''Something Awful'' (SA) is an American comedy website hosting content including

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

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 Internet phenomena are social and cultural phenomena specific to the Internet, such as Internet memes, which include popular catchphrases, images, viral videos, and jokes. When such fads and sensations occur online, they tend to grow rapidly ...

, and it has been cited as a significant influence on

Internet culture Internet culture refers to culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet (also known as netizens) who primarily communicate with one another as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence ...

. In 2018, ''

Gizmodo ''Gizmodo'' () is a design, technology, science, and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the sub-blogs ''io9'' and ''Earther'', which focus on pop ...

'' named it in their list of the "100 Websites That Shaped the Internet as We Know It". The website has been involved in a number of events. These include a conflict with the Spam Prevention Early Warning System, a

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a powerful, devastating and historic tropical cyclone that caused 1,392 fatalities and damages estimated at $125 billion in late August 2005, particularly in the city of New Orleans and its surrounding area. ...

relief fund being caught in

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...

red tape Red tape is a concept employed to denounce excessive or redundant regulation and adherence to formal rules for creating unnecessary constraints on action and decision-making. The occurrence of red tape is usually associated with governments but a ...

, an exhibition boxing match between Kyanka and movie director

Uwe Boll Uwe Boll (; born 22 June 1965) is a German filmmaker. He came to prominence during the 2000s for his adaptations of video game franchises. Released theatrically, the films were critical and commercial failures; his Alone in the Dark (2005 film), ...

, and the creation of the

Slender Man The Slender Man (also called Slenderman, Slender, or Slendy) is a fictional supernatural character (arts), character that originated as a creepypasta Internet meme created by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen (also known as "Victor Surge") ...

History

''Something Awful'' was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka. 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. In the years immediately following ''Something Awful'' launch, several sponsors, including

GameFan ''GameFan'' (originally known as ''Diehard GameFan'') was a publication started by Tim Lindquist, Greg Off, George Weising, and Dave Halverson in September 1992 that provided coverage of domestic and imported video games. It was notable for it ...

and eFront, failed to compensate Kyanka as promised for advertising on the site. In 2001, the site began charging an activation fee (currently

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

10.00) for forum access. 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. On October 9, 2020, following a backlash from the community in response to allegations that Kyanka was a domestic abuser, Kyanka sold ''Something Awful'' to a fifteen-year member and moderator known under the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...

of Jeffrey of YOSPOS.Something Awful, a Cornerstone of Internet Culture, Is Under New Ownership
by Matthew Gault; at ''

Vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, Habit (psychology), habit or item generally considered morally wrong in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhe ...

''; published October 13, 2020; retrieved October 15, 2020 Following its sale, Kyanka was banned from ''Something Awful'' on March 23, 2021. On November 9, 2021, Kyanka died by suicide.

Spam Prevention Early Warning System

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. ''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 Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are not only discussion groups or conversations, but also a repository to publish articles, start ...

''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.

GreenMeat Body Armor charity drive

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.

Hurricane Katrina charity

As ''Something Awful'' servers were located in

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

, 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

account where people could donate money to the survivors of the hurricane via the

Red Cross The organized International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 16million volunteering, volunteers, members, and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ...

. Kyanka put in $3,000 of his own money, and promised to give some free merchandise to anyone who donated more than $10. 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. 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 The American National Red Cross is a Nonprofit organization, nonprofit Humanitarianism, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. Clara Barton founded ...

. However, he was told that PayPal would only give the money to

United Way of America United Way is an international network of over 1,800 local nonprofit fundraising affiliates. Prior to 2015, United Way was the largest nonprofit organization in the United States by donations from the public. Individual United Ways mobilize a sin ...

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.

Shooting deaths

In 2005, William Freund sought advice in the ''Something Awful'' gun subforum about purchasing Hevi-Shot brand

ammunition Ammunition, also known as ammo, is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. The term includes both expendable weapons (e.g., bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines), and the component parts of oth ...

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.

Uwe Boll fight

In June 2006, Kyanka accepted an open challenge from German movie director

, 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. The event took place in

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

, 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 A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, w ...

comedy Comedy is a genre of dramatic works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. Origins Comedy originated in ancient Greec ...

character during the fight rather than seriously attempting to fight Uwe Boll.

Death of Sean Smith

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.

Site content

The frontpage article series '' Golan the Insatiable'' is the basis of an animated series of the same name that premiered on

Animation Domination Animation Domination (also called AniDom, Fox AD, and AD) is an American animated Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby image, still images are manipulated to create Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are d ...

on Fox on July 27, 2013. In 2014, the

American Folklife Center The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife". The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, established at the library in 1928 as a rep ...

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.Getting serious about collecting and preserving digital culture
by Nicole Saylor, at ''Folklife Today'' (at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

); published June 5, 2014; retrieved December 15, 2014

Forums

The site is home to a collection of Internet forums running a highly customized version of

vBulletin vBulletin is a proprietary Internet forum software package sold by MH Sub I, LLC doing business as vBulletin (formerly Jelsoft Enterprises and vBulletin Solutions). It is written in PHP and uses a MariaDB or MySQL database server. Similar pro ...

, 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. The forums have spread several Internet memes, such as "

all your base are belong to us "All your base are belong to us" is an Internet meme based on a Engrish, poorly translated phrase from the opening cutscene of the Japanese video game ''Zero Wing''. The phrase first appeared on the European release of the 1991 Sega Mega Drive P ...

". Additionally, image macros originated on the site in 2001, originally as a vBulletin feature introduced by Kyanka. 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 Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc., Adobe for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital ...

. The website also highlights some of what its administrators believe to be exceptional forum threads in the Comedy Goldmine feature. A forum member, moot, also launched

4chan 4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, mu ...

after

hentai Hentai () is a style of Pornography in Japan, Japanese pornographic anime and manga. In addition to anime and manga, hentai works exist in a variety of media, including artwork and video games (commonly known as ''eroge''). The developme ...

was banned, and the

Let's Play A Let's Play (LP) is a video (or screenshots accompanied by text) documenting the playthrough of a video game, often including commentary and (in some cases) a camera view of the gamer's face. A Let's Play differs from a video game walkthrough ...

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 "Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, wikt:modification, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individuals ...

extension to his house, which has been mocked online for its poor design and execution. The phrase " load-bearing drywall" was coined in response to the thread. Many originators of " Weird Twitter", including dril, originally posted in ''Something Awful'' Fuck You and Die forum. The

urban legend Urban legend (sometimes modern legend, urban myth, or simply legend) is a genre of folklore concerning stories about an unusual (usually scary) or humorous event that many people believe to be true but largely are not. These legends can be e ...

was created in a 2009 thread in the ''Something Awful'' forum. The 2015 video game '' Dropsy'' originated as a 2008 CYOA thread on the ''Something Awful'' forums.

References

External links

*{{official website, https://www.somethingawful.com/
Fuck You And Die: An Oral History of Something Awful
a 2017

oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information from people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who pa ...

conducted by ''Vice'' American comedy websites Internet forums Internet properties established in 1999 Internet trolling 1999 establishments in Missouri