Something Awful

History

Something Awful was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka.{{cite web | access-date = May 10, 2007}} 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.{{cite web | access-date = May 10, 2007}} 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 10 dollars for accounts with forum access (which was approximately $ in dollars, although an account still costs $10.00 as of 2025). 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. 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.

GreenMeat Body Armor charity drive

Something Awful forum user GreenMeat deployed to Iraq in 2004, despite his unit not having hard body armor. SA forum users, along with help from Fark users, raised over $20,000 to buy body armor, plate carriers, and assorted care packages for a group of 31 soldiers.

Hurricane Katrina charity

As Something Awful servers were located in New Orleans, the site temporarily went offline in August 2005 during the flooding from Hurricane Katrina. After the site was brought to a semi-functional state, Kyanka set up a link to a PayPal account where people could donate money to the survivors of the hurricane via the Red Cross. Kyanka put in $3,000 of his own money,{{cite magazine | access-date = May 27, 2018 and promised to give some free merchandise to anyone who donated more than $10. PayPal froze the donation account, then stated that they would unfreeze the account once it was provided with proof of shipping from aggrieved buyers. Due to the nature of the collection, there were no actual "buyers", and it was impossible to provide proof of shipping for donation.{{cite news | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20091213123447/http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1005868/paypal-freezes-something-awfuls-relief-fund | url-status = unfit | archive-date = December 13, 2009 | access-date = May 27, 2018}} Eventually, Kyanka contacted a customer service representative over the phone, and asked to have PayPal donate all of the money to the American Red Cross. However, he was told that PayPal would only give the money to United Way of America due to their business affiliation; Kyanka initially agreed, but after receiving several emails from readers detailing alleged corruption and inefficiency within United Way, he changed his mind and told PayPal to refund all of the money to the individual donors. PayPal refunded the money, but did not refund exchange and handling fees for international donors.

Shooting deaths

In 2005, William Freund sought advice in the Something Awful gun subforum about purchasing Hevi-Shot brand ammunition several days before embarking on a "shooting rampage", during which he killed two people before taking his own life. Freund had stated in the thread, which was closed before the killing spree, along with his ability to post comments being revoked, that he intended to use the ammunition to defend his Halloween pumpkins from vandals.

Uwe Boll fight

In June 2006, Kyanka accepted an open challenge from German movie director Uwe Boll, who had offered to fight critics of his movies in a series of ten-round boxing matches. Something Awful had posted a humorous review that was critical of one of his films. | access-date = March 12, 2007}} | access-date = March 12, 2007 The event took place in Vancouver, Canada, on September 23, 2006; after being knocked down several times and eventually forfeiting the fight in the first round, Kyanka claimed that he had been told by Boll, a trained amateur boxer, that the fight would be just for show. To that effect, Kyanka purportedly acted like a silent film comedy character during the fight rather than seriously attempting to fight Uwe Boll.{{cite magazine | access-date = May 10, 2007 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070609201552/http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117950633.html?categoryid=1011&cs=1 | archive-date = June 9, 2007 | url-status = live

Death of Sean Smith

Sean Smith, a US Foreign Service Information Management Officer, as well as a Something Awful forum moderator and leading member of the Goonswarm Federation alliance (which originated in part from the Something Awful forums) in the video game Eve Online, was killed in the 2012 Benghazi attack on September 11, 2012. Eve Online players paid respect to Smith by renaming in-game space stations after him. | access-date = March 28, 2018}}

Site content

The frontpage article series Golan the Insatiable is the basis of an animated series of the same name that premiered on Animation Domination on Fox on July 27, 2013.

In 2014, the American Folklife Center announced that Something Awful was one of the sites it would be archiving as part of its efforts to compile a history of digital culture.

Forums

The site is home to a collection of Internet forums running a highly customized version of vBulletin, charging a one-time registration fee of US$9.95 for posting privileges and full access to the forums, with additional user account and forum features available for purchase at prices ranging from US$4.95 to US$29.95.

The forums have spread several Internet memes, such as "all your base are belong to us". Additionally, image macros originated on the site in 2001, originally as a vBulletin feature introduced by Kyanka. The forum's users refer to themselves as "Goons". A weekly activity is "Photoshop Phriday", where users will modify existing images to create parodies through the use of image-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. The website also highlights some of what its administrators believe to be exceptional forum threads in the Comedy Goldmine feature. A forum member, moot, also launched 4chan after hentai was banned, and the Let's Play phenomenon originated in posts on the Something Awful forums.

