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Something Awful Founder Richard 'Lowtax' Kyanka Dies At 45 (kotaku.com) 165

Posted by msmash from the RIP dept.
Longtime Something Awful forum administrator Fragmaster posted that site founder Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka has died. From a report: "I guess I should preface this by saying this isn't a joke especially since I'm posting for like the first time in 10 years or something, but I got the bad news today directly from Rich's family," wrote Fragmaster. "Lowtax has passed away."

"I didn't ask for details," Fragmaster continued. "I don't know details. I don't know what the current opinion of Rich here is. Not here to answer questions, I'm sharing the news. I really hate to share this news. But there you go." Considering all the shit that Something Awful has gotten up to over the years, some have wondered if this were a hoax. "Is this for real?" wondered one forum member. Some expressed shock at the news, while others offered their condolences to his children. Kyanka's second wife, who posts on SA under the name LadyAmbien, has confirmed her husband's death, in a very angry post about his treatment of her and their children.
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Something Awful Founder Richard 'Lowtax' Kyanka Dies At 45 More

Something Awful Founder Richard 'Lowtax' Kyanka Dies At 45

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  • But I am sorry I don't know who this guy is, nor the Something Awful site they are talking about.
    Being that a good part of the article saying that it is the truth, It doesn't seem like a site that I would have wanted to go to anyways.

    • Something Awful says "something awful" about the founder. Truth in advertising.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pimpy ( 143938 )

      It was basically a precursor to Facebook, where the content was better moderated.

    • nor the Something Awful site

      Ha Sprung! Sorry alien overlord but the game is up, someone with a 6 digit UID almost certainly knows about Something Awful. I don't know what you did to jellomizer but I hope he at least found his buttprobe enjoyable before you took over his body. The FBI is on route!

      Jokes aside, SA are a bit of internet history. I think their most famous /. coverage was their battle with Paypal here during Hurricane Katrina. https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

      • I have no idea what that site is, and since nobody bothered to give any context, I can't be bothered to research it...

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          And yet I must read the comments on the story and add my own.

        • Ha, you have made comments even before my time LOL I still think you are the guy I use to compete against in prime number racing with back in the 90's using c++ and Borland complier

        • I have no idea what that site is

          Pfft. Kids these days. ;-)

        • Being a 4 digits too and on /. since last century, you must be 40-50yo, how do you not know SomethingAwful?!?!

      • Gosh I recall that problem.
        Yet that simple problem created a lot of future solution on how to properly address donation within the paypal system. Back then /. users were still in the front of tech and had friends all over to really help move concepts along or get to the top solution makers of a company to solve a problem.
        I was even call once by one of the founder of /. for something I had access too and was more than happy to help.

        I miss those days when sharing or dealing with idiots or whatever was still o

    • Re:I am sorry for the guys family but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11, 2021 @11:59AM (#61978537)

      You have a low user ID, so I'll give you a pass on this one, but basically they were one of the sites that developed Internet culture. If you read the Wikipedia article about SA it's like reading Forrest Gump -- with pretty much every event of significance, SA was there. SA was started years before 4chan or any other site you could think of (except Slashdot).

      Asking for a justification of SA's importance is like asking for a Slashdot post about Linux to justify why it is important.

    • The Something Awful forums were (are?) known for being a for-pay gathering place for Internet trolls in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, before the rise of sites that were willing to push boundaries a lot more. It was the sort of place that would doxx people who rubbed them the wrong way, bully kids who were contemplating suicide, invade multiplayer games en masse to disrupt play or bring down servers, or generally just engage in early Internet-era edginess for its own sake. These days, 4chan, 8cha

      • The Something Awful forums were (are?) known for being a for-pay gathering place for Internet trolls in the late â90s and early â00s, before the rise of sites that were willing to push boundaries a lot more. It was the sort of place that would doxx people who rubbed them the wrong way, bully kids who were contemplating suicide, invade multiplayer games en masse to disrupt play or bring down servers, or generally just engage in early Internet-era edginess for its own sake. These days, 4chan, 8chan, and loads of other sites do the same things âoebetterâ (for whatever that means when weâ(TM)re talking about despicable behavior) or for free, so the impression Iâ(TM)ve had is that itâ(TM)s basically just old timers still using it.

        *Cue someone from SA making a pithy comment about my mother dropping me on my head or some such.*

        Clearly you don't have stairs in your house.

        It's pretty weird that there was absolutely no context in the article. These days the forums are chill and pretty woke, if anything. Lowtax himself got chased out after it came out that he was an abusive asshole. Still, it seems like had serious medical and psychological issues so it's a pretty tragic story.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

          ...is woke a good thing?

