Something Awful and Friends - The roller-coaster train-wreck embarrassing downfall of a Web 1.0 giant and its tick offspring like from Cloverfield

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Tanner Glass said:
I think most people suspect ZDR treats his admin position as a "Super-Moderator" instead of an actual system administrator. He spends a lot of time posting and probing/banning/approving bans which doesn't leave a lot of time for actual admin work.

Even if he's unskilled, he's had a huge amount of time to work on it. Even if you've never done anything like it before, most people who give a shit will become proficient within two years.

It isn't just ZDR in that regard, either. Lowtax has made his money owning a message board but never in ~20 years did he ever think it was a good idea if he himself learned how they operate and learned how to code around them. If Lowtax knew what he was doing he could have saved himself at least ten years of Sys Admin salary (which for SA was ~$42,000) which comes to $420,000, before any other compensation he gave people in tech support for his forums. Even if he didn't know what he was doing; if he stuck with it he could have ~20 years experience that he could put on a resume instead of "I sometimes wrote articles on the front page and/or Let's Played". Hell, if he sets his sights high enough he could have had a working search function or working archives.
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Was Lowtax already like this when he started the forums or did the goon rub off on him?
 
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I feel like it's time to talk about the Climate Change thread in D&D. They're defending the Unabomber over there now, and I don't think the probations being passed down are going to stop them.

That thread's already produced one straight-up basket case known as AceOfFlames, who has multiple E/N threads now talking about how hopeless he is and how fucked the world is, and it mostly seems to stem from his addiction to the Climate Change thread. People keep telling him to stop reading that thread and pissing himself off, and he keeps ignoring them.
 
DanteAlighieri said:
Was Lowtax already like this when he started the forums or did the goon rub off on him?
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He was always like this in a sense, although previous companies he before he worked for before SA had a dedicated site administrator so he didn't explicitly need to how it worked. Although even then it would have been a great idea to learn so he could have made more informed decisions in the space of his job.

Before SA Lowtax was a "Webmaster" meaning for a website he was essentially a promoter, writer, and editor for the website (or part of a website). I shit you not this was a job title in the late 90s and very early 2000s. In current year, this is a job that is relegated to unpaid interns and college kids who are paid very little to be a "Social Media Co-ordinator" instead of the management title it was years ago.

Considering SA was at one time his literal lifeline (as in the job he was working for hadn't paid him for a few weeks then fired him) there's really no excuse for him to not have at the very minimum of a basic understanding of how it works; especially considering that while it's currently a weirdly modded version of vBulletin, it started off as a clean install right off the shelf.

To understand what Lowtax's lack of drive has cost him, you only need to compare him to anyone you could consider as a peer.
- Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade took a dumb webcomic and turned into a franchise that has six annual packed-out conventions a year. They are currently worth roughly $6 million each.
- Arin Hanson (a newgrounds animator) started a let's play series that's valued around $6 million dollars. He also started and owns a touring company.
- Mega64 (started by SA goons) is worth $144,000/year on Patreon alone, before their merchandise, ad revenue, speaking fees, side gigs (including voice acting), con work, and remarkably popular podcast.
- YOGSCast (started by SA goons) is harder to gauge, but the owners are worth nearly $3 million each reportedly.

Lowtax currently (as far as I understand) has a low or possibly even negative net worth (with two ex wives, child support and few assets). Apparently he isn't even noteworthy enough for anyone to have ever listed it (unlike every person else on this list). SA isn't worth much as an asset (compared to 10 year ago) as they have the same notoriously terribly ad-base as Tumblr (hates ads, ad blocker, doesn't buy products, pirates/steals) and the site is in such bad shape a potential investor would have to spend a fair amount of money getting SA usable and wouldn't be guaranteed that it would generate any revenue to justify the investment.
 
Corbin Dallas Multipass said:
Oh my god, why is there a climate change thread on something awful? Do you just get banned if you don't agree with the latest UN report?
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It looks like they had to implement thread rules against excessive nihilism and calls to ecoterrorism.

The entire D&D subforum is like that. People try constantly to one-up each other with increasingly radical-left opinions, and calling out the absurdity of those opinions can get you banned and/or on a purge list. The result is that D&D is an ever-smaller and more bloodthirsty band of leftists feeding off each other's insanity.

