I'm the goon at 22:19 that went to the headquarters and took the picture of Rich passed out. At that point in time I had met Rich a few times and all my interactions with him were always positive and fun. It's a shame that it was all a mask.
"Then he began drinking and launched into a schizophrenic-like spiel about being kidnapped by the Chinese government. Even though is pregnant wife began to cry, he didn't stop." If you could summarise the founder of Something Awful in 1 quote, this would be it.
Everything he ever did, from dropping out of college to his own death, was motivated by spite. Even the things that seemed to be positive or creative were, in hindsight, really all about showing up someone else. This was a man devoid of love, not for his community, not for his family, not even for himself.
@@whalt He named himself Low Tax, because around the same time Something Awful was launched, Byron "Low Tax" Looper shot and killed his political opponent, Tommy Burks.
That's how you know they lied on him. He didn't destroy his own life. Those closest to him betrayed him. From the pedo Shmorky, to his cheating ex wife.
@@intellectualshepherdsclub6708 That was Mainly Richard "Anotherknothole Resident" Kuta(Born in 1979 in Peoria,IL). He was pretty infamous over at the Furry Sub section until Lowtax kicked him off the community in 2004 for Harassing people at SEGA and Dic/Cookie Jar often shooting Chain emails at them DEMANDING they make a Sonic SaTam movie. There were Videos of Kuta role playing as a Baby and defecting leaked around '08. Shmorky was the ONLY one objecting to Kuta's Perma Ban. Figures.
I had no idea who they were until it was revealed in the video that they made the "This is fine" animation which is honestly very fitting for this whole story.
Wow, he really did not deserve Ashley. She sounds like she was a really cool partner to have. She instantly tried to adapt to his wacky online business despite knowing nothing about it before marrying him, _and_ did a good job of it. Talk about meeting the proverbial one and then squandering it.
@@KrumpytheClown Wow, didn't expect you to reply honestly. No problem, you seem like a really cool person to know :) I'm sorry you had to go through all this.
This is a testament to how personal, wild and fluid the internet was back in the 2000's. It was a madhouse, but a single individual at the right time could have a huge, lasting impact throughout the entire net. The internet was shaped by people, rather than companies and governments.
Yes, I caught part of the tail-end of things. Garbage like Facebook began getting popular during my last years of HS and I had kind of stopped using the internet as much by that point. Even big mega-platforms like UA-cam were so much less sterilized and kid-friendly back then. I have fond memories of using this website back in middle school and the slogan "broadcast yourself" still rang (mostly) true back then. Content was user-generated and largely uncensored with the noted exception of the 10 minute time limit for videos. The user-interface was ridiculously customizable and practically encouraged interaction. Looking back, I wish I had checked out more websites before they became little more than lists of social media links. Still feel like there must be some way to get it all back if parents would kick kids offline so adults can be free...but I suppose ridiculous maintenance costs and appeasing advertisers would remain massive hurdles for anybody looking to reignite the spirit of the old internet.
LOWTAX seems like a guy with a lot of creative potential but no impulse control. The fact that he abused every known wife he had and his oldest daughter left him is some of the saddest stuff I've seen on camera. But it really is his own fault. No one told him to get married or that he had to keep working on a site he lost passion in. This is all on him.
"Creative potential but no impulse control" is a good summary of the double-edged sword central to the internet culture codified by Something Awful. These subcultures can be, and often are, widely influential due to the sheer variety and originality of the content and ideas that spring forth from them. But many of the foundational and driving personalities tend to consume themselves if they don't move onward and upward from these fringe internet spaces. Internet "edge" culture is a terrible place to be a big fish in a little pond. It's hell on mental health and destroys all sense of perspective on one's place in the world - and how one treats other people.
This isn't limited to the internet, either. Many creative people have impulse-control issues, and are more susceptible to substance abuse, either to inspire creativity, or escape reality.
A thing often forgetten about the Shmorky drama is that Lowtax had always known that Shmorky was a babyfur with ABDL tendencies and never cared. Shmorky posted about Lowtax being abusive and how awful his behavior was and then Lowtax joined KF and started appearing on every podcast he could to disparage Shmorky to bury the fact that he was a wife-beating loser who was on a rapid decline. Lowtax knew the whole time, and was waiting to use throw his best friend under the bust for the sake of covering his tracks, including pretending that he was scared to have Shmorky around his kids.
Throwing Shmorky under the bus was such a galaxy brained move, it's like the dude spent 15 years years charging his vicodin power levels so that he could annihilate his reputation in one fell swoop.
Dude would pitch shift his voice in every video to sound like a baby and wore a yarn wig. I have no clue why anyone ever associated with him . Retsuprae, game grumps, etc. They all just ignored the red flags.
Schmorky got done SO dirty, it still makes my heart ache; your best friend for almost two decades throws you under a train as easy as breathing. Weird kinks aren't a red flag for predatory behavior; if anything the obsession with normalcy and thoughtcrime is, as evidenced with how rancid people from KF treat other people.
I worked for Rich/SA for several years and am very excited to watch this....no clue if it's accurate or not, but love that SA is still remembered a big part of internet culture propped up by Rich being a fucking madman EDIT - fifteen minutes after making this post, it aged poorly.
@@NobodyCaresALot Just a depressing clusterfuck, had no idea he either was or turned in to a completely abusive shitty human. No father should ever kill themselves and I have no respect for him doing that, but it's still pretty deeply saddening. He was always a bit disconnected with reality in a way that I found.....bizarre. TBH it sounds like the alcohol and Ambien finally got the best of him. A Shakespearian tragedy of sorts, I guess - that'd be my thoughts on it now.
The funny thing is, I remember learning about Lowtax's death from browsing /vr/. The website had a big "RIP Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka. The Dad who abandoned us" under the board title. Despite everything, Moot/Hiro still felt like at least posting their respects. Man...
@@DoodleWill he left google a year ago. People claim he left cause he found out Google was storing CP but we don’t know that for sure so it’ll be hard to get word from him. 😔
I remember having no idea what was going on or how bad it had gotten, until during one Gaming Garbage stream, Lowtax just up and blurted out the name of the shelter where his wife and kid were staying. Lost whatever respect I had for the man after that. I think this is the coda we all need.
@@KrumpytheClown even his family thinks he was in the right? Makes me think his family supported his terrible decisions. I wish the best for you and your kids
Every time I read or watch anything about Rich, it just hurts my heart. He could’ve done something else, anything else with his life. If not for himself, for his kids. His judgment was too clouded by the end, and I pray to God his children are okay. Those poor kids. They did nothing wrong.
It sucks, his site was really formative to my sense of humor. I always had a soft spot in my heart for him, even with everything. I learned a lot of bad habits from SA, and a lot of things I had to train myself out of, but I also met some of the people that helped mold me into a better dude.
@@KrumpytheClown Yeah, the guy basically did nothing unless it was to spite someone else. His selfishness and compulsive lying knew no limits. How people still insist on pushing his actions to be no fault of his own is astounding.
Holy shit, I had no idea Rich had died. This was a... weird way to find out. I grew up reading SA articles during my teen years and I was a big fan of Gaming Garbage up until Shmorky left. This is surreal.
I didn't either until reading the comments here! I was like halfway through the video and decided to read the comments and was like...what are people talking about? Then I thought it may have been from COVID but nope :/
@@Sockington You know the story of the Ultimate Warrior and how he wreaked his own career after his peak in WM VI from not bothering to improve his craft to general attitude backstage? Low’s path is exactly like that but far worse and doesn’t end with him mending bridges with the company that helped made him an icon. Though, both has their own Halloween Havoc 98’ each. Terrible, horrid and regretfully exists on record.
I was going to like this comment but it has 666 likes, which seems appropriate. Agreed, though, this was really well done and informative. I haven't visited SA in years and didn't even know the guy had killed himself, damn.
The picture of him middle-aged and greying and bellowing into a camera is burned into my retinas and is gonna haunt my nightmares. It's actually unsettling just how wildly enraged he looks considering what a goofball he was and how he used to be seen as such a cornerstone of online entertainment.
Of course Lowtax would break the golden rule of don't plow your fans. If only Shmorky wasn't such a messed up sob. He might have been able to prop up Lowtax, or least slow down his spiraling descent. Given just how influential Something Awful was, far more than most of us will realize, I'm surprised there wasn't a list in this video of noteworthy persons who were/are goons. I can't confirm as fact that every single one of these persons were goons, but: Zoe Quinn (former member of helldump) Jordan Raskopoulos (used to be part of Axis of Awesome; the Logies controversy was not an isolated event), Neil Stephen Cicierega (the crossdresser from the documentary about GoonCon 2004), John "TotalBiscuit" Bain (he was banned for a novel-length post), the GroverHaus guy (a former moderator),Sean "Vile Rat" Smith (deceased; former member of EVE Online guild Goonswarm), Ian Quartey-Jones, Brandon Allan Hardesty, Rivers Cuomo, Kane, Derek Smart, Scott Manley, Calvin "Cal" Wong, Jesse Moynihan, Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw, hbomberguy, Brian Firenzi, Freddie Wong, Jason Somerville, Deadmau5, Annie Cruz, the Chapo Trap House team, Steve O'Dwyer, Shaun Deeb, Jason Yungbluth, Bob Weber Jr., Tom Parkinson-Morgan, Dan Lacey, Robert Kelly Thomas, Jhonen Vasquez, Daniel Negreanu, the Yogscast guys, Jeffrey Michael Gerstmann, Brad Shoemaker, Daniel Joseph Ryckert, Ian Flynn/Ian Potto, Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug, ChipCheezum, Jamie Stewart, David Lowery, John Darnielle, Charlyn Marie "Chan" Marshall, Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd, and Juliana Hatfield. Heck, "CalArts style" itself may have originated from the site for all we know.
i def appreciate this list, but how could you not list ProtonJonSA? i'd argue his Kaizo Mario and other romhack LPs were critically influential in pushing forward let's playing to what it is today.
