Inactive Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka - Deadbeat (emphasis on "Dead") founder of Something Awful, forced out of his own community, on his second divorce, stuck his dick in crazy, "Birth Giver"

[Likely]

The ten bucks made superficial sense in the early 2000s. It wasn't uncommon for privately hosted bulletin boards to go down partway through the month after hitting a bandwidth cap, or for even static sites to crumple under the tiniest surge of interest. SA was huge and super active, especially by the standards of the time, so the idea of there being a genuine need for users to help cover server costs was believable enough. Of course, it seemed that the forum never got any less expensive or difficult to run, even as decades passed and the rest of the web progressed.

I would love to know how many whales there were as far as forum purchases went. Some people would get into back and forth avatar changing wars with each other, while others would go on spending sprees, tossing "Platinum" status and other forum whatnots to whoever sucked up in the right way. And the whole time they'd be patting themselves on the back for supporting the beloved "community" that they mistook for a network of friends and not a collection of random spergs and psychos.

some D&D poster who kept getting banned supposedly put in over $1000 worth of $10

at what point do you just call that mental illness and perma

 

[Apteryx Owenii]

some D&D poster who kept getting banned supposedly put in over $1000 worth of $10

at what point do you just call that mental illness and perma

lowtax figuring out how to milk whales via recurrent microtransactions before that was a thing

 

[TurdFondler]

Third, Lowtax refusing countless offers throughout the years from goons who wanted to fix or replace the forums codebase for free.

Anyone who offered to fix the forums for free was too re.tarded to actually be able to do it. All those free offers were compsci 101 kids or fedora Lords with dunning Kruger.

 

[LordofCringe7206]

Anyone who offered to fix the forums for free was too re.tarded to actually be able to do it. All those free offers were compsci 101 kids or fedora Lords with dunning Kruger.

I'll never understand why people who don't have the technical skills to manage a website (or are just to lazy to use those skills) will always try to create a big one.

 

[Mullti Port RDRAM]

I'd say Tumblr was the big one

Yeah, but the ones on SA were organized and they started SRS, a notable bed shitting cabal on reddit

 

[guidmaker]

2005 was peak SA forums with the advent of the tv/movie torrent subforum which is what made me shell out the $10. Made it a one-stop shop for all my internet needs, glorious.

 

[Thumb Butler]

Anyone who offered to fix the forums for free was too re.tarded to actually be able to do it. All those free offers were compsci 101 kids or fedora Lords with dunning Kruger.

I have to disagree a bit. There was a time when people who knew their shit would have done if for free (or cheap), but Lowtax could not be bothered of course.

edit: spelling

 

[AnOminous]

It kinda worked to keep out the riffraff. Then the riffraff ended up running the place.

Well it would have worked if they didn't have the policy of just banning people for nothing, because only absolute vermin with nowhere else to go would put up with being repeatedly robbed like that.

 

[Uber driver reviewer]

R

Richard's not Jewish, if he was it would have certainly been mentioned at some point in the past.

Shalom!

 

[Mikoyan]

I remember the Alienware fuck-up, dudes sent him a brand new computer at a screaming deal back in the day, and something happened a month later (too much troon hentai) and lowtax screamed on the forums about how shit it was even after they issued a full refund and paid for return shipping. Acted like a spoiled brat.

That's what gets me, the continual fucking up of good business relationships. Maybe he thought he was keepin' it real being 'honest' about the product experience but that's not how you do it.

 

[Uber driver reviewer]

Well it would have worked if they didn't have the policy of just banning people for nothing, because only absolute vermin with nowhere else to go would put up with being repeatedly robbed like that.

Honestly, I like the :tenbux: model.

I wish more paid forums would have had adopted it. It basically is pay-to-shitpost. I’ve been banned from numerous communities for more or less being a giant smartass, cage rattling, shitposter. Due to my persistence of simply signing back up for forums, I’ve caused a lot of site owner / admin rage and money spent to detect persistent funposting shitposters like myself fro be detected via expensive metadata troll detector services.

A simple move to a pay per ban feature would simply result in people like myself, and the site owners, to find a natural equilibrium where either I fuck off after getting sick of paying, or learn to behave myself. Instead the site owners spend tons of money, drive off funposters, and look at new members with suspiciousness. $10 is the perfect rate to make breaking the rules a simple monetary transaction that eventually adds up enough to get sick of spending it every time you see the dreaded “account locked” screen pop up.

t. Never was a goon. Didn’t have a credit card as a teenager lol. But lurked SA a lot. Mainly posted at off-topic.net, which was like SA but for sexhavers and moneyhavers. SA definitely influenced how I approach internet funs.

 

[AnOminous]

A simple move to a pay per ban feature would simply result in people like myself, and the site owners, to find a natural equilibrium where either I fuck off after getting sick of paying, or learn to behave myself. Instead the site owners spend tons of money, drive off funposters, and look at new members with suspiciousness. $10 is the perfect rate to make breaking the rules a simple monetary transaction.

The problem is Dickard turned over this process to prudish catladies, screeching troons, and an increasingly worse series of absolutely unfunny people who drove out the people who actually were funny. "Behaving" meant not being funny, ever, for any reason.

