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

  • 🏰 The Fediverse is up. If you know, you know.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
chekovia said:
From what I've read here he's driven away most of the actual 'content creators' 10 years ago, hell probably when 4chan split off.
Click to expand...

It was about 10 years ago, yeah, but it was well after 4chan split off. People forget how early 4chan split from SA, it was like 2003. SA itself was only 3 years old at that point.

And IIRC 4chan basically split off because they wanted more anime chat, which was not as welcome on SA at that point. ADTRW wasn't formed for another year or two I think (this is hazy so my dates might be off).
 
Just off the top of my head a small list of things @Lowtax had the chance to get on the ground floor of but never did because of reasons. I'm certain other can add to this.

Mega64
Zero Punctuation
4chan
Let's Plays
Reddit/Reddit Style AMAs
Podcasting

He's had a number of things fall into his lap but is just too lazy to capitolize on it.
 
4chan post-dates ADTRW. Contrary to how goons unironically hate it now, the anime people were some of the first ones on SA and got their own subforum years before things like Sports or American TV did. I've already told this story a shitload of times but what the hell, once more into the breach. A number of anime goons used to be super into just Japanese shit in general, and as such they'd try to hang out on 2ch/futaba/other places like that. Most of them sucked at posting in Japanese, which is what those Japanese sites wanted users doing and since bandwidth actually cost a fair amount of money back then the sites would respond by blanket banning non-Japanese IP addresses. Since the goons wanted to post on those types of communities, but weren't allowed to, they made their own versions. By far the most famous of which was 4chan, though world-2ch also lasted awhile. 4chan itself took awhile to catch on and actually went down, seemingly forever, at least once, only to then come back. It was never an official SA extension, just something that was formed by SA members on their own and linked back to.

Also, Lowtax did have a few official things with Mega64, I feel like it was more of an issue with his audience not finding much interest in that youtube style content, at the time.

Online radio was another thing goons did on their own for years, with GBSFM with no official support. Thats a bit different from podcasting and they even had an online TV station for a bit.
Those Shmorky shirt designs that one guy stole and made a lot of money selling things from was another. Though that was more Shmorky giving in at the first legal offer than Lowtax himself.
Another thing SA was an early booster of was Minecraft, which spawned huge threads with, IIRC, limited dev input but never got any official recognition from the Games admins.
It doesn't have a brand name, but even with all the avatar changes Lowtax barely made a pittance on all of the left-wing outrage coming out of his site, which tons of far sleezier actors now have.
 
Is it possible to see an approximation of the finances of S.A? I'm fascinated by this trainwreck.
 
Tanner Glass said:
Just off the top of my head a small list of things @Lowtax had the chance to get on the ground floor of but never did because of reasons. I'm certain other can add to this.

Mega64
Zero Punctuation
4chan
Let's Plays
Reddit/Reddit Style AMAs
Podcasting

He's had a number of things fall into his lap but is just too lazy to capitolize on it.
Click to expand...
I've no idea about Mega64, but none of those other things come from SA directly.

Yahtzee put a couple of videos up on Youtube and was offered a job at the Escapist based on them. Plus he had his own website full of comics and games that he'd made years before posting on SA.
He had his Chzo Mythos game series (that started on the Adventure Game Studio forums, not SA).

4chan was modeled after Japanese imageboards and would have festered and died if it were behind a subscription wall (plus, there's no way Lowtax would have put the effort in to implement an imageboard like 4chan within SA, he's such a lazy retard that he likely wouldn't even bother reading a description of what an imageboard is).
Leaving SA to create 4chan was the best decision moot ever made.

Despite what retards on SA say, "let's plays" were inevitable even without goons making them. Playing videogames is one of the most popular hobbies on the planet, and people have enjoyed watching people play them for as long as they've existed. With the advent of free video sharing services like Google Video and Youtube it was inevitable that people would start uploading let's plays to the internet.
None of the popular SA let's players are really that well known outside of SA and related communities, either (Chip and Ironicus, one of the most popular SA let's play channels, only gets 15k-25k views per video within the first couple of weeks - this is despite putting out content of a decent quality consistently for years).
Retsupurae is probably the most popular SA LP thing, and they're only big because of their Youtube audience.

AMAs aren't a unique thing to SA, it's just people talking to each other over the internet.

Podcasts became popular with the fist gen iPod, that's where the name comes from. Are there even any mainstream podcasts that have goons on?

If anything, I'd say that the key to success for goons is not using SA and moving to outside platforms.
 
Last edited:
SA Yearbook is laughable to think about nowadays but at the time Facebook was still a novelty people enjoyed. It would've been the way to make dumbass goons feel justified in doing the same shit normies do, only Goon Made and Approved.
 
kiwilurkin said:
Is GBSFM where "NO YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP DAD!!" comes from?

Fuckin Kuuenbu
Click to expand...
Yes, though I believe its SASS which originally managed to preserve that moment in time for us.

And Yahzee posted his two youtube videos, which formed the basis of ZP, on SA pretty much as soon as they were created. Lowtax offered to give him some sort of content gig on the site but either was only offering a pittance in compensation or literally wasn't going to pay him anything at all. Yahzee, wisely, said no and worked out a real deal with the then small Escapist "Magazine" instead.
 
Lou Wrong said:
Lowtax offered to give him some sort of content gig on the site but either was only offering a pittance in compensation or literally wasn't going to pay him anything at all. Yahzee, wisely, said no and worked out a real deal with the then small Escapist "Magazine" instead.
Click to expand...