@@SirBlackReeds oh fuck I forgot shmorky is in like a mental asylum or something like that, right? I'm not sure, while shmorky also spiraled and faster I'd say, this far more impactful because we know the end of lowtax's story, shmorky's is still going
@@muffy_bunny Shmorky's spiral and most of the accusations against him were pushed pretty hard by Kiwifarms which means there's a solid chance at least half of it's bullshit, it's unclear how much of any of it was true or what actually ended up happening.
@@PandaPelley Don't get me wrong dude was weird as fuck but beyond that I don't think it's right for anyone to really say for sure and there certainly wasn't enough there to justify the insane amount of harassment he ended up getting.
The fact anime fans were considered “undesirable” on SA is wack as hell to me because THE thing I remember SA for was being where the first “translated” play through of Danganronpa was hosted.
It helps that there was a serious pedophile problem in the original anime fandom on the forums. But yeah once they were all banned the bias stuck around a bit out of habit
Danganronpa LP opened the floodgates for thousands of mentally ill kids from tumblr to sign up so they could read it so yeah I mean if anything that was proof of anime being undesirable.
tbf there was like a decade or so between the purge thing and the DR let's play, and Lowtax had been basically entirely checked out for years by the time the LP started by that point i'm pretty sure he wasn't looking at anything but FYAD, except for his once-every-two-years "no i'm really gonna make the forums better and start caring again because i love this place and it's the best place on the internet ;_;" posts
It’s amazing how much Something Awful influenced influenced internet culture in spite of Lowtax’s behavior. He’s the opposite of Zuckerburg in that he makes the worst choices for himself but like zuckerburg in that he makes life for others around him terrible.
Nah, that'd not be Lowtax, the first true edge would probably be given to Chet Faliszek via Portal of Evil. But Chet went on to write half life and portal and kinda left behind his 90s edginess.
It sounds like rich tried to fuel himself with detached irony and spite and paid for it dearly. Great video, i like how you cover artists/creators like this but also point out the sad way they've harmed themselves and others.
Yeah it's an interesting one, I think people can become so wrapped up in their own irony that they are consumed by it. I get the feeling there might have been a good person within him but unfortunately that person did not win.
This was a depressing ride, is hard to think how this situation got so out of control, he kinda had everything, people liked him, he had money, he had beautiful wives and children, he was set for life. Such is the curse of an arrogant man, I guess, I wonder how different the whole thing would have been if he was self aware enough to notice he had problems.
> he had money This was his the reason of his downfall That and his a[redacted] arrogance. May he rest in peace though. I wonder what would've happened if actually got the help he needed
Whether or not he was a good person, it's horrifying to hear how he was misdiagnosed about his vertebrae falling apart as muscle pain for FOUR MONTHS. No one deserves that amount of pain.
IMO he was misdiagnosed because he lied to the doctors about what happened. Probably Lowtax got wasted and fell down the steps and either forgot about it or lied about it. There's also a chance he got fucked up by fighting Uwe Boll but didn't want to admit it. When you walk into a doctor's office and say "I was sitting in my chair browsing the internet and my vertebrae snapped in half" you sound like a fucking idiot and a doctor is going to think "Okay it's muscle tension, cramping, etc.. and by the way he has a low-IQ." Your vertebrae don't just snap in half from sitting in a chair doing nothing. That's like saying "I was just typing at my keyboard and my forearm snapped in half."
@@paigemosher8697 Why? I don't think anyone should have to suffer debilitating pain. Someone can be a horrible POS but the American healthcare system isn't doling out justice, it's just failing in another way. Miss me with that punitive justice BS
Rich was a surprisingly resilient, hard working writer and content creator in his early days. I admire that he was interested in highlighting good posters, and supporting young creators like Mega64. It’s too bad he got disillusioned with the site and let his personal life get out of control. Sad story of a sad, bitter guy.
He was a brilliant mind when it came to running an online community. He understood the right balance of chaos and control. You were allowed to be a shitposting idiot but if you went too far he wouldn't hesitate to ban your ass. You had to read the room (also known as "lurking") to get a feel for the place and egos never ran the ship. He had a solid concept of guiding the community rather than lording over people in DMs as to why they got banned in moderators. He got disillusioned for sure and really should have let someone else run the forums instead he let it get to his head and he went dark. If anything it's a tragedy that left victims.
Not so much the children - rather the whores who kidnapped his children, fled the country, lied about him all over the internet and still somehow felt entitled to internet money.
@@RealNovgorod he was found guilty in a court of law, with compelling evidence supporting their stories. I can understand being skeptical, but not in outright denial of reality. you stop that.
@@IAMFANTROLL It's family court, dude. He was found guilty of being a man, nothing else. His last bitch even publicly admitted that she lied about her accusations that a bed-ridden cripple somehow managed to beat her up and throw her down the stairs or whatever.
I think one of the most interesting things to me about lowtax is the fact that, in a way, everything was his fault through every court case, every lawsuit, every piece of drama, and even to the last moments of his life, he thought that he was the victim, that he was doing nothing wrong, that what he was doing was ok
Honestly someone shoulda intervened and told him this, if someone is like that I'm sure hating them would make it worse from a psychological perspective. Like, if someone believes everyone is against them and nothing is their fault. Getting mad at them for it will just, make them justify their own claims. I feel a lot of people think "abusing the hate out of someone" is a good mindset and people shouldn't try to help them, they should suffer, etc. Idk what he even did nor do i care, I'm just responding to stuff cause i like to share my ideas (cause i rarely find anyone else with them)
If he could have done some introspection instead of doubling down every single time, he would have been unstoppable. If you feel like Lowtax never had a choice and you would have done the same thing as him, consider therapy. It's not a healthy way to live.
This video is SO well edited and written. Its crazy how something so crucial to the formation of internet culture and memes feels like such a "niche" video.
A lot of the Something Awful community deserve their own video if we're being honest. Helldump, several of the Let's Players, DanganRonpa, and much more. Hardly compare to Lowtax or Shmorky, but they're still noteworthy in how internet fame or in some cases lack thereof can corrupt people into being bitter, psychotic, and beyond.
Worth noting that when Shmorky was outed as a pedo, the person who accused him of it was later discovered to have been 20 at the time of the incident she claimed to be underage for; not unlike the ProJared incident. Of course this was only found out _after_ Shmorky had been run out of every community, apparently made a suicide attempt, and most likely had to move back in with his abusive family in a trailer park in Bumblefuck Nowhere. That being said, Shmorky *did* have a habit of going after women half his age (dude was, like Rich, in his 40's), there's all the babyfur stuff, the ERP chatlogs are as hilariously autistic as they are horrifying, he apparently convinced that one ex to go off her meds, is an expert at self-victimization, he was part of a group of forum members who incited someone to suicide... There are already multiple videos covering the Shmorky rabbit hole and the sub-rabbit holes of his alternate identities and most of them don't even cover half this shit. Not saying he was (is?) a good person, but of all the shit he deserves, the actual incident that undid him probably wasn't it.
I don't think the internet corrupts, it just encourages inherently bad behavior in some folks. It's definitely a heavy tool to wield and some folks pick up that sword thinking they can swing it around like Cloud and end up slicing their own nuts off.
For sure. I used to frequently the forums daily but there came a point where it got so toxic that it was negatively affecting my life and sanity and making me fucking depressed. Leaving Something Awful and Twitter behind are two of the best things I have ever done for my mental health and well-being.
@@Gammatron64 GBS became such a hellscape that even browsing the list of topics made me feel ill at times and I began to avoid it like the plague. Certain subforums like Games somehow remained pretty chill though.
He set the tone of a decade and his humor has colonized your mind whether you know it or not. A part of your personality can be drawn back to him. I don't think we are better for it, we live in a bitter and ironic world. The future will be defined by our reaction to it.
It's sad. How many people have become so irony-pilled that they don't even know who they are anymore? How many people have become buried in bitterness that anything sweet is spat out?
As a Goon I had heard about most of this, but I hadn't heard about the guy who was a friend of his who ended his life the same way Rich later would. It's all very fucked.
Oh fuck, I just realised Rich's kids are in their early-mid teens now. What a brutal thing for a kid to go through. Man. Also while $150K sounds like a lot, with a substance abuse problem, mortgage, server farm and staff to pay, I suspect you'll find he was actually dirt poor.
The new owner did a run down of the site's cost and says the site is easily profitable enough for a full time job, today in 2022. The site in it's prime was hugley profitable. Lowtax just squandered it.
one interesting thing: The secret service never subpoenaed SA about the Laissez Fair stuff. Lowtax made that all up to justify deleting the forum some people asked them about it and there was no record of such an incident
@@KrumpytheClown I would say sorry for the experiences you have faced, and what can only be described as a the recent 'loss'.. Though whatever loss that is was lost some time ago. Otherwise thank you for not only being able to rather these horrible times, but also for still being a positive member of the wider community to this day
after that, i can only wish the best for his kids. i know how hard it is to grow up without a dad, despite how bad of a person he was, and i can only hope they perservere and be happy.
It's truly shocking how much Lowtax's website, and in turn, Lowtax himself, formed and shaped the internet as we know it today, yet so few people know about him compared to the legacy he left behind. As much as he sunk both his professional and personal life, far more people really should know about him than they do currently.
