WikiFur - User contributions [en]

Something Awful

2005-12-28T09:38:26Z

69.21.136.234:

'''Something Awful''' is an internet community owned and operated by [[Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka]]. Among its users are stereotypical forum members with a somewhat higher sense of collective intelligence and pretentiousness than the average forum grouping. (For example, "GameFaqs.") It ranges from adults to teens, talented artists to talented writers, and also very avid gamers.

* '''Address''': http://www.somethingawful.com
* '''Motto''': ''The Internet Makes You Stupid''

However, among these users lurks a minority dark-side which has gotten the website its reputation in the furry fandom, with ridicule of the furry community, including [[trolling]] -- sometimes organized -- and harassment of users themselves in places such as [[LiveJournal]], messageboards, and various furry websites. This includes [[WikiFur]] itself, which was vandalized on various pages with defamation toward the furry fandom or repetitions of the phrase "SOMETHING AWFUL DOT COM." While the administrators of the [[Something Awful|SA]] forums do not condone the actions taken-- and do take action to remove these troublemakers from their ranks when they deem necessary-- many [[Goons]] take it upon themselves to invade websites, forums and LiveJournals when they are linked on or off the forums. (Examples of off-forums organized invasions includes the now defunct [[SALJ]].) There are three instances where Goons "infiltrated" a furry [[convention]]. 

To many on the Something Awful forums now, however, furries are considered "old meme." But there are still members who continue to "hop on the bandwagon" and attack the fandom.

== Involvement with Furries ==
=== Conventions ===
==== Texas Furry Con 2004 ====
A newer SA forum user started a post detailing her first visit to a furry convention then decided it wasn't for her. She left a picture of a detailed pineapple hand-grenade which stated, "WE ARE WATCHING." [[Image:Sawarning.jpg|right|thumb|Not quite the SA grenade picture - this one has ID]]

Later, SA member Vorpal Bunny, a resident of Texas, decided to pay the convention a visit, 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, forcing them to stay until they signed a form which stated they would not release anything to the Internet. This, of course, didn't happen.

An account in his own words of Vorpal Bunny's visit can be found online [http://www.viewfromuphere.com/writings/000122.php here].

The picture linked is not the actual picture at the con. It 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 handgrenade, it is not a universally recognized symbol of the website. 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.

==== [[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 [[Something Awful|SA]] [[Goons]] for supposedly "having no life."

==== Anthrocon 2005 ====
An individual named [[Mix]] decided to bring an old 1960's-style '8mm Kodak Ektachrome' video camera with him, labelled with a bumper sticker that read "LOL INTERNET." He wore a t-shirt with his [[fursona]] on the front-- a blue hyenataur-- with his profile and "SomethingAwful.com" above it; on the back, a blown-up version of the Something Awful grenade logo. He visited the convention [[Con Ops|Operations]] office on the Monday morning of the convention, gave out 'I <3 VCL' buttons, shouted "SomethingAwful!" and ran out.

While many consider this behaviour that for a ''Something Awful'' [[goon]], Mix denies his involvement with the site, saying that he was taking pictures and filming for a personal art project, and that the actions he took on that day were a joke and something he regrets.

Later, a [[Talk:Mix|heated debate]] arose over the inclusion of the above events in WikiFur. In fact, the matter tended to be taken far more seriously by those who heard rumours of it than those who were there at the time. [[Xydexx]] had this to say:

:''To be honest, I didn't think he was doing anything really malicious. I mean, he gave me an [[VCL#buttons|I <3 VCL button]]. That was kinda nice. The worst he did at AC was exercise poor judgement, that's all. Everyone makes mistakes.''

=== LiveJournal ===
==== SALJ ====
[[SALJ]], or "[[Something Awful]] LiveJournal", was a LiveJournal community which trolled pretty much all of LiveJournal. From autoerotic asphyxiation communities to zoophile communities, they attacked them all. While not the main focus, one thing they did attack were other furry communities.

=== 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 #dragon_yiff. What happened was enormous amounts of spam with constant barrages of various catchphrases from the [[Something Awful]] forums, such as the ever infamous "SOMETHING AWFUL DOT COM." The users, however, when everything calmed down, blamed it on [[Sibe]].

=== Awful Link of the Day ===
For those of you unfamiliar with "Something Awful", it is a site that specializes in "really bad stuff." One feature is called "The Awful Link of the Day," 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 fetish artist's website or community, such as [[vore]] or [[babyfur]], will pop up as the target. It was probably inevitable that a Furry themed webpage would eventually fall prey to this. On July 16th, 2000, the web page of [[Tom Foxx]] was given the "Awful Link of the Day" treatment:

: ''[http://homepages.go.com/~tomfoxx/ The Foxx's Den] (down, [http://web.archive.org/web/20000617060945/homepages.go.com/~tomfoxx/indecks.html 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."

The resulting discussion has, unfortunately, now expired from their forums.

==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 [http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1642602 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, their attempt to stop WikiFur backfired; the actions of Something Awful actually increased the visibility of WikiFur, and this attracted more legitimate users than SA could bring vandals. In hindsight, their actions were actually beneficial.

