EFFORTPOST KEYED EFFORTPOST The story of Lowtax

Rdrama.net is, for many of us, a very special place that is unlike the rest of the Internet. It has the soul of the old web, and it's own brand of humor that can't be found anywhere else. The site's main jannie, Carp, is genuinely hilarious and adored by the community. Despite the constant shit flinging and sneeding, there is a deep feeling of unseriousness here that is refreshing in a world that takes itself too seriously.

This article is not about this gay butt site, however, it's about another site that took the internet by storm in the early 2000s and was the genesis of many extant aspects of Internet culture. It's the story of the man who made it possible, and how his internet fame ruined him.

In November of 1999, a man by the name of Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, a dropout from Vanderbilt University, would get fired from his job as a quake gaming journo for making fun of an old r-slurred coworker of his. With his newfound free time, he would begin to write articles and publish them on his fancy new website,

SomethingAwful.com.

SA began as a sort of ripoff of Maddox's "best page in the universe" with edgelord articles being posted nearly daily to the front page. SA had a forum where readers could comment on the articles, and it quickly drew a large following of the early denizens of the Internet, which were mostly neckbeards and edgelords. In a few short years, the forum had become more popular than the front page, with a very active community of "goons" that would create content in the forums that would feature on the front page. In 2002, Rich began charging users a $10 fee to access the forums, and the users obliged, as the fee deterred trolls and stupid children from pooping up the site. You also had to pay 5 bucks for a profile pic, but you could anonymously spend 5 bucks to change another users pfp as well, which was funny. Lowtax also banned l33tsp33k on the forums and required people to write in complete sentences.

The community became a massive success, and eventually grew to over 100,000 users. Memes, raids, "let's play" videos, and even 4chan were born from SA. Lowtax was making six figures just off of registration fees, and at this point, was still in his 20s. He had money, time, and a massive community that loved him. What could a man with so much potential do next?

Lowtax decided to start banging the female users of the site, known as "Goonnettes." In 2005, he got one of them pregnant and got married to her shotgun wedding style.

In 2006, Lowtax would have a year that would begin the downward slope of his life. Two major events would change his relationship with the site.

In March, Lowtax posted a thread to "General Bullshit," SA's general discussion board, talking about a particular brand of juice that he liked. It was a brand of "Mangosteen" juice (A mangosteen is a small purple fruit from southeast Asian btw). The users quickly realized that this was an affiliate marketing link and teased Lowtax, who reacted by throwing a temper tantrum, calling everyone cute twinks, and then deleting the post and banning everyone that made fun of him. This really soured many users of the site to Lowtax, who before this time was seen as a lovable goofy site admin.

Things got worse later that year when Lowtax would publicly accused a shitty movie director named Uwe Boll of being a child molester. Uwe had been organizing an event to box the critics of his shitty movies, and asked Lowtax if he wanted to box him. Lowtax agreed, and the two would meet in September of that year, in a shitty events center in Vancouver. Lowtax would get his butt kicked in this event, which would stream to 7000 viewers (which was unheard of in 2006. he would then sneed in the parking lot after the event in a post fight interview.

Between this incident and the Mangosteen debacle, Lowtax would post much more infrequently to the site, as he wasn't really able to live those two things down. He would begin renting a shitty strip mall office, which would be the HQ for SA. He supposedly rented the space to run the site, write articles, and make content with animator and best friend, Shmorky. Usually though, Lowtax would mostly go there to get high and stay away from his wife, who now had two children with him.

Lowtax's wife was devoutly religious, whereas lowtax was a neckbeard atheist. As Lowtax spent less time with the family, his wife would begin teaching Sunday school, much to the chagrin of Lowtax. The two would fight about religion, Lowtax's lack of doing anything other than being a drunk r-slur, and the tension would culminate in a physical altercation in 2010. At this point, his first wife would file for divorce.

The site itself, SA, was beginning to lose it's relevancy as other platforms rose in popularity. The company that went on to buy reddit offered Lowtax 14 million for the site in 2007, but he turned it down, as this site was his life's work and the community were HIS people, right?

Back on SA, the makeup of the community had begun to shift dramatically. Starting in 2008, a Kenyan man named Barack Hussien Obama ran for president against crippled war hero John McCain. The goons that supported McCain decided to wager their accounts on the election results, and after McCain lost, many of the goons that supported him (chuds) were banned from the site and never returned.

Then in 2010, a game called Dangan Ranpa released. It's an anime game about murdering teenage girls, so naturally, it was a smash hit with the s on tumblr. SA was one of the first places on the web to feature "let's play" videos. Lowtax was pissed that these tumblrites were watching his premium SA content for free, and put the "let's plays" behind a paywall. Tumblrinas needed to buy a forum membership to view the "let's plays," and many of them promptly did and never left. The word "" comes from the words and goon, and originated on SA. There was also a dedicated politics board called "Laissez Faire," but the users from this board would brigade other boards (especially the chud board, "FRICK YOU AND DIE," or FYAD), so Lowtax decided to delete the Laissez Faire which was essentially a leftist containment board) and thus, a somewhat apolitical forum culture was permeated with a leftist political slant that continues to this day.

As for Lowtax, he wasn't doing so good. He had started a shitty gaming channel called "gaming garbage" that never took off. By 2014, registration fees had dropped significantly and would not recover. His site was still running on 2002 era software, and he was too fricked up all the time to really address any issues with it. Also in 2014, Lowtax fired Shmorky, as he was starting to trans out and was doing shit like wearing a cape and a yarn wig and speaking with an extremely creepy high pitched voice. He had a schizo gf as well, and posted a video of her having an actual schizoid attack to SA, which caused the community to disown him.

