Raspberry Heaven

ADTRW's weeb mafia.

Anonymous' Grandaddy

Anime-oriented community that splintered from Something Awful in late 2002. Originally part of, or at least almost 100% overlapping with, Studio ADTRW, a fansubbing group created the same month. Started out as a clique of ADTRW regulars composed of mdl, inpheaux, uziga, hannibal, ichibanmuffin, censored_vagina, and other names lost to dead sites. Raspberry Heaven (RH) was at first just hannibal and ichibanmuffin's name for their DC++ Hub, where they networked for anime rips and helped host Studio ADTRW's releases. torrenting was still in it's infancy and there was considerable demand for anime, so a steady influx of users ensued.

Everyone who got along in ADTRW would eventually find themselves on RH. The bullying from other SA regulars for having a sense of humour somehow too black for Something Awful (and a couple self-declared pedophiles they refused to kick out) helped foster a tight ingroup identity within ADTRW. Note that this was all done casually and in an organic manner, this ain't internet power politics. Azumanga Daioh was of course the hill they'd die on and they were some of the biggest promoters of Moé anime.

It grew. Big enough to include many ADTRW regulars and even mods, accrue a repertoire of grumpy banned users, have splinter groups (such as #dickgirls) and do some slight cabaling on ADTRW. Specifically, they took the crazy idea of a 15 year kid called moot with enthusiasm, and provided him will all the tools he needed to get a site called 4chan going. This turned out to be a stroke of genius: Synergy with 4chan turned them into a mutual support network for the developers and webmasters that gave birth to western imageboards.

Come 2005, they were one of the first cliques to be "purged" from SA as Lowtax started the Internet Vigilante act that culminated in the creation of Kiwifarms Helldump. Past 2005, the DC++ hub started declining in as torrenting ate it's niche, and the community was relegated just to their IRC. End zenith, come nadir.

Short Q&A for a future autismo fest:

How influential where they?

On top of the core group that ran several websites and had their own fansub group with at least 30 translations and 20 episodes to their name? By 2005 RH had gathered the biggest names of Pyoko.org, shii and some of the people behind the 4-ch.net-Wakachan federation, W.T. Snacks and other members of Studio Cookie Thievery, Kirtaner, who in a couple months was gonna start 420chan and cabal the future /i/nsurgency into becoming Anonymous, multiple server owners and people running hundred-person large forums and personal blog networks. You know, just a normal internet gang.

Did they Invent 4chan?

No.

Did they invent western imageboards?

Indirectly so.

They were the midwives of the first couple batches of IBs that grew out of 4chan. 5chan, burichan, 1chan were all from RH regulars or ex-regulars (see: barnacleED). The few that weren't were shamed into shutting down (see: zabadab). 4-ch, wakachan and their confederation all had people who hung at RH. Other big names or future big names in the chanverse hung out at RH. Their culture was very much ingrained into 4chan's DNA. A large chunk of 4chan's early jokes and visual identity comes from them. Azumanga and Yotsubato! being big in 4chan is direct a cultural legacy of RH. The urban myth that 4chan was funded by banned SA users comes directly from actual RH people getting banned in one of Lowtax visits to ADTRW (they always ended in someone getting banned).

Where they 4chan's secret cabal?

N-no. ok, a bit. But for a short while.

It's not a stretch to say a 15 years old teenager with nearly no coding experience and definitely no clue what a server was wouldn't have lasted a month without their help. Or that a literal who on SA with no influential friends would have gotten as much attention as his 4chan thread did if it weren't for the subtle help of a certain IRC. Everyone who mattered in 4chan was hanging out at #raspberryheaven in 2004. They were supportive to the point actual money was involved, being behind donations and at one point IchibanMuffin was sharing server space with moot. Some members may have considered 4chan their "baby" as much as moot did.

When did this stop?

moot wasn't an easy person to approach, and over time several people, one possibly being ichibanmuffin, had falling outs with him. moot did not take the project's third collapse (july 2004) well either, and there's a gallery of snide remarks from many names floating around, meaning a lot of people were talking behind moot's back. Eventually moot took his inner circle and moved out of the community somewhere in 2005. I'd place this around 2005 when #4chan moved out of Pyoko to Rizon, was arguably the point where the relationship moot and RH started dying off.

This may be related by a strange statement from W.T. Snacks (who idled at RH but wasn't "RH") in 2005/2006 that moot and his inner circle were considering moving to NYC together to attend the same colleague, signaling that moot was losing interest in "internet people". But he ended that sentence with a shitpost so take it with a grain of salt.

What happened then?

Death by chillin' too hard. Each clique went their own way. RH's relationship with SA was totaled by Lowtax's purity spiral. Many people were banned for posts they made several years ago. Without the DC++ Hub and with Skype replacing IRC as the dominant chatroom platform, regulars slowly dropped off until only the core group of now real life friends remained, and they were too busy adulting to do any content creation projects together. They diligently kept the servers alive until the late 2010s. Mr. Vac Bob, also known as 4chan's server maintainer, ran the final years of Studio ADTRW.