Clown World War I

Clown World War I was a conflict between the shitposters of The WIDEVERSE and the Goons of SomethingAwful in general but specifically Serious Overchill and SA Discord. The conflict was a clashing of cultures between the laid back anti-PC anti-censorship views of WTT and the groupthink multiculti "Cult of Chill" perpetuated by Goons. The latter half of the war was characterized by betrayal by BMW admins and TTs ongoing ineptitude and feud with Taylor Swift. The war went with The Sauce Affair, resulting in the banning of on-again off-again COMMIE, The Sauce, and personal threats made against Taylor Swift. The war would officially end almost a year later with The Troon Uprisings and the final purge of Bimmers from SomethingAwful and its associated platforms, including GDN. The war caused untold destruction and butthurt across many discords and created countless splinter groups and feuds among the factions. Its widely regarded as a mostly hilarious affair.

Clown World War I

BMW soldiers preparing to invade during The Siege of Lowtaxia
DateApril 10th, 2018 - January 28th, 2020 (1 year, 9 months, 2 weeks and 4 days)
Location
Result Massive discord losses on both sides, countless splinter groups created, dignities lost. All sides would later claim victory.
Belligerents
 BMW/ WTT
 MOTHER
 BEEFY BOYS
 WIDEBOYS
 Lowtaxes Discord
 SA Discord
 Wonka
 Sauce
 Serious Overchill
 Bread and Roses
Commanders and leaders
BMWTaylor Swift
BMWPrude
BMWCST
WTTThe Wonkas[1]
MOTHERThe Sauce[2]
BMWKimsemus[3]
Lowtaxes DiscordLowtax 
SA DiscordTT
WonkaThe Wonkas
WonkaKimsemus
The SauceThe Sauce 
Serious OverchillFAT32 
Serious OverchillBen Smash
Bread and Roses Dickeye
Bread and Roses Measly Twerp
Strength
A few hundred Bimmers & shitposts 1000s of members but nobody fighting lol 2000 Tankies

History and Causes

Conflict between BMW and Goons existed as long as BMW itself. There was a long and rich history of certain Goons getting butthurt over this or that and gagging at gnats, most notably when Spacedad joined the Rust crew for all of one day and noped out within 12 hours. One of the most notable clashes between BMW and Something Awful was when Cal Worthingtons "Wanted Posters" caused the mods of the forum to lock the years old griefing thread permanently for "doxxing". The main Rust thread was also lock temporarily as FactsAreUseless bumbled about trying to involve himself in it. The event blew over but left a reputation for BMW among the Goons. One of BMWs most vocal opponents was a forums poster named Cheen aka McCain Av Faggot, who had long hated BMW because they wouldn't play on Vanilla servers. No really, that's the basis of his entire butthurt campaign, its because BMW wouldn't grind for hours on Vanilla servers with him.

Throughout the war, a certain sect of members of BMW who disliked Taylor would begin plotting against him in various ways, an event that would culminate twice in The Wonka Uprising and The Sauce Affair.

Beginning

Relations would be made worse after the 2016 Election when Something Awful as a whole lost its god damn mind, and during the Conan Expedition of 2017, began wholesale slandering BMW of being "Alt-Right". Goons tenuous grasp on reality was one of the primary causes for Taylor and admins to eventually stop recruiting on the forums all together. Prude would later coin the term for the move as "post-goon". Some in the SA community saw this as a signal that BMW as a whole should no longer be welcomed among Goons, as they don't tolerate dissent.

BMW vs Serious Overchill

The roots of the war formed when Serious Overchill and Cheen began harassing SA Discord admin Tempus Thales about Taylors twitter account, featuring such hateful tweets as "Potato chips are banned in the ethnostate". Their campaign culminated in the Fornite thread, where a chorus of Goons cried about all the hateful Nazi alt right mods in SA Discord, and encouraged people to detour from there and instead join Serious Overchill. TT, at the time, shrugged it off but remained ignorant of the true intents of the campaign which were to bolster Serious Overchill and take away from SA Discords presence. FAT32, an admin in SA Discord and Serious Overchill, tried to downplay that last point, while also being in TTs ear about Taylor being a Nazi.

