Richard 'Lowtax' Kyanka, the creator of SomethingAwful, has died
November 11, 2021 3:22 AM Subscribe
The announcement was posted on SomethingAwful itself.
'Lowtax' created SA, the forum that preceded and spawned 4chan (amongst others) and arguably had an immeasurably large impact on internet culture and even the course of American history, given that it led to (at least) the creation of Anonymous and QAnon.
Credible allegations of domestic abuse seemingly led to him selling SomethingAwful in 2020. There is a GoFundMe to support his ex-wife and children.
Well, that happened.
Something Awful really did host some good stuff back in the day, though. I loved Worm Miller's Monstergeddon series.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:20 AM on November 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
Something Awful really did host some good stuff back in the day, though. I loved Worm Miller's Monstergeddon series.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:20 AM on November 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 4:21 AM on November 11, 2021
posted by fluttering hellfire at 4:21 AM on November 11, 2021
This meme kind of sums it up.
Lots of good stuff found roots in the SA forums. But also a ton of bad stuff. Lowtax was mostly a part of the latter.
I feel bad for his ex-wife and his kids, who had to live with the vile monster he was, and now have to live in a world where he'll never apologise or make up for it.
posted by fight or flight at 4:25 AM on November 11, 2021 [40 favorites]
Lots of good stuff found roots in the SA forums. But also a ton of bad stuff. Lowtax was mostly a part of the latter.
I feel bad for his ex-wife and his kids, who had to live with the vile monster he was, and now have to live in a world where he'll never apologise or make up for it.
posted by fight or flight at 4:25 AM on November 11, 2021 [40 favorites]
.
The dot is for his families, all of them, who are left with so many pieces to pick up.
I appreciate you posting this; I was thinking of doing it myself yesterday. I did not realize that Lowtax had spiraled so hard and become an outright abuser, although "become" is maybe not the right word for someone revealing what a piece of shit he is. Back in the day, though, I didn't know any of this.
Kyanka had a very nearly respectable period. He spoke at the University of Illinois in 2005 about the internet, where he made a very good point about the way it can destroy brains (i.e. the Parrot Ass Club) that I have thought about many times in the past couple of years. He did a Rifftrax of Troll 2 with Mike Nelson that, along with other Rifftrax, I often listened to while doing work. And he did a very funny channel with a talented animator called Shmorky, until --
Well, I don't know what the hell happened with Shmorky. Either they had a psychotic break, or their fiancee did, or Kiwi Farms found out they were a pedo, or Kiwi Farms framed them for being a pedo, or ... I don't know, but it was incredibly nasty, and so was Lowtax. Shmorky went offline for good, and I stopped paying attention to the drama and his channel. Come to find out all this, now, about how truly ghastly he got to be.
A lot went on in the SA Forums that was really formative to the internet, for bad and for good, and to the people who spent time on them. I saw a lot of hilarious stuff, read about the SCP and Zack Parsons' weird fiction, and learned quite a few things. One of those things, though, was about how men talk about women when they don't think they're around. That is a terrible thing to know. Another was Chris-chan: again, a terrible thing to know.
From here, it looks as if the guy who pointed out that the internet can destroy your brain let it destroy his, and let spite govern all his actions, including his very last one. Not to be parasocial on main, but it's a hell of a thing to see happen to someone you remember as young.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:29 AM on November 11, 2021 [60 favorites]
The dot is for his families, all of them, who are left with so many pieces to pick up.
I appreciate you posting this; I was thinking of doing it myself yesterday. I did not realize that Lowtax had spiraled so hard and become an outright abuser, although "become" is maybe not the right word for someone revealing what a piece of shit he is. Back in the day, though, I didn't know any of this.
Kyanka had a very nearly respectable period. He spoke at the University of Illinois in 2005 about the internet, where he made a very good point about the way it can destroy brains (i.e. the Parrot Ass Club) that I have thought about many times in the past couple of years. He did a Rifftrax of Troll 2 with Mike Nelson that, along with other Rifftrax, I often listened to while doing work. And he did a very funny channel with a talented animator called Shmorky, until --
Well, I don't know what the hell happened with Shmorky. Either they had a psychotic break, or their fiancee did, or Kiwi Farms found out they were a pedo, or Kiwi Farms framed them for being a pedo, or ... I don't know, but it was incredibly nasty, and so was Lowtax. Shmorky went offline for good, and I stopped paying attention to the drama and his channel. Come to find out all this, now, about how truly ghastly he got to be.
A lot went on in the SA Forums that was really formative to the internet, for bad and for good, and to the people who spent time on them. I saw a lot of hilarious stuff, read about the SCP and Zack Parsons' weird fiction, and learned quite a few things. One of those things, though, was about how men talk about women when they don't think they're around. That is a terrible thing to know. Another was Chris-chan: again, a terrible thing to know.
From here, it looks as if the guy who pointed out that the internet can destroy your brain let it destroy his, and let spite govern all his actions, including his very last one. Not to be parasocial on main, but it's a hell of a thing to see happen to someone you remember as young.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:29 AM on November 11, 2021 [60 favorites]
A post from one of his ex-wives provides some additional context.
(TW: Allegations of domestic violence and mistreatment, suicide.)
As a goon of nearly twenty years' standing, I will happily agree that it was and is like a herd of elephants on amphetamines at times. Capable of massive displays of force whether directed or not, the occasional bit of majesty, and amazing amounts of excrement at a moment's notice. Kind of like humanity.
