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"

[Punished Brent]

He did this to himself. Why would you reproduce with an illegal or insane woman and if you chose to do that it would have been easy to maintain the relationship. The fact she took his stuff and bolted in the night says a lot about both of them.

 

[Twinkie]

Just looked it up and this shows he has judgments for over $100k in back taxes. How is that possible? Did he just not pay taxes for years?

https://www.courts.mo.gov/casenet/base/welcome.do

Search his name and see.

The judgement for 100K has a "date of satisfaction" which I think means it's been paid??

 

[Manwithn0n0men]

So he's Sarah Nyberg without the gender dysphoria and pedophilia?

You sure on the second?

 

[Tanner Glass]

Was that the time when Lowtax almost tried to actually *gasp* do something and de-cuck the site by getting tough with the troons? I remember that was when MapleWife was still pregnant with the kiddo and she seemed to actually be keen to help Richard clear the mess up. That passion rather ebbed away soon after when the push-back happened. I generally get the impression she was all in to help sort things, till it became apparent how tied down Richard is to his goons.

Different Drama, this drama was all of the Shmorky drama coming out (though his ex) - the diaper stuff, the "younger" stuff, the abusive stuff, etc.

 

[Captain Manning]

Are you taking into account that mods in SA have a financial incentive to ban as may accounts as often as possible to keep signups high? Also that 10$ alone gets you almost nothing, not even the searchbar will work unless you pay 10$ more.

Is there a cap on how many users can be signed up at once? I'm not sure I follow.

In any event, I certainly have no trouble believing that ResetERA makes more money. Hell, KF probably makes more money. I was just commenting that Lowtax at least charges people to use his forum as a toilet.

 

[NavyGuzzler]

The judgement for 100K has a "date of satisfaction" which I think means it's been paid??

View attachment 1027383View attachment 1027384View attachment 1027385

Is it possible that this "satisfaction" took the form of a payment plan that he is still paying on? I can't imagine he scraped together 100k.

Edit: then again I am told there's maybe 2/3 of that in his account right now, so maybe. Apparently, his mom also pays a lot of his bills. Not sure if she is aware of his Patreonbux or how much the forams really bring in, etc. So, it's possible, I guess.

 

[break these cuffs]

Are we also sure she's at some "women's shelter" and not just crashing at Tyrone's place? Being married to an unemployed loser who plays video games all day probably has you looking for someone else.

We're at the Best Value over on 49. Got a rental unit nextdoor to setup the lab in. There's a dollar general and a liquor store just down the street. Alshii is doin just fine.

My theory is it did so for the same reasons almost all Web 1.0 forums did.

• Generic Web 1.0 forum develops unique culture due to small member base
• Flare ups between members and cliques are balanced by mobbing trolls into submission
• Members meet IRL, develop bonds with their fake internet friends
• Millennials show up
• There are massive amounts of faggotry spread across the entire forum by relatively few millennials
• "Guys, you were all just as bad a the "newbies". The board needs fresh blood."
• Don't say fag, don't say exceptional individual, omg no tiddy threads, why are there no women moderators, speaking as a woman, token open homo member is best member, in this thread I tell how difficult it is to be a homo in this community
• Gen-X capitulates. Massively. The ones who think this is all bullshit either leave or soften their stances due to the IRL friendships developed by misanthropes online
• New hotpockets, all either millennials or millennial friendly
• Fag is officially banned
• exceptional individual is officially banned
• Bye, bye tidddies
• Phobias are banned
• Red headed stepchild politics board becomes a place of keyboard screaming and shit flinging
• Politics board views and vendettas spread to the respectable sub-forums
• Current day

Basically, Gen-X being unabashed faggots.

I remember drifting away from PoE and coming back to find users unironically upset that people were making fun of a literal autist for being quarantined since the quarantine sub was called Hugbox since it was a place for tards to rage out until they exhausted themselves. Autism was a very serious issue that shouldn't be joked about and why is the quarantine sub named after an essential tool to help the differently abled, blah blah blah. It was a peak 10-15 years into the future of the internet. Pretty sure I didn't even log in and I definitely never went back.

 

[RisingPhoenix]

The judgement for 100K has a "date of satisfaction" which I think means it's been paid??

View attachment 1027383View attachment 1027384View attachment 1027385

Notable that the two unsatisfied tax judgements have Ashli's name on it too. Is she still liable for those taxes if a divorce happens, or would she be able to get a lawyer to absolve her responsibility to pay it off?

 

[Manwithn0n0men]

Notable that the two unsatisfied tax judgements have Ashli's name on it too. Is she still liable for those taxes if a divorce happens, or would she be able to get a lawyer to absolve her responsibility to pay it off?

