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

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

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 Social and cultural phenomena specific to the Internet include Internet memes, such as popular themes, catchphrases, images, viral videos, and jokes. When such fads and sensations occur online, they tend to grow rapidly and become more wides ...

, and it has been cited as an influence on

Internet culture Internet culture is a culture based on the many way people have used computer networks and their use for communication, entertainment, business, and recreation. Some features of Internet culture include online communities, gaming, and social media ...

. 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, and runs on the Kinja platform. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the subsite ''io9'', whic ...

'' placed it as 89th on their list of "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 The Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS) was an anonymous service that maintained a list of IP address ranges belonging to internet service providers (ISPs) that host spammers and show little action to prevent their abuse of other network ...

, a

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cost ...

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 online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

red tape Red tape is an idiom referring to regulations or conformity to formal rules or standards which are claimed to be excessive, rigid or redundant, or to bureaucracy claimed to hinder or prevent action or decision-making. It is usually applied to g ...

, an exhibition boxing match between Kyanka and movie director

Uwe Boll Uwe Boll (; born June 22, 1965) is a German filmmaker. He came to prominence during the 2000s for his adaptations of video game franchises which often starred international stars like Jason Statham, Burt Reynolds, Ray Liotta, Christian Slater, E ...

, and the creation of the

Slender Man Slender Man (also spelled Slenderman) is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta Internet meme created by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen (also known as "Victor Surge") in 2009. He is depicted as a thin, unna ...

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 import video games. It was notable for its ex ...

and

eFront eFront was an affiliate marketing network which purchased successful websites, such as '' Penny Arcade,'' SquareGamer, and BetaNews, and pooled traffic to those sites to command higher prices for advertising during an industrywide ad revenue slow ...

, 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 (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

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 or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

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, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character tra ...

''; 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

(SPEWS) added an entire class-B subnet with the

Cogent The CoGeNT experiment has searched for dark matter. It uses a single germanium crystal (~100 grams) as a cryogenic detector for WIMP particles. CoGeNT has operated in the Soudan Underground Laboratory since 2009. Results Their first announ ...

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 () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

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 discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct ...

''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 In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connect ...

attack on SPEWS, although this type of behavior was strongly discouraged by Kyanka and assistant editor Zack Parsons.

Hurricane Katrina charity

As ''Something Awful'' servers were located in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

, 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 International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...

. 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 Red Cross (ARC), also known as the American National Red Cross, is a non-profit humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. It is the desi ...

. 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. United Way was the largest nonprofit organization in the United States by donations from the public, prior to 2016. United Way organizations raise funds ...

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 (informally ammo) is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. Ammunition is both expendable weapons (e.g., bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines) and the component parts of other weap ...

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 ...

, 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.

Death of Sean Smith

Sean Smith, a forum moderator and leading member of the ''Something Awful'' alliance in the video game ''

Eve Online ''Eve Online'' (stylised ''EVE Online'') is a space-based, persistent world massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by CCP Games. Players of ''Eve Online'' can participate in a number of in-game profess ...

'', was killed in the attack on

Benghazi Benghazi () , ; it, Bengasi; tr, Bingazi; ber, Bernîk, script=Latn; also: ''Bengasi'', ''Benghasi'', ''Banghāzī'', ''Binghāzī'', ''Bengazi''; grc, Βερενίκη (''Berenice'') and ''Hesperides''., group=note (''lit. Son of he Ghazi ...

, Libya, on September 11, 2012. ''Eve Online'' players paid respect to Smith by renaming space stations after him.

Site content

The frontpage article series ''

Golan the Insatiable ''Golan the Insatiable'' is an American animated television series that originally aired on Fox on November 23, 2013 along with '' Lucas Bros. Moving Co.''; it officially premiered on January 11, 2014. It was created by Josh Miller and developed ...

'' 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 programming block which has aired in two iterations on the Fox broadcast network, featuring a lineup solely made up of prime-time animation and adult animation carr ...

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

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 repos ...

announced that ''Something Awful'' 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 the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

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

Forums

The site is home to a collection of

Internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

s 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 produ ...

, 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 An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...

, such as "

all your base are belong to us "All your base are belong to us" is an Internet meme based on a badly translated phrase from the opening cutscene of the video game '' Zero Wing''. The phrase first appeared on the European release of the 1991 Sega Mega Drive port of the 1989 ...

". 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. for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the indu ...

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

moot Moot may refer to: * Mootness, in American law: a point where further proceedings have lost practical significance; whereas in British law: the issue remains debatable * Moot court, an activity in many law schools where participants take part in s ...

, 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 anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...

after

hentai Hentai is anime and manga pornography. A loanword from Japanese, the original term ( ) does not describe a genre of media, but rather an abnormal sexual desire or act, as an abbreviation of . In addition to anime and manga, hentai works exis ...

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/or a camera view of the gamer's face. A Let's Play differs from a video game walkthrough or strateg ...

phenomenon originated in posts on the ''Something Awful'' forums. Many originators of "

Weird Twitter Twitterature (a portmanteau of ''Twitter'' and ''literature'') is a literary use of the microblogging service of Twitter. It includes various genres, including aphorisms, poetry, and fiction (or some combination thereof) written by individuals or ...

", including

dril @dril is a pseudonymous Twitter user best known for his idiosyncratic style of absurdist humor and non sequiturs. The account, its author, and the character associated with the tweets are all commonly referred to as dril (the account's identi ...

, originally posted in ''Something Awful'' Fuck You and Die forum. The

urban legend An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...

was created in a 2009 thread in the ''Something Awful'' forum. The 2015 video game ''

Dropsy Edema, also spelled oedema, and also known as fluid retention, dropsy, hydropsy and swelling, is the build-up of fluid in the body's tissue. Most commonly, the legs or arms are affected. Symptoms may include skin which feels tight, the area ma ...

'' 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 about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people wh ...

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