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Something Awful is the brainchild of Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka, who remains in control of the site, despite the proliferation of guest writers and administrators who have assisted him over the years. The earliest comedic features of the website appeared originally on Planetquake including Cranky Steve's Haunted Whorehouse, which at that time presented comical reviews of user-made Quake II maps, and other reviews, notably of a Doom comic book, and some horrible movies.
After some unknown dispute with Planetquake, Lowtax moved his personal features to a new site, entitled Something Awful, in late 1999. During this early period, Lowtax created many of SA's most famous and long-lasting characters and catchphrases, such as JeffK, the Space Robots ICQ prank, and the Awful Link of the Day feature.
Something Awful met with great financial difficulties during the period from 2000-2001 that threatened to take the entire site down. Various dishonest sponsors promised Lowtax various payments in exchange for ad space, including GameFan and Sam Jain, but none of these companies lived up to their promises. Details of the actual financial structure of SA have always been hard to come by, but most goons know that Lowtax has made, and continues to make a massive personal financial and time investment into the site to keep it running. The decision to charge a one-time fee for forums access in 2001 seems to be a cornerstone of the site's present financial stability.
Notable features of the frontpage include Cliff Yablonski, who mercilessly mocks pictures found on the Internet, the Photoshop Phriday, which features the Photoshop skills of forum members, and the frequent movie and game reviews, which continue the tradition of Cranky Steve's Haunted Whorehouse from SA's earliest days. Older features, such as Game Designer Survivor, seem to have been instrumental in bringing notable game designers, such as Levelord and Cliffy B to the Something Awful forums, at least for a short time.
The Something Awful Forums is a limited-access highly-modified message board system, with a huge userbase (over 25,000 on January 31st, 2004). People who frequent the Something Awful Forums call themselves "SA Goons," or simply "goons." The forums reflect the website in that the main currency hereis comedy and irreverence. Political correctness is looked down upon, and nothing is sacred. Racist, sexist and homophobic jokes are the norm but despite this, displaying actual bigotry will earn you at the very least a large accusatory title, and often the bigot will simply be banned from the forums.
There is a large group of banned users who hold a grudge against the administrators of the forums and think that power is too often abused, while others believe the forums are deftly moderated. The forums are highly reknowned for this same moderation which keeps them largely troll-free and are a haven for many different types of people who share a similar sense of humor. Although the community is international, it is mostly comprised of American males in the teen to 20s age range.
The entire forum contains several subforums dedicated to, among other things, goon-created art, [successfully moderated and flame-free] political discussion, consumer deals, trading, sports and computers. The main difference between these forums and other message boards dedicated to similar purposes is that with such a large userbase none of the forums are ever "dead" and all have a topic turnover rate, even though oftentimes controversial issues or things particularly pleasing to the goon mind will span hundreds of posts.
It costs $10 to register; this money goes directly to the webmaster, Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka. Many other forum features also cost $10 each, such as gaining permission to search the forums, putting an image and custom text under your or someone else's username (often to demean them). These fees help pay for the costs of the servers which are naturally under large amounts of strain and transfer massive amounts of bandwidth, with anywhere from a 1000 to 3000 people logged onto the forums at any given time.
Many of the photoshops which circulate the web are created by members of this forum, and many of the internet fads such as All Your Base are accelerated and given an exponentially larger audience by goons. These often get old at SAF before they hit the 'mainstream' and are looked down upon thereafter.
FYAD frequents hate GBS with a passion, because it is one of the sort of communities that they love to mock. When someone is not funny enough for FYAD, they will be told to "go back to GBS".
The webmaster, Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka, is a frequent of FYAD, despite the fact that he destroyed the forum early on and did not resurrect it until they attacked GBS with shock sites. He has stated that it is frequently funnier than GBS.
FYAD has an interesting history; in its earliest inception, it was meant to be a rule-free, no-holds-barred arena for brutal verbal slugfests and horrifying images. Goons such as 3MTA3 and Brock Landers exemplified the style of classic FYAD, with their creative streams of invective dominating the forum: In the beginning, you went to FYAD to tell people, "Fuck you, and die."
