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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

#281

Post by vkou »

Apocryphon wrote: post #35
vkou wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The influence of CTH on contemporary American politics is similar in scope to that of a fly farting into a hurricane. A few people around the fringe breathe it, a portion of the left is sympathetic to it, but it has not managed to perform an insane coup on one of the two mainstream political parties, or have its ideas overtake an entire category of mass media (AM radio). The democratic machine is proving rather resis…

I wonder how much of the Bernie Sanders phenomenon was bolstered by Chapo and extremely online figures inspired by Chapo. Obviously, that's not to say that the Squad nor the post-2016 DSA surge owe anything to them, but they likely contributed towards the popularizing of the left to a certain younger extremely online audience. > but it has not managed to perform an insane coup on one of the two mainstream political p…

I'm not talking about 2016, I'm talking about the crazy shit that has happened since then - most specifically in the tail end of 2020, where instead of dropping Trump like the bad acid trip that he was, much of the Republican party doubled down on qanonsense.

As for Sanders, he didn't win, he hasn't taken over half the Democratic party, and the people in charge aren't even paying lip service to his platform.

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

#282

Post by bigbillheck »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #181
prvc wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>confirmed his treatment of me was Domestic Violence Wording suggests that adopting an expansive definition of the term (which has undergone substantial concept-creep) was necessary in order for it to have applied to her allegations.

"Concept creep" is interesting — is there an old and new concept of domestic violence?

The old concept was 'it doesn't exist, and if it does it wasn't the husband's fault'

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

#283

Post by Apocryphon »

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…

I think it is important to remember that while SA has become normalized as a community over time, more Reddit than 4chan, at its heart it was not simply a nerd community but a community for nerds to mock other nerds. Trolling and aggression was honed at SA. In many ways it was a bigger and broader successor to alt.tasteless and other shock sites. It definitely amplified the culture of snark and misanthropy in nerd culture.

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

#284

Post by bigbillheck »

extortionist wrote: post #12

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--…

I think the success of Something Awful is, by and large, despite Lowtax, and not because of him.

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

#285

Post by aweiland »

superkuh wrote: post #207
praxxis wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean while we're talking about the legacy of Tribes and SA and "old internet" culture we need to shout out a certain dancing gherkin wearing a pink inventory as a hat. (hi Nexty, it's ParadoX)

Hey guys. Don't just reminisce about Starsiege: Tribes, pick it up again (if you ever stopped playing). The community master servers and a couple dozen servers are still up. It's active with pick-up games on Fri+weekends. Join us! http://playt1.com/

holy crap, I had no idea this existed

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

#286

Post by Apocryphon »

vkou wrote: post #281
Apocryphon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of the Bernie Sanders phenomenon was bolstered by Chapo and extremely online figures inspired by Chapo. Obviously, that's not to say that the Squad nor the post-2016 DSA surge owe anything to them, but they likely contributed towards the popularizing of the left to a certain younger extremely online audience. > but it has not managed to perform an insane coup on one of the two mainstream political p…

I'm not talking about 2016, I'm talking about the crazy shit that has happened since then - most specifically in the tail end of 2020, where instead of dropping Trump like the bad acid trip that he was, much of the Republican party doubled down on qanonsense. As for Sanders, he didn't win, he hasn't taken over half the Democratic party, and the people in charge aren't even paying lip service to his platform.

Without getting too off-topic, I’d argue that the GOP has always been more flexible towards embracing ideological extremism than the Democratic Party has, and this trend has existed since Barry Goldwater at least.

But back to SA culture and its innumerable offshoots and bastards: even if Chapo has comparatively less actual political influence than say Q did (someone posting on a 4chan offshoot), the dirtbag left subculture the podcast spawned is still of internet historical value, in the same way Anonynous (a 4chan hacker collective) is historically significant despite Anon having been dismantled by the security state since the mid-2010s.

Oh, and on that note- perhaps that means 4chan had some influence on the Occupy movement, not as a prime mover but certainly one of the groups participating in it. And while Occupy is long gone, it had its important moment, once.

On the flipside, later on 4chan was one of the major staging grounds for Gamergate.

At some point 4chan’s actions are its members’ own with no connection to SA, but without SA, there would be no 4chan, and the people who acted within it would’ve been redistributed elsewhere.

The hand of Lowtax moves through history like a dumb idiot god, but it does move.

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

#287

Post by everdrive »

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…

> There's a reason human nature is to criticize and focus on flaws - that's how progress is made.

This may lead to progress, but I don’t believe this is WHY we do this. People are moralizing creatures. Much like we are “programmed” to recognize faces, (even when they’re not there) so too are we programmed to see issues in moral terms. Once you start paying attention to what people say, this conclusion is almost unavoidable: often discussion will never get into the details of things, but simply focus on the question of whether something is “good” or “bad.” (Other times it will focus on who is to “blame,” and who is the “victim.”)

Hopefully my tone hasn’t come off too harsh, since evaluating moral claims is one of the most fundamental things which make us human. Like all those other traits though, sometimes we focus on it too much, or else can’t see past the moral part of the argument.

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

#288

Post by namelessoracle »

There seems to be some kind of weird cult thing that goes on in nerd spaces that always involves a person with major personal problems that manages to assemble a cult of personality around themself and that cult becomes the primary means by which they support themselves. Eventually the members rebel in a coup like fashion after one of the chief henchmen who has built their own coalition see their opportunity, and either splinter off with loyalists vs rebels becoming a new fashion, or the coup attempt being successful and the space being taken over. (with new management basically acting the same as old management)

You see this play out in things as pedestrian as comic book shops. The comic book shop owner doesnt display anything resembling good business sense, but they have a coterie of people who support their business out of a sense of community and do stuff to help keep the business afloat where it would otherwise fail. Eventually someone (usually someone they know fairly well) takes a chunk of his cult and opens a new comic book shop while exposing all the horrible social abuses the old owner used to heap on people on the community space they owned.

This pattern repeats over and over in these kind of social spaces.

Maybe this happens in all social spaces that are owned by a specific person (like churches, comedy clubs, concert venues) too and I just dont see that part of the world.

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

#289

Post by georgeecollins »

superkuh wrote: post #207
praxxis wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean while we're talking about the legacy of Tribes and SA and "old internet" culture we need to shout out a certain dancing gherkin wearing a pink inventory as a hat. (hi Nexty, it's ParadoX)

Hey guys. Don't just reminisce about Starsiege: Tribes, pick it up again (if you ever stopped playing). The community master servers and a couple dozen servers are still up. It's active with pick-up games on Fri+weekends. Join us! http://playt1.com/

What a great game!!

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

#290

Post by Apocryphon »

namelessoracle wrote: post #288

There seems to be some kind of weird cult thing that goes on in nerd spaces that always involves a person with major personal problems that manages to assemble a cult of personality around themself and that cult becomes the primary means by which they support themselves. Eventually the members rebel in a coup like fashion after one of the chief henchmen who has built their own coalition see their opportunity, and eit…

Perhaps the same could be said of all societies
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