Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

forums.somethingawful.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 370 posts

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

#151

Post by matheusmoreira »

Jensson wrote: post #99
rubyn00bie wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Domestic abuse is a real problem, but false allegation of domestic abuse is a real problem, too. That’s some MRA bullshit and I want to call it out. You have in one sentence made a false equivalence, because your claim is entirely untrue. It’s not a problem anywhere near the magnitude of real abuse cases. So much I couldn’t find results except one shit article from 2009, everything else was nothing but bullshit blo…

Accusing your spouse for domestic abuse to prevent them from seeing their kids is like toxic divorce 101. It doesn't cost anything, carries no risk and in a divorce court you don't have to prove much, rather your spouse would have to prove that he didn't abuse you. This is different from criminal court where getting a guilty verdict is very hard. If he was found guilty in a criminal court it would be very different.

> Accusing your spouse for domestic abuse to prevent them from seeing their kids is like toxic divorce 101.

Certainly seems thay way. In my country, there is a female criminal psychologist who confirmed this based on her own experience. In the context of divorce and child custody, she said most accusations are likely to be false. It immediately became a media scandal.

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

#152

Post by happytoexplain »

prvc wrote: post #149
antihero wrote: post #130

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.

The wording suggests the applicability of the term was arrived at via a court ruling, which it was.

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

#153

Post by kalleboo »

content_sesh wrote: post #72
javajosh wrote: post #65

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…

What the hell are you talking about? It was multiple women, independently, over decades, that all gave similar allegations of abuse. At one point, one of the unpaid site administrators flew across the country so she could take one of these women to a shelter. How far would you have had the people who used his site and paid for his lifestyle go to cover their eyes and ignore his behavior? Also buried in that massive t…

There are also the police reports that someone FOIA'd that paint a pretty guilty picture as well.

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

#154

Post by kalleboo »

lollowtax wrote: post #42
MrLeap wrote: post #9

SA in the early 00's was really special. It was like someone dumped a whole chemical supply closet into a pot and brought it to a boil. Equal parts trash and alchemy. Gold was inexplicably made there, and as long as you had your kitty litter scoop it was easy to find.

Goons screwing around with Poser was probably peak gold or close to it. The large-scale projects like Goon City and Goon Tower stick with me as inspirational with respect to what spontaneous groups of idiots can accomplish pushing in the same direction.

> The large-scale projects

You just reminded me of the Blue Ball Machine https://ytmnd-fads.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Ball_Machine

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

#155

Post by romwell »

Jensson wrote: post #134
tallanvor wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Women are still often told that sexual harassment is their own fault for dressing the way they do, or get told "boys will be boys". It used to be expected that women would have to put up with it in the workplace. Rape victims get told that if they really didn't want it to happen they could have fought harder. There are still judges in the US giving lighter sentences or no jail time at all…

> There are still judges in the US giving lighter sentences or no jail time at all and citing this sort of reasoning. Name one case in the last 5 years where the judge uses the victims clothes as a reason for a light sentence in USA, and where the judge wasn't punished for it. It should be possible to find one right? If you can't even find one for a whole 5 years I wouldn't say that this is a problem we need to care…

TL;DR: read this first: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/sexual-assault-r...

--------------------------------------

You are asking the wrong question.

The judges don't give reasons for their sentences like that (i.e., the judge is under no obligation to say "I was going to give this person X years, but I'm giving them X-Y because the victim was wearing a mini skirt").

The question you should be asking is: is victim's clothing an admissible evidence in rape cases? That's to say, is it something that the defense uses in their arguments?

And the answer is that, historically, yes, victim's clothing has been extensively used by the defense in rape cases.[1]

The issue was serious enough that states started to adopt laws that banned using clothing as indication of consent in rape cases. By 1994, NY introduced such a law - being the second state in the nation to do so[2].

However, no matter what the law is regarding admissible evidence, the judges will most likely know what the victim was wearing because that, in itself, is collected for evidence. To argue that this does not factor into sentencing would be improbable given the prevalent attitudes in our society, and studies like[5] confirm that.

Which brings us to the main problem: that even without taking clothing as an excuse, sexual assault perpetrators are often left unpunished or given a slap on the wrist, like in the infamous case of the rapist Brock Turner[7].

This is, of course, tangential to the point that a significant part of the population believes that clothing can be an indicator of consent [3][4], which results in the dismal proportion of cases being reported to begin with, and then a small percentage of those brought to prosecution.

In the end, the judges simple don't give prison time to rapists. The judges give light sentences citing anything as a reason, without consequence.

