In some ways their evolution has been counter intuitive. Something Awful the homepage was always about the worst of the web; laughing at some of the more disturbing and hypocritical aspects of the Internet.
You’d expect some of it, like their reputation for manipulating Eve online.
Over time the community sprouted one of the more effective social justice movements. They were the ones who started the campaign that successfully shut down the “technically legal” child pornography on reddit. Their Gameghazi movement is the single biggest entity in opposition to Gamergate’s home base on reddit.
On the other hand, 4chan is a weird kind of offspring of SA. So there is that.