4chan

4chan

This is where smart people become idiotic.

Type of site:	Imageboard
Language:	English
Created by:	Christopher Poole
Owner:	Hiroyuki Nishimura
Date of launch:	October 1, 2003
Status:	Active

4chan is an English-language imageboard website. Users generally post anonymously, with the most recent posts appearing above the rest. 4chan is split into various boards with their own specific content and guidelines. Registration is not possible (except for staff).

Notable Image Boards

/v/: video games, at least it's supposed to be about them...
/b/: random, a mixed bag in a way. There are no real rules in /b/, so people are free to post whatever legal material they want. In practice, that means LOTS of porn, pictures, and discussions that can only be defined as, well, random.
/pol/: politics, or more accurately, politically incorrect. The board for politics, current events, and general debate, occupied by trolls, shitlords. alt-right, Neo-Nazis and edgy teens. Feel free to be as offensive as you want!
/s4s/: Shit 4chan Says, originally an April Fool's prank meant to mimic the subreddit "Shit Reddit Says".
/r9k/: Robot 9001, IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!
/a/: anime & manga.
/co/: cartoon & comics.
/hm/ & /s/: for handsome men & sexy girls, be it safe or NSFW.
/o/: auto. Mainly about carporn.
/lgbt/: the name says it all, aside from /pol/ shitposters, this board is usually peaceful.
/mlp/: the board for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Created because MLP fans really don't get along with /co/.
/k/: Guns and weaponry. Not meant for pro gun control supporters.

Why It's Rotten

The most notable thing about 4chan is organizing mass raids to livestreams.
Another notable thing about 4chan is its pranks. Such as when Mountain Dew asked what should their new flavor be, they responded with "Hitler did nothing wrong".
Many members can and will use violence against others. And death threats from the site are not to be taken lightly. According to court documents filed on November 5, 2014, there were images posted to 4chan that appeared to be of a murder victim. The body was discovered in Port Orchard, Washington, after the images were posted. The posts were accompanied by the text: "Turns out it's way harder to strangle someone to death than it looks on the movies." A later post said: "Check the news for Port Orchard, Washington, in a few hours. Her son will be home from school soon. He'll find her, then call the cops. I just wanted to share the pics before they find me." The victim was Amber Lynn Coplin, aged 30. The suspect, 33-year-old David Michael Kalac, surrendered to police in Oregon later the same day; he was charged with second-degree murder involving domestic violence. Kalac was convicted in April 2017 and was sentenced to 82 years in prison the following month.
A few of the members that were involved in several acts of violence were arrested as well.
Due to its anonymous posting nature, many users get away with insults and their behavior.
/B/ contains very provocative and unsettling images due to the random nature of the section.
/Pol/ short for politically incorrect. It is filled with alt right supporters, and white supremacists.
Users of 4chan and other websites "raided" Hal Turner by launching DDoS attacks and prank calling his phone-in radio show during December 2006 and January 2007. The attacks caused Turner's website to go offline. This cost thousands of dollars of bandwidth bills according to Turner. In response, Turner sued 4chan, 7chan, and other websites; however, he lost his plea for an injunction and failed to receive letters from the court.
On July 10, 2008, the swastika CJK unicode character a swastika appeared at the top of Google's Hot Trends list—a tally of the most popular search terms in the United States—for several hours. It was later reported that the HTML numeric character reference for the symbol had been posted on /b/, with a request to perform a Google search for the string. A multitude of /b/ visitors followed the order and pushed the symbol to the top of the chart, though Google later removed the result.
The stock price of Apple Inc. fell significantly in October 2008 after a hoax story was submitted to CNN's user-generated news site iReport.com claiming that company CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a major heart attack. The source of the story was traced back to 4chan.
In May 2009, members of the site attacked YouTube, posting pornographic videos on the site. A 4chan member acknowledged being part of the attack, telling the BBC that it was in response to YouTube "deleting music".
In January 2010, members of the site attacked YouTube again in response to the suspension of YouTube user lukeywes1234 for failing to meet the minimum age requirement of thirteen. The videos uploaded by the user had apparently become popular with 4chan members, who subsequently became angered after the account was suspended and called for a new wave of pornographic videos to be uploaded to YouTube on January 6, 2010.
Later the same year in 2010, 4chan made numerous disruptive pranks directed at singer Justin Bieber.
It is highly possible for child pornography to be found on /b/ in this website.
Back in 2014, 4chan's founder moot and his newly promoted admins decided to push GamerGate out of the site by using the same tactics GG has been accused of using.
On February 4, 2009, a posting on the 4chan /b/ board said there would be a school shooting at St Eskils Gymnasium in Eskilstuna, Sweden, leading 1250 students and 50 teachers to be evacuated. A 21-year-old man was arrested after 4chan provided the police with the IP address of the poster. Police said that the suspect called it off as a joke, and they released him after they found no indication that the threat was serious.
Being banned on 4chan doesn't last long. And once the ban is uplifted users are more than likely to go back to causing trollish behavior online.
They managed to manipulate those who have purchased iPhones to destroy it. By making up fake features that would cause permanent damage to the phone, such as charging the phone by putting it in a microwave oven.
One notable prank "pool's closed" is when they blocked users from Habbo to access the pool due to "AIDS".
One Jewish user on 4chan asked for help to find his grandfather's concentration camp he was held in. Things went to turn for the worse when they started to deny the Holocaust and make pro-Nazi jokes. And mock his grandfather going through the unimaginable horrors during his time in the Holocaust.
Cut4Bieber was a joke by 4chan encouraging many Justin Bieber fans to cut themselves.
One user exploited a 4chan prank to get free coffee from Starbucks.
Hypocrisy. They hate furries for being "degenerates" despite most of the userbase having even grosser fetishes.