 

[Uber driver reviewer]

The problem is Dickard turned over this process to prudish catladies, screeching troons, and an increasingly worse series of absolutely unfunny people who drove out the people who actually were funny. "Behaving" meant not being funny, ever, for any reason.

Well my understanding (at the time) was that if you were banned (for all but the worst violations) it was just another $10 to deactivate your account. Was that still the case in more recent SA history?

I mean I have a lot of $10 bills I’m willing to light on fire to post YNBAW memes and make troons with a mod badge mad. I mean at some point it becomes so profitable to the site, that the owner would have to notice and allow that type of content to have a corner of the site, or offer higher Memberships that protect against heavy handed moderation.

 

[Hollywood Hulk Hogan]

I once noticed the forums and realized they charged $10 and thought "lmao that's a funny idea." I never even considered signing up after that.

Honestly I think it was a solid idea. In theory it would prevent people signing up just to troll and post shit to get banned. The theory didn't work, but at least he got $10 for each time they did it

 

[Trip Chesterton III]

Well my understanding (at the time) was that if you were banned (for all but the worst violations) it was just another $10 to deactivate your account. Was that still the case in more recent SA history?

I mean I have a lot of $10 bills I’m willing to light on fire to post YNBAW memes and make troons with a mod badge mad. I mean at some point it becomes so profitable to the site, that the owner would have to notice and allow that type of content to have a corner of the site, or offer higher Memberships that protect against heavy handed moderation.

They would do other stuff, like probate your account for 30 days AND ban you so you have to pay $10 but you still cannot post again for 30 days

 

[AnOminous]

Honestly I think it was a solid idea. In theory it would prevent people signing up just to troll and post shit to get banned. The theory didn't work, but at least he got $10 for each time they did it

No it wasn't. They only banned the good posters, who said fuck this and went away. The desperate losers were the ones who paid $10 to rejoin. As an example of someone who paid $10 over and over after he got banned for being a complete loser, look at the thread of Richard "Terra" Jones.

Only a completely cucked loser shithead would pay $10 to sign up again to a site that kicked him off for no reason at all. That's why only completely cucked loser shitheads are currently on SA. They banned everyone else.

 

[Uber driver reviewer]

Honestly I think it was a solid idea. In theory it would prevent people signing up just to troll and post shit to get banned. The theory didn't work, but at least he got $10 for each time they did it

In retrospect, just a business model and secure payment processing platform for forum membership would had been a goldmine unto itself in early 2000’s when using your credit card online was still approached with apprehension.

 

[Mullti Port RDRAM]

Anyone who offered to fix the forums for free was too re.tarded to actually be able to do it. All those free offers were compsci 101 kids or fedora Lords with dunning Kruger.

Again, when Radium tried to build the Titan forum, he got paid 40k a year and all we got out of it was a doctored screenshot. Lowtax has no managerial ability. It would take an able bodied developer about 6-10 weeks to shit out something similar with modern tech.

Having been active on SASS, it became obvious that he surrounded himself with enablers, exactly what happens when you run a secret club for 20 years. SA wasn't just a place for aspies with disposable incomes. It was a loudspeaker for the depraved.

I have to disagree a bit. There was a time people where who knew their shit would have done if for free (or cheap), but Lowtax could not be bothered of course.

That's the thing. I wouldn't do it for free even if they were good. Never do a damn thing without getting paid. That's my motto. And never fucking do it without a list of milestones. These are things you learn if you don't drop out of college, and make a living off edgy articles and a message board of spergs.

 

[Jan Ciągwa]

And the Deadbeat of the Year award goes to...

Seriously, Richard Kyanka's morals and personality are so absurdly petty & evil his body and life history ought to be preserved like Lenin's and studied by neurobiologists for centuries to come, to figure out how to he was raised and came to be like that so we can figure out the ultimate child raising procedure by doing the exact opposite. At the end of his life he was like a very evil child in a old fart's body.

I know opiates and alcohol don't always turn you into a human slug, there had to be something deeper than "drugs bad".

 

[Long Tongue Silver]

I went down the ballistics rabbit hole of shooting yourself with a 57. No way did he die quickly. He shot hinself in the head with equivlant of a .22.He was probably alive for several hours and possibly even a day

Fyi, You gotta use a bigger caliber or shotgun altogether if your gonna hero yourself. A .22 in your brain is a painful way to go...arteries probably got missed and you are just gonna dehydrate and slowly bleed to death because your unable to do anything as your motor and cognitive skills are gone. What sucks most is likely he went barrel to upper mouth which would preserve memories...likely the entire time he lie alive incapacitated his mind is replaying what led up to the event like a lucid fever dream over and over but his cognitive mind couldnt comprehend it.

Crazy shit and what a damn fool. Of all the ways to kill himself he chose the worst way but probably the easiest as it didnt require any research or planning or effort. Yl

Well, that's Lowtax in a nutshell. Too lazy to make good choices, even when it comes to an heroing himself.

In this thread we've had amazing claims, up to and including '12 gauge to the brain is a slow lingering death' to try to gin up Lowtax torturedeath fantasies. I think the exceptionalism needs to slow down on that front before someone goes full fudd and says 'should'ta used a fawty five'.

Should have used a .38.