Raspberry Heaven

ADTRW's weeb mafia.

Anime-oriented community that off-shoot from Something Awful in late 2002. Originally, 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 a DC++ Hub for sharing anime and helping Studio ADTRW with their releases. torrenting was still in it's infancy and there was considerable demand for anime.

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.

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 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 fangroup with at least 30 translations and 20 episodes to their names? By 2005 RH had gathered the biggest names of Pyoko.org, shii and some of the people behind 4-ch.net and the Wakachan confederation, W.T. Snacks and most the members of Studio Cookie Thievery, had 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.

Did they Invent 4chan?

No.

Did they invent western imageboards?

Indirectly so.

They were the midwives of the first couple batches of IBs. 5chan, burichan, 1chan were all from RH regulars or ex-regulars (see: barnacleED). 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. A large chunk of 4chan's early jokes comes from them. Azumanga and Yotsubato being big in 4chan is basically a cultural legacy of RH. The urban myth that 4chan was funded by banned SA users comes directly from actual RH leadership 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 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 extremely supportive to the point actual money was involved, and some members may have seen 4chan as much their "baby" as moot did.

When did this stop?

moot wasn't an easy person to approach, several people, possibly one of the core clique, had fallings out with him. 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 cut that off with a shitpost so take it with a grain of salt.

What happened then?

Their relationship with SA totaled with Lowtax's purity spiral. Many people were banned for posts they made several years ago decade ago. Besides that, nothing spectacular, they grew old. 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. They diligently kept the servers alive until the late 2010s.