@@jskmo something awful was big, but the internet was much bigger, the 2000s era internet in general has hundereds of forums with thousands of things, SA was just one of the bigger ones. i think its the sites negative reputation, even with all the good internet culture, theres been tons of bad from SA
I knew his relationship with Megan was odd when the first I even heard about it was lowtax making a post in a random FYAD thread that said his girlfriend was carrying his unborn child (his words). I was like "this is really how you're going to tell people?"
Something I've learned from the abusive people I've encountered throughout my life, there's one thing that sticks out to me: if someone's SO or child is claiming domestic abuse, and that person goes on a long public rant that includes a variation of the line "I would NEVER hit my [son/daughter/wife/husband/etc]" and then tries to throw said person under the bus through some kind of demonization tactic (esp using that I CANT BELIEVE A WOMAN CAN JUST SAY THEYRE SCARED AND TAKE YOUR KIDS line), you're pretty safe in assuming they're the perpetrator unless evidence proves otherwise.
Correct. Lowtax's behaviour has "abuse" written all over it. The man is and always has been a huge narcissist. When the bill for his behaviour finally came due, he paid it as spitefully and miserably as possible. He really did die as he had lived.
I mean anyone who would be falsely accused of abuse would try to explain the situation and how its a lie. In this case i think lowtax was abusive but you are saying that you wouldn’t believe a person accused of abusing someone just because they said they wouldnt do it
I would agree with this if "throwing them under the bus" was something like calling them a slut or revealing something private. But saying him talking about her taking his child away from him (and also getting thousands from him in both alimony and child support) is that is just... Disgusting to be honest. How is that any different from her claiming he abused her? They are both saying terrible things about each other. If anything. He actually has prove that she took his child away from him. While I believe he probably abused her in some way, it's still innocent until proven guilty.
Dangerous road to go to assume guilty until proven innocent, i've seen enough horrible people use this for their own gain at the expense of the other party. It goes both ways.
>claims to hate politics >goes on drunken rants about the Chinese government >uses someone's immigration status to manipulate and control them >lets people he sleeps with into positions of power on SA
They used to praise that one admin, Barry, who would lie about what he did to fix things so the search would work or why they wouldnt upgrade to the latest php release. The hivemind was so crazy on that site.
Though I know his first marriage probably had way more problems than just Religious differences and parenting differences, to hear that he just refused to stop cursing/being vulgar in-front of his kids makes me think it was ultimately his fault. I curse A LOT, it’s really not that hard to switch it off. Of course you may slip up but him just not wanting too compromise is a huge character tell.
@@caucasoidape8838 It's kind of strange when I noticed 'kuso' uttered by plankton in the Japanese version of the first SpongeBob movie. Kuso roughly translates to "shit", "fuck" and "damn" yet it was uttered in media designed for children.
This man was absolutely a monster to his family and many of the people he crossed paths with...but regardless of that...what a tragedy. He could have been so much more than this. But instead he pissed it all away, destroyed people's lives, and eventually destroyed his own life. Farewell Lowtax. I hope your loved ones find peace.
SA had a massive impact on me in a lot of good and bad ways. I can’t remember exactly how I found the site, either because of All Your Base or perhaps from other PC game forums. I joined the SA forums a few years later in ‘05 or ‘06, and spent hours and hours on the site every day until around 2012 when I quit cold turkey. It got me into photoshop and meming, Let’s Plays, reading LF and D&D even created a bit of a political awakening in me. And just in general the site was incredibly, cripplingly funny. Photoshop Fridays and Comedy Goldmines weren’t just hilarious in a vacuum, the site’s content often shaped internet culture in ways we’re still feeling today. I belly-laughed every day. At the end though, I began to realize that posting on the forums had become an unhealthy obsession. Leaving the site behind was probably pretty good for my mental health and my sense of empathy. What this doc captures about the lived experience of the average goon during the heyday of SA is that Lowtax did feel like a cross between a feudal lord and a divorced dad to us, only coming around sparingly to shitpost and usually leaving a wave of banned members in his wake.
Same. You only have to watch one of those Gooncon videos to know that the point at which real life and Something Awful meet is some kind of hell nexus.
Sounds like a similar story to mine. Honestly, I kinda feel like it was more of a bad influence to me than a good one. By like 2014-2015 the forums had just become such a cesspool I couldn't tolerate it anymore and quit cold turkey. Did the same with Twitter. Really helped my mental health in the long run.
@@DepressedHandsomeSpaceCop I laughed involuntarily when it showed the gooncon footage, because it's exactly what you'd expect it to look like. And ironically, I intended a few (local to me) smaller cons and I was one of the worst human beings there (although I of course thought I was one of the best).
As a streamer and sufferer from depression, this video is immeasurably helpful. It is so easy to be toxic when views are low, when in reality, people have lives and other interests. A warning indeed, this video helps me hold myself accountable, count my blessings and maintain control. Thank you for this.
This was an excellent deep dive into SA. You're absolutely right about how unreported this story was. It's incredible how influencial SA was and it's validating to watch a documentary about it like this. Hopefully there is still a chance we will see something similar for the wild story of the peak of rooster teeth ( the OG Funhaus/Sugar Pine 7/ Cow Chop years) and the fate that would befall it and it's visionary content creators. Edit : Lowtax died 2 months ago ... Holy crap
I used to be an avid follower of Gaming Garbage, so I tuned into one of the more recent streams last year. Lowtax looked and sounded like a tired, dejected husk and wasn't remotely funny; it was one of the most depressing streams I've ever seen. I figured something was up so I did a quick search to see what he got himself into this time, and hoo boy it was even worse than I thought. I'm surprised to find out that there was so much drama going on in the background when Gaming Garbage was in its prime. I wonder what his wife thought of him bringing Lauren to the office to make UA-cam videos.
Honestly, a small one-time fee for a good forum is a great idea. It means no ads, no spambots, and severely less trolling. But it needs to be paired with a mod staff that's very, very hesitant to ban people.
Although possibly unintentional, the title and finale's use of the song "Hurt" is an excellent callback to how this all started. Quake's (not Quake 2's) soundtrack was composed by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame. As was Hurt.
As someone who frequented their forums from 2003 to 2006, this took me back. Some of his ICQ pranks are still some of the funniest things I've ever read. Never heard of your channel before but this was excellently made. Very well done! Subscribed!
Thus was really helpful not knowing whoLowtax was when he passed and not having much idea of the impact Something Awful had on the internet. Your awesome that these internet documentary stuff man. Hope to see more throughout the year.
Lowtax in his final months was taking a lot of gabapentin for his neck pain - it's important to know that those have the side effect of suicidal ideation
"He could have sold SA for $15 million and never have to work for the rest of his life." No, he would have spent that money within a few years. Anyway, RIP to Lowtax. Today is the anniversary of his death. A flawed guy that still deserved help and compassion.
Yeah he seemed like the sort of person who views a ton of money as an opportunity to spend gloriously, rather than "wow I am so lucky, better save up the bulk of it and spend the rest intelligently since I probably won't be getting a huge infusion of cash again."
@@IsmailofeRegime The hedonist's paradox. Instead of being responsible to assure their continued happiness in the long run, they'd rather gain immediate gratification, thus assuring their suffering in the long run.
@@Kodeb8 As something of a hedonist myself its an issue of delayed gratification. I get drunk and high then have rough sex on Saturday night then bum around on Sundays but the rest of the week I do my job and all the boring normal stuff spliced if with more normal fun because if I try to do it every night it won't work. You got realise that coke rush hits better if you do less and the rest of your life doesn't suck.
This guy is partly responsible why people on the internet are so insufferable. SA Goons are the equal and opposite of 4chan anons. It sucks his life was such a mess but how he was explains his community and how they are.
I first saw this video years ago, and it was fucking amazing, but what has stuck with me for the past few years is the use of NIN's Hurt for the end segment. It just is well done and such a good finale.
It honestly really hits like a gunshot after hearing lowtax read that letter to his friend that had never got delivered. Great directorial choice on Bernie's part
Jesus! I hadn't been on SA for years. Had no idea all this happened. Sad. Nihilism and lack of self-control. I guess Lowtax was one of those people they say "should never win the lottery" because they destroy themselves. Tragic to see how he blew it all away and lost everything (the kids especially). It's important to develop real values & virtues in life. This was an absolutely phenomenal documentary. Well done man, and thank you.
"It's an alternative operating system, kind of like a hip-hop operating system." That is actually a pretty funny line, I wonder how long he rehearsed it.
@@SirBlackReeds Watch the bit from 6:56, then watch a Cybershell video, then a GamerFromMars video and tell me they've got the same voice. It's gotta be Cybershell, strangely uncredited?
This is the best video on the subject that I’ve seen. All the other videos seem to be made by people just reading wikis about the site and not from a firsthand POV
I worked with Rich at PlanetQuake. I remember him showing me SA before he left/got fired. He asked me if I wanted to write for him but I declined because he couldn't pay me. My life could have turned out pretty different.
Fantastic video! I remember being a teenager in the mid-00s posting on YTMND and Newgrounds when Something Awful users were like the cool kids and Lowtax the king of the internet. Now as an adult all I can do is shake my head at the guy It’s almost like the internet fame and fortune caused a kind of arrested development and he was stuck mentally as a twenty-something. Sure he had all the trappings of adulthood (nice car, nice house, a wife and kids) but none of the maturity. Like the early 2000s internet version of a kid who peaked in high school.
