Hubbry Logo
Something AwfulSomething AwfulMain
Open search
Something Awful
Community hub
Something Awful
logo
7 pages, 0 posts
0 subscribers
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Something Awful
Something Awful
Something Awful
View on Wikipedia
from Wikipedia

Something Awful (SA) is an American comedy website hosting content including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka in 1999 as a largely personal website, but as it grew, so did its contributors and content. The website has helped to perpetuate various Internet phenomena,[1][2][3] and it has been cited as a significant influence on Internet culture.[4] In 2018, Gizmodo named it in their list of the 100 websites that "shaped the internet".[5]

Key Information

The website has been involved in a number of events. These include a conflict with the Spam Prevention Early Warning System, a Hurricane Katrina relief fund being caught in PayPal's red tape,[6] an exhibition boxing match between Kyanka and the filmmaker Uwe Boll, and the creation of the Slender Man.

History

[edit]

Something Awful was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka.[7] Kyanka started Something Awful several months before leaving his previous job, after using his "Cranky Steve" persona to write a comedic website update deriding the attitude and work performance of a fellow Planet Quake administrator. He moved the "Cranky Steve" personality he had created to the Something Awful site in 1999.[8] In the years immediately following Something Awful's launch, several sponsors, including GameFan and eFront, failed to compensate Kyanka as promised for advertising on the site.[9][10]

In 2001, the site began charging 10 dollars for accounts with forum access (which was approximately $17.76 in 2024 dollars, although an account still costs $10.00 as of 2025).[11] Only members can post messages or threads; to encourage new registrations, the forums are only intermittently viewable by unregistered users. The site and forums draw continuous income from fees for new accounts, forum upgrades such as custom avatars and access to the forum archives and search features, and merchandise sales.[11]

On October 9, 2020, following a backlash from the community in response to allegations that Kyanka was a domestic abuser,[12] Kyanka sold Something Awful to a fifteen-year member and moderator known under the pseudonym of Jeffrey of YOSPOS.[12] Following its sale, Kyanka was banned from Something Awful on March 23, 2021.[13][non-primary source needed] On November 9, 2021, Kyanka died by suicide.[14]

Spam Prevention Early Warning System

[edit]

On July 20, 2003, the spam filtering organization Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS) added an entire class-B subnet with the Cogent ISP to their spammer list, since Cogent was hosting a known spammer that SPEWS found difficult to block.[citation needed] Something Awful was added to the list in the process, disrupting its ability to communicate with its customers who were using SPEWS. Upon appeal, SPEWS initially refused to delist SA. The Something Awful administrators responded by telling their users to post their support in the Usenet newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.blocklisting. However, that group and news.admin.net-abuse.email were flooded with off-topic posts and trolls from Something Awful users, incensing SPEWS advocates. The SA administrators claimed that SPEWS was attempting to hack the Something Awful server. Forum users responded by threatening to perform a distributed denial-of-service attack on SPEWS, although this type of behavior was strongly discouraged by Kyanka and assistant editor Zack Parsons.[15]

GreenMeat Body Armor charity drive

[edit]

Something Awful forum user GreenMeat deployed to Iraq in 2004, despite his unit not having hard body armor. SA forum users, along with help from Fark users, raised over $20,000 to buy body armor, plate carriers, and assorted care packages for a group of 31 soldiers.[16]

Hurricane Katrina charity

[edit]

As Something Awful's servers were located in New Orleans, the site temporarily went offline in August 2005 during the flooding from Hurricane Katrina. After the site was brought to a semi-functional state, Kyanka set up a link to a PayPal account where people could donate money to the survivors of the hurricane via the Red Cross. Kyanka put in $3,000 of his own money,[17] and promised to give some free merchandise to anyone who donated more than $10.[citation needed] PayPal froze the donation account, then stated that they would unfreeze the account once it was provided with proof of shipping from aggrieved buyers. Due to the nature of the collection, there were no actual "buyers", and it was impossible to provide proof of shipping for donation.[18] Eventually, Kyanka contacted a customer service representative over the phone, and asked to have PayPal donate all of the money to the American Red Cross. However, he was told that PayPal would only give the money to United Way of America due to their business affiliation; Kyanka initially agreed, but after receiving several emails from readers detailing alleged corruption and inefficiency within United Way, he changed his mind and told PayPal to refund all of the money to the individual donors. PayPal refunded the money, but did not refund exchange and handling fees for international donors.[17]

Shooting deaths

[edit]

In 2005, William Freund sought advice in the Something Awful gun subforum about purchasing Hevi-Shot brand ammunition[19] several days before embarking on a "shooting rampage", during which he killed two people before taking his own life. Freund had stated in the thread, which was closed before the killing spree, along with his ability to post comments being revoked, that he intended to use the ammunition to defend his Halloween pumpkins from vandals.[20]

Uwe Boll fight

[edit]
Further information: Uwe Boll § Boxing matches

In June 2006, Kyanka accepted an open challenge from German movie director Uwe Boll, who had offered to fight critics of his movies in a series of ten-round boxing matches. Something Awful had posted a humorous review that was critical of one of his films.[21][22] The event took place in Vancouver, Canada, on September 23, 2006; after being knocked down several times and eventually forfeiting the fight in the first round, Kyanka claimed that he had been told by Boll, a trained amateur boxer, that the fight would be just for show. To that effect, Kyanka purportedly acted like a silent film comedy character during the fight rather than seriously attempting to fight Uwe Boll.[23]

Death of Sean Smith

[edit]

Sean Smith, a US Foreign Service Information Management Officer, as well as a Something Awful forum moderator and leading member of the Goonswarm Federation alliance (which originated in part from the Something Awful forums) in the video game Eve Online, was killed in the 2012 Benghazi attack on September 11, 2012. Eve Online players paid respect to Smith by renaming in-game space stations after him.[24]

