4chan
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 enterprise, not formally registered anywhere. Money transactions were first attempted via moot's personal PayPal, but he 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 providing 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 December 2007.[2]
4chan, LLC. (Virginia)
In February 29, 2008, 4chan, LLC is first registered in Virginia's State Corporation Commission[3] with legal address on 1101 W. Grace Street, Unit #6 (likely moot's address) through a commissioned agent which resigned his position in April 10, 2009.[4]
The current status of the Virginia registration appears to be unavailable to the public, albeit the registration approval documents continue being hosted in the SCC's gov website. It likely automatically expired in accordance with Virginia law, due to not filing a new registered agent by July 31, 2009.
4chan, LLC. (Delaware)
In January 5, 2011, 4chan, LLC was registered in Delaware with address 2711 Centervile Rd, Unit #400. Foreign company registries in New York (Jan. 20, 2011) and Ohio (Sep. 14, 2012) ensued.
In March 8, 2013, 4chan files to register it's name as trademark and obtains them in October 8. The do the same for the four leaf clover logo on April 9, 2014[5]
The Delaware association still exists and was never formally dissolved, albeit it has been inactive since. Foreign company registration in Ohio remains valid, while that of NYC expired (Sep. 13, 2018).
4chan Community Support, LLC
In early 2015, moot sold 4chan to Hiroyuki Nishimura, transferring company ownership, trademarks and domains. However, the formal sale of a company requires some paperwork:
On July 22, 2015, 4chan Community Support, LLC. is registered in Delaware as a company with three shareholders, with Hiroyuki acting as Managing Member of the company, holding all decision power:
- Hiroyuki Nishimura (holding 10% of the shares)
- Good Smile Company, KK. (under American Subsidiary Good Smile Company, Inc.) (30% under the signature of CEO Takanoni Aki)
- Brasil Co., Ltd. (60% under President Eeichiro Fukami, Brasil Co. is a shell company owned by Hiroyuki)
While the original association document has not surfaced yet, the association's condition for formation was likely to be acquiring ownership of 4chan from moot's 4chan, LLC. for a sum of 8.000.000 USD. The procedure was successfully carried out and by early September 4chan had already updated it's footer message to read 4chan community support LLC.[6] with the sale being announced on Sep. 22. 4chan trademarks were passed from 4chan, LLC. to 4chan Community Support, LLC. by Sep. 30, 2015[5] and the domain at an unknown date.
In June 2022, Good Smile Company, KK. pulled out of the association and sold it's shareholder stake, likely to Brasil Co., Ltd. and Hiroyuki.[7]
Employees
At some point between 4chan, LLC. and 4chan Community Support, LLC. the general manager and lead developer became paid positions, according to moot statements, not earlier than May 2013.[8]
Website
Side Projects
world4ch
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Former Boards | ||||
| April Fools | 4chan BBS | World4ch | Split or Merged | Misc. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||
Community
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
- 4chan Boards
- 4chan History
- 4chan History Timeline
- 4chan GET Encyclopedia
- 4chan mod memes
- 4chan-anecdotes.odt
Sources
Citations
- ↑ linkedIn profile.
- ↑ [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.
- ↑ [4] megalodon.jp [5] archive.is [6] B2BHint records aggregator's article on 4chan, LLC., Virginia.
- ↑ [7] - 4chan, LLC, Virginia - Statement of Resignation of Registered Agent
- ↑ 5.0 5.1
- ↑ [14] Sep. 2 - Earliest known footer message that reads: The rest is Copyright © 2003-2015 4chan community support LLC. All rights reserved.
- ↑ [15] GSC announces on their news page that they never had more than an ownership stake on the company, weren't involved in it's management and, in fact, have sold their state in June 2022
- ↑ [16] 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."
