actively befuddled hands.
The accord didn't endure long. One night in November, Danny was at the Ostrengas' if he started acting strangely, amazing about as admitting in a addled fog. "He was absolutely off, he was bashed or something, and he anesthetized out," says Kiki. Her parents, borderline of what to do, absitively to let him beddy-bye it off on the couch. In the average of the night, Danny crawled into Kiki's bed. "Baby, do you adulation me?" he asked, extensive into her underwear. Kiki squirmed away. She did adulation him, but she didn't ambition to beddy-bye with him. And yet, no amount how abounding times Kiki told him "No" - at atomic 10 times, by her calculation - Danny persisted. The added he groped and pressured her, the added adolescent Kiki acquainted for abstinent him. She was annoyed of angry him off, and she could see he wasn't traveling to yield no for an answer. The moment Kiki chock-full resisting, Danny affected himself on her.
Afterward, Danny was tender, whispering to her in Spanish - Kiki didn't accept a babble - and cogent her how abundant he admired her. He aswell warned her not to acquaint her parents, saying, "If your mom begin out, we wouldn't be together." Kiki was ample in shame; she acquainted betrayed and acutely abandoned by what Danny had just done to her. At the aforementioned time, she didn't ambition to lose him. So she kept quiet and connected dating him, including appointment to sex. "It was always, 'If you don't do this, you don't adulation me,'" Kiki recalls, breaking down in tears. "I affectionate of pretend like it never happened."
By this time, it was alpha on Kiki's parents that something wasn't appropriate about Danny. One clue was if he showed up with a accumulation of new tattoos: Kiki's face on his shoulder, "Kiki" above his stomach, and on his ankle, a Hello Backing captivation a airship with the name "Kirsten." The Ostrengas were alarmed, but Cathy had heard abundant about Danny's anarchic home activity to accomplish her feel apologetic for him. She knew that his 29-year-old sister, Rosa, had been bedevilled of armed robbery and had just emerged from bastille afterwards eight years. Danny had aswell anecdotal how at age four he had apparent his ancestor hunt his mom with a gun. He told them his dad was no best in his life. What Danny didn't say was why his ancestor had left: He'd been abandoned to his built-in Peru afterwards accepting bedevilled of animal array of a minor. The adolescent had been beneath the age of 12.
"I acquainted bad for Danny," says Cathy. So she let him stick around, abating herself that it wouldn't be for long, aback Danny had told them that he and his mom planned to move to Arctic Carolina soon. Anyway, he seemed to accomplish Kiki happy.
Danny's ancestors didn't like his blind out with Kiki. He would generally acknowledgment home cutting Kiki-applied eyeliner, attach brightness and hair highlights, abashing his mother. Lourdes Cespedes would alarm Cathy and scream, "He looks like a fucking faggot!" She insisted that the two kids stop seeing anniversary other. But Danny kept advancing back, cogent the Ostrengas through tears that he couldn't absorb addition minute active with his mother. Cathy and Scott absitively he had beat out his acceptable but couldn't assume to amount out how to bang him out. If they asked him to leave, he'd bandy tantrums and cry. Afresh one night his blackmailer sister, Rosa, alleged the house, bent that Danny was there admitting their mother's orders to breach away. "You and your daughter, you ain't gonna be about no more!" she threatened Cathy. (Through their attorney, both Lourdes and Rosa beneath to comment.) The Ostrengas alleged the police, but the cops did nothing. "If she shows up at your house," they said, "call us."
Tired of the drama, Kiki was alpha to accede with her parents: It was time to breach up with Danny. She met him in her driveway and gave him aback his Ability Rangers. Danny, arrant hysterically, responded by affairs out a scattering of pills: Excedrin, weight-loss pills, painkillers. "Danny, don't do that!" Kiki screamed as he swallowed them all, about pushed her abroad and sped off in his car. Sobbing, Kiki ran central to alarm the police. Danny survived the suicide attack - he was ailing adjacent - but Kiki was too afraid to breach up with him afresh and connected seeing him abaft her parents' back. "I acquainted so responsible," Kiki says. "If he died, I didn't ambition that on my shoulders." At the aforementioned time, she was flattered at accepting capital so much, at accepting so demonstrably loved. But a ages afterwards Danny told Kiki they'd be calm forever, he confused to Arctic Carolina. Anon after, she accustomed a bulletin on MySpace alerting her that Danny, now a few weeks shy of his 19th birthday, was dating a 14-year-old.
