1999 / Web post / Comedy website and forum
Something Awful
A deliberately ugly comedy site turned a recurring pile-on of jokes into an influential community.
The original is hosted off-site; this page provides context and a link to it.
What was this?
Features, Photoshop jokes, and message-board riffs sat together under a proudly abrasive house style.
Why it spread
The site rewarded readers who returned for running jokes and contributed their own escalating versions.
What happened
Features, Photoshop jokes, and message-board riffs sat together under a proudly abrasive house style.
Where it came from
Rich Kyanka founded Something Awful in 1999 as a comedy website; its articles and forums developed their own fast, hostile-to-sincerity comic language.
Why it mattered
Something Awful made the forum itself part of the authored comedy, a pattern later platforms would repeat at much larger scale.
How it spread
The site rewarded readers who returned for running jokes and contributed their own escalating versions.
Keep going
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