Welp.
posted by delfin at 5:34 AM on November 11, 2021 [24 favorites]
(TW: Allegations of domestic violence and mistreatment, suicide.)
As a goon of nearly twenty years' standing, I will happily agree that it was and is like a herd of elephants on amphetamines at times. Capable of massive displays of force whether directed or not, the occasional bit of majesty, and amazing amounts of excrement at a moment's notice. Kind of like humanity.
Welp.
posted by delfin at 5:34 AM on November 11, 2021 [24 favorites]
meh
posted by chance at 5:45 AM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by chance at 5:45 AM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
To sum up delphin’s link; his ex-wife posted she learned news of his suicide by gun the same day she got the divorce ruling where the judge affirmed how he treated her was in fact domestic violence, lowtax had intentionally spent their marital property, but that she would be allowed to live in the house. But he would get some custody of their daughter.
And her ex mother-in-law blames her.
Mixed feelings here. She’s left to pick up the pieces from someone not willing to face the consequences of their actions. But in the long run, it will be a gift. But fuck, the psychic scar for her and her children is going to be a hard one.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 6:09 AM on November 11, 2021 [15 favorites]
And her ex mother-in-law blames her.
Mixed feelings here. She’s left to pick up the pieces from someone not willing to face the consequences of their actions. But in the long run, it will be a gift. But fuck, the psychic scar for her and her children is going to be a hard one.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 6:09 AM on November 11, 2021 [15 favorites]
(This probably comes off as extremely judgmental to those that commit suicide, and I apologize. This just is familiar to me in too many ways to not have an opinion. I wish I had some idea what my old SA login was to comment.)
posted by [insert clever name here] at 6:15 AM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by [insert clever name here] at 6:15 AM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
Something Awful has the weird legacy it does in part because the subforum structure largely balkanized it into subcommunities. Nothing was stopping you from posting wherever, but you could, for example, just post in the World of Warcraft forum and have no goddamned idea what else was going on for years. This created some incredibly fruitful spaces and it created some incredibly toxic spaces, and perhaps most damningly, Lowtax consistently encouraged the most toxic spaces.
He did a few things right, mostly against his will, he did a lot of things wrong, and lived such that when he died, a lot of people who'd been part of the community he built laughed about it and shared vicious jokes and stories about what a trashpile he was, and were right to do it. And ultimately he died as he lived: hurting vulnerable people.
Fuck him.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:32 AM on November 11, 2021 [22 favorites]
He did a few things right, mostly against his will, he did a lot of things wrong, and lived such that when he died, a lot of people who'd been part of the community he built laughed about it and shared vicious jokes and stories about what a trashpile he was, and were right to do it. And ultimately he died as he lived: hurting vulnerable people.
Fuck him.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:32 AM on November 11, 2021 [22 favorites]
Mod note: One comment deleted. Public service announcement in here: he was a bad guy and commenters here should feel free to say so, but in the process please try to avoid callousness in talking about suicide or other stigmatized ways that other people die. If you are in crisis yourself or having suicidal thoughts, please reach out and talk to someone; the Mefi community has compiled a list of crisis hotlines that includes text lines and online chat hotlines.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 6:43 AM on November 11, 2021 [35 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 6:43 AM on November 11, 2021 [35 favorites]
I'm pretty skeptical of the premise that SA somehow led to QAnon. I'm pretty sure that that forum invented neither the capability for anonymity nor the tendency for creating toxic groupthink loops. Regardless, Lowtax, and SA in general, could indeed be pretty awful, especially in the earlier days; I'm not trying to absolve them for that, or even myself for having passively consumed it. I think that this previously is useful, ditto the Vice oral history that it's based on.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:53 AM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:53 AM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm pretty skeptical of the premise that SA somehow led to QAnon.
Kyanka banning anime on SomethingAwful was the specific reason 4Chan was born. It's a pretty straight line.
posted by mhoye at 7:02 AM on November 11, 2021 [31 favorites]
Kyanka banning anime on SomethingAwful was the specific reason 4Chan was born. It's a pretty straight line.
posted by mhoye at 7:02 AM on November 11, 2021 [31 favorites]
I don't think anyone's arguing that Something Awful was a direct or necessary ancestor of QAnon – or that Lowtax shoulders the blame for QAnon. But SA was definitely an early glimmer of anarchic, vulgar, trollish, online-mob internet culture.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:04 AM on November 11, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:04 AM on November 11, 2021 [13 favorites]
The SA of today has a lot of subforums filled with older posters who are pretty chill. The site has changed as it has aged, much like Metafilter has.
posted by ryanrs at 7:11 AM on November 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by ryanrs at 7:11 AM on November 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
The site has changed as it has aged, much like Metafilter has.
Right, it was sold to a new owner last year who then turned around and banned Lowtax.
I never got that into the SA forums, but in recent years I'd had multiple interactions with Lowtax on facebook through mutuals, and he came across pretty much exactly as his reputation suggests.
I'm not going to comment on his suicide specifically, but just to say as a generality: the wish to die is often accompanied by a wish to kill.
posted by obliterati at 7:17 AM on November 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
Right, it was sold to a new owner last year who then turned around and banned Lowtax.
I never got that into the SA forums, but in recent years I'd had multiple interactions with Lowtax on facebook through mutuals, and he came across pretty much exactly as his reputation suggests.