At the same time, TT and his assistant, IAmKale, had begun to harbor resentment about Taylor and BMW, as the latter was seeing massive success while the former's discord withered and stagnated

Siege of Lowtaxia

At some point, Prude found out that Lowtax, the owner of SomethingAwful, had a private discord that was actually open to everyone. The Bimmers used this as a chance to fuck with him and proceeded to dump copious amounts of anime tiddies into the discord daily, eventually getting a response from Lowtax that would result in him banning politics in GBS.

Taylors Banishment & The SA Discord Incident

The first turn in the war began with Taylors banning from the Something Awful forums, because of the earlier mentioned innocuous tweets. With this and the concept that BMW was post-Goon, TT officially began preparations to remove Taylor from his admin position and the discord. The latter part wouldnt be revealed until years later during Operation Overlard, and at the time, TT played ignorant and that the discord was simply "trying to go in a different direction".

Prior to the ousting, Taylor had planned to leverage the groups access to gain access to the development of GDN, which had stagnated due to Kales lack of interest, as a way to increase BMWs recruitment, by finding troubled users using text recognition. This basic concept would later be used as the basis for the cover story during Operation Overlard.

Brief Armistice

Summer of Butthurt

After BMW had been ousted from SA Discord and had moved on from Goons, they had committed to helping forlorn Goons in what became known as the SA Rapefugee Program (A program originally meant to use GDN to find oppressed Goons), which sought out Goons who exhibited wrong-think publicly on the forums. The program was largely a success for months, but in May of 2018, began to turn sour. A small contingent of the rapefugees, led by notorious pedophile Tallgeese, lashed out at WTT mod Prude over his love for traps and their misunderstanding of the word vestigial. In hindsight its clear this was their own latent pedo tendencies lashing out in some sort of weird closeted cry for attention. Regardless, a small group of these posters fucked off into a small discord that would later fold.

A month later, Taylor would begin receiving strange and threatening texts in the middle of the night from people who claimed that he would be doxxed and outed as a racist, presumably by Goons. The dissident admins feigned sympathy, but after The Sauce Affair it would become clear they were either involved or at the very least, knowledgeable, as information obtained during The Skirmish Of Wonka Plains showed that a parachute discord had been prepared almost directly in sync with the text messages, assumedly coordinated by Sauce and Hindered. The admins eventually found an excuse in the form of a missed permission for a music bot to stage an all out coup against Taylor. The attempt utterly failed as the group lacked any charisma and the subsequent restructuring of WTT led to a renaissance in the groups culture, largely overshadowing the coup plotters.

From August of 2018 until March of 2019, there were little to no skirmishes among the combatants. However, ever since the ousting of Taylor from SA Discord, it had died a slow death, eventually dwindling down to a few users and only a few hundred posts a day.

WTT however continued to flourish, as the priorities of the group had been refocused and the toxic elements had mostly self deported. However, in October of 2018, The Sauce would return during a sudden uptick in The Wonkas group activity (something that would die out just a few weeks later due to their own mismanagement of the group). WTT Historians have never agreed on why Sauce returned, but it is widely believed that based on the timing, he intended to either gloat or to entrench himself back into the group. The latter was mostly unsuccessful due to his chaotic and sporadic nature, as well as it inability to commit to anything.

In December, WTT would officially removed politics from its platform, choosing to move it to a new platform, Rocket.Chat.

Climax and Cold War

Taylors Abdication & BEEFY BOYS Return

In March of 2019, Taylor officially stepped down as leader of WTT, handing the reins over to Peaches and AlexanderDeLarge, two long time and trusted mods of WTT. Along with this move, Prude brought forth the idea to bring back politics from the dying Rocket.Chat platform to a separate Discord, specifically the former COMMUNISM discord, BEEFY BOYS.