Depends: Did those judgments happen when they were married?

 

[Humble Shitpost Merchant]

How the fuck did he get over $10k in Patreon money? Do these people realize that money is not going into the site at all? It's to pay alimony, child support, and medical bills. Medical bills he accrued because he was too lazy to sign up for health insurance (which is dirt cheap if you're as broke as he claims).

It’s a parasocial relationship. All their self worth is invested in Rich and his website. It’s one of the most important things they have. In many cases SA is their sole method of social interaction. They care about Rich, on an emotional level, and in turn convince themselves that he cares about them in return. Bad things happening to Rich is the same thing as a bad thing happening to them.

“I’ve known Rich for twenty years and trust him when he says his wife is the bad guy” says one goon, but no you fag, at best you know of him on a website where anything approaching criticism is banned.

 

[Ghostse]

From strictly a video game subsection breakdown - Lack of leadership direction (Lowtax) and competition.

SomethingAwful (which would really be an offshoot of the planet* network) had the major benefit of being the largest video game forum of it's time (early 2000s). Imagine what a resource it was when playing something like early World of Warcraft (which, at the time, had 0 mod support, discord wasn't invented yet, no dungeon/duty finder, no WoWhead, no easy to use voice chat - nothing). It was literally one of the only shops in town and it had tons of clout (a lot of industry insiders would post there). Because there were tons of people who wanted to have fun, it was very easy to set things up - which paved the way for dumb goon things like massive PVP shitstorms, firework shows, raids, whatever - which became SA Advertisements.

In addition, Lowtax also had tons of free content generation for his website from these same people. This was before people had a notion of making money on the internet (this is pre youtube ADS, pre-twitch, pre-Mixer, pre-streaming in general). People were making stories, photoshops, video content, etc and Lowtax was the only one making money from any of it, for years and for free.

Eventually, the video game landscape started to change and other sites started to rise up and Lowtax in his infinite wisdom decided to do nothing. It started to fracture slowly, with writers and other content creators going elsewhere for a larger audience or actual, real money. With those creators leaving, they took thier fans with them. So now Lowtax was bleeding content AND audience and really had no way to replenish them, because Lowtax wasn't involved with thier success at all - it was all other people who did it for free. Using the WoW example, it was the people who led the guilds, the raids, wrote the articles, made the videos, etc and not Lowtax, so when those people broke off and wrote for other sites, started streaming, set up a Patreon, whatever, Lowtax had no idea what to do.

It isn't just Video Games, either, it's the same story for every SomethingAwful vertical - Lowtax didn't animate (Shmorky did), he didn't write many articles (everyone else did), he didn't build the forums, he wasn't involved in Let's Play/Streaming until way later (and too late, tbh), he wasn't even the "likable management guy" (that was Fragmaster).

The wokeness is basically just a situation of "what's left" when everyone who likes having fun leaves for greener pastures to a million different other sites. Lowtax is there because it's easy, but also he never actually developed any skills despite his proximity to talented people for huge periods of time and opportunities literally being constantly handed to him.

This is a great post, and covers the high points, the current userbase is people who couldn't make it in another online community.
You didn't cover the Dagan Rompa Tumblr influx, that was the critical event that made things unsalvagable.

SA had been in decline for years.
SA got so terrible because the moderation team drove off everyone funny, talented, creative, and productive. You had mods like Oxma (fat) and EPW who would burst into mildly popular threads they never posted in before and shut them down because THEY didn't find them interesting. They, and faggots like Abe (Caylen) would ban anyone who was funnier or more popular than them who didn't have a Mod or Admin sempai.
The ones they didn't straight up banned got sick of Mod Toadies using their nepotism to get away with stuff that would result in a ban for anyone else, and to get people who took issue with them banned when anyone else would have been ignored.

Breaking kayfabe a bit here: The sorts of people who engage in that sort of sucking-up-to-teacher behavior are the worse people, the sort of people who would latch on to Social Justice as a way to shield themselves while having others attack anyone they disagree with, basically all the people in the past 10 years who have suddenly decided that they are trannies without having actual dysphoria, for woke points and protection from criticism. These people are too fagile to be able to live without the protection of others, so they are natural born toadies.

Then in 2010 or there abouts, there was some goon who did a Let's Play of Dagan Rompa, a glorified Japanese Visual Novel that was an irrelevant rip off of Phoenix Wright. The game was released on PSP, and didn't have an English translation, so this Let's Play thread was pretty much the ONLY place you could find out anything about the game. For anime reasons, it was really popular on Tumblr, and Lowtax threw up the paywall on the thread (only registered accounts could view it). This caused much wailing and nashing of teeth as sadbrains complained about being broke, but large numbers of them registered so they could get their Japanese Anime Highschool Murder Fix.