          • When the alternative is 4chan (or the comments section here), yes. That's why its worth paying for

          • Being aware of the suffering endured by minorities, women, LGBTQ, etc., and wanting to help, is a good thing.

            Hijacking popular forms of entertainment and replacing engaging content with angry political lectures, blamestorming, and racism/sexism against white people or males, is not a good thing.

            The word "woke" seems to mean both, and possibly even more.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      SA might have spawned most of the troll forums like *chan, *cows, kiwif*arms, ED and such sites which are much more hateful, but SA never tried to get people killed like KF does and then claim "it was a joke", and celebrate when GLBTQ and ND people die.

      But you have to understand that sites curate their own audiences. People who come to slashdot are mostly ND types that are baby-boomers or Gen X'ers. People who come to Fark are literal baby-boomers (over 40) or Gen X'ers. SA are mostly Gen X'er sociopaths. C

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by fazig ( 2909523 )
        Speak for yourself.
        I remember a time in EVE Online were the big dog SA's representation in the game called for people to harass a certain player in the game so they commit suicide.

        https://www.rockpapershotgun.c... [rockpapershotgun.com]

        • Yea... there was that.

          Goonswarm was a blight on that game community. A lot of money was lost by CCP putting up with their BS. While swaths of players left the game.

          EVE Online was a challenging enough game without an in game arch nemesis involved in xenophobia, homophobia, racism, doxxing, harassment, and plain old bullying.

          However, I'm not going to get sucked into the whole "sympathy for the devil" trap. The dude's dead. None of those people over there ever gave anyone a good reason to care that he's dead.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by flink ( 18449 )

        People who come to Fark are literal baby-boomers (over 40)

        There is literally no such thing as a baby boomer under the age of 55, never mind in their 40s. The older millennials are currently entering their forties.

    • Re:I am sorry for the guys family but... (Score:5, Funny)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @01:27PM (#61978819)

      You don't know who Lowtax was, and you jumped right in here with a first post announcing that? Honestly I think that's kind of peak slashdot, so I'll let it slide.

      Anyway, SA was foundational to a lot of internet things. Hell, his original decisions about what could and couldn't be on SA are a big part of why 4chan even exists.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Anyway, SA was foundational to a lot of internet things.

        It is a child of CDA Section 230. There were, and still are a lot of great Internet sites that I think did a better job of defining Internet culture. And they didn't need an immunity clause to do it.

    • I feel like someone on Slashdot should know SA. They're from the same era

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nbvb ( 32836 )

        Been around the Interwebz longer than slashdot, but also had no idea who this guy or his website was all about.

        I’m sure I’ve heard the name Something Awful in passing, but never bothered or cared to investigate it.

        In hindsight, I chose . Wisely.

      • I feel like someone on Slashdot should know SA. They're from the same era

        The sites I remember from "the old days" are Slashdot.org, freshmeat.net and sourceforge.net. Never came across Something Awful, but reading the comments here it's clear that if I had come across it I wouldn't have had any reason to visit it twice. I remember that other sites existed back then because Slashdot almost always linked to articles on other sites, but that doesn't mean those sites were worth remembering just because they existed at the same time. I think it's a bit silly that you think someone wo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Crizp ( 216129 )

      Nice low UserID, I guess you bought it or inherited it the account from your parents. How else can you have that low an ID and not know anything about SAhttps://news.slashdot.org/story/21/11/11/1457240/something-awful-founder-richard-lowtax-kyanka-dies-at-45#

  • ..here is the link to the Wikipedia Article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . It was, in it's own way, quite an influential website.

  • The guy was very entertaining but apparently also a rather shitty person? I mostly feel bad for the guy's daughter who did voices with him for a lot of animations on the site, from that I would've assumed they got along well at least when she was younger.

    • Re:Feel bad for his kids (should I?) (Score:5, Informative)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @12:00PM (#61978539)

      Yeah he had a series of marriages fail due to him behaving like a bezerk asshole. He had substance abuse issues (mostly just drinking, but there may have been more. "substance abuse" tends to imply more than booze) and was infamous for his shitty temper.

      But the guy undeniably had a huge impact on the net as we know it. "Memes" pretty much where born on his website, as well as much as the lingo of web culture.

      Also, 4 chan sprung out of him banning hentai on the site. I'm not sure thats a positive.

      Yeah, Richard was a fuckup, and he shot himself after a court case that more or less found him responsible for abusive behavior towards his ex wife. But let the Kyankas bury their dead before worrying about that..

  • "Kyanka's second wife, who posts on SA under the name LadyAmbien, has confirmed her husband's death, in a very angry post about his treatment of her and their children."

    ----
    While there are some who still believe in the notion that you don't speak ill of the dead, there are others who believe that dying doesn't make one honorable nor does it wipe away the good or bad one brought into the world.

