Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

This isn&#x27;t a joke; I had actually scheduled a lunch with Lowtax for this Saturday. Despite a (let&#x27;s call it) checkered past, I was extremely excited to meet him, since he&#x27;s been a huge influence to my sense of humor and Something Awful was really important to me as a teenager.<p>-------<p>I had found him on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, and simply sent a message explaining that I&#x27;m a fan, would love a chance to buy him lunch and chat about Something Awful and Gaming Garbage. To my surprise, he responded back with &quot;sure, I&#x27;d be up for it&quot;.<p>I responded back with &quot;How does early December sound to you? something on the order of December 11?&quot;<p>His response was &quot;shit I dont even know if I&#x27;ll still be alive then&quot;. This response was a little weird, but this isn&#x27;t exactly &quot;off brand&quot; humor for Lowtax, so I ignored it.<p>I then say something to the effect of &quot;how about something along the lines of November 13?&quot;, which he said was better. He then said &quot;and you have my permission to stab me&quot;. Again, not off brand for Lowtax.<p>I bought a plane ticket to Kansas City, was ready to fly out this friday. But I had this deep feeling in my stomach that what he was saying wasn&#x27;t just a joke. It&#x27;s pretty well documented that he&#x27;s been depressed, and I dunno, upon re-reading his messages a hundred times I got a dark feeling that these might be kind of bad omens. What exactly do I do with this? I discussed it with my wife and a friend, who weren&#x27;t sure what the best solution was, and I ultimately decided not to say anything. I figured I&#x27;m just some dork who stalked him on LinkedIn, and I was afraid that if I said anything he would think I&#x27;m weird and cancel our lunch date.<p>And now this shit happened. He finally did it, and now the thought keeps playing in my brain of &quot;what if I had said something a few weeks ago?&quot; I know I don&#x27;t <i>owe</i> him anything, but I can&#x27;t help but have this repeated feeling of &quot;I valued an opportunity to meet my man-crush more than I valued someone showing suicidal tendencies,&quot; and it makes me feel downright rotten. That&#x27;s not the kind of person I want to be, and it makes me feel legitimately sick that that&#x27;s how my brain decided to work.<p>At some logical level I know none of this is my fault really; realistically even if I <i>had</i> said something, I doubt much would have changed, and I doubt I had enough there to get him committed or anything, but there&#x27;s a difference between logically knowing something and <i>feeling</i> something.<p>As it stands, I think there&#x27;s a reasonably good chance that I will <i>feel</i> partly responsible for this for the rest of my life. This sucks.<p>--------<p>RIP Rich. I know you had a rough last couple years, you were the definition of a &quot;complicated person&quot;, and despite everything you will be missed.

He leaves behind a complicated legacy. It&#x27;s important to note that credible allegations of domestic abuse lead him to sell SA in the past year, and this can&#x27;t be set aside.<p>At the same time, SA&#x27;s influence on the modern internet can&#x27;t be understated. The &#x27;image macro&#x27; of early SA (maybe created by Lowtax himself, from what Fragmaster says in his video in the link) is the direct ancestor of today&#x27;s common meme image--impact font text over a silly image, easily accessible to anyone who wants to post it.<p>Many of today&#x27;s well-known internet comedians and writers grew up with the site. And it&#x27;s hard to estimate how big the impact (positive or negative) of things like ADTRW leading to 4chan have been, not to mention things like the rise of Let&#x27;s Play videos, or the creation and eventual shutdown of BitTorrent Barnyard (and its ensuing spinoffs).<p>The site itself still remains one of the last vestiges of the old internet--one of the few sites that both survived and managed not sell out and go headlong into monetization--and as a result, is one of the last sites on the modern internet that (maybe ironically) is not entirely awful.

I used to visit SA regularly. A lot of the humor was tasteless, but nowhere near the level of the chans. I avoided the forums, and only read the front page stuff.<p>What kept me coming, was that they were amazing writers (it wasn’t just him -or he wrote under several <i>nom de plumes</i>).<p>His essays, done in the style of famous writers, and deadpan humor, where a story seemed serious, up until the point that you suddenly realize you’re being punked, were masterful.<p>But it sounds like his personal life was a disaster. I have known a number of folks like that. In most cases, I always hoped that, one day, they would “come out of the cesspool,” and start to realize their potential (I have also known a number of folks that did that, too). In my experience, these people were absolutely miserable, and difficult to be around. I only ever saw his creative output, so had no other stake in his personal life.<p>I wish his exes and children the best. It sounds like they may need it.