Site content

[edit]

The frontpage article series Golan the Insatiable is the basis of an animated series of the same name that premiered on Animation Domination on Fox on July 27, 2013.[25]

In 2014, the American Folklife Center announced that Something Awful was one of the sites it would be archiving as part of its efforts to compile a history of digital culture.[26]

Forums

[edit]

The site is home to a collection of Internet forums running a highly customized version of vBulletin, charging a one-time registration fee of US$9.95 for posting privileges and full access to the forums, with additional user account and forum features available for purchase at prices ranging from US$4.95 to US$29.95.[27]

The forums have spread several Internet memes, such as "all your base are belong to us".[2] Additionally, image macros originated on the site in 2001, originally as a vBulletin feature introduced by Kyanka.[28] The forum's users refer to themselves as "Goons". A weekly activity is "Photoshop Phriday", where users will modify existing images to create parodies through the use of image-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop.[29] The website also highlights some of what its administrators believe to be exceptional forum threads in the Comedy Goldmine feature.[30] A forum member, moot, also launched 4chan after hentai was banned,[31][32] and the Let's Play phenomenon originated in posts on the Something Awful forums.

The "Groverhaus" internet meme originated with a 2006 thread by the forum moderator "Grover", documenting the building process of a do it yourself extension to his house, which has been mocked online for its poor design and execution.[33][34][35] The phrase "load-bearing drywall" was coined in response to the thread.[36]

Many originators of "Weird Twitter", including dril, originally posted in Something Awful's Fuck You and Die forum.[37] The Slender Man urban legend was created in a 2009 thread in the Something Awful forum.[38] The 2015 video game Dropsy originated as a 2008 CYOA thread on the Something Awful forums.[39]

See also

[edit]

Further reading

[edit]

References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Something Awful

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
Something Awful is an American comedy website and founded in 1999 by "Lowtax" Kyanka as a platform for satirical content and discussion. Featuring a motto of "The makes you stupid," the site initially offered humor articles, game reviews, and flash animations but gained prominence through its paid-access forums, including the irreverent "Fuck You And Die" section and recurring Photoshop editing contests known as Photoshop Phriday. The forums cultivated a tight-knit community of registered users, dubbed "goons," who influenced early 2000s web culture by pioneering interactive formats such as "Let's Play" video game walkthroughs and fostering experimental image manipulation and meme prototyping that predated and informed anonymous boards like 4chan. Something Awful's emphasis on curated absurdity and community-driven content positioned it as a precursor to modern internet subcultures, with its output often archived and revisited for historical significance in digital humor. Despite its cultural impact, the site encountered challenges in later years, including operational shifts following Kyanka's removal from administration in 2020 amid personal conduct issues and his subsequent death by suicide in 2021 at age 45, after which volunteer moderators assumed control to sustain the forums. As of 2023, Something Awful remains active with ongoing discussions and preservation efforts for its visual archives, maintaining a niche but enduring presence in online communities.

Founding and Early Development

Inception as a Personal Blog (1999)

Something Awful originated in 1999 when "Lowtax" Kyanka registered the domain somethingawful.com to host a personal blog of satirical commentary on emerging phenomena. Kyanka, a and who had operated an earlier personal site called RK Central on .com since 1996, adopted "Something Awful" as the site's name from a recurring he used to describe online absurdities and mediocrity. The blog's initial content consisted primarily of Kyanka's solo-authored entries, blending cynical humor with critiques of video games, services, and optimism. Examples included writings on Quake 2 gameplay flaws, fabricated pranks depicting awkward cyber-interactions, and parodies of online subcultures like enthusiasts. Specific posts from late 1999, such as "Hello, Welcome to " published on December 23, showcased scripted dialogues mocking naive users' attempts at digital socializing. Kyanka's tone emphasized the 's potential for banality and irritation, as he later stated: "I predicted that the would be shitty back in 1999." This approach drew from his experiences in gaming communities and early web experimentation, positioning the as a contrarian voice against hype surrounding tools like and multiplayer titles such as . By year's end, entries like the December 29 "Infamous Cleric Petition" extended this satire to in-game exploits and player behaviors in MMORPGs. At , the site lacked forums or , functioning solely as Kyanka's outlet for personal essays that highlighted causal links between technological adoption and social folly, without reliance on external validation or polished production. This foundational phase established a template for irreverent, evidence-based mockery rooted in observed online interactions, predating the site's expansion into collaborative features.

Emergence of Forums and Goon Culture (1999–2001)

In 1999, , known online as Lowtax, launched Something Awful as a featuring cynical commentary on , parodies, and reviews of odd online phenomena, drawing from his earlier Tripod-hosted site RK Central. By 2000, the site expanded to include forums as an extension of the front-page content, initially drawing a modest of a few hundred users who engaged in discussions mirroring the blog's irreverent tone. This shift enabled real-time interaction, with threads focusing on mocking web absurdities, early contests, and shared critiques of digital trends, laying the groundwork for a participatory model distinct from passive blog reading. The forums' user base, soon self-identified as "goons," cultivated a rooted in ironic detachment, rapid-fire wit, and communal gatekeeping against perceived outsiders, with the term originating from an early derogatory label in a general discussion thread that the group reclaimed as an . Goon interactions emphasized brevity, sarcasm, and avoidance of earnestness, often channeling wars into dedicated subforums like Fuck You and Die (FYAD) to segregate vitriol from broader content. This period saw the forums grow to thousands of active participants by late 2001, fostering innovations such as collaborative and precursors, while unpaid registration kept the community accessible yet prone to trolling influxes. Goon culture during these years prized self-deprecating humor and skepticism toward hype-driven web fads, with users bonding over shared disdain for elements like excessive pranks or amateur , as highlighted in site features. Lowtax moderated lightly to preserve the chaotic energy, attributing the site's appeal to its unpolished authenticity amid the dot-com era's optimism. By 2001's end, the forums had solidified Something Awful's reputation as a hub for subversive discourse, influencing subsequent subcultures through exported and raiding tactics, though still operating without the paid membership barrier introduced later.

