#lowtax

[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

[jtightpants]

[teal-sharky]

So anyone noticed that Elon accepting the martial arts duel REALLY sets him up for an incredibly fast speed run of Lowtax, right? I'm personally incredibly stoked for the finale

[perpetual-lurker]

She needs to Stop writing about mining companies getting land rights to sacred salmon spawning grounds and Start writing the Howard Hughes Speedrun plot

[sweaterkittensahoy]

I am... so out of the loop, and yet intrigued -- who is this 'lowtax' you speak of?

Here's a documentary someone put together that goes into detail.

But, the short version:

Lowtax was the screenname of the guy who created the Something Awful forums. They were a major thing in internet culture in the aughts, and there was a strict 'no hentai' rule because Lowtax hated hentai.

This led to some disgruntled members of the Something Awful community to create 4chan. When people say "What would the world be like if Lowtax didn't hate/ban hentai?" They're wondering if qanon would even exist.

For years, Lowtax had an overall good reputation. He actually shows up in a couple of the early live shows of Rifftrax (from three of the guys who did MST3K), and that group tries to keep their shows at a light PG-13 at the dirtiest. I mention this because I think it shows that not only was Lowtax known, but people really liked his content. He would do fake ads and that sort of thing. Early content creator stuff. His stuff from those Rifftrax shows is goofy and dumb and even cute when he got his daughter's storytelling adventures animated.

But.

But then some personal shit got very, very public (and rightly fucking so), and it turns out he was an absolute fuck of a human being. Abusive as shit. Went so far as to sell Something Awful for next to nothing and then blow all the money on nonsense so that there were no funds to go to his exes to take care of his kids after he took his own life.

[lesbianchemicalplant]

[ID: screenshot of a Jim P Jorps post reading

just as a point of comparison for how absolutely bugnuts the Twitter API pricing scheme is:

the bulk tier of 10,000 calls for $2,500/mo comes out to $0.25/call, and a typical action like a login or posting a tweet involves several API calls, so about $2.50 per single action a user takes

Google's API gateway pricing is free for the first 2 *million* calls, and then $3 for every *million* calls after that: $0.000003 per call, making Twitter 83,333 times as expensive to interact with

followed by a discord message caption

lowtax spinning in his abuser grave realizing he could have charged $2.50 per post

\end ID]

[ghettobillgates]

[theculturedmarxist]

DOOM HOUSE

DOOOOOOOOOOOM

[bugginout-net]

BELIZE

I know some of you have been, I've heard the stories....

It might be a little bit rough around the edges and not everything might work in the way you're used to (or at all) but that's part of the charm isn't it?

[crezth]

The event of what is probably Lowtax’s daughter returning to YouTube to upload some of her father’s unfinished home movies is lifting me into a thunderstorm

[8one6]

[the-deviations]

My god, I think he’s finally figured out how to be funny.

[aristotels]

this will fix me

[jess-or-whatever]

photomatt is not beating the lowtax allegations.

[gothicprep]

people often ask why a lot of prominent lefty users online tend to be disproportionately vicious for no reason. my best stab at an answer here is that a lot of prominent mainstream internet users got their sea legs on somethingawful before moving to other platforms when that website imploded. most notably Weird Twitter, back when that was still a thing in the early 2010s, was full of people like this. many of them have troll’s remorse now, but never really got over those old habits. the bridge they lived under for so long has a bit of a hotel california situation going on with it.

it’s pretty much impossible to overstate how much influence Weird Twitter had on what’s now mainstream internet culture. if you were there, you know what i mean. if you weren’t, you unfortunately have to take my word for it.

people typically cite chap trap whateverthefuck as the genesis point, but there’s more of a history here than that. the 2016 election just dragged it out into popular consciousness.

I could always be wrong, but that’s my best guess.

[familiaralien]

"Gotta swat this trans woman real quick she wished I would slip on a banana peel." -Tumblr's current CEO probably