Barneyfag (Lee Goldson)

A picture of Lee.

Summery

An example of Lee spamming.

Lee Goldson, also known as Barneyfag is a legendary 4chan spammer known for constant ban evasion and his enormous hatred of Barney and My Little Pony. Ever since his first identifiable post on /mlp/ in February of 2012, Lee has been on a crusade to rid the site of all MLP related content outside of /mlp/ and those posting it. When finding someone posting MLP, he will often spam the thread with a set of images comparing MLP to barney, wish death on the poster in various ways and call them barneyfags. In the past decade, Lee has become one of the most famous anonymous posters in 4chan history.

Origin Story

Lee was born on January 8th 1995 and lives in Ontario, Canada. According to him, when he was in Special Education in high school he saw another student watching Barney and Friends in two hours blocks every day while he was watching other things on a smart board. This greatly damaged Lee and caused him to associate various other things he was watching with Barney. An example of such thing which he gives in his manifesto is his formerly favorite band Pink Floyd which he can no longer tolerate.

Lee is also a Doom speedrunner, and can be seen wearing a Doom T shirt in the video his image comes from, in which he meets Tom Kenny, the voice actor for Spongebob Squarepants.

4chan Posting Career

When spamming a thread that contains MLP related content, Lee is best known for using the famous image titled "bronies, this is your mindset".

Lee's most iconic Image.

It's an image of a Treehouse TV airing schedule that shows MLP airing right after Barney and Friends, meant to imply that MLP is on the same level as Barney, which he despises. As of January 2022, despite having been hashbanned from multiple boards on several occasions, this image is the number 1 most reposted image ever on /v/, /co/ and /qa/. While those three boards are the main ones he patrols, Lee has made occasional appearances all over the site.

On August 3rd 2015, Lee created a kiwifarms account with the username x86x2 and began answering questions about himself. At some point, the site's moderators changed his profile picture to an image of a Barney themed pony.

After gaining much notoriety for his spam on boards like /co/ and /v/, Lee was doxed by an anon on /v/ on November 17, 2016. The dox included Lee's picture, name, and various online accounts. Lee indirectly confirmed the validity of the dox by responding with "DOXING! MODS!".

Lee has been acknowledged by the moderators on two different occasions. The first was when he was publicly double banned on /qa/ on April 1st 2017. The second was when the mods made a pony sticky on /b/ on October 11th, 2020 which included the public ban message "(bronies this is your mindset)".

Lee Baiting

Lee will somtimes respond to this type of leebait by saying "they appear in the pupils".

Leebait is a type of image, gif or video created to bait Lee into spamming a thread without blatantly posting MLP content as to not get banned for violating Global Rule 15. Most commonly leebait is made by hiding MLP imagery in gifs so it only shows after waiting for a bit, putting very small ponies you wouldn't notice right away in regular images, or cropping brony fanart. The average person typically has no way of knowing an anime girl was actually cropped from a piece of art that has a pony in it, but lee often discovers that's the case using reverse image searching bots and than calls the leebaiter out by linking the full image on derpibooru in his posts. One of the most famous forms of leebaiting involves putting the bait in Pepe the Frog's pupils. Another well known piece of leebait is a cropped image of Homer from The Simpsons saying "Marge, i'm confused" or just "i'm confused", cropped from a brony meme.

A certified Marge moment.

On July 16th 2020 Lee accidently posted an overwatch feet picture on /qa/ (a board he frequents alongside /co/ and /v/), leading people to start using the character Don Turtelli from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, known for tickling feet and saying his now iconic line "It smell like cheese!" in leebait. Ever since, leebait has often been referred to as "cheese", with missed leebait being "missed cheese".

Leebaiting is most commonly done to troll, but at the height of Lee's career he was so persistent in spamming and evading bans that leebaiting became a powerful tool for ruining threads you don't like. Simply post an innocent looking image that was secretly cropped from brony fanart, and within the hour Lee will descend down from the heavens with a trillion proxy IPs at his side to stomp that thread into the ground. It's possibly for this reason that leebaiting can result in a 3-30 day ban for "barneyfag bullshit".

In October of 2020 someone paid for a self serving ad which included leebait.

In what some consider to be the greatest act of leebaiting ever, on December 7th 2020 a guy on /qa/ paid Bob West, Barney's actual voice actor, to record a video mocking Lee for his constant spamming and love of cheese.

A couple of leebaiters have made a name for themselves through leebaiting and got called out personally by Lee. These include the following:

• Justpassingthrough (ban-evading Argentinian (Barneyfag)): A kiwifarms user who has been around since Lee began his tirade. Lee believes him to be a consumer of Foalcon and Lolicon, which he apparently has screenshot evidence of.
• tay k 47/tk47: A /qa/non and confirmed csgo cheater whose steam profile was leaked (by himself). His full name (tay k 47) is now spam filtered from 4chan, so Lee now just abbreviates it to tk47.
• CC: A poster known to post the "kara boga" copypasta and other mud dick spam related content. His name is also from his steam profile. Lee believes that he lives in Oregon, but this could just be where his proxy is located.
• Karaboga Proxyhopper: CC's original name
• Ausfreak: An Australian Lee baiter. Will sometimes put the link of a missed thread in his name field, he'll sometimes put the number of a missed thread over Tom Kenny's hand. He says he lives in Gold Coast.
• British Phoneposter/British scum: A British Lee baiter. He is distinct because of his iPhone filenames.
• Filthy Franc: A French Lee baiter. Known for putting the link of missed threads in the name field similar to Ausfreak, Lee seems to be able to distinguish them by their flag in the missed thread, along with other factors.
• Vendettafag: A poster that emailed Lee threads that he missed. His posts usually have an anime styled lee bait image.
• FagMark : a Pseudo-Baiter who’s profile pic of a Pickle Rick styled Twilight Sparkle is used to bother Lee.
• Tom Sawyer Leebaiter: A schizo who posts pictures of Tom Sawyer, sometimes accompanied by leebait. Lee doesn't have a name for him.

