Something Awful, a Cornerstone of Internet Culture, Is Under New Ownership | Hacker News Reader

Something Awful, a Cornerstone of Internet Culture, Is Under New Ownership

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54 pointselsewhen22 comments

Kyanka should have sold SA at least 15 years ago.

For real. The ebaumsworld guy did it and made out like a bandit (millions of dollars if I recall correct)

I’m honestly surprised something awful is still around at all. I thought it’d faded out years ago.

Odd anecdote: When WoW classic was re-released in 2019, Lowtax himself (from the SA "Goon Squad" guild) killed me in the game with a Warrior character that was 20 levels higher than mine. Which even on a PvP server, relatively few numbers of people actually do these days (especially if they are grown men). Doesn't take much of a man to fight someone who is defenseless, whether it's virtual or the real world.

FWIW, I thought it was funny at the time when it happened in the game, but not so funny now after hearing of the allegations and feeling like this guy actually has serious issues.

That’s life on a PvP server

As someone who actually runs a private PvP server, I think your drive-by reply missed the point I was making there.

What allegations?

> FWIW, I thought it was funny at the time when it happened in the game, but not so funny now after hearing of the allegations and feeling like this guy actually has serious issues.

Not sure how you're insinuating there's a causal relation between these two facts.

I'm not surprised the former happened. I mean, if you look at Goonswarm (which originated from SA) and realize its a big bully guild in EVE Online, then I am not surprised their leader did some ganking in WoW.

What is the cultural significance of the site? I've been there probably a few times but always via a link.

The SA forums begat the meme culture of 4chan and early Reddit, which are now the clear precursors to things like TikTok.

They were also the first, as far as I know, to pioneer the concept of video game "let's plays" aka watching others play video games with commentary for fun. On the English side of the Internet. Probably would have happened organically without them anyways but just saying.

This site has a long history much of which was not available to the main users.

Maybe one day that story can be told.

Can you elaborate a bit what do you mean?

I’m guessing they’re either referring to the unbelievably gigantic number of threads making it impossible to find the important and notable ones, or they’re referring to the fact that significant forums on the site have been closed down and either deleted or hidden.

I was active on SA from 2004 to 2010, and at one point I was a contractor who worked on the forum code. I was also an admin for a short period. Having been so immersed in the forums for so long, it blows my mind to think that so much internet culture originated on SA. They basically invented the now hugely popular meme format, though they were called image macros then. “tl;dr” and “pro tip” originated there. 4chan was a spin-off forum from their anime forum. I’m sure there’s more I’ve missed.

The allegations in the article against Lowtax are disturbing to say the least.

Lobster guy?!

No. :)

I’ll leave it up to you to guess, but I’d rather not advertise it publicly here.

No sweat, didn’t mean to doxx you. Just had the lobster avatar pop into my head :)

Why did the site never get a decent search?

Any interesting tidbits about the code? much has been made about how awful it was

Why not tell it now, if you know it?

The world is not ready; the world will silence the messenger.

I'm not sure if this is some attempt to sound cool and mysterious, but if so making vague comments that do not contribute to the discussion here is not the way to go about it.

Aside from the current Lowtax domestic abuse / being digitally tarred and feathered business, there were the Aaatrek and Shmorky incidents, that guy who shot a couple of people over pumpkin vandalism, and so on. Literally no one would be surprised if there was more weird stuff going on behind the scenes. If you have some information (and proof) you should just post it.

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