I dunno if anyone here was ever a "somethingawful.com goon" but this is precisely what happened to that forum. The birthplace of the first Internet meme (all your base) and a truly free and open forum where people came to strengthen their knowledge base, train their debate skills, and share otherwise impossible to find information where nobody automatically assumed you were lying or otherwise fake. Started in 1999 (I joined in 03) by Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka, it steadily gained users that amounted to well over 100,000 registered users who each paid a minimum of $10 to post and participate. It employed a shirt list of very straight forward rules that served to prevent the forum from devolving into rampant trolling and kept people focused on the topics at hand. It was very unforgiving in that once you broke a rule, you were banned outright with no warning. However, redemption came in the form of another $10 bill that allowed you to keep your original account standing as well as provide you with a learning lesson and was very effective in helping you understand how to not be a garbage human.
It began to collapse some time around 2007/2008. Seemingly out if nowhere a whole new staff of moderators and admins came aboard. They were "woke" before woke was a word. Faggy authoritarians that trained the user base to constantly seek offense to everything and to rat each other out over semantics. At first they stuck to the "no warning bans" then the user base began to decline as they stopped re-registering after their ban. They then implemented the "probation" feature. Literally any half-way "offensive" joke anyone would tell earned them a random length probationary period that added "demerits" to your account. The forums were is steady collapse for years until Lowtax grew some balls and, some time around 2012/2013, reverted back to the old rules. Except by that time, there was no going back. People's minds were permanently altered and it never got it's groove back. I have revisited a few times since but there's nothing there anymore. Everyone is demoralized and paranoid.
I didn't figure out until just recently what actually happened. What caused this drastic change in a such a short amount of time....
Turns out, Lowtax had a sneaky little Chicom lady wiggle her way into his life. He was not forthcoming about his personal life until he Bagan doing video game livestreams beginning maybe 6 or 7 years ago. He married the Chicom, perhaps early on, and I can only imagine she played a big role in talking him into redoing his moderator staff. They ended up having children, two girls. The last time I saw them on a livestream I want to say the oldest was around 12 years old. Not long after that, it was clear that they had divorced. The kids and the wife were no longer a part of his life. She left when things began going south and I'm certain. It was some point halfway through Trump's term.
Buddy ran a budding internet cultural epicenter who's balls were snipped before they even dropped. He was infiltrated by a chinese CCP operative to destroy the subculture and help usher in the age of woke-ism. This is how they did it. They infiltrated internet subcultures before they even had a chance to show the world what free speech really was. Fucking diabolical and it infuriates me to no end.
I dunno if anyone here was ever a "somethingawful.com goon" but this is precisely what happened to that forum. The birthplace of the first Internet meme (all your base) and a truly free and open forum where people came to strengthen their knowledge base, train their debate skills, and share otherwise impossible to find information where nobody automatically assumed you were lying or otherwise fake. Started in 1999 (I joined in 03) by Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka, it steadily gained users that amounted to well over 100,000 registered users who each paid a minimum of $10 to post and participate. It employed a shirt list of very straight forward rules that served to prevent the forum from devolving into rampant trolling and kept people focused on the topics at hand. It was very unforgiving in that once you broke a rule, you were banned outright with no warning. However, redemption came in the form of another $10 bill that allowed you to keep your original account standing as well as provide you with a learning lesson and was very effective in helping you understand how to not be a garbage human.
It began to collapse some time around 2007/2008. Seemingly out if nowhere a whole new staff of moderators and admins came aboard. They were "woke" before woke was a word. Faggy authoritarians that trained the user base to constantly seek offense to everything and to rat each other out over semantics. At first they stuck to the "no warning bans" then the user base began to decline as they stopped re-registering after their ban. They then implemented the "probation" feature. Literally any half-way "offensive" joke anyone would tell earned them a random length probationary period that added "demerits" to your account. The forums were is steady collapse for years until Lowtax grew some balls and, some time around 2012/2013, reverted back to the old rules. Except by that time, there was no going back. People's minds were permanently altered and it never got it's groove back. I have revisited a few times since but there's nothing there anymore. Everyone is demoralized and paranoid.
I didn't figure out until just recently what actually happened. What caused this drastic change in a such a short amount of time....
Turns out, Lowtax had a sneaky little Chicom lady wiggle her way into his life. He was not forthcoming about his personal life until he Bagan doing video game livestreams beginning maybe 6 or 7 years ago. He married the Chicom, perhaps early on, and I can only imagine she played a big role in talking him into redoing his moderator staff. They ended up having children, two girls. The last time I saw them on a livestream I want to say the oldest was around 12 years old. Not long after that, it was clear that they had divorced. The kids and the wife were no longer a part of his life. She left when things began going south and I'm certain. It was some point halfway through Trump's term.
Buddy ran a budding internet cultural epicenter who's balls were snipped before they even dropped. He was infiltrated by a chinese CCP operative to destroy the subculture and help usher in the age of woke-ism. This is how they did it. They infiltrated internet subcultures before they even had a chance to show the world what free speech really was. Fucking diabolical and it infuriates me to no end.