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Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

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Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#71

Post by newbie789 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #66
newbie789 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly are you trying to have a discussion with me about? Edit: it’s wrong of me for uh, responding?

You're harassing someone for basically saying "your mention of 'unfettered free speech' is off topic". While acting like the person that said that is the one that brought up 'unfettered free speech'. You are wrong to do that.

I made an equally arbitrary comment to the one you responded to. To save time, Why are you responding to my posts? Do you have any personal opinions about Rich Kyanka? If so, do you care to share? If not, am I expected to debate your position? If so, (again because I don’t know why you’re responding) what exactly is your opinion on this topic aside from… not liking what I said?

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#72

Post by astrange »

tylersmith wrote: post #8
pstuart wrote: post #2

Advocates for unfettered "free speech" always seem to gloss over the fact that a lot of that shit is not healthy. I'm not trying to argue that such speech should be censored, but it's certainly nothing to be celebrated.

I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly, but Something Awfully famously censored certain types of porn-related posts leading to 4chan so unfettered free speech isn't something SA has ever really been known for.

> Something Awfully famously censored certain types of porn-related posts leading to 4chan

According to people who weren't there at the time, yes. (That mostly happened several years later on SA.)

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#73

Post by KennyBlanken »

newbie789 wrote: post #11

Lowtax was by all accounts a real piece of garbage by the end, but he undoubtedly created a place that changed the internet permanently. I find it kind of funny the amount of ire he drew long before the abuse allegations surfaced though. For example, he was basically auto banned from Twitter by… somebody with the ability to make those decisions at their discretion. I’ve always wondered who that was. In my head, it’s…

Lot of ire for him getting banned from a private corporation's service, yet not much ire for him doing him doing nothing to stop people on his forums from harassing the shit out of dozens if not hundreds of people - criminal behavior in many jurisdictions.

Or the fact that he apparently planned his suicide out enough that he purportedly intentionally spent all the money in the joint account he had with his wife before he killed himself. Made sure his lawyer got paid, but left his kids high and dry.

Dude was a piece of shit in real life and online, through both his own behavior and what he enabled and willfully allowed to happen.

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#74

Post by Ansil849 »

Stopped reading and posting on SA when they started requiring members to pay to join. That was bullshit that went against the whole ethos.

Upon reflection, SA was vastly overrated. It started some wildly popular memes, because at the time it was one of the few places for memes. But that's about it.

Kyanka himself has had numerous domestic violence police reports filed against him. He is not someone to be celebrated.

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#75

Post by newbie789 »

tylersmith wrote: post #34
newbie789 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase “unfettered free speech” only appears in the comments here and not in the article. I can also make up stuff he could have said but didn’t. As far as I know, he didn’t advocate for changing the name of Myanmar back to Burma, so that’s an indicator that he supported military-run governments? That being said, if you’re not willing to host me and my friends’ tentacle porn libraries, you’re not an advocate for…

> The phrase “unfettered free speech” only appears in the comments here and not in the article. Yes, and I responded to that comment and not the article.

So how do I move my tentacle porn collection to your personal website? SFTP? Git? Rsync?

I would love to hear your position on free speech

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#76

Post by KennyBlanken »

devonkim wrote: post #33

What’s been interesting through the years on the forums that I’ve found to be strange is that as the Internet social media landscape became “free” services that have terrible, low effort, low quality content and users as a rule, SA’s model of having users pay to post is becoming more of a better model to help avoid the poor incentives of most companies to demand more of users’ attention. The posting quality for users…

SA was free and had advertisers, but they disappeared and because the site was such a shitstain on the internet, no advertiser wanted to touch him with a ten foot pole.

> terrible, low effort, low quality content

You just described SA pretty well, but you left out doxxing and targeted harassment campaigns of people IRL.

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#77

Post by newbie789 »

Talanes wrote: post #69
newbie789 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly are you trying to have a discussion with me about? Edit: it’s wrong of me for uh, responding?

What conversation do you think you're trying to have here? You started out by getting very heated about a point that no one was actually discussing, and then proceeded to get very angry that people were responding to a comment chain in context with the first comment.

Wait are you part of this conversation? Edit: It literally can’t be the answer to my question so

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#78

Post by pessimizer »

Svperstar wrote: post #44
pstuart wrote: post #2

Advocates for unfettered "free speech" always seem to gloss over the fact that a lot of that shit is not healthy. I'm not trying to argue that such speech should be censored, but it's certainly nothing to be celebrated.

SomethingAwful forums were NEVER about any kind of free speech. They had stifling censorship that drove a lot of the regulars off the forums for good.

Yup. Unmoderated forums are a sanctuary and a blessing. I would never have one - I would run a very offensive forum, but not one that annoyed me in any way or else I would brutally censor and crush it.

I honestly think the reason SA was so successful (other than the buy-in) is that the the only criterion for censorship was that you were annoying. That's an arbitrary and unfair criterion, though, so you had better be funny or interesting. It's certainly whatever the opposite of a free-speech zone is.

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#79

Post by flomo »

newbie789 wrote: post #11

Lowtax was by all accounts a real piece of garbage by the end, but he undoubtedly created a place that changed the internet permanently. I find it kind of funny the amount of ire he drew long before the abuse allegations surfaced though. For example, he was basically auto banned from Twitter by… somebody with the ability to make those decisions at their discretion. I’ve always wondered who that was. In my head, it’s…

Something awful dot com was also blackholed by Google for many years because they did something to piss-off the internet overlords. (For most of the 2000s, you could google for "JeffK" and SA wouldn't show up until like page 20.)

I view Lowtax like Norm McDonald or many other people who provided me a lot of mirth years ago. I would rather not know if they turned out to be a terrible person or not. RIP internet funny man.

Re: Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, founder of Something Awful, has died

#80

Post by redisman »

pram wrote: post #7
pstuart wrote: post #2

Advocates for unfettered "free speech" always seem to gloss over the fact that a lot of that shit is not healthy. I'm not trying to argue that such speech should be censored, but it's certainly nothing to be celebrated.

Lowtax wasn't an advocate for unfettered free speech lol. He encouraged and enabled arbitrary and capricious punishment for pretty much anything the forum moderators didn't personally like.

I remember he would run threads that were something like “comment to get banned” (or account renamed on milder days). And of course everyone including me piled on
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