Bad Crazy in Internet Space

There is a jagged fissure of insanity which runs through the heart of the EVE playerbase, a kind of feverish bad crazy that you simply don't find in other online games. Oh, sure, everyone knows a tale or two about the Starcraft player who stayed awake for 50 hours and died from exhaustion because he wouldn't stop gaming, or the legions of relatively mundane overweight basement-dwelling nerds that populate the other MMOs that have a lack of perspective that comes from playing in virtual worlds too much. Some people like to point to South Korea's Starcraft tournaments as a sign of abnormality, but sporting leagues are a 'healthy' expression of hobby activity by most standards. No, if you want utter madness, you have to look to EVE.

The Mitanni, head of the Goonswarm Intelligence Agency, tells some tales from the dark underbelly of Eve Online. (previously)
posted by empath on Apr 13, 2009 - 110 comments

A long time ago in an art gallery far far away: Star Wars as Classic Art via
posted by The Whelk on Mar 27, 2009 - 13 comments

"Today we destroyed BoB." The giant sandbox-galaxy of EVE-Online (previously) was rocked this week by a defection from Band of Brothers, the largest alliance in the game (and no stranger to controversy), to the Something Awful-related alliance Goonswarm. The Mittani, the goon spymaster, explains what happened, after all of BoB's assets were given over, the alliance disbanded, and the name reincorporated by goons. Via [more inside]
posted by waraw on Feb 6, 2009 - 207 comments

The Ukrainians have a station about 50 miles south of Palmer, called Vernandsky. We all piled onto the resupply icebreaker ship one weekend and took a trip down to pester them and say hi, sort of a "Howdy, neighbor!" type thing. That was cool, they have a still there and make their own vodka. It's, uh, potent. Tsaven Nava talks to SA about working in Antarctica.
posted by The Whelk on Jan 22, 2009 - 29 comments

Congratulation! You have a fruit! A fruit is not ready currently. You must prepare a fruit. The color of a fruit is green. The color of a fruit to taste great and put inside your body is red.

[YES! A link to SomethingAwful "dot com." BUT.] [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena on Jul 5, 2008 - 64 comments

A few days ago a post appeared on the Something Awful forums noting a curious website called Notes to Mary. The notes are a series of threatening letters from a high schooler named Robert to his crush, Mary. The goons figured out pretty quickly that they had an ARG on their hands and went to work on solving the puzzle. Several other forums picked up on the game. Robert began interacting with players, sending them strange messages and several series of numbers that appeared to be some sort of code. A Flickr pool was started. Players even created an IRC channel to swap clues and information in real time. The Notes to Mary site offered a link to a login. All effort was made to crack the user/pass combo. Finally, several days after the game began, users were finally able to log in. The game was solved. The players would be rewarded for their hard work. Where did the login lead? Here. [more inside]
posted by lysistrata on Jun 25, 2008 - 35 comments

This is why we can't have nice things/people. Jade Raymond is a producer for Ubisoft's new video game Assassin's Creed. Being an attractive woman, Ubisoft decided to capitalize on this fact, leading to sad and pathetic video game coverage of said woman. Then the comic hit. [more inside]
posted by zabuni on Nov 19, 2007 - 364 comments

Not-so-classy movies with classy posters. Previously.
posted by Sticherbeast on May 11, 2007 - 17 comments

Please God, make everyone die. Amen. Todd Goliath, the creator of the infamous "Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them" t-shirts/paintings/flash games/etc. (previously x2) has been discovered to have a piece in a gallery show which is remarkably similar to this Purple Pussy cartoon by Dave Kelly (a/k/a Schmorky) of Keenspot and SA. Not only that, but he's got another character, Eve L. who bears more than a passing resemblance to Lenore, The Cute Little Dead Girl by Roman Dirge. (other examples in the main link -- a surprisingly on-topic thread for SA)
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me on Apr 7, 2007 - 103 comments

Dude gives a homeless friend a camera. Months later, dude receives prints in the mail.
posted by tylermoody on Feb 11, 2007 - 63 comments

Backward Movies. When you play a movie backwards, what you get is not creepy messages, but rather a new movie. For example:
Titanic
An enormous iron ship surges up from the vast depths of the ocean in order to save a large number of people who are inexplicably, and somewhat foolishly, floundering in the water near an iceburg. It then kindly takes them back to Southampton.
posted by CrunchyFrog on May 21, 2006 - 56 comments

Inside the White House .... brought to you by Something Awful. Elaborate SA put-on, or so insane it must be true? I can't decide. DailyKos summary. [morey]
posted by dhartung on Apr 12, 2006 - 94 comments

eBaum's World Sucks. "For a long time ebaumsworld.com has been stealing content and rebranding it from Something Awful and many other sites on the Internet. Everyone is used to having their content moved around on the net, but Eric Bauman obscures any references to the creator in favor of slapping his branding everywhere. And he's gotten rich doing it."