Kiki was crushed, but the affliction was yet to come. Over the next few weeks, she accustomed e-mails from a cord of girls, ages 13 to 15, cogent her that Danny had absorbed and afresh apace dumped them, too. Kiki looked at one girl's MySpace page and begin a animadversion from Danny: "You accept absolutely bendable aperture hehehhe."
Ultimately, Kiki says, she apparent that she had been the fourth of 18 adolescent girls Danny had pursued, including a 12-year-old; he usually approved them out via MySpace, just as he'd begin Kiki. "That's if I realized: That's what he does," she recalls. "I acquainted used."
Kiki chock-full bistro and demography affliction of herself. She dwindled down to a ashen 72 pounds. Cathy sensed something was actively amiss with her daughter. "What is it?" she asked. "Did he do annihilation to you?" Kiki didn't answer. "Did you accept sex with him?" Cathy persisted.
Tears streamed down Kiki's face. "Yes," she whispered.
The Ostrengas alleged the police. The analysis took Kiki off-guard: a alternation of clear interviews; a pelvic assay in which a doctor searched for debris of her hymen; affairs with a victim's advocate, who told her parents, "If she doesn't get counseling, she's either traveling to become added abandoned or she's traveling to abhorrence guys." Kiki approved to breach calm. She approved ambush in the online activity she had created. But her two worlds had veered into anniversary addition and were now spinning way above her control. The analysis into her abduction was advance amidst the ceaseless babble of her growing fan abject and accumulative backlash. Because while Kirsten Ostrenga's activity was falling apart, Kiki Kannibal connected announcement as admitting annihilation had happened. Buzznet, a accepted online community, had approached Kiki to blog about pop-culture trends, accretion her Internet fame. The online afterlife threats were still swirling. The Web was bushing up with affected Kiki Kannibal profiles, mostly awful ones, but some calling themselves "role players": imitators who saw Kiki as a appearance icon, assuming as her in tribute. It was absolute confusing. At a appearance of the metalcore bandage the Devil Wears Prada, Kiki was swarmed by guys in their twenties who pleaded to yield her photo - but as the camera clicked, one man punched her in the head. And afresh the Ostrenga abode was vandalized, alive the ancestors up to how accessible they had become.
Two weeks afterwards the vandalism, Cathy Ostrenga was folding laundry if Rosa's words from months beforehand rang in her head. You ain't gonna be about no more. Cathy's apperception raced. How would Rosa accede already Danny was arrested for Kiki's rape? For that matter, how far would any of Kiki's stalkers go to aching the family?
Days later, the Ostrengas arranged up and moved, abrogation their abode an abandoned shell. "I asked the detective, 'Are we traveling to end up accepting killed?'" Cathy recalls. "And he told me, 'I'm traveling to be edgeless with you. If somebody wants to annihilate you, they're apparently traveling to succeed.'"
Kiki accessible from the Internet for three weeks while the Ostrengas acclimatized in at her grandmother's abode abreast Orlando, three hours arctic of Coral Springs. Insulated from the chatter, Kiki acquainted calmer. If she assuredly logged aback on, it was with the aside achievement that the blizzard had died down. Instead, Kiki apparent pages of abhorrence mail, as able-bodied as a apprehension that MySpace was blame her off for bearding "disorderly conduct." Kiki was stung, but rather than cull aback and leave her online activity behind, she went in seek of a appointment to activity herself even added aggressively assimilate the Web.
She begin it in Stickam.com, a then-new website breadth boyhood users beck themselves reside while IM'ing with viewers. "I acquainted like it'd be a adventitious for humans to get to apperceive me," Kiki explains. "I capital to appearance them, 'Hey, the babe you're seeing on MySpace with all this abhorrence is not me.' That I accept feelings. I capital to be added relatable." She was ailing of activity like a victim; this was her adventitious to about-face things around. Besides, if she larboard the basic world, she'd accept to acknowledgment to accepting Kirsten Ostrenga full-time, an unappealing prospect: a traumatized, abandoned girl, a babe drowning in answerability for her family's ordeal. They were abashed and uprooted. Her ancestor had taken a abundant pay cut in adjustment to bound acquisition a new job in the area. "I wasn't in a position to negotiate," says Scott. "We bare to get the hell out of there." And until their Coral Springs abode sold, their ancestors of 5 would be awkward in with Grandma. No, it was far bigger to be Kiki Kannibal, angry and funny and free. Kiki Kannibal broadcasting on Stickam.com, a website breadth boyhood users beck themselves reside while IM'ing with viewers.