Early Innovations in Web Humor (2000–2002)

During 2000–2002, Something Awful pioneered interactive web humor through forum-driven contests and collaborative content creation, shifting from static blog posts to user-generated that emphasized absurdity and digital editing. The Photoshop Phriday feature, active by 2000, invited registered users to submit themed image manipulations using , often parodying commercial ads, celebrities, or mundane objects with grotesque or ironic alterations; entries were curated weekly on the front page, rewarding the most inventive submissions and establishing a model for crowdsourced visual that predated broader ecosystems. This format highlighted early adoption of accessible image-editing software for humorous ends, with themes like altered collectible plates or phake video games drawing hundreds of contributions per contest by 2002. The forums, especially the FYAD (Fuck You and Die) subforum, innovated collective trolling and incubation, where users dissected pop culture flaws in real-time threads, amplifying ironic detachment and in-joke escalation. A seminal example was the popularization of the "All your base are belong to us" , derived from broken English in the 1989 Mega Drive game ; initially posted on Something Awful in 1998, it exploded in 2001 through forum-shared GIFs, remixed videos, and spam campaigns, marking one of the first instances of a phrase achieving cross-site virality via user remixing rather than top-down media. This reflected causal dynamics of early humor: low-barrier sharing tools enabled rapid iteration, turning niche references into self-replicating content without institutional gatekeeping. Other features underscored performative pranks as humor, such as 2000 ICQ prank archives logging deceptive chats with unsuspecting users, blending social engineering with transcribed to mock online naivety. Annual Awful Awards in 2000 further formalized community voting on lowlights, like worst websites or trends, institutionalizing ironic critique. These elements collectively advanced web humor by prioritizing empirical —verifiable via screenshots and logs—over polished narratives, influencing later platforms' reliance on user participation for viral escalation.

Core Content and Features

Photoshop Phriday and Image Manipulation Contests

Photoshop Phriday is a weekly contest on Something Awful in which registered forum users, referred to as "goons," submit digitally altered images based on a theme selected by site staff, typically involving parody or exaggeration of cultural, historical, or mundane subjects. The name combines "Photoshop," referencing Adobe's image editing software central to submissions, with "Phriday" as a deliberate misspelling of "Friday" to evoke the feature's end-of-week timing. Entries are compiled into online galleries, with standout works highlighted for their creativity, technical skill, or satirical edge, fostering a competitive environment that has generated thousands of images since its inception. The contest originated in the early 2000s amid the site's growing forum community, with archived editions dating to 2001, marking it as one of Something Awful's earliest structured humor features. Themes often draw from pop culture, such as reimagining origins or historical inaccuracies, encouraging manipulations that blend absurdity with precise editing techniques like , , and surreal additions. Staff curation ensures variety, with multi-part series for complex topics, and the format has persisted through site changes, including implementations in that restricted access to premium members. Beyond the flagship Photoshop Phriday, Something Awful forums have hosted numerous ad-hoc image manipulation contests within threads, often in subforums dedicated to visual humor or experimental editing. These include themed challenges like adding human arms to birds or creating "paranormal pictures" from stock photos, which in one 2009 instance spurred the collaborative invention of the internet horror figure through iterative edits turning ordinary images into eerie composites. Such contests emphasize community-driven escalation, where participants build on prior submissions, predating formalized "Photoshop battles" on later platforms and highlighting the site's role in pioneering competitive digital satire.

Feature Articles, Columns, and Serialized Content

Something Awful's feature articles section featured long-form content such as humorous essays, game reviews, and satirical pieces that expanded beyond the site's initial blog format of critiquing poorly designed websites. These articles, often written by pseudonymous contributors or site founder Richard Kyanka under the "Lowtax" handle, emphasized absurdism, irony, and critique of internet and pop culture phenomena, with publications dating back to at least 2000. For instance, a January 29, 2001, article titled "Storytime: He-Man and the ROCK WARRIORS!" presented a mock-narrative recapping a fictionalized episode of the He-Man cartoon, blending nostalgia with exaggerated parody. Columns within this category included recurring opinionated or advisory series, such as "," a satirical take on and advice formats that mocked human behaviors through an alien perspective, with episodes critiquing topics like species-specific idiocies. These columns maintained the site's contrarian tone, often deriding mainstream trends while encouraging reader engagement through forums, and were updated sporadically to align with contributor availability rather than strict schedules. Earlier examples included Kyanka's personal rants evolving into structured commentary on gaming and media, as seen in the January 8, 2000, review of Incite Gaming Magazine, which lambasted print media's irrelevance in the digital age. Serialized content appeared as multi-part features or episodic narratives, allowing for extended storytelling within the site's humorous framework. A notable example is "World War C: An Oral History of the Cobra War," published October 5, 2006, which fabricated an of lore through mock interviews, spanning multiple installments to build comedic escalation. Similarly, gaming impressions like "Anarchy Online: First Impressions" from June 6, 2001, used serialized updates to chronicle playtesting flaws and exploits, influencing early critiques of MMORPG design. These formats fostered discussion, with threads linking back to articles for goon input, though production waned post-2010 as forum activity overshadowed site updates.