A charming little flash animation from some SA goons.
posted by Brockstar on Nov 7, 2005 - 77 comments

SomethingAwful.com , which has been running on fumes since Thursday because they're hosted in New Orleans, added a Paypal donation link for Katrina relief to their barebones status update site yesterday, raising more than $3,000 an hour. Paypal then froze the account for "suspicious activity," preventing over $30,000 in donations from reaching the Red Cross.
posted by MegoSteve on Sep 4, 2005 - 20 comments

Princess Maker 2 - Stressed out from current events? I doubt the game is as much fun to play as it is to be bewildered by, but either might help. "...is basically a perverse sports management simulation where your entire team consists of a single ten year old girl that you have to raise to adulthood. Much like any decent sports manager game you have to keep track of a nearly overwhelming number of statistics that fluctuate based on training. In Princess Maker 2 these run the gamut from the mundane like "strength" and "charisma", to the droll like "cooking" and "conversation", to the bizarre like "sin" and "temper". "
posted by soulhuntre on Oct 28, 2004 - 13 comments

Redemption? At the risk of linking to another Something Awful thread and incurring their wrath, I think it's important to point this out, especially here. In the matter of a few short days, the users over there emptied their paypal accounts to help someone in need. They raised $12,000 in four days.
posted by crunchland on Jun 15, 2004 - 10 comments

Tales from the Mental Hospital. "I fought them the best I could, but it was no use at all. I was rather quickly overpowered and dragged inside. A smart person would have just given up at that point, but at the time I was by no means a smart person. I started pulling and struggling to get these guys off me. This only made the situation worse, as I was forced down onto the floor of the wing so the nurse could come and administer the ever popular needle of Ativan into my ass cheek. I continued to try and fight, until a rather large fellow named Abdullah decided the best way to keep me down would to be to use his knee to pin my head to the rug."
posted by UKnowForKids on Jun 8, 2004 - 14 comments

An American Ebay seller realises a European bidder is trying to scam him out of a Powerbook (fake escrow site, hijacked ebay account), so he sends him something far better, a P-P-P-Powerbook! Now, for you non-techies here, a factory model p-p-p-powerbook weights half what it's competitors weigh, comes with an A4 screen, the latest in internet adventure software, zero boot time, a fullsize keyboard (often with Key Redundancy^TM) and a state-of-the-art laser bluetooth mouse. This is technology. The seller posts to a forum and amongst the chatter people follow the package via the the Fedex tracking page and some even visit the delivery address (a barbershop/internet cafe) and take photos, video, and a seat for their hair cut. The duty tax on this particular p-p-p-powerbook is around £350 (paid for by the scammer) before he sees the package, and a few days later it's released by Customs as they watch in anticipation. A forum member arrives at the internet cafe, takes a seat and soon the package arrives. The scammer opens the box and there are angry raised voices heard. The barber doesn't understand what's wrong and asks... "Is it broken?"
posted by holloway on May 13, 2004 - 57 comments

"My mother is insane. Like, one of those ladies-you-see-on-the-local-news insane. Since it's inevitably going to come up I'll get out of the way that I am too, but at least I take a full dose of my medication... Anyway, let's take a tour of our house."
posted by tranquileye on Feb 8, 2004 - 75 comments

We had a crack at the Historic Tale Construction Kit a couple months ago in this thread, but Something Awful has done us one better and collected nine pages of raw humor created with the toy. Click! Read! Laugh!
posted by UKnowForKids on Nov 26, 2003 - 16 comments

The greatest pictures ever. According to the refined aesthetes from SomethingAwful, that is. Surprisingly, it isn't altogether unsafe for work, illegal or ultra-offensive as long as you stay on the path.
posted by 111 on Jan 9, 2003 - 22 comments

Quite possibly the most fun I've ever had with Flash. Oh, yes, there's trouble in River City, and only Jesus, Hitler, Ryu, and Custom Guy can save it. Courtesy of the fine folks at Something Awful.
posted by WolfDaddy on Dec 20, 2002 - 13 comments

Do you visit Fark? If so, you'll probably get a kick out of Something Awful's latest site parody.
posted by kingmissile on May 2, 2002 - 12 comments

bin Laden overthrown! New leader promotes peace and better spelling for children!
posted by mis on Oct 13, 2001 - 20 comments

SomethingAwful.com closes its doors... temporarily or otherwise. A similar traffic-induced fate befell our own James Lileks, resulting in a sorrowful, pared down site. Is this developing a trend? Could the Internet be getting too big for its ad-free, humorous britches?
posted by Dane on Sep 25, 2001 - 22 comments

Roofle! The SomethingAwful goons are on a GWB photoshopping spree. Oh man, I haven't laughed this hard in a long time.
posted by Potsy on Mar 30, 2001 - 8 comments

Kids Korner: "Drugs are Nature's Hugs" The real reason you should be using drugs. (A public service announcement from Something Awful.)
posted by Steven Den Beste on Feb 2, 2001 - 8 comments

The infamous Jeff K arrested by the FBI? Is it just a prank? If not, that's some pretty serious stuff!
posted by swank6 on Jan 19, 2001 - 19 comments

Lowtax (of Something Awful fame, and creator of JeffK) on the State of the Internet.
posted by PWA_BadBoy on Jan 16, 2001 - 16 comments

Something Awful is one of my favorite game-related sites, full of goofy immature humor, game reviews, bad movie reviews and more. But the webmaster is having a hard time getting paid for the ads he hosted as part of the Gamefan / Express.com network... (more)
posted by wiremommy on Aug 17, 2000 - 2 comments

I thought this was funny... but I might just be drunk...
posted by Bane on Jul 9, 2000 - 9 comments