somethingawful is the Internet equivalent of a decaying fascist state. instead of there being cars with fins on them on the street, CRT monitors in the offices, and brutalist architecture which touts the righteous goals of the revolution, there's a button for digg (for christ's sake it's 2012) and forums software that would be dark comedy if you didn't have to pay ten dollars for privelage of using it.
there are approx. 3 safe zones for 'being funny' and then the rest of the forum for the most stilted and boring discussion outside of the political discussion board of gamefaqs (i'm assuming this is a thing, and that they love ron paul).
every funny safe zone emulates fyad by sucking its dick as hard as it possibly can, earnestly trying to distance itself from goony stereotypes and fitting them all the more snugly because of that effort. by parroting 4chan memes that are nearly a decade old, people form 'crews' and try to distinguish themselves as funny posters in a cult of personality with richard 'lowtax' kyanka as its head (hello, please join roger ebert's 'tasting things' club... thanks). for some reason the domain somethingawful.com redirects to a deprecated SEO page from 1999 with spam articles made to resemble comedy articles from the same period, mimmicking a style that even idiots like seanbaby and maddox had the good sense to get out of in 2004 or w/e. one must instead type the longer forums.somethingawful.com to get to the only part of the site with any content that has utility.
every thread has a very distinct party line (even threads I agree with, like the aforementioned leftist political ones) which replace the site's earlier ridiculous libertarian leanings with a desk chair maosim that is both embarassing and intellectually dissonant. this is enforced by a report system that you have to pay to be a part of, meaning that the CareHard level is through the fucking roof, especially when coupled with the fact that the only people who volunteer to be moderators are those who are such empty husks that the act of playing authoritarian strong man to a bunch of computer janitors and teenagers is something that they will lovingly engage in for free. proper punctuation and lack of, ahem, 'leet speak' is taken as a point of pride rather than as a point of 'honestly who gives a fuck in this day and age'.
this is all to say that somethingawful is both too big to be useful as a place for humor and too small and old to be useful as a place like reddit, where you click on the links and ignore the dipshit commentary.
ganbare and thanks
Gaming World Forums
Happy New Salt + What's on your mind 2012: CHILL YOUR HEAD