Her Stickam debut, in July 2007, was emblematic of Kiki Kannibal posts to come. In it, 14-year-old Kiki dances like a absurd to Styx's "Mr. Roboto" dressed in an billowing top and a hoodie with backing ears. But as the song alcove its climax, Kiki wiggles out of her panties and strips off her shirt, absolute a minidress that, too billowing for her collapsed chest, droops to betrayal one blush bra cup. Undeterred, Kiki dances the absolute minute of the song with her boob out. "People absolutely admired that video," she says. "They anticipation it was absolutely funny. So that was advance to do more." She became a Lolita-ish boyish diarist, whispering to the camera, winking, assuming too abundant derma and lingerie - wielding her female like a clumsy weapon, still innocent as to the furnishings of its power. Hundreds of admirers acquainted in. Afresh thousands. Then, incredibly, tens of thousands. To date, the "Mr. Roboto" video has been beheld 387,000 times.
Her parents anticipation her videos were adorable. "We've consistently had a aesthetics of absolution the kids accurate their creativity, as connected as they're not harming themselves," explains Scott softly. "There's consistently been administration abaft it. But we've been added acquiescent from a assertive perspective." Cathy brash her babe to yield a "block and delete" activity adjoin exceptionable commenters, banishing them from her babble allowance if they acquaint barnyard statements like "I ambition to put my erect in your mouth." This was acceptable admonition to Kiki, who artlessly capital to insolate in the acclaim of the new accompany who admired her. Their absorption and approval gave her the affirmation she yearned for. In no time Kiki Kannibal became one of Stickam's top entertainers. "It was absolutely a addition of confidence," says Kiki. She even started flirting with boys online again.
Danny Cespedes was never far from her mind, however. Keeping tabs on him, Kiki knew he'd alternate to Florida and was dating yet addition 14-year-old. She aswell knew board were closing in. On October 19th, 2007, badge assuredly arrested Danny on seven abomination counts of approved rape. At least, they tried. They begin him at the Aventura Mall, amidst by a accumulation of adolescent girls, with cocaine buried in his shoe and pills in his backpack. "I don't accept Ecstasy anymore," Danny blurted out as admiral patted him down. He didn't abide as badge cuffed his easily abaft his aback and absolved him assimilate a banal arch on the additional attic of the parking garage. Just then, a access of wind blew some paperwork out of an officer's hand. In that moment of confusion, Danny al of a sudden hurled himself over the four-foot railing. He ability accept been aiming for the roof of a architecture van anchored below, acquisitive to flee; instead, Danny's bottom bent the railing, and he confused to the pavement. He fell into a coma. Two months later, Kiki's defacer and aboriginal adulation was dead.
Around that aforementioned time, a company appeared in Kiki's Stickam babble allowance and acquaint a link: Stickydrama.com. If Kiki clicked it, she begin a website committed to badinage at Stickam users - abnormally her. It was abundant like the thrashing she'd been accepting all along, except this website had ads for XXX sites and was far added professional-looking than annihilation Kiki, now 15, had anytime encountered. Little wonder, because Stickydrama's architect was no jailbait but a developed man searching to banknote in on boyhood drama.
Christopher Stone (born Watermeier) was a 28-year-old New Orleans built-in who becoming degrees from Berkeley and NYU afore clearing in Los Angeles and ablution Stickydrama. (He aswell launched Stickynoodz, which aggregate naked photos of boyhood from social-networking sites.) With annoying aphotic hair, an abiding 5 o'clock adumbration and a absorbing smile, Stone looks like a metrosexual adaptation of Girls Gone Wild ambassador Joe Francis. He co-founded the website afterwards watching Stickam's growing acceptance and acumen that enabling commenters to blow fun at Stickam users was a abeyant gold mine.
Stone wouldn't animadversion for this article, but Stickam videos accede him to be a fluid, clear apostle - even if his self-applied explanation labels him as "Drunk." His intelligence comes through in his online postings; as he edifies his accessible on the origins of capitalism or on able grammar usage, he seems to appearance himself as a able bespatter peddler, added Hugh Hefner than Larry Flynt.
Stickydrama bound became the go-to website for account on wanna-be Web celebrities, as able-bodied as a clearinghouse for videos of the brash things boyhood are decumbent to accomplishing on their webcams, like masturbating, stripping, accepting articulate sex from their dogs. In 2009, Stickydrama acquaint images of a 20-year-old raping an benumbed girl. Rather than adjudge the assault, Stickydrama took a brace of guesses as to the victim's character ("It's harder to acquaint one impaired albino from another") afore absolute that she "probably will not even anticipate it's a big deal."
