A Year Ago: KSK in Memoriam

A year ago today, KSK Smelled Us Later, Forever. It’s hard to think it’s been so long, or even so short sometimes, but I know that many of us feel that we owe the good folks who Made U—–X Great Before a debt of some kind. We’ve heard from Ape, so let’s hear from some of the estranged former Kommentors on what KSK meant to them, and after a year, what DFO means to them now.

Balls of Steel:

My favorite piece of all time was probably Punte’s Mike Mayock Porn Draft Preview.  I don’t know if that’s the official title,  but that’s what I remember it as.  It was just so wrong and so perfect in all the right ways. He nailed the Mayock speech pattern and the way he describes potential draft picks.  The pictures that went along with the post were also perfect.

Alas,  I tried to find it,  but the pictures were gone and it just wasn’t the same.  That’s why,  kids,  you should savor every moment of happiness.  Also,  kill some trees and print shit out.  I know I saved one of our fellow commentists when he was looking for one of Sarah’s old recipes by having the paper copy.

Also,  take nude Polaroids instead of saving them on your phone.

Lastly,  even though I never read Footsteps Falco’s  CFL Beat,  he inspired my own AFL Beat posts that you all love.  YOU LOVE THEM,  RIGHT?!?!?

Anyway,  I want to thank the creators of KSK for creating this awesome community and inspiring me to write creatively. If anything,  it’s made me a happier person and that, these days,  is actually kind of a big deal. Thanks!

yeah right:

I was originally drawn to KSK because of Drew, I followed him from his FKS days but it was Ape, Ufford, Maj and Punter and the rest that kept me coming back. I think my favorite bits were the Ookie posts. There was one post with Vick holding the “Shopped” in bag of weed were he said “I’m higher than Betty Crocker!” and I pretty much fucking lost it.

I’m in complete agreement with my esteemed colleague Balls of Steel when he mentions the “community” that was there in the Komment section. While I won’t get too deep into the bashing of the former overlords, I will say that I felt like they took something away from me on a personal level and I was and still am pretty goddamn pissed off at that.

Moving on though, I will say that without the shutdown of the former blog I would have never been given the opportunity to start doing my own Sunday Gravy posts which, as you all know by now have since expanded into a worldwide frozen food line, my own set of vineyards and also helped propel me into my next career as a world famous chef and beloved Food Network star.

One thing we have been able to recreate is the sense of community on our site, which I actually feel is stronger and closer than at the previous site. We’re our very own social network! Love all of you good folks.

Beerguyrob:

Like about ⅓ of the current Commentists, I too was a July 31st refugee when the old site blew up. I can’t remember who I was following when I found out about DFO, although searching my email finds some back-and-forth with Unsilent about Top Chef, and Maske sent me a shirt from their Breaking Bad contest. I also tried sticking around the old place, because I (still) enjoyed Stroud’s wrestling coverage, but it wasn’t enough, especially once football season started. The spirit of the Komment Section lived on at DFO, which is where I want to be for my football blatherings.

Plus, no Nat Turner!

Somehow, I worked up the courage to submit a couple of articles to the DFO overlords. They were deemed worthy enough – after some editing – and then I was given access inside the machine. Weekday Open Threads have become my off-season responsibility, and I really enjoy the freedom I get to throw my twist onto the daily news coming out from behind The Shield.

When the regular season starts, I will defer Open Thread duties on weekday game nights to others with more vested interests. I will even try to come up with some original material for publication, based most likely on my attendance at Seahawks games. Oh, and I’m channeling the spirit of Ape and will try to review the MMQB each week. KSK & DFO has made me a more critical consumer of the NFL, and for that I’m appreciative.

Doktor Zymm:

I can no longer watch anything even vaguely Steelers related without thinking THE BEN WANT CHOCO TACO HARF HARF!  I’m pretty sure this condition is permanent.

Nowadays, I assume that all girl scouts have lesser known Great Old Ones in their basement and wish people would use finger guns  more often.  I have a much clearer picture in my head of Goodell, the brooding evil, and I know how Australian football works, kinda!  Can’t wait to dick joke the way through the next NFL season with y’all!

BrettFavresColonoscopy:

I can’t believe it’s been a year. In that time, I’ve switched jobs, traveled a ton, learned about Aussie Football, and seen Peyton Manning’s forehead grow three sizes bigger.

Which is apt because I first found KSK when Peyton Manning and I were hanging out together in Archie and Olivia’s basement. He was livid that they exposed the private writings in his diary and how they got it all wrong about his attitude toward sex.

