Why is Something Awful Forums so woke now?

[Tablet County]

Dude. It's not propaganda, it's my own opinion. Gaming, like movies or literature do not matter. It's what men do in their downtime from what they normally do, which is build things. And they get very irate when some broad steps in saying they shouldn't be gaming because it's problematic or whatever. Before gaming, it was heavy metal and before that it was hunting, smoking and drinking booze.

Learn a trade, get out of the coom dungeon.

Okay so you didn't actually read anything I wrote, have no idea what you're talking about, and are just saying words that sound good, got it.

 

[Ignatius von Cistern]

Okay so you didn't actually read anything I wrote, have no idea what you're talking about, and are just saying words that sound good, got it.

Calm your shit and you listen. I've had this conversation before. "How can you say games don't matter, it's a billion dollar industry!" OK, well are you building the games or just playing them? "Gamer," isn't an identity. If that's all you do and get upset when "gaming journalists" say "gamers are dead," I have a bug hive to sell you.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

Troll's Remorse.

 

[Xarpho]

Forums in general especially in 2000s trolling culture were very leftist, or at least anti-conservative. a big reason why people went after Chris-chan was 1. autism wasn't as well known back then but more importantly 2. he was extremely racist and 3. homophobic like Chris-chan in 2009 and Null in 2025 have the exact same politics.

This is also why users here from before 2017 are almost all complete faggots, being woke was considered a virtue until around the Trayvon Martin shooting. like sure you could make "offensive jokes" but they had to be jokes, and once trump and his followers started making the same jokes, suddenly it stopped being ok so all you were left with was their real politics. This forum a decade ago was extremely pro-anime and pro-trans and the most right leaning guy here was Hulk Hogan, believe it or not.

Encyclopedia dramatica was also made up mostly of lefties, just the idea of being a nazi was practically not a thing online pre-2012 aka when Something Awful was king of the internet. Everyone was leftist and agreed with the democrats no matter how silly their policies were. much like ED they too didn't get the memo when the fringe parts of the internet were rapidly becoming alt-right. obviously they knew how to deal with conservatives but /pol/ocks were impossible for them to argue with.

the reason SA seems so woke now is that the politics of the internet changed a lot from 2012. most of the beliefs on SA were also held back then only most people agreed or stayed silent so no one really understood how insane SA had become.

there's a reason you didn't even hear the term "social justice warrior" until about 2012. In general SA is something tons of modern lefties including everyone on Chapo Trap House and Cumtown were users of because being leftist was the norm and as you grew up you'd keep those same politics and end up being a faggot working for the enemy.

AKA they were always woke, its just that the internet moved on from everyone being cringe leftists

Forum culture and American politics are a little weird; it wasn't some "flip" over time but rather an attitude in what was and wasn't acceptable. It's like when you could use "gay" as an insult but still be left-wing and nominally support "LGBT" causes; as late as 2014 most of the gay/troon shit we see today was written off as "slippery slope".

But that is some serious revisionist history about KF. It was never "pro-trans" and started out very neutral. At some point I remember reading a quote where a forum's politics is defined by how much they censor stuff. It's why you saw forums from the early 2000s with broad rules like "no racism" (no unhinged rants on the Jews/blacks/etc.) become "feel free to be as anti-white as much as you want/don't EVER imply that there might be something wrong with Jews/blacks/etc." over time, but KF wasn't like that.

I've been here since 2014 (logged into my old account to show--less settings and ironically less posts--yes I have two accounts due to the reset and I found the old email, no I'm not using it for evil) and by 2014 you were already starting to see some pushback to culture war stuff hence Gamergate later that year (forum probably leaned right even back then--but even if it did lean left it didn't sperg out about evangelist Christianity like other forums did). I do have to say that "Hulk Hogan being the most right-leaning user" is really inaccurate because that and @Hollywood Hulk Hogan are different users. The original @Hulk Hogan was a gimmick poster who if I recall had a rare yellow title (another one was @Alec Benson Leary); everyone else was green or blue, can't remember--there was one for Null, one for other mods, red for banned users which all got the INTERNET CUT DOWN avatar, and a few others--there was one guy (@Wise Old Badger) who had an "Autistic" banner under his name and was purple and eventually got banned for being an autistic sperg...but if we were talking about autistic spergs who got banned we'd be here all day.

