Chanverse

Note: Under construction. Expect suck.

Chanverse refers to the collection of websites that claim pedigree from the posting culture of 4chan. Most are imageboards, but there's also textboards and even Wikis,

Etymology and Synonyms

The term is a portmanteau of "Channel" and "Universe", first used in 2006 to describe the growing communities of the western Imageboard scene, spread through Wikis (e.g. Wikichan likely being the first to use the term (ref: IOU)). When referring to non-specific IBs, it was typical to use *chan.

In the mid 2010s, being a bit hard on the tongue, the term fell out of use. Under influence of alt-right terminology the term Altchan came to supplant it. Some communities, specially the Otaku-inclined, favor the term Spinoff. Subsets of the chanverse are typically referred with the suffix -sphere (e.g. /jp/sphere) according to the culture they are aligned to.

Grouping the Chanverse

While some imageboard scenes were large enough to create the illusion that all chanverse communities were related to each other, at no point in time there was a continuous genealogy of communities. Isolated networks of developers and IB enthusiasts gathered and dispersed in high activity periods of 3 to 5 years, keeping a record of friendly relations, rivalries and website scripts within their own niches. Past that point, their websites either close down or ossify and remain active with a small but loyal core userbase. On occasions, unrelated groupings mingle and may even see the smaller scene subsumed into the larger.

These networks can be grouped into generations, which posses a common relation, and those that mutually acknowledge each other form smaller scenes.

[NAME PENDING] Generation

Imageboards that claim pedigree from 4chan as it existed in it's first years, well before Anonymous posting became dominant and the idea of 4chan culture itself existed. Often being side projects by developers from Raspberry Heaven or influenced by them, including in one case their direct competition.

Raspberry Heaven Scene

The very first batch of imageboards came by the hand of moot's acquaintances at Raspberry Heaven. thatdog programmed Futallaby in December 2003, and months later WaHa unveiled Wakaba when Futallaby was discontinued. From these two scripts, several dozen imageboards surfaced. The very first chanverse IB was 1chan, followed by Burichan and other short-lived boards, including site that arose years later such as Gurochan. At the same time, competition by other SA readers surfaced, with BarnacleED's controversial 5chan.net sporting a custom engine.

RH was not fond of competition, with 5chan being harassed into shutting down twice, and iichan's appearance causing moot to write a diss section against non-friend IBs on his Something Awful thread. In an interesting contrast, thatdog innovated by creating the first overchan, an IB link portal that included almost all the chanverse of it's time.

Textboard Scene

The textboard scene was funded in late 2004 with the creation 4-ch.net taking the opportunity to host the first Kareha engine website. Unlike all the groups mentioned where, 4-ch actually claims pedigree from world2ch (and therefore 2channel), albeit in a tongue in cheek manner thanks to the interests of oldheads such as shii, WaHa and 0037. Thus the textboards become a mix of imageboard culture and 2ch's culture. etherchan and Secret Area of VIP Quality soon latched on to the elitist superstructure, and the scene remains active to this day.

Idlechan Federation

iichan was the first true 4chan spinoff, made in July 2004 as a bunker after Yotsuba died it's fourth and longest death. It served it's purpose and failed to make ends meet after 4chan came back. A mutual support network developed with the administrator of the recently created Wakachan. Together, they were the first to float the idea of an imageboard federation, attracted a half-dozen IBs and most of the early chanverse comes from their ranks. It was however unable to garner any sort of posterbase save from a very small number of boards and the federation slowly died off.

Camgirl Scene

4chan's advantage as a porn site was apparent to many. Some took to mixing up the phenomenon as a source of interaction with amateur camgirls, group that was definitely not small in the 00s. WTFUx was arguably the first among these, quickly followed by Kyriu's chanchan that later became the LURKMORE Group.

The scene has one major claim to fame: Being the first to boot an user-created bulletin board script, in the form of AnonIB. Originally an experiment not part of the scene, it was eventually subsumed into it by the fact most popular boards were camgirl-related.

Lulz Generation

The first group to use the term chanverse. They contrasted with the [NAME PENDING] generation by claiming pedigree not from 4chan, but from /b/ culture alone. They consider the /b/day their foundational myth, the point where /b/ became "full of suck" and an exodus was needed.

/i/nsurgency

The largest and more influential group by far, in a way, the group that informed the idea of a network of related imageboards. An active protest against 4chan imposing global rules on /b/, it quickly coalesced into a culture centered on raiding. It garnered wide support, even from established chanverse figures. However the association with hacking, unsavory content and even illegal spam saw most efforts at creating an /i/ board collapse.