The newfound platform and freedom from the obligations of leading WTT encouraged Taylor to don his "Taylor Unchained" persona, where he went on a tour of fucking with people, mostly The Wonkas and TT, reigniting the war. The first battle of this new chapter in the war was The Skirmish of Wonka Plains, where Taylor went into their dead discord and openly mocked them and Kimsemus. The latter would try and scold Taylor for sullying his good name and trying to take credit for creating BMW. He was mostly laughed at for being a faggot who cried about internet things. The BEEFY BOYS were eventually banned from Wonka discord in because of the continued bad blood.

After this, TT and The Wonkas would formally join forces, after breaking The Siege of Lowtaxia and gaining a GDN foothold in that discord.

Operation Overlard

The most explosive operation in the war occurred as part of TTs ongoing struggle for relevancy. In the past few months, he had attempted to rebrand his discord as an LGBTQIABBQLMAO+ safe discord as well as a safe space for mental care. In line with this, he created a special role to access the channels where one could get this help. However, in his ineptitude, the role also revealed a channel where FAT32, Tempus, and IAmKale had one year earlier plotted to ban Taylor and assassinate his character. Also included in the channel was a trove of personal information on the 3, information that would eventually make its way to 8chan and KiwiFarms due to their interest in TT after GDN had been put into Lowtaxes discord.

TT, in a panic, created a cover story with FAT32 and Kimsemus to frame Taylor. A preposterous story was concocted that involved Taylor gaining access to FATs bot, Brobot, and gaining access to every channel it was in and logging all the information for years. TT would flaunt this info in an attempt to spook Taylor into believing he was going to be banned and to what other ends are unclear. However, Capri Sun Tzu would put together a comprehensive pdf detailing the events as they really occurred and absolving Taylor of any crimes.

The Sauce Affair

In May however, the war took a dark turn when the depths of The Sauces betrayal came to light. Rumors had emerged for months that The Sauce was a turncoat to WTT and BEEFY BOYS, as such, Taylor and company were careful with what information Sauce had access to, making sure only the information he was filtering was predominately mocking TT and The Wonkas. The full breadth of his betrayal was revealed when c0rndog would leak a DM between him and notorious German computer toucher, Rejdukian, showing that Sauce had been telling them all very sensitive and personal information about Taylor, including home addresses.

After the leaking of an opsec channel that was meant to frame Capri for his earlier comprehensive defense of Taylor, WTT would move to ban The Sauce and his associates from all portions of the platform. What resulted was a complete and total meltdown, including a massive text chain between him and Taylor where Sauce posed as some sort of "Anonymous" style hacker of justice who was going to take down Taylor. When this had failed, Sauce broke down and resorted to texting Taylor directly via his actual phone number, issuing a number of personal threats of bodily harm. This behavior would be repeated several times in DMs with mediators.

As the dust settled from the affair, WTT brass decided that most objectives had been met and that the war needed to turn cold, seeing as the combatants were venturing into IRL territory.

The Quiet Months

In the wake of The Sauce Affair, Peaches stepped down as leader, leaving ADL as the sole commander of BMW. Tensions remained high in and out of the community as Sauce continued to attempt to recruit broke brains to his cause, but largely gave up by Summer 2019s end.

The war entered a cold state for the remainder of 2020, until December when a new set of conflicts arose surrounding FYAD and Lowtax.

The Troon Uprisings & Wars End

In early December, the legions of Troons now completely in control of SomethingAwful began a massive campaign to get rid of FYAD, an ironic and absurdist comedy subforum of SA. This put Lowtax back firmly in the spotlight of the Clown War, as he initially refused to remove the subforum. BMW saw this as an opportunity to stir the shit, and hopped into the QCS thread with burners to inflame the situation and advertise the Discord. The same was done on NYE, during Lowtaxes stream where he began probing a bunch of Tankies, who believed he did it at the "Nazis" behest.

This led to a full scale troon rebellion, who began their own Discord to plan their exodus. MOTHER agents happened to be on the scene when the Discord was founded, and snuck in and ingratiated themselves before any actual vetting began. Because of his flaw in security, MOTHER was able to begin directing the narrative in the direction it wanted, specifically in inflaming relations among the SA staff. PartyPlaneJones was the useful scapegoat here, as it had been known to MOTHER and BMW leaders for a long time that he was a member of the BMW Discord while also being an SA Mod. This carefully leaked revelation spread like wildfire among the troons, who used it as their primary ammunition against Lowtax and his style of leading SA.

