Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by wayoutthere » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #127

wayoutthere wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, autistic people don’t get a pass for being socially awkward, nor are we entitled to one. The internet autism communities (particularly the edgelordy ones) often enable this nonsense because “fuck you I don’t want to change”. Social skills therapy exists and you can learn these things. Poor social awareness does not make up for contributing to a hostile work environment, full stop. Autism means you have to work…

Right, we shouldn't exempt autistic people who make bad jokes. But you shouldn't assume that those people are rapists or domestic abusers just because they make those jokes.

I’m sorry, but a cavalier attitude around rape and domestic abuse absolutely contribute to a hostile work environment which both from a legal and simple fairness perspective is a problem. Sexual assault and domestic abuse are unfortunately quite common — when you make that joke, there’s a very real chance that someone within earshot has been raped or abused. And it’s not just women who are the victims, so they’re not ok around “just the boys” either.

Autistic people aren’t dumb. We do understand when actions have consequences. The reasons why may seem arbitrary to us, but again, it doesn’t mean the consequences aren’t real or that we can violate the psychological safety of others with impunity. Yeah, that may mean getting fired for telling edgy jokes to understand you don’t make edgy jokes at work. I’m 100% ok with that as an autistic person.

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

#162

Post by Jensson » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

scotchmi_st wrote: post #125

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…

This is really misinformed comment. Aside from the specific case here, in the UK at least, on average two women a week are killed by a current or former partner[1]. Women are at far greater chance experiencing domestic violence than men[2]. In 2018 there were 1.32 million domestic abuse-related incidents and crimes reported to police of women, of which 746,219 were considered by the police to be criminal acts under u…

> in the UK at least, on average two women a week are killed by a current or former partner

And a hundred men kill themselves every week in UK. Suicide is often associated with relationship abuse, if an abusive woman makes her spouse commit suicide then that is also murder, but it wont go into the statistics. It is important to realize that women can also abuse men, and that this can be just as damaging even if the bruises aren't always visible, the psychological damage can still be enough to make them kill themselves. And false allegations is one way for women to abuse men, it is extremely powerful since it will ruin many of his friendships making him lonely and more likely to kill himself. The more people she can take away from his life the more likely he is to kill himself.

Note I'm not saying that we shouldn't protect women, just that we should also work to protect men.

https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/25/3/413/2399170

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

#163

Post by romwell » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #141

romwell wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

facepalm

What definition of social awareness are you using to make that assertion?

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

#164

Post by vadfa » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 1:03 PM UTC

lotophage wrote: post #61

havkd wrote: post #45

Why does it say “dies” when he killed himself? And please, no trick answers. One of my favourite posts of his, why lingerie is fucking stupid: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=38...

Did he not die?

When someone gets killed or kills himself we don't usually say he's "died". The verb "died" in some way has a sense of having been an accident or simply passing because one is too old.

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

#165

Post by Svperstar » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

I'm old so I remember when SomethingAwful was like 4chan and reddit combined for its time. I never actually registered an account on the forums, I was busy on other sites. My biggest issue with the SA forums is how they abused their users("Goons").

Basically. Imagine having to pay $10 to register a 4chan or reddit account and being banned for silly and ridiculous rule infractions but then being allowed back on if you registered another account("10bux").

I knew a guy who was huge into SA and contributed a lot of their photoshop Friday threads. One time there was a thread about a new movie, most people liked it but he simply said "I just left the theater a few hours ago, I didn't really dig it" he was immediately banned for "trolling" simply for sharing his opinion. He was the biggest SA user I knew at the time.

I think the last thing SA contributed to internet culture was Slenderman.

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

#166

Post by Jensson » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 1:05 PM UTC

romwell wrote: post #155

Jensson wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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:…

> The judges don't give reasons for their sentences like that

The post I responded to says they did, note the "citing this sort of reasoning", citing means they said it straight out and you should be able to find a court document where they explicitly used that reasoning:

> > There are still judges in the US giving lighter sentences or no jail time at all and citing this sort of reasoning.

It is a very different thing from judges being open about these things and it getting pushed underground. I asked about evidence of the former since that was what the person said still happened today. I just wanted to confront that lie, people often lie about these things to make their case seem stronger.

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

#167

Post by prvc » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #150

prvc wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

It is an interpretation, not a conclusion, based on the premise that one would have known before the ruling whether or not the allegations described an instance of DV, if the term had been interpreted according to its traditional meaning.

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

#168

Post by acdha » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #120

claudiawerner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This isn't against women. >"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," and yet here we are The fact that these same two statements are in the same paragraph seems sarcastic, if not ironic.

Humans in general get angry, lie, are violent. Power corrupts humans. Corruption is more likely if you're angry. These things hold true for all humans: men, women, adults, children, young, old, rich, poor, black, white, etc. Yet women, as a group, have been exempted from these truths by the state and society on any matter relating to domestic violence. This is an unearned and unjust exemption that must end. This is n…

> Yet women, as a group, have been exempted from these truths by the state and society on any matter relating to domestic violence. This is an unearned and unjust exemption that must end.

This is a wild claim you’ve been repeating without a shred of evidence. It’s offensively untrue to anyone who’s seen how hard it is for a victim of abuse to get it taken seriously, and I really think you need to produce hard evidence backing it up. Your comment history sounds like you’ve spent time in a bar listening to bitter guys complain about their ex-wives and treated it as a research paper.

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

#169

Post by onion2k » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #147

onion2k wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Are people innocent or guilty by default?

When it comes to investigating a crime, it's neither. It's not up to the police (or the public) to determine guilt; that's a job for the court. The job of the police is to investigate what happened. When a crime is reported to the police they must believe what the victim is saying until they have a damn good reason not to. If they started with a presumption of the victim making a false allegation very few domestic abuse crimes would ever get investigated, let alone prosecuted.

The potential for abuse is obvious.

Domestic abusers already claim they're being accused falsely. If the police and public assumed they were telling the truth they would get away with it much more, and they already get away with it a lot. That's the abuse that people should be much more concerned about.

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

#170

Post by user-the-name » Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

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.

What the hell would make you feel this was an appropriate thing to post. What the hell.