Because the Something Awful Forums are such a monstrously huge online community, they’ve had to deal with all sorts of bizarre user‐management scenarios. Banned members returning over and over to annoy people; members stirring up drama, swearing to leave, leaving, then coming back later; and, yes, members dying, through causes commonplace and unusual alike. I don’t think this has happened before, though.
William Freund, known as forbiddenforum on SA, committed double‐homicide, then suicide, with the help of a 12‐gauge shotgun. A week ago he’d been posting on a guns subforum at the SA forums, asking creepy questions about buckshot. Nobody gave him any information that aided his crimes — he was more or less laughed out of the thread — but once someone figured out the connection, the gut reaction was panic: “Okay. Deep breaths, guys. Did we make fun of an autistic kid, tell him where he can find buckshot, then laugh about it?”
Annoying SA members get put on posting probation; really annoying members get banned (they have to pay another $10 to re‐register); hall‐of‐fame idiots get permabanned, meaning they can’t ever register that username again. As tradition, deceased SA members get permabanned in order to retire their usernames. The banlist entry is surreal: among bans for trolling, posting gimmicks, and drunk posting, there’s this little nugget:
