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.