Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, the founder of the now dying Something Awful has reportedly died at age 45.
Details about his sudden death are unknown, though an article I read claimed an account allegedly owned by his ex said he shot himself because he would not be able to afford debt payments.
It should be noted he backstabbed everyone who called out the regressive left in defense of those freaks, and it should also be noted he is a domestic abuser and got canibalised by the same subhuman animals he defended at the cost of his site's reputation.
Let's hope the now ruined Something Awful transitions into an archive.
4chan exists specifically because SA was such a shitpit of mod tyranny. It forced an exodus of what would be the first 4channers. SomethingAwful was as much responsible for 4chan as Reddit is for the .win communities.
4chan was created because Lowtax banned anime.
He could have theoretically kept the SA community going forever had he not beat his wife and gone regressive.
4chan today is running on the fumes of it's dying frequently abused legacy, and 8kun was ruined forever by the actions of a retarded tradcon who replaced global mods with personal shills, replaced /b/ and /pol/ with new boards directly under his control, banned loli for personal reasons while having a lawyer dig up a pedo case as an excuse, and ended board migration early when the loli ban got announced.
These guys spent their youths destroying other people’s tradition, but always want to be given respect because of tradition. Does anyone see the absurdity?
Dignity for me, but not for thee.
That username...
IIRC this was before Lowtax got married and things started going down the drain. ADTRW could not fucking shut up over 2ch and that prompted the creation of 4chan.
What always tickled me was how 4chan was set up as a mod-free fun zone, and itself soon devolved into people begging moot to bring back Snacks, a mod who essentially did the same thing those SA mods did when it came to heavy-handed bans. Over-moderation of 4chan would eventually produce 8chan, and a slew of other less successful satellite chans.
"Details unknown" hell, dude went and did an An Hero on himself. Report from his ex wife was that he did it shortly after the latest decision came down in their divorce case.
cause of death: climate change
Hard to imagine now, but SomethingAwful was the funniest site on the web from 1999-2005 and laid the groundwork for future humor sites. Lowtax was also the epitome of the devil-may-care carefree Gen X attitude that was all over the web in that era. It’s also credited with producing the first memes, a completely playable RPG (Awful Fantasy), popularized bad video game reviews, and was the source of many funny photoshops that originated on their forums. It was worth the $10 paywall to join their forums in the mid 00s, which was unheard of at the time.
However....
Before SJW term was even coined, they were on all over their forums. And they were really bad. Like 2021 bad only in 2009, that’s how extreme they were. It only got worse as time went on. Many of their posters were the vanguard of movements such as OWS, Antifa, the Young Turks, Reddit and other leftist trash.
It’s legacy is mixed, to put it mildly.
Ah, YTMND. Those were the days.
TIL that YTMND was an acronym.
Somehow I missed it. I've certainly heard the name but never went to the website. I probably saw their work second or third hand, kind of like how people know about stuff coming from 4chan but don't actually go there.
If you ever played any big MMOs chances are you ran into them as “Goon Squad” or their crème de la crème “Elitist Jerks”
never went there but i remember being disappointed other pillars of the late 90s internet fark and slashdot went full commie
conquests 2nd law is absolute (paraphrased)
Slashdot died when CmdrTaco left...
They had a couple of those guys. There was Jon Katz in the late 90's/early 00's, then there was another guy in the late 00's or early 10's who did the same kind of shit. Just treated the site like his own personal blog, and the entire comment section of every post of his was people shitting on him.
i used to visit fark almost religiously. what a disgrace it became.
Their forums say he died of a degenerative bone disorder. Did Lowtax get the vax?
He had some kind of disease that required back surgeries several years ago. I'm not sure of the details much beyond that he was having a lot of health issues years before the vax...
I'm sure having a bunch of cells in his body start pumping out random spike proteins didn't help is leukocytes.
I was around something awful back during the early years and it provided me with so many hours of entertainment. I remember back in early 2003 stationed in South Korea and finding a fellow "goon" in my unit and becoming instant friends over shitty memes. And what was it? Washer and Dishwasher Maintenance Association? (a cover for Where Da Movies At). And them shitting on MDickie lead me to discover one of my favorite game maker of all time. Anyways, I stepped away around 2008ish and only found out much later how much worse it had gotten.
Fuck something awful for what it has become, but thanks for the memories. If Lowtax is dead I'ma pour one out for him tonight.
My friend introduced me to SA back in the early 2000s. It was one of my go to sites of that era along with Newgrounds.
I can't believe Newgrounds is still around.
And it’s even better now than then. Blows me away just thinking about it.
You’re just as much of a faggot as them. Follow the leader
My opinion of him is good riddance to the guy. The only e-celeb that came out of there that were worth watching was MIster Metokur, the rest of them were smug pedo-worshipping fags that are as sensitive as journos and I hate that they all got sycophants that worship their cult of personality. I never really looked into Lowtax to know what he's like but I got the sense he's probably the same type of people that lets the fame go to his head fast.
Oh yeah. Jim's pretty much gone now, isn't he?
Still active in twitter.
Rest in piss Lowtax.
Probably aids, from reading SA all these years.
I heard he recently-ish worked with Chelsea Van Valkenburg of all people, so I guess it's just another confirmed kill.
That’s because you’re 13.
If you've ever heard of the Goons from EVE, SA is where they were founded...
rip in pieces
SA was awesome twenty years ago. It's honestly kind of fascinating how it went from that, to this lefty infested shithole.
Well, bye.
Heh
Sleep with SJW dogs, don't be surprised to wake up with flees.
Too bad he didn’t kill himself before he started SA.
I thought he had sold what was left of the site earlier this year.
Good fucking riddance. I hope every one of those “goons” ends up killing themselves, it only sucks that these miserable sacks of shit spread their commie faggot bile across the web and world.
“B-but they were funny years ago” they were never funny, they were losers. The genesis of the twitter church lady world we live in today. I hope he felt extreme pain, both leading up to and during his cowardly exit into hell.
He also was BFFs with a pedophile that he let babysit his kids. Again, it’s just sad that he didn’t kill himself before making that garbage site.