Something Awful
From Encyclopedia Of Stupid
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| Banned At Something Awful |
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| Old Memes |
| Fiesta cat Chuck Norris Tired Catchphrases All Your Base |
| Fuckery |
| Flaming Trolling Backseat Moderation Low Content Posting NWS Scamming SA Mart |
| Mod Sass |
| Fistgrrl Mayor Wilkins Lowtax Ozma |
Something Awful is stupid.
Something Awful (colloquially known as "SA") is a website created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka in 1984 to cater to the needs of gamers everywhere, which is to say, provide them with pirated software, pirated porn and pirated music. In addition, Lowtax seems to have been a true visionary, realizing early on that the Internet was going to be a truly retarded cesspool populated by sexually deviant asshat sociopaths. The site has, therefore, taken rather a contrarian view of the many alternative lifestyles that seem to have flourished with the advent of the Information Superhighway.
Contents |
There Is a Website
Although the butt of the commonly understood joke among SA forum regulars which punchline is "Something Awful has a front page?" the SA website has a number of marginally amusing subsections, however most have not been updated since the site's inception. Originally Lowtax updated most of the front page on his own, but he has now completely turned over control of the front page to Livestock Parsons and Zack Burrell. This is not particularly problematic, since nobody reads the front page anyway.
JeffK Et Al
SA's claim to fame were the many characters that Lowtax invented for it. The most memorable of these characters was JeffK, an over-the-top script kiddie parody that was funny for five minutes. These five minutes, however, were enough to propel SA and Lowtax to a level of web stardom so high that they have been able to ride it for nearly a quarter of a century now. Other characters were created, but they were obviously not memorable as the author is unable to recall them.
Photoshop Phriday
Photoshop Phriday used to be the place where all the best Photoshop threads from the forums were put, guaranteeing that you would laugh at least three or four times while browsing it. It has since become the place where admin-created Photoshop Phriday BIG IDEA threads are vomited all over but dumped to the front page anyway because hey - an admin came up with the idea, so it can't possibly suck! Meanwhile, legitimately funny Photoshop threads are gassed for insensitivity to Islam.
Awful Link of the Day
The Awful Link of the Day was where the Righteous SA Army used to go to get its marching orders (ie: "this is the site full of fursuit-wearing perverts we are DDOSing today") but now has devolved into links to articles about Dragonlance and World of Warcraft nerds and their obsessive diagramming of whatever it is gamer geeks diagram. Attacking other sites is deeply frowned upon these days, because the SA Morality Squad has successfully tapped into the site's users' deep gravitas and guilted them for making fun of the less fortunate. Instead of being used as a righteously indignant put-down to these ultra-sensitive kneejerkers, "You are on a website called 'Something Awful'" has instead become a bannable phrase.
Horrors of Porn
This subsection was created for all the folks who enjoy Japanese hentai porn and looking at wrestling star Chynna's penis-like pierced clitoris, a diverse group of 8.
The Flash Tub
Initially a place where mildly funny forum gags were set to mildly competent drawings. Devolved in time to idiotic drug-induced abortions of animations without the slightest trace of funny. Probably not needed.
Your Band Sucks
Formerly a parody of hatefully hip online music critics who stomp on people's hopes and dreams to make up for their own insecurities, YBS is these days exactly that. No-one seems to have noticed.
And There Are Forums
The SA Forums have become increasingly popular, with a community of around 50,000 people who refer to themselves as goons. The forums are moderated, which means that instead of dealing with thousands of idiots (see also: USENET), you only have to contend with a handful of them: the admins. Break a rule, any rule - ignorance of 22 years of netiquette is no excuse - and you will be put on probation, banned, or even perma-banned. As a matter of fact, don't break a rule. Just annoy an admin. The results will be the same.
GBS
An acronym meaning "General Bullshit," GBS is SA's most popular forum where everything gets posted regardless of whether or not there is a subforum that would be more appropriate to post to. Because of the forum's popularity, most of its users, who are neckbearded basement-dwelling faggots, spend their time trolling the board looking for any opportunity to tell you that your post sucks ass, was posted yesterday, uses poor grammar, and is going to be gassed. Posting to GBS is solely the domain of the masochistic, for you are certain to be abused by an army of sexually frustrated man-children if you do. Ever since the Mangosteen Incident, Lowtax has sworn to never post in GBS again. He has been as good as his word.
FYAD
An acronym meaning "Fuck You And Die," FYAD is the second-largest forum on SA, mainly because Lowtax only posts there and has an army of the posting equivalent of executive knobwashers all vying to suck his dick at once. They accomplish this by by being "truly/totally FYAD," posting utterly incoherent non-sequitur crap about absolutely nothing in the most annoying font possible, and accompanied by as many sparkling animated gifs of anime horse porn as possible. When FYAD instructs users to gb2gbs (Go Back To GBS) it is because they are afraid you might think you "get" FYAD. This is most dangerous to them, because it means they are failing at being "truly/totally FYAD," as there should be nothing to get.
As BYOB became more popular, Lowtax stopped posting in FYAD as much as he used to. With the addition of Helldump and YCS, FYAD has lost most of its popularity and power on the forums. In the older days of SA, FYAD was considered the 'cool' forum that many people unsuccessfully attempted to post in. This is not the case anymore.
FYADs aggressive upholding of exclusivity is not as harsh anymore, so newer posters might have an easier time getting in.
BYOB
Nobody knows what the fuck this forum is, but Lowtax thinks it's cool, so it must be. It is populated mostly with people who can't make it in FYAD but are looking to ride the coattails of a new forum to become Internet Superstars.
Later on in 2007 BYOB became Lowtax's preferred forum to post in, as evidenced by his many threads in it.
Helldump
The new fyad, in short.
All Other Forums (These Are Unused)
There are roughly a hundred subforums dealing with everything from tentacle rape films to car racing, but they are empty, as everyone who posts to the forums is too busy telling GBS posters what colossal failures they are at posting.
The Lepers Colony
If you are unfortunate enough to be put on probation, banned or perma-banned, your name appears in this list with a short explanation and a link to the post you made that got you in trouble. The idea of the Leper's Colony is that if you browse it enough, you will know what not to do by virtue of the comments left by the admin who gave the user the boot. Unfortunately, most of these comments read like "shut up faggot" and "stay out of AI, dickface," which are somewhat less than helpful. Add to this the fact that the admins are notoriously capricious and all you really have is a list of useful insults.
Gassing of Threads
If an admin doesn't like your thread, it will be gassed. That is to say it will be closed, given an unreadble green background and taken out of the main forums. Because admins are not required to explain why they gas a thread, users are generally left to guess about why the thread was gassed. This leads to the inevitable "gas chamber challenge," wherein the neckbeard brigade repies to your thread simply to inform you that it is going to be gassed. And they may well be right, as threads can be gassed even when they don't suck, and frequently are.
