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Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

forums.somethingawful.com

141–150 of 370 posts

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Jokes at someone else’s expense = bad” seems to me like it literally* requires some social awareness. * in its original definition

What definition are you using? The idea that autistics don't empathize is, put it simply, false. And difficulty reading social cues doesn't apply in cases where many, many, many people openly and directly explain why jokes at someone else's expense are bad (and correlate with the people being the butt of the joke being mistreated). I have deconstructed the rape joke in another comment. Maybe to you immediately feel w…

> What definition are you using?

Literally to mean “in a literal sense; exactly” not the novel accepted usage to include meaning “figuratively, not literally”.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make the worst joke and I hope you wouldn't consider me a domestic abuser. Given how our judicial system works, if I had an public known history for jokes about rape, it would be even easier to mount a case of domestic abuse on me. If a divorce will grant me unique custody of my children or money and get rid of my ex, I would be ready to lie my way out. Unless there is proof, these are just allegations. And if I we…

Every one of my ex-wives is a crazy bitch. Every judge has it out for me. It's not my fault my kids don't like me; their mom keeps poisoning them against me with lies and my visitation schedule makes it impossible for me to be in their lives. No one ever believes me, they all just want to think I'm the bad guy. You don't need to construct hypotheticals here because we're talking about a specific person. He pretty muc…

> It's not my fault my kids don't like me; their mom keeps poisoning them against me with lies and my visitation schedule makes it impossible for me to be in their lives.

I wouldn't doubt that. This is called parental alienation and it happens extremely often if my lawyer friends are to be believed.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#143

He leaves behind a complicated legacy. It's important to note that credible allegations of domestic abuse lead him to sell SA in the past year, and this can't be set aside. At the same time, SA's influence on the modern internet can't be understated. The 'image macro' of early SA (maybe created by Lowtax himself, from what Fragmaster says in his video in the link) is the direct ancestor of today's common meme image--…

It's true, his forums had a huge indirect influence on modern US online culture, giving rise to so many projects and careers. Ironically, he failed to capitalise on his influential position unlike so many of his peers who sold off their online properties and disappeared from the public eye. If he'd taken a different approach, he'd probably now be sitting on media properties (or a fortune) worth tens of millions, and…

If he'd taken a different approach...

For some reason, imagining this individual with lots of money calls to mind the life of John McAfee.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#144

He leaves behind a complicated legacy. It's important to note that credible allegations of domestic abuse lead him to sell SA in the past year, and this can't be set aside. At the same time, SA's influence on the modern internet can't be understated. The 'image macro' of early SA (maybe created by Lowtax himself, from what Fragmaster says in his video in the link) is the direct ancestor of today's common meme image--…

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&th... "I have been sitting for hours debating whether or not to disclose this, and I feel like it's something I do need to get off of my chest. Frankly, I'm tried of being quiet. I've mostly had to stay quiet for years about things happening behind the scenes. I've held things inside so long and so hard my chest physically hurt the same way it is now. I consid…

So he took the coward's way out, knowing that his abuse was about to catch up with him. Pathetic really.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>credible allegations I truly wish that allegations of any and every sort were considered not credible by the general public. Domestic abuse is a real problem, but false allegation of domestic abuse is a real problem, too. Indeed, if a person wants to harm another without lifting a finger, the simplest thing to do is claim "He hurt me" or "I'm afraid of him" and you'll get every cop, judge, attorney, a legion of your…

Domestic abuse is a real problem, but false allegation of domestic abuse is a real problem There are significantly fewer false allegations than real ones. I'd be amazed if more than 1% were proven to be false, and it's likely far less than that. To assume that the alleged victim is lying would be incredibly harmful; many more people would refuse to make an accusation if they weren't going to be believed. Your opinion…

I would agree if I didn’t have this happen to me personally. It happens far more often than you could imagine, and the judicial system setup around it makes an automatic assumption the male is the aggressor.

In my case I was stabbed by her and still charged as if I was the aggressor. The state of California refused to drop the charges even with this evidence and I couldn’t afford a lawyer to fight it. I plead to a misdemeanor and now I cannot own a firearm for the rest of my life.

