4chan

4chan is an anonymous image-board website that was first launched in 2003. Originally created as a forum for posting images and discussion related to anime, 4chan quickly grew into one of the world’s largest online communities. Since its creation, 4chan has expanded to include numerous public boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics ranging from anime to video games, politics, sports, and more. In the process, 4chan emerged as a major hub of Internet subculture responsible for the creation and spread of various well-known Internet memes and online political movements. At the same time, however, 4chan has also earned a reputation for being one of the Internet’s most controversial websites. With minimal moderation and all but complete user anonymity, all sorts of questionable, if not outright offensive, content proliferates on 4chan. This includes everything from pornography to graphic depictions of violence and a wide range of posts that support racism, bigotry, sexism, political extremism, and conspiracy theories.

Background

The historic roots of 4chan can be traced back to the emergence of similar image-board websites that first gained popularity among Japanese Internet users in the late twentieth century. The genesis of 4chan began when Hiroyuki Nishimura, a Japanese student then studying in the United States at the University of Central Arkansas, created an anonymous Japanese-language message board called 2channel in 1999. Also known as 2ch for short, 2channel quickly became popular among Japanese users who enjoyed having the freedom to anonymously vent their frustrations online without fear of social repercussions. Spurred by fears that 2channel was about to shut down, in August 2001 fans of Nishimura’s message board created a backup board they called 2chan, or Futaba Channel. Unlike the strictly text-based 2channel, Futaba Channel was an image board, which meant that users could post both text and images. Before long, Futaba Channel gained its own following independent of 2channel and inspired the creation of many similar image-board websites.

Among the fans of Futaba Channel was Christopher Poole, a teenage manga aficionado from Westchester, New York. Believing there was a potential demand for an English-language version of image-board websites like Futaba Channel, in October 2003 the then fifteen-year-old Poole created a new online forum he called 4chan. Initially focused only on anime, 4chan enjoyed rapid growth and soon came to feature numerous distinct boards focusing on a wide variety of specific topics. While some of these boards were relatively benign in terms of their content, others quickly became open forums for illegal activities and the posting of extremely illicit images, including child pornography. Such behavior eventually led authorities to begin investigating 4chan and its users’ activities. After an attempt to crack down on some of the more problematic aspects of the website, Poole ultimately stepped down from 4chan in 2015, selling his interest in the popular image board to 2chan creator Hiroyuki Nishimura. Although 4chan remained one of the Internet’s most frequently visited websites, Nishimura struggled to keep it afloat in the years that followed, in part because of 4chan’s continued association with illicit content and ill-behaved users. In 2018, Nishimura announced that 4chan would be divided into two separate websites, with 4channel.org housing all of the site’s more work-friendly content and 4chan.org continuing to host the more controversial boards.

Overview

Essentially a series of freewheeling online forums where users can discuss a broad range of topics, in most respects 4chan is similar to other largescale Internet forums like Reddit or Something Awful. Like these other websites, 4chan is divided into separate boards that are dedicated to specific topics, such as politics, sports, and video games. However, several factors make 4chan unique among other Internet forums. Most importantly, 4chan users do not have to sign up for an account or even create a user name to comment. This affords 4chan users a much greater degree of anonymity and makes it easier for them to say or do nearly anything without fear of repercussions. Another key difference between 4chan and other Internet forums is that 4chan threads automatically expire after a set period of time. Once a thread expires, it is permanently deleted from 4chan’s servers. This impermanence makes 4chan even more attractive to users who do not want their posts to be preserved online indefinitely.

According to internal studies conducted by 4chan itself, most of the website’s users are young males with at least some college education. Many also share an interest in video games, technology, and Japanese culture. The majority reside in English-speaking countries. Given the level of anonymity the site permits, however, little else is definitively known about precisely who regularly uses 4chan.

4chan hosts a wide variety of distinct boards divided by topic. While some topics are comparatively narrow, others are quite broad. One of the broadest and most well-known—not to mention most controversial—4chan boards is the Random (/b/) board. By far the largest board on 4chan, the /b/ board is overflowing with creative memes, Internet pranks, and other amusing material. At the same time, however, the /b/ board also features angry and often offensive rants, pornography, and violent imagery. In fact, most of 4chan’s worst, most offensive content—such as pornography, photographs of attempted suicides, and at least one real murder—have surfaced on the /b/ board. The /b/ board is also known for having helped to birth the anonymous hacker movement.

Fortunately, much of the content found on 4chan is not as problematic as what can often be seen on the /b/ board. The Videogame (/v/) board hosts varied discussions about video games and the video game industry and has grown over time to become one of the Internet’s largest online video game communities. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (/lgbt/) board hosts serious discussions on topics like reproductive rights and same-sex marriage and is generally viewed as one of 4chan’s safest and most positive boards. Less positive is the Politically Incorrect (/pol/) board, which has largely evolved into a space for political extremism, hate speech, and political conspiracy theories. Other 4chan boards include the Auto (/o/), Fitness (/fit/), Paranormal (/x/) boards.

Bibliography

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