This influx is what terminally fucked SA, they are the snowflakes that caused the avalanche that's left us with SomethingWoke.

 

[BIG BILL HELL'S]

That is if he can't recruit some goon loser to do it for free.

That's the funniest part of the whole thing-- he could get literally dozens of people who are actually competent to do the backend work on the forums for free, if only he'd ask. He won't, though, because

1. he'd have to admit that he was wrong to pay radium, et. al., tens of thousands of dollars to basically do nothing, and
2. competent people would tell him yet again that the forums software that he's stuck on permanently is a mishmash of 2002 technology and literal tacked-on garbage, and that he needs to blow it all away and start over. (His little pissy fit with Jelsoft sure did pay off, didn't it?)

Hell, IIRC a few years ago a few goons who were at least marginally competent were discussing the forum software problems in a QCS thread and spontaneously started a project to code new forums software from scratch. Of course, like most goon projects, it didn't really go anywhere, but instead of actively encouraging them and then sitting back and letting them do almost all of the work, Lowtax instead dismissed them out of hand and basically told them to fuck off.

No, the hobby boards/communities are all worthless garbage.

For example - there's a Fallout thread, which should be a lot of fun because of how bad fallout 76 is right now. However, the SA Fallout thread is literally just pages and pages of handwringing about how no one should play as Legion in Fallout : New Vegas because of how super evil they are, unironically. The Yakuza thread is the same thing, instead of people having fun with the games (and hype about the new one), there's constant complaining about some vague Dialogue in Yakuza 4, along with some of the weirder scenes. There's occasionally good/fun discussion, but it's basically just ResetERA at this point.

Even off site, the gaming groups are either low effort/dissolved or have hilarious sets of rules (literal pronoun respecting, no disrespecting trannies, etc - Look at this shit) and super complicated authentication processes. In game, no real fun or cohesion is had and you'll be treated to uncomfortable politics in guild chat, near constantly - either about how evil Donald Blump is or how life is better post-transition. I wish I was fucking kidding.

The new Callidoody game is another good example of this. Dozens of pages were spent virtue signalling about well, ahkshually, the U.S. committed the war crimes in the games instead of discussing gameplay, awesome stuff that they did, etc. They also have a Discord set up supposedly for the purpose of grouping up to play the game together, but unless you're already friends with a bunch of them you'll sit there for days waiting for someone to invite people to a party.

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

Is it possible that this "satisfaction" took the form of a payment plan that he is still paying on? I can't imagine he scraped together 100k.

Edit: then again I am told there's maybe 2/3 of that in his account right now, so maybe. Apparently, his mom also pays a lot of his bills. Not sure if she is aware of his Patreonbux or how much the forams really bring in, etc. So, it's possible, I guess.

Lowtax has $70k in his bank account? Most ppl with tax liens don’t keep those amounts of liquid cash on the books in bank accounts. Sure someone isn’t confused about money he has in a IRA/retirement account? I could see Lowtax putting money in a retirement account and the IRS can’t touch it - and neither can a soon to be ex-wife.

I can’t see him actually having $70k cash money on hand, esp if he knew a divorce was eminent.

 

[Ghostse]

Just looked it up and this shows he has judgments for over $100k in back taxes. How is that possible? Did he just not pay taxes for years?

https://www.courts.mo.gov/casenet/base/welcome.do

Search his name and see.

No one knows for certain, the speculation:
Its not federal but state taxes; the tax lein is DOR, likely 'Department of Revenue', which is Missouri's state tax collection agency. https://dor.mo.gov/

Missouri passed an internet tax law that said that any company that sold "goods" on the internet was subject to taxes. I speculate Low-T didn't pay them because he likely believed that accounts, avatars, and red text didn't fall under "goods", and it would seem that DOR disagreed and he settled.

I believe someone else had said something about him claiming credits and write-offs incorrectly.

 

[Brazen Wanker]

I have a hard time imagining Low-T funding any sort of retirement account, given his track record of poor decisions and inability to think past the next box of wine.

 

[Leonard Helplessness]

This is a great post, and covers the high points, the current userbase is people who couldn't make it in another online community.
You didn't cover the Dagan Rompa Tumblr influx, that was the critical event that made things unsalvagable.