Forum Structure and Specialized Subforums

The Something Awful forums operate on a hierarchical model, featuring parent categories that encompass multiple child subforums tailored to specific topics, with access primarily restricted to paid members—known as "goons"—following a one-time $10 registration implemented around to filter out low-quality participants and sustain the community. This , combined with internal user rankings like bronze, silver, and gold stars based on post count and tenure, influences visibility and moderation privileges across subforums. The structure emphasizes threaded discussions, where users post in ongoing topics, often with embedded images, links, and , fostering a mix of humor, , and unique to the site's ethos. At the core of the general discussion tier lies the General (GBS) subforum, established as the largest open forum for miscellaneous topics ranging from current events to personal anecdotes, designed to host substantive exchanges while benefiting from the redirection of elsewhere. Complementing GBS, the Fuck You And Die (FYAD) subforum—launched early in the forums' —served as a designated space for unfiltered flame wars, grotesque image dumps, and provocative trolling, effectively quarantining disruptive behavior to preserve order in other areas and encapsulating Something Awful's tolerance for boundary-pushing content. FYAD's raw, insider-oriented chaos influenced broader subcultures but drew criticism for enabling toxicity, leading to its eventual archival and restricted access by the late . Specialized subforums branch into niche domains, such as gaming under categories like "Let's Play," which originated in 2006 with threads featuring narrated gameplay of titles like Oregon Trail and evolved into a repository for user-generated video walkthroughs that popularized the format across platforms. Technology sections dissect hardware, software, and internet culture, while entertainment-focused areas include Awful Anime for dissecting Japanese animation series and threads tied to music critique under influences like "Your Band Sucks," a companion feature spawning forum debates on genres from rock to electronic. Other niches cover fashion mockery—echoing the site's Fashion SWAT columns—sports analysis, and creative outlets like Bring Your Own Read (BYOR) for curated link-sharing, each enforcing topic-specific rules to channel the community's snark into productive ridicule rather than aimless venting.

Charitable Activities and Community Responses

Spam Prevention and Early Tech Initiatives

Something Awful's forums, launched in late 1999, adopted a one-time $10 registration fee as an early barrier against spam and automated abuse, a measure rare among contemporaneous free-for-all discussion boards that often devolved into bot-filled chaos. This economic disincentive, combined with human verification during signup, significantly reduced unsolicited commercial postings and low-quality trolling from the outset, fostering a user base committed to the site's ironic humor ethos. By , as forum traffic grew, volunteer moderators—known as "goons"—enforced anti-spam policies through rapid thread pruning and user bans, maintaining post quality amid rising web-wide spam proliferation following the CAN-SPAM Act's 2003 enactment. In July 2003, Something Awful encountered external spam prevention challenges when its hosting IP range was blacklisted by the Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS), a volunteer-maintained database flagging ranges associated with spammers. The listing stemmed from a nearby IP used by a spam operator, not direct site activity, yet it disrupted SA's email operations and ignited backlash from users who viewed SPEWS as indiscriminately punitive, potentially collateral-damaging innocent hosts. Site founder and community members critiqued the system's opacity and error-proneness in an , 2003, front-page article titled "SPEWS is Love," which detailed failed delisting attempts and argued for more granular, evidence-based filtering to avoid overreach. This episode spurred Something Awful users to engage in broader anti-spam discourse, including influxes into Usenet's news.admin.net-abuse.email hierarchy to debate blacklisting methodologies and advocate for verifiable spam attribution over broad strokes. Such community-driven scrutiny contributed to early conversations on refining collaborative tools, predating widespread adoption of reputation-based systems like DNSBL refinements. While not a formal initiative, these responses underscored SA's role in highlighting causal pitfalls in nascent spam tech, such as false positives from IP proximity rather than behavioral evidence. Early technical efforts extended to forum infrastructure tweaks for resilience, including custom scripts for duplicate post detection and integration of basic rate-limiting by the early 2000s, which goons iteratively refined based on spam patterns observed in subforums like Technology. These ad-hoc innovations, shared informally among users, prefigured modern moderation aids and reflected a pragmatic, community-sourced approach to sustaining usability amid evolving threats like forum-hopping bots. No peer-reviewed metrics exist for their efficacy, but anecdotal forum archives indicate sustained low spam incidence relative to peers.

Charity Drives for Disasters and Health Causes

In response to , which devastated New Orleans and surrounding areas on August 29, 2005, Something Awful founder "Lowtax" Kyanka initiated an official donation drive to support relief efforts. The campaign, leveraging the site's community of registered users known as "goons," rapidly collected over $30,000 in contributions within hours, with Kyanka planning to match donations and provide merchandise incentives to donors. However, froze the account amid verification concerns, sparking public backlash and media coverage that highlighted tensions between online fundraising platforms and rapid-response charity efforts. Funds were ultimately redirected to established organizations such as the , allowing continued support for victims despite the interruption. Community-driven donation threads on Something Awful forums supplemented official drives for other disasters, including informal pledges and matches for events like the in , though these lacked centralized organization and verifiable totals from site leadership. For health causes, Something Awful's direct drives were less formalized but included promotional support for member wellness initiatives and awareness campaigns, such as humorous yet pointed critiques of major cancer charities that encouraged scrutiny of fund allocation efficacy. The site's coverage of marathons like , which raised millions for organizations including the Prevent Cancer Foundation, amplified community participation in funding through shared donation incentives and commentary. Forum discussions also vetted and recommended evidence-based health charities, prioritizing interventions with measurable impacts on disease prevention and treatment.

