ex SA forum goons almost always have a "gee-willikers, we sure got up to some wacky hijinks on somethingawful dot com" and yeah, I spent a lot of time there in my early 20s because there was nowhere else like it on the internet. it was almost singularly responsible for converting me from a soft republican into a hard socialist because of the political bent of the community
but almost no one aside from colin spacetwinks is ever forthright about how some of the fucking nastiest people you can imagine would congregate there, mostly via the fyad subforum. whenever anyone from that side of the forums broke containment, it would be to make unfunny driveby "ironic" shithead comments and they'd have more or less diplomatic immunity because the old guard admins were secret bigots who loved that garbage
when the gbs (general forum) mods started actually punishing them for being fucking bad posters, they threw a fit and got lowtax to implement a no-rules rule for gbs that turned it into 4chan-style racist, homophobic, transphobic hellhole and they declared this an absolute success. I imagine there was a demonstrable drop in forum population after that because I noticed a ton of the frequent nicer people mentioned on other platforms that they were done with the forums. I certainly was
there was one incident a bit before that which was a real "questioning my faith in humanity" moment in one of the gdq threads. one of those driveby shitposts from a fyad asshole which was so shockingly mean-spirited that it's gotten lodged in my brain permanently for the rest of my life. I genuinely don't recommend reading it
paraphrasing, of course. I'm not digging up the actual post
gross shit
"can't wait to see the compilation of grown men crying from this year's autism olympics"when I reported it, louisgod—the games forums' biggest prick moderator (trust me when I say there was stiff competition)—quote-replied to the post with "lol someone reported this." everyone else in the thread probably just rolled their eyes and ignored the usual random unhelpful comment from one of the community's untouchables, but it was such a fucking gross sentiment to show towards a goddamned charity event that it's stuck in my craw and I have the misfortune of being reminded of it every gdq event forever. I wish I could memory-hole it because I don't know what purpose it serves me at this point
I occasionally traipse back in every couple years to see how things are going, and it's... kind of better? but still plagued by a subsection of the community who just have a weird disdain for everything and make it everyone else's problem. I remember seeing casey explosion was a frequent fyad poster now? fucking bizarre
what few fun memories I have of that place (mainly getting to be part of the gamecenter cx fansub group for a hot minute) are outflanked by some of the most devastatingly cruel things I've ever read in my life. I'll admit to having pretty thin skin, so your mileage probably varied depending on your disposition towards this sort of thing