SA had been in decline for years.
SA got so terrible because the moderation team drove off everyone funny, talented, creative, and productive. You had mods like Oxma (fat) and EPW who would burst into mildly popular threads they never posted in before and shut them down because THEY didn't find them interesting. They, and faggots like Abe (Caylen) would ban anyone who was funnier or more popular than them who didn't have a Mod or Admin sempai.
The ones they didn't straight up banned got sick of Mod Toadies using their nepotism to get away with stuff that would result in a ban for anyone else, and to get people who took issue with them banned when anyone else would have been ignored.

Breaking kayfabe a bit here: The sorts of people who engage in that sort of sucking-up-to-teacher behavior are the worse people, the sort of people who would latch on to Social Justice as a way to shield themselves while having others attack anyone they disagree with, basically all the people in the past 10 years who have suddenly decided that they are trannies without having actual dysphoria, for woke points and protection from criticism. These people are too fagile to be able to live without the protection of others, so they are natural born toadies.

Then in 2010 or there abouts, there was some goon who did a Let's Play of Dagan Rompa, a glorified Japanese Visual Novel that was an irrelevant rip off of Phoenix Wright. The game was released on PSP, and didn't have an English translation, so this Let's Play thread was pretty much the ONLY place you could find out anything about the game. For anime reasons, it was really popular on Tumblr, and Lowtax threw up the paywall on the thread (only registered accounts could view it). This caused much wailing and nashing of teeth as sadbrains complained about being broke, but large numbers of them registered so they could get their Japanese Anime Highschool Murder Fix.

This influx is what terminally fucked SA, they are the snowflakes that caused the avalanche that's left us with SomethingWoke.

Even before Dangit Grandpa, you had Laissez’s Faire to blame for a lot of the decay. LF was a political subforum that degenerated into leftist hackery and was mostly unmoderated, though it became so bad that Lowtax moved it into a special subforum called Retarded Forum for Assholes with a hideous stylesheet and heavy penalties that got applied to your account just for posting there.

It continued to degenerate, though, until Lowtax literally got a Secret Service visit because posters were talking about murdering President Obama for not being woke enough. Not long after that, Laissez’s Faire was shut down entirely, and the goons once quarantined there proceeded to impose themselves on the rest of the forums.

 

[Ghostse]

The judgement for 100K has a "date of satisfaction" which I think means it's been paid??

View attachment 1027383View attachment 1027384View attachment 1027385

It means the Lien has been lifted, it doesn't necessarily mean the debt that caused the lien has been paid. Lowtax may have worked out a payment plan or similar.

Even before Dangit Grandpa, you had Laissez’s Faire to blame for a lot of the decay. LF was a political subforum that degenerated into leftist hackery and was mostly unmoderated, though it became so bad that Lowtax moved it into a special subforum called exceptional Forum for Assholes with a hideous stylesheet and heavy penalties that got applied to your account just for posting there.

It continued to degenerate, though, until Lowtax literally got a Secret Service visit because posters were talking about murdering President Obama for not being woke enough. Not long after that, Laissez’s Faire was shut down entirely, and the goons once quarantined there proceeded to impose themselves on the rest of the forums.

Good catch & good point. I forgot the McCain toxxers in 2008 getting banned and not coming back. That removed a lot of the sane center and right voices from the board.
(Compared to the Hilary toxxers in 2016 who weren't banned and told to pinky-promise to donate $10 to trannies instead)

 

[Twinkie]

It continued to degenerate, though, until Lowtax literally got a Secret Service visit because posters were talking about murdering President Obama for not being woke enough. Not long after that, Laissez’s Faire was shut down entirely, and the goons once quarantined there proceeded to impose themselves on the rest of the forums.

Wasn't that around the time when Fragmaster (or someone?) came up with the idea of "forums cancer" and everyone who posted in LF got forums cancer which made their poasts all fogged out, and the user had to pay to get it lifted?

 

[Reverend]

I think Rob Malda from Slashdot did okay(ish) too. He got out when the getting was good.

Slashdot now is fucking cancer. It used to be my home page for the longest time and then when CmdrTaco left it became this really odd tech blog. I didn't understand what was happening then but now looking back I can see it was infected with the same shit that brought down other news sites: Identity Politics and Social Justice.

 

[Leonard Helplessness]

Wasn't that around the time when Fragmaster (or someone?) came up with the idea of "forums cancer" and everyone who posted in LF got forums cancer which made their poasts all fogged out, and the user had to pay to get it lifted?

Yep. Forums Cancer also set your postcount to zero, randomly redirected you to an extremely loud flash if you tried to post elsewhere, changed your avatar to a cancerous child, and other shit I’ve forgotten about. You could pay to get rid of it, but if you ever made another post in LF it would come right back.