You can see plenty of cases in the survey[8], many of them quite recent.

The analysis of the extent to which victim-blaming has been a factor in each of those cases is left as an exercise to the reader.

[1]https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

[2]https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/30/nyregion/new-law-says-vic...

[3]https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/13/...

[4]https://philpapers.org/archive/WOLPDA-3.pdf

[5]https://escholarship.org/content/qt0fq160dv/qt0fq160dv.pdf?t...

[7]https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/us/brock-turner-blamed-dr...

[8]https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/sexual-assault-r...

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

#157

Post by happytoexplain »

javajosh wrote: post #65
extortionist wrote: post #12

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--…

>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…

I generally agree with the point you're trying to make, but:

>to even doubt a woman's allegation is to condone violence against women

I'd go so far as to say it's naive to consider that the problem of believing women too easily when they accuse men is significant _compared to_ the problem of not believing women who accuse men. Unfortunately those are always in comparison, since more of one means less of the other.

>here we are, giving scorned women the literal power of life and death over the object of their rage

A client killing themselves over legal consequences is a tragedy that might speak to those legal consequences, but it's unrealistic and unfair to say the other client was given power over life and death.

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

#158

Post by romwell »

Jensson wrote: post #128
romwell wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do I really have to play Captain Obvious and say that rape jokes are usually at the expense of rape victims? The "9 out of 10 enjoys gang rape" joke makes fun of the fact that the person being raped doesn't "enjoy" it. Let's see if it works in other contexts: > "9 out of 10 people enjoy lynchings" > "9 out of 10 people enjoy stoning" > "3 out of 4 people enjoy bullying" > "1 out of 2 people enjoy scalping" > "9 out o…

> Doesn't quite have the same vibe, does it? It does. There are also a lot of jokes about burning babies etc. Just because you don't understand that sort of humour doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

>It does.

Oh, does it? Would you find me a joke with either of the specific premises I listed? Or anything in that format that doesn't have to do with rape?

>Just because you don't understand that sort of humour

Again, assumptions. Would you please present your Certificate of Telepathy, or otherwise stop making statements about what I know, understand, think, etc?

>doesn't mean that it doesn't exist

Who's denying that it exists? I never said it doesn't, nor did I say anything about it being funny or not.

Humor at other people's expense is problematic and harmful.

>There are also a lot of jokes about burning babies etc

Yeah, except burning babies isn't a problem we have in this society on a mass scale.

Try spinning a joke about burning Jewish babies as innocent form of humor that society doesn't look down on. I'll wait.

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

#159

Post by kalleboo »

makeitrain wrote: post #25

I am so fascinated by all of this. The impact on internet history and culture. The challenges of creating and growing communities. The lifestyles and faults of leaders and the controversial realities we live in. I know about SA, but was never an active participant. Likewise I know about 4chan and other communities. From reading the first page of this thread, it seems very critical of the creator of the community. Eve…

His relationship to the community was also complicated.

I stopped visiting SA 10 years ago, but even back then he'd do something unpopular like ban someone for something petty, then when people called him out on it he'd rage-quit the forums saying they were a cesspit, and focus on the front page articles for a while.

Famously his rules regarding moderation of anime content caused the creation of 4chan(!).

I don't know what's happened in the intervening 10 years but reading some of the comments in the linked thread it seems like everything he did every time he returned was unpopular with the community, like deleting one of the most popular subforums, and justifying it with a blatant lie.

So it's not too odd for the community he created to turn on him this violently if you add in how he treated the community in addition the problems in his personal life.

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

#160

Post by seibelj »

Apocryphon wrote: post #7
curuinor wrote: post #2

Someone on twitter was talking about the Franz Ferdinand insane ripples of the man's decision to ban anime pornography on his site: 1. He bans it 2. One "moot" was then currently showing around his futaba channel clone "4chan" and not getting many bites 3. The pornography-obsessed people decide to abscond to 4chan en masse, determining the culture of /b/ and all that 4. This leads to the proliferation of fascism and…

Interesting thing is, Qanon isn't even 4chan at its most activist, there was Anonymous and all of its ops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_associated_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(hacker_group) And Qanon isn't even /pol/ at its most politically active, given how they rode the memetic wave into the 2016 elections. While there might not be a direct material connection between 4chan and r…

I believe crypto came out of the pink sheets / Stocktwits culture, which after the crash in 2017 went back into stocks and rose WSB and meme stocks. It was like stocks -> crypto -> back to stocks in the influence cycle.
Post reply on HN