Most of the "forums going leftist" stuff (SA especially) has to do with mods gaining too much power, creating bans/chilling effects until they drive out wrongthink. Even KF isn't immune to that, there was a BP mod called Meowthkip that was sort of like that and one of the earliest mods was Null's gay catboy friend who later left and trooned out. From I've gotten over the years Null hates the A&N crowd which by the late 2010s was very much right-wing but had also wised up to raids with new users trying to subvert forum culture and run KF as a left-wing fiefdom.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

Even KF isn't immune to that, there was a BP mod called Meowthkip that was sort of like that and one of the earliest mods was Null's gay catboy friend who later left and trooned out.

Could anyone with a post-2017 join date imagine Null having a tranny friend? Much less a tranny mod? Like that one guy proved with the older posts talking about porn. This forum was a lot different on issues a decade ago.

Also just an observation I want to point out again, A/N posters have the exact same politics Null claims he does on MATI whereas the pre-2017 users are all much further left on issues

 

[W'rkncacnter]

You can have a conversation with nothing else happening in writing.
My example for this is Twilight
There are so many scenes in the movies where it's like 5-10 characters sitting or standing in a room and talking without almost any movement.
It's boring as fuck because nothing happens on screen for several minutes but in a book, the dialogue can completely take over, augmented by telling the reader what each person is feeling and thinking.

I think you're in the wrong thread pal.

 

[Easterling]

SA went considerably more leftwing after the Obama election, users who were republican/democrat wagered if their preferred candidate lost they would delete their account.

 

[Smar Mijou]

I think it's important to frame it for people who don't know any better, while I'm a somewhat newfag to KF, only being here for a few years or so, I'm not new to the internet overall. And I can certainly say that KiwiFarms is an outlier, even compared to the old internet forums of yore that zoomers romanticize. Even in those wild west days of Web1.0, short of a few obscure places with a hundred or so users, or actual fed honeypots like 4chan, most places would at least censor or ban people for saying the NIGGER word, although you could slip in some faggots, kikes, and other fun slurs occasionally. The centralization and dumbing down of the internet was bound to happen, due to corporate takeover. Places like pReddit with it's overkill "heckin' wholesome" culture and automated bots programed by troons to censor any wrongthink on every other platform haven't helped either.

Null is unique in that he doesn't really let his personal feelings dictate the direction of KF, when it would be extremely easy for him to do so. Meanwhile most other places let their mods rule based on their feelings, and the minute you do that, the place is doomed. Tumblr tried to clean up their image for the sake of corporate investment that lead to their downfall. SA let the troons take over. pReddit is in an ideological struggle between their strong userbase of pornsick pedophilic gooners, and their increasing corporate expectations for profitability.

Also...

the tranny mods'

You answered your own question in your opening statement.

 

[TruffleSpark]

As far as major events that pushed SA to where it is now, there was "toxx for McCain" in 2008 where a bunch of Republican voters got permabanned. lf was also bringing in left wing users around this time because it was one of the few places (at the time) where you could be a hard left Marxist and still be a total edgelord. On other Marxist sites like the RevLeft forums you were expected to conduct yourself in a more serious manner. I know right wingers tend to view more mainstream liberals and hard line Marxists as slightly different flavors of the same thing, but there is bad blood between these two groups. That sort of settled GBS and D&D as the more normie liberal subforums and lf (later C-SPAM) as the Marxist subforum. A lot of online commie culture now (Chapo Trap House and stuff like that) can be traced back to lf.

I think the Danganronpa LP by Slowbeef in 2013 brought in a lot of tumblr users. Then a whole bunch of Trump supporters got banned after the 2016 election because Trump Derangement Syndrome took over and no wrongthink could be allowed. The final straw was FYAD (the sole remnant of SA's former edgelord site culture) getting banned because a troon posted about how he gets erections when he uses the womens changing rooms and FYAD laughed at him.

Lowtax himself didn't really have much of a consistent political ideology. He was anti Bush in a vague sort of way from 2000 to 2008, then I think he was a libertarian of some flavor. He tried to reinvent himself as an anti Democratic party socialist on twitter in the later years. But I think he only really cared about what would give him money/attention in the moment and he never followed through on anything beyond that. He let the troon and troon chaser moderators take over the site because it was the path of least resistance. And by the time he realized he had fucked up it was too late and he couldn't take the site back.