I watched the Tiny Toons stalker video and the mentions of Somethingawful reminded me how much time I used to spend browsing that site in the early 2Ks. Super stoked to see a full documentary a few videos back on the channel!
i dunno if they do it anymore, but back in the early 2000's if someone hotlinked to an image from SA on another site they'd make it redirect to some shock image like tubgirl or lemonparty. i learned this the hard way when i tried to link a photoshop phriday pic in a forums signature
Holy shit, this video was a slap in the face. I Had no idea Lowtax died. I can definitely say with confidence that SA helped form my sense of humor into what it is today. I was pretty active in the mid-late 2000s but eventually moved onto the Garry's Mod forums since I was becoming more interested and versed in source modding and 4chan. The articles had me dying laughing and I signed up immediately, only to be banned a week or so later for posting an image that was hosted elsewhere (stupid, I know). So many memories came flooding back watching this like Rich's boxing match, regular posting in GBS and ADTRW, and Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons doing a video game review for a Japanese eroge game. Pretty damn tragic to see how in the end Lowtax squandered everything and everyone around him and took so much for granted. He definitely lived long enough to see himself become the villain. Prayers and love to his daughters and family. Also, god tier editing on this video. Definitely subbed.
Thanks so much for making this. It's amazing work. As a fan of Lowtax for 8 years, I only witnessed his entertaining points of view and sharp sense of comedy. I was never an SA Forums user, and never heard the depths of his bad choices or harmful behavior. I appreciate this full perspective. It's weird because I still admire him. Not his narcissistic, violent, or neglectful side. But as a creator and comedian. When I heard of his suicide, I oddly felt the most hurt I ever had about news of a death that wasn't a family member. That said, he dug his own grave and he earned his spot in it. If only things could've gone a different way, but that was all up to him.
PilotRedSun, Boards of Canada, WORLDCORP!? BASED. Gotta love how universal of an experience the internet can be; you can tell exactly what era of the internet resonated with someone via music alone.
@@greablood1072 I was saying "this internet"' to refer to how different it is then and now, so the old one is practically a different beast. Also, multiverse theory is really stupid. It's closer to a real life headcanon built on a pile of assumptions than a true scientific theory.
Better? It's actually worse than before. The Goons and Troons ironically became the Nazi Fascists they reee about, and any dissenting opinion gets you permabanned. Heck, they will actually try to hunt you down.
yo, sidenote, LOVE the gfx and editing. I can see you're super inspired by HWD and I'm really happy to see that specific niche of design branching out into more places. Hopefully it becomes more and more common! edit: watching further, even hearing music from HWD - this feels like a bigass episode of HWD that is a serious documementary. I like it.
My name is Lowtax, Admin of Admins; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
It boggles my mind that there is an irrefutable butterfly effect that starts at Rich shitposting about a shitty co-worker and ends with an American president calling for a siege against the capital building.
Yeah it really is absolutely insane. Some dropout nerd gets fired from his dead-end job writing Quake articles and so creates a site that spawns 4chan, QAnon and /pol/ and influences an entire election.
I was at the 2005 UIUC talk, and at the time it really seemed like Lowtax had a good thing going and we could all be proud of our tiny roles in making Something Awful what it was. Funny that it was probably all downhill from there. I remember the last time I talked to Lowtax it was when we had briefly played EverQuest ][ together as part of the (predictably) game-largest guild Clan Banhammer. He and I adventured for a while, having what I thought was a great time, but at the end he seemed even more miserable than at the start. I remember thinking maybe his trademark cynicism-and-anger-based comedy was clearly not as much an act as I had assumed.
Excellent documentary, I had no idea of some of this stuff that happened later down the line. Shame I still have such good memories of the stuff these guys had a part in. Now they don't hit the same.
Something Awful was a huge part of my mid teens to my 20s. Even in his decline, Rich wrote the funniest review of Revolution 60 on Steam. It's a bitter swallow, but not wholly unfathomable, that he became the same Internet silly person he used to mock 20 years ago. And for him to take his own life to weasel out of a divorce settlement instead of being a man for the sake of his kids...I have no words for that except "low, totally low."
I'm the goon at 22:19 that went to the headquarters and took the picture of Rich passed out. At that point in time I had met Rich a few times and all my interactions with him were always positive and fun. It's a shame that it was all a mask.
Shit man! I can only imagine what was going through your head at the time upon seeing him passed out like that.
Were the pills Vicodin?
@@2beJT I wasn't that nosey :-D
Did he really pass out before everyone arrived?
@@BlueBoy0 I was everyone that showed up.
"Then he began drinking and launched into a schizophrenic-like spiel about being kidnapped by the Chinese government. Even though is pregnant wife began to cry, he didn't stop."
If you could summarise the founder of Something Awful in 1 quote, this would be it.
How do you know his chunk ex wife isn’t a red chinese spy?
@@honestabe411 Don't be cringe and weird
@@honestabe411 You seem like you could use a grippy-sock vacation yourself.
@paigemosher8697 pretty sure they were joking
Stop saying dumbass things... A COMICALLY LARGE SPOON
Everything he ever did, from dropping out of college to his own death, was motivated by spite. Even the things that seemed to be positive or creative were, in hindsight, really all about showing up someone else. This was a man devoid of love, not for his community, not for his family, not even for himself.
I wanna like your comment but at the time of writing this it sits at 69 likes
nice
Not surprising from someone who defined their identity by a hatred of taxation.
100%
Yeah he was unparalleled in his pettiness and love of mangosteen juice
@@whalt He named himself Low Tax, because around the same time Something Awful was launched, Byron "Low Tax" Looper shot and killed his political opponent, Tommy Burks.
"They later broke up due to compatibility issues"
Can't tell if brilliant Linux joke or a hilarious coincidence
😉
@@berniealt
based
No no no, she just didn't want to install BeOS, an alternative operating system.
He preferred BSD licensing
And that was simply unforgivable
Lowtax was right. The internet does make you stupid.
he wasn't exempt from that either
the only intelligent thing he ever said in his life
And he was too proud to realize he wasn't immune to his own observation until it was too late.
@@AeronKabutoBlade I have seen the internet. It is full of stupid; and now, as am I. -Richie Tenbux
No, it's people !
Damn his ex wives became friends, that's how you know he messed up. Great video, very interesting and to the point.
Wtf?
LMAO yeah that's how you know he fucked up.
It was at this moment that he knew he fucked up.
I mean, they were both goons
That's how you know they lied on him. He didn't destroy his own life. Those closest to him betrayed him. From the pedo Shmorky, to his cheating ex wife.
"This artist's name was Shmorky." (awkward silence deeply felt by the people who know about That Shit already)
There's an old ass video from 15 years ago calling him out for being a diaper fur.
@@intellectualshepherdsclub6708 I mean, we know way more than that about them now, but I had no idea the callouts went that far back. Damn!
@@intellectualshepherdsclub6708 That was Mainly Richard "Anotherknothole Resident" Kuta(Born in 1979 in Peoria,IL). He was pretty infamous over at the Furry Sub section until Lowtax kicked him off the community in 2004 for Harassing people at SEGA and Dic/Cookie Jar often shooting Chain emails at them DEMANDING they make a Sonic SaTam movie. There were Videos of Kuta role playing as a Baby and defecting leaked around '08.
Shmorky was the ONLY one objecting to Kuta's Perma Ban. Figures.
I had no idea who they were until it was revealed in the video that they made the "This is fine" animation which is honestly very fitting for this whole story.
“Oh no”
Wow, he really did not deserve Ashley. She sounds like she was a really cool partner to have. She instantly tried to adapt to his wacky online business despite knowing nothing about it before marrying him, _and_ did a good job of it. Talk about meeting the proverbial one and then squandering it.
Lowtax's entire MO was to take whatever good fortune came his way and drown it in a bathtub full of mangosteen juice
@@DepressedHandsomeSpaceCop Evidently.
"13 million? Naa dude I just wanted to have fun with the site."
@@DepressedHandsomeSpaceCop outstanding!~
@@KrumpytheClown Wow, didn't expect you to reply honestly. No problem, you seem like a really cool person to know :)
I'm sorry you had to go through all this.
This is a testament to how personal, wild and fluid the internet was back in the 2000's. It was a madhouse, but a single individual at the right time could have a huge, lasting impact throughout the entire net. The internet was shaped by people, rather than companies and governments.
Yes, I caught part of the tail-end of things. Garbage like Facebook began getting popular during my last years of HS and I had kind of stopped using the internet as much by that point. Even big mega-platforms like UA-cam were so much less sterilized and kid-friendly back then. I have fond memories of using this website back in middle school and the slogan "broadcast yourself" still rang (mostly) true back then. Content was user-generated and largely uncensored with the noted exception of the 10 minute time limit for videos. The user-interface was ridiculously customizable and practically encouraged interaction. Looking back, I wish I had checked out more websites before they became little more than lists of social media links.
Still feel like there must be some way to get it all back if parents would kick kids offline so adults can be free...but I suppose ridiculous maintenance costs and appeasing advertisers would remain massive hurdles for anybody looking to reignite the spirit of the old internet.
Yup. Now its just a reflection of capitalistic corperate conformist offline life.
@@paintbrush3554well its not it was better before just under new management
Lowtax censored eerything. Bc of him I could not try Discord on my Apple Air
LOWTAX seems like a guy with a lot of creative potential but no impulse control. The fact that he abused every known wife he had and his oldest daughter left him is some of the saddest stuff I've seen on camera. But it really is his own fault. No one told him to get married or that he had to keep working on a site he lost passion in. This is all on him.
"Creative potential but no impulse control" is a good summary of the double-edged sword central to the internet culture codified by Something Awful. These subcultures can be, and often are, widely influential due to the sheer variety and originality of the content and ideas that spring forth from them. But many of the foundational and driving personalities tend to consume themselves if they don't move onward and upward from these fringe internet spaces.