    I don't know what the dude was like privately, but the site he was associated with was ghoulish and he relished the

  • his ex wife says suicide by gun (Score:5, Informative)

    by MattMann ( 102516 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @12:06PM (#61978553)

    the blurb up above is missing the href link (which is in the article quoted) to his ex wife's angry message [somethingawful.com]. Assuming that she's not trolling,

    TLDR a divorce decree at least somewhat in her favor was granted yesterday and he shot himself the next day.

    I have been sitting for hours debating whether or not to disclose this, and I feel like it's something I do need to get off of my chest.
    Frankly, I'm tried of being quiet. I've mostly had to stay quiet for years about things happening behind the scenes. I've held things inside so long and so hard my chest physically hurt the same way it is now.

    I considered not sharing this out of respect for Rich's parents and sister, but after thinking on the incredibly vitriolic wall of text Rich's Mother sent to me this morning, saying upon many other things, that his blood is on my hands, I need to share it to regain some sense of control over what's taken place in the past 48 hours.

    Yesterday I recieved a divorce ruling that would help me and my daughter stay in our home in Canada and allow me to provide a good life for her as well as pay back numerous debts that had accrued during the past two years when I was receiving $350 a month in child support.

    In the divorce ruling the judge found that Rich had willfully spent down the martial fund, confirmed his treatment of me was Domestic Violence and put together a plan to pay for the attorney fees etc. He would still retain custody settled on previously in mediation. He was due to get our daughter for Christmas.

    An hour later I was contacted by my attorney who informed me that Rich had shot himself earlier in the morning.

    So. There it is.
    His other ex and I got to tell our children that their father died without saying goodbye to them, or that he loved them, or to my knowledge, left a note for them.

    If you've made it this far thank you for giving me space to let this go so I know longer have to hold onto it.

  • Is that a reference to "Lowtax" Looper, a politician who shot his opponent in Texas in the early 2000s?

    • As a matter of fact yes, it was a reference to that Lowtax

    • I came here to ask that same question.

      And he was in Tennessee... the opponent was a sitting TN state senator.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vadim_t ( 324782 )

      Yes, apparently Richard Kyanka (the SA Lowtax) worked as an intern for the politician Byron Anthony Looper, who changed his name to "Byron (Low Tax) Looper" as a campaign stunt, and murdered his political opponent. That one died in prison.

    • Nope, he was using the Lowtax alias since the late 90s at least. That's what we went by back in his PlanetQuake days.

  • He had no chance to survive made his time.

  • I knew of him from association.... (Score:3)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @12:34PM (#61978635) Homepage Journal

    Weird this whole 13 degrees of separation thing. So young.

    Before The Onion or The Babylon Bee satire sites there was somethingawful. Before 4chan there was the goon squad forums. SomethingAwful was something of a pioneer in those days, and along with Slashdot was my daily reader.

    I took a break from tech, worked at a Karaoke bar. In 2004 I started streaming video from the stage of the bar using Nullsoft Streaming Video (NSV/Winamp) During those early years of streaming another guy, Chris Putnam started up "GoonSquadTV", a channel of weird user submitted videos being streamed. This was all before the days of youtube, twitch, or even Justin.tv. Chris would later be known for getting Javascript past facebooks input validation and everyone that saw his post suddenly became his friend (IIRC)

    So weird how the top comment so far in this is "i dOnT kNow tHat sITE". I'm guessing someone in their 20's. RIP Lotax, you brought us a lot of good laughs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      I didn't know the site either. I am not in my 20's.

      If it happened as described, good riddance. May other abusive people follow his example.

      • If it happened as described, good riddance. May other abusive people follow his example.
        Damn bro, I need a trigger warning, you just broke my irony meter.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          Hmm... Were you looking for a Funny mod?

          No Funny comments in this discussion, though "It was supposed to be Funny" was apparently frequently used on the SA website as an excuse for nasty behavior?

          And no, I can't recall ever hearing about the SA website. I'm glad of that because it sounds mentally damaging. Especially weird that people apparently paid to be damaged. Cheaper to juggle bricks?

          I'm filing that business model under self-harm. Which must be related to some of the otherwise mysterious comments abou

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jack9 ( 11421 )

      I hadn't heard anything about SA for over 15 years, until today.

      I met Lowtax once, as he got off a plane in Southern California at John Wayne...when you could still readily walk in and up to any arrival gate, although there were soldiers with guns around. There was a small meetup of people. The conversation amongst the group was far more interesting than the brief interaction we had with him, as he was tired and his hot girlfriend was going to drive him home.

