Something Awful
You might remember it as Photoshop Phriday
The archive has not found a surviving copy.
2001·Early web, before YouTube·informative
The comedy site and forum where a startling proportion of internet culture was actually invented.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- Photoshop Phriday
- Spread in
- 2001
- Began as
- A web page
- Format
- Phenomenon
- Made by
- Richard Kyanka, known as Lowtax
- Where it started
- An American comedy website with forums, founded in 1999
- Origin
- Not an upload originally
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
A comedy website started by Richard Kyanka in 1999, and behind it a paid forum whose members called themselves goons. Its recurring features — Photoshop Phriday, Awful Link of the Day, the front-page reviews — set a tone of practised cruelty and enormous inventiveness, and its ten-dollar registration fee kept out exactly the kind of drive-by posting that later sites drowned in.
The forum still runs. Its cultural centrality ended when the things it invented outgrew it, and its founder's later years were troubled and publicly so. What it demonstrated is that a paywall and heavy moderation could produce more creative output than an open site, which is not the lesson the following two decades took.
Why it matteredWhat changed
A comedy site whose forums charged ten dollars to join is where the image macro, the Let’s Play and Slender Man came from, and where the founder of 4chan was a member first.
TimelineIn order
- Made
Richard Kyanka founds the site.1 What else happened on 16 November
- Later
The forums begin charging for access. In the same year the image macro originates there, as a forum feature Kyanka adds.1
- Made
Slender Man is created in a thread on the forums.1
- Later
Kyanka sells the site to a long-standing member and moderator.1
- Later
Kyanka dies.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asSomething Awful started 4chan.
Actually4chan was started by one of its forum members, not by the site.1
Commonly remembered asAll your base began there.
ActuallyThe forums spread it. The source does not say it began there.1
What it createdWhat came out of it
- The trend it started 4chanPhenomenon · 2003
Its founder invited the first users from a subforum of Something Awful.
- The phrase it gave us Chuck Norris factsPhrase · 2005
The jokes first appeared on the Something Awful forums early in 2005.
- The meme it became The image macroMeme · 2007
The term was coined on the Something Awful forums, where a macro was a short text entry that expanded into a stock image.
- It became drilPost · 2013
Before Twitter he posted on the Something Awful forums under the name “gigantic drill”.
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later · the upload that made its maker known
This began as a web page, not as a video. Originally published on somethingawful.com.
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This began as a web page, not as a video. Originally published on somethingawful.com.
Created by Richard Kyanka. Established by research, not by who posted the copy shown here.
ConnectedFollow it further
- It helped spread All Your Base Are Belong To Us2001
The phrase was spread through the Something Awful forums.
- It helped spread LolcatMeme · 2007
Forums such as Something Awful spread the images, and the picture that launched I Can Has Cheezburger was reportedly taken from it.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things