Internet "edge" culture is a terrible place to be a big fish in a little pond. It's hell on mental health and destroys all sense of perspective on one's place in the world - and how one treats other people.
This isn't limited to the internet, either. Many creative people have impulse-control issues, and are more susceptible to substance abuse, either to inspire creativity, or escape reality.
And he squandered away his entire fortune and children's savings out of spite
A thing often forgetten about the Shmorky drama is that Lowtax had always known that Shmorky was a babyfur with ABDL tendencies and never cared. Shmorky posted about Lowtax being abusive and how awful his behavior was and then Lowtax joined KF and started appearing on every podcast he could to disparage Shmorky to bury the fact that he was a wife-beating loser who was on a rapid decline. Lowtax knew the whole time, and was waiting to use throw his best friend under the bust for the sake of covering his tracks, including pretending that he was scared to have Shmorky around his kids.
Throwing Shmorky under the bus was such a galaxy brained move, it's like the dude spent 15 years years charging his vicodin power levels so that he could annihilate his reputation in one fell swoop.
Dude would pitch shift his voice in every video to sound like a baby and wore a yarn wig.
I have no clue why anyone ever associated with him . Retsuprae, game grumps, etc. They all just ignored the red flags.
Huh. Just like most “friendships” on Twitter.
@@KotoCrash (It’s because they all lack morals)
Schmorky got done SO dirty, it still makes my heart ache; your best friend for almost two decades throws you under a train as easy as breathing. Weird kinks aren't a red flag for predatory behavior; if anything the obsession with normalcy and thoughtcrime is, as evidenced with how rancid people from KF treat other people.
I worked for Rich/SA for several years and am very excited to watch this....no clue if it's accurate or not, but love that SA is still remembered a big part of internet culture propped up by Rich being a fucking madman
EDIT - fifteen minutes after making this post, it aged poorly.
Lmao at that edit. What are your thoughts on all of it now?
@@NobodyCaresALot Just a depressing clusterfuck, had no idea he either was or turned in to a completely abusive shitty human.
No father should ever kill themselves and I have no respect for him doing that, but it's still pretty deeply saddening. He was always a bit disconnected with reality in a way that I found.....bizarre.
TBH it sounds like the alcohol and Ambien finally got the best of him.
A Shakespearian tragedy of sorts, I guess - that'd be my thoughts on it now.
@@actuallynotsteve He always was abusive.
@@actuallynotsteve Agreed.
@Steve ambien and alcohol doesn't turn you into a wife abusing child neglecting misanthropic nihilist my dude
The funny thing is, I remember learning about Lowtax's death from browsing /vr/. The website had a big "RIP Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka. The Dad who abandoned us" under the board title.
Despite everything, Moot/Hiro still felt like at least posting their respects. Man...
Moot hasn't been involved in years, but yeah.
@@jodgee2374 oh yeah isn't the dude working at Google?
I'd doubt Hiro even knows what SA is.
@@DoodleWill he left google a year ago. People claim he left cause he found out Google was storing CP but we don’t know that for sure so it’ll be hard to get word from him. 😔
He died???
@@legion999 well … yeah. Died back in November 2021.
I remember having no idea what was going on or how bad it had gotten, until during one Gaming Garbage stream, Lowtax just up and blurted out the name of the shelter where his wife and kid were staying. Lost whatever respect I had for the man after that.
I think this is the coda we all need.
@@KrumpytheClown
I hope you got the rest of the estate after his death. Sorry for what you went through miss
@@KrumpytheClown even his family thinks he was in the right? Makes me think his family supported his terrible decisions. I wish the best for you and your kids
What an actual sociopath
@@KrumpytheClown jesus christ man, I'm sorry you had to go through that. I hope youre in a better place now
Doxing women is based
a foia request proved that the secret service never knocked on his door. he just spitefully closed LF and lied about it
Gee. I wonder where he got the idea for that lie from..
still no big loss
WHAT
Good, f*ck LF and anyone that posted in it
@@iaobtc you were not ready for purestrain truth
Every time I read or watch anything about Rich, it just hurts my heart. He could’ve done something else, anything else with his life. If not for himself, for his kids. His judgment was too clouded by the end, and I pray to God his children are okay. Those poor kids. They did nothing wrong.
The only thing they did wrong was being born to a woman who would use them as pawns in a petty attack on Lowtax.
It sucks, his site was really formative to my sense of humor. I always had a soft spot in my heart for him, even with everything. I learned a lot of bad habits from SA, and a lot of things I had to train myself out of, but I also met some of the people that helped mold me into a better dude.
@@dn7949 Hey mate wtf is wrong with you?
@@ulisesguerrero1822 Hey, I wasn't the one who lied on a man and used my children as pawns and pushed a man to the point of taking his own life.
@@KrumpytheClown Yeah, the guy basically did nothing unless it was to spite someone else. His selfishness and compulsive lying knew no limits. How people still insist on pushing his actions to be no fault of his own is astounding.
Holy shit, I had no idea Rich had died. This was a... weird way to find out. I grew up reading SA articles during my teen years and I was a big fan of Gaming Garbage up until Shmorky left. This is surreal.
I didn't either until reading the comments here! I was like halfway through the video and decided to read the comments and was like...what are people talking about? Then I thought it may have been from COVID but nope :/
First time I heard it too. He outlived screech but he beat bob saget to the punch.
@gimple waffleimages?
Wait....Lowtax died? Are you not trolling? I worked for the guy, actually stayed at his house.
@@actuallynotsteve Not trolling, I recommend you watch the full video. He committed suicide toward the end of last year.
Fantastic work and presentation my man
Were you, too, a SA goon?
Yooo wendigoon !!
Absolutely. I had stepped away for a few years and never knew what happened during the decline years.
@@Sockington You know the story of the Ultimate Warrior and how he wreaked his own career after his peak in WM VI from not bothering to improve his craft to general attitude backstage? Low’s path is exactly like that but far worse and doesn’t end with him mending bridges with the company that helped made him an icon.
Though, both has their own Halloween Havoc 98’ each. Terrible, horrid and regretfully exists on record.
I was going to like this comment but it has 666 likes, which seems appropriate.
Agreed, though, this was really well done and informative. I haven't visited SA in years and didn't even know the guy had killed himself, damn.
The picture of him middle-aged and greying and bellowing into a camera is burned into my retinas and is gonna haunt my nightmares. It's actually unsettling just how wildly enraged he looks considering what a goofball he was and how he used to be seen as such a cornerstone of online entertainment.
Of course Lowtax would break the golden rule of don't plow your fans. If only Shmorky wasn't such a messed up sob. He might have been able to prop up Lowtax, or least slow down his spiraling descent.
Given just how influential Something Awful was, far more than most of us will realize, I'm surprised there wasn't a list in this video of noteworthy persons who were/are goons. I can't confirm as fact that every single one of these persons were goons, but: Zoe Quinn (former member of helldump) Jordan Raskopoulos (used to be part of Axis of Awesome; the Logies controversy was not an isolated event), Neil Stephen Cicierega (the crossdresser from the documentary about GoonCon 2004), John "TotalBiscuit" Bain (he was banned for a novel-length post), the GroverHaus guy (a former moderator),Sean "Vile Rat" Smith (deceased; former member of EVE Online guild Goonswarm), Ian Quartey-Jones, Brandon Allan Hardesty, Rivers Cuomo, Kane, Derek Smart, Scott Manley, Calvin "Cal" Wong, Jesse Moynihan, Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw, hbomberguy, Brian Firenzi, Freddie Wong, Jason Somerville, Deadmau5, Annie Cruz, the Chapo Trap House team, Steve O'Dwyer, Shaun Deeb, Jason Yungbluth, Bob Weber Jr., Tom Parkinson-Morgan, Dan Lacey, Robert Kelly Thomas, Jhonen Vasquez, Daniel Negreanu, the Yogscast guys, Jeffrey Michael Gerstmann, Brad Shoemaker, Daniel Joseph Ryckert, Ian Flynn/Ian Potto, Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug, ChipCheezum, Jamie Stewart, David Lowery, John Darnielle, Charlyn Marie "Chan" Marshall, Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd, and Juliana Hatfield.
Heck, "CalArts style" itself may have originated from the site for all we know.
i def appreciate this list, but how could you not list ProtonJonSA? i'd argue his Kaizo Mario and other romhack LPs were critically influential in pushing forward let's playing to what it is today.
You forgot slowbeef and Diabetus. In any case, "Derek Smart's DESKTOP COMMANDER" still brings me to tears.
You forgot a few notable game devs like Josh Sawyer, Cliffy B, Notch and Toby Fox.
Surprised and yet not surprised at all that Jhonen Vasquez was a goon
Ok I knew about Kane already but I'm gonna need some sauce on Rivers Cuomo and the Flaming Lips guys both being goons. Where did this come from?
Even if he wasn't a great person, it's still really sad and depressing to see someone spiral out of control.
Especially when you consider how Shmorky spiraled faster than Lowtax. Sure, there's radio silence, but that's only half-comforting.
@@SirBlackReeds oh fuck I forgot shmorky is in like a mental asylum or something like that, right?
I'm not sure, while shmorky also spiraled and faster I'd say, this far more impactful because we know the end of lowtax's story, shmorky's is still going
@@muffy_bunny Shmorky's spiral and most of the accusations against him were pushed pretty hard by Kiwifarms which means there's a solid chance at least half of it's bullshit, it's unclear how much of any of it was true or what actually ended up happening.