In 2016, Shmorky was outed as a diaper furry scat fetishist libertarian (really) and disappeared from the internet forever (people think he killed himself). Lowtax was beset with anger, as he had allowed Shmorky, a man who was once his best friend and someone he trusted, around his children. He took to the SA forums to talk shit about Shmorky, as he needed the cathartic release of bullying this wierdo, but the users mostly defended Shmorky because he is "non-binary" and if someone is LGBTQIAA+, cannot be made fun of even for being a sick frick.

Lowtax had realized that he had lost the community that he cared about. These new users were gay r-slurs and not cool and all the real neighbors left long ago. At this point, Lowtax decided to make a change and fix the site, but the rot was so deep it couldn't be cut out at this point. He did weird shit like segregate all the black users to a board called "negrotown." (Lmao)

In 2016, Lowtax would go to Canada to frick another goonnette. While there, he would meet Ashli, his soon to be second ex-wife. He flew her back to his hometown in Missouri and the two would be wed shortly thereafter. Lowtax wouldn't bother to complete her residency paperwork, making Ashli technically an illegal immigrant.

Ashli was not a goon, but she believed in Lowtax and though SA could be great again. He made her a mod, which pissed off the other mods, but the users seemed to actually like Ashli. She recommended that Lowtax make a patreon to raise money for SA. He already had one, so he marketed it on the forum and was began making like $15k a month from his paypigs (who could give a shit about Lowtax but like using the site.) She really wanted to light a fire under Lowtax's butt, but much like his first wife, found herself caring for a lazy, drug addicted manchild who spent his time and money on dumb shit, like rented sports cars and luxury cakes. He chose to bask in the success of his youth, which had already faded, and a rift began to grow between the two. In 2019, Lowtax would take a "business trip" to frick a 25 year old BPD slut for a month. He would leave his wife and child in the midwest, with no money or car, in the middle of the coldest time of year. When he returned, his house was empty, as Ashli had escaped to a woman's shelter with the help of Lowtax's first wife. Lowtax made an angry facebook post accusing his soon to be ex-wife of kidnapping their child, further drawing the ire from his community. His eldest daughter contacted him asking him what his problem was, with Lowtax telling his teenage daughter to go frick herself. This would be the last time they spoke.

The slut Lowtax hooked up with was a piece of LA BPD trash named Logan Day. She and Lowtax tried to claim repeatedly that their relationship was strictly professional, but the users of SA knew this was bullshit.

His patreon was bleeding about $1000 a month until he got down to about $7000. Later that year, in july, Logan would accuse Lowtax of hitting her in a strange Facebook post, and by that time, his community was done with him. His patreon collapsed in a matter of days, and he was left with only a couple hundred a month. With mounting legal depth and no more future income, Lowtax had to make a very painful decision. Below is a picture of his patreon:

In late 2020, Lowtax would sell the site to some twink named Jeffrey of YOSPOS, who was supposedly a crypto millionaire. He got about 400,000 for the site, a bit less than the 14 million he was offered earlier in 2007. Jeffrey would then auction the right to ban Lowtax to a lucky user, and Lowtax, shortly after selling the site, would be banned from his own forums, never to return.

At this point, Lowtax had almost no money, no income, and was in a legal dispute that was costing him thousands. He had lost most of his friends and his family. It was now 2021, and Lowtax was 45 years old with no assets, skills, and with poor health. He turned to doing streams on gaming garbage, his dogshit youtube channel, which would only attract around 12 or so viewers, and he would show up on stream fricked up and incoherent. He did streams where he would eat meat sticks for money, barely making more than a couple hundred at most.

Below was his last stream, Nov 6th, 2021

On November 7th, 2021, the judge in Lowtax's court case against his ex decided the following:

-Lowtax had deliberately spent the 400,000 in 14 months in order to not pay it to Ashli

-Lowtax had physically, emotionally and verbally abused Ashli

-Lowtax had failed to pay the Guardian ad Litem (this is sometimes required in a custody battle, where the child has to essentially be cared for by the court. The guardian ad litem in this case was named Dana Outlaw, which is a cool name)

-Lowtax told Ashli ahead of time that he was going to move Logan in to the house and expected her to "be OK with that."

-Lowtax was ordered to pay Ashli a lump sum of $92,000 (which had been seized by restraining order so Lowtax couldn't spend that too)

-Lowtax was also ordered to pay Ashli $6,500 a month in spousal support for 2.5 years

Two days later, on November 9th, 2021, Lowtax would shoot himself.

His death was announced to the users at SA by Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen, a longtime admin and best friend of Lowtax. His forum mostly dunked on him, and he is remembered for being a colossal piece of shit who stumbled into greatness and squandered it all away.

His family was left with basically nothing. He blew everything on games, luxury $70 pies on goldbelly.com (which is like etsy for baked goods) and rented sports cars. He also spent tens of thousands on mobile games. He also rented his house and had no assets other than something awful, which he had already squandered the proceeds of.

These days, most people don't know who Lowtax is. The only people who currently discuss him are on kiwifarms, and its just to sneed at how much of a piece of shit he was. He really was, too. He left three children and two mothers without a father, and was buried by his mother who was dying of leukemia, and passed away about 4 months after Lowtax did. His oldest daughter Lauren was especially haunted by his death.

He was once seen as a figurehead of internet culture back when it was niche, and nerdy, and kind of a counterculture.

SA is now a dead mall of the internet, with a front page that hasn't been updated in three years.

If you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading this. Today is the 2nd anniversary of Lowtax's death and I wanted to say that I love this site (rdrama) because it reminds me of the spirit of early Something Awful.