Eventually, the scene was reduced to a number of holdouts on IRC, Wikis and some radio sites. Among the /i/nsurgents where the cliques that were responsible for the birth of Anonymous hacktivist movement in 2008. The rest of the community, by 2010, it had completely dispersed.

(copied from the 4chan page)

4chan is by far the largest force, and as the spawn point of all the other *chans, so therefore it has a good history. Most 4chan raids are zerg rush attacks on a target, like AsianBabeCams or Drawball. Sometimes, as during the Subeta or Gamestop calls, 4chan is a massive epic force; Personal Army. The problem with getting 4chan's help is twofold: First you need their interest. Everyone hated Gamestop and Subeta pissed them off, and the hivemind randomly chose Hal Turner and his ilk. However, most regular raids will be saged for "raidfags" which some people hate. The second problem is the banhammer; a larger and more legally scrutinized site, the 4chan staff can't just leave raids going, and so they ban hard. Major raids with great interest will overwhelm the mods, and often you might just escape their attention.

Getting 4chan involved in a raid is either going to completely fuck it up (if they listen to you at all) or turn it into something hueg, though the majority of the time, if its not their idea they'll not be interested; for example, during MySpays when there were too many passwords and not enough people to fuck them up, the packs were posted on 4chan, and the threads were saged. On the other hand with stuff like Project Chanology they seem more than happy to help. They're incredibly fickle and usually disinterested, but on the rare occasion help from 4chan arrives, expect either a large amount of newfags fucking shit up or a giant shitstorm of destruction.

• A great example of proper 4chan involvement were the Gamestop.
• An example of 4chan inaction is MySpays The reason for this: /b/tards consist of a mix of several groups of internet users. There may be a few talented /i/nsurgents who visit the board, but the rest of the users are basically civilians who lack either the technical skills and know-how for internet raids, the motivation to actually do something, or most often both. A group of raiders from 4chan is usually composed of a few proper /i/nsurgents leading an attack and (trying) to manage things, a few others following behind and doing the "grunt work", and the rest just blindly doing whatever the fuck they feel like until they get bored and leave. Think of it as a levee en masse; you have the potential to employ all of *chan's resources by getting everyone there involved, akin to large scale military conscription, but unless it's important you're not going to get anywhere.

Anonymous Scene

A scene that developed from the /i/nsurgency's attack on Scientology developing into the viral Anonymous movement. An unexpectedly large group of people became interested in 4chan overnight and proved uninterested in assimilating, drawing their ideas on what imageboards are from whatever hacktivist groups manage to make viral.

Protestfags were widely despised in 4chan for crashing their hangouts and ruining a number of events (such as the /b/oston meet up), their tangential relation to site culture and wonton appropriation of memes. Being a group composed mostly of activists and tourists, imageboards mattered little more than a means to an end to them, and only a few sites claimed relation.

The scene only lasted around a year or so, and posters eventually read the room and left. Anonymous hacktivism remained active all the way into the mid 2010s.

whyweprotest 711chan

Russian Chanverse

Inspired on the /b/day, a Russian-language imageboard called (2ch.ru) opened. The site was an unexpected hit in the Russian internet, becoming large enough to compete with 4chan on it's own right. Dvach developed it's own posting culture and a large number of successors after it's unexpected first death in 2008.

/int/ernational

A decentralized group of enthusiasts who attempted to capture the magic of /b/ on an IB in their language. Many were tried, and the most successful was Krautchan. Their innovation, /int/ - International, came to inform the culture of every european IB scene west of Russia's. This became a phenomenon, with the board becoming a decentralized culture that existed independent of their hosts site, managing to developing the most widespread set of injokes after /b/. Soon, it too the form of a network of Imageboards that all sported common set of jokes and an embassy in the form of /int/, going as far as to inspiring moot to make an /int/, creating a new major board on the spot.

Spinoff Generation

The most fragmented group, not having a single origin but rather a sequence of dramas the resulting in distinct communities being exiled from 4chan in the early 10s, product of a years-long moderation crackdown on the board culture phenomenon.

/jp/ Spinoffs

aka tokiko and siztra's excellent adventure

#Outlaws

GETchan and the soviet federation

4chon & Wizardchan

incel culture and astroturfing /r9k/

Culture War Generation

Also known as the /pol/sphere. Starting with 2014, /pol/'s spectacular rise to relevancy and a continuous conspiracy that 4chan was secretly infiltrated by leftists marked a turning point in the imageboard ecosystem and a complete renovation of net vocabulary and the very idea of what an imageboard is for.