@@LonelyKnightess the diaperfur stuff is real that's enough for me
@@PandaPelley Don't get me wrong dude was weird as fuck but beyond that I don't think it's right for anyone to really say for sure and there certainly wasn't enough there to justify the insane amount of harassment he ended up getting.
The fact anime fans were considered “undesirable” on SA is wack as hell to me because THE thing I remember SA for was being where the first “translated” play through of Danganronpa was hosted.
Lowtax didn't know or care to know about his audience. He just hated Otakus, Furries, Normies, religious people, and anyone stingy or corporate.
It helps that there was a serious pedophile problem in the original anime fandom on the forums. But yeah once they were all banned the bias stuck around a bit out of habit
Danganronpa LP opened the floodgates for thousands of mentally ill kids from tumblr to sign up so they could read it so yeah I mean if anything that was proof of anime being undesirable.
God that's unfortunate, danganronpa sucks
tbf there was like a decade or so between the purge thing and the DR let's play, and Lowtax had been basically entirely checked out for years by the time the LP started
by that point i'm pretty sure he wasn't looking at anything but FYAD, except for his once-every-two-years "no i'm really gonna make the forums better and start caring again because i love this place and it's the best place on the internet ;_;" posts
It’s amazing how much Something Awful influenced influenced internet culture in spite of Lowtax’s behavior. He’s the opposite of Zuckerburg in that he makes the worst choices for himself but like zuckerburg in that he makes life for others around him terrible.
I mean, Zuckerberg can maintain a stable marriage as far as we know too, so that's something else Zuck has going for him.
@@TheAlexSchmidt i mean, if I married a computer I’d imagine it wouldn’t cheat on me
@@ohitsstar1241 If it does you may have to reset it to factory defaults.
@@phoebeaurum7113 zuck cannot be rebooted
@@ohitsstar1241 Plankton's computer wife really inspired the aliens who record our activities.
The internet's first true "Edge lord" that made it rich. This entire story can be used as a fable for years to come of what not to do.
Nah, that'd not be Lowtax, the first true edge would probably be given to Chet Faliszek via Portal of Evil.
But Chet went on to write half life and portal and kinda left behind his 90s edginess.
It sounds like rich tried to fuel himself with detached irony and spite and paid for it dearly. Great video, i like how you cover artists/creators like this but also point out the sad way they've harmed themselves and others.
Yeah it's an interesting one, I think people can become so wrapped up in their own irony that they are consumed by it. I get the feeling there might have been a good person within him but unfortunately that person did not win.
If "Scared of success" was a person
This was a depressing ride, is hard to think how this situation got so out of control, he kinda had everything, people liked him, he had money, he had beautiful wives and children, he was set for life.
Such is the curse of an arrogant man, I guess, I wonder how different the whole thing would have been if he was self aware enough to notice he had problems.
> he had money
This was his the reason of his downfall
That and his a[redacted] arrogance.
May he rest in peace though. I wonder what would've happened if actually got the help he needed
mental illness is a bitch.
Sweet awful hospital profile pic!
Did people like him, though? He always seemed like such a hateful person, even at the height of his fame.
@@benjaminthefox we used to like him and hate him.
Whether or not he was a good person, it's horrifying to hear how he was misdiagnosed about his vertebrae falling apart as muscle pain for FOUR MONTHS. No one deserves that amount of pain.
American Health system mate
I wouldn't say no one but he probably didn't
IMO he was misdiagnosed because he lied to the doctors about what happened. Probably Lowtax got wasted and fell down the steps and either forgot about it or lied about it. There's also a chance he got fucked up by fighting Uwe Boll but didn't want to admit it. When you walk into a doctor's office and say "I was sitting in my chair browsing the internet and my vertebrae snapped in half" you sound like a fucking idiot and a doctor is going to think "Okay it's muscle tension, cramping, etc.. and by the way he has a low-IQ." Your vertebrae don't just snap in half from sitting in a chair doing nothing. That's like saying "I was just typing at my keyboard and my forearm snapped in half."
Abusers absolutely do. Your sympathy is better placed in someone who knows how to treat people.
@@paigemosher8697 Why? I don't think anyone should have to suffer debilitating pain. Someone can be a horrible POS but the American healthcare system isn't doling out justice, it's just failing in another way. Miss me with that punitive justice BS
Cybershell is the perfect guy to read these posts.
Was just about to comment that it was such a good cameo
Are you sure you're not thinking of GamerFromMars?
no cybershell, gamerfrommars, whang!, and emplemon made cameos in this video
Cybershell is the perfect guy to read
@@SirBlackReeds Cybershell is better
Rich was a surprisingly resilient, hard working writer and content creator in his early days. I admire that he was interested in highlighting good posters, and supporting young creators like Mega64.
It’s too bad he got disillusioned with the site and let his personal life get out of control. Sad story of a sad, bitter guy.
It's even sadder how self aware the sod was, and yet he let it all unwind to the very end. Jesus christ.
He was a brilliant mind when it came to running an online community. He understood the right balance of chaos and control. You were allowed to be a shitposting idiot but if you went too far he wouldn't hesitate to ban your ass. You had to read the room (also known as "lurking") to get a feel for the place and egos never ran the ship. He had a solid concept of guiding the community rather than lording over people in DMs as to why they got banned in moderators.
He got disillusioned for sure and really should have let someone else run the forums instead he let it get to his head and he went dark. If anything it's a tragedy that left victims.
The "Congrats Jeff" picture is brutal as hell
The fact that he wasted all of his money just so his children couldn't get any angers me. Goodbye and good riddance indeed.
@Bob Duckington Does it really matter what he spent the money on?
@Bob Duckington The what now?
Not so much the children - rather the whores who kidnapped his children, fled the country, lied about him all over the internet and still somehow felt entitled to internet money.
@@RealNovgorod he was found guilty in a court of law, with compelling evidence supporting their stories. I can understand being skeptical, but not in outright denial of reality. you stop that.
@@IAMFANTROLL It's family court, dude. He was found guilty of being a man, nothing else. His last bitch even publicly admitted that she lied about her accusations that a bed-ridden cripple somehow managed to beat her up and throw her down the stairs or whatever.
I think one of the most interesting things to me about lowtax is the fact that, in a way, everything was his fault
through every court case, every lawsuit, every piece of drama, and even to the last moments of his life, he thought that he was the victim, that he was doing nothing wrong, that what he was doing was ok
Lowtax was some kind of ultra hilarious Coptic
Honestly someone shoulda intervened and told him this, if someone is like that I'm sure hating them would make it worse from a psychological perspective.
Like, if someone believes everyone is against them and nothing is their fault.
Getting mad at them for it will just, make them justify their own claims.
I feel a lot of people think "abusing the hate out of someone" is a good mindset and people shouldn't try to help them, they should suffer, etc.
Idk what he even did nor do i care, I'm just responding to stuff cause i like to share my ideas (cause i rarely find anyone else with them)
If he could have done some introspection instead of doubling down every single time, he would have been unstoppable. If you feel like Lowtax never had a choice and you would have done the same thing as him, consider therapy. It's not a healthy way to live.
I'm a fucking mess, and I think I could have done better.
This video is SO well edited and written. Its crazy how something so crucial to the formation of internet culture and memes feels like such a "niche" video.
Jesus christ.....I had no idea it was this heavy. This was an amazing video and you should be proud of it.
A lot of the Something Awful community deserve their own video if we're being honest.
Helldump, several of the Let's Players, DanganRonpa, and much more. Hardly compare to Lowtax or Shmorky, but they're still noteworthy in how internet fame or in some cases lack thereof can corrupt people into being bitter, psychotic, and beyond.
Worth noting that when Shmorky was outed as a pedo, the person who accused him of it was later discovered to have been 20 at the time of the incident she claimed to be underage for; not unlike the ProJared incident. Of course this was only found out _after_ Shmorky had been run out of every community, apparently made a suicide attempt, and most likely had to move back in with his abusive family in a trailer park in Bumblefuck Nowhere.
That being said, Shmorky *did* have a habit of going after women half his age (dude was, like Rich, in his 40's), there's all the babyfur stuff, the ERP chatlogs are as hilariously autistic as they are horrifying, he apparently convinced that one ex to go off her meds, is an expert at self-victimization, he was part of a group of forum members who incited someone to suicide...
There are already multiple videos covering the Shmorky rabbit hole and the sub-rabbit holes of his alternate identities and most of them don't even cover half this shit. Not saying he was (is?) a good person, but of all the shit he deserves, the actual incident that undid him probably wasn't it.
Helldump was never a place to be glorified. It was always shit.
I don't think the internet corrupts, it just encourages inherently bad behavior in some folks. It's definitely a heavy tool to wield and some folks pick up that sword thinking they can swing it around like Cloud and end up slicing their own nuts off.
For sure. I used to frequently the forums daily but there came a point where it got so toxic that it was negatively affecting my life and sanity and making me fucking depressed. Leaving Something Awful and Twitter behind are two of the best things I have ever done for my mental health and well-being.
@@Gammatron64 GBS became such a hellscape that even browsing the list of topics made me feel ill at times and I began to avoid it like the plague. Certain subforums like Games somehow remained pretty chill though.
He set the tone of a decade and his humor has colonized your mind whether you know it or not. A part of your personality can be drawn back to him. I don't think we are better for it, we live in a bitter and ironic world. The future will be defined by our reaction to it.
It's sad. How many people have become so irony-pilled that they don't even know who they are anymore? How many people have become buried in bitterness that anything sweet is spat out?
As a Goon I had heard about most of this, but I hadn't heard about the guy who was a friend of his who ended his life the same way Rich later would. It's all very fucked.
Who was his friend?
@@BBWahoo Joe
@@iancooper1466
Joe whom?
