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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3299 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 3, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I’m reading about something awful. Namely, SomethingAwful.

They left an indelible mark on internet culture with afaik <50,000 register users. I actually can’t find the number of register users in 2008 so I’m estimating from a bad graph. Compare this to just how many registered users are on Reddit or Tumblr, but how little culture is actually created there (versus shared there).

The forum had a $10 cost of membership and strict standards of posting:

See, since its inception Something Awful was built around strict moderation. Even its $10 entry fee was originally implemented not as a way to make money but as a way to keep problem posters from endlessly re-registering or creating throwaway gimmick accounts.

How strict? Well: Not capitalizing the beginning of a sentence? Probation. No punctuation? Probation. Post a YouTube link without including a description of the video's content? Probation. Not properly rehosting and resizing images? Oh you better believe that's a Probation

Whatever happened to paid forums? They are actually not a bad idea.

very important because it's an early rumbling of the kind of terminally online white male resentment that would eventually give us Gamergate and Trump.... And the primary focus on their ire was on the site's moderation. They complained about there being too many threads in GBS about current events. They complained about not being able to use slurs anymore.

I would love to hear a summary of this from someone not carrying water for the wokescolds who were... wow, banning nudity on the site as "problematic" while writing werewolf incest porn themselves?

On the other hand, it's fitting for an SA autopsy to be written by a "35M asexual panda furry from Jacksonville, FL."

banning nudity on the site as "problematic" while writing werewolf incest porn themselves

This was par for the course for them even back in the old days; their prohibition on loli was one of the catalysts for the site that would end up taking their crown: 4chan.

In the presence of alternatives, woke finds itself outcompeted.

On the other hand, it's fitting for an SA autopsy to be written by a "35M asexual panda furry from Jacksonville, FL."

A furry speaking positively of SA? Now I've truly seen everything.

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