Political and Activist Engagements

Something Awful's political engagements centered on online satire, forum-based discourse, and moderation efforts against perceived extremism, rather than organized real-world campaigns or protests. The site's Photoshop Phriday contests frequently parodied political figures and events, such as the "Unlikely Political Campaigns" threads in April 2004 and January 2008, where forum users manipulated images to depict absurd electoral scenarios involving historical or fictional candidates. Similar efforts included "Political Cartoons" in February 2004 and ongoing iterations through 2025, critiquing media portrayals of elections and leaders via exaggerated visuals. These activities reflected the community's contrarian humor, targeting both major parties without formal advocacy. Forum subforums like Fuck You and Die (FYAD) hosted heated discussions on U.S. elections, , and cultural issues, often emphasizing irony and over endorsement of ideologies. Threads such as "Let us discuss (but not advocate for) against the " in January 2019 explicitly barred calls to action while dissecting tactics in historical contexts like anti-colonial struggles. This approach fostered a nihilistic critique of power structures, influencing broader political through exported memes and trolling styles, as analyzed in Dale Beran's 2019 book It Came from Something Awful, which traces SA's role in shaping anonymous online antagonism that later permeated platforms like . In response to cultural controversies, SA users positioned against movements associated with . During the 2014 Gamergate dispute, originating partly from a post on SA forums alleging ethical lapses in games journalism, the community largely aligned in opposition, with threads mocking participants as reactionary or misogynistic. Later, in January 2020, founder Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka shuttered FYAD after it became overrun with alt-right and Nazi-aligned posting, stating the subforum's toxicity had degraded into "nazi poo poo" that undermined the site's standards. Such moderation actions represented defensive engagements against ideological infiltration, though they coincided with declining activity amid internal scandals. Satirical articles, like "When Is It Okay to Call Someone a 'Nazi?'" in April 2017, further lampooned loose applications of labels in political debates. Overall, these efforts prioritized humorous subversion and boundary enforcement over structured activism, contributing to SA's reputation as a cradle of internet contrarianism.

Cultural Influence and Achievements

Origins of Key Internet Memes and Tropes

Something Awful's forums and editorial features served as incubators for numerous early internet memes, primarily through user-generated content in subforums like Fuck You And Die (FYAD) and weekly Photoshop Phriday contests, where members manipulated images to create absurd or satirical visuals. These activities amplified obscure references into widespread phenomena, often by exploiting poor translations, viral videos, or gaming mishaps shared among "goons"—the site's paid members known for their contrarian humor and coordinated posting raids on other online communities. The site's emphasis on mocking low-quality web content and fostering ironic detachment contributed to tropes like organized trolling, where goons would overwhelm rival forums with disruptive posts to highlight perceived absurdities. One of the earliest major memes popularized on Something Awful was "All Your Base Are Belong to Us," originating from a poorly translated in the 1992 Mega Drive port of the 1989 arcade game . In late 2000, forum users spotlighted the phrase during discussions of bad game localizations, leading to Photoshop Phriday entries superimposing it onto unrelated images, which proliferated across the internet by early 2001. This marked a template for memes, with goons creating variants that mocked authority or conquest themes, influencing later formats on sites like . The FYAD subforum also propelled viral videos into meme status, such as the 2004 "Numa Numa" clip of Gary Brolsma lip-syncing to O-Zone's "Dragostea Din Tei," which gained traction after being posted and dissected there for its earnest awkwardness. Similarly, Tay Zonday's "" (uploaded July 2007) exploded after goons highlighted its distinctive falsetto and conspiracy-laden lyrics, spawning parodies and references that peaked at over 100 million views by 2010. The 2005 video featuring ""—a player impulsively charging into battle, yelling the character's name—spread rapidly via Something Awful threads, becoming synonymous with reckless disruption in online gaming culture. Something Awful directly originated the trope in June 2009, when user Eric Knudsen (Victor Surge) posted two manipulated photos in a Photoshop thread depicting a faceless, suited figure stalking children in a park, captioning them with fabricated historical context. This sparked a genre of urban legends spread via forums, evolving into multimedia horror with games and films, though it later inspired real-world incidents due to its immersive mythology. Goon-driven trolling tactics, including "raids" on sites like or furry communities, codified early internet harassment tropes, emphasizing feigned outrage and escalation for humorous effect among insiders. These elements collectively shaped a contrarian ethos that prioritized deconstructing pop culture over affirmation, influencing broader web humor until the mid-2010s.

Impact on Gaming Journalism and Let's Plays

The Something Awful forums' games subforum pioneered the Let's Play format in 2006, when users began posting sequential screenshots of gameplay accompanied by running commentary, often highlighting flaws in obscure or poorly designed titles. This interactive style of documenting playthroughs, initially text-based, evolved into a dedicated subforum that formalized rules for submissions, emphasizing narrative engagement and critique over mere walkthroughs. The format's origins are traced to threads on games like The Oregon Trail, where participants shared humorous, annotated progress, laying the groundwork for video-based iterations. A landmark example was user Slowbeef's April 2007 Let's Play of the adventure game Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh, which popularized screenshot-driven storytelling with sarcastic narration, drawing thousands of views and inspiring imitators within the community. The subforum's influence extended to video platforms, as early adopters transitioned to YouTube, where Let's Plays proliferated into a major content genre by the late 2000s, generating millions of views and spawning careers for creators like those behind The Angry Video Game Nerd series through similar critical gameplay dissection. Academic analysis of over 14 years of top threads confirms the subforum's role in fostering diverse engagement, from narrative LPs to screenshot archives, which shaped community-driven gaming media beyond traditional reviews. In gaming journalism, Something Awful's feature articles and columns offered an alternative to mainstream outlets, delivering irreverent reviews and critiques that exposed hype-driven coverage and subpar writing in sites like GameSpot. Pieces such as the 2005 roundup of "The Five Worst Gaming Articles," which lambasted overly positive or poorly reasoned reviews of titles like Black & White 2, highlighted systemic issues like undisclosed incentives and lack of rigor, influencing a generation of online commentators to prioritize unfiltered analysis. Similarly, the 2006 "New Games Journalism" article satirized emerging trends in subjective, lifestyle-oriented reporting, underscoring Something Awful's contrarian stance that prefigured broader skepticism toward industry collusion revealed in events like the 2014 Gamergate controversy. These efforts, rooted in forum-driven discourse, contributed to a shift where enthusiast communities demanded transparency and depth, indirectly pressuring professional journalism to address biases in scoring and narrative framing.