There seems to be some kind of weird cult thing that goes on in nerd spaces that always involves a person with major personal problems that manages to assemble a cult of personality around themself and that cult becomes the primary means by which they support themselves. Eventually the members rebel in a coup like fashion after one of the chief henchmen who has built their own coalition see their opportunity, and either splinter off with loyalists vs rebels becoming a new fashion, or the coup attempt being successful and the space being taken over. (with new management basically acting the same as old management)<p>You see this play out in things as pedestrian as comic book shops. The comic book shop owner doesnt display anything resembling good business sense, but they have a coterie of people who support their business out of a sense of community and do stuff to help keep the business afloat where it would otherwise fail. Eventually someone (usually someone they know fairly well) takes a chunk of his cult and opens a new comic book shop while exposing all the horrible social abuses the old owner used to heap on people on the community space they owned.<p>This pattern repeats over and over in these kind of social spaces.<p>Maybe this happens in all social spaces that are owned by a specific person (like churches, comedy clubs, concert venues) too and I just dont see that part of the world.

All this eulogy for an abusive bully.<p>Among the many &quot;innovations&quot;, there was a feature where he would link to a website that he thought was worthy of ridicule. Often mentioning directly that it had a guest book to sign in.<p>So a horde of bullies would descend on that website, fill the book and any forums with goatse porn and email the same. Some of the victims shut down their websites, their complaints posted to SA so people could laugh at them.<p>Brigading and &quot;cancelling&quot;... Yes, some of the humor was funny, but the site was a cesspool that festered into the chans. Let&#x27;s Play is good, but the worst of the Internet was fostered here as well.<p>The best part was when he was tricked into a boxing match with Uwe Boll, which didn&#x27;t work out well for him.

I&#x27;m old so I remember when SomethingAwful was like 4chan and reddit combined for its time. I never actually registered an account on the forums, I was busy on other sites. My biggest issue with the SA forums is how they abused their users(&quot;Goons&quot;).<p>Basically. Imagine having to pay $10 to register a 4chan or reddit account and being banned for silly and ridiculous rule infractions but then being allowed back on if you registered another account(&quot;10bux&quot;).<p>I knew a guy who was huge into SA and contributed a lot of their photoshop Friday threads. One time there was a thread about a new movie, most people liked it but he simply said &quot;I just left the theater a few hours ago, I didn&#x27;t really dig it&quot; he was immediately banned for &quot;trolling&quot; simply for sharing his opinion. He was the biggest SA user I knew at the time.<p>I think the last thing SA contributed to internet culture was Slenderman.

SA in the early 00&#x27;s was really special. It was like someone dumped a whole chemical supply closet into a pot and brought it to a boil. Equal parts trash and alchemy.<p>Gold was inexplicably made there, and as long as you had your kitty litter scoop it was easy to find.

I am so fascinated by all of this. The impact on internet history and culture. The challenges of creating and growing communities. The lifestyles and faults of leaders and the controversial realities we live in.<p>I know about SA, but was never an active participant. Likewise I know about 4chan and other communities.<p>From reading the first page of this thread, it seems very critical of the creator of the community. Even at a glance I can tell that is because of the personal flaws of that person, the mistakes they&#x27;ve made in their life, and how they hurt other people. I feel like it is such a shame for this to be your legacy to your community. I feel like we lost a pioneer, but it&#x27;s now on us to learn from their mistakes and continue to build communities that we want to be in.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned the domestic abuse allegations. The Something Awful forums almost completely melted down because of that, and it’s certainly left me with a very negative final impression of the man who’s sense of humor I once idolized.

Someone on twitter was talking about the Franz Ferdinand insane ripples of the man&#x27;s decision to ban anime pornography on his site:<p>1. He bans it<p>2. One &quot;moot&quot; was then currently showing around his futaba channel clone &quot;4chan&quot; and not getting many bites<p>3. The pornography-obsessed people decide to abscond to 4chan en masse, determining the culture of &#x2F;b&#x2F; and all that<p>4. This leads to the proliferation of fascism and other foolish ideology in &#x2F;b&#x2F; and eventually to the quarantine zone, &#x2F;pol&#x2F;<p>5. Someone starts posting as &quot;qanon&quot;<p>6. A depressing number of people start believing in that crap<p>7. Many depressing things<p>e: looks like 4chan also has a banner for the occassion:<p>&quot; RIP Rich &quot;Lowtax&quot; Kyanka<p>Our dad who disowned us&quot;<p>which one would surmise would also describe moot. Who wouldn&#x27;t disown 4chan if it was created from their actions?