I'm not going to comment on his suicide specifically, but just to say as a generality: the wish to die is often accompanied by a wish to kill.
posted by obliterati at 7:17 AM on November 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
Lowtax was an absentee owner for a long time before the sale. I'm pretty sure he hated the site. The post-sale permaban just made it official.
posted by ryanrs at 7:24 AM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by ryanrs at 7:24 AM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
The Kotaku article has this unintentionally damning comment: "In 1999, Kyanka created Something Awful, and today, it’s hard to understate the site’s influence".
Yes, SomethingAwful had significant influence. Full of bros being gross and feeling like their stupid racist and sexist comments constituted a valuable culture. Which to be fair, it kind of was in the early 2000 time period. SomethingAwful and others did a great job with early tech creating a place for people to talk about things and form an online consciousness. Unfortunately the culture they created was awful because in many cases the primary members and leaders of that culture were awful people. And no one stood up to them. That their founder was a spouse and child abusing piece of shit is not a surprise.
(Metafilter itself was not immune from this toxicity; we're all properly horrified going back and reading early 2000s threads now. I can say our founder Matt is the sweetest, best intentioned person. But the chattering classes of the US Internet back then were often indulging in bad behavior. And we had an ethos of free speech and not paying for moderation.)
posted by Nelson at 7:25 AM on November 11, 2021 [24 favorites]
Yes, SomethingAwful had significant influence. Full of bros being gross and feeling like their stupid racist and sexist comments constituted a valuable culture. Which to be fair, it kind of was in the early 2000 time period. SomethingAwful and others did a great job with early tech creating a place for people to talk about things and form an online consciousness. Unfortunately the culture they created was awful because in many cases the primary members and leaders of that culture were awful people. And no one stood up to them. That their founder was a spouse and child abusing piece of shit is not a surprise.
(Metafilter itself was not immune from this toxicity; we're all properly horrified going back and reading early 2000s threads now. I can say our founder Matt is the sweetest, best intentioned person. But the chattering classes of the US Internet back then were often indulging in bad behavior. And we had an ethos of free speech and not paying for moderation.)
posted by Nelson at 7:25 AM on November 11, 2021 [24 favorites]
the wish to die is often accompanied by a wish to kill.
In this case, the wish to die was also a wish to not pay child support. So, yeah. The man died as he lived.
posted by mhoye at 7:28 AM on November 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
In this case, the wish to die was also a wish to not pay child support. So, yeah. The man died as he lived.
posted by mhoye at 7:28 AM on November 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
Kyanka banning anime on SomethingAwful was the specific reason 4Chan was born. It's a pretty straight line.
yeah, in a James Burke "isn't this facinating" sort of way. Not in the way that I read most comments about it.
posted by Dr. Twist at 7:40 AM on November 11, 2021 [7 favorites]
yeah, in a James Burke "isn't this facinating" sort of way. Not in the way that I read most comments about it.
posted by Dr. Twist at 7:40 AM on November 11, 2021 [7 favorites]
Horrible people will always exist.
SA accumulated more than its share of them, and took steps to remove some of them. The $10 paywall helped; acting shittily and wanting to remain on the site carried a penalty. The self-policing avatar system helped; you could buy your own avatar/caption for $5, or buy someone ELSE'S for $10, leading to Big Red Custom TItles red-flagging the deserving and the not-so-much alike. The fabled ADTRW ban wasn't so much about removing anime in total, but a subset of posters who were a bit too enthusiastic about a subset of anime with pedophilic or sexually violent content.
That subset of posters migrated to 4chan, eliminated most of the personal-accountability measures, and the cycle repeated. Eventually 4chan attempted to rein in certain topics and content, which begat 8chan, and so on.
So, it's not a case where even old-school FYAD was an anarchic free-for-all. It was a set of insular communities, many of which warred against each other from time to time. As ryanrs noted above, it was easy to pick and choose which parts of it you wished to engage with -- and remains so.
posted by delfin at 8:12 AM on November 11, 2021 [15 favorites]
SA accumulated more than its share of them, and took steps to remove some of them. The $10 paywall helped; acting shittily and wanting to remain on the site carried a penalty. The self-policing avatar system helped; you could buy your own avatar/caption for $5, or buy someone ELSE'S for $10, leading to Big Red Custom TItles red-flagging the deserving and the not-so-much alike. The fabled ADTRW ban wasn't so much about removing anime in total, but a subset of posters who were a bit too enthusiastic about a subset of anime with pedophilic or sexually violent content.
That subset of posters migrated to 4chan, eliminated most of the personal-accountability measures, and the cycle repeated. Eventually 4chan attempted to rein in certain topics and content, which begat 8chan, and so on.
So, it's not a case where even old-school FYAD was an anarchic free-for-all. It was a set of insular communities, many of which warred against each other from time to time. As ryanrs noted above, it was easy to pick and choose which parts of it you wished to engage with -- and remains so.
posted by delfin at 8:12 AM on November 11, 2021 [15 favorites]
yeah, in a James Burke "isn't this facinating" sort of way. Not in the way that I read most comments about it.