Shaping Early Internet Troll Culture and Contrarianism

Something Awful's forums, particularly the "Fuck You And Die" (FYAD) subforum established in the early 2000s, served as a primary incubator for early internet trolling by normalizing coordinated disruptions and ironic cruelty for entertainment value, often termed "lulz." FYAD began as a space for flame wars but evolved into an invite-only hub where users, known as "goons," refined techniques like site invasions and persona-based pranks, such as early ICQ trolling campaigns documented in 1999-2000 site features. This approach emphasized performative nihilism over genuine malice, influencing subsequent platforms; for instance, 4chan's founder, Christopher "moot" Poole, was a former SA goon who launched the site in 2003 after facing bans for excessive raiding. Goons targeted "lolcows"—individuals or groups milked for dramatic reactions—fostering a culture where provocation was gamified, as seen in organized troll raids on sites like LiveJournal communities. The site's , encapsulated in its "The makes you stupid" adopted around 1999, rejected the era's prevailing about connectivity by prioritizing cynical deconstructions of pop culture, media hype, and earnest fandoms. Forum rules and moderation discouraged repetitive memes or unoriginal content, enforcing a standard of subversive, context-specific wit that antagonized mainstream narratives, such as mocking enthusiasts or corporate gaming trends through snarky feature articles and threads. This bred a toward uncritical enthusiasm, with goons cultivating ironic detachment—treating convictions as targets for ridicule—to counter perceived naivety, a dynamic that prefigured broader in humor sites and . By the mid-2000s, SA's peak membership exceeded 197,000 paid users, amplifying these traits through serialized content like "Roamin' Dad" that satirized suburban normalcy, solidifying its role in embedding as a defensive posture against cultural conformity.

Controversies and Criticisms

Moderation Failures and Toxic Community Dynamics

Something Awful's moderation relied on a $10 entry fee to deter casual trolls, supplemented by rules prohibiting overt illegal content but permitting caustic humor and as community norms. This approach, while initially curbing spam, failed to consistently suppress persistent offenders, as evidenced by users creating dozens of accounts to evade bans, and allowed subforums like Fuck You and Die (FYAD) to foster exclusivity through unfunny post deletions and aggressive banter. In practice, enforcement was whimsical and inconsistent, with founder personally banning disliked users while tolerating bizarre aggression in specialized boards, contributing to a culture where served as both and informal . The community's "goons"—paying members—engaged in organized harassment campaigns, including brigading targets with profane messages, griefing in online games like via the Goonswarm alliance, and real-world escalations such as hacking a deceased teenager's MyDeathSpace memorial page in 2008, followed by calls to his parents and visits to his grave. Other incidents involved flooding a 12-year-old creator with 7,500 harassing messages in January 2009 and targeting sufferers' sites with seizure-inducing flashing GIFs in 2008 to assert dominance over anonymous trolling identities. Subforums like Helldump amplified doxxing of grudges, turning internal disputes into public exposures, while FYAD's freewheeling insults devolved into broader toxicity, including death threats against administrators and their families that drove Kyanka offline in 2005. Lax oversight in these spaces normalized such behaviors, with one banned user's later commission of a 2007 underscoring gaps in addressing escalating threats. These dynamics culminated in moderation breakdowns, such as FYAD's permanent closure on , 2020, after infestation by Nazi sympathizers posting swastikas, iron crosses, and Hitler threads, which administrators deemed irredeemable despite prior tolerance of the board's "worst impulses." The incident highlighted systemic failures to curb ideological amid declining membership, as the forum's paywall-insulated echo chambers prioritized contrarian edginess over proactive , breeding resentment and spillover to unmoderated sites like . Earlier efforts, like promoting in a 2004 moderator essay, further eroded boundaries, enabling unchecked that outpaced rule enforcement.

Leadership Scandals Involving Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka

In early 2020, Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka faced allegations of domestic assault from his second wife, stemming from an incident reported to police on February 7, 2020, in Missouri. The accusation prompted significant internal unrest within the Something Awful community, with forum users publicly demanding accountability and threatening mass exodus if Kyanka did not step down. These claims were amplified by posts from affected individuals, including references to prior patterns of behavior toward ex-partners, though Kyanka denied the severity of the allegations and attributed some community outrage to broader cultural pressures around domestic violence reporting. Legal proceedings culminated on October 27, 2020, when Kyanka pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disturbing the peace, receiving a fine of $164.50, while the charge was dropped. Despite the legal resolution short of conviction for , the eroded trust among long-time members, who cited it as emblematic of unchecked flaws, including inconsistent and personal conduct unbecoming of the site's founder. This backlash intensified forum-wide boycotts and subscription cancellations, pressuring Kyanka to relinquish control. On October 9, 2020, amid the escalating crisis, Kyanka sold Something Awful to longtime administrator Jeffrey of YOSPOS for a nominal fee, effectively ending his direct role. Post-sale, he was banned from the forums, a move framed by new ownership as necessary to restore community standards. Critics within the community argued the incident exposed systemic failures in Kyanka's oversight, where personal scandals intertwined with the site's tolerance for edgy content, ultimately contributing to its reputational decline. Supporters, however, viewed the response as disproportionate, noting the lack of conviction and Kyanka's historical contributions to , though of the allegations' veracity remained contested beyond initial police reports.

