what happened to something awful was really a microcosm of what happened to the internet at large. as a couple people have mentioned, early 00s SA was heavily moderated - you'd get banned for low effort posting, not using your shift key, spamming memes (they were called catchphrases and image macros back then) and so on. however the climate was basically apolitical aside from that mix of Jon Stewart-esque nerdy snark and "logical" atheist libertarianism that was the house ideology of every internet community at the time.
as the story goes, sometime in the late 00s the forum was taken over by so-called "catlady mods" who probated people for saying bitch and whore, banned the "post your favorite tits and ass" threads and changed the atmosphere of the forum from locker room shit talk to a boring feminist lecture. or if you talked to someone else, they might say that the community matured and disavowed its problematic past, and the backlash against "catlady mods" was nothing more than misogyny. if this sounds familiar it's because the same story happened 5 years later with gamergate and a lot more people cared.
this image would get you banned in 2004
within the same timeframe as the supposed catlady invasion, the helldump subforum opened. helldump was a place to mock and flame other forum members. in the beginning most of the posts were making fun of pedos, furries, general sex freaks and massive sperglords. posters were encouraged to find people's accounts on other sites and share their gross selfies and bad fanfiction. it was very much like kiwifarms, the main difference was that helldump didn't allow actual doxing. as time went on they ran out of loli addicts and yoshifuckers and started to turn their sights on posters with the wrong opinions and subcultural signifiers (the same thing happened to KF 10 years later). it's important to realize that the "SJW vs. Nazi" narrative hadn't fully solidified yet, so what helldump posters were railing against wasn't exactly bigotry. it was
gooniness.
"goon" is slang for a something awful poster. the stereotypical goon, much like the stereotypical 4channer, redditor, or agora road traveller, is an overweight, unattractive white male who is a little too old to be spending all of his time on internet forums. he is socially awkward and probably has aspergers. he has an inflated sense of his own intelligence and often boasts about his IQ score even though he has achieved nothing of note in his life. his hobbies include gaming, programming, consuming internet pornography, and maybe guns. he might call himself a libertarian or not mention politics at all. he frequently engages in casual racism or sexism, but this is a reflection of his shelteredness and poor luck in dating rather than the inevitable result of being born a straight white male. above all, the goon is
sincere. he discloses his autistic obsessions and the humiliating events of his life in detail. by mocking this image of the Ur-Goon with detached ironic humor, the helldump poster positions himself as its opposite: a charming, attractive, cultured man with a diverse and fulfilling life.
image search result for "goons.jpg"
helldump got closed after a couple years for becoming a toxic pit of infighting, but its legacy lived on. the early 2010s movement of Extremely Online feminism and social justice, propagated by sites like jezebel, xojane and wehuntedthemammoth, was deeply intertwined with this sort of mockery of "gooniness" (later, "inceldom"). many former helldump superstars became buzzfeed writers and twitter bluechecks. this of course paved the way for gamergate and the great SJW vs. Nazi wars.
if the CIA wrote a manual on how to disrupt internet communities, i don't think they could have done it better than this. the narrative makes every post a political act, every forum a political space. you don't post in the Tits and Ass Megathread but you don't really care if it exists? don't you realize that you're promoting misogyny, objectification and rape? what are you, a MRA PUA nazi incel sperg? fuck you, you're not invited to our offsite. you're kinda disappointed that they deleted the tits and ass thread? well come to
our offsite for complaining about the mods, yes we say the gamer word every 5 minutes and have heated debates about the jewish question, but everyone on the forum already thinks you're a nazi so what's the difference? every website is like this now.
i looked at the forum mentioned in the op and it seems ok if a little bland. if they think agora is toxic and don't want to link to it, that's fine and it's their right. i wouldn't tell everyone i know that i post here because i think many people would have the same reaction. but what i enjoy about this forum is that for the most part people can share differing opinions without being total dipshits about it. i am not compelled to censor myself or to be overly edgy to scare off the morality police. i can be sincere. there is nowhere to be sincere anymore.