Redeeming Qualities

Project Chanology was a huge success in calling out Scientology.
Many famous memes have originated from this site.
They managed to expose how easily offended Social Justice Warriors are. With creating the term "Its alright to be white" and the result was many Social Justice Warriors claiming it was a white supremacist statement, even though in reality it is okay to be yourself regardless of who you are.
They, mostly /b/, helped arrest a 17-year-old animal abuser who was shown kicking his cat on Vine back in 2013. Not only that, but in 2011 they also tracked down a judge who was accused of abusing his disabled daughter.

Trivia

Chrisopher "moot" Poole was even Time's person of the year.
Contrary to popular belief, there are rules on 4chan, especially the /b/ board, such as "Do not insult Mr. Rogers" (many users grew up with him) and "Do not ask for Rule 34 of Yotsuba." (the site's 404 mascot, who is 5 years old, so it's understandable.) It's just that the rules are hidden.
The site was the subject of a clue on Jeopardy! in 2010.

Videos

References

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Tubbybloxian

6 months ago

Score -1

I wonder how Christopher Poole got 4chan to be a notorious website in the first place, like why is 4chan so bad and what does the creator think about all this? I feel like he was thinking about this when he saw number 14 on this page:

Christopher Poole: (Or Hiroyuki Nishimura) Ok, now I have a plan to shutdown this website in the future, because oh boy I don't wanna be underarrested.

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Tubbybloxian

6 months ago

Score -2

Also why does 4chan have some rules about the mascot and Mr Rogers but not anything about massive raids that occurred because of this website?

I mean like, there should be a rule on 4chan saying “Do NOT do the following that made us a page in the rotten websites wiki, which is raiding livestreams, posting illegal content, etc.”

That rule would DEFINITELY improve 4chan, because they should just stop raiding stuff like Club Penguin.

Also BTW, did you know that the purple republic from Club Penguin Shutdown is based off 4chan's purple penguin raids on Club Penguin?

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Dominicmgm

6 months ago

Score 1

They do have that rule, and it started because of the Habbo raid.

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TehSmile

4 months ago

Score 0

I'll remove the point about "Highly outdated website design" because all anonymous image boards have the same design. Also, many people prefer minimalistic old-fashioned design over modern website design which is often overloaded with unnecessary stuff and requires newest browser and good PC to handle all that crap.

Lifehack: if you want to improve the functionality of anonymous image boards you visit, use Dollchan extension.

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Grust

4 months ago

Score 2

Won't lie, I'm a little concerned about 4chan being on here as they have some skilled hackers.

They even scare me, Grust, the most psychotic Miraheze user around.

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Jeva

3 months ago

Score 0

I’m surprised 4chan is Anti-Gamer Gate, I mean isn’t 4chan Anti-SJW.