You know what I miss more than anything about the 90's? James Burke drawing zigzags starting from one interesting thing to another and all the way back around, constantly taking things in an uplifting direction even when he was talking about very dark events. He was a personification of what we expected the Web to become.
posted by ocschwar at 8:29 AM on November 11, 2021 [30 favorites]
You know what I miss more than anything about the 90's? James Burke drawing zigzags starting from one interesting thing to another and all the way back around, constantly taking things in an uplifting direction even when he was talking about very dark events. He was a personification of what we expected the Web to become.
posted by ocschwar at 8:29 AM on November 11, 2021 [30 favorites]
SA only improved once everyone woke up to Rich's shittiness and essentially kicked him off his own site and people had been slowly fighting to improve for a while before then, not to discount their work. Sucks for his kids, such a shitty thing he's done to them here.
SA is interesting in having done a pretty hard 360 over the years. Once a place outright hostile to furries, (actually not even listing em all anything that could or couldnt be mocked was mocked by someone trying to be 2000s af) and all sorts of other harmless ways to be, now those sorts of folks are totally welcome and it's hateful blanket bashing of them that is derided and mocked. It's so easy to see how SA could've become a cesspool like many of its offshoots and peers, and there are a couple SA-hate communities formed that kind of offer glimpses into the pathetic community of an eternal hateful-negativity stew.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:29 AM on November 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
SA is interesting in having done a pretty hard 360 over the years. Once a place outright hostile to furries, (actually not even listing em all anything that could or couldnt be mocked was mocked by someone trying to be 2000s af) and all sorts of other harmless ways to be, now those sorts of folks are totally welcome and it's hateful blanket bashing of them that is derided and mocked. It's so easy to see how SA could've become a cesspool like many of its offshoots and peers, and there are a couple SA-hate communities formed that kind of offer glimpses into the pathetic community of an eternal hateful-negativity stew.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:29 AM on November 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
Important quote from his second ex-wife:
My daughter is five, she will fare better than his other children who are in their teens and risk seeing people celebrating their fathers death.
posted by ocschwar at 8:40 AM on November 11, 2021 [22 favorites]
My daughter is five, she will fare better than his other children who are in their teens and risk seeing people celebrating their fathers death.
posted by ocschwar at 8:40 AM on November 11, 2021 [22 favorites]
SA is interesting in having done a pretty hard 360 over the years.
Another example, SA posters chased the nazis and cops off the gun subforum, and now it's run by leftists.
Good people seem to be winning the fight for the heart of the forums, now that lowtax is gone. Job isn't done, though, by any means.
posted by ryanrs at 8:44 AM on November 11, 2021 [17 favorites]
Another example, SA posters chased the nazis and cops off the gun subforum, and now it's run by leftists.
Good people seem to be winning the fight for the heart of the forums, now that lowtax is gone. Job isn't done, though, by any means.
posted by ryanrs at 8:44 AM on November 11, 2021 [17 favorites]
For anyone even a little bit sad about him dying, he literally tried to get his ex wife he abused deported while she was hiding in a battered women's shelter, so.
posted by ShawnStruck at 9:10 AM on November 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by ShawnStruck at 9:10 AM on November 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
This tweet is a breathtaking eulogy, brutal and succinct and absolutely spot-on:
a man who managed to be on the wrong side of just about every history - even his own.posted by Ian A.T. at 9:26 AM on November 11, 2021 [12 favorites]
I'm glad SomethingAwful got better. It's always had value, I hope I conveyed my respect for that in my first comment. It's just also always been wrapped up and riddled-through with a lot of shittiness.
This discussion reminds me also of the evolution of NeoGAF to ResetEra. A 20+ year gamer forum, notable in particular for having a lot of industry insiders on it. Once the community there figured out their founder was a bad person (including sexually harassing someone) they regrouped to a new site that is doing very well and is actually kind of pleasant.
posted by Nelson at 10:16 AM on November 11, 2021 [5 favorites]
This discussion reminds me also of the evolution of NeoGAF to ResetEra. A 20+ year gamer forum, notable in particular for having a lot of industry insiders on it. Once the community there figured out their founder was a bad person (including sexually harassing someone) they regrouped to a new site that is doing very well and is actually kind of pleasant.
posted by Nelson at 10:16 AM on November 11, 2021 [5 favorites]
Good riddance. May he spend his next several lives being on the receiving end of the kind of shit his bored asshole forum-dwellers would regularly bring down on people who attracted their ire for simple crimes like "being a furry" of "being trans" or whatever. Fuck him, fuck everyone who ran similar sites dedicated to finding weird people on the internet to mock.
posted by egypturnash at 10:25 AM on November 11, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by egypturnash at 10:25 AM on November 11, 2021 [8 favorites]
SA is interesting in having done a pretty hard 360 over the years.
Pretty sure this was intended to say 180.
posted by axiom at 11:13 AM on November 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
Pretty sure this was intended to say 180.
posted by axiom at 11:13 AM on November 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
Pretty sure this was intended to say 180.
Pretty sure this was intended to say pi radians
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:22 AM on November 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
Pretty sure this was intended to say pi radians
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:22 AM on November 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
He did a bunch of bad things and then he killed himself. There is nothing good about it. He wasn’t the first, nor will he be the last to find himself overwhelmed when the consequences catch up and everything is taken away. If you or anyone you know is in this situation remember there are better options than suicide.
posted by interogative mood at 11:29 AM on November 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 11:29 AM on November 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
I was thinking about posting this but it felt weird to just post a link to the forums.