@@BBWahoo JOE MAMA
@@LocoRodeoBozo
B U E N O
Oh fuck, I just realised Rich's kids are in their early-mid teens now. What a brutal thing for a kid to go through.
Man. Also while $150K sounds like a lot, with a substance abuse problem, mortgage, server farm and staff to pay, I suspect you'll find he was actually dirt poor.
He had crippling medical debt from his semi-crippling spinal injuries too.
@@PandaPelley Yeah that too.
@@PandaPelley yes b'y
The new owner did a run down of the site's cost and says the site is easily profitable enough for a full time job, today in 2022. The site in it's prime was hugley profitable. Lowtax just squandered it.
$150k IS a lot.
one interesting thing: The secret service never subpoenaed SA about the Laissez Fair stuff. Lowtax made that all up to justify deleting the forum
some people asked them about it and there was no record of such an incident
@@KrumpytheClown I would say sorry for the experiences you have faced, and what can only be described as a the recent 'loss'.. Though whatever loss that is was lost some time ago.
Otherwise thank you for not only being able to rather these horrible times, but also for still being a positive member of the wider community to this day
As someone who originally solely knew Lowtax for Gaming Garbage, this documentary is shockingly depressing.
after that, i can only wish the best for his kids. i know how hard it is to grow up without a dad, despite how bad of a person he was, and i can only hope they perservere and be happy.
It's best that he's gone. They never would have had a chance at a normal, healthy upbringing with him as a dad.
@@WobblesandBean as true as that might be still missing a parent while growing up is a difficult struggle with a long road, i wish them the best
@@dialga236 I saw that Ashley had replied to some comments. The kids are hopefully all doing well.
It's truly shocking how much Lowtax's website, and in turn, Lowtax himself, formed and shaped the internet as we know it today, yet so few people know about him compared to the legacy he left behind.
As much as he sunk both his professional and personal life, far more people really should know about him than they do currently.
i couldnt agree more. its genuinely shocking to me that most people have no clue who he is or what SA is
@@jskmo something awful was big, but the internet was much bigger, the 2000s era internet in general has hundereds of forums with thousands of things, SA was just one of the bigger ones. i think its the sites negative reputation, even with all the good internet culture, theres been tons of bad from SA
I knew his relationship with Megan was odd when the first I even heard about it was lowtax making a post in a random FYAD thread that said his girlfriend was carrying his unborn child (his words). I was like "this is really how you're going to tell people?"
Something I've learned from the abusive people I've encountered throughout my life, there's one thing that sticks out to me: if someone's SO or child is claiming domestic abuse, and that person goes on a long public rant that includes a variation of the line "I would NEVER hit my [son/daughter/wife/husband/etc]" and then tries to throw said person under the bus through some kind of demonization tactic (esp using that I CANT BELIEVE A WOMAN CAN JUST SAY THEYRE SCARED AND TAKE YOUR KIDS line), you're pretty safe in assuming they're the perpetrator unless evidence proves otherwise.
Correct. Lowtax's behaviour has "abuse" written all over it. The man is and always has been a huge narcissist. When the bill for his behaviour finally came due, he paid it as spitefully and miserably as possible. He really did die as he had lived.
Too complicated, simplify it
I mean anyone who would be falsely accused of abuse would try to explain the situation and how its a lie.
In this case i think lowtax was abusive but you are saying that you wouldn’t believe a person accused of abusing someone just because they said they wouldnt do it
I would agree with this if "throwing them under the bus" was something like calling them a slut or revealing something private. But saying him talking about her taking his child away from him (and also getting thousands from him in both alimony and child support) is that is just... Disgusting to be honest.
How is that any different from her claiming he abused her? They are both saying terrible things about each other.
If anything. He actually has prove that she took his child away from him.
While I believe he probably abused her in some way, it's still innocent until proven guilty.
Dangerous road to go to assume guilty until proven innocent, i've seen enough horrible people use this for their own gain at the expense of the other party. It goes both ways.
>claims to hate politics
>goes on drunken rants about the Chinese government
>uses someone's immigration status to manipulate and control them
>lets people he sleeps with into positions of power on SA
"the site didnt even have a functional search engine"
still doesnt lol
They used to praise that one admin, Barry, who would lie about what he did to fix things so the search would work or why they wouldnt upgrade to the latest php release. The hivemind was so crazy on that site.
Though I know his first marriage probably had way more problems than just Religious differences and parenting differences, to hear that he just refused to stop cursing/being vulgar in-front of his kids makes me think it was ultimately his fault. I curse A LOT, it’s really not that hard to switch it off. Of course you may slip up but him just not wanting too compromise is a huge character tell.
I'm very much an atheist, yet I wouldn't intentionally curse around kids.
@@caucasoidape8838 It's kind of strange when I noticed 'kuso' uttered by plankton in the Japanese version of the first SpongeBob movie. Kuso roughly translates to "shit", "fuck" and "damn" yet it was uttered in media designed for children.
This man was absolutely a monster to his family and many of the people he crossed paths with...but regardless of that...what a tragedy. He could have been so much more than this. But instead he pissed it all away, destroyed people's lives, and eventually destroyed his own life. Farewell Lowtax. I hope your loved ones find peace.
SA had a massive impact on me in a lot of good and bad ways. I can’t remember exactly how I found the site, either because of All Your Base or perhaps from other PC game forums. I joined the SA forums a few years later in ‘05 or ‘06, and spent hours and hours on the site every day until around 2012 when I quit cold turkey. It got me into photoshop and meming, Let’s Plays, reading LF and D&D even created a bit of a political awakening in me. And just in general the site was incredibly, cripplingly funny. Photoshop Fridays and Comedy Goldmines weren’t just hilarious in a vacuum, the site’s content often shaped internet culture in ways we’re still feeling today. I belly-laughed every day. At the end though, I began to realize that posting on the forums had become an unhealthy obsession. Leaving the site behind was probably pretty good for my mental health and my sense of empathy.
What this doc captures about the lived experience of the average goon during the heyday of SA is that Lowtax did feel like a cross between a feudal lord and a divorced dad to us, only coming around sparingly to shitpost and usually leaving a wave of banned members in his wake.
Same
Same. You only have to watch one of those Gooncon videos to know that the point at which real life and Something Awful meet is some kind of hell nexus.
Sounds like a similar story to mine. Honestly, I kinda feel like it was more of a bad influence to me than a good one. By like 2014-2015 the forums had just become such a cesspool I couldn't tolerate it anymore and quit cold turkey. Did the same with Twitter. Really helped my mental health in the long run.
Yeah. You could learn and laugh a lot by reading and posting there, but graduation was the realization that it was time to leave.
@@DepressedHandsomeSpaceCop I laughed involuntarily when it showed the gooncon footage, because it's exactly what you'd expect it to look like. And ironically, I intended a few (local to me) smaller cons and I was one of the worst human beings there (although I of course thought I was one of the best).
Wow. He really left his children with nothing out of spite...
As a streamer and sufferer from depression, this video is immeasurably helpful. It is so easy to be toxic when views are low, when in reality, people have lives and other interests. A warning indeed, this video helps me hold myself accountable, count my blessings and maintain control. Thank you for this.
That Linux joke was severely underated
Well, when the guy saying it has his belted khakis pulled up to his nipples...
This was an excellent deep dive into SA. You're absolutely right about how unreported this story was. It's incredible how influencial SA was and it's validating to watch a documentary about it like this. Hopefully there is still a chance we will see something similar for the wild story of the peak of rooster teeth ( the OG Funhaus/Sugar Pine 7/ Cow Chop years) and the fate that would befall it and it's visionary content creators.
Edit : Lowtax died 2 months ago ... Holy crap
Easily the best Low-tax documentary of the year. Best video yet Benardo
I used to be an avid follower of Gaming Garbage, so I tuned into one of the more recent streams last year. Lowtax looked and sounded like a tired, dejected husk and wasn't remotely funny; it was one of the most depressing streams I've ever seen. I figured something was up so I did a quick search to see what he got himself into this time, and hoo boy it was even worse than I thought.
I'm surprised to find out that there was so much drama going on in the background when Gaming Garbage was in its prime. I wonder what his wife thought of him bringing Lauren to the office to make UA-cam videos.
Honestly, a small one-time fee for a good forum is a great idea. It means no ads, no spambots, and severely less trolling.
But it needs to be paired with a mod staff that's very, very hesitant to ban people.
This documentary was absolutely brilliant. Thank you for producing some of the best content on this website
Kind of wild a modern day tragedy, concluding merely months ago, slipped right under our noses.
Although possibly unintentional, the title and finale's use of the song "Hurt" is an excellent callback to how this all started. Quake's (not Quake 2's) soundtrack was composed by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame.
As was Hurt.
Trent Reznor is the only member of nine inch nails. He hired people specifically for tour but on albums it's him doing all the vocals and instruments
@@SatanRomps Nowadays Atticus Ross is an official member, but that was years after he did anything for Quake
As someone who frequented their forums from 2003 to 2006, this took me back. Some of his ICQ pranks are still some of the funniest things I've ever read.
Never heard of your channel before but this was excellently made. Very well done! Subscribed!
To this day I still say "do you have stairs in your home?"
Thus was really helpful not knowing whoLowtax was when he passed and not having much idea of the impact Something Awful had on the internet. Your awesome that these internet documentary stuff man. Hope to see more throughout the year.
He died?
@@sonyabladesbooty3890 ya there were tweets about like 3 or 4 months back about him.
