Hey y'all, I'm Diggy and I run The Lime Joint and put together this whole deal. I'm just here to clarify some things regarding why and how we did this.
I've known the reason Kahi got fired for a while, but I refrained from calling him out due to respect to those he had wronged. In situations like these, they should have complete and total power over how the information comes to light. I'm not gonna lie, after he disappeared for weeks, I was pretty over the whole thing. From the second he got fired I knew I wanted to interview him, even before I knew what he'd done (bear in mind I didn't know the details).
After some time, I noticed him trying to wiggle his way back into Twitter and the BCC server; particularly a tweet about how he "peer pressured" Kevin Hinkle into buying an $800 Lego set put this thing into motion. A lot of people around me saw this as manipulation, and knowing what I knew, I could tell his behavior wasn't going to change.
Like I said, I didn't know the details. I never intended to find out the whole story, actually. I contacted prpl and asked her if it was okay with her if I confronted him with harassment allegations. This ended up being a conversation that sprawled many hours and topics, and I ended up getting the full story. I asked her many times for permission to include points she brought up about him; I had full permission to write the dossier, and I censored/did not include anything that didn't include specifically Kahi's treatment of prpl.
Phweffie's statement I didn't get until we actually begun the livestream, which caught me off guard. It was still important and it was very courageous of her to stand up for what's right.
Why confront him to begin with and not just release the document?
We specifically chose a livestream format as we did not want him to be able to back out, or give him preparation time to prepare lies, or give way to the possibility of us editing the footage to make him seem bad.
As to us insulting him and being unprofessional... I do agree, to a certain extent. Going into the show, I did not want to attack him personally, I wanted the facts to do all the talking. It was no secret that The Lime Joint as a whole, that is to say my co-hosts and I, have had an extreme disliking of Kahi.
From what I've talked to with other TTV crew members, Kahi is an extremely narcissistic person. Even during that interview, he thought that he was in control of the situation. He tried justifying and "giving context" to questions and accusations that were a simple "yes or no" answer.
As the interview went on, we all picked up that he was distinctly trying to deflect, shift blame, and generally did not get why what he did was wrong. We all felt like he wasn't upset because what he did was wrong, he was upset because he got caught. He did not want to atone for his actions, he just wanted to get it out of the way. We all believe to this day that the only reason he confirmed all the accusations so enthusiastically is so he would stop being pressed about it. We started cutting him off because he tried not to give us any space to talk, and because he would try to deflect the point of the original question.
I'd like to stress that Kahi genuinely did not seem to get why we pressed on some issues hard. Getting him to even apologize for his actions was a herculean task, not to mention trying to make him understand why his actions were horrifying.
It's also very important to note personal involvement from part of the hosts. All of us have either had personal experience being harassed in a similar manner, or had someone dear to our hearts that this happened to. In our eyes, he was less than dirt due to our past experiences with people like him.
Lastly, we aren't a professional show, by any means. There are moments where we poke fun at him for reasons unrelated to his horrific behaviors towards his co-hosts, no, his friends. The Lime Joint is a podcast deeply steeped in dark humor, and we often playfully make fun of both our hosts and our guests. Might not have been the best idea to do this on this specific episode, but it's how we usually roll, not to mention that the first half of the interview is supposed to be like our regular episodes.
I'd like to end this by saying that we did this for prpl and Phweffie. We did this so it's clear that the Bionicle community does not tolerate this. I can not imagine what it would feel like for them to see him alive and kicking in other communities like if he did nothing wrong. It was immensely brave of them to come forward with their stories, and everything we did, we did thinking of them. Like I said, all of us have been affected by similar people in way or another. I recall prpl saying "Rip him to shreds" after our conversation was over.
In the end, I'm content knowing that both of them found closure in our interview. I know some don't agree with how we handled the situation, that we were disrespectful. I'd just ask, was Kahi respectful of their well-being when he did all the things he did?
This interview was not for me or my show, it was for the community, and most importantly, it was for the people Kahi wronged.
