|
A Buttery Pastry posted:You're looking at the whole thing wrong if you start with Lowtax getting deposed. The struggle for control over the site started earlier, when Koala's March and her co-conspirators tried to coup the forums. Though that coup eventually failed, and Koala's March left, her co-conspirators largely remained in power. The coup attempt also energized the most "politically active" forums posters, convincing them of the need to defend the values of the forum - no matter what side of the KM coup they had originally been on and what they saw those value as. The revelation* that Lowtax was an abusive piece of poo poo was thus dropped into a reality where forum coups were on the table, and where the admins could expect to be able to mobilize the loudest parts of the forum's population to spread the word and force Lowtax into either selling the forum (easy) or losing a significant chunk of the users and the moderation team (requiring annoying effort to fix). One thing that's worth noting is that Lowtax had admitted to being completely, totally broke and unable to financially maintain the forums. His bank account was negative and the Patreon didn't even cover the expenses. So he sucked it up and begged for money. Goons, being prone to making terrible decisions, upped it over $10,000 a month which more than covered the costs and let him live pretty comfortably. Not long after that the shitstorm followed and the Patreon dropped back down to like $1,000. That was when he was forced to sell as the message was clear; all the people that donated would refuse to donate as long as he was still around. Maintaining the forum was a financial impossibility and he was immediately unpersoned. He'd been disillusioned with the forums for a very long time before that so I don't get the feeling that it was a difficult decision for him. The SA Patreon hasn't recovered so who the gently caress knows what happens next.
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2021 06:15
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 01:37 |
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:Jeffrey has come out and stated that the forums easily pay for themselves. Lowtax was literally just lying to get goons to give him money. Which is not to say that the drop in Patreon income might not have put him on a path to insolvency, since he's apparently not the most financially responsible person. Maintaining the forums financially was never an issue; maintaining his lifestyle of being a lazy rear end in a top hat eating expensive cookies was. He seemed more cripplingly depressed then actually lazy to me. Not that I know anything about crippling depression or anything.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2021 06:41
|
|
|
Sinteres posted:Wasn't he hosed up on booze and pills even long before the back surgery poo poo? I think he mostly just ran into the same problem tons of peope who win the lottery do, where the need to work to make money going away and leaves them with nothing to fill it but a bunch of bullshit and they end up miserable. Not that I think work is the only thing of value people can do with their lives, obviously, but it's demonstrably true that it does provide some sort of structure or purpose to a lot of people's lives, and our society isn't particularly built around the idea of finding those things elsewhere. The whole situation is pretty complicated, really. People want to see things in black and white but it is rarely that simple. This is why I find it frustrating that there's so much LOWTAX = BAD floating around. He wasn't all bad. Nor was he all good. Whether we like it or not these forums exist because of him. Even then though the guy was clearly hurting and the incessant attacks he had to deal with from the shittier elements of the internet certainly couldn't have helped. The motto is, after all, "the internet makes you stupid."
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2021 09:39
|
|