In the end, PPJ was run off and Lowtax was forced the sell the forums. The tankies would form their own offshoot forums, but nothing ever came of it and they mostly gravitated back to SA.

Also caught in the crossfire of this exchange was Tempus Thales and his GDN bot, who were labelled largely as Nazi co-conspirators. This enraged TT who used it as an opportunity to virtue signal and mass ban any remaining Bimmers from his platform. This move caused a small brief exodus from BMW, but was beneficial in the long term as it served to fully sever BMW from SA, and also served as a recruiting point for them.

With all former alliances and rivalries settled and severed, the Clown World War drew to a close.

Results and Aftermath

Both sides throughout the war always contended that they were always the victors in each battle and skirmish, even if it was clear they were not.

On the BMW front, multiple mods and admins had been lost due to The Wonka Uprising and The Sauce Affair, however in the case for the former, this was more of a boon as it removed toxic undermining elements from the group allowing it to flourish and to place more devoted and competent leaders into power.

On the SA Discord front, however, it was mostly grim. After the banning of Taylor and the Bimmers, activity hit all time lows. Even with several attempts at revitalizing the discord, nothing ever stuck. The only daily activity coming from a completely unrelated and detached Path of Exile clan who operated in a corner of the discord, completely apart from the rest of the population. As of late May 2019, the server was almost completely dead, with less than a few hundred posts a day.

Serious Overchill was mostly absent from the later portions of the war, and never had any real stake in the war. However, they began siphoning much of SA Discords traffic into themselves.

The Wonkas would see brief success in June and then October, with their ARMA III/Terraria server and Rust group, respectively. However, the former naturally died off and the latter would split from their Discord in an ironic show of lack of leadership on The Wonkas part.

After The Sauce Affair, Sauce would go on to create his own splinter. However, unlike The Wonkas, it didn't generate any of the interest of draw that The Wonka Uprising had, and faltered very quickly.

Years later, in Fall of 2021, Taylor and TT reached an armistice agreement after the latter suffered his own cancellation at the hands of Goons.

Combatants

From the onset of the war, there consisted 3 camps that remained consistent throughout the war:

  • BMW, who were fighting against the encroaching clown war and politically correct cultures that are infesting online spaces.
  • Tankies, comprised of Serious Overchill and later Bread and Roses, who sought to spread their cancel culture deplatforming ways across SA.
  • Something Awful and offshoots, who largely served as the battlegrounds for the previous two but remained mostly neutral.

Despite changing names and branding several times throughout the course of the war, the leadership of BMW remained largely same except for notable uprisings like The Wonkas and The Sauce. SA and the neutral ground parties also remained largely the same, as the spaces in contest were almost always either the SomethingAwful Forums themselves, or various offshoot Discord usually ran by Tempus Thales, who would begin actively fighting against BMW but without outright siding with the Tankies.

The Tankies themselves shifted many times. Originally, the war began over a turn conflict in The SomethingAwful Discord that spawned from BMW founder Taylor Swift disagreeing with Serious Overchill founder FAT32s ways of moderating the Discord. However, in short order Serious Overchill left the sphere of the war, not returning until the very end when they briefly hosted the offshoot tankies during The Troon Uprising. The latter portions were the forums troons, mostly Dickeye and Measly Twerp, the latter of whom ironically was once a Bimmer, during the original Rust Golden Age.

References

  1. Formerly part of the council that ran BMW, The Wonkas broke off during The Wonka Uprising
  2. Originally a low level MOTHER operative, Sauce betrayed BMW in an illfated coup attempt during The Sauce Affair.
  3. Kimsemus, originally one of the councilors running BMW, split off with The Wonkas during the uprising and actively fought against BMW during the war. However, in the late stages of the war when BMWs victory seemed inevitable, he defected back.