4 ms·
SA 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
by nostalgk 7y ago
SA 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