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An Oral History of Something Awful

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Re: An Oral History of Something Awful

#51

Post by meowface »

ue_ wrote: post #45
compuder wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voat had remarkably little promise and followed the standard tragectory of sites designed to clone a site for angry users jumping ship. Moot, founder of 4chan, had some good comments about the phenomenon during his resignation: >To single out 420chan, it’s actually one of the imageboards that I have actually respected over the years. I think that what's kind of defined a lot of image boards, even going back to the fi…

>or a wrestling board It does now, in the form of /asp/ I think :) However I don't know how well moot's prediction of fizzling out holds for say 8chan, which has started to very much grow in popularity; granted, having roughly some of the same popular boards as 4chan (except for where moderation doesn't matter, like on NSFW boards) but with some interesting and nice top boards, like /leftypol/ which 4chan would never…

8chan's growth rate looked promising for a time, but I believe it's pretty inactive at the moment.

Re: An Oral History of Something Awful

#52

Post by swang »

Keep in mind SA forums hated "memes" unless you were really good at it. That made the forums great because it also involved an element of risk so if someone wasn't sure how good their stuff was they're at risk of getting banned.

A simple example: There use to be a forums poster who posted just screenshots from old NES video games that was always super relevant so he was never banned (usually if you just post a meme with nothing else in the post you'd get banned).

Another one: The whole concept of tricking users into reading a long fictional story that started one way and eventually delved into some other topic altogether. I guess you'd now call it a bait-and-switch (w /an anti-clamatic ending).

That too was started (or at least popularized) on SA. A user named, "Hakan" posted a lot of fictional stories that were pretty good and always had a twist ending. Imitators who tried to copy him but sucked were told, "You're No Hakan." Then that catchphrase became too memeish and was banned from the forums (unless again your comedic timing of the phrase was hilarious).

Edit: Even the meme of, "Read post, then read saw username " meme, seems to have come from Hakan/SA which was a "meme" where you'd read a story, get tricked by it and make a post just to specifically say you were tricked. That got banned pretty quickly as well but it's so common in reddit and other parts of the internet now.

Re: An Oral History of Something Awful

#53

Post by partiallypro »

subway wrote: post #4
mrbill wrote: post #2

I read this about a week ago and it is very well done. I've not logged into SA (I only used the forums) in a couple of years at least, glad to see they're still existing. I still use a torrent site that was a SA spinoff.

Spin-off of a spin-off of a spin-off... Edit:Wow, downvotes for making an oblique reference to the fact the SA offshoot torrent sites have disappeared and reappeared under new names a half dozen times in the last decade.

Yeah, I believe Demonoid had its beginnings rooted in SA (or at least some connection,) which was definitely the most popular.

Dreamhost also had beginnings on SA, they used to give steep discounts to SA members.

Re: An Oral History of Something Awful

#54

Post by dleslie »

jschwartzi wrote: post #36
Scuds wrote: post #13

I have all sorts of conflicted feelings about my time with SA during the Bush years when I was a college student. It was fun, but I think the time I spent there cost me a point or two off my GPA. The people I knew of that went off to the Microsofts, Googles, Apples, and various startups of the world were more focused in their studies and their technical passions and didn't pay too much attention to many of the things…

I'll basically never be an A player, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. The world needs B, C, D, E, and F players too.

I wish I could upvote you twice.

Re: An Oral History of Something Awful

#55

Post by Kallikrates »

swang wrote: post #52

Keep in mind SA forums hated "memes" unless you were really good at it. That made the forums great because it also involved an element of risk so if someone wasn't sure how good their stuff was they're at risk of getting banned. A simple example: There use to be a forums poster who posted just screenshots from old NES video games that was always super relevant so he was never banned (usually if you just post a meme w…

It's a shame that nearly all of gamequoter's history is gone.

Re: An Oral History of Something Awful

#56

Post by astrange »

Scuds wrote: post #13

I have all sorts of conflicted feelings about my time with SA during the Bush years when I was a college student. It was fun, but I think the time I spent there cost me a point or two off my GPA. The people I knew of that went off to the Microsofts, Googles, Apples, and various startups of the world were more focused in their studies and their technical passions and didn't pay too much attention to many of the things…

I know many successful people (PhDs, government employees, "popular twitter users", SW engineers) who used SA to make weird jokes to get over boredom in college.

The most successful people either became mods or were permabanned. SA admins liked to take their life problems out on the forum by breaking it, a kind of self-harm, and then ban you if you complained.

Also liked to claim anime forum posters were "child molestors" and ban them as a joke, one of the sources behind 4chan's growth.

By the way, all of the least successful people I know identify as "gamers" and keep trying/failing to become pro Twitch streamers instead of applying for jobs.

Re: An Oral History of Something Awful

#57

Post by swang »

Kallikrates wrote: post #55
swang wrote: post #52

Keep in mind SA forums hated "memes" unless you were really good at it. That made the forums great because it also involved an element of risk so if someone wasn't sure how good their stuff was they're at risk of getting banned. A simple example: There use to be a forums poster who posted just screenshots from old NES video games that was always super relevant so he was never banned (usually if you just post a meme w…

It's a shame that nearly all of gamequoter's history is gone.

thanks for that. yeah looks like almost all of his history is gone. the images weren't saved...

Re: An Oral History of Something Awful

#58

Post by peterwwillis »

lobo_tuerto wrote: post #7

Wow that site feels slugish on a Core i7 + GTX 970 with 16 gigs of RAM.

This is literally the only reason I have upgrade a machine for the past 6 years. Web pages are too slow. Rendered text.

I tried to install TurboTax [2016] on a small Windows partition. Turns out i'm an idiot, because I only left 5GB free, and it requires 5.2 gigabytes to install.

I hate modern software.

Re: An Oral History of Something Awful

#59

Post by Neliquat »

vasili111 wrote: post #49
cloakandswagger wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many private forums still out there that are invite-only or have an entry fee, and some of them have communities as large and "healthy" as SA during its hay day

How to find them? Any links or requirements to get links, etc?

They tend to find you, and your quality commenting, on other sites and invite you.

Re: An Oral History of Something Awful

#60

Post by peruvian »

Scuds wrote: post #13

I have all sorts of conflicted feelings about my time with SA during the Bush years when I was a college student. It was fun, but I think the time I spent there cost me a point or two off my GPA. The people I knew of that went off to the Microsofts, Googles, Apples, and various startups of the world were more focused in their studies and their technical passions and didn't pay too much attention to many of the things…

> Message boards are not where the 'A' players of the world spend their time

So what are you doing here?

--

Personally, I don't regret the time I sank on 4chan/video games (still play a lot), anime, etc from ages 13-22. Maybe I am less ambitious than you, but I have a programming job in a good city and I'm not stressed about finances/rent. Good enough for me. My career is going fine and I'm learning new skills at work every year.

I look back on those years and remember a lot of fun nights with friends. In fact, sometimes I miss it!

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