Something Awful

This article contains lost or unknown lore. Primary sources of this history are either gone, dead, or were never part of WIDEVERSE and as such there may be large gaps and missing information.

Something Awful

Type of business	Limited liability company
Founded	1999 (1999)
Headquarters	Pleasant Hill, Missouri, U.S.
Founder(s)	Richard Charles Kyanka
Key people	Richard Kyanka Zack Parsons David Thorpe
Industry	Internet
Website	somethingawful.com
Alexa rank	5,277 (August 2017)

Something Awful (SA) is a comedy website (allegedly) housing a variety of content, including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka (Rest in Power, King) in 1999 as a largely personal website, but as it grew, so did its contributors and content. The website has helped to perpetuate various Internet phenomena, and it has been cited as an influence on Internet culture. In 2018, Gizmodo placed it as 89th on their list of "100 Websites That Shaped the Internet as We Know It".

The website has been involved in a number of notable events outside of The WIDEVERSE. These include a conflict with the Spam Prevention Early Warning System, a Hurricane Katrina relief fund being caught in PayPal's red tape, an exhibition boxing match between Kyanka and movie director Uwe Boll, and the creation of the Slender Man.

History

Pre-WIDE

Something Awful was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, who controls the site and is supported by other contributing writers and administrators.

Kyanka started Something Awful several months before leaving his previous job, after using his "Cranky Steve" persona to write a comedic website update deriding the attitude and work performance of a fellow Planet Quake administrator. He moved the "Cranky Steve" personality he had created to the Something Awful site in 1999. In the years immediately following Something Awful's launch, several sponsors, including GameFan and eFront, failed to compensate Kyanka as promised for advertising on the site.

In 2001, the site began charging an activation fee (currently US$9.95) for forum access. Only members can post messages or threads; to encourage new registrations, the forums are only intermittently viewable by unregistered users. The site and forums draw continuous income from fees for new accounts, forum upgrades such as custom avatars and access to the forum archives and search features, and merchandise sales.

Early Days & BMW

Mostly independently, many of the COMMUNISM Revival members were somewhat active on SA. Prude was mostly a lurker while Taylor was active in the Late Night Show thread, as well as some Minecraft servers.

There were several plans during 2013 and even into early 2015 to use the "Private Game Servers" subforum to advertise COMMUNISM Minecraft and Rust servers, though never realized.

COMMUNISM's first real interaction with SA came in May of 2015 when Prude began playing on the primary SomethingAwful Rust server, Goon Playground, founding the clan [GAY]. Taylor too soon joined, as did Tony. COMMUNISM was central to the founding of BMW some weeks later when the major clans of the Goon server merged to go wreck havok on pubbies. COMMUNISM eventually began using BMW and the SA Rust thread (and later the dedicated BMW thread) to recruit directly into COMMUNISM, at least until COMMUNISM was dissolved and merged into BMW itself.

Clown World War I

In 2018, when it became clear that BMW was a sizeable and influential force on SA, many separate groups, though mainly Serious Overchill and Starfleet Dental, conspired to get Taylor banned from SA. This was largely successful, though later on the Bimmers would begin speaking directly to Lowtax in his own server during the Siege of Lowtaxia, though this too later failed when TT turned Lowtax against them.

Troon Uprisings

The WIDEVERSE's last dance with SA came in January of 2020, when PartyPlaneJones was outed as a member of BMW in the infamous Troon Uprisings. The few Biggers who were still active on SA either left BMW or were banned from SA, marking the end of SomethingAwful's involvement with The WIDEVERSE.

Legacy

It cannot be understated, despite the later events, how instrumental SomethingAwful was in not only reshaping, but saving The WIDEVERSE. The 2015 change in philosophy set forth by Taylor changed COMMUNISM's outlook from trying to create its own groups to leeching off of bigger groups, eventually creating BMW and leading to the current WIDEVERSE as it is known.

The downfall of SA and its relation to The WIDEVERSE is seen as a tragedy, a long list of "What Ifs...", and countless broken friendships.