#Something Awful

[sreegs]

I reblogged it earlier but I'm glad the Something Awful Forums 9/11 thread was archived because it's an incredibly important slice of internet history. For the record I think 9/11 was thousands of personal tragedies for the direct victims of the attacks but one big national farce that led to America's ongoing slide into fascism, and the nationalism and remembrance around it is a joke especially in the wake of the same amount of deaths every fucking day in the US during the height of coronavirus.

Nevertheless I think it's important that if you do not remember because you were too young or just didn't exist on Sept 11, 2001 to read the Something Awful 9/11 forums to get an idea of what the internet was like at the moment when America changed to 24 hour news cycles and renewed hyper-nationalism not seen since WWII.

This all happened before Twitter, Facebook, before Discord. Before smart phones. Before most people had cell phones. When a lot of people still had dial-up internet, even. Some people in the thread were relying on radio because internet and TV weren't keeping up.

It was a live event of internet denizens reacting to the biggest national event (and among the biggest international events) of the past 25 years. It was also a slice of what the internet was like at the turn of the millennium. Not only that, but people accurately calling out who was responsible, and what would result before the attacks even finished.

Keep in mind that the links that follow contain images of the event, lots of Islamophobia, people calling for the Middle East to be nuked, people blaming Palestine, casual racist and homophobic language (this was Something Awful after all), etc etc. They preserved the first 17 pages which spanned about 24 hours during the events. It's the origin of the "WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR" screenshot.

Links under the fold. I've also annotated the pages with notes regarding the timeline and any posts of interest. Note the thread was preserved in Pacific Time even though the page says times are Eastern. That's incorrect. Post timestamps are 3 hours behind Eastern Time, which is the time zone where the attacks occurred:

Page 1 - Note the first post was edited to include images of the second attack. The thread started after the first plane hit. Second plane hitting the WTC happens here too.

Page 2 - Poster accurately calling out Bin Laden was responsible at 9:14 AM EST

Page 3 - "WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR"

Page 4

Page 5 - First official acknowledgement it was a terrorist attack.

Page 6 - Pentagon hit

Page 7

Page 8

Page 9 - Commercial flights grounded by FAA (Federal Aviation Administration)

Page 10 - First mention of towers collapsing at end of page

Page 11 - More reactions to collapse of first tower. People thinking it was a bomb or yet another plane. Rumors about a fourth plane just missing the White House (these are false and predate the actual 4th plane crash by minutes)

Page 12

Page 13 - By this point there's just rampant speculation about more bombs at the WTC, the US Capitol building being hit, etc (all false). Remember this is all just people reacting to TV news and radio and the rumor mill via phone, AIM, IRC, and maybe text messages.

Page 14 - By this point internet news sites are overwhelmed

Page 15 - Second tower collapses. First acknowledgement of the fourth plane that crashed in PA.

Page 16 - There's an abrupt time jump in the threads, I think it was the result of admins pruning the activity or the SA forums going down. This page starts on 9/12 even though it is page 16. American flag signatures and ribbons start appearing.

Page 17

[jade-the-kobold]

Oh, that tracks...

[facts-i-just-made-up]

What was up with that Slenderman thing anyways?

It's a folklore type monster based on the fear we share across the entire species that we will encounter anything invented by Something Awful Forum users.

[viledictorian]

Stuck Inside Slender Verse

Greetings Marble Hornets and slenderverse people! Behold my offering to you and your nostalgically profitable community! A friend of mine pitched the idea to me, and I owed him for helping me cause the endangerment of the bee species, so he wrote the lyrics, made the story board, I recorder, we both made the art, and all in 20 days! Sorry if the audio isn’t the best. I threw my microphone at the wall in a fit of rage.

[dayfalwastaken]

Notable Slenderman designs from over the years

Something Awful: As the users of the original Create Paranormal Images thread took to calling him, "Poo Poo", the first Slendy on this list is sort of a composite variant of his first depictions. After Victor Surge had made "the Slender Man" people started creating their own photos and a couple even drew him. Designs varied, but many featured arms that turned into tentacles or tree branches, and blank faces with either few or very pronounced facial features. These first drawings gave me the impression that Slendy was a creature that attempted to blend in and look human, but if examined its nonhuman aspects would become apparent almost immediately, empty face notwithstanding. As such, while his suit gives the impression of a well-dressed man, if one looks at it from a small distance they'll note the lack of buttons, pockets and other such accessories, so in a way the suit is like a second skin as opposed to actual clothes. Merely a disguise.

