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

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

#331

Post by 1123581321 »

rmidthun wrote: post #270

All this eulogy for an abusive bully. Among the many "innovations", there was a feature where he would link to a website that he thought was worthy of ridicule. Often mentioning directly that it had a guest book to sign in. So a horde of bullies would descend on that website, fill the book and any forums with goatse porn and email the same. Some of the victims shut down their websites, their complaints posted to SA s…

Brigading those ugly guestbooks was relatively harmless fun. The owners were usually enraged and nonplussed but didn’t feel anything of value was touched. This was before death threats and harassing employers and roping traditional news in to amplify the attack, and all that.

The Uwe Boll fight was very funny.

I think, though, my favorite lowtax moment was a recorded talk he gave at a university, in which he expounded on the “greater parrot-in-ass theory” about how much worse the world becomes when people with extremely niche and unacceptable interests are able to find each other online and convince each other that they’re normal and healthy. Prescient.

But yes, also a bully.

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

#332

Post by Chris2048 »

romwell wrote: post #310
Chris2048 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gets to speak for the whole spectrum I don't see any claim that they speak for the spectrum, i.e. no appeal to authority/identity. Sure, it means they don't provide a basis for their claims, but in this case I am attacking what I see as an invalid basis. Also: > by saying that autistic people wouldn't know that.. They said "Autists often don't.." i.e they aren't speaking about all/any/every, but some . They are tal…

Look, the OP implied that autism maybe be a likely reason why someone could be observed regularly making denigrating jokes like "9 out of 10 people enjoy gang rape", because we lack "social awareness" to tell otherwise. As an autistic person, who knows other autistic people, and is a part of online community of autistic people, I'll go out on limb and say that the OP is talking out of their ass, and I can comfortably…

Does it take much to figure out if your tone is off?

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

#333

Post by anonygler »

arpa wrote: post #257
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #79

I used to visit SA regularly. A lot of the humor was tasteless, but nowhere near the level of the chans. I avoided the forums, and only read the front page stuff. What kept me coming, was that they were amazing writers (it wasn’t just him -or he wrote under several nom de plumes ). His essays, done in the style of famous writers, and deadpan humor, where a story seemed serious, up until the point that you suddenly re…

oh man, Zack Parsons' series "the insidious beast" and "instructions for a thing" were the best series i've ever read on the web. He kind of lost me a bit later on.

My favorite Zack parsons article from my memory: https://www.somethingawful.com/news/were-all-gonna/

“Your poison womb is making heaven too fucking crowded. - Zack”

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

#334

Post by legerdemain »

selimthegrim wrote: post #234
wolrah wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 p…

Vilerat banned me once for calling Hamid Karzai a restaurateur. I never figured out why that was worth one.

I thought it was Karzai's brother who operated a restaurant, in Baltimore ("The Helmand")?

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

#335

Post by Apfel »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #173
lollowtax wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Failed goon projects, too, like the "amazing innovative RPG that does away with all the cliches", which was inevitably completed cliched and gave us johnny.jpg Also the Goon Island idea that came up all the time: if every goon contributed $10, we could buy an island and it would be a paradise.

https://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Zybourne_Clock.html

I assume this is the RPG you're referring to?

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

#336

Post by Threeve303 »

nerevarthelame wrote: post #202
dwater wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the forums went paid and semi private, a few boards were created for sharing music, porn, and torrents. AFAIK you could never see they existed without a paid account. The last time I logged in with a paid account was more than 15 years ago though so I can't say how it evolved.

The mods/admins shut them down after year or two, before there were any real legal consequences. As a result of that, there were a number of private spin-off sites dedicated solely to piracy, some of which continue today.

I think a lot more happened there than just piracy. Just based on what I heard, I certainly never had an account on any of the sites... . Perhaps over time, more will be known publically. SA lead to 4chan and 8chan, many conspiracies started on these sites as memes. Look at 8kun for example. Behind the scenes of sites like SA existed a large collection of questionable groups. Just imagine the bandwidth needed and the kinds of political connections required to keep it off of the radar. Also consider how the whole Warez scene operates in general. Experienced programmers writing cracks, leaked movies and tv shows, drugs, etc.

Kind of like the silk road before the darkweb.

Hopefully more will be known over time because there are some crazy stories.

Not that I would know anything about any of it

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

#337

Post by nickthemagicman »

harles wrote: post #272
nickthemagicman wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. For some reason modern society paints women as incapable of lying ever so if it's an allegation by a woman it must be true. And if you don't believe it you're victim-blaming. Women are just as vicious as men.

This seems like a vague generalization. In this case it was Lowtax vs all 3 of his ex wives corroborating the same story.

Its pretty clear: women are human beings that also lie.

Hitting a woman is always bad.

Taking all of a dudes money and his kid away in a divorce is equally bad

In life there doesn't have to be a good guy.

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

#338

Post by ryaniscool »

Tronno wrote: post #261
ryandrake wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 enough and gotten to know yourself and other people you realize how complicated and flawed each and every one of us are. We see this a lot in posts here and elsewhere: Some historical figure or someone with a lifetime of achievements and impact gets mentioned. Then, inevita…

There's a reason human nature is to criticize and focus on flaws - that's how progress is made. Great achievements speak for themselves. In most cases, people readily adopt proven new practices or inventions, flock to groundbreaking ideas, and celebrate those who produce them. Meanwhile, they will happily stay silent about uncomfortable truths. Who dares pipe up about the charismatic but incompetent colleague? The su…

By your logic, funerals should be more like agile retrospectives where we examine every mistake a person made or person they hurt so people at the funeral don't repeat the same mistakes.

The reason people commit violence is not because of a lack of social pressure or not understanding the difference betweeen right and wrong. They have something broken inside.

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

#339

Post by selimthegrim »

legerdemain wrote: post #334
selimthegrim wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vilerat banned me once for calling Hamid Karzai a restaurateur. I never figured out why that was worth one.

I thought it was Karzai's brother who operated a restaurant, in Baltimore ("The Helmand")?

Yes, I believe I did mention his brother now that I think about it.

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

#340

Post by romwell »

Chris2048 wrote: post #332
romwell wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, the OP implied that autism maybe be a likely reason why someone could be observed regularly making denigrating jokes like "9 out of 10 people enjoy gang rape", because we lack "social awareness" to tell otherwise. As an autistic person, who knows other autistic people, and is a part of online community of autistic people, I'll go out on limb and say that the OP is talking out of their ass, and I can comfortably…

Does it take much to figure out if your tone is off?

Not at all, people misread my tone so often that I might as well assume it's off all the time.

It works both ways though; sometimes I'm trying to tell someone to go fuck themselves in a polite way, and for some reason it takes them forever to get the hint.

I've learned to be patient in either case.

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