![]() Eventually, Kyanka contacted a customer service representative over the phone, and asked to have PayPal donate all of the money to the American Red Cross. Due to the nature of the collection, there were no actual "buyers", and it was impossible to provide proof of shipping for donation. PayPal froze the donation account, then stated that they would unfreeze the account once it was provided with proof of shipping from aggrieved buyers. Kyanka put in $3,000 of his own money, Īnd promised to give some free merchandise to anyone who donated more than $10. After the site was brought to a semi-functional state, Kyanka set up a link to a PayPal account where people could donate money to the survivors of the hurricane via the Red Cross. Hurricane Katrina charity Īs Something Awful 's servers were located in New Orleans, the site temporarily went offline in August 2005 during the flooding from Hurricane Katrina. Forum users responded by threatening to perform a distributed denial of service attack on SPEWS, although this type of behavior was strongly discouraged by Kyanka and assistant editor Zack Parsons. The SA administrators claimed that SPEWS was attempting to hack the Something Awful server. However, that group and were flooded with off-topic posts and trolls from Something Awful users, incensing SPEWS advocates. The Something Awful administrators responded by telling their users to post their support in the Usenet newsgroup. Upon appeal, SPEWS initially refused to delist SA. Something Awful was added to the list in the process, disrupting its ability to communicate with its customers who were using SPEWS. On July 20, 2003, the spam filtering organization Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS) added an entire class-B subnet with the Cogent ISP to their spammer list, since Cogent was hosting a known spammer that SPEWS found difficult to block. On November 9, 2021, Kyanka died by suicide. Following its sale, Kyanka was banned from Something Awful on March 23, 2021. On October 9, 2020, following a backlash from the community in response to allegations that Kyanka was a domestic abuser, Kyanka sold Something Awful to a fifteen-year member and moderator known under the pseudonym of Jeffrey of YOSPOS. 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. Only members can post messages or threads to encourage new registrations, the forums are only intermittently viewable by unregistered users. In 2001, the site began charging an activation fee (currently US$10.00) for forum access. 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. He moved the "Cranky Steve" personality he had created to the Something Awful site in 1999. 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. Something Awful was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka. ![]() 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. The website has been involved in a number of events. In 2018, Gizmodo placed it as 89th on their list of "100 Websites That Shaped the Internet as We Know It". The website has helped to perpetuate various Internet phenomena, and it has been cited as an influence on Internet culture. It was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka in 1999 as a largely personal website, but as it grew, so did its contributors and content. Something Awful ( SA) is an American comedy website hosting content including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |