Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died
This isn&#x27;t a joke; I had actually scheduled a lunch with Lowtax for this Saturday.  Despite a (let&#x27;s call it) checkered past, I was extremely excited to meet him, since he&#x27;s been a huge influence to my sense of humor and Something Awful was really important to me as a teenager.<p>-------<p>I had found him on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, and simply sent a message explaining that I&#x27;m a fan, would love a chance to buy him lunch and chat about Something Awful and Gaming Garbage.  To my surprise, he responded back with &quot;sure, I&#x27;d be up for it&quot;.<p>I responded back with &quot;How does early December sound to you? something on the order of December 11?&quot;<p>His response was &quot;shit I dont even know if I&#x27;ll still be alive then&quot;.  This response was a little weird, but this isn&#x27;t exactly &quot;off brand&quot; humor for Lowtax, so I ignored it.<p>I then say something to the effect of &quot;how about something along the lines of November 13?&quot;, which he said was better. He then said &quot;and you have my permission to stab me&quot;.  Again, not off brand for Lowtax.<p>I bought a plane ticket to Kansas City, was ready to fly out this friday.  But I had this deep feeling in my stomach that what he was saying wasn&#x27;t just a joke.  It&#x27;s pretty well documented that he&#x27;s been depressed, and I dunno, upon re-reading his messages a hundred times I got a dark feeling that these might be kind of bad omens. What exactly do I do with this?  I discussed it with my wife and a friend, who weren&#x27;t sure what the best solution was, and I ultimately decided not to say anything.  I figured I&#x27;m just some dork who stalked him on LinkedIn, and I was afraid that if I said anything he would think I&#x27;m weird and cancel our lunch date.<p>And now this shit happened. He finally did it, and now the thought keeps playing in my brain of &quot;what if I had said something a few weeks ago?&quot; I know I don&#x27;t <i>owe</i> him anything, but I can&#x27;t help but have this repeated feeling of &quot;I valued an opportunity to meet my man-crush more than I valued someone showing suicidal tendencies,&quot; and it makes me feel downright rotten. That&#x27;s not the kind of person I want to be, and it makes me feel legitimately sick that that&#x27;s how my brain decided to work.<p>At some logical level I know none of this is my fault really; realistically even if I <i>had</i> said something, I doubt much would have changed, and I doubt I had enough there to get him committed or anything, but there&#x27;s a difference between logically knowing something and <i>feeling</i> something.<p>As it stands, I think there&#x27;s a reasonably good chance that I will <i>feel</i> partly responsible for this for the rest of my life.  This sucks.<p>--------<p>RIP Rich.  I know you had a rough last couple years, you were the definition of a &quot;complicated person&quot;, and despite everything you will be missed.