X-Pither Mobs

SolarNet News | Breaking Report

X-Pither Conspiracy Theorist Dies After Failed Attack on Celebrity

January 17, 498 AC – Tycho City, Luna

A self-proclaimed X-Pither investigator, Daren Kuo (34, Earthborn), has died in a Tycho City medical center after succumbing to injuries sustained during a failed assassination attempt on holo-actor and entrepreneur Amira Sen.

Kuo, who had been active in the X-Pither conspiracy community for over a decade, was intercepted by security forces at a private gala event on Phobos Station last week. Armed with a concealed electroshock stiletto—a weapon frequently used in anti-bioroid violence—he attempted to breach Sen’s private lounge, reportedly shouting accusations that she was “one of them” and demanding that she “submit to verification.”

The attack followed a month-long smear campaign led by X-Pither mob groups on the SolarNet, fueled by speculative deepfake analysis and claims that Sen’s “inhumanly symmetrical” features and “unnatural calm” during interviews were proof of her being an Alraune. Sen, a known advocate for bioroid rights, had previously denounced X-Pither groups as “a digital witch hunt against anyone who doesn’t conform to their paranoia.”

Tycho City Medical confirms that Kuo succumbed to cardiac arrest after being placed in a medically induced coma following injuries sustained during his apprehension. Officials have declined to comment on whether his injuries were self-inflicted or the result of force used by security.

This marks the fifth violent incident linked to X-Pither activity in the last standard year, reigniting debates about the role of conspiracy-driven harassment in the hyper-connected era.

SolarNet moderators have since deactivated several high-traffic X-Pither nodes, but analysts predict the conspiracy will persist. As one anonymous expert notes, “For the X-Pithers, every failed attack is proof they were right all along.”

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An Ethnic Scare and a Moral Panic

Alraune are a fact of life in human space. They are real, and they are pure 'evil.' The ones that have been discovered are universally sociopaths and psychopaths. They are serial killers, cutthroat in business, abusive to those around them, often separating themselves from humans with these traits by the fact that they also tend to be higher than human averages in their Derber-IQ. They have the alien mindset of Redspace Adversarial Intelligences and the more temporal ambitions of humanity. Alraune are, to reiterate, not human. They are inhuman, perhaps even best described as anti-human. They are wolves in sheep's clothing, and their moral outlook is to ours what the moral outlook of a cat is to that of mice. All of this combines to create a potent paranoia. Just because only a few have been caught, just over one a century on average, doesn't mean that they aren't there. In fact, given their continued existence, it's all but guaranteed that at least a few are around completely undetected. In the minds of the more impressionable public, this means that there is a certain background radiation of paranoia that exaggerates any confirmed Alraune activity while blaming anything the X-Pither might be against on the enigmatic beings. Alraune are a handy 'other' made all the more effective because they truly are unforgivably and irredeemably evil.

The Name

"X-Pither" comes from the first post of its kind, which generated an online mob that culminated in the tragic assassination of a socialite. Yi Lana, heiress to a sizable Stellaris Mining Consortium share hold. The specific fervor that had kicked off the 'xinquisition' was a viral video of Yi Lana telling a healthy little girl that she was too fat to be a model. During the video, there was an artefact of the lighting that looked almost like the light illuminated hand from behind, showing an eerie green medium instead of the pinkish orange one might expect. The SolarNet sleuths insisted that this could only mean that the soft tissues of her body were actually pith, the soft and fleshy internal components of plant matter. It was only there for a few frames, but combined with the seeming callousness of what she had thought was a simple joke escalated with more and more 'evidence' until she was forced to address the rumor in public. Once she had done that, any acknowledgement at all, including her fervent and rather bewildered denial and apology, were seen as confirmation in the more shadowy and extreme corners of the SolarNet that there was validity in the accusation. Poll Novak, a man who had recently lost everything in a divorce and had turned to online conspiracy theories in search of meaning, saw the lack of action on the part of authorities as Yi Lana 'getting away with it' and set off a homemade S-C60 bomb vest. Her fashionable Martian Silk dress shielded her body from most the blast, but her head and a generous portion of her decolletage were uncovered, so she died instantly. Examination of her remains settled the issue once and for all; she was human, and "X-Pither" became a slur for terminally online conspiracy theorists and keyboard warriors, with the actual X-Pither 'community' being beneath contempt for those not on the inside of the moral panic.