Lowtax in his final months was taking a lot of gabapentin for his neck pain - it's important to know that those have the side effect of suicidal ideation
To me, it seems like he was severely depressed anyway. Probably didn't help matters at all
i have a feeling he woulda offed himself anyway
"He could have sold SA for $15 million and never have to work for the rest of his life."
No, he would have spent that money within a few years. Anyway, RIP to Lowtax. Today is the anniversary of his death. A flawed guy that still deserved help and compassion.
Yeah he seemed like the sort of person who views a ton of money as an opportunity to spend gloriously, rather than "wow I am so lucky, better save up the bulk of it and spend the rest intelligently since I probably won't be getting a huge infusion of cash again."
@@IsmailofeRegime The hedonist's paradox. Instead of being responsible to assure their continued happiness in the long run, they'd rather gain immediate gratification, thus assuring their suffering in the long run.
@@Kodeb8
As something of a hedonist myself its an issue of delayed gratification. I get drunk and high then have rough sex on Saturday night then bum around on Sundays but the rest of the week I do my job and all the boring normal stuff spliced if with more normal fun because if I try to do it every night it won't work.
You got realise that coke rush hits better if you do less and the rest of your life doesn't suck.
This guy is partly responsible why people on the internet are so insufferable. SA Goons are the equal and opposite of 4chan anons. It sucks his life was such a mess but how he was explains his community and how they are.
the internet became insufferable in 2007 when Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg conspired to make it easy for your mom to use the internet
@@HCFrick-sx1ty It sucked before that, but that definitely didn't help.
The music transitions are so lovely
I got probated by Lowtax once and he called me a passive aggressive bitch. Given everything that he's done, I consider it a badge of honor.
I first saw this video years ago, and it was fucking amazing, but what has stuck with me for the past few years is the use of NIN's Hurt for the end segment. It just is well done and such a good finale.
It honestly really hits like a gunshot after hearing lowtax read that letter to his friend that had never got delivered. Great directorial choice on Bernie's part
To quote a goon on lowtax's very own memorial thread: health benefits of mangosteen debunked.
Jesus! I hadn't been on SA for years. Had no idea all this happened. Sad. Nihilism and lack of self-control. I guess Lowtax was one of those people they say "should never win the lottery" because they destroy themselves. Tragic to see how he blew it all away and lost everything (the kids especially). It's important to develop real values & virtues in life. This was an absolutely phenomenal documentary. Well done man, and thank you.
Great work on the doc. The tale of lowtax is thoroughly depressing and I wish it hadn't ended like this. My condolences to his family.
"It's an alternative operating system, kind of like a hip-hop operating system." That is actually a pretty funny line, I wonder how long he rehearsed it.
Why does hearing Cybershell's voice make me so happy?
Are you sure that wasn't GamerFromMars?
@@SirBlackReeds Watch the bit from 6:56, then watch a Cybershell video, then a GamerFromMars video and tell me they've got the same voice. It's gotta be Cybershell, strangely uncredited?
This is the best video on the subject that I’ve seen. All the other videos seem to be made by people just reading wikis about the site and not from a firsthand POV
"with some admins being flown in to work in his basement"
That sentence really summed up the whole vibe of something awful pretty decently
I worked with Rich at PlanetQuake. I remember him showing me SA before he left/got fired. He asked me if I wanted to write for him but I declined because he couldn't pay me. My life could have turned out pretty different.
Tell that to the guys he screwed over.
Fantastic video!
I remember being a teenager in the mid-00s posting on YTMND and Newgrounds when Something Awful users were like the cool kids and Lowtax the king of the internet. Now as an adult all I can do is shake my head at the guy
It’s almost like the internet fame and fortune caused a kind of arrested development and he was stuck mentally as a twenty-something. Sure he had all the trappings of adulthood (nice car, nice house, a wife and kids) but none of the maturity.
Like the early 2000s internet version of a kid who peaked in high school.
I watched the Tiny Toons stalker video and the mentions of Somethingawful reminded me how much time I used to spend browsing that site in the early 2Ks. Super stoked to see a full documentary a few videos back on the channel!
i dunno if they do it anymore, but back in the early 2000's if someone hotlinked to an image from SA on another site they'd make it redirect to some shock image like tubgirl or lemonparty. i learned this the hard way when i tried to link a photoshop phriday pic in a forums signature
Cool story man you've lived a full life.
@@waytospergtherebro i know! you should've paid me for my valuable time
And Goaste. Remember that?
Holy shit, this video was a slap in the face. I Had no idea Lowtax died. I can definitely say with confidence that SA helped form my sense of humor into what it is today. I was pretty active in the mid-late 2000s but eventually moved onto the Garry's Mod forums since I was becoming more interested and versed in source modding and 4chan. The articles had me dying laughing and I signed up immediately, only to be banned a week or so later for posting an image that was hosted elsewhere (stupid, I know). So many memories came flooding back watching this like Rich's boxing match, regular posting in GBS and ADTRW, and Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons doing a video game review for a Japanese eroge game. Pretty damn tragic to see how in the end Lowtax squandered everything and everyone around him and took so much for granted. He definitely lived long enough to see himself become the villain. Prayers and love to his daughters and family. Also, god tier editing on this video. Definitely subbed.
Thanks so much for making this. It's amazing work. As a fan of Lowtax for 8 years, I only witnessed his entertaining points of view and sharp sense of comedy. I was never an SA Forums user, and never heard the depths of his bad choices or harmful behavior. I appreciate this full perspective. It's weird because I still admire him. Not his narcissistic, violent, or neglectful side. But as a creator and comedian. When I heard of his suicide, I oddly felt the most hurt I ever had about news of a death that wasn't a family member. That said, he dug his own grave and he earned his spot in it. If only things could've gone a different way, but that was all up to him.
I started using 4chan in roughly 2008-2010. I genuinely thought 'Something Awful' closed around that time
You have always made the best video essays on this entire platform in my opinion, and this is probably the best one yet.
Thanks for making this video. Somebody needed to document it, and you did a great job.
PilotRedSun, Boards of Canada, WORLDCORP!? BASED. Gotta love how universal of an experience the internet can be; you can tell exactly what era of the internet resonated with someone via music alone.
What an _awful_ documentary!
Seriously though, this is very interesting. Thank you for preserving the history of this internet.
Ha
I was going to make a joke about ‘this internet,’ but then I realized that multiverse theory means there are a billion different internets…
*shudders*
@@greablood1072 I was saying "this internet"' to refer to how different it is then and now, so the old one is practically a different beast. Also, multiverse theory is really stupid. It's closer to a real life headcanon built on a pile of assumptions than a true scientific theory.
Still find it funny that he kick out the "undesirables" only for them to create an even better version of his website and be relevant to modern times
Better? It's actually worse than before. The Goons and Troons ironically became the Nazi Fascists they reee about, and any dissenting opinion gets you permabanned. Heck, they will actually try to hunt you down.
@@BimboBagginsyt I think "better version of his website" is a reference to 4Chan, which I'd argue is still an incorrect statement in terms of quality.
yo, sidenote, LOVE the gfx and editing. I can see you're super inspired by HWD and I'm really happy to see that specific niche of design branching out into more places. Hopefully it becomes more and more common!
edit: watching further, even hearing music from HWD - this feels like a bigass episode of HWD that is a serious documementary. I like it.
this comment is how i figured out he used worldcorp music
Extremely underrated channel. You make some the best docu content on the platform and should have views in the mils.
of course if you talk about lowtax, you HAVE to cover shmorky
Would he be able to say anything that hasn't been said before? Would he bring up that crazy lady that clogged up the thread of Kiwi Farms?
Look up the Mad at the Internet video on Shrmorky, if you haven't. Null himself did the video.
AND Richard "Anotherknothole Resident" Kuta. He was completely INSANE.
My name is Lowtax, Admin of Admins;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Underrated comment. Beautiful.
It boggles my mind that there is an irrefutable butterfly effect that starts at Rich shitposting about a shitty co-worker and ends with an American president calling for a siege against the capital building.
Yeah it really is absolutely insane. Some dropout nerd gets fired from his dead-end job writing Quake articles and so creates a site that spawns 4chan, QAnon and /pol/ and influences an entire election.
This was super well put-together, amazing video
Uwe Boll may make some shitty movies, but him knocking out 5 critics is fucking hilarious
I was at the 2005 UIUC talk, and at the time it really seemed like Lowtax had a good thing going and we could all be proud of our tiny roles in making Something Awful what it was. Funny that it was probably all downhill from there. I remember the last time I talked to Lowtax it was when we had briefly played EverQuest ][ together as part of the (predictably) game-largest guild Clan Banhammer. He and I adventured for a while, having what I thought was a great time, but at the end he seemed even more miserable than at the start. I remember thinking maybe his trademark cynicism-and-anger-based comedy was clearly not as much an act as I had assumed.
Things started going downhill in 2008.
He and Megan had a great thing going. He REALLY did LOVE her and was honored to be a Father.
What a tragedy. This is a great example of how self loathing pointed outward will completely destroy everything in life. Literally everything
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Lowtax The Fool? I thought not. It's not a story the Normies would tell you. It's a Goon legend.
Excellent documentary, I had no idea of some of this stuff that happened later down the line.
Shame I still have such good memories of the stuff these guys had a part in. Now they don't hit the same.
Something Awful was a huge part of my mid teens to my 20s. Even in his decline, Rich wrote the funniest review of Revolution 60 on Steam. It's a bitter swallow, but not wholly unfathomable, that he became the same Internet silly person he used to mock 20 years ago. And for him to take his own life to weasel out of a divorce settlement instead of being a man for the sake of his kids...I have no words for that except "low, totally low."
The inevitable end for all those self proclaimed "Grumpy bastards who tell it like it is"