Lowtax was an awful person. Some of his awfulness was a refusal to grow up past a lot of the web 1.0 culture his site was founded in; he was a bigot ('ironically', but not that ironically) and had a cruel sense of humor. SA still has sizable pockets of that ethic built into it, but it's a very balkanized forum by and large so you could really reasonably only read/post in, say, the let's play forum or about comics without knowing what the hell is going on elsewhere. Some of that balkanization down to the fact that he basically avoided the forums for years except to occasionally try to squeeze some money out of it (or to try to revert it back to his original vision when many of the users had grown past it), so when a critical mass of people decided to stop being shitty in a given thread or forum, it was possible to have a distinct culture. It seems like a weirdly archaic model now that I think about it, although I came up posting on internet forums long before the SA forums even existed (much less before I bought an account, to...watch people play sonic games, I think?)
So he was a sort of bad person on the Internet before it was clear that he was also engaged in financial, emotional, and physical abuse in his relationships. It was only the last part that I think finally made the forums snap enough that people stopped giving him money on Patreon and he was forced to sell. And now, with the sketchy details about the family court stuff makes it seem like he truly was spitefully wasting money on god knows what in order to avoid paying alimony. What a god damned mess.
posted by dismas at 11:33 AM on November 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
Lowtax was an awful person. Some of his awfulness was a refusal to grow up past a lot of the web 1.0 culture his site was founded in; he was a bigot ('ironically', but not that ironically) and had a cruel sense of humor. SA still has sizable pockets of that ethic built into it, but it's a very balkanized forum by and large so you could really reasonably only read/post in, say, the let's play forum or about comics without knowing what the hell is going on elsewhere. Some of that balkanization down to the fact that he basically avoided the forums for years except to occasionally try to squeeze some money out of it (or to try to revert it back to his original vision when many of the users had grown past it), so when a critical mass of people decided to stop being shitty in a given thread or forum, it was possible to have a distinct culture. It seems like a weirdly archaic model now that I think about it, although I came up posting on internet forums long before the SA forums even existed (much less before I bought an account, to...watch people play sonic games, I think?)
So he was a sort of bad person on the Internet before it was clear that he was also engaged in financial, emotional, and physical abuse in his relationships. It was only the last part that I think finally made the forums snap enough that people stopped giving him money on Patreon and he was forced to sell. And now, with the sketchy details about the family court stuff makes it seem like he truly was spitefully wasting money on god knows what in order to avoid paying alimony. What a god damned mess.
posted by dismas at 11:33 AM on November 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
SA is interesting in having done a pretty hard 360 over the years.
Pretty sure this was intended to say 180.
Indeed.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:34 AM on November 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
Pretty sure this was intended to say 180.
Indeed.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:34 AM on November 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
Even his nick, “lowtax”, is a massive red flag, strongly suggesting that the bearer is the kind of fuck-you-got-mine libertarian manbaby who resents being expected to take responsibility, to the point of rationalising an entire political philosophy around it.
posted by acb at 2:58 PM on November 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by acb at 2:58 PM on November 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
He lifted it from Byron "Low Tax" Looper, a politician who murdered his opponent. Edgelord shit.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:16 PM on November 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:16 PM on November 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
Kind of accurate.
Weird emotions about this. It's not about him, can't even suggest it's about what he created, that's too active a word. The man was an idiot in so many ways, even to the point of not realising that there's enough goons who would help him when he was in medical bill shit.
The various sections of that site had so much good and bad shit in them. I remember toy drives, international Secret Santa's, stalker games, random photography stuff, but also things like FYAD and swap.avi.
Just a weirdly unsettling thing to read.
posted by MattWPBS at 3:29 PM on November 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
Weird emotions about this. It's not about him, can't even suggest it's about what he created, that's too active a word. The man was an idiot in so many ways, even to the point of not realising that there's enough goons who would help him when he was in medical bill shit.
The various sections of that site had so much good and bad shit in them. I remember toy drives, international Secret Santa's, stalker games, random photography stuff, but also things like FYAD and swap.avi.
Just a weirdly unsettling thing to read.
posted by MattWPBS at 3:29 PM on November 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
(and because it's not clear in that, the man was definitely an arsehole, but one who was a weird parasocial presence in my life 20 years ago or so. Just strange processing.)
posted by MattWPBS at 3:33 PM on November 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by MattWPBS at 3:33 PM on November 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
Weird emotions about this. It's not about him, can't even suggest it's about what he created, that's too active a word. The man was an idiot in so many ways, even to the point of not realising that there's enough goons who would help him when he was in medical bill shit.
The funny thing is, the goons DID flock to his Patreon when he was in deep medical bill shit because his spine was turning into Slim-Jims. And then the domestic violence allegations became much louder, and his revenue streams _plummeted_, even to the point where mods set up alternative ways in which you could purchase a new avatar and make sure that none of the money went to Lowtax.
Certain standards do supersede other loyalties.
posted by delfin at 3:38 PM on November 11, 2021 [5 favorites]
The funny thing is, the goons DID flock to his Patreon when he was in deep medical bill shit because his spine was turning into Slim-Jims. And then the domestic violence allegations became much louder, and his revenue streams _plummeted_, even to the point where mods set up alternative ways in which you could purchase a new avatar and make sure that none of the money went to Lowtax.
