Something Awful
Something Awful, sometimes abbreviated to SA, is a cynical comedy website based in the United States. It houses a variety of content, such as instant messaging pranks, digitally edited pictures, intentionally bad web comics, and humorous negative reviews of pornography and old NES games. In addition, it has a very active set of message boards, which in later years have grown remarkably.
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History
Something Awful is the brainchild of Richard "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 ARCCentral, but were popularized 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 he was forced into resignation for publishing a derogatory Cranky Steve update on a PlanetQuake employee[1], Lowtax moved his personal features to a new site, entitled Something Awful, in late 1999. During this early period, Lowtax created some 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, including GameFan and eFront, promised Lowtax various payments in exchange for ad space, 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 investment of time and money into the site to keep it running.
The 2001 decision to charge a one-time fee (currently $9.95 USD) for forums access seems to be a cornerstone of the site's present financial stability. Continuous income is generated through new member fees and the charge to re-register that is levied against members who have repeatedly broken forum rules.
Modern Something Awful
The Something Awful, in which the sites' various writers post humorous articles (officially called "News posts") that are displayed on the site's front page. The articles may be personal in tone, describing real-life experiences, but more often than not they are irreverent rants, often with a satirical, educational tone. Typical articles include "The Unwritten History of Halloween," "Learning to Cope with France," "Life Lessons: Protection against Molesting" and "Oh TV, What Have You Done?"
Every News post concludes with an "Awful Link of the Day" (sometimes abbreviated to ALOD) in which the authors provide a link to a site (often fan submitted) which they feel is disgusting, humorous, disturbing, stupid, or all four. Fetish websites are a common target of Awful Link of the Day. Furry sites were once a common target for ALoD, but that topic has since been deemed a "dead horse."
Other notable features of the site include:
- The fictional cranky old man Cliff Yablonski, who mercilessly mocks pictures of ugly people found on the Internet, or submitted by readers in his section "Cliff Yablonski Hates You."
- Photoshop Phriday, a weekly feature in which members of the Something Awful forums (see below) use their computer graphic skills to make humorous images dealing with the theme of the week, such as "Movie Crossovers that should not happen"
- Frequent movie, TV, game, and porn reviews (often selective in reviewing the very worst examples of all), which continue the tradition of Cranky Steve's Haunted Whorehouse from SA's earliest days. The Something Awful review system gives each movie a score between 0 and -50, with 0 being tolerable and -50 being the worst possible score. There are also occasional rare reviews of actually good things, where the scale goes normally from 0 to 50. The only video games to receive a positive scores are Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Deus Ex, Kiss Psycho Circus, and the Soldier of Fortune Demo - the only game to receive a grade of -73, which surpasses -50, is Derek Smart's Universal Combat.
- The Flash Tub, which contains short flash movies animated by forum user Shmorky. Voices are usually provided by well-known SA personalities such as Lowtax, Fragmaster, and Shmorky himself.
- The Weekend Web, a weekly feature edited by Johnny "DocEvil" Titanium where Something Awful Forums members scout out badly written, overemotional, or seemingly insane posts on any Internet forum on the Web. The feature usually consists of particularly interesting picks from three or four specific forums, and occasional topical mix of posts from multiple forums.
- Daily Dirt, closer to a blog format than the main page, where the writer of that day's article usually uses material they feel not worth devoting the main page to. Early postings have shed light on the history of the site. It is optional for the writer to use the feature, but most writers do.
- Your Band Sucks, a feature which criticizes popular music artists, maintained by Dr. David Thorpe. This feature also gives out the annual "World's Greatest Dad Awards" (Dr. Thorpe claimed to have chosen this name because he was too lazy to create images of the awards himself) for the year's worst musicians in a variety of categories.
- Legal Threats, which showcases some of the numerous legal threats the site or operators have received. Over the years, the site has offended its share of people, usually when their sites were featured as Awful Links Of the Day. Some have tried to bring lawsuits against the site, usually under the grounds of libel. This section displays most or all of the email or real mail correspondence related to the threat. Lowtax usually gives his opponents the run-around, messing with them to either get a rise out of them or waste their time. Sometimes he also corresponds under the guise of fictional legal "expert" Leonard "J." Crabs. The people and groups who initiate the threats usually give up once they realize that, under free speech, an opinion does not constitute libel, and so they have no grounds for a lawsuit. Lowtax has stated that he will remove a link to a site if they ask nicely, but if they threaten legal action, he will keep the link no matter what. Most recently, the site was threatened by a company run by retired wrestler Jim "The Ultimate Warrior" Hellwig.
- Fashion SWAT, a new segment which makes fun of clothing and/or styles. Each article has some theme, such as "Comic SWAT", "Retro SWAT", or "Ganguro Madness".
The site also often produces "specials" such as deliberately-poorly-drawn comics, short stories, or "guides to life." 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.
Forums
Main article: Something Awful Forums
The "Something Awful Forums" is the message board system on Something Awful. Many consider the forums to be more popular than the main website (a running joke is that new members occasionally do not even know that the main page exists). Despite charging a membership fee - something which is almost unheard of in internet message boards - the forums are unusually popular with over sixty thousand current members.
Something Awful subculture
Doom House
Doomhousetitle.jpg
Terrible Secret of Space
The Terrible Secret of Space is an Internet meme that originated in an instant message prank by Richard Kyanka. Kyanka told a particularly gullible young IM user that he was building "space robots" to assist humans and protect them from the mysterious secret (which, appropriately, was never explained). These included a pusher robot that was programmed to shove, and a shover robot that was programmed to push. In the prank Kyanka's robot malfunctioned during the conversation and pushed Kyanka down the stairs, just as an earlier prototype had done to his grandmother. Kyanka then posed as the robot which tried to find out the location of the IM user so it could push him down the stairs as well.
Like the "All your base are belong to us" phenomenon, the Terrible Secret of Space spawned a Flash Animation with a soundtrack by The Laziest Men on Mars. It also inspired the Something Awful token phrase, "Do you have stairs in your house?". This phrase is used when registered Forums members greet each other in real life. For example, if Person 1 thinks Person 2 is a goon, Person 1 will say "Do you have stairs in your house?", and Person 2 (if he is a goon) will give a response which is accepted by goons everywhere as the correct response.
External links
- Doom House-Includes a free download of the movie.