 

[Tablet County]

Calm your shit and you listen. I've had this conversation before. "How can you say games don't matter, it's a billion dollar industry!" OK, well are you building the games or just playing them? "Gamer," isn't an identity. If that's all you do and get upset when "gaming journalists" say "gamers are dead," I have a bug hive to sell you.

What the fuck is this? Why are you assuming that I hold a position that I've given no indicator that I actually hold? Are you an AI chatbot?
Personally, I don't care if it's about vidya games, the stock market, or fucking knitting. I think that a bunch of journalistic outlets all banding together to create a false narrative and control public perception is fucked up and should be discouraged no matter how banal the subject is.

 

[grump]

Forums in general especially in 2000s trolling culture were very leftist, or at least anti-conservative. a big reason why people went after Chris-chan was 1. autism wasn't as well known back then but more importantly 2. he was extremely racist and 3.

Uh, I don't know about that. Of the political side of the internet a lot certainly was leftist (as in antibush) maybe the majority. But people, especially young people were generally more apolitical than they are now. And the leftism back then could be considered republican now specifically in that identity politics was a lot more basic and trans stuff basically didn't exist and so was mocked by the leftists like the conservatives do now. And internet and culture in general could be considered more 'conservative' as a lot of the culture war flashpoints that leftists fight against now were uncontroversial and not even thought of much at all.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

and trans stuff basically didn't exist

linetrap would be surprised to hear you say that.

beyond that apolitical doesn't mean "has no politics" because plenty of apolitical types are anti-homophobes or anti-racists. Also rather telling that guys like you and the 2014 user both try and fag this thread up with your shitty opinions. almost like i might be right about the pre-2017 users.

And lots of culture war flashpoints didn't exist at all.

while they didn't, you had equivalents, such as Rick Santorum, who was the JK Rowling of his day, only because online culture back in 2012 had the same views as bluesky and reddit, they acted like he was the biggest monster of the era.

 

[byron]

As soon as the atheist community became a "community" is when trouble struck. The exact same people that need church and Jesus found a way to sublimate this need through endless lectures about nerve strands in giraffe necks.

It took me a long time to admit it, but you're absolutely right.

A lot of people *need* ...I wont say they need "religions" - but they need the thing that religion does, the purpose that it serves in the human psyche. It's exactly like how people need tribes, and if you take away real tribes, they get heavily invested in, for example, sports - it serves the need that tribes used to serve.

You might like this article from 9 years ago: https://intellectualtakeout.org/201...ial-justice-the-new-religious-fundamentalism/ (archive: https://archive.is/nPdqq ) Jonathan Haidt was definitely at the forefront of identifying this problem.

 

[Lieutenant Rasczak]

AKA they were always woke, its just that the internet moved on from everyone being cringe leftists

No... Intersectionality or "wokeness™" as most people refer to it really didn't start to spread until the Early 2010s. It started becoming a bigger problem around 2012 or so. It peaked between 2019 and 2022, but it's been getting a lot of backlash as of recently. You're still going to see moralistic lefty types, but I think Intersectionality is going to be largely irrelevant in 2-3 years time.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

No... Intersectionality or "wokeness™" as most people refer to it really didn't start to spread until the Early 2010s

so is being pro-gay marriage "woke" to you? pretty sure you're going to say no, and won't even admit that was in fact a leftist position. same thing with affirmative action or multiple other things that people of a certain age just assume are a moderate position.

the idea that trolling someone for being anti-gay marriage being a leftist action certainly doesn't enter your mind

 

[Slap47]

I don't know about SomethingAwful, but I can talk about Facepunch.

That forum was always progressive, but eventually the culture war got so extreme that progressives found the very idea of anybody even in the center (on any topic) abhorrent. Leftists are generally better at being unemployed (becoming Jannies) so they slowly purged the people with the wrongthink until the site and its successor (knockout) were established as lefty sites.

I would assume the same happened with SomethingAwful as they had the same conditions as Facepunch (absentee ownership, millenial/zoomer userbase, lots of programmers/troons, powerful moderators, etc).

 

[Xarpho]

Could anyone with a post-2017 join date imagine Null having a tranny friend? Much less a tranny mod? Like that one guy proved with the older posts talking about porn. This forum was a lot different on issues a decade ago.