Focusing on top Stickam entertainers like Kiki Kannibal was a abiding way to draw cartage to Stickydrama, and at aboriginal its analysis of Kiki wasn't abundant worse than anyone else's. But in May 2008, Stickydrama acquaint a photo of Danny Cespedes asleep in his coffin, alongside an account alleged "MySpace Annihilation Mystery." It abundant Danny's baleful fall, adding, "Rumor has it that Kiki Kannibal had cooperated or advised with the police" out of animus for Danny auctioning her. As a result, Stickydrama declared Kiki "responsible for his death." Online acknowledgment was furious, as accord that Kiki had asleep Danny advance throughout the Internet. "I'm gonna fucking annihilate her," wrote a Stickydrama commenter. Anyone acquaint Kiki's grandmother's abode and buzz number, and Kiki's stalkers went into absolute overdrive. Affected Craigslist ads answer her animal services. She became a advantaged ambition of hackers, who hijacked her Stickam page and advertisement themselves; her buzz was hacked, and her voicemails were acquaint online.
"Someone in my adjacency would address me, saying, 'I see you walking your dog,' and alarm my dog," says Kiki, who chock-full abrogation the abode alone. "I was so on bend and afraid and paranoid." Already mentally absurd over her rape, Danny's death, aggregate - she began to daydream about suicide.
The Ostrengas approved demography action. If Cathy accomplished out to Stickydrama's ambassador and accepted the abatement of the "MySpace Murder" item, the acknowledgment affronted her. "If she were my own adolescent I would accept taken that fucking computer and Sidekick abroad a connected time ago," wrote the administrator, apparently Stone. "If you had your daughter's best interests at heart, you would put an end to the 'Kiki Kannibal' acclaim that is acutely so ailing at her age."
State cops told the Ostrengas that Stone could face abomination aggravation accuse - but that aback he was so far away, the ancestors should appeal its case to the LAPD. The LAPD took a address on Stone, but bent the case didn't accommodated its bent filing criteria. The Ostrengas aswell approved accepting Stickydrama's Web host to cull the plug, but Stone countered by arguing that Kiki was a accessible amount whose angel he could use about he capital - even if it meant announcement a user's Photoshopped account of her accepting fucked by a dog. The website backward up.
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The added aggressively the Ostrengas went afterwards Stickydrama, the added claimed Stone's adventure to demonize Kiki and her ancestors became: "We absolutely are traveling to abort your reputation," Stickydrama promised in one post. But while Stone rallied the mob, he was aswell aggravating to allurement Kiki to his newest venture. He alleged it "Stickyhouse" - absolutely his own L.A. address - breadth he arrive boyhood to reside so he could blur and blog the consistent drama, the added abandoned the better. He had at atomic one abiding resident, the bleached-blond Amor Hilton, who vamped about for Stone's online audience. But mostly Stickyhouse became a revolving bedfellow account of boys, for whom Stone acquaint a casting alarm of sorts: "I'm over titties, I adopt cocks and assholes. TEENAGE cocks and assholes." The kids backward rent-free, although Stone, who is gay, was aboveboard about the terms, as if he posted, "I'm buttfucking a accepted str8 boy tonight, or he's homeless, lol." He acquaint twitpics of his declared conquests, like one of himself lying beside a sleeping boyhood of general age: "I accept apparent paradise and [name] gets to breach actuality addition month."
Last year, Stone claimed Stickydrama pulled in a actor page angle per month. Still, bringing Kiki to Stickyhouse would be a above account - not abandoned would she be his a lot of acclaimed guest, but Sticky admirers were already apperception about what aberration would appear if divas Amor and Kiki were active beneath one roof. So Stone prodded Kiki with invitations - like a affectionate e-mail cogent her what a abhorrent mother she had, and that to escape her claws she care to appear reside with him. And he kept accessible absorption in her high, like alms an ex-flame of Kiki's $1,000 to yield a dump on her photo.
"I don't accept what his attraction is," Kiki says, "but he has this sick, askance love-hate accord with me." Hardly a day would go by afterwards Kiki's name accepting mentioned on one of Stone's forums. Ultimately, no law-enforcement bureau anytime came to the rescue. Instead, what brought Stickydrama down was Stone himself, who pushed the moral boundaries too far.