Associations with Violence, Harassment, and Extremism

Something Awful's user base, self-identified as "goons," engaged in coordinated online harassment campaigns known as brigading, where members collectively targeted individuals, websites, or communities with disruptive posts, spam, and doxxing to mock or punish perceived transgressors. These activities were particularly prevalent in subforums like Fuck You And Die (FYAD), which fostered a culture of contrarian trolling and escalation against outsiders. Documented examples include goons organizing raids on rival forums during internet feuds, such as clashes with 4chan users amid the 2014 Gamergate controversy, where SA participants contributed to mutual harassment across platforms. While physical violence directly attributable to Something Awful remains undocumented in major incidents, the forum's tolerance for extreme rhetoric occasionally blurred into threats, with users reporting real-world fear from doxxing campaigns that exposed personal information. Some harassment tactics migrated to successor sites like Kiwi Farms, founded by former SA users in 2013, which amplified doxxing and stalking against targets including transgender individuals and online personalities, though SA moderators banned overt advocacy of such extremes. No verified swatting incidents—false emergency calls prompting armed police responses—have been credibly linked to SA goons, distinguishing it from later anonymous boards. Associations with extremism stem primarily from SA's role in pioneering troll culture, which influenced ironic meme-making that evolved into alt-right signaling on platforms like , as analyzed in Dale Beran's 2019 book It Came from Something Awful. Beran argues this subculture's nihilistic humor inadvertently memed support for during the 2016 election, blending irony with far-right appeals, though SA itself maintained heavier moderation against overt ideology and leaned toward progressive contrarianism. Unlike unmoderated sites, SA discouraged white supremacist or neo-Nazi content, but its alumni populated early anonymous boards where such views proliferated. Internal threads occasionally debated without endorsement, reflecting the forum's edgy but non-advocacy stance.

Decline, Transitions, and Current State

Factors Contributing to Membership and Activity Drop-off (Mid-2000s Onward)

The emergence of free, accessible alternatives like , launched in 2005, and , established in 2003 by a former Something Awful user, significantly diverted users seeking similar humor, memes, and discussion without subscription barriers. These platforms offered anonymity on and upvote-driven aggregation on , attracting participants alienated by Something Awful's requiring $10 annual fees for full forum access since the early , which limited casual engagement and growth. Something Awful's insular subforums, such as FYAD (Fuck You And Die), fostered exclusivity through strict moderation and in-jokes that deterred newcomers, exacerbating a sense of stagnation as core members aged and departed for professional obligations around the mid-2000s. Founder "Lowtax" Kyanka's withdrawal from active forum moderation in 2005, prompted by death threats, contributed to administrative burnout and reduced oversight, allowing rising internal hostility amid broader internet culture wars. The proliferation of smartphones from the late 2000s onward further eroded forum-based activity, as users migrated to mobile-optimized social media like (2006) and , which prioritized real-time feeds over threaded discussions and lacked Something Awful's structured, rule-enforced environment. Peak activity, centered in the early to mid-2000s, waned as these shifts fragmented the user base, with interviewees noting a progressive meaner tone and departure of early contributors.

Ownership Changes and Forum Closures (2020)

In June 2020, Something Awful's founder and owner, "Lowtax" Kyanka, faced renewed allegations of stemming from an incident on June 22, 2020, which prompted a swift backlash from the site's moderators and long-time members. These claims echoed prior accusations against Kyanka, exacerbating community discontent over his management, including the site's financial struggles and inconsistent moderation. By June 23-24, moderators initiated a revolt, demanding Kyanka's removal to preserve the forum's viability amid fears of total shutdown due to his personal issues and neglect. On June 25, 2020, Kyanka agreed to transfer all assets of Something Awful LLC to Jeffrey of YOSPOS, a 15-year site veteran and moderator, though no formal contract was immediately signed, leading to operational uncertainty. This preliminary handover was driven by community pressure rather than a commercial sale, with moderators stepping in to maintain forum functionality during the transition; subforums experienced intermittent access issues but did not fully close at this stage. The Something Awful store was taken offline, halting new paid registrations essential for full forum access, which further strained membership retention. Earlier in the year, on January 2020, the prominent "Fuck You and Die" (FYAD) subforum was shuttered by Kyanka due to an influx of extremist content, including Nazi-related posts, marking a notable closure amid broader moderation failures; it was reopened by late June 2020 under moderator oversight post-allegations. Delays in finalizing the asset transfer persisted through the summer, with Kyanka's erratic behavior, including public meltdowns, complicating the process. The ownership fully changed hands by early October 2020, when Kyanka announced the sale to Jeffrey of YOSPOS on October 9 via , citing personal health and financial burdens as factors, though community revolt was the . No evidence indicates a complete forum closure during this period; instead, operations continued under interim moderator control, with the site avoiding total shutdown through collective member efforts to and sustain content. Kyanka later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disturbing the on October 27, 2020, related to the June incident, underscoring the legal ramifications that sealed his exit. Under new ownership, the forums stabilized without further major closures, though the paid model limited growth.

Post-Kyanka Era and Ongoing Operations (2021–Present)

Following Richard Kyanka's suicide on November 9, 2021, Something Awful continued operations under the ownership of Jeffrey of YOSPOS, who had acquired the site from Kyanka in October 2020 amid community backlash over domestic abuse allegations against . The transition maintained the core paid-access forum model, with a one-time $10 registration fee funding server costs without reliance on advertising. By 2023, the site initiated efforts, including bulk downloads of user-uploaded images from to counter hosting service limitations, ensuring archival access to historical content like Photoshop Phriday threads. The forums sustained activity across subforums such as Death Games, Debate & Dismemberment, and The Finer Arts, with ongoing threads for user-driven content including writing challenges like Thunderdome, which saw a 2025 edition launched on January 1. User metrics as of late 2025 indicated steady engagement, with approximately 1,200–1,500 registered users logged in daily, over 212,000 total accounts, and cumulative posts exceeding 274 million, alongside 3.8 million threads. Moderation persisted through volunteer staff, enforcing rules against spam and , resulting in around 27,000 lifetime bans. Article updates on the main site paused during interim ownership transitions, halting features like the propaganda comic, though forum discussions remained uninterrupted. In May 2025, owner Jeffrey of YOSPOS discussed the site's 25-year legacy in a , emphasizing its role as a persistent for contrarian humor and niche interests, without major structural overhauls. The platform's reduced cultural footprint reflected broader shifts in , yet it retained a dedicated user base focused on long-form posting over viral trends.

