Raspberry Heaven

ADTRW's weeb mafia.

Anonymous' Grandaddy

Anime-oriented community that developed from Something Awful around November 2002. Originally sister project, or at least almost 100% overlapping with, Studio ADTRW, a fansubbing group created the same month. Both grew out of a clique of ADTRW regulars initially composed of [NPH], mdl, inpheaux, uziga, hannibal, IchibanMuffin, among other names lost to dead sites. Raspberry Heaven (RH) was at first hannibal and ichibanmuffin's name for their DC++ Hub, the former of whom also helped manage Obso's Something Awful Direct Connect Hub (SADCHUB), an ADTRW-centric hub which was either struggling to accommodate a rapid growth into a general interest hub or about to be abandoned by it's owner. In their own channel, bridged to a secondary IRC, RH members networked for anime dvd 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.

Suffice to say it grew. Big enough to include many forum regulars and even one of ADTRW's mods, accrue a repertoire of grumpy banned users and have it's own splinter groups. Everyone who got along in ADTRW would eventually find themselves on RH. Bullying by other SA regulars for having a sense of humor somehow too dark for Something Awful (and a couple self-declared pedophiles they refused to kick out) helped foster a tight ingroup identity. At their peak, they had a couple hundred hub members and several dozen everyday regulars in their IRC channel, website with a wiki, a forum, a custom wallpapers page and something like 3 spinoff IRC channels. More accurate info is lost to the seas, maybe [NPH] still has a copy of the wiki.

Culturally (socially?), they were promoters or debaters of the merit of moé anime. Their longest running jokes were centered around pretending to be degenerates with a rogues gallery like list of fetishes. They have a yearly tradition of sending cristmas cards. They had quite a cluster of talent, core members ran their own servers and multiple sites (mileage may vary, everyone had a personal blog back then). They also did some slight cabaling on ADTRW: They took the idea of a 15 years old 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 created a second user influx and turned RH into a mutual support network slash hangout for the developers that gave birth to western imageboards.

Come 2005, they were among the cliques "purged" from SA as Lowtax started the Internet Vigilante act that culminated in the creation of Kiwifarms Helldump. Past 2005, the DC++ hub declined in as torrenting ate it's niche, user flow stopped and the community downsized to an old boys club in IRC. End zenith, come nadir.

RH continues to exist as a private friend group. Once their involvement with imageboards ends, digging any further degrades into messing with people's private lives. Please be respectful.

Short Q&A for a future autismo fest:

They were an ADTRW offshot.

No. That would be misunderstanding how independent forums work. The nature of forum socializing is that of forming (and disintegrating) friend groups. This process is natural and inherent to the mechanics of posting. Subforums rarely represent a culture of their own unless they were mechanically walled-off like FYAD. The idea of "ADTRW" being it's own culture was heavily informed by some RH member's alienation from SA, but this wasn't the case for the majority of their regulars. On the broadest scope, the lifecycle of a forum is that of a networking platform, usually to the benefit of the admin's clique, and any culture that develops in forums grows out of these groups. Collective identity is too weak to beat personal relations. Communities like RH, among many others, are the expected by-product of a mature forum.

How influential where they?

On top of the core group that ran several websites and had their own fansub circle with at least 20 translations and 10 episodes to their name? By 2005, user flow from SA and 4chan saw gathered in the same place: terra and their Pyoko.org crew, shii (and his love-hate relationship with 4-ch.net), anonymous-san among other early 'ideologues' of anonymous culture, some of the devs who ran the iichan-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, and multiple regulars and semi-regulars who ran personal review blogs. You know, just a normal internet gang.

If they were so influential why are they forgotten?

Because they didn't seek to be remembered. They were a group of friends that allowed new people to introduce themselves, not a content creator group. All the culture they created was by RH, for RH, and not the wider web. While core members were big names or ran large projects, some with help of other members, they were personal endeavors and RH was not promoted in any of them. In the early 2000s there were hundreds of communities like RH, all forgotten too. RH stands out due to their role in promoting the first imageboards.

Did they Invent 4chan?

No.

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 money was involved, being behind donations and IchibanMuffin tried sharing server space with moot. Some members may have considered 4chan their "baby" as much as moot did.

Did they invent imageboard culture?

Indirectly so.

They were the midwives of the first IBs that spun out of 4chan. 5chan, burichan, 1chan were all from RH regulars or ex-regulars / wannabes (see: barnacleED). The few that weren't were harassed into shutting down (see: zabadab). 4-ch, iichan and their confederation had people who hung at RH. Other big names or future big names in the chanverse were present (see: Kirtaner). Their way of talking was very much ingrained into 4chan's DNA, the ZOMG meme (and other '4chan style' idiot speak) went from an RH injoke to a mainstay within 4chan lingo. A 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's taste in media. 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). It must be noted, however, that this "priming" of imageboard culture wasn't intentional. It is merely a by-product of cultural osmosis, a consequence of the overlap between RH and early imageboards (specially their funders and mods) that shaped the mindset and sensibilities of the early chanverse.

When did this stop?

moot wasn't an easy person to approach. Over time several people, one possibly being ichibanmuffin, had falling outs with him. moot's team was almost entirely managed through RH spaces and mods were lifted from their ranks until project's third collapse in July 2004. However, by then the RH core clique had lost interest and new mods were introduced to RH via 4chan. During the team4chan era, RH became home to some member whose relation with moot ended badly, such as shii and WTSnacks. Thus there's a number of snide remarks from RH-names floating around.

moot eventually developed his own inner circle, one composed of same age people he met through RH, SA and #4chan, then stopped idling on chatrooms altogether. I'd place the start of this process right on January 2005 when #4chan moved out of Pyoko to Rizon, the point where the relationship between moot and RH started dying out. It's likely he stopped visiting entirely before 2006 started.

W.T. Snacks in 2005/2006 writer a somewhat clear motive: moot (17-18 by then) and his inner circle were considering moving to NYC to attend college together, signaling that moot was losing interest in "internet people" and focusing on real life relationships. But Snacks ended that sentence with a shitpost so take it with a grain of salt.

What happened then?

Death by chillin'. Each group went their own way. RH's relationship with SA was totaled by Lowtax's purity spiral. Even after helldump was closed, people could find their accounts banned for posts they made several years ago. Without the DC++ Hub and with other instant messaging apps replacing IRC as the dominant chatroom platform, regulars slowly slid out until only the core group (of now real life friends) remained, and they were too busy adulting to do any content creation projects together. Mr. VacBob, also known as 4chan's servers maintainer to this day, ran the final years of Studio ADTRW until it's closure in 2012. Inpheaux deleted Studio ADTRW's website in 2015 and hannibal let RH net shut down a few years later.