4chan

From Bibliotheca Anonoma


4chan logo.png

4chan is the website that introduced the Japanese Imageboard to the English-speaking world. It is seen as the hubsite of the *chans, like 2channel in Japan.

While it's features were derived from Futaba Channel, it's culture and original community was seeded by Something Awful offshoot Raspberry Heaven with support and advise from the greater SA community. It eventually eclipsed it's founding communities, reinventing internet culture in the process.

4chan was the origin and/or hub of many internet-wide phenomena, most famously enabling the development of the Anonymous hacktivist movement and the being the pivot where the alt-right jumped from the political fringe into the mainstream. 

If I had known it one day become a dominant source of Internet culture with five hundred million pageviews per month and an Alexa Traffic Rank in the global top 1,000 websites, I might have written more of this down at the time. - moot (source?)

Characteristics

A basic overview of 4chan as a forum:

  • 4chan is Registration-free.
    • Unlike most other English forums, 4chan does not use cumbersome user account, lowering the barrier to entry.
  • 4chan is anonymous.
    • Anonymity allows users to post their truthful opinions without fear of recourse. Additionally, since all users are anonymous in name, people are judged by their words, rather than their reputation.
    • Users can also choose to become psuedoanonymous with tripcodes in case there is a need to establish identity.
  • 4chan has no memory.
    • Because all threads will be destined for deletion, great pictures are immediately saved, and later reposted by users of the site. The less interesting pictures are left alone and soon forgotten. This creates a "survival of the fittest" environment that demands and promotes the development of remix culture.

In the cultural context of the 2000s internet, this made the site immensely attractive to just about anyone with a passing interest in the virtual communities and content creation. In just a couple years, 4chan became the dominant force of the Internet zeitgeist, a position it held for almost a decade before new developments in the service industry allowed online platforms (e.g. Twitter) to contest their niche.

Structure

Business

During it's first years, 4chan was only a de facto business, not formally registered anywhere. Money transactions were first attempted via PayPal, but moot quickly found out being underage was a fast way to get locked out of money handling accounts every time there was a problem. Volunteers offered assistance, the first being Censored_Vagina's providing with his credit card from November 2003 to July 2004, followed by Man of Wax's volunteering his bank accounts to manage everything from paypal donations to checks between August 2004 until his retirement somewhere in 2007.

moot moved to Virginia to attend the Virginia Commonwealth University in 2006.[1] In 2007, when he reached legal adulthood, 4chan was already reported as as "based in Virginia" by November 2007.[2]

4chan, LLC

The first known mention of 4chan as a business entity occurs in 2008. 4chan, LLC is registered in Virginia in

In January 5, 2011, the was registered again in Delaware. Foreign company registries in New York (Jan. 20, 2011), Virginia and Ohio (Sep. 14, 2012) ensued.

In March 8, 2013, 4chan files to register it's name and logo as trademarks and obtains them in October 8.

The Delaware association still exists and was never dissolved, albeit it appears inactive. Foreign registrations on Ohio remain active, while those of Virginia and NYC have gone inactive.

4chan Community Support, LLC

Between June and September 2015 4chan, LLC is phased out in favor of 4chan Community Support, LLC, likely for the ownership transfer process during Hiroyuki Nishimura's adquisition.[3]

It's the company under which the 4chan.org domain (and all subdomains and alternatives) are currently registered.

Employees

At some point between the shift from 4chan, LLC. to 4chan Community Support, LLC. the manager and lead developer became paid positions, according to moot statements, not earlier than May 2013.[4]

Website

Side Projects

Not4chan

Ikuzo

Futachan

'4meet

Domains

Former

4chan.net not4chan.net

Current

4chan.org 4channel.org futachan.org world4ch.org

Staff

See also: 4chan/Staff

Boards

See also: 4chan/Boards

/b/

/b/ is the random board of 4chan, where any sort of faggotry goes on. It it's first and foremost board, dwarfing all the other ones in size. Currently, /b/ has amassed over 936,000,000 posts whereas many of the others have yet to break a million. (On an unrelated note, GETs are a popular pastime, such as getting the numbers 1111111, 10000000, 12345678, etc.) The content on /b/, as with all of the major chan boards, is periodically deleted automatically to save database strain.

Also, on /b/, there are NO RULES, LOL. Except no child porn and /i/nvasion. This consequently means mods can slap you with the banhammer for no good reason.

Boards
Japanese Culture Interests Creative Other Adult(NSFW)


Evolution

Posting Culture

See also: Anonymous Internet Culture

Impact

See also: Internet Culture and Chanverse

History

See also: 4chan/Chronicle and 4chan/History

Dramatic account: The old 4chan Chronicle on Wikibooks

4chan was founded in 2003 by a 15 year old kid named moot. It started out as simple joke and an personalized email and that evolved into the idea of recreated the content culture of Futaba Channel for English audiences. With support from Raspberry Heaven and the greater Something Awful scene, moot purchased the server space with his mother's credit card. Costs began to spiral out of control and the project collapsed several times and underwent many crises before it became economically solvent around 2009.

Multiple groups and immigrants from other communities arrived, first attracted by the fast-cycling pornography board and otaku-friendly niche discussion, later by the innovative "4chan-style" sense of humour developed by /b/. The primary factor behind growth was the ease of posting relative to other western communities due to the requirement to register an account before posting, other factors included general fatigue when it came to dealing with ubiquitous cliques in forums and chatrooms.

Other Info

Sources

  1. ↑ linkedIn profile.
  2. ↑ [1] archive is [2] megalodon.jp [3] - 2007-12-09 - Frankston blog hoax scrambles LA cops by Peter Munro, Deborah Gough and Ari Sharp - Victoria Police arrested Mr Willis and seized his computer. He was released without charge after being questioned for two hours. His blog was posted on 4chan.org, a discussion board based in Virginia for people with an interest in Japanese manga comics.
  3. ↑ [4] Sep. 2 - Earliest known footer message that reads: The rest is Copyright © 2003-2015 4chan community support LLC. All rights reserved.
  4. ↑ [5] May 2013. moot Q&A on /q/ - "If 4chan had a paid staff/was more of a "real" company, I'm sure we'd be churning through it like no tomorrow."
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