I forgot how nasty those forums could be.<p>A random post to his daughters:<p>“kids if your reading this: i paid for your meals. fuck you. i own you b*tch”

Link to Fragmaster&#x27;s eulogy:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=2UkcZ4LtSE8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=2UkcZ4LtSE8</a>

Been married 12yrs due to a goon meetup. RIP Lowtax, -Bad games crew

I started reading and posting on SA religiously starting around 2003, when I was only 14 years old. It really shaped me a lot (probably not for the better) in my teenage years. I probably still hold a lot of that shaping because I still spend way too much time on reddit. I never really liked Lowtax much or thought he did much that was funny, but I did appreciate the community he built because it did feel like friends for me when I was pretty lonely. Anyway, rest in peace Rich, sorry you had such a hard life. I know the struggle. I sent a final tenbux to your kids.

Goons wrote the playbook for the internet culture war.

Others are discussing the important and serious stuff, so I wanted to touch on something more lighthearted.<p>I was in the e&#x2F;n scene so knew of SA but never got involved, and it wasn&#x27;t till 2013ish when he started doing YouTube playthroughs of the worst indie &#x27;games&#x27; he could find which were quite entertaining on their own merits and showed off people&#x27;s creativity that might otherwise be ignored. Examples: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4pIFud0Bsa8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4pIFud0Bsa8</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=zsCF-mz6Y6A" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=zsCF-mz6Y6A</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=F9II_cq01hY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=F9II_cq01hY</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=JRQC9c6RkeI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=JRQC9c6RkeI</a>

I don&#x27;t know whether he&#x27;s a good &#x2F; bad person, but what I know is that I grew up with SA and this saddens me.

Cause of death?

I became a goon in 2008. For better or for worse, it shaped my life on the internet. This is a jarring headline to see, and I hope he rest in peace, and that anyone he harmed also finds peace.

Thanks for all the &quot;crazy shit&quot; I got to laugh about, marvel over, be disgusted with etc. as a young Internet user in the early 2000s.

d-did he have stairs in his house?

One of Richard Kyanka&#x27;s latter acts at Something Awful was to edit the apology to furries down to one line: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.somethingawful.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;bolgy-wolgy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.somethingawful.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;bolgy-wolgy&#x2F;</a><p>The author on the matter: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MALTSCHLITZMANN&#x2F;status&#x2F;1298460809341919233" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MALTSCHLITZMANN&#x2F;status&#x2F;12984608093419192...</a><p>Lowtax is definitely not going to the fun hell with all the furries he told to yiff in hell.

Can someone please explain who this is and what this site is about? I poked around a bit but couldn’t make sense of it

&quot;the internet makes you stupid&quot;

Well dang, that sucks. Something Awful circa 2003 really shaped my sense of humor as a teen. Photoshop Phriday was something I and all my friends waited for each week.<p>In my opinion this deserves the black bar.

Anyone remember ezpics?

I don&#x27;t think we&#x27;ll be seeing a black banner on HN for this one, even though his controversial history is probably highly relevant to the growth of Internet society and culture.<p>Is there specific criteria for who gets a black banner and who doesn&#x27;t?

Why does it say “dies” when he killed himself? And please, no trick answers.<p>One of my favourite posts of his, why lingerie is fucking stupid: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forums.somethingawful.com&#x2F;showthread.php?threadid=3863579" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forums.somethingawful.com&#x2F;showthread.php?threadid=38...</a>

I feel devastated hearing this. Whatever was happening in his personal life, its none of my business, but he was a true innovator.<p>Also reading the message from his ex really angers me. A man was so broken he took his own life, and she&#x27;s concerned about the 350 dollars a month hes not giving her. It&#x27;s gross.<p>Like seriously a man she once loved killed himself and her reaction is like &quot;he should&#x27;ve payed up&quot;

What’s that site? Definitely not humorous. Soft bullying forum? A place to lodge whims and cerebral flatulation?<p>I created an account and figured it could go two ways - abandon it, or try to invent the most effective mental faeces filter human kind has seen. It’s been years.