Certain standards do supersede other loyalties.
posted by delfin at 3:38 PM on November 11, 2021 [5 favorites]
Aye, he didn't post anything about it at that point, then someone called him an idiot, stuck it in GBS and people helped. Man was truly stupid at times. That's the last time I'd been on there till today.
The good part of the forums was things like that response, or the one to the GFM for the ex-wife and children. It's gone to near $60k in a day.
I don't know why this is kicking off emotions in me, but it is. Doesn't feel like it should, so it's giving me that unsettled sense where I'm trying to untangle threads from feelings and figure out where they're coming from.
posted by MattWPBS at 4:08 PM on November 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
The good part of the forums was things like that response, or the one to the GFM for the ex-wife and children. It's gone to near $60k in a day.
I don't know why this is kicking off emotions in me, but it is. Doesn't feel like it should, so it's giving me that unsettled sense where I'm trying to untangle threads from feelings and figure out where they're coming from.
posted by MattWPBS at 4:08 PM on November 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
Vice:
Kyanka’s legacy is woven into the soul of the internet, for better and for worse. He hated the internet, the internet hated him back, and it's not clear anyone has learned anything from what he helped unleash.posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:16 PM on November 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
“I'm obviously not a visionary, but I predicted that the internet would be shitty back in 1999,” Kyanka told Motherboard in 2017. “Everybody was talking about how the internet was going to revolutionize everything and everything was going to be great, but nobody ever talked about how shitty the internet could also be.”
I won't mourn a piece of shit abuser but I hope his kids can remember him as more than that.
In that spirit the non-toxic thing I think worth remembering about Lowtax is how much he loved comedy. He never had any talent for it, but he kept grinding out pieces on his website long after it was clear nobody liked or respected his writing.
He wanted to be friends with the actually funny people who showed up on his forums so badly that he always encouraged them, even when they'd mock him so cruelly that I think any reasonable person would have kicked them off the website. There are people in TV show writing rooms today because of the ethos that you can trace directly from 2009 FYAD to weird twitter to current twitter comedy.
His willingness to be associated with good jokes even though they were usually at his own expense ended up having a real impact on the comedy he loved.
posted by zymil at 4:21 PM on November 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
In that spirit the non-toxic thing I think worth remembering about Lowtax is how much he loved comedy. He never had any talent for it, but he kept grinding out pieces on his website long after it was clear nobody liked or respected his writing.
He wanted to be friends with the actually funny people who showed up on his forums so badly that he always encouraged them, even when they'd mock him so cruelly that I think any reasonable person would have kicked them off the website. There are people in TV show writing rooms today because of the ethos that you can trace directly from 2009 FYAD to weird twitter to current twitter comedy.
His willingness to be associated with good jokes even though they were usually at his own expense ended up having a real impact on the comedy he loved.
posted by zymil at 4:21 PM on November 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
If it weren't him, it would have been someone. Blame the gardeners, not the weed.
posted by lon_star at 4:26 PM on November 11, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by lon_star at 4:26 PM on November 11, 2021 [5 favorites]
As a former forums admin, this produces a lot of very complicated and conflicted feelings. The man was an ass, always had been.
Rich hated the forums, eventually; he hated that they existed, that he had to do work to keep a thing he hated, but which made him money, so he'd come in every few years and act like he owned the place. The forums were always secondary to the front page, where he was the star, because that's what he made himself into.
Having thought about it, the nicest way I can describe Rich is that if you gave him a bottle and some lightning, he'd never produce lightning in a bottle. He'd cork the bottle, shoo off the lightning, and proceed to tell you about the many wonderful qualities of the bottle, such as that it might hold quite a lot of lightning, if only some were around.
He was almost supernaturally gifted at turning away success, and somehow found a way to make that into its own kind of success.
He's dead and I'm not sad about it, I'm sad for a time and a place that never really was.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 5:17 PM on November 11, 2021 [29 favorites]
Rich hated the forums, eventually; he hated that they existed, that he had to do work to keep a thing he hated, but which made him money, so he'd come in every few years and act like he owned the place. The forums were always secondary to the front page, where he was the star, because that's what he made himself into.
Having thought about it, the nicest way I can describe Rich is that if you gave him a bottle and some lightning, he'd never produce lightning in a bottle. He'd cork the bottle, shoo off the lightning, and proceed to tell you about the many wonderful qualities of the bottle, such as that it might hold quite a lot of lightning, if only some were around.
He was almost supernaturally gifted at turning away success, and somehow found a way to make that into its own kind of success.
He's dead and I'm not sad about it, I'm sad for a time and a place that never really was.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 5:17 PM on November 11, 2021 [29 favorites]
the wish to die is often accompanied by a wish to kill.
No, mostly not, and I think that’s bullshit mental illness shaming.
To be more gracious, “citation needed”
posted by soylent00FF00 at 6:12 PM on November 11, 2021 [22 favorites]
No, mostly not, and I think that’s bullshit mental illness shaming.
To be more gracious, “citation needed”
posted by soylent00FF00 at 6:12 PM on November 11, 2021 [22 favorites]
Some of the front page SA content was genuinely hilarious. Like the dog ads? Fucking delightful. Lowtax was occasionally capable of being quite smart and funny and it’s truly something awful what he became and what a horrible legacy he left behind.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:03 PM on November 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by aspersioncast at 8:03 PM on November 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
Wow. I was briefly a pedestrian on SA in the early zeroes. Lowtax was described with some reverence. This is eye-opening.