References

  1. https://www.vice.com/en/article/fuck-you-and-die-an-oral-history-of-something-awful/
  2. https://www.engadget.com/something-awful-founder-lowtax-dead-170501155.html
  3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14121584
  4. https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/8/23713128/something-awful-imgur-download-caper-digital-preservation-photo-hosting
  5. https://www.vice.com/en/article/richard-lowtax-kyanka-founder-of-something-awful-is-dead-at-45/
  6. https://forums.somethingawful.com/
  7. https://www.somethingawful.com/icq-pranks/1999/
  8. https://www.somethingawful.com/everquest/1999/
  9. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/something-awful
  10. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4076943
  11. https://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop-phriday/
  12. https://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop-phriday/2002/
  13. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/all-your-base-are-belong-to-us
  14. https://www.somethingawful.com/icq-pranks/2000/
  15. https://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/2000-awful-awards/1/
  16. https://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop-phriday/video-game-origins/3/
  17. https://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop-phriday/historical-inaccuracies-part/1/
  18. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3079902
  19. https://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/
  20. https://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/review-incite-gaming/1/
  21. https://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/storytime-heman-rock/1/
  22. https://www.somethingawful.com/series/golan-the-insatiable/
  23. https://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/world-war-an/1/
  24. https://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/ianarchy-onlinei-first/2/
  25. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/lets-play
  26. https://www.somethingawful.com/directory/
  27. https://www.somethingawful.com/your-band-sucks/
  28. https://www.somethingawful.com/
  29. https://www.theregister.com/2003/08/08/something_awful_going/
  30. https://www.somethingawful.com/news/spews-is-love/
  31. https://www.osnews.com/story/19713/spam-turns-30/
  32. https://www.somethingawful.com/news/paypal-fiasco-summary/
  33. https://www.somethingawful.com/news/bee-charity-drive/
  34. https://www.wired.com/2005/09/paypal-freezes-out-katrina-aid/
  35. https://betanews.com/2005/09/04/paypal-blocks-hurricane-relief-funds/
  36. https://www.somethingawful.com/news/stop-natural-disasters/
  37. https://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/for-the-cure/
  38. https://www.somethingawful.com/news/gdq-cancer/
  39. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3926035
  40. https://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop-phriday/unlikely-political-campaigns/1/
  41. https://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop-phriday/unlikely-political-campaigns3/1/
  42. https://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop-phriday/political-cartoons/10/
  43. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3879009
  44. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/745484563/it-came-from-something-awful-links-4chan-and-todays-political-discourse
  45. https://medium.com/arc-digital/almost-everything-you-know-about-gamergate-is-wrong-c4a50a3515fb
  46. https://mashable.com/article/something-awful-fyad-forum-shut-down
  47. https://www.somethingawful.com/news/nazi-identification-questions/
  48. https://www.somethingawful.com/comedy-goldmine/ms-paint-goons/1/
  49. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/SomethingAwful
  50. https://www.kotaku.com/the-all-your-base-are-belong-to-us-video-is-now-20-ye-1846281979
  51. https://newgrounds.fandom.com/wiki/All_Your_Base
  52. https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/5gxl2e/today_marks_the_12th_anniversary_of_numa_numa_one/
  53. https://earlygame.com/news/gaming/20-years-ago-he-shouted-leeeeeeroy---and-the-internet-was-never-the-same-again
  54. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3719690
  55. https://www.cracked.com/article_32159_5-hilarious-memes-with-messed-up-origins.html
  56. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Website/SomethingAwful
  57. https://www.somethingawful.com/comedy-goldmine/weird-things-made/1/
  58. https://lparchive.org/history
  59. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3843069
  60. https://www.reddit.com/r/letsplay/comments/9kboe1/does_anyone_know_the_history_of_lets_plays/
  61. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/24701475.2022.2084823
  62. https://www.somethingawful.com/news/five-worst-gaming/
  63. https://www.somethingawful.com/news/new-games-journalism/1/
  64. https://www.somethingawful.com/icq-pranks/
  65. https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/digital-culture/something-awful-this-way-comes/
  66. https://libraryofrickandria.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/It-Came-from-Something-Awful_-How-a-Toxic-Troll-Army-Dale-Beran-ebook-2019-All-Points-Books-1.pdf
  67. https://www.pcgamer.com/richard-lowtax-kyanka-founder-of-something-awful-and-onetime-king-of-the-internet-goons-dead-at-45/
  68. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/freund-176737-smith-home.html
  69. https://www.vice.com/en/article/something-awfuls-notorious-fuck-you-and-die-forum-shuts-down-because-of-nazis/
  70. https://www.vice.com/en/article/something-awful-under-new-ownership/
  71. https://www.newsweek.com/richard-lowtax-kyanka-something-awful-found-dies-45-1648348
  72. https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstGamerGate/comments/3d3em9/burgers_fries_owner_condemns_harassment_wants_gg/
  73. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352234896_It_came_from_something_awful_how_a_toxic_troll_army_accidentally_memed_Donald_Trump_into_office_by_Dale_Beran_2019_St_Martin%27s_Publishing_Group_ISBN_9781250189745_304_Pages_All_Points_Books_First_Edit
  74. https://www.roundstable.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=2824
  75. https://www.facebook.com/richkyanka/posts/818464892242142
  76. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4078659
  77. https://www.somethingawful.com/news/
  78. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-all-this-for-10-dollars-259808710/episode/talking-about-a-25-year-old-276040456/
  79. https://x.com/something_awful
Add your contribution
Related Hubs
User Avatar
No comments yet.