Today's attack on these rjkarlboards is an egregious affront that I'm ready to call a terrorist attack. As some of you may know, a large contingent of the female posters of the Pit have stopped posting over the course of the last week to ten days. You may have only noticed if you frequent such threads as the Chat Thread, Home Improvement Thread, Running Thread, SheWoman thread, etc. However, their absence is particularly conspicuous as it coincides with this attack. Each of the top 8 suspects has a motive:
awakeandready - We've learned from HTTD that his wife has been more and more "busy at work" which may have led to the gradual decline from fewer posts to no posts and her eventual absence here. What seems more likely to me is that we may be looking at a criminal mastermind the likes of which the world has rarely seen. awakeandready is already known in Deep Web communities for stockpiling the biggest online collection of dick picks from ChatRoulette and Craigslist. Could she be using connections she found on the Deep Web to launch an attack here? Motives are unclear.
ChicDeac - Upon learning her husband, Mett, was taking a full time job and she could no longer be both the breadwinner and the thundershirt provider, Chic must have felt a sense of loss. Her connection to the Assad regime is unclear, but her knowledge of birds, and by extension bird law, may have helped in this manner. My latest intelligence suggests she has been passing messages along using codename "E" when she wants the hackers to take notice.
Dashionista - Her surprise marriage proposal (and subsequent sextape) from kickballdeac was completely outed by the boards in her Three Days in New Orleans thread. Now, whether or not she has the verbal skills necessary to complete a sentence without abbreviating words is a big concern, especially with the language barrier of Syrian hackers. The motive is there, the picture of her, kickballdeac, and the sketchy mustachioed man is damning, but I just don't think an "OMG LET'S TOTES HACK OGB" instagram would get the ball rolling.
deachoops - A fitness buff, frequent contributor to chat threads, and seemingly nice person altogether, deachoops is an overall enigma. However, there's a large part of her past that she spent almost entirely off the grid, where she claims to have been hiking the Appalachian trail. No sources yet have been able to independently verify this information, and the missing time could have been spent elsewhere, perhaps out of the country. Also, unverified reports that an assassin placed mold in her house in an assassination attempt have come in.
ITK - This IT worker has both the means and the feminine wares to bring down a board of this size. With a purported sexual history linked to a board administrator, it stands to reason she has ready access to administrator logins, and administrator DONG. We know she lives in the desert already; could the American Southwest may be a cover story for a Middle Eastern desert?
lbe08 - In the mold of DeacHoops and RTQ, lbe is very much into fitness, and posts about bicycles and workouts and coworkers almost exclusively. On the surface, there's little ground for suspicion, but there is evidence to suggest that she and long-time boyfriend, codename J, are doomsday preppers with an arsenal of weapons that rivals most on the politics board. Perhaps in those types of circles, you run across militant types, and friends of foreign repressive regimes; I don't want to speculate too much. Where she lacks apparent motive, she has distinct firepower. If this turned into a 24 type Jack Bauer chase scene, I wouldn't want to have to track down lbe.
RollTheQuad06 - To me, this is the strongest case for motive. In spite of a large contingent of online (and from all accounts, real life) friends, RTQ is a frequently depressive poster. She's generally down on herself in spite of all reports indicating her level of personal success: steady job, healthy lifestyle, good looks. Her quest for a man seems to be the missing link, the one thing that would drive her in desperation to some sketchy corners of the earth. Unconfirmed reports show she ran a 10k in Damascus this spring, followed by a half marathon in Kabul, and an ultramarathon in Cairo. Whether or not she was simply running races over there or she found a man with terrorist/hacking background is unclear. But she has every reason to spite all the people here who ever tired of her "woe is me" attitude.
WakeGal - Under the veneer of a small business owner in small-town NC, perhaps the most unassuming poster of the crowd, WakeGal is currently the top suspect on my list. Like ITK, she has knowledge of computers, software, and interwebs. Unlike the rest of this group, she has the most potential ties to separatist groups. If any government is like the Assad regime, it's small town NC government, and with her public-private business connections, we can only assume this grassroots organizer has found herself some seed investing in seedy areas.
There is also a chance that all these posters are working together. Each has their own motive, and combined, perhaps the pressure was too much, and they felt the need to form a strike.
I'll open this up for the IMPORTANT discussion our community needs right now. Poll to come.