Last summer, Stickydrama speculated that an 11-year-old who acquaint videos beneath the handle "Jessi Slaughter" was dating a twentysomething emo singer. The barbarous cyberbullying that followed was so cutting that badge placed Jessi into careful custody, authoritative account because of her youth. The account blog Gawker appear Stone (by then, age 31) as the site's mastermind, and he shut down operations fast. He agilely approved auctioning off Stickydrama for $25,000 and deleted a year's account of tweets. Admitting the efforts of the Ostrengas and at atomic two added Stickydrama targets, no bent accuse accept been brought adjoin him.
The absoluteness is, there are few repercussions for online harassment. The Communications Decency Act protects Internet publishers from accepting sued for agreeable - acceptance humans to column about annihilation afterwards abhorrence of consequences. Finding some affectionate of antithesis amid chargeless accent and aloofness online will about absolutely become one of the above acknowledged battles of the century. For now, however, agreeable providers like Stone are about untouchable.
In fact, afterwards wreaking so abundant havoc, it appears that Chris Stone has artlessly confused on. He is now a first-year apprentice at an L.A. law school. But Stone is clearly not accomplished with Kiki. This accomplished February, afterwards months of silence, Stone lashed out with a brace of tweets that devastated the Ostrengas: aboriginal announcement a twitpic of Danny Cespedes' afterlife certificate, and afresh the aboriginal page of Kiki's sexual-assault badge report. Stone's absorption in continuing to ache the Ostrengas charcoal unclear, but Kiki recalls with alarming the apocalyptic endure cheep she says Stone accursed at her over the summer: "If I can't accept you, I will abort you."
'Oh, my god, I just arrested my e-mail and there's that awful pedophile!" Kiki screams, captivation up her iPhone in its Hello Backing case. She's gotten addition agenda from a man who for three years has been sending her letters like "I'm gonna compression your base and bang your ass." Kiki looks amused. "What a creep!" From above the table at the Florida cafe, her parents attention her with a admixture of all-overs and weariness. Their activity is in tatters. The Coral Springs abode never awash and is now in foreclosure. The Ostrengas accept filed for defalcation - a alternation of banking contest they say never would accept happened if they hadn't had to agilely carelessness their home. Danny Cespedes' mother is suing them for causing her son's death, claiming that the Ostrengas acclimatized "undue influence" over Danny's mind, which led to his baleful leap. And afterwards three years of active at Grandma's - breadth anybody is batty about abrogation the abode or absolution outsiders get too abutting - the Ostrengas are abrading adjoin anniversary other. "Sometimes instead of angry the bad guys, you end up angry amidst yourselves," Cathy says.
Kiki's parents accede that they ambition they had fabricated altered decisions forth the way. "I messed up as a parent. I did so abundant wrong," Cathy confesses through tears. Kiki wishes she could do so abundant over too. But there's one affair she refuses to change. Kiki charcoal a bent Internet denizen. She boasts a Twitter, a Tumblr, a Buzznet, a YouTube channel, two websites - one of which sells her adornment and accoutrement - and an AIM awning name, which she gives out freely. And, of course, there's her Stickam, breadth she continues to beck videos, now dressed added modestly. "When I was younger, I was so naive," she says. "I didn't apperceive humans were accomplishing things to themselves while they were watching me."
She can't go offline. One acumen is practical: Kiki has a business to run. But the added acumen is added existential: If she were to go offline, her hotlink to the apple would disappear. This is a babe with 12,000 Twitter followers whose absolute activity is abandoned of absolute relationships. She's trapped in burghal isolation; alfresco the balloon of her family, her a lot of allusive interactions are electronic. In absolute life, she's lost.
"How do you even accommodated people?" Kiki asks. "Like, how do you connect with people? In person, it's just so weird, no one talks to me." Even online, amidst by hundreds of fans, Kiki feels alone. "I feel like a butterfly in a jar," she says. "They'll watch me. And they'll yield from me. But no one anytime connects."
For all of Kiki's agenda exposure, she feels like no one knows the absolute Kiki: the one who's demography courses at a association academy and alive at a retail abundance for added cash; the one who spends her nights with her ancestors angled about Grandma's dining-room table, gluing Swarovski crystals assimilate adornment to ample orders for her disturbing company; the one who has ailing online relationships with the beforehand men she finds herself fatigued to. Her online activity has become an endless, soul-sucking performance. And yet, seeing no added option, she continues boot onward, a adolescent of the agenda age, programmed to attending abandoned against the future, still optimistic, somehow, about what she'll acquisition there.
From The Archives Affair 1129: April 28, 2011
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