Fyad disappeared at various times, and on others, was given moderators, which certainly subverted its original purpose. After a wave of goatse.cx postings in GBS, Lowtax created an "All about goatse.cx" which soon turned into FYAG, with the "G" standing for goatse.cx.
Today's FYAD is a repository for all the silliness, spamming, parody threads, and lame catchphrase humor that (depending on the viewer's perspective) either plagued GBS or made it great.
The Something Awful Forums community has many in-jokes, including
The Something Awful Website
The Something Awful Forums
GBS (General Bullshit)
General Bullshit, almost always abbreviated to "GBS" to save time typing and be less offensive, is very similar to any of the "Off Topic" forums found on virtually every message board system on the Internet. GBS is usually slightly more mature than the average "Off Topic" board, simply because people on the Something Awful Forums are rich, mature, and old enough to purchase an account. GBS frequents can start a thread on any random thing, usually without getting dismissed by the rest of the community. Something Awful's weekly Photoshop competition is held in GBS.The Leper's Colon
This forum is devoted to showing who has been banned from the forums and for what reason. Newbies to the forums may wish to view this because the moderators sometimes include a thread of why they were banned. Another thread is "The Autoban" which always includes the thread and the name of the person who was banned. The Autoban is run by a bot named Radium.FYAD (Fuck You And Die)
Fuck You And Die, almost always abbrieviated to "FYAD" for the same reasons described above, is unique to Something Awful. In FYAD, all posts are nonsensical and mock the common, teenage Internet user. Chatspeak and message board jokes are taken to ridiculous extremes, and often whole catchphrases are invented, some of which are described in the section below. Something Awful's weekly Weekend Web articles, a compilation of stupid things said on message boards, are put together in FYAD.Serious Hardware/Software Crap (SH/SC)
Often abbreviated to SH/SC, this forum is for the technical types. Many of the less technically inclined posters come here for advice on what to do when their computer or other components stop working. Programming issues are also discussed here.Anime Death Rape Tentacle Whorehouse
Abbreviated to ADTRW, this forum is where all anime discussion goes. Threads are usually intelligent and spawn much creative work (many anime GIF animations on the Internet come from ADTRW). Trolls are usually kicked out.Games
Games, whether they be of the video or the pen and paper type, are all represented here. Tips, requests, spoilers, and positive/negative reviews are rife. There is a subforum devoted to private game servers.SA-Mart
The bazaar of the Forums, where anybody may buy, sell, or trade anything so long as it is legal. Posters may also link to eBay auctions as well. Feedback about posters' experiences with a particular buyer or seller can be posted in a subforum of SA-Mart. However, the administrators and moderators disclaim any responsibility for actions between the buyer and seller. Nevertheless, defrauding a buyer is generally considered the worst thing a person can do on the forums (other than hacking the forums), and will almost always result in the user being banned permanently (refered to as a permaban).Coupons, Rebates, Freebies, & Great Deals
Often abbreviated to just the first word. This subforum of SA-Mart is the place to obtain exactly what's in the forum's title. The denizens of Coupons have been humorously derided as being cheapskates in the banner ads of the forums and in GBS.The Crackhead Clubhouse (TCC)
Abbreviated often to TCC. A haven for users of recreational drugs, and discussion of them. No buying or selling of them is allowed as that is illegal activity. Comedy Goldmine
The absolute best of the best of the best threads. Threads that are voted up to the "Gold" rating may recieve the blessing of being moved by a mod to the Comedy Goldmine archive where all may see the humor of the thread for a few weeks before being moved to the permanent archive.Comedy Gas Chamber
Threads that have been deleted by the moderators are sent here and have been said to be "gassed". They have been judged not to be up to the standards of SA. Most of these threads are often silly things (i.e. troll postings, one-liners, gimmick posts, and the like).Something Awful Forums Culture
Stub...Common Abbreviations and Phrases
External Links