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Something Awful
I don't get it and I don't like it.
We've got goons here; what about the website appeals to you if you do visit it?
Comments
Out of curiosity, which sections of the site do you visit? There are major differences between individual board communities after all.
I sometimes like a good laugh at others' expense, and there's some interesting general discussion to go along with it. For the record, I frequent Debate and Discussion (Canadian politics, natch), (recently) TV IV, and Post Your Favorite.
SA is pretty good when it comes to media discussions, that's why I stick to Games (Traditional, and Let's Play too), ADTRW, and TVIV. I stay the hell away from anything like politics, though.
^^ It seems like there's a general goon ethos to it regardless of subforum, though I'm probably wrong about that.
That's something a lot of goons resent, hence the use of "goon" as an insult. It's far from unanimous.
I mostly lurk the Lets Plays. Not a whole lot else appeals to me, though I'll occasionally skim through stuff like their awful political cartoons thread.
As for a "goon ethos", for the most part it's just being exaggeratedly angry on certain topics. Sometimes they're right, sometimes it's kinda obliviously hypocritical. Internet, ladies and gentlemen; nothing new.
I like to read the Fashion SWAT, Awful Anime, and the Comedy Goldmine sections. I also occasionally look at the forums (sometimes they're interesting) and sometimes Weekend Web.
What first drew me in, though, were the fake Something Awful front pages. They don't seem to do that anymore.
In short, I visit it because some of it is entertaining. But I don't actually have an account. I prefer to lurk.
The only thing I ever saw were the LP Archives.
So, yeah, other than that, I don't really go to SA.
I like the LP Archives, though there are too few screenshot+story LPs as opposed to vids with running commentaries.
taught me how to make a makeshift flamethrower from household materials, heh heh.
That's what I said. Too few LPs were they weave a story of their own using screenshots alone, as opposed to the myriad of vids with running commentary. Best example of the former: Animal Crossing.
I'm a member of SA and mostly go around PYF, The Goon Doctor and E/N Bullshit. I think it's cool.
Some LP's really are better off in screenshot form, with small videos interspersed where applicable. Pretty much any RPG ever, for instance.
Has SA ever contributed anything meaningful to the internet aside from Let's Plays?
I can't comment on what the site, as a whole, has contributed, but with as many users as there are, I'd imagine some of them have had pretty big accomplishments. Plus, it's not like IJBM has done a whole lot for the Internet. And while TVTropes has become pretty significant, I can hardly say that tropespeak, and the redefinition of "trope", are positive contributions.
What's redditbomb? That major episode of anti-pedophilia net drama? Or was that against tumblr...
Yeah, it was that.
Are LPs meaningful in any way? Do what individuals of a site accomplish outside of their site contribute to a site's worth? Should we even be interested in dickwaving contests on the merits of websites? The answer to all is no.
^ The bit about individual worth was more to make the point that SA's users aren't uniformly terrible. I get what you mean, though, and I agree with that, if not your way of phrasing it.
I frequent SAL (Science, Academics, and Languages) and ADTRW and lurk on TV IV and PYF. The media forums are good as a whole, I think.
I would definitely stick to the media forums. I think. I know I'll stay away from the music forums, though; I remember looking at the general metal thread and finding nothing I liked and genre elitism.
Well, seeing as someone bought an account for me way back when, I could technically hop in at any point, but I don't really know where to begin.
I tend to stay away from the political and FYAD forums and the forums that I have no interest in.
They were incidental in creating 4Chan, for what it's worth. They're basically the cutting edge of "Internet culture," whatever the fuck that is. There was also that art exhibit thing. And Johnny Five Aces made a cameo in Fallout: New Vegas.
Honestly I like it because it's far more consistent than most other Internet Places. I skim through PYF occasionally, read a couple of threads in D&D, and mostly read BSS, CineD, and NMD. The Comic Strips Megathread is the best thread on the website.
>They're basically the cutting edge of "Internet culture," whatever the fuck that is.
I think that crown (such as it is) might've gone to 4chan at this point.
I don't think Something Awful was ever the cutting edge of internet culture, considering that they actively loathe it.
I'm not entirely convinced internet culture is a thing.
I'm convinced that internet culture consists significantly of bored young men in first-world countries sitting at desks.
I don't think Something Awful was ever the cutting edge of internet culture, considering that they actively loathe it.
I'm not entirely convinced internet culture is a thing.
Well right now we're experiencing the transition between the Fifth Wave of Internet Culture, in which there still occurs a widespread rejection of memes and the most popular websites, but also a notion of anti-anti-conformity in the "who really gives a fuck?" sense, which corresponds to a heightened level of discourse in some areas and lowered discourse in others.
So basically you have the guys reestablishing what actual social justice is and criticizing the Tumblr Social Justice Machine and whatnot while also disseminating information about sites like Reddit in a way that clearly mimics the way Reddit views "mainstream" society, whatever the fuck that is. It's Web 2.0 combined with post-post-modernism.
I'm convinced that internet culture consists significantly of bored young men in first-world countries sitting at desks.
Yes, that too.
Well, how about memes, image macros, FourChan being a wretched hive, that sort of thing? Those aren't things that you see being relevant to the real world, but you see them being discussed and used in the internet often enough to distinguish them in the first place.