Legacy And The Present Day

It is unknown whether or not Lee himself is still posting on 4chan. The general consensus is that Lee's appearances in recent days are actually bots or trolls pretending to be him due to his legendary status, or even that the leebaiters and "Lee" himself are one and the same. It is unlikely, that ALL of Lee's posts are made by bots since he somtimes gives unique and specific responses, however he does so far less than he used to. Do note that pretending to be Lee will probably get you permabanned.

The following is a short essay, written by an anon on /qa/ on August 23rd, 2021 and later expanded on by another on September 5th, which aims to prove that Lee has quit his posting career.

Lee Goldson no longer uses 4chan and heres why
1. In recent times, "Barneyfag" has not, or has seldom, chosen to identify new Derpibooru crops. This is massively out of character considering his track record between 2014 and 2019. Instead, "Barneyfag" only identifies a handful and is incredibly repetitive. This suggests that much of the Leebait, and much of the replies by "Barneyfag", are posted by impostors, for things that Lee would normally identify straight away are instead completely looked over. "Missed cheese" is simply due to Barneyfag being gone, replaced by these impostors.
2. In recent times, "Barneyfag" has written especially outragious, long and infuriated posts. Is it that Barneyfag is unusually angry, angrier than ever, or is it that his impersonators are beating a dead horse for entertainment? "BARNEYFAG HAS NEVER BEEN THIS ANGRY BEFORE, OMG THIS IS EPIC" is more exciting to think than "this unusually angry, long post may not be Lee Goldson". The impersonators go believably out of character for the sake of creating more entertainment and receiving more attention. This is a strong example, which appears often in Leebait threads: https://archive.wakarimasen.moe/v/thread/568166292/#568168765\
3. Lee graduated college in 2019 and likely entered the workforce. This creates a perfect reason for his absense from 4chan, and gives a fitting timeframe.
4. Barneyfag's famous baiters, such as CC, TK47 and Franc, are only internet famous & receive attention because of the Leebait culture. If Leebaiting were to die, they would receive no attention and and never be mentioned again. Therefore, because they are mentally ill attention whores, it is in their best interest to preserve Leebaiting, which makes them likely culprits for being of these prominent "Barneyfags". Regardless it has always been true that random people impersonate Lee.
5. Recent Leebait threads, regardless of board, have "Barneyfag" using copy-pasted terms from previous threads rather than creating anything new. They also use "funny and epic" Lee statements unusually often, in order to be more entertaining. Example, "they appear in the pupils" appearing in https://arch.b4k.co/v/thread/565907284/#565910351 , fairly out of place, for Lee had only used this statement on gifs historically.
6. A recent "epic Lee moment", in which Lee accidentally posted Overwatch feet from an iPhone again occured on /qa/. This was passed off in the Leebait community as being a funny Lee fail, but Lee has never used an iPhone, and he would never make such a mistake again, as his original cheese moment was mortifying and has been heavily used to troll him. This is a simple example of how obvious Barneyfag impersonators may impersonate Lee but not be called out, for it is more entertaining to ignore the rational explanation. This nature is what makes Leebaiting a self sustaining culture even though Lee Goldson has stopped using 4chan.
Conclusion:
Lee Goldson, roughly a year ago, stopped using 4chan. Because Leebaiting is a self-sustaining culture that can exist as long as there is an illusion of Lee Goldson being present, Leebaiting has continued even with Lee's absense. The result is an especially "lulzy and epic" Lee Goldson persona, fabricated by impostors, that doesn't care for new Derpibooru crops and gives special attention to attention whores like Franc, CC and TK47. This is no longer related to anti-MLP sentiment. Instead, it is a "Shadow Lee", merely a concept, which exists so that Leebaiting may continue.
Extension:
On December 7th, 2020, Bob West (voice actor of Barney) was comissioned to give a shoutout to "Lee 
Goldson" on behalf of "qa". A few hours later, a seemingly fake thread posted by someone claiming to be 
Barneyfag, https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/3686220 , announced their resignation from the "war". This thread, seemingly fake, had an interesting comment from the OP. Note this line:
>You will know I'm the real "Barneyfag" when the threats and harassment to certain images stop. Sure there's a few imitators out there, but they don't hardly have the dedication as I used to.
>There will be far less of my former signature posts which just started after making this post.
This is a surprisingly accurate summary of the current situation, which supports everything previously 
alleged in this manifesto & predicted the current status quo. That status quo being one with an unusually 
lazy, unskilled Lee who misses a large demographic of cheese and refuses to identify many new Derpi crops. 
Moreover, Barneyfag's last login to TrannyFarms was one month afterwards, 
https://kiwifarms.net/members/x86x2.7320/
Another observation from a random qway user in August: 
https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/4838663/#4838663