Bigot Brigade Something Awful and Friends - The roller-coaster train-wreck embarrassing downfall of a Web 1.0 giant and its tick offspring like from Cloverfield

[Anime is Blood]

SWB I know people are trashing you pretty hard but think of our position as this analogy

Moderators are traffic cops, directing the flow of conversation and inserting their authority when needed.

Something Awful Moderators are traffic cops that have erected their own toll checkpoints and will only let people through intersections if they agree with them politically or ideologically. They've also banned people from being able to use the road for little to no reason. Their Police chief is a depressive drunk who comes to work once a year so they are allowed to do whatever they want and you can't even so much as complain, anywhere, about this.

eventually everyone moves away from hitler town because nowhere else are you paying for the privilege of getting your shit pushed in on a subjective basis with zero recourse to even talk about it.

 

[TiggerNits]

SWB I know people are trashing you pretty hard but think of our position as this analogy

Moderators are traffic cops, directing the flow of conversation and inserting their authority when needed.

Something Awful Moderators are traffic cops that have erected their own toll checkpoints and will only let people through intersections if they agree with them politically or ideologically. They've also banned people from being able to use the road for little to no reason. Their Police chief is a depressive drunk who comes to work once a year so they are allowed to do whatever they want and you can't even so much as complain, anywhere, about this.

eventually everyone moves away from hitler town because nowhere else are you paying for the privilege of getting your shit pushed in on a subjective basis with zero recourse to even talk about it.

Or to be more succinct, Something Awful Moderation is essentially what the group think of SA accuses America of being on any given day

 

[HG 400]

I don't understand most of what's going on here anymore I just want more stickers tbh.

 

[Anime is Blood]

everyone is waiting patiently for Lowtax to write his hilarious article on notch and then update everyone on what's going on with the forums

Also for FAU's hilarious jokes. He is hard at work

 

[TiggerNits]

I wonder how hard it would be to talk notch in to buying SA out from under Lowtax

 

[Wintoner]

So in conclusion, I like your website here, it's funny. I like making fun of people and weirdos and I like the cool forum software. It's funny busting goons and mods chops about stuff. I understand the reason behind "doxxing" is to see the over reaction it takes. But think about how some of these people youre posting information on and humiliating are already half or fully nuts as is, is it really all that funny if it drives them to take their own life or someone else's? This stuff has real world consequences and if is just being done in the name of laughs it's honestly pretty sad.

Actually letting these people persist in their psychosis in an internet safe space protected from criticism and mockery is how these people turned from someone relatively normal with maybe a weird fetish or depression, to Troonzilla rampaging through the internet and absolutely hurting themselves and everyone else. This place actually has pretty functional guidelines about who ends up with a lolcow thread and these people are already way too far gone for being made fun of by an internet peanut gallery to change them for the worse.

 

[Shrangus]

Just being trans doesn't get you a thread. But if you are too busy arguing on twitter to take your dog to the vet, then the dog dies, then you blame gamergate for the dog dying, someone will bring up the fact that you are trans in your KF thread.

 

[somewhereelse poster]

Koalas fear of whites is equal to an insane alt-right posters fear of Jews. Keep her as mod forever; her and the future mods like her will be a great funeral dirge for SA.

Eh, she's going to lash out eventually and say something that would earn a ban for any other poster. We'll just have to see if the rest of the staff have uncucked themselves enough to do anything about it at that point. But I still say burning her early wouldn't be a great loss.

I may be in the minority on this though.

 

[Power Word Birb]

SWB, I appreciate your effort posting and I especially appreciate you dropping that dumb gimmick.

In the spirit of sincerity, I didn't abandon ship because I disagree with any moderation decisions prior to this whole clusterfuck. I think I said earlier I was excited to see SA get funnier, and I meant that. I did care about the community, I'd been there a while, and it was a cool place where I learned a lot of things and had some laughs.

But the moderators and Lowtax's reaction to this has been shameful. The fact that they only warned specific users about the dox, the fact that they refuse to allow clarification or discussion on the forums, the fact that they're deliberately keeping people in the dark for days even though a simple, honest statement from anyone, at any point, would have put people at ease--the fact that FactsAreUseless is willing to let other people take the fall when all he has to do is swallow his pride and make a few posts and the fact that Lowtax is completely out of control of his business? The fact that to find out anything going on in the forums I frequent, I have to go to another forum entirely?

Yeah, I'm not interested. Especially the cowardice on the part of the ringleaders here, FAU and Lowtax and ZDR. They're perfectly happily to let people who are, as you say, often not well or vulnerable be exposed in their place. That doesn't sound like a group of people with the best interests of their community at heart.