Eh, fuck it, I’m too fried for creative writing today. I found KSK through Deadspin. The crossposts lured me in AND THEN I WAS HOOKED. From 0-60 in two Rex Ryan foot fetish posts. I started emailing KSK links to my friends, family, and co-workers so regularly that eventually my colleagues (rightly) asserted that I was the reason the site got blocked by the work filter.

I lurked for a REALLY long time until I finally joined in the reindeer games during the liveblogs. That yellow bar was horrendous, but the joy of having a joke manually cleared by the dickjoke experts was a bright light during a time when a lot of other things were going wrong in my day to day. And suddenly, KSK was more than a font of NFL player parodies and links for me to send around to my friends. It was a community where I could go and exchange my thoughts on the Bears or share in mutual HATE HATE HATE for a TWIFY or learn a new douchey nickname for Philip Rivers or just bask in the warmth of the community that made fun of each other but also loved each other.

That didn’t really hit me until the mental health post. You know the one. Ape hit it on the fucking head. The writing was raw, honest, and beautiful, and it prompted a flood of support, love, and sharing from the Kommentariat that underscored the importance of this collective to one another. KSK was amazing because Drew, Flubby, Ape, Unsilent, PUNTE, Ufford, Sarah, MJD, Rappoccio, and even Footsteps Falco opened up and invited all of us to know them and let them know us and each other. And we did.

So it was more than disappointing when the douchebags at U****X tainted our beloved site and then pushed Ape until he could be pushed no more. It was devastating. Eventually I followed a link from an exiled Kommenter to football to the groin and was thrilled that some of the crew brought the same spirit of kommunity to a new community. And shockingly they let me contribute every once in a while. But more importantly, they’re there for one another thanks to the precedent set by our friends at KSK.

The second week after I started my new job last year, I ended up in the hospital in Boulder for four days [SPOILER ALERT: I lived.] I knew literally no one in the city, the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me, and I was scared. I felt comfortable enough with the commentists that I opened up about it and had an outlet that was there in my time of need. Cuntler gave me pointers about CO and even offered to meet up with me if things got really dour, DTZM was amazingly supportive, Dok shared knowledge and encouragement, and all of you helped me get through the loneliness until the doctors felt comfortable sending me home. I’m tremendously grateful to have DFO, the descendent of KSK, in my life, even if I never meet any of you in person. I’m sure WCS, Porky, and countless others feel the same way, and I know we’ll all be there for anyone else that is willing to share our community and open up. We’re here for dick jokes, but we’re also here for each other.

The KSK Krew deserved better from their corporate overlords, but hopefully they feel at least somewhat gratified by the fact we aim to continue their legacy. We may not be as funny as them sometimes, but we have damn good recipes, some funny SOBs, and a lot of love.

BFC OUT!

——-

blaxabbath:

Not sure if Putin has posted this to Wikileaks yet (it’s not their fault my password is password1) but here is what I sent Ape after the shutdown

Yes, I bcc:’d it to [email protected] because I didn’t know if he used an abbreviated version of his name for his contact)

Also, Sarah gave me my first ever Komment of the Week mention so she became my internet crush. But, after the site closed down and I began ‘surfing the web’, I discovered just how vast the internet is and it turns out that I have a lot of internet crushes now.

The Maestro:

I got introduced to KSK from a buddy who sent me a link to Drew’s “Scenes From A Summer At Camp Ryan” in 2010 and I was immediately hooked. Hard. KSK was my diving headfirst into become a far more serious football fan than I was before that date. It was also my first foray into a true online community – I’m so grateful that its spirit lives on at DFO today. I still find it so ironic that my buddy who pointed me towards the site never really read it much outside of the Rex Ryan: Greatest Coach Ever posts, but good fortune smiled on me that first time I ever clicked the link.

Also, fuck the liveblog yellow bar. May you burn in hell, you piece of utter garbage. BRING BACK THE OLD LIVEBLOGS!

Senor Weaselo:

I originally got into KSK from the first Rex Ryan post, a friend sent it to me and I was rolling. From there I started reading everything else and lurked for a couple years because either I couldn’t think of what to say or was afraid of being mocked or ridiculed or something. Like because the community and  the Kommentariat seemed really cool, I wanted in, but at the same time I didn’t want to fall on my face and look like an idiot. Especially if one of my friends could figure out if it was me (no idea if they did).