And I'm also now calling him out as a piece of shit.
posted by bendy at 8:22 PM on November 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
And I'm also now calling him out as a piece of shit.
posted by bendy at 8:22 PM on November 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
well whether you love him or hate him, i think we can all agree that the only fitting tribute to richard "lowtax" kyanka is to make the most tasteless jokes imaginable about his death
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:02 PM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:02 PM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
Or alternatively, you can stop the cycle right there, refusing to play along with his last piece of trolling as if he was some zany, outrageous character, instead calling attention to the real harm he did. Never again, and all that.
This is not Bill Hicks or Oderus Urungus or some similar larger-than-life character we're talking about, but a piece-of-shit serial domestic abuser whose contributions to the world were largely unintentional.
posted by acb at 2:17 AM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
This is not Bill Hicks or Oderus Urungus or some similar larger-than-life character we're talking about, but a piece-of-shit serial domestic abuser whose contributions to the world were largely unintentional.
posted by acb at 2:17 AM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
If it weren't him, it would have been someone. Blame the gardeners, not the weed.
What does this nonsense even mean? That somebody else would have abused everyone he abused, so shrug-whatever? It was him. He, specifically, did the things he specifically did.
posted by mhoye at 6:40 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
What does this nonsense even mean? That somebody else would have abused everyone he abused, so shrug-whatever? It was him. He, specifically, did the things he specifically did.
posted by mhoye at 6:40 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
. for his family, his children and the man he could have been.
SA was my too-late-on-a-Friday-night website in the early oughties (along with memepool) and I remember it fondly. I usually just read the Photoshop Phridays and whatever other stuff got to the front page, mostly avoiding the forums. These days, I'm glad that's the extent to which I got into the site.
posted by suetanvil at 7:12 AM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
SA was my too-late-on-a-Friday-night website in the early oughties (along with memepool) and I remember it fondly. I usually just read the Photoshop Phridays and whatever other stuff got to the front page, mostly avoiding the forums. These days, I'm glad that's the extent to which I got into the site.
posted by suetanvil at 7:12 AM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
the wish to die is often accompanied by a wish to kill.
No, mostly not, and I think that’s bullshit mental illness shaming.
To be more gracious, “citation needed”
It is accompanied often enough to be chilling to those of us that have seen it. At least one of the mother’s of them shooters at Columbine has talked about the connection between mass shootings and suicidal thoughts and encouraged there to BE more research on the topic. I witnessed my own late husband stumble down the hole of increasingly violent rhetoric before taking his life, before finding what the police described as a manifesto detailing even more explicit plans. I assume obliterati is talking about the same kind of cryptic violent postings on social media that friends warned me were coming from my late husband.
It’s not a cite, but I spent a good year of my grief digging into the connection between suicide and mass shootings and murder/suicide, as well as finding other widows who felt they barely escaped alive. It would take me some effort and pain to revisit and find the supporting information, but it is there and if you’re really curious, I’d start with the Ted talk by the Columbine shooter’s mother, it should be easy to Google.
Obliterati isn’t saying that all suicidal people are also potential killers. But some, perhaps too many, there is a hatred that could go inward or outward and it’s not always clear which way it will go, and it’s an understudied, under-recognized problem. (Likely because most of the victims end up being women, as it comes out in murder/suicides with the majority of those being committed by men and why bother with the concerns of women? Like the rest of domestic violence, we too eagerly turn a blind eye.)
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:15 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
No, mostly not, and I think that’s bullshit mental illness shaming.
To be more gracious, “citation needed”
It is accompanied often enough to be chilling to those of us that have seen it. At least one of the mother’s of them shooters at Columbine has talked about the connection between mass shootings and suicidal thoughts and encouraged there to BE more research on the topic. I witnessed my own late husband stumble down the hole of increasingly violent rhetoric before taking his life, before finding what the police described as a manifesto detailing even more explicit plans. I assume obliterati is talking about the same kind of cryptic violent postings on social media that friends warned me were coming from my late husband.
It’s not a cite, but I spent a good year of my grief digging into the connection between suicide and mass shootings and murder/suicide, as well as finding other widows who felt they barely escaped alive. It would take me some effort and pain to revisit and find the supporting information, but it is there and if you’re really curious, I’d start with the Ted talk by the Columbine shooter’s mother, it should be easy to Google.
Obliterati isn’t saying that all suicidal people are also potential killers. But some, perhaps too many, there is a hatred that could go inward or outward and it’s not always clear which way it will go, and it’s an understudied, under-recognized problem. (Likely because most of the victims end up being women, as it comes out in murder/suicides with the majority of those being committed by men and why bother with the concerns of women? Like the rest of domestic violence, we too eagerly turn a blind eye.)
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:15 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
It is accompanied often enough to be chilling to those of us that have seen it.
It is absolutely not "accompanied often enough". I cannot find any papers that actually tie suicidal ideation with homicidal ideation. The most predictive factors for a murder-suicide are (a) a history of violence by the perpetrator, (b) the perpetrator knowing the victim, (c) the perpetrator being male, and (d) specifically the history of violence is domestic.
The trauma you've gone through is awful and terrifying, but your ex-husband's propensity for violence is not the norm for suicidal people. It is more a representation of the path of domestic abusers. And that issue also exists separate from social ideation.
posted by Anonymous at 12:06 PM on November 12, 2021
It is absolutely not "accompanied often enough". I cannot find any papers that actually tie suicidal ideation with homicidal ideation. The most predictive factors for a murder-suicide are (a) a history of violence by the perpetrator, (b) the perpetrator knowing the victim, (c) the perpetrator being male, and (d) specifically the history of violence is domestic.