This is basically how SA has been since day one. I don't think anyone on SA has ever been paid decently except maybe Zack Parsons WAAAAAAAY back in the day, and even then probably not.

Ever since Lowtax got sick of writing front page updates (and to be honest, I can't blame him on that), almost everything on the front page has been stolen from the forums in some form or another, whether it be Photoshop Friday, or hot topics from the forums, or just the writers themselves. He was never likely to pay anyone much of anything when he had a shitload of people willing to do the work for free just to see their name at the bottom of a photoshop on page six of a front page article.

Edit: For clarity, front page writers did (do?) get paid. So did (do?) forums admins. But it was typical shit blog wages at best.

Edit2 (to avoid doublepost):

jace821 said:
Lowtax made some serious coin in SA's heyday. He's probably earned well over 1 million. Of course he's squandered it all. I want to know what's the largest buyout offer he rejected.
Click to expand...

1 million over 18 years is not a whole lot of money to be honest.
 
proteus4994 said:
This is basically how SA has been since day one. I don't think anyone on SA has ever been paid decently except maybe Zack Parsons WAAAAAAAY back in the day, and even then probably not.
Click to expand...

I wonder what Zack is doing these d-

lAuc7H1.png
 
BlueSpark said:
I've no idea about Mega64, but none of those other things come from SA directly
If anything, I'd say that the key to success for goons is not using SA and moving to outside platforms.
Click to expand...

I think the idea was more that Lowtax could have said "Hm, I'm making good money off of SA, this might be a good time to try and reach out to some of the creatives posting on my website to generate more content, clicks, and revenue."

Even things like hitting Total Biscuit, deadmau5 and Skrillex were probably not really good ideas in the longterm. Even if they posted a few times and then forgot about it, it would've been a chance to pull in some of their fans for 10bux.
 
Manah said:
I think the idea was more that Lowtax could have said "Hm, I'm making good money off of SA, this might be a good time to try and reach out to some of the creatives posting on my website to generate more content, clicks, and revenue."
Click to expand...

On top of this (which I fully agree with), in SA's heyday of 2000-2004, Lowtax had endless issues getting paid. If he'd parleyed SA's popularity and forum talent into something of a content aggregate and used that to leverage advertising money, Lowtax could be rolling in a shitload of money.

That being said, at heart Lowtax is a lazy shitposter just like the rest of us. The one thing I've never really faulted Lowtax for (although I'll freely talk about the fact that he didn't) was not cashing in, because to be perfectly honest, in his shoes I'd probably be the same lazy shitposter and would have blown a bunch of chances to make money too.
 
chekovia said:
Is it possible to see an approximation of the finances of S.A? I'm fascinated by this trainwreck.
Click to expand...
Well according to that latest post where he begged people to write free content, Lowtax is "up to his dick in debt" and if I remember right he had to dip into the money people donated to upgrade the site to pay server costs, so make of that what you will.
 
Intelligent Calcium said:
Well according to that latest post where he begged people to write free content, Lowtax is "up to his dick in debt" and if I remember right he had to dip into the money people donated to upgrade the site to pay server costs, so make of that what you will.
Click to expand...
I remember when 4chan was mocking moot for nor exactly being Elon Musk and his failed canvas spioff website but fuck he's now hired by google and doing a lot better than lowtax, I think.

When lowtax was banned by S.A from going offsite, are there any images of that or can we just surmise his pussy-whippedness.
 
BlueSpark said:
I've no idea about Mega64, but none of those other things come from SA directly.

Yahtzee put a couple of videos up on Youtube and was offered a job at the Escapist based on them. Plus he had his own website full of comics and games that he'd made years before posting on SA.
He had his Chzo Mythos game series (that started on the Adventure Game Studio forums, not SA).

4chan was modeled after Japanese imageboards and would have festered and died if it were behind a subscription wall (plus, there's no way Lowtax would have put the effort in to implement an imageboard like 4chan within SA, he's such a lazy exceptional individual that he likely wouldn't even bother reading a description of what an imageboard is).
Leaving SA to create 4chan was the best decision moot ever made.

Despite what exceptional individuals on SA say, "let's plays" were inevitable even without goons making them. Playing videogames is one of the most popular hobbies on the planet, and people have enjoyed watching people play them for as long as they've existed. With the advent of free video sharing services like Google Video and Youtube it was inevitable that people would start uploading let's plays to the internet.
None of the popular SA let's players are really that well known outside of SA and related communities, either (Chip and Ironicus, one of the most popular SA let's play channels, only gets 15k-25k views per video within the first couple of weeks - this is despite putting out content of a decent quality consistently for years).
Retsupurae is probably the most popular SA LP thing, and they're only big because of their Youtube audience.

AMAs aren't a unique thing to SA, it's just people talking to each other over the internet.

Podcasts became popular with the fist gen iPod, that's where the name comes from. Are there even any mainstream podcasts that have goons on?

If anything, I'd say that the key to success for goons is not using SA and moving to outside platforms.
Click to expand...
in a lot of those cases, though, SA did it first, and Lowtax was in a position to monetize it.

Chapo Trap House is one of the most popular podcasts on Patreon, if not the most popular/profitable, and while the hosts were not goons they reference SA constantly and there's a straight line from weird twitter --> left twitter -> Chapo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom