There's no need to assume, we know exactly where KF started. It originally focused on one specific target before branching out, a severely autistic person known as Chris Chan who isn't notable for any reason other than being a target of incredibly intense stalking, harassment and manipulation. The site didn't need to "fall from grace" when its baseline from day one was stalking a random mentally ill person for amusement.
This is demonstrably false. Chris Chan became the obsession of the internet because of his incredibly odd and anti-social behavior, such as plastering signs around campus looking for a "boyfriend free girl" and telling other men with boyfriends to go jump off a cliff (https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Attraction_Sign#The_Sign.2C_Mark_1). Calling him "not notable" is just not true.
Down the Rabbithole has a good video about him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IPtLvxO8hs
Even if you do class Chris Chan as "notable", is that supposed to make it OK to strip-mine a mentally ill person for content?
Speaking of harassment, it's also misleading to refer to him as a the first "target". Kiwi Farms (formerly the CWCiki Forums) started as a place to discuss Chris Chan, but it was far from the only or the worst one. For example, KF was strongly against the "idea guys", who actively tried to harass Chris in real life.
There's lots of nuance here, and I think we ought to acknowledge what is fact versus fiction. Otherwise we're just talking about a made-up boogeyman.
When people do insane shit online for internet fame they don't really get to cry when it goes sideways.
The world is full of crazy people, especially online.
I think it's crazy having seen the advent of the internet, to watch it devolve into people begging for attention/money.
I wish so bad we could go back to usenet and geocities when people posted out of love and passion, but 'You can never go home'.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.in/thelife/news/online-creator-c...
Decades of posting all about your life online and doing insane things for internet fame, and even your own personal details means they can't cry when that attention isn't always positive.
Chris is himself a troll. He has physically attacked a gamestop employee, his mother tried to run over another one.
Again, if OP wanted to garner sympathy, Chris wasn't the example to be used.
He also gloated about having a girlfriend while deliberately witholding information that he knew would get him in trouble; he teased out hints that it was his mother, such as "she's an older lady", "we've known each other a long time", "she graduated from <school> in accounting".
Maybe your ranting about online fame would make sense if reading about this person was 1 of my hobbies. This person would be the unknown creator of a low quality web comic without Kiwi Farms and related groups as far as I know.