Missouri trans ‘snitch form’ down after people spammed him with ‘Bee Movie’ script

A Missouri government advice site for submitting gender-affirming care complaints and concerns is down after people flooded it with fanfiction, rambling anecdotes and the “Bee Movie” storyline.

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office spear an online form for “Transgender Center Concerns” in late March, inviting those who have witnessed “disturbing practices” at clinics that provide gender-affirming care to submit advice. The site did not ask users to name patients or healthcare providers, but encouraged users to fill out the form “with as much detail as possible.”

But after days of TikTok and Twitter users spamming the site with gibberish, the whistleblower line has been removed from the Missouri government site entirely. Instead of the online form, the link to the advice line now says that the page no longer exists.

Madeline Sieren, press secretary to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, accused “far-left activists” of hacking the site. She said the tip line was temporarily down.

“Rather than relying on their so-called science to back up their facts, they are attempting to hack into our system to silence the victims of the exact network we are trying to expose,” Sieren told TechCrunch in an email. “In order to ensure the integrity of a government website, the page is temporarily unavailable while we investigate these matters.”

Sieren did not specify what the “hack” entailed.

Bailey said her office has set up a hotline for parents to report concerns about the gender-affirming care their children are receiving from centers for transgender youth. It also issued an emergency rule severely restricting access to gender-affirming care.

PROMO, a Missouri LGBTQ advocacy organization, said Bailey “fanned the flames of hatred” by enacting a state of emergency.

“The Attorney General’s claims are handpicked and come from unverified sources that allow him to promulgate disgusting, obstructive and misleading information in an emergency rule,” PROMO said in a statement. statement. “It should be clear to anyone paying attention that the real threat to Missourians is the attorney general himself.”

Social media users on TikTok, Twitter and Tumblr ensured that Bailey’s office had plenty of evidence to consider for the investigation, flooding the site with bogus complaints and other fleeting ones.

When the online form was first launched, it lacked a CAPTCHA, which savvy Twitter users were quick to use to their advantage byuse bots to spam the site. Users have also employed aGenerator produce false names and false addresses in Missouri. Others have simply inserted text into the complaint form, ranging fromthe whole scenario of the “Bee Movie”, ForBilly May’s OxiClean sales pitch,ForWalter White’s introductory monologue in “Breaking Bad”. TikTok users said they submitted the “AO3’s hottest fanfic” And “a naughty love story of Mario and Luigi.”

“I knew those weird fanfics I was reading at 3 a.m. would be helpful,” said a TikTok commenter. said.

Many submitted elaborate anecdotes ofwoke up moms taking kids ‘to local gender clinic to get trans’ Andcomplaints of “too many men receiving gender-affirming care via viagra”.Another tip referencing “The Crucible” joked“I saw a good overseer inject estrogen with the devil.”

The tip form added a CAPTCHA on Thursday, but that wasn’t enough to deter the trolls. The form was removed from the attorney general’s site on Friday morning.

Spam tipping forms, colloquially referred to by detractors as “whistleblower lines,” are nothing new. The Texas abortion whistleblower site was shut down in 2021 after activists flooded it with Shrek porn. Amid mass protests following the death of George Floyd in 2020, activists spammed law enforcement tip lines with K-pop fancams and videos of police brutality against protesters. Relentless trolling has become a form of protest against draconian surveillance.

The tip line is part of a larger “investigation” the Missouri attorney general is using to target the state’s trans community. Earlier this month, Baileyannouncement an emergency directive that severely restricts access to gender-affirming care in the state.

The new restrictions, which come into effect on April 27, will require patients to attend 15 therapy sessions over an 18-month period before they can receive puberty blockers, hormonal drugs or gender-affirming surgery.In emergency stopBailey referenced state consumer protection law and said he was “responsible for protecting consumers, including minors, from harm.”

The state of emergency cited a whistleblower report disputed alleging that a center for transgender youth at St. Louis Children’s Hospital rushed patients into gender-affirming care without informed consent.

The ACLU of Missouri argues that Bailey’s emergency rule is based on debunked claims, not scientific evidence.

“Gender-affirming care is essential to helping transgender adolescents do well in school, build healthy relationships with friends and family, live authentically as themselves, and dream about their future,” l Missouri ACLU tweeted. “These emergency regulations will have a drastically negative impact on transgender youth, compounding the prejudice, discrimination, violence and other forms of stigma they continue to face in their daily lives.”