Marble Hornets: The Operator! Version that got many people into the Slenderman mythos, the Marble Hornets rendition streamlined the many variations of the Something Awful forum into a simple yet iconic design. This guy is very tall, and makes it clear that he's the furthest thing from human. Proportion-wise, his torso is not even half of his total height, while his arms almost reach the ground. Weirdly enough, his hands don't seem to have fingers? And look to be morphed into the suit, though they could be wearing fingerless gloves. He has a straight upper body and shoulders, and in most entries has barely if any shadows on his face to enunciate human features. As in, most of the time his face is completely blank, although there are entries where you can spot the outlines of a nose, mouth and eye sockets.

TribeTwelve: To me, the Administrator is a more grounded (heh) Slenderman. If you ignore the times he's shown to tower over humans, this guy, while tall, isn't abnormally long. He even has human-looking skin and visible eye sockets! With regular proportions for a Slenderman depiction, he's pretty tame in appearance when he doesn't have his tentacles or spider legs out. So really, he's just a regular man in black with no face, which makes him a bit more believable but still creepy as all hell.

DarkHarvest00: Gorr'rylaehotep! This dude's like a streamlined version of the Marble Hornets Operator, which was himself a streamlined Slendy. He's like an expected evolution of a live action Slenderman, where his body isn't elongated so much as it's scaled up for him to appear larger. That said, he's in no way thick, being quite thin for a big guy in a business suit. Luckily, that doesn't take away from his scare factor, as he's remains an imposing figure throughout the series... In the shots where he doesn't move too much, that is… Having fewer overall appearances in DarkHarvest00, he's also the most consistent Slendy on this list to keep a totally blank face with no features. Neato!

Slender: the Arrival: This guy isn't slender. Like, at all. He's well-built for a Slenderman and, dare I say, kind of muscular-looking. If you shorten his arms, he's just a big human, but I think that strengthens the unease you have when you see him. The others, aside from the TribeTwelve design, don't really hide their uncannyness. Once you’ve spotted them, you know there's something wrong when you look at them. The Arrival Slenderman takes it a step further. He gets all up in your face, not even stalking you all that much. He almost refuses to blend into the background, opting to terrorize you up close. He doesn't obscure the fact that he's an otherworldy entity that shouldn't exist, and I think that's great. His ragged skin and ears melted into his skull offer him an incredibly distinct look, and given how well the game uses him, he's super scary to play against. He's also among the first Slendermen to feature a red tie, which will go on to be a very popular design choice when depicting this character.

The ways people chose to draw/show/model Slendy have always intrigued me, so I made this lil thing to show off the differences in a few designs over the past decade! I hope you've enjoyed reading through this, and I'll see you next time when I'll draw and analyse five more. Have a good day!

[cybercentric]

Centipede slenderman !!

Drawing this with a bug phobia was…something

[3liza]

put the Something Awful :smug: guy on BTTV

[arconinternet]

P-P-P-Powerbook (Website, 2004)

One of many bizarre sequences of events to originate from the Something Awful Forums. The website is backed up here, and the main story itself is here. KnowYourMeme sums it all up here.

You can learn more about Something Awful's history at Crazy Ass Moments in Something Awful History and the I'm From The Internet podcast.

[nicnavarrocage]

I named this troll after a famous "an hero" who gave birth to a website that shaped memes during the early 2000s. You know who I'm talkin' about.

Also, this might be Something Awful's main trollsona.

[uzworm]

People keep comparing the Photomatt to Lowtax but I'm not convinced Lowtax ever had anywhere near as embarrassing a meltdown as that guy is currently having while supposedly being on vacation

[victusinveritas]

Trotsky returning from the grave periodically to give us webforum rankings and updates was not in my bracket for this year and yet here we are.

[sreegs]

i'm not pointing this out to be cynical i just want to make it clear that the vanilla extract joke from the cake poll spilling over to other polls is nothing unique to tumblr. decades ago this joke was referred to as "comedy option" on polls on the Something Awful forums. it became a regular thing to include a joke option on polls, which was eventually distilled to simply putting "comedy option" as a choice on polls because no matter what, goons would fuck up polls so you gave them a comedy option so they could press a button anyways.

this probably also came from an earlier place before Something Awful. but yeah, history repeating itself. etc.

[forteania]

Found on Something Awful Pokémon Megathread; Hatsune Mimikyu. I love it! (Did I accidentally out myself as a goon?)

[iforgiv3u]

Can any of you guys link me to new, ongoing or recently finished ARG’s?? No qualifications I just need content

Internet horror/unfiction is welcome too!!!

Thanks <3

[master-ultra]

[cosmicsponge2004]