      Shortly after that, I brought my rig to a LAN par

  • Everyone thinks about the forums, since that's what spawned 4chan et al., but does anyone remember the writing? For a while SomethingAwful had some of the best short form fiction going, along with great bits of humor writing. It's a shame it doesn' seem like that style has any place on the internet anymore, everything now is tweet-size.

  • He screwed up and stood by the stairs (Score:3)

    by Mal-2 ( 675116 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @01:09PM (#61978761) Homepage Journal

    He stood by the stairs, and the shover robot protected him from the Terrible Secret of Space.

  • What about CLIFF YABLONSKI, is he still alive ?

  • Violent, cruel man, who made money being nasty, to others and refused to shoulder the responsibilities he voluntarily incurred shoots self dead - apparently to avoid those responsibilities permanently, But, hey, he "was complicated", and his nastiness made some people laugh.

  • SA had great humor articles for awhile there. JeffK was hilarious. He was the perfect parody of stupid Internet gamer kids. Funny that people claim the site is loused up with SJWs now when Lowtax and his squad of writers/editors were taking shots at non-SJW stereotypes with characters like Cliff Yablonski and JeffK.

    Not sure how I felt about the forums. Their Photoshop Friday collabs were amazing, but everything else was just . . . meh. Like those people didn't know how to relax. They constantly weaponi

    • They really did have some great comedy content. WTF D&D is one of my favorite series of all time. I can't get the URLs since I'm posting at work, but here's one after they moved to their own site eight years later or so:

      WTF, D&D: Ravenloft [thebadguyswin.com]

  • Rest In Peace (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jodka ( 520060 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @04:52PM (#61979529)

    I knew Rich before his SA days, we worked at Vanderbilt University together for a year or so. I was at a science research center there writing software. They created a second position to offload my pc maintenance chores, such as replacing broken hard drives and upgrading PCs, so that I could devote more time to writing software.

    Rich applied for that job. I interviewed him, called his references, then he had an interview with the entire hiring committee. Afterward, before anyone had made a decision, one of the faculty on the hiring committee strolls into my office.

    RB: "So, what did you think, should we hire him?"
    Me: "Well, his references said he is no good and he did not do well when I interviewed him or in the full committee interview."
    RB: "That's true.... but... he is incredibly funny."
    Me: Right. Let's hire him.
    RB: Great!

    Rich would do things like arrive to work a couple of hours late then wonder why the motherboard he had installed without enough plastic standoffs, so it shorted out against the metal case, was not working. Rich was a smart guy, but creating Jeff K. was more important an interesting than installing motherboards correctly. I just said oh, I can fix that, and did and always just patiently helped him out. Putting in extra effort to get him through and keep him around was worth the constant supply of his comedy. What a fantastic bargain!

    One time I was talking to the center secretary in her office and Rich rushes in handing me a camera, saying "here, here, take my picture while I go like this, " as he holds his arms up and looks concerned. I take the photo, he rushes out with the camera, saying, "I am going to paste myself in front of photo of a burning building". I still do not understand how or why that was funny, but then and there, in that context, it was absolutely hilarious.

    We were not great friends but I knew he was a comic genius. When you stumble into talent like that, you want to protect it for its own sake. He took some flack around there for not doing his job well and I always diplomatically soothed things over. The guy who I had replaced was still around in some other capacity and he pitched in also. Rich was like an IQ test around there, the smart people were instant fans, the dumb ones thought he was weird and annoying.

    Eventually Rich quit to go work for a gaming magazine in California, which he would later leave to found Something Awful. The day he left Nashville, he was behind on packing the U-Haul, so I went over to help him carry moving boxes and furniture for a few hours. He took breaks to guzzle gatorade straight from the bottle and had a pet ferret he would smuggle into California with him.

    It happened that the guy we eventually hired to replace Rich already knew about him and was a Something Awful fan.

    Rich and I never kept in touch, but then had become Facebook friends within this last month. It was clear he was suffering. I wanted to reach out, I knew others who had endured absurdly unjust court decisions. But I figured it was personal and none of my business. To everyone reading this, know that if you want to help, always risk being ignored or told "it's none of your business."

  • Reminder: You're not alone. 1-800-273-8255 (Score:3)

    by kriston ( 7886 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @05:17PM (#61979607) Homepage Journal

    Reminder: You're not alone. 1-800-273-8255 or call 911.

    • On or before July 22, 2022, you'll also be able to dial 988 and get connected, similar to how 911 is essentially ubiquitous in the US.

  • I feel sorry for his daughter, she's only about 10 or 12 (idk exactly but looks very young).

  • from TFS:
    > LadyAmbien, has confirmed her husband's death, in a very angry post about his treatment of her and their children.

    I, for one, did not find the post very angry at all. It seems someone is trying to stir up trouble where none exists.

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