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I hope someone accurately attributes SomethingAwful.com to these early iconic internet memories. Image macros, the lowest form of comedy on SA, became memes an
by ctvo 7y ago
I hope someone accurately attributes SomethingAwful.com to these early iconic internet memories.
Image macros, the lowest form of comedy on SA, became memes and is still the lowest form of comedy.
- anthonybsd 7y agoI miss Photoshop Phridays. I mean they still exist but somehow the spark is gone. Back in 2000-2001 we used to wait for them religiously.
- nostalgk 7y agoSA truly had a massive effect on Internet culture as a whole, something I rarely see attributed to them. Spent quite a lot of time on that site as an adolescent.
- unicornfinder 7y agoI seem to recall them charging a small amount to open an account there, which meant I, as well, a child back then, never was able to access it. I feel like I missed out.
- kyllo 7y agoI've heard that dril on Twitter is actually Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka from SA, can anyone confirm/deny? https://twitter.com/dril https://twitter.com/dril
- nostalgk 7y agoI can confirm that I want this to be true, at the least.
- RankingMember 7y agoNah, Lowtax was banned from twitter and created another account to whine about it, something he would be banned quickly for in his own forum.
- jandrese 7y agoLowtax also got shadowbanned on Youtube apparently. He had been making all of these videos that would basically never show up in search results. There is something to be said for sticking to your own forum I guess.
- Dylan16807 7y agoIf you get banned from SA you just have to rebuy your account. Permabans are not common.
- WallWextra 7y agodril was doxed a couple of years ago. You can google around for his real name, which is not Richard Kyanka.
- Scaevolus 7y agodril and many other Weird Twitter posters are migrants from the FYAD subforum on Something Awful, which had similarly absurdist memes.
- thomble 7y agoIt's not Lowtax, but some of the most prevalent "weird twitter" accounts, like @fart and @dril established their brand of humor at SA: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-die-an-oral-history-of-something-awful https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-die-a...
- tapland 7y agoFart is still around on SA related places
- throwaway180118 7y agoWrong. dril is funny.
- ctvo 7y agoFor the influence SA had and the business it currently is -- it's incredible. Impact:value is so out of line. An analysis of how Lowtax failed to become a billionaire and has to sell coffee mugs and t-shirts or whatever the business model is would be a good read. SA was my first paywall for content, my first micro-transaction (forum avatars, titles, etc.). There were elements of reputation and social networking. I don't know how it all went so wrong.
- meowface 7y agoSA was very influential, but how could Lowtax have become a billionaire from it? I'm not sure obscure Internet comedy is all that lucrative.
- koboll 7y agotumblr was sold for $1.1 billion, and it's largely obscure Internet comedy.
- meowface 7y agoTumblr is a lot closer to a social network than a forum, and I'd say only a small subset of it is comedy. Also, Tumblr has 460 million registered accounts and SA has 200k. That's probably partly because it costs $10 to sign up on SA, so alt accounts are uncommon, whereas accounts are cost-free on Tumblr, so some people may have many alt accounts. But Tumblr still gets way more traffic.
- ctvo 7y agoI was being hyperbolic about the billionaire claim. Mainly SA was ahead of its time on what the internet could be. What people were willing to pay for and what makes a good community. It failed to take any of those ideas outside the realm of a comedy forum, which isn't a bad thing, maybe Lowtax was happy with that. I'm wistfully in what-could-have-been mode since the products I use these days (Reddit, Twitter) are a poor approximation for what SA was at its height.
- 7y ago
- ProAm 7y agoDoes SA predate 4chan?
- jnosCo 7y ago4chan was born of a banned SA user.
- v64 7y agoThis is a great interview[1] about Something Awful featuring creator Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka. The Something Awful forums had a board called Fuck You and Die, which was a predecessor to 4chan's /b/. YTMND's lineage to SA is acknowledged here as well. If you used to post on the SA forums, you'll probably get a load of nostalgia hearing this again[2] (this was the background music of the board where deleted threads went to die) [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-die-an-oral-history-of-something-awful https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-die-a... [2] https://youtu.be/9_NqFgYJWn8?t=204 https://youtu.be/9_NqFgYJWn8?t=204
- plorkyeran 7y agomoot stopped posting at SA many years ago, but he isn't banned. https://forums.somethingawful.com/member.php?action=getinfo&userid=32422 https://forums.somethingawful.com/member.php?action=getinfo&... is him.
- nostalgk 7y agoEven if it doesn't (and it does, see in same chain), it almost certainly is the progenitor of the prevailing culture found on 4chan. Maybe not the current trend as of recent, but definitely at it's peak.
- c3534l 7y ago4chan was largely populated by SA users and anime nerds in it's earliest days.
- LinuxBender 7y ago4chan started on one of the ytmnd test servers. I might still have a screenshot of that somewhere.
- busterarm 7y agoSA has a strong competitor in b3ta, which really brought the art of the photochop to levels unseen elsewhere.