The trauma you've gone through is awful and terrifying, but your ex-husband's propensity for violence is not the norm for suicidal people. It is more a representation of the path of domestic abusers. And that issue also exists separate from social ideation.
posted by Anonymous at 12:06 PM on November 12, 2021
The GoFundMe to support the kids is (as of the time of this writing) up to $74,230, and they've had to increase the donation goal a couple of times. Already talking about making trusts for them, too.
One highlight: the goon who made sure to donate the appropriate amount and screenshot it to briefly make the total $69,420 because of course, why would you not?
"Herd of elephants" indeed.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 3:55 PM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
One highlight: the goon who made sure to donate the appropriate amount and screenshot it to briefly make the total $69,420 because of course, why would you not?
"Herd of elephants" indeed.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 3:55 PM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
Here's the Something Awful thread about his death. I can read it without being logged in - hopefully accessible by all.
posted by bendy at 4:16 PM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by bendy at 4:16 PM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
I’m waiting for the inevitable reports that his spirit is now trapped in Grover House.
posted by interogative mood at 7:33 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 7:33 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Way way up Countess Elena brought up Shmorky, which may also be a sad story. I don't know much of it, I've read accusations of pedophilia, and a claim they committed suicide, but the mention of the hated Kiwi Farms basically casts a shadow of doubt on everything.
About the only real thing I know about Lowtax is that Rifftrax (Troll 2) he did with Mike Nelson. Also, there is an early Rifftrax Live where there is an animated section done in Shmorky's style.
I might have joined Something Awful long ago if it weren't for a fateful day when Slashdot linked to something on their site, back in the day when the "Slashdot effect" could bring a server to is knees, and they compensated by having their server call up goatse to references from that domain. That was the day I resolved to myself, this isn't for me. Probably Lowtax was responsible for that.
Long long ago, there was a site, actually I think it's still up, |tsr's NES archive, which was (is) a funny early web takedown of crappy video games. It closed up shortly before SA launched, I think because tsr joined up with them? It'd explain the style of those early vg mocking posts, some of which are amazingly tone-deaf.
Most of this is random musing on SA and it's legacy than anything about Lowtax, except how his presence influenced the site and it's culture. I'm glad it's a better place to be now, that it has long outgrown Lowtax's personality. Maybe I should finally see about getting a forum account there now.
posted by JHarris at 4:58 PM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
About the only real thing I know about Lowtax is that Rifftrax (Troll 2) he did with Mike Nelson. Also, there is an early Rifftrax Live where there is an animated section done in Shmorky's style.
I might have joined Something Awful long ago if it weren't for a fateful day when Slashdot linked to something on their site, back in the day when the "Slashdot effect" could bring a server to is knees, and they compensated by having their server call up goatse to references from that domain. That was the day I resolved to myself, this isn't for me. Probably Lowtax was responsible for that.
Long long ago, there was a site, actually I think it's still up, |tsr's NES archive, which was (is) a funny early web takedown of crappy video games. It closed up shortly before SA launched, I think because tsr joined up with them? It'd explain the style of those early vg mocking posts, some of which are amazingly tone-deaf.
Most of this is random musing on SA and it's legacy than anything about Lowtax, except how his presence influenced the site and it's culture. I'm glad it's a better place to be now, that it has long outgrown Lowtax's personality. Maybe I should finally see about getting a forum account there now.
posted by JHarris at 4:58 PM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
obliterati:
I had a mini dissociative episode trying to apply the first argument above to myself and figuring out if I have had any homicidal thoughts. (No.)
posted by EmperorOozy at 9:06 PM on November 13, 2021 [7 favorites]
the wish to die is often accompanied by a wish to kill[insert clever name here]:
there is a hatred that could go inward or outward and it’s not always clear which way it will goPlease stop applying an individual’s shitty behavior to all people struggling with mental illness. We face enough unnecessary stigma and this sends a harmful message, to both the general public and mental illness sufferers.
I had a mini dissociative episode trying to apply the first argument above to myself and figuring out if I have had any homicidal thoughts. (No.)
posted by EmperorOozy at 9:06 PM on November 13, 2021 [7 favorites]
You know what I miss more than anything about the 90's? James Burke drawing zigzags starting from one interesting thing to another and all the way back around, constantly taking things in an uplifting direction even when he was talking about very dark events. He was a personification of what we expected the Web to become.
Well now we have Adam Curtis.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:13 PM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
Well now we have Adam Curtis.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:13 PM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
The thing I have noticed about SA people -- even the ones I know fairly well, and like! -- is that there is a kind of impersonal coldness to them, I think that just comes from being deeply guarded from soaking in a culture where there was a lot of bullying.
The site is different now than it was. I said before that SA is a place where a lot of bullies came to learn how to be better bullies, but they learned to be better people instead.
posted by fleacircus at 12:10 AM on November 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
The site is different now than it was. I said before that SA is a place where a lot of bullies came to learn how to be better bullies, but they learned to be better people instead.
posted by fleacircus at 12:10 AM on November 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
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posted by acb at 3:56 AM on November 11, 2021 [26 favorites]