If I had the power to post and stop the dox, I would in a heartbeat. I don't even know or like most of these people, but if it were that easy to help them out I would do it even if I knew I would be mocked and harassed. Doesn't it seem like the only decent thing to do, if you could?

Unfortunately, I am not as funny as you or FAU, so I don't know any jokes good enough to distract these guys. I can only hope someone puts a stop to this before my old gay account gets doxed and people find out how ugly I am. (Extremely.)

 

[Wintoner]

Shmorky was a weird diaper fetishist and he survived like a decade on SA despite being mocked for it, he actually toned it down and kept it hidden. Only after he found encouragement and a safe space on tumblr he went full on klurf shitler hiding antipsychotic medication from his gf and became so insufferable @Lowtax had to kick him out.

 

[Shrangus]

Whites have gotten so insidious in their harassment of KM that some of them have stooped to actually being black just to get to her.

 

[a crotchety old wizard]

Eh, she's going to lash out eventually and say something that would earn a ban for any other poster. We'll just have to see if the rest of the staff have uncucked themselves enough to do anything about it at that point. But I still say burning her early wouldn't be a great loss.

I may be in the minority on this though.

My money is on her flaming out like RedShirt - having an admin make a post defending her, and then replying with an attack for no conceivable reason that gets her banned.

 

[Wintoner]

I looked at the negrotown thread and it really is just this:
Poster 1: Guys tell me why X is racist
Poster 2: It's because of postcolonial attitudes and normalization of dog whistle white approval of marginalizing folx of color and denying them a safe space platform to experience profound true blackness
Poster 1: *gif of black woman being sassy*
Poster3: Guys I'm black in a black neighbourhood and I looked out the window and I don't think anyone is being raped and murdered by the Trump KKK right now (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

 

[GotMeWrong]

A thread called "itt we are losing our god damn minds over forums drama we don't understand," started out being just jokey but truth is starting to slip through:

 

[Wintoner]

OMG JC a Bomb! either has amazing luck or amazing mod friends because he's been hellthreading it up for the past year while everyone around him got banned or ate 11 year probations.

 

[Shrangus]

Really surprised hes not shadowbanned considering how much he posted in the shmorky thread & related drama threads.

 

[horse ceremonies]

Just being trans doesn't get you a thread. But if you are too busy arguing on twitter to take your dog to the vet, then the dog dies, then you blame gamergate for the dog dying, someone will bring up the fact that you are trans in your KF thread.

I have yet to see anyone doxed who isn't part of the problem.

Also to SWB and other goons complaining about the harassment, what makes this any different than harassing and stalking Conservapedia or that conservative facebook clone that you guys did? Legit want an answer.

 

[Elite Fart Analyst]

They might have the wrong opinion about stuff so it's cool and good

 

[repentance]

So in conclusion, I like your website here, it's funny. I like making fun of people and weirdos and I like the cool forum software. It's funny busting goons and mods chops about stuff. I understand the reason behind "doxxing" is to see the over reaction it takes. But think about how some of these people youre posting information on and humiliating are already half or fully nuts as is, is it really all that funny if it drives them to take their own life or someone else's? This stuff has real world consequences and if is just being done in the name of laughs it's honestly pretty sad.

I don't recall SA feeling especially bad when Ty Peppar killed himself. Perhaps more significantly, it didn't really change FYAD culture. The prevailing attitude - then and now - was that you have to be pretty messed up if online stuff is what sends you over the edge. And to be honest, that's pretty much our attitude too. The deaths with which SA has been associated haven't changed the fundamental nature of SA, and few people would argue that they should have.

Maybe we're just too new to have accumulated a history yet. None of our lolcows had died until halfway through last year. People had mixed feelings when it happened. Her life, and her death, was the perfect storm of neglect, abuse, and mental illness. Our thread is probably the only honest chronicle which will ever exist of the months leading up to her death. It gives us no pleasure to see how quickly those who neglected and abused her moved on, nor to know that her abuser will probably go on seeking out and abusing vulnerable, messed up young women indefinitely.

 

[MysteriousStranger]

In fact, in most cases a six hour probation lasts longer than an actual ban, since there's no time limit on how quick you can shell out another ten bucks.

Wait, what? You have to pay again to come back from a ban? So there's a built-in financial incentive for the most dedicated users to be fucked with?

[...]and that thread has generated thousands of dollars in avatars (Someone paid $160 changing one goons avatars back and forth) and registrations of people coming to SA [...]

'Thousands of dollars in avatars'? What is this fuckery?

OK real posting done.. Thank you for your time

WAIT. THE FUCK. UP. This was a real person telling a real story and not the world's 'tardedest ween?

You know what? I'm going to have to go sit in a darkened room and can't even for a while. This thread!