There was a lot of well-founded animosity towards SomethingAwful in the early days of 4chan. How could you respect anybody who paid money to talk to people online? It was so contrary to the spirit of the internet.
SA's brand of snarky balding catfather humour lives on in so many facets of culture, and they all suck hard. Most of Twitter and Reddit were colonised by it. Almost all garbage American comedy seems tinged by it too. Looking past the hysterical headlines about 4chan, SA may have ultimately been the bigger setback to online culture.