Also just an observation I want to point out again, A/N posters have the exact same politics Null claims he does on MATI whereas the pre-2017 users are all much further left on issues

He wasn't a troon, he was just gay. He didn't troon out after leaving KF. There was never time when trans people were "accepted" by KF, that was liberal zeitgeist that really started from 2015 on. The whole Christine transition thing wasn't embraced as support, Null said you could address the issue as "he" or "she" (but not "they" or any variation of Tumblr pronouns).

I think it's important to frame it for people who don't know any better, while I'm a somewhat newfag to KF, only being here for a few years or so, I'm not new to the internet overall. And I can certainly say that KiwiFarms is an outlier, even compared to the old internet forums of yore that zoomers romanticize. Even in those wild west days of Web1.0, short of a few obscure places with a hundred or so users, or actual fed honeypots like 4chan, most places would at least censor or ban people for saying the NIGGER word, although you could slip in some faggots, kikes, and other fun slurs occasionally. The centralization and dumbing down of the internet was bound to happen, due to corporate takeover. Places like pReddit with it's overkill "heckin' wholesome" culture and automated bots programed by troons to censor any wrongthink on every other platform haven't helped either.

Null is unique in that he doesn't really let his personal feelings dictate the direction of KF, when it would be extremely easy for him to do so. Meanwhile most other places let their mods rule based on their feelings, and the minute you do that, the place is doomed. Tumblr tried to clean up their image for the sake of corporate investment that lead to their downfall. SA let the troons take over. pReddit is in an ideological struggle between their strong userbase of pornsick pedophilic gooners, and their increasing corporate expectations for profitability.

Exactly. The problem when you're comparing KF to Something Awful or any other forums from the 2000s it's never going to be a 1:1 since Null has explicitly stated that it's designed to be a throwback to 2000s/early 2010s forum culture. You can also tell Null took notes from other forums to not make the same mistakes they did. In the Lowtax video, one of the things he said that "changed the pH level" of the forums' politics during the late 2000s/2010s (correct me if I'm wrong on this) was closing a popular left-wing subforum and allowed those users to basically colonize the rest of the site. It's the same reason why he keeps A&N and other subforums he personally dislikes around.

Likewise, there probably is some sort of "lessons learned" reasons about why there is no porn forum on KF. It's not just the problems that patrolling forums to make sure no one posts genitals of actual children (and weaken the case of KF being law-abiding, something he clings to); it sure as heck isn't advertiser dollars, high-powered troons like Liz-Dong and others ensured that KF can't ever make a profit through legitimate Internet means, he either explicitly or implicitly said that coomers are detrimental to forum culture. I'm not sure which forum he learned that from, but it had be something.

 

[Hollywood Hulk Hogan]

I do have to say that "Hulk Hogan being the most right-leaning user" is really inaccurate because that and @Hollywood Hulk Hogan are different users. The original @Hulk Hogan was a gimmick poster who if I recall had a rare yellow title (another one was @Alec Benson Leary);

No, Hulk Hogan was me. I got Null to change my name and turn heel.

 

[peachlover669]

he either explicitly or implicitly said that coomers are detrimental to forum culture. I'm not sure which forum he learned that from, but it had be something.

im pretty sure he learned that from 4chan. he seems to have a good disdain for modern 4chan and the proliferation of pornography is one reason for it im sure.

 

[big pauper]

Calm your shit and you listen. I've had this conversation before. "How can you say games don't matter, it's a billion dollar industry!" OK, well are you building the games or just playing them? "Gamer," isn't an identity. If that's all you do and get upset when "gaming journalists" say "gamers are dead," I have a bug hive to sell you.

the culture of creativity i grew up in as a child is dead. the social and political requirements of corporations in the obama era was extremely authoritarian and used heavy moderating and gatekeeping. the kind of stuff people get mad at nintendo for doing now is what every company was doing 15 years ago, despite pretty much everyone but nintendo doing the opposite in the 90's. i grew up playing custom maps, mods, and gamemodes. everything i did when i was 12-16 was stuff created by 20+ year olds who ended up getting jobs making the games. there is a clear pedigree from 1993's doom all the way to 2007's team fortress 2. but console gaming picking up steam in the 2010s changed the gaming industry and cut the pedigree off. its only just now that console gamers have mods and it functionally has no connection to the culture i grew up in, its just indians reuploading old content to a new respository with monetization.

halo 1 came out with a software development kit. halo 2 got a broken pc release with no modding tools. halo 3 never came to pc.