Something Awful

Something Awful, also known simply as SA, is a comedy website hosting a variety of content, including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. Since its inception, the website has helped to perpetuate various Internet phenomena, and has been cited as an influence on Internet culture. It was created by and is operated by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka.

Forum members, also known as Goons, range from teens to adults, artists to writers, and gamers.

Something Awful and furry
Some of its users hold up the perceived SA tradition of mocking the furry fandom, including pranks, organized trolling, and individual harassment of users themselves in places such as LiveJournal, message-boards, and various furry websites.

While the administrators of the SA forums do not officially condone the actions taken, and that they almost never take any action unless legal action could be directed towards SA itself, many goons take it upon themselves to troll social media, personal and furry media websites, and/or their forums.

It should be noted that since the meme of Trolling furries has become somewhat passé, there have been increasing numbers of Furry fans that have taken to participating in the SA forums themselves. their motives are unknown, but considering the primarily humorous nature of the site itself, one can only guess that it's for entertainment. When pressed about their choice to participate, most users tend to respond with "it's just an internet forum." Furries that are discovered are usually called out in "Helldump", a subforum used to contain mockery and call-outs of other Something Awful users. Helldump was eventually shut down in 2009.


 * SALJ, or "Something Awful LiveJournal", was a LiveJournal community which trolled pretty much all of LiveJournal. From auto-erotic asphyxiation communities to zoophile communities, they attacked them all. While not the main focus, one thing they did attack were other furry communities.
 * SA IRC - In late 2004, when the SALJ LiveJournal community was still around, many users of the community congregated in an IRC channel. They organized an attack on a channel on FurNet called #dragonyiff. What happened was enormous amounts of spam with constant barrages of various catch-phrases from the Something Awful forums. The users, however, when everything calmed down, blamed it on Sibe.
 * The Awful Link of the Day - The Awful Link of the Day is a daily feature of Something Awful where a particularly awful web page is located and showcased. The websites featured range between horrendously created Tripod websites or the most bizarre of the bizarre forums on the Internet, and sometimes a random furry artist's website or community, such as vore or babyfur, will pop up as the target. Furry-themed websites have been part of the Awful Link of the Day nearly since the site's inception.


 * The Foxx's Den (down, archived) - Since I'm currently at a loss to explain this page (yes, it appears to only be one page), I'll just copy the description that was included in the email: "Gay anime boy goes to fantastical online make-believe land, becomes a gay humanoid fox creature, falls in love with fellow humanoid fox creature, takes care of baby dragons, and puts bad midi music on an already bad site. I think it's about some guy's roleplaying character, but I'm not sure."

The page is long gone. Tom's site was more or less hammered with a combination of hits and hate mail in his guest book. The incident sparked allegations that the site ops were picking on furries because they were gay. Lowtax, the person responsible for the selection, stated that he chose the page because "it appeared to be written by a spastic 10 year old with ADD who was obsessed with becoming a magical humanoid fox and marrying another guy fox. If that's not a ripe candidate for an Awful Link, God help me, I don't know what is." He added: "And to all you furry-lovers out there: you can defend and rationalize and explain the act of pretending to be animals so you can have online sex with people all you want. The fact is that it makes for some hilarious websites, and prime ALOD links. If you don't want people making fun of your abnormal sexual fetishes, DON'T MAKE THEM PUBLIC."

Conventions

 * Texas Furry Con 2004 - A newer SA forum user started a post detailing her first visit to a furry convention (Texas Furry Con), then decided it wasn't for her. She left a picture of a detailed pineapple hand-grenade which stated, "WE ARE WATCHING."

The image above is a recollection of what the initial poster assumed she had left drawn again. The original displayed was left laying around in the dealers room and was given to con staff. The actual drawing had the grenade standing vertically, said "We are watching you!" and did not have the SA insignia anywhere. At the time, staff were perplexed and, although the logo of Something Awful is a hand-grenade, it was not a universally recognized symbol of the website at the time of incident. Equally, this hotel was right across the street from Bergstrom International Airport. Had the drawing identified itself as coming from SA, it would have been seen as harmless.

Later, SA member Vorpal Bunny, a resident of Texas, attended the convention wearing a shirt that said "L33T LIEK JEFFK", and had a URL to the website. After being tipped off by furry and SA goon Labinnah, the con staff proceeded to catch and detain Vorpal Bunny and his pack of friends, attempting to force them to stay until they signed a form which stated they would not release anything to the Internet. This, of course, didn't happen.

Video of the incident can be found here. Also of interest is an opinion article on the matter at nothingkat's website, Something Awful In Texas.