:''[[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]]: As they say, the only bad publicity is no publicity!''

== Furry involvement with Something Awful ==
=== 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. [[Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka|Lowtax]], after getting rather annoyed with having the obtuse-humored subforum filled with even more horrendous furry spam, created the Furry Concentration Camp, a subforum which acted much like FYAD, but disconnected furries from the main forum. The furries who spammed-- and many others who didn't, but were labelled anyway for humorous effect, such as user Procrasturbator-- were placed in this subforum because they were incredibly annoying. It also proved to be a place where members of FYAD could come in and ridicule other furries for their own humor. 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 [[Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka|Lowtax]] deleted the forum. Sibe and several of the furries participating in the furry concentration camp were later banned for being a nuisance.

=== #safurs ===
<nowiki>#safurs</nowiki> was an [[IRC]] channel on [[FurNet (IRC)|FurNet]] started by a [[furry|fur]] named [[Jazzy]] around 2002. His SA forum handle was JJcoolJ, which is a play on the name of a famous rap artist, [[Wikipedia:LL cool J|LLcoolJ]]. While on the SA forums, on various occassions-- 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 <nowiki>#safurs</nowiki> as a doorway to [[trolling]] other channels on the network. Snowpony began monitoring the channel by idling and logging. Annoyed, the users of <nowiki>#safurs</nowiki> took on a rule of "no idling," which was typically only enforced on Snowpony, and [[Wikipedia:kickban|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, <nowiki>#safurs</nowiki> began to mock and taunt Snowpony constantly, perpetually kickbanning her every time she joined the channel, causing another round of [[Wikipedia:akill|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.

'''See also''': [[Anthrochat]].

=== Furry "Goons" ===
A "furry [[goon]]" is someone who is actively involved with both the Something Awful Forum and the Furry Community. Some furry goons are given "immunity" at Something Awful, but the large majority simply keep quiet. One furry goon has estimated that 20% of SA members are furries, but this figure seems too large.

!MESSAGE FROM SENOR LOWTAX: IF YOU ARE A FURRY OR A PEDOPHILE YOU WILL BE BANNED FROM SOMETHING AWFUL FORUMS. FUCK YOU.

=== SA is Not Anti-Furry ===
It seems the SA goons recently made a Web TV station called '''GBStv'''
It contains a slew of content, some are furry (the notable of the furry content on GBStv is the Sam & Max cartoons). At the same time, GBStv airs JJcoolJ's humiliating home movie "Jason's Weekend" which shows how much of a furry faggot he is.

== See also ==
* [[wikipedia:Something Awful|Something Awful]] on Wikipedia

[[Category:Websites]]
[[Category:Anti-furries]]
[[Category:Media coverage]]

Something Awful

2005-12-28T09:36:28Z

69.21.136.234:

'''Something Awful''' is an internet community owned and operated by [[Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka]]. Among its users are stereotypical forum members with a somewhat higher sense of collective intelligence and pretentiousness than the average forum grouping. (For example, "GameFaqs.") It ranges from adults to teens, talented artists to talented writers, and also very avid gamers.

* '''Address''': http://www.somethingawful.com
* '''Motto''': ''The Internet Makes You Stupid''

However, among these users lurks a minority dark-side which has gotten the website its reputation in the furry fandom, with ridicule of the furry community, including [[trolling]] -- sometimes organized -- and harassment of users themselves in places such as [[LiveJournal]], messageboards, and various furry websites. This includes [[WikiFur]] itself, which was vandalized on various pages with defamation toward the furry fandom or repetitions of the phrase "SOMETHING AWFUL DOT COM." While the administrators of the [[Something Awful|SA]] forums do not condone the actions taken-- and do take action to remove these troublemakers from their ranks when they deem necessary-- many [[Goons]] take it upon themselves to invade websites, forums and LiveJournals when they are linked on or off the forums. (Examples of off-forums organized invasions includes the now defunct [[SALJ]].) There are three instances where Goons "infiltrated" a furry [[convention]]. 

To many on the Something Awful forums now, however, furries are considered "old meme." But there are still members who continue to "hop on the bandwagon" and attack the fandom.

== Involvement with Furries ==
=== Conventions ===
==== Texas Furry Con 2004 ====
A newer SA forum user started a post detailing her first visit to a furry convention then decided it wasn't for her. She left a picture of a detailed pineapple hand-grenade which stated, "WE ARE WATCHING." [[Image:Sawarning.jpg|right|thumb|Not quite the SA grenade picture - this one has ID]]

Later, SA member Vorpal Bunny, a resident of Texas, decided to pay the convention a visit, 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, forcing them to stay until they signed a form which stated they would not release anything to the Internet. This, of course, didn't happen.

An account in his own words of Vorpal Bunny's visit can be found online [http://www.viewfromuphere.com/writings/000122.php here].

The picture linked is not the actual picture at the con. It 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 handgrenade, it is not a universally recognized symbol of the website. 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.

==== [[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 [[Something Awful|SA]] [[Goons]] for supposedly "having no life."

