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

forums.somethingawful.com

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

#221

Post by coldpie »

Svperstar wrote: post #212
coldpie wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a forums member since 2006. The SA forums are my home on the Internet. It's definitely had its ups-and-downs, as you describe. But the forums have taken me through all of my major hobbies and interests, from video games and Internet culture, to cars, to music, to guitar. I've even made real-life friendships there. I think over the past few years, and especially since the ownership transition last year, the…

I might check it out since it is under new ownership. The era of SA I knew of was 1999-2003. I haven't thought very much about SA in a long time. I started using 4chan in like 2008 and didn't even know it was made by a former SA user till I bothered to look into the history of 4chan.

Hahaha, I was on 4chan from around 2003-2006. Our Internet histories are inverses :P

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

#222

Post by matheusmoreira »

nsxwolf wrote: post #180
matheusmoreira wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That’s been a feature of nearly every divorce I’ve been personally adjacent to.

Happened in my extended family as well. The woman and her mother took the kid away and I never saw them again. I was told it took court officials and police for the father to be able to see his son.

At work, a female colleague described similar situation. A family member had a child with her husband, divorced him and took the child to the United States so they'd be out of his reach. Apparently it's easier to illegally enter the country if you have a child with you. Now she sends my colleague and her family threatening messages using fake instagram accounts, taunting them with the fact they will never be able to "ruin her life" now that she's in the USA. She's supposed to be arrested for kidnapping and lose custody of the child if she ever steps foot in my country again.

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

#223

Post by avree »

rexreed wrote: post #195

I don't think we'll be seeing a black banner on HN for this one, even though his controversial history is probably highly relevant to the growth of Internet society and culture. Is there specific criteria for who gets a black banner and who doesn't?

I haven't seen any confirmed serial domestic abusers get black banners on HN, if that helps you figure out the metric.

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

#224

Post by aseipp »

kalleboo wrote: post #159
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 kno…

Basically every ex-SA user I know of describes it as simply as "He's treated like a piece of dirt, because that's what he is." In their words SA largely became successful in spite of Lowtax, not because of him, and this is very easy to miss to anyone who wasn't there from what I can tell.

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

#225

Post by joshmanders »

petercooper wrote: post #92

Others are discussing the important and serious stuff, so I wanted to touch on something more lighthearted. I was in the e/n scene so knew of SA but never got involved, and it wasn't till 2013ish when he started doing YouTube playthroughs of the worst indie 'games' he could find which were quite entertaining on their own merits and showed off people's creativity that might otherwise be ignored. Examples: https://www.…

> I was in the e/n scene

Geez that's a term I haven't heard in decades! I too was in E/N during SA times. Mostly on CFUS though.

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

#227

Post by prvc »

happytoexplain wrote: post #188
prvc wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>one would have known before the ruling whether or not the allegations described an instance of DV I'm not defending/attacking any person here, since I haven't read further details, but if one goes to court to have something "obvious" decided upon, and then one writes for strangers about it, many (I think even most) people would absolutely use the same wording she used. "The judge confirmed X." I think you're looking…

That would be another possible interpretation of the phrase, but I think it is the less plausible one due to other contextual cues in the above text. In fact, the following quote appears on p. 128 of the same thread, posted by the same account:

>with me, Rich did not get physical.

Which, in my view, definitively settles the issue in the favor of my previous comments. The imputed "suggestion" was, in fact, the case. I also don't see why a bad-faith "flag" could be an appropriate response to the content of that post, which merely makes a reasonable point.

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

#228

Post by wolrah »

Svperstar wrote: post #165

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…

> 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").

Flip side, the paid account system means that banned trolls coming back under a different username doesn't happen nearly as often as it would on other platforms. It still does for sure, there are a couple of people who apparently have no problem throwing cash at the forums to be able to post their nonsense, but it's not really a big thing. The vast majority of users pay their 10 bucks once, maybe buy a few upgrades, and then never pay a cent more.

I've been on the forums since the early 2000s and have honestly never seen frivolous bans as a thing. 6 hour probations are sometimes thrown around like candy, but they're mostly meaningless unless you do something stupid in response.

In the end, the ban list is public so the system has a lot of transparency. If you know what your friend's username was you can see the exact post that earned it, as well as their history of infractions, and what mods/admins were involved. https://forums.somethingawful.com/banlist.php

> 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 certainly can't say it didn't happen, there were definitely some less stable mods and of course the subject of this thread was the top admin for most of the forums' life, but my experience tells me that your friend was likely not entirely honest with you about why they got banned.

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

#229

Post by Bluecobra »

Svperstar wrote: post #165

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…

> 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").

IMHO, that's one of the best features of the forums. I first joined in 2003, didn't read the rules, posted garbage, and got banned. I ended up making a new account avoid having the embarrassment of being banned. Later on they ended up loosing the rules a bit and came out with probations.

Also, that $10 went towards the costs of running the website/forums. When SA came out there was no AWS, they had to lease cabinet space in a colo facility and buy real servers. The website/forums was actually down for while when Hurricane Katrina hit, (their colo was in downtown New Orleans at the time).

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

#230

Post by romwell »

tremon wrote: post #210
romwell wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#metoo was literally about bringing the attention to the scale of the problem and raising awareness, and normalize talking about abuse, so that it wouldn't continue in silence. The court of public opinion has existed before and after #metoo. Let's not pretend that #metoo invented it. If twenty people were to go public and say that Justin Bieber beat each of them with a crowbar, Justin Bieber would have some 'splainin…

Yes, and that's why we have libel laws: to stop these kinds of things from being "judged" in the court of public opinion. Raising awareness and providing support are all fine and very necessary, but the extrajudicial punishments is where the movement lost my support. Still, extrajudicial punishment is what we're left with if the judicial system fails to do justice.

Why did the movement lose your support? It didn't advocate removal of libel laws, did it?

And "extrajudicial punishment" is a stretch for "I have a right to tell people what happened to me without shame and harrasment".

Did #metoo make a call to burn people at stakes that I missed?

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