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Richard Kyanka

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Richard Charles "Lowtax" Kyanka (pronounced [kə.ˈɪŋ.kə]) (born May 11, 1976[1]) is an Internet personality, and owner and operator of the humor website Something Awful.

Origin of Lowtax pseudonym

The nickname "Lowtax" is a reference to Tennessee politician Byron (Low Tax) Looper, who achieved national notoriety at about the same time Something Awful was being launched. In Kyanka's own words,[2]

"Way back during my college days at Vanderbilt University, I almost ended up getting a summer job with the Putnam County Tax Assessor (because I was broke and needed to pay for college tuition). He was a very insane little man who legally changed his middle name to 'Low Tax'."

Something Awful

Kyanka started Something Awful after he was forced to resign from his job at PlanetQuake for writing a derogatory website update about a fellow employee. He moved the "Cranky Steve" personality to his own site, which he called "Something Awful", in 1999.[3]

Originally, the site was limited mostly to personal content, in which Kyanka personally reviewed video games, movies, and comics which he felt were "something awful". However in recent years the site has grown greatly, and now features numerous writers and columnists, putting Kyanka's own writings in the minority. Kyanka is the creator of the characters Jeff K. and Cliff Yablonski, that are featured on the Something Awful site.

Other endeavors

In addition to administrating Something Awful, he also owns the movie publishing company Awful Video, which has released the first and second DVDs of the computer and video game-themed show Mega64. In addition to that, he owns and operates City Name Sports Team, a clothing line that mocks sports fanaticism and team loyalty; and has released his first CD of original music under his ARC moniker, which he derived from his email address at university.[4] He later added Moofwear to this list; a second clothing line featuring drawings by SA frontpage writer and forums member Tom "Moof" Davies. In November, 2005, Lowtax released the DVD of Doom House, a horror movie parody he and fellow SA writer and Internet personality Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen created in 2003.

In mid 2005, Kyanka's musical project ARC released its first CD, Drain. The name of the project has been changed to Central ARC for future releases.

In October 2005, Kyanka appeared at a seminar hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery, at the University of Illinois and showed a presentation on maintaining an online community.[5] In 2006 he spoke in the Master's Tea series at Yale University. [6]

As a writer with an audience of video game enthusiasts, Kyanka has made some mark in video game culture. One of the most obvious references to him is in the game Icewind Dale II where a tombstone bears the inscription "Richard Kyanka - Writer of Humorous Stories."[7]

A character named "Lowtax" appeared in the comic Smallville #11 (based on the show of the same name). The character was named Lowtax by a member of the Something Awful Forums as a homage to Kyanka [8].

On June 20, 2006, Kyanka announced that he had accepted Uwe Boll's challenge to a boxing match, which Boll had issued to all his online critics.[9] This boxing match took place on September 23 of the same year in Vancouver resulting in Lowtax's defeat. Kyanka subsequently claimed Boll had given assurances that neither were expected to actively compete, as it was a publicity stunt.[10]

In 2007, Kyanka joined former Mystery Science Theater 3000 host Michael J. Nelson in an audio commentary mocking the film Troll 2 for Nelson's RiffTrax website.[11]

Personal life

Kyanka announced his proposal to his longtime girlfriend Emily "Integral" Reigel on his website in 2002,[12] but the couple later split.[13] On February 13, 2005, Richard married [14] Megan "crazyellow" Austin, whom he had previously announced to be pregnant.[15] On June 27, 2005, Richard's wife Megan gave birth to a girl named Lauren.[16] Kyanka lives with his wife and daughter in Lee's Summit, Missouri.[17]

Honors and awards

In 2001, Kyanka was entered into the Entertainment Weekly Entertainer of the Year online poll, and went on to receive the most votes. Although he received "thousands" of votes, he was manually removed from the top results by EW, which claimed the many votes came from few sources. This caused an email support campaign, but EW turned a deaf ear, again claiming that "similar phrasing" in the many emails proved that only a few people were sending multiple emails. EW awarded "Entertainer of the Year" to Britney Spears.[18]

References

  1. ^ ""I Am Immortal! I Have Inside Me Blood and Things (Yeah!)", April 26th update". Retrieved 2006-05-15.
  2. ^ "Fark.com forums post". Retrieved 2006-05-15.
  3. ^ http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2873
  4. ^ "ARC CD information page on www.somethingawful.com". Retrieved 2006-05-15.
  5. ^ "Lowtax speaks at the University of Illinois". Retrieved 2006-05-15.
  6. ^ "The Yale Record, Master's Teas". Retrieved 2006-05-15.
  7. ^ "Icewind Dale II - Lowtax reference!". Retrieved 2006-05-15.
  8. ^ "The Awful Forums - I have a feeling this month's Smallville comic will be popular with goons". Retrieved 2006-12-27.
  9. ^ "Uwe Boll Wants Me Alone In The Dark". Retrieved 2006-06-20.
  10. ^ "Uwe Boll Pushing Lowtax's Face In". Retrieved 2006-09-25.
  11. ^ RiffTrax Announcement
  12. ^ ""The Deed is Done", May 3rd 2002 update". Retrieved 2006-05-15.
  13. ^ ""Title Goes Here", January 24 2003 update". Retrieved 2006-09-24.
  14. ^ ""Congratulations Rich and Megan!", February 17, [[2005]] update". Retrieved 2006-05-15. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  15. ^ ""In This Update I Murder My Fiancee and Unborn Child", 11th January 2005 update". Retrieved 2006-05-15.
  16. ^ ""Lowtax Has Been Hit By a Stork", June 28th 2005 update". Retrieved 2006-05-15.
  17. ^ ""What I Learned Last Week, By Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka, Age 26", March 18th update". Retrieved 2006-05-15. ""The Awful Forums - If you are going to Vancouver for the big show, click here!"". Retrieved 2006-09-18.
  18. ^ Entertainment Weekly, "Fan Flare"
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