The "Groverhaus" internet meme originated with a 2006 thread by the forum moderator "Grover", documenting the building process of a do it yourself extension to his house, which has been mocked online for its poor design and execution. The phrase "load-bearing drywall" was coined in response to the thread.

Many originators of "Weird Twitter", including dril, originally posted in Something Awful Fuck You and Die forum. The Slender Man urban legend was created in a 2009 thread in the Something Awful forum. The 2015 video game Dropsy originated as a 2008 CYOA thread on the Something Awful forums.

A 2017 bathroom renovation by forum user "bEatmastrJ" became an internet meme mockingly called the "Doom bathroom" after its design. In 2019, a playable Doom II map of the bathroom called BATHDOOM was created by Twitter user Dieting Hippo. The house was listed for sale in 2025.

References

References

1. (January 2013). "Tourist of Death".
2. Johnston, Rich. (February 28, 2001). "All your base...".
3. "All Your Base Are Belong To Frogstar".
4. (July 5, 2005). "Somethingawful.com, Pink Five, Chris Gore". G4 television.
5. (October 19, 2018). "100 Websites That Shaped the Internet as We Know It".
6. Mook, Nate. (September 9, 2005). "PayPal Blocks Hurricane Relief Funds".
7. Dan Knight. (October 11, 2000). "Something Awful & Express.com". Low End Mac.
8. Tim Johnson. (March 13, 2001). "eFront: What Went Wrong?". The Duke of URL.
9. Jeremy Turnage. (January 2013). "Something awfully funny".
10. [https://www.vice.com/en/article/something-awful-under-new-ownership/ Something Awful, a Cornerstone of Internet Culture, Is Under New Ownership], by Matthew Gault; at ''[[Vice (magazine). Vice]]''; published October 13, 2020; retrieved October 15, 2020
11. (March 23, 2021). "The Button".
12. Gault, Matthew. (November 11, 2021). "Richard 'Lowtax' Kyanka, Founder of Something Awful, Is Dead at 45".
13. John Leyden. (August 8, 2003). "Something Awful going on with SPEWS". Situation Publishing Ltd..
14. "Update from the Frontlines".
15. "Something Awful forum post".
16. Kimi Yoshino. (November 6, 2005). "The Cyber World Shut Out O.C. Loner Too". LA Times.
17. Byrne, Craig. (February 28, 2013). "FOX Announces Season Finale Dates & Summer Premieres". KSiteTV.
18. [https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/06/getting-serious-about-collecting-and-preserving-digital-culture/ Getting serious about collecting and preserving digital culture], by Nicole Saylor, at ''Folklife Today'' (at the [[Library of Congress]]); published June 5, 2014; retrieved December 15, 2014
19. "Something Awful Secure Purchase System".
20. (November 2012). "SAClopedia entry for "image macro"". Something Awful SAClopedia}}{{registration required.
21. "Photoshop Phriday". Something Awful.
22. "Comedy Goldmine". Something Awful.
23. Jerry Langton. (September 22, 2007). "Funny how 'stupid' site is addictive". [[Toronto Star.
24. Rich Stanton. (November 11, 2021). "Richard 'Lowtax' Kyanka, founder of Something Awful and onetime king of the internet goons, dead at 45". PCGamer.
25. Broderick, Ryan. (2021-05-07). "Finally.... a weapon to surpass Groverhaus".
26. Broderick, Ryan. (2020-08-21). "lofi Joe Rogan beats to relax/study".
27. Zubair, Aydin J. (2023-10-23). "The Not-So-DIY Disaster: Groverhaus — Where Home Renovation Meets Hilarity!".
28. (2020-04-14). "Groverhaus".
29. Notopoulos, John Herrman, Katie. (2013-04-05). "Weird Twitter: The Oral History".
30. Blistein, Jon. (February 19, 2015). "Images From Slender Man Stabbing Suspect's Notebook Surface".
31. Gera, Emily. (July 17, 2013). "Dropsy: The surreal adventure game the Internet made". [[Vox Media]].
32. Gault, Matthew. (2019-03-05). "The Hot New ‘Doom’ Mod Is a Nightmare DIY Bathroom Renovation".
33. (2025-05-24). "Please Know That The House With The Doom Bathroom Is For Sale - Aftermath".