 * Feral! 2004 - A forum user posted about his "ninja infiltration" to a furry convention out in the woods. Sneaking around the camp area, he placed numerous paper flags with the Something Awful logo on various cars. In the thread he posted, he was ridiculed by the other forum goons for "having no life."

On July 16th, 2000, the web page of Tom Foxx was given the "Awful Link of the Day" treatment:

WikiFur
On August 15, 2005, WikiFur was invaded by goons from Something Awful only a few days after the project had been announced. Despite the disclaimer contained in the (archived, archives account required for view) initial thread in the Something Awful Forums ("DISCLAIMER: DO NOT INVADE THIS SHIT YOU FUCKERS. YOU KNOW THAT'S AGAINST THE RULES. JUST POINT AND LAUGH",) vandalism ramped up when the link to the site was chosen as the SA Awful Link of the Day on the same day.

At one point, pages were being maliciously edited every 45 seconds. However, the actions of Something Awful increased the visibility of WikiFur. This attracted more legitimate users than SA vandals.


 * GreenReaper: As they say, the only bad publicity is no publicity!

The "Furry Concentration Camp"
In January 2003, JJcoolJ, a now ex-forum member and somewhat excommunicated from the furry community, organized users from the now defunct #safurs channel on FurNet to spam an internal forum called "FYAD," or "Fuck You and Die" with furry porn.

Lowtax, after getting rather annoyed with having the obtuse-humored sub-forum filled with even more horrendous furry spam, created the Furry Concentration Camp, a sub-forum which acted much like FYAD, but disconnected furries from the main forum, with the apparent intent to discourage furries from spamming the site with unrelated and offensive images and other memes.

The furries who spammed -- and many others who didn't, but were labeled anyway for humorous effect, such as user Procrasturbator -- were placed in this sub-forum if deemed to be incredibly annoying. It also proved to be a place where members of FYAD could come in and ridicule other furries for their own humor. For identification purposes, a "Furry Badge" was tacked to their "Sigs." Many non-furry and furry members of the forum found this highly amusing as, as expected, there were endless pages of funny, dramatic and venting posts.

However, after a few months, the furry goons took the forum for themselves and turned it into their own "Furry FYAD." Much to the disturbance of SA forum regulars, Sibe, under an alias on an account purchased by JJcoolJ and several other furries began to post their collections of furry porn there. In mid-summer Lowtax deleted the forum. Sibe and several of the furries participating in the furry concentration camp were later banned for being both spammers and annoying, disregarding moderator warnings and administration rulings against such behavior.

#safurs

 * 1) safurs was an IRC channel on FurNet started by a fur named Jazzy (SA forum handle JJcoolJ). While on the SA forums, on various occasions-- mainly in the furry porn game when it came around in FYAD-- he would advertise the IRC network as well as the channel.

The channel became popular and well-known among the SA community when the Furry Concentration Camp (see above) was created. Many trolls, goons, other furries and anti-furries alike began to visit, stick around to chat, harass the users for being furries or use the channel as a make-shift portal to troll other channels on the IRC network.

In late 2003/early 2004, Snowpony, an administrator of FurNet deemed Jazzy unstable and therefore unable to keep administrating his channel. Forcibly, ownership was passed on to Bobby (aka Squnq). After getting bored, Bobby passed the channel on to Verix.

At this point, the FurNet administration stated their belief in other users utilizing #safurs as a doorway to trolling other channels on the network. Snowpony began monitoring the channel by idling and logging. Annoyed, the users of #safurs took on a rule of "no idling," which was typically only enforced on Snowpony, and kick-banned Snowpony from the channel. Flustered, Snowpony used her administrative powers to unban herself and rejoin the channel, only to have it happen again. She then proceeded to akill those who had removed her from the channel and rejoined.

For a few days after this, #safurs began to mock and taunt Snowpony constantly, perpetually kick-banning her every time she joined the channel, causing another round of akills and rejoins to occur. Another admin, Simba caught wind of this and began to look into the situation between Snowpony and this IRC channel. Believing that Snowpony was out of line with her actions, in a rather infamous display of quitting her administrative job of FurNet, turned the tables and akilled Snowpony.

The channel is now inhabited and run by furries of the South Australian Furry Community.

Furry "Goons"
A "furry goon" is someone who is actively involved with both the Something Awful Forums and the Furry Community. Being a furry is technically a bannable offense on SA, but enforcement is uneven. Several older SA furs have been given official immunity to being banned for it, the most well-known example of which is Doodles. Other open furries who post on non-furry topics are very seldom banned. Closeted furries who are outed by others are sometimes banned depending on the subforum, mod whim and degree of perceived deviance. Open furries who spark drama about it are always banned, as are closeted furries who out themselves.