When everything went to hell and I learned about our new digs I went there to see what was going to happen, a little worried because we were on our own without that simian leadership. And it proved to be the same community and if anything we seemed to band together even more, open up about even more topics. I’ve personally opened up to you guys and vented in comments about some things, and with that combined with actually writing things it’s fed more into a personal reminder that’s seemed to be the theme of this year for me, that “Yeah, you’re good enough.” So I thank you all for letting a lurker into the party way back when and for letting me write about nearly dying of hot sauce and about fighting robots. Hopefully I can take on some more creative projects, and after BattleBots ends I’ll actually start the House of Pain feature in earnest (still potentially a working title).

Now to go play a double.

RIKKI-TIKKI-DEADLY:

In proper tribute to KSK and its most popular feature, I’m gonna make this all about MEEEEE.

A lot of people found their way to KSK via one of Drew’s pieces that went viral.  Not me.  I found my way there via With Leather, which I had found via What Would Tyler Durden Do.  WWTD, if you can believe it, had its own little community of commenters not entirely unlike our own.  But I digress.  What actually kept me reading KSK wasn’t the kharacter pieces, it was actually the Friday fantasy drafts.

The one that sticks in my memory is the “Skills” draft because, in my opinion, Ufford completely won it.  It’s idiotic to say that someone could “win” an online activity of such an arbitrary nature, but I’m an idiot so there.  I enjoyed the drafts so much that I eventually decided to start submitting my own suggestions for topics.  It took more than a few swings and misses before they finally used one, but DAMN if it didn’t feel good.  So I kept it up, with Unsilent Majority occasionally picking one of my suggestions and massaging it into something decent (or if I might treat my own ego an old-fashioned, something great.)  It sounds strange to say that coming up with ideas for imaginary drafts helped me develop confidence as a writer, but it actually DID.  Knowing that people whose writing I enjoyed were actually interested in using my ideas made me eager to come up with more.  And eventually it inspired me to try to come up with more than just ideas.  I did my own version of a Raiders prekkake in the komments in 2012 (I predicted they would go 6-10 – too optimistic!) and it meant the world to me when Flubby reached out via email with some encouraging words and it meant even more a year later when Christmas Ape actually reached out to me to contribute my VERY OWN PREKKAKE in 2013.

It’s not easy to live up to the dick joke standards that those guys set.  But knowing that THEY thought I could live up to them – even for just a single post – really meant a lot.  I’m proud to have carried on the tradition here at DFO and obviously we owe pretty much everything to those guys.  So I’m grateful to them for not only giving me the confidence and encouragement to try my own hand at this long form dick joke business, but also for creating a community with enough momentum to keep going even when a corporate entity who will remain nameless decided they weren’t really #UpForWhatever.  Thanks, guys.  You really did create something special.

Low Commander of the Super Soldiers:

I found KSK in possibly one of the most backwards ways I can think of. A good friend of mine who read FilmDrunk sent me a link to the King Laserface Twitter account (which apparently doesn’t exist anymore! DO SOMETHING, CONGRESS!) back in December of 2008, during the height of the Rivers-Cutler feud. After pouring through its history and loving every second of the secret ramblings of our fowl-mouthed Marmalard, I followed the link listed on his bio to the Mothership. It didn’t take me long to realize that I had found something that felt so much like home. Gratuitous Simpsons references? PK take downs? Actual smart football takes? Shitting on, well, everyone? It was glorious.

All of a sudden, 7 years go by. I graduated college, went through 3 jobs, traveled coast to coast across the country, matured (still a point of contention) and watched the football season after football season pass. A year ago today, I got to work, started doing going through my daily routine, only to have my browser fly open to reveal things wouldn’t quite be the same. In hindsight, that week ended up being one of the worst in recent memories. But thankfully, there was [DFO] to help ease the pain and it certainly has. Being able to continue on with new Kharacters and bad Photoshops are what always got me, and I’ve tried to keep that part alive in as much of my work as I can,

Anyway, I want to thank Ape, Drew, Ufford, Punte, Flubby, PFTC, Trevo(u)r, Sarah and many others for their work and for making this one corner of the internet a great place for me and the rest of us Commentsits. If not for them, we wouldn’t be here, doing whatever it is we do everyday, and I’d miss all of you glorious bastards and bastardettes. The Commentist Party is family, and I love you all.

I also officially declare this thread: OPEN. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, folks. Remove those pants and raise a pint or your other preferred glass/substance to the fallen and the future.