It's like skimming the cream off the top of a pail of milk, except instead you pour off the cream, let the milk spoil and congeal, then come back each week to scrape away the least spoiled portions and leave the rest.
 
Tanner Glass said:
He was always like this in a sense, although previous companies he before he worked for before SA had a dedicated site administrator so he didn't explicitly need to how it worked. Although even then it would have been a great idea to learn so he could have made more informed decisions in the space of his job.

Before SA Lowtax was a "Webmaster" meaning for a website he was essentially a promoter, writer, and editor for the website (or part of a website). I shit you not this was a job title in the late 90s and very early 2000s. In current year, this is a job that is relegated to unpaid interns and college kids who are paid very little to be a "Social Media Co-ordinator" instead of the management title it was years ago.

Considering SA was at one time his literal lifeline (as in the job he was working for hadn't paid him for a few weeks then fired him) there's really no excuse for him to not have at the very minimum of a basic understanding of how it works; especially considering that while it's currently a weirdly modded version of vBulletin, it started off as a clean install right off the shelf.

To understand what Lowtax's lack of drive has cost him, you only need to compare him to anyone you could consider as a peer.
- Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade took a dumb webcomic and turned into a franchise that has six annual packed-out conventions a year. They are currently worth roughly $6 million each.
- Arin Hanson (a newgrounds animator) started a let's play series that's valued around $6 million dollars. He also started and owns a touring company.
- Mega64 (started by SA goons) is worth $144,000/year on Patreon alone, before their merchandise, ad revenue, speaking fees, side gigs (including voice acting), con work, and remarkably popular podcast.
- YOGSCast (started by SA goons) is harder to gauge, but the owners are worth nearly $3 million each reportedly.

Lowtax currently (as far as I understand) has a low or possibly even negative net worth (with two ex wives, child support and few assets). Apparently he isn't even noteworthy enough for anyone to have ever listed it (unlike every person else on this list). SA isn't worth much as an asset (compared to 10 year ago) as they have the same notoriously terribly ad-base as Tumblr (hates ads, ad blocker, doesn't buy products, pirates/steals) and the site is in such bad shape a potential investor would have to spend a fair amount of money getting SA usable and wouldn't be guaranteed that it would generate any revenue to justify the investment.
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I'd give lowtax $100k for SA just for the pleasure of purging the admin and mod lists
 
Leonard Helplessness said:
It looks like they had to implement thread rules against excessive nihilism and calls to ecoterrorism.

The entire D&D subforum is like that. People try constantly to one-up each other with increasingly radical-left opinions, and calling out the absurdity of those opinions can get you banned and/or on a purge list. .
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I was shocked the R guyvich or however you spell his name. purdge prestor john/jane a former homless schizo phrenic who went trans. And I am saying trans not troon. He has conducted the whole tranny shit with more respect and self restraint and maybe even selflawarness.

The purges are just wrong because it shows they can even magic up a vague rule or transgression




D&D going that way will hurt low tax on toxx threads

They should have a "TOO SAD ZONE" as a place to put the mental or just posing as mental posters to maybe self correct that shitty feed back loop

Hey @Null Do you know if the banner ad on SA resulted in a few goon defecting?



also I had to use wayback but I think lowtax could make alright content doing his wacky zany reviews to stuff like this

http://web.archive.org/web/20030210230759/http://www.somethingawful.com:80/articles.php?a=141
 
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So a goon found a way to look at old waffle images and now the goons are going through it and low and behold there used to be interesting content on SA.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3877524&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

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I'm always shocked to find lefties aren't super stoked to hear climate change isn't real. Aren't they concerned for the environment? Why so mad at good news?



e: share the glad tidings at christmas dinner fellow kiwis
 
northstar747 said:
So a goon found a way to look at old waffle images and now the goons are going through it and low and behold there used to be interesting content on SA.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3877524&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
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Some of the older front page articles were legendary. Like the Hurricane Katrina one that used DuckTales metaphors to be stupendously racist.

First you need to assess the situation. Are you a duck or are you a Beagle Boy? If you're a Beagle Boy you might as well just skip to the end of this because you're not really going to be able to follow most of our suggestions due to a lack of resources. Just plan on riding out the hurricane and then reverting to the barely-suppressed bestial urges that served your ancestors so well before they were brought to this country and domesticated. If you're a duck, great news: your chances of survival just increased exponentially...
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As a note, archive.is is getting blocked by Cloudflare on some front page articles.
 
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