The downfall started when a bunch of posters toxx'd for Ron Paul winning the 2008 GOP primary. Then even more people toxx'd that McCain would beat Obama. Hundreds and hundreds got banned by the time it was over; these weren't all necessarily forum superstars, but they were people who followed and cared about politics and were therefor most likely to be the type to add a center-to-right-of-center voice to any political discussion. This all happened within ~6 months or so, and it shifted the forums jarringly to the left. It wasn't quite the People's Republic of Something Awful yet, but the political discourse went from being roughly split between conservatives, moderates and liberals (with a fractional minority of people with hard left politics who were generally told to stop being faggots by everyone but the liberals) to being about 80% liberal and 20% split between conservatives and moderates combined.
This new liberal majority, now being the loudest and most sizable political voice on the forums was able to pressure the admins for all sorts of stuff: banning certain words, initially (this is when "faggot"was given the ax, and while "nigger" was already technically bannable if used in a racist context but sorta allowed if it was clearly being used edgily/ironically it was now banned entirely); "tranny" wasn't yet bannable, I don't think, but it was largely becoming socially verboten on the forums.
So, now you have a liberal forum where you won't get called a faggot or a nigger and won't have to do much defending of your views against conservatives. This attracted further left people to join. Gradually, more changes got pushed through. LF was originally established as a sub-forum for the few remaining conservative-leaning goons to shit post about Ron Paul or whatever, but after the 2012 election, where even more of the remaining conservative/moderate goons toxx'd for Ron Paul in the primary and Romney in the general, the last real vestiges of outspoken moderate/conservative politics were pretty much gone for good. LF, now left without a real purpose due to the vacancy of conservative goons and the gradual pozzing of the forums in general got taken over by liberals being 'ironic' dem-socs, who then became dem-socs being 'ironic' communists, who then became communists being "ironic" tankie Stalin apologists as they spiraled further and further left. Eventually, LF would see 100% serious hard left tankies horseshoe theorying themselves into calling for the death of Jews/Israel from the left with only token mod/admin disapproval if the posts were particularly violent in nature.
Then, 2016 happened and people lost their fucking minds. A lot of the more moderate leftists -- who would have been among the most liberal people on the forum in 2008, but were now the new 'conservatives' (defined as such because they didn't want to immediately start guillotine rich people while their young children are forced to watch) due to the Goonverton Window shifting to the hard left -- toxx'd for Clinton, who everyone was sure would win. Clinton shat the bed, they got banned and with it, the only real political voices on the forums at all were ultra-left commies. This is around the time where Tumblr-esque 'gender discourse' became a huge thing in ultra-left circles, and it infected SA almost immediately as a result. Trans goons were already accepted by now, and 'transphobic slurs' banned at some undefined point prior, but now unquestioning, mandatory support for a bunch of mentally ill, autistic men hopped up on lady hormones and screaming about the need to behead the cis became the new SA political shibboleth; cis goons were expected to not just tolerate trans people posting, not just use the proper pronouns, not just to grovel if any offense, even accidental, occurred, but to shut up, stay in their lane, 'center' the trans posters and let them lead forum discourse since they were the most marginalized people imaginable.
At this point, everything was fucked. People started demanding idpol subforums like Negrotown where even if you were black, you literally had to show your skin color to be allowed to post and to determine where on the progressive stack you fit in vis a vis how much "light skin privilege" you have; they started demanding troon mods and troon front page writers "for representation", etc.
Finally, the virtue spiral caught up to Lowtax himself. He's a cis white straight dude who used to say "faggot" a lot and voted for George Bush in 2000. For that alone, his days were numbered as soon as he approved the first Ron Paul 2008 toxx ban, but even more so given that he's a genuinely loathsome fuck who has been accused of domestic violence by 3 out of 3 of his last long term relationships. It was clear, at least to me, that he didn't like the new tranny overlords, but was both powerless to stop them and willing to cuck for gibs. Now he's out, and a woke dude who embraces the garbage fire bought it. I give it 6-12 months from the date Jefferey of YOSPOS officially takes the reigns until the site spontaneously combusts.
And that, in a small novel, is how and why SA went from being Kiwi Farms-esque prior to 2008 to a forum full of tranny communists where no leftist position is too fucked or violent or gross. It's good that SA is going to implode soon, as if it'd limped on for a few more years, I don't doubt in the slightest that mocking pedophiles would be bannable ("it's a mental illness uwu you're ableist uwu"), Pet Island would allow bestiality posts ("NO KINK SHAMING, SHITLORDS") and everyone to the right of Pol Pot banned for being a "Nazi".