The unifying trend in all culture war scenes is the high value given to Militancy and an overarching belief that all communities push an agenda, be this the "right" or "left" side of the culture war, or utopic ideals such as non-governmental freedom of speech.

Contrary to popular belief, not everything in 8chan was related to /pol/, albeit their terminology influenced every corner of it.

Conservative Scene

The conservative side of

4chan's /pol/ 8chan's /pol/

Liberal Scene

bunkerchan

Freedom of Speech Absolutists

"Freedom of Speech Absolutism" was a popular chanverse term to describe american libertarians (in the general Internet, these groups would be derided as lolbertarians). Falling behind the flag of anti-censorship, a concept fundamentally rooted in the belief that freedom of speech protections should extend beyond government check and balances to all private communities and enterprises.

A mindset that always existed on 4chan in some way or form; they became a cohesive group between 2012 and 2014 as the culture war took prominence on the Internet. Their size and influence arguably peaked during the GamerGate controversy, leading the exodus towards 8chan.

In practice, it became apparent that debates over censorship in IBs almost always end up focusing on whether the site should ban controversial topics like pedophilia. Naturally, they became the number one source of altchans in the scene, specially as the alt-right scene often fell behind freedom of speech and abused libertarian beliefs. Absolutists made the first competing imageboards within 8chan, and later the first Infinity spinoffs. The largest such being Endchan.

Unsurprisingly, the scene was subsumed by actual pedophiles, with adherents claiming to represent anti-censorship known to have formed groups running revenge operations against communities that banned lolicon (see: The Webring). As the tone of never-ending debate spiraled to ridiculous lows, libertarian anon ranks shrunk until most freedom of speech absolutists today can be generally regarded to be stealth pedophiles - albeit holds out of the original anti-censorship movement still exist in IBs like 8chan.moe

The scene exists to this day, with illegal pornography still being one of their sacred cows, and infiltration by criminals still being the main cause of a community's implosion.

Largest Imageboards

8ch.pl / freech / Endchan / 9chan / 8chan.moe

/intl/

GENETIC DUD

Soy Generation

Soyteen culture claims pedigree from 4chan via late /qa/'s board culture. But at the same time, they interpret this through the notion that they are so removed from the site's modern baggage they have returned to the original purpose of 4chan. Thus, contrary to almost every group in this page, they boast they lack of pedigree as proof of their value. Their funding myth is the closure of /qa/ that exiled them to the spinoff soyjak.party.

Most Soyjak Party spinoffs can't be properly grouped in a family, as they are all culturally indistinct and their divisions are under all intents are purposes roleplay. From 2023 onwards, with the advent of controversial administrator Kuz, divisions among Soyteens are drawn between nihilists and culture purists, a split along of lines of the lengths they are willing to go in the name of their communities.

Soysphere

The Soysphere is a collection of sites that aren't necessarily related to the Soyjak Party, but are hopelessly influenced by the vernacular and way of thinking. Many don't see eye to eye with the party, and every consider themselves a direct competitor to them.

Party Purists

A short lived number of Soyjak Party spinoffs who denounced the direction the party pivoted to under the adminship of Kuz. They envisioned the Party as, at best, a content creator group, at worst, a raider group that only did things for fun, and not for cred in a secret club. The poster boy for purist culture was jakparty.soy, followed by a few short lived sites with a similar mindset.

The scene failed to muster a posterbase, being outnumbered and outraided, and purist culture fell out of relevance by 2024 as the problems that caused their existence simply ceased to be.

Edgecore & Foodists

Soy culture had a period of heavy mingling with Larpercore groups - a subculture that developed inside chatroom communities - in a way comparable to how IRC cabals influenced imageboards of old. Past the Pandemic, the subculture's growth was spectacular and it impacted soyjak party on a cultural level.

Initially, the soy community's only interest in chatrooms was figuring out whether they were on the enemy side ("LGBT Degenerate") of the culture war, letting bad actors within larpercore groups simply go unnoticed. Administration only realizes there's a situation going on when several groups take to running "ops" in the Party, spamming CSAM and running hostile takeovers during raids. By then, it was too late, posters continually accused the administrations of Kuz, Doll and Froot of being passive enablers of foodists, the biggest larpercore boogeyman within the community. Many Soyjak party spinoffs were unmistakably aligned to what soon to be known as "edgecore" culture, and eventually branched out to pursue topics other than bald men with glasses.

Today that relation is mostly over, and modern Party culture openly denounces all edgecore relations, yet most edgecore groups carry some artifacts of soyphere in their zeitgeist.