Something Awful

''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, and it has been cited as an influence on Internet culture. In 2018, ''Gizmodo'' 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, a Hurricane Katrina relief fund being caught in PayPal's red tape, an exhibition boxing match between Kyanka and movie director Uwe Boll, and the creation of the Slender Man.

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 and eFront, failed to compensate Kyanka as promised for advertising on the site.

In 2001, the site began charging an activation fee (currently US$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 of Jeffrey of YOSPOS.Something Awful, a Cornerstone of Internet Culture, Is Under New Ownership
by Matthew Gault; at ''Vice''; 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 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.

Hurricane Katrina charity

As ''Something Awful'' servers were located in New Orleans