==== Anthrocon 2005 ====
An individual named [[Mix]] decided to bring an old 1960's-style '8mm Kodak Ektachrome' video camera with him, labelled with a bumper sticker that read "LOL INTERNET." He wore a t-shirt with his [[fursona]] on the front-- a blue hyenataur-- with his profile and "SomethingAwful.com" above it; on the back, a blown-up version of the Something Awful grenade logo. He visited the convention [[Con Ops|Operations]] office on the Monday morning of the convention, gave out 'I <3 VCL' buttons, shouted "SomethingAwful!" and ran out.

While many consider this behaviour that for a ''Something Awful'' [[goon]], Mix denies his involvement with the site, saying that he was taking pictures and filming for a personal art project, and that the actions he took on that day were a joke and something he regrets.

Later, a [[Talk:Mix|heated debate]] arose over the inclusion of the above events in WikiFur. In fact, the matter tended to be taken far more seriously by those who heard rumours of it than those who were there at the time. [[Xydexx]] had this to say:

:''To be honest, I didn't think he was doing anything really malicious. I mean, he gave me an [[VCL#buttons|I <3 VCL button]]. That was kinda nice. The worst he did at AC was exercise poor judgement, that's all. Everyone makes mistakes.''

=== LiveJournal ===
==== SALJ ====
[[SALJ]], or "[[Something Awful]] LiveJournal", was a LiveJournal community which trolled pretty much all of LiveJournal. From autoerotic asphyxiation communities to zoophile communities, they attacked them all. While not the main focus, one thing they did attack were other furry communities.

=== 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 #dragon_yiff. What happened was enormous amounts of spam with constant barrages of various catchphrases from the [[Something Awful]] forums, such as the ever infamous "SOMETHING AWFUL DOT COM." The users, however, when everything calmed down, blamed it on [[Sibe]].

=== Awful Link of the Day ===
For those of you unfamiliar with "Something Awful", it is a site that specializes in "really bad stuff." One feature is called "The Awful Link of the Day," 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 fetish artist's website or community, such as [[vore]] or [[babyfur]], will pop up as the target. It was probably inevitable that a Furry themed webpage would eventually fall prey to this. On July 16th, 2000, the web page of [[Tom Foxx]] was given the "Awful Link of the Day" treatment:

: ''[http://homepages.go.com/~tomfoxx/ The Foxx's Den] (down, [http://web.archive.org/web/20000617060945/homepages.go.com/~tomfoxx/indecks.html 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."

The resulting discussion has, unfortunately, now expired from their forums.

==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 [http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1642602 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, their attempt to stop WikiFur backfired; the actions of Something Awful actually increased the visibility of WikiFur, and this attracted more legitimate users than SA could bring vandals. In hindsight, their actions were actually beneficial.

:''[[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]]: As they say, the only bad publicity is no publicity!''

== Furry involvement with Something Awful ==
=== 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. [[Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka|Lowtax]], after getting rather annoyed with having the obtuse-humored subforum filled with even more horrendous furry spam, created the Furry Concentration Camp, a subforum which acted much like FYAD, but disconnected furries from the main forum. The furries who spammed-- and many others who didn't, but were labelled anyway for humorous effect, such as user Procrasturbator-- were placed in this subforum because they were incredibly annoying. It also proved to be a place where members of FYAD could come in and ridicule other furries for their own humor. 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 [[Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka|Lowtax]] deleted the forum. Sibe and several of the furries participating in the furry concentration camp were later banned for being a nuisance.

=== #safurs ===
<nowiki>#safurs</nowiki> was an [[IRC]] channel on [[FurNet (IRC)|FurNet]] started by a [[furry|fur]] named [[Jazzy]] around 2002. His SA forum handle was JJcoolJ, which is a play on the name of a famous rap artist, [[Wikipedia:LL cool J|LLcoolJ]]. While on the SA forums, on various occassions-- 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 <nowiki>#safurs</nowiki> as a doorway to [[trolling]] other channels on the network. Snowpony began monitoring the channel by idling and logging. Annoyed, the users of <nowiki>#safurs</nowiki> took on a rule of "no idling," which was typically only enforced on Snowpony, and [[Wikipedia:kickban|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, <nowiki>#safurs</nowiki> began to mock and taunt Snowpony constantly, perpetually kickbanning her every time she joined the channel, causing another round of [[Wikipedia:akill|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.

'''See also''': [[Anthrochat]].

=== Furry "Goons" ===
A "furry [[goon]]" is someone who is actively involved with both the Something Awful Forum and the Furry Community. Some furry goons are given "immunity" at Something Awful, but the large majority simply keep quiet. One furry goon has estimated that 20% of SA members are furries, but this figure seems too large.

=== SA is Not Anti-Furry ===
It seems the SA goons recently made a Web TV station called '''GBStv'''
It contains a slew of content, some are furry (the notable of the furry content on GBStv is the Sam & Max cartoons). At the same time, GBStv airs JJcoolJ's humiliating home movie "Jason's Weekend" which shows how much of a furry faggot he is.

== See also ==
* [[wikipedia:Something Awful|Something Awful]] on Wikipedia

[[Category:Websites]]
[[Category:Anti-furries]]
[[Category:Media coverage]]