Live data from Hacker News

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

forums.somethingawful.com

241–250 of 370 posts

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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So to me your post just shows that you lack the social awareness to understand these things Your first comment used autistic people as an example to advance your argument. When an autistic person used personal experience to counter your argument, you defended your argument by accusing the autistic person of lacking the social awareness needed to understand the point they just made. Frankly, your comments aren't mak…

My point was that people who make rape jokes as young adults stops with it when they realize that other people gets disturbed by them. An autistic person who never made rape jokes isn't a counter example for anything, and that autistic person saying that other autistic people should just naturally understand that rape jokes are bad doesn't prove anything either.

>An autistic that never made rape jokes isn't...

Seems like you're referring to me here, and again, are making unsubstantiated assumptions. Is that a hobby of yours?

I've told this particular joke, and didn't find it problematic in the past. I learned.

See, it doesn't have to do with social aweareness. After thinking about it, I figured it's bad to think that way (as explained above).

>other autistic people should just naturally understand that rape jokes are bad

Never said that. Please don't lie.

>doesn't prove anything either.

Your claim that autistic people are more likely to make that joke because of their autism is

1) incorrect, as proven at least by this counterexample, plus the analysis above, and observation that autistic women aren't seen telling rape jokes at the same rate as all men;

2) offensive to autistic people, by implying that figuring this out is a-priori beyond their reach;

3) not a claim you are qualified to make.

Please stop.

Autism doesn't make people douchebags, making rape jokes does.

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

#242

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…

> 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.

One of the best things about the moderation culture at SA was that they came down hard on facile, thoughtless half-posts like the one you describe. It tended to result in vibrant threads full of people who actually had something to say.

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

#243

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…

"May the good he created stretch on, and the evil be buried with him."

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Thank you for your responses. As a woman who grew up on the Internet (and is on the spectrum) I really appreciate you articulating the problems with jokes like that, because having argued with people online, I've learned that my reasoning was never well-constructed and convincing enough to change minds, and the often (usual?) aggressive backlash would just add to the growing pile of uneasiness. One learns it is safer to stay quiet.

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rape jokes normalize sexual violence, and create an intimidating atmosphere for anyone who may potentially be a victim, or may unfortunately have already suffered. To me, they are also a clear marker of someone who never matured enough to express their sexuality in a healthy fashion. SA may have had a lot of that shit back in the day (and may still in some corners, I’ve never spent much time in FYAD), but it shouldn’…

> Rape jokes normalize sexual violence And it's still claimed that violent video games normalised violence, despite research suggesting otherwise. So is the above claim something that is researched fact, or your opinion?

It's a very well researched fact. Evidently, you didn't try Googling "rape jokes link to violence" before asking this, or you would find many studies, like [1].

Exhibit 1: A bad-faith question: something that is very eaisly answered with a single Google search, but instead asked in a conversation to cast doubt on what the other person just said.

[1] https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/sexist-humor-and-rape-proclivity...

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

#246
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're kidding, right? You think that all of the things listed below are instances of "I have a right to tell people what happened to me without shame and harrasment", and none are instances of virtual stake burning? Note: this is the result of just five minutes of keyword searches, I have no opinion on the actual merits of these cases, just disproving your claim that there is no extrajudicial punishment associated with the movement:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karenrobinsonjacobs/2020/06/30/...

https://www.tampabay.com/blogs/media/2017/10/31/house-of-car...

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/brendan-eich-steps-down-...

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-the-cancelling-of-j...

https://nypost.com/2020/06/11/the-wing-ceo-audrey-gelman-res...

https://pagesix.com/2020/07/01/essence-ceo-richelieu-dennis-...

https://www.distractify.com/p/tyler-joseph-canceled

https://www.rt.com/news/535587-depp-cancel-culture-festival/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57426579

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

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just left and right, but establishment, too. Eliot Higgins was an SA mod, who got into analysing images out of the Arab spring uprisings after learning that some of his fellow goons had gone there to volunteer for one side or another. He got picked up by the US/UK FP/MIL/INT establishment after his excellent documentation of modified volcano rockets in the Syrian civil war. I think that wasn't just for his journa…

Also a moderator was Vilerat who died in the Benghazi attacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Smith_(diplomat)

He was mostly in D&D IIRC

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

#248

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.

For anyone intrigued by the term, maybe this would help: http://www.hearye.org/1999/05/whats-an-en-site/ – bear in mind 1999 predates the popular use of the term "blog" (which appeared only in that same year) but e/n sites were, more often than not, what we'd call blogs now.

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

#249

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…

Since banning ended up being a big part of their revenue model, I think an interesting approach they could have took was to allow you to re-instate your existing account if you were banned for $10, instead of having to register a completely new account. That would have avoided the chaos of losing users that had reputation while still kind of working for their odd moderation and revenue system. They could have also, of course, just made the $10 an annual thing and solved it that way too, but that just seems clinical to the madness that made the forum entertaining, and the banning kind of played into the humor.

I'll out here that my work is very strongly influenced by Something Awful and I had an account there a very long time ago. I was banned by Zack Parsons for I don't even remember what post (nothing any reasonable person would think deserved a ban), and that was the end of my participation in the SA forums, I didn't want to have to re-build an identity from scratch there and I decided to move on, for better or worse.

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

#250

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--…

Never heard of this guy or SA until this post but I think it's depressing that we feel guilty celebrating this guy's accomplishments without being like "oh but it has to be mentioned he treated people in his life terribly and might have been an objectively awful person". Maybe there is a subconscious belief that only "good" people deserve success and praise? I just find this so naive because if you've lived long enou…

Interesting points. It's too common now to lump a person's strengths and weaknesses into one big package. Right or wrong, that is the common way of judging people it seems.

I enjoyed SA at first, until it became quite clear the moderation was heavily skewed to Lowtax and his friends, Photoshop Fridays were largely rigged, accounts would be locked for no apparent reason and good luck getting a response from that cancer guy that never checked email. And fine - that's his site, his rules, and opted (since phpBB was free and had "access" to university servers) to set up something just for me and my friends. Apparently I wasn't the only one because the user base slowly declined with some hardcore hangers-on sticking around to form the shell of a community it is now. Lowtax was always an asshole, but he did build something that greatly influenced internet culture (again, for better or worse is left up to the reader).

Post reply on HN