161–170 of 185 posts
There was a big thread about this already: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29184198 - Nov 2021 (304 comments) But the current article goes more into the history and influence of SA, and perhaps that is worth talking about? The sordid personal stuff has already had a thorough treatment.
That's right, there have already been enough ewwwlogies written about him.
This is an amazing word. Thank you.
In the end, the Internet made us stupid.
Indeed, amid debates about whether or not he was visionary, you have to admit, looking at the past few years, he was spot on in this regard. At the very least, the Internet has enabled stupidity on a massive scale, and enabled the rapid spreading of ideas not backed by facts across borders. As evidenced when people turn out to protests in my country with signs referencing political talking points from a nation 12500k…
No, it was making access to the Internet easy that caused this. Used to be in the Windows 95 / 98 (and earlier) era, you had to actually have a fucking brain and read directions and do what you were told, i.e., setting up TCP/IP settings for your dial-up Internet connection. You had to read, and to think, because there wasn't always 24/7 tech support to clean up after you when you legitimately fucked up some settings.
So you learned, and like all learning, it was hard and painful.
Once things became as easy as just plugging something in and turning it on, then you had people who were not only not that bright, but also lazy, joining in. From 1995 to around 2005 was, I think, my favorite time using the Internet. I find myself increasingly distancing from the large social media sites precisely because they allow low-effort individuals access, or they've dramatically shifted from their own stated ethos (Reddit being a perfect example, imo - the shift from nearly unlimited free speech to hilariously moderated).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're talking about vilerat; great guy. There are writeups about him.
The most well-known write-ups of the not great guy vilerat are his racist tirades against African people.
Genghis Khan was a great man. You cannot unify a nomadic people and conquer a shitload of Asia and not be a great man. Given that under his leadership, the Mongols literally reduced the carbon footprint of the whole planet based upon the amount of people they killed, you could easily claim he was not a "good" man.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, amid debates about whether or not he was visionary, you have to admit, looking at the past few years, he was spot on in this regard. At the very least, the Internet has enabled stupidity on a massive scale, and enabled the rapid spreading of ideas not backed by facts across borders. As evidenced when people turn out to protests in my country with signs referencing political talking points from a nation 12500k…
> the Internet has enabled stupidity on a massive scale No, it was making access to the Internet easy that caused this. Used to be in the Windows 95 / 98 (and earlier) era, you had to actually have a fucking brain and read directions and do what you were told, i.e., setting up TCP/IP settings for your dial-up Internet connection. You had to read, and to think, because there wasn't always 24/7 tech support to clean up…
I think more than the setup filter, the filter of having people learn what it takes to host their own content on the Internet is actually quite a bit worse. Since not only do we lose the quality bar, but it also has led to centralization.
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…
Well that’s too bad. I had a lot of fun trolling D&D and participating in photoshop Fridays. I remember loading that up and watching 9/11 footage set to the Benny Hill theme practically the day it happened. The forums were just brutal, and hilarious for a certain kind of mind. And the impact on the internet is clear and widespread.
> The forums were just brutal, and hilarious for a certain kind of mind. I don't want to know that there are people with that kind of mind.
I haven't kept up over the years. This feels eerily like a scene from Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
Things I saw first on SA:
- Micro transactions
- Paid membership for content
- Fail whale (2000 -> 5000 concurrent users)
- Image macros
- Let's play videos
- Moderation policies on racism, etc. way before anything else on the internet self-moderated content at this level
- Libertarian white men in engineering and technology
- Social justice warriors
Some of these aren't unique, but we're talking early, early 2000s for many of these things.
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…
> created a place that changed the internet permanently. Not in a particularly positive way. It seems like every truly awful person I've interacted with online has roots back to SA.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Best put. I'm not sure if younger people these days can imagine just how anonymous the internet was then. It had its advantages and disadvantages. Although I'd still rather live in the future of that world than our current identity-everywhere one.
> can imagine just how anonymous the internet was then. It wasn't that anonymous on SA though. Once you paid your :tenbux: then the site admins (incl. Lowtax) had your PII, assuming you used your own credit-card, ofc. I don't recall Lowtax et al. ever doxxed any of their own forum patrons, at least not any in good-standing, but I assume fear from the possibility of being doxxed for being an asshat on the forums kept…
You weren't anonymous on SA in the sense that law enforcement couldn't find out who you were, or whatever, unless you used a burner credit card and... never used your own wifi, or whatever.
But you were anonymous in the "Google search results" sense that nobody was expected to publicly share their real names or faces, and what you posted on SA and its ilk didn't necessarily follow you around for the rest of your life.