I don’t even like talking about it since the stigma around it is so large and I know people think I’m a liar because why would a woman lie about that?

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#146

He leaves behind a complicated legacy. It's important to note that credible allegations of domestic abuse lead him to sell SA in the past year, and this can't be set aside. At the same time, SA's influence on the modern internet can't be understated. The 'image macro' of early SA (maybe created by Lowtax himself, from what Fragmaster says in his video in the link) is the direct ancestor of today's common meme image--…

I'm unfamiliar with BitTorrent Barnyard, despite knowing of both SA and BitTorrent for nearly twenty years, and a search just gives me torrents for a 2006 movie. Someone mind telling me what it was? Guessing a tracker?

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>credible allegations I truly wish that allegations of any and every sort were considered not credible by the general public. Domestic abuse is a real problem, but false allegation of domestic abuse is a real problem, too. Indeed, if a person wants to harm another without lifting a finger, the simplest thing to do is claim "He hurt me" or "I'm afraid of him" and you'll get every cop, judge, attorney, a legion of your…

Domestic abuse is a real problem, but false allegation of domestic abuse is a real problem There are significantly fewer false allegations than real ones. I'd be amazed if more than 1% were proven to be false, and it's likely far less than that. To assume that the alleged victim is lying would be incredibly harmful; many more people would refuse to make an accusation if they weren't going to be believed. Your opinion…

> To assume that the alleged victim is lying would be incredibly harmful

> many more people would refuse to make an accusation if they weren't going to be believed

Of course. That's the point. Why should people be able to accuse others of serious crimes without one shred of evidence?

Are people innocent or guilty by default? That's what this boils down to.

> There are significantly fewer false allegations than real ones.

Does it matter how many false allegations are made? If there's a chance that it could be false, you must assume it is until proven otherwise.

Fundamentally, this is an issue of false positives and false negatives. Most societies are founded on the principle that false negatives are better than false positives: better to let a criminal go free than convict an innocent. It seems at some point western societies experienced an inversion of values: now it's better to convict innocents than let a criminal go free.

This is dangerous. The potential for abuse is obvious.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#148
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes off as naive. I saw the domestic abuse allegations again him and decided to read up. He had multiple allegations from both exes. He lightly joked about rape, domestic abuse etc. Yeah, they're jokes, but when I stopped being a child that stopped being funny, you can still see him making these jokes int interviews about his situation. You've got people on HN today that believe that metoo is just made up. Tho…

> Yeah, they're jokes, but when I stopped being a child that stopped being funny Autists often don't pick up on that and continues to make unfunny or cringe jokes year after year. That makes them prime targets for false accusations, since the world is full of people like you who will assume they are guilty just because they are socially unaware.

Richard Kyanka was many things but I'd have a very hard time believing 'autistic' was one of them.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#149

He leaves behind a complicated legacy. It's important to note that credible allegations of domestic abuse lead him to sell SA in the past year, and this can't be set aside. At the same time, SA's influence on the modern internet can't be understated. The 'image macro' of early SA (maybe created by Lowtax himself, from what Fragmaster says in his video in the link) is the direct ancestor of today's common meme image--…

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&th... "I have been sitting for hours debating whether or not to disclose this, and I feel like it's something I do need to get off of my chest. Frankly, I'm tried of being quiet. I've mostly had to stay quiet for years about things happening behind the scenes. I've held things inside so long and so hard my chest physically hurt the same way it is now. I consid…

>confirmed his treatment of me was Domestic Violence

Wording suggests that adopting an expansive definition of the term (which has undergone substantial concept-creep) was necessary in order for it to have applied to her allegations.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#150
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&th... "I have been sitting for hours debating whether or not to disclose this, and I feel like it's something I do need to get off of my chest. Frankly, I'm tried of being quiet. I've mostly had to stay quiet for years about things happening behind the scenes. I've held things inside so long and so hard my chest physically hurt the same way it is now. I consid…

>confirmed his treatment of me was Domestic Violence Wording suggests that adopting an expansive definition of the term (which has undergone substantial concept-creep) was necessary in order for it to have applied to her allegations.

not quite sure how you are arriving at that conclusion?
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