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Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka, the founder of Anything Dreadful and a crucial impact on aspects of modern online society, has died at the age of 45. The news was originally posted to A thing Terrible by longtime forum administrator Fragmaster, who was a personal mate of Kyanka, and Motherboard managed to affirm with the Lee’s Summit Missouri law enforcement office that Kyanka died by suicide on November 9. 

“I guess I should really preface this by stating this isn’t a joke primarily because I am publishing for like the 1st time in 10 many years or a thing, but I bought the negative news these days right from Rich’s relatives” wrote Fragmaster. “Lowtax has handed absent. I did not question for specifics. I never know information. I do not know what the existing feeling of Rich in this article is. Not below to respond to concerns, I am sharing the information. I seriously dislike to share this information. But there you go. Goonspeed golden manbaby 555s 2 heaven.”

Fragmaster also shared the underneath online video, in which he delivers a fuller tribute to Kyanka, and encouraged individuals to donate to a GoFundMe to assist Kyanka’s daughter.

Kyanka’s influence on the net and modern day social media, great and lousy, is difficult to deny. One thing Dreadful was intended as a comedy internet site, but its origins can be traced back to Quake.

“I dropped out of college my junior calendar year since I hated engineering and took a occupation staying a techniques administrator for the Vanderbilt Eyesight and Exploration Heart,” Kyanka told Vice in 2017. “In my free time I would engage in a great deal of Quake 2 and generate about Quake 2. Close to ’98, GameSpy claimed, “Do you want to operate PlanetQuake?” So I explained, “Yeah, Ok,” and moved to Orange County. I obtained compensated $24,000 a 12 months to create about Quake 2.”

Anything Awful appeared in 1999, meant as in essence a own comedy website and a spot for Kyanka to vent about GameSpy, but with performance that authorized end users to share blogs, shots and shitpost on discussion boards. The motto: “the online can make you stupid.” And it is most likely the shitposting more than everything else that observed One thing Awful—and its influence—explode.

A single issue that would later occur to annoy Kyanka was its position in popularising world wide web memes (he regarded sharing somebody else’s humour as unoriginal), with SA supplying delivery to things like “All your foundation are belong to us” and afterwards the Slender Guy urban legend. Other big facets of SA have been the idea of weekly Photoshop Phridays, the emergence of Let’s Enjoy movies, and being the launchpad for teams like Mega64. The site’s “Fuck You And Die” discussion board is an notorious troll haunt from which online figures like dril have emerged.