4chan

4chan

This is where smart people become idiotic and edgy.

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!!! Concieved by Randall Monroe, the creator of xkcd. It originally had a script which prohibited reposts on the board, but the script was removed some years later.
/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.
/tg/: Tabletop Games, particularly Warhammer 40k(this also refers to Warhammer 40k fanbase)

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 (practically his entire life) 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. However the board has now devolved into posting pornography affecting its originality and humor...
/pol/ is the politically incorrect board. This board is filled with alt-right supporters, white supremacists, and people pretending to be such.
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 /b/ board is also responsible for causing some commotion in the 2013 Agile Alliance Conference. It started when a bored conference attender discovered that the conference center had multiple monitors that display live Twitter feeds, any tweet that contains #agile2013 will be automatically displayed on the screens WITHOUT prior moderation. The attender then informed the /b/ board which proceeded to post huge quantities of NSFW content onto the Twitter feed, forcing the conference to eventually shut the feed down after the situation escalated out of control.
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. Such as manipulating online polls to send Bieber to perform his next world tour stop in North Korea.
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.
They managed to manipulate those who have purchased iPhones to destroy them. 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 by forming swastika formations with their avatars due to "AIDS". In reality they were just trolling the website due to claims that Habbo mods are racists who tend to ban users with black avatars.
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.
Literally no one is friendly there, as if you try to say something inoffensive, there are high chances of people insulting you for no reason.
- 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.
- What makes this even worse is that users there are outright proud of them being assholes.

Redeeming Qualities

Project Chanology was a huge success in calling out Scientology.
Many famous memes have originated from this site, such as Rage Guy, Rickrolling, Shoop Da Whoop, LOLcats, etc.
- Indeed, /b/, whilst having the occasional nasty fluke (see above) used to be a great haven for kooky, offbeat humor before the ban on raids kicked out a lot of former users and turned the board into yet another boring porn board in the vein of /soc/, /hr/ and the like.
Many of the boards that are dedicated to certain fandoms, like /a/, /lit/ (the literature board), /m/ (the mecha anime board), /tv/ (American television and film) and /co/ (before a rather notorious infiltration by SJW users likely coming from Tumblr) are actually decent enough if you want to discuss certain entertainment topics. Beware though, you will need to understand the mindset and the humor of the anonymous posting there, so "lurk more" as 4chan themselves best explained how to use the 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/, are against any form of animal abuse. They 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.
The site can be seen as a haven of free speech, since it pretty much has no rules.
- It can also debatably be seen as a necessary evil.
While somewhat rare, some good discussions can be had.
On 2010 all 4chan users celebrating mr.lashua birthday which become the most wholesome history in 4chan.
Since this website is against pedophilia, they banned all posts related to this subject including anything from the movie Cuties.
They ban anyone who insults the great Fred Rogers.

Trivia

Chrisopher "moot" Poole was even Time's person of the year.
The site was launched in 2003 from the SomethingAwful forums...
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.

Link

https://www.4chan.org/

Videos

References

Comments

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Tubbybloxian

22 months ago

Score -2

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.