I am a Horrible Monster and I Pray for Death

I am a Horrible Monster and I Pray for Death

This Thursday I'll be flying out to San Diego and doing a Rifftrax with Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame! Hooray! Go team Something Awful! Basically we'll just be sitting down and watching a terrible movie, making fun of it, recording our lines, and then releasing the resulting mp3 for public consumption. If you never heard of Rifftrax before, think of it like this: it's Mystery Science Theater 3000 without the licensing issues. You rent the movie, you buy the Rifftrax, then you play both of them at the same time. If you're a diehard MST3k fan, you can put your fan club sticker on the bottom right hand part of your monitor while watching the movie (assuming you want to pretend Joel is watching the film and has some incurable muscular disease which prevents him from lowering his left arm).

The only difference between Rifftrax and MST3k, besides the lack of visuals and skits, is the selection of films Mike chooses. Since you have to rent / buy / steal the DVDs yourself, he tends to pick more mainstream movies such as "Firewall" and "Daredevil." It makes it easier for people to find films like this at the local Blockbuster Video, which probably wouldn't carry copies of MST3k-type films such as "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" or "Mitchell."

So how did I go from unfunny Internet has-been to unfunny Internet has-been who is now collaborating with Mike Nelson? I don't know, probably a lack of better judgment on their part. Or perhaps it's part of some new government law which requires my patented brand of non-humor to be evenly distributed even further throughout the Internet, like when they bus inner-city children into suburban schools because that somehow makes everybody involved magically non-racist. Whatever the reason, I'm looking forward to working with Mike and spending time in the recording studio, making fun of a very non-good movie. No, I will not tell you the name of the movie, because it's a terrible secret. I will give you a hint though, one which has nothing to do with the movie and isn't even a clue in any fashion whatsoever: aspirin.

And no, it's not a Uwe Boll movie.

I am Still a Horrible Monster and I Pray for Death

Sometimes running a site like SA is a double-edged sword. On the positive side, I get sent a lot of links to furry pornography. On the negative side, I - wait a minute! That wasn't really a positive at all! I've been bamboozled!

Well on the negative side, some people tend to really, really, really get into the site and the forums, which frankly scares me. Running SA is my full time job, one which my entire career is based upon. You'd think that if anybody should take this website seriously, it'd be me. Unfortunately, some folks on the Internet... well... I don't want to say they "lack lives," but let's sugarcoat that statement and try to soften the blow a little bit. They really don't "have anything to live for."

From: Andrew Not Likely
To: webmaster@somethingawful.com
Subject: Dear Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka

Why are you a neo-McCarthyist?
Banning someone from your forums, a man who has given you physical cash to still be bombarded by an abundance of useless advertisements on your website, solely because he has a fetish that you don't particularly(or myself for that matter) agree with?
That's typically the same garbage the aforementioned man(McCarthy) pulled, absolutely absurd.
I don't have an account, I don't even frequent your site modified to fit requirements of the SS regime, but I think that's absolutely fucking absurd, and you're a joke.
-You know my name. :)
I would approve if your 2 year old died in a gas fire, and you followed suit.
"And as we wind on down the road, Our shadow's taller than our soul."

Let's take a look at the key points here:

1) This person doesn't have a forums account, yet he's so outraged at the fact that I banned a furry from the forums that he just couldn't resist the urge to write me an incensed letter of loathing.
2) Despite the fact that he doesn't have a forums account and he doesn't read the site, he is still so mad that he wrote in to let me know he hopes my daughter and I die in a gas fire.

I won't even get into the whole McCarthyism and Nazism cliche, because this is the Internet and honestly the whole "you run a website therefore you're Hitler" logic has been played out since 1998. But - Christ - getting so pissed off about an Internet forum that you write emails wishing for somebody's two-year old daughter to die in a fire? Are some people lacking the "bad idea" part of their brain which chimes in and shouts "hey stupid! This is a BAD IDEA" before they do something idiotic? How far gone do you have to be to honestly process thoughts like this, ones where all common sense and attachments to reality are thrown out the window, replaced with sensationalism and mindless reactionism? I banned a guy who dresses up like a fox and masturbates to animal pornography, clearly I'm the next Adolf Hitler.

Here's a crazy idea for all you folks who hate me, want me to die, think I'm unfunny, or hate Something Awful for a variety of other perfectly logical reasons: don't read the site. I know, it's a zany idea, but just try it out and see if it works. There are a lot of websites out there I don't like, and I react by not reading them. If I do not like somebody, I don't go out of my way to contact them, since telling somebody to die on the Internet is about as effective as printing out a photo of them and drawing a big sloppy penis in their mouth.

Life's too short to get all worked up and furious over Internet sites. Get a grip, get a sense of humor, get a foundation in reality. If you discover a website like SA has so much control over your life that you're finding yourself getting worked up into a righteous fury and drawing comparisons to Hitler, perhaps you need to take up a hobby or increase your Xanax prescription or something.

It's the Internet. Who the hell cares?

- Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)