4chan

4chan

File:4chanMain.png Screenshot of 4chan's Main Page.
Type of site	Imageboard/TextBBS
Owner	"moot"
Created by	"moot"
URL	4chan.org
Commercial	No
Registration	No

4chan (Japanese: Yotsuba, lit. "four leaves" Channel) is an English language imageboard, based on the famous Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel. It was first announced and created as an offshoot of the Something Awful forums, but soon attracted anime fans from around the world. On 4chan, many pictures (often related to anime and manga) are posted and critiqued. It is the 2,339th most visited site on the Internet according to Alexa Internet's statistics.

Site description

The site is divided into discussion boards, image and upload boards, and drawing boards. Currently, there are 35 different image boards, with topics ranging from anime, weapons and photography to real and animated pornography. Seven of these (Cosplay & EGL, Food/Cooking, Comics & Cartoons, Music, News, Papercraft & Origami, Sports, and Television & Film) are trial boards, as their continued existence depends on the overall user response. The site's other boards include an oekaki board, an Artwork/Critique board, an upload board that is used for the uploading and discussion of Flash files,and 19 text-based discussion boards. The discussion boards were once hosted on a separate site called "world4ch" (pronounced world four channel) until they were integrated into 4chan using the subdomain dis.4chan.org, and they use the same codebase as 4chan's previous discussion boards. The discussion boards were initially created by 4chan's administrators and hosted on world4ch as an homage to the defunct world2ch, which itself was a site created during as an earlier attempt to create an English version of 2channel, the Japanese site which started the entire anonymous BBS phenomenon.

Because 4chan is provided to its users free of charge and consumes such a large amount of bandwidth, the site's financing often becomes an issue. To avoid long periods of downtime caused by a severe lack of funds, such as the four "deaths" that plagued the site during its first year of existence, the 4chan staff regularly requests donations. However, there have been numerous problems relating to the receipt of funds through several different online payment services. These services include: PayPal, YowCow, and the Authorize.net payment gateway. Historically, a large contributing factor to these problems had been the presence of lolicon and shotacon imageboards on 4chan, since such content violated many service provider's Terms and Conditions agreements. The disruptions of 4chan's ability to receive funds through the use of these online payment services eventually caused 4chan's moderators to move the lolicon and shotacon boards to a separate website called "not4chan.org", which was run by some of 4chan's moderators. Sometime mid-April, the not4chan.org domain began giving no response, and it was assumed that the moderators had shut down the site. At the end of August, an imageboard with the not4chan title appeared under the "not4chan.us" domain. This has been confirmed to not officially exist as a part of the 4chan network, and was created by someone referring to himself as "narunet" as an apparent attempt to revive the site.

/b/

The Random board /b/, named after the Nijiura board of Futaba Channel, is 4chan's most popular board by far according to statistics which have been released by 4chan staff, as well as the sheer post count: As of 2006-10-28, /b/'s post count has surpassed 15,000,000 posts with most of the other boards still struggling to break 250,000; the anime and video games boards (/a/ and /v/, respectively) are the only other boards to have accumulated more than 1,000,000 posts. After /b/'s 14,000,000th post was made on 2006-10-08, it took only 20 days to accumulate another 1,000,000 posts on /b/, meaning /b/'s posting rate has now surpassed an average of nearly 50,000 posts per day. The humor of /b/'s many residents (also known as "/b/tards", a derisive term which /b/ users have appropriated for themselves) has spawned enough intricate and hard-to-follow inside jokes that most newcomers find many posts incomprehensible.

/b/ is known for the holding of theme days by small subsections of its user base, when pictures following a certain theme are posted in large floods, i.e. Furry Friday or Caturday (Saturday). For 2005-04-01 (a Friday), the moderators created a fake furry board as an April Fools joke and left it up until April 3rd. Every person who posted to the joke board was then banned from 4chan for an extended period of time. This incident is referred to as April Furs Day.

Controversy

Blocks in the UK

Access to /b/ was blocked to customers of NTL, BT Broadband and UKOnline in early June of 2006. For some users, access to /r/, /s/ and /t/ was also affected. Speculation became rife, and the popular theory has been that the Internet Watch Foundation added the board to their list of URLs; because while moderators act to remove instances of posted child pornography as soon as possible, as well as ban the individuals who submit it, the prevalence of such content has led systems like Cleanfeed to blacklist the site. The 4chan TOS and FAQ also state that illegal content (e.g. child pornography, posting of personal information, invasions of other internet communities, etc.) will not be tolerated, and will be punished appropriately. Moderators have also recently taken stronger measures against such content. For example, on 2006-07-12, a reporting system was implemented on all of 4chan's various image, upload, and oekaki boards, allowing any user to 'report' a post that contains illegal material, or material that violates 4chan's terms of use; and on 2006-08-23, the moderators of /b/ began enforcing previously neglected rules regarding sexually suggestive pictures of underage teenagers, invasions of other websites, and posting of personal information. Infractions would now result in bans on the original poster and on anyone posting in the thread, whether they supported the content or not. Many users of /b/ responded by attacking /b/ with automatic floods and spam. Shortly afterwards there was a hard disk failure on one of 4chan's servers, causing most of the boards to go down.

It is worth noting, however, that the "IWF-led block" theory has several discrepancies. Firstly, the ISPs still to have /b/ blocked are BT Internet and NTL, with UKOnline appearing to have removed the block after a few weeks. Secondly, the Internet Watch Foundation themselves confirmed that "no part of the URL for the site 4chan.org is included in our live database." Investigations by other 4chan users have revealed that BT's support teams claim to have no knowledge of a block on any part of the URL 4chan.org. Finally, the BT 'block' on /b/ has evolved continuously over time, with new workarounds redirected to the ban page or a nondescript 404 within mere hours of being discovered. These blocks also have an erratic nature, as blocks have been said to have been suddenly lifted, but reinstated days later, only to be lifted again within an equally short time period. However, some of the percieved inconsistencies in this theory are directly contradicted by claims made by 4chan's staff and other sources. For example, on 2006-08-05, during a 4chan panel at Otakon in which he was fielding questions from the audience, moot, the owner of 4chan, said that the blockings of /b/ and some of the other boards have indeed been a result of the Cleanfeed system. /b/'s front page has also been removed from Google search results due to a notice reportedly sent by the IWF to Google.

NFL bomb threat hoax

File:Jakebrahmthread.jpg

The original threat posted on September 18, 2006 by Brahm.

On October 18, 2006 the Department of Homeland Security warned NFL officials in Miami, New York City, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Oakland, and Cleveland about a possible threat, which involved the simultaneous use of dirty bombs at stadiums in those cities. The threat claimed that the attack would be carried out on the day of October 22nd, the final day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security expressed doubt concerning the credibility of the threats.

On October 20, 2006, Jake Brahm turned himself into federal authorities. He was charged with making a terrorist threat and was taken into custody by police. If convicted, he could face up to 5 years in prison, and a fine of up to $250,000. The threats came to light in the national media after they were repeatedly reposted on 4chan's /b/ more than 40 times by Brahm between September 18th, 2006 and October 19th, 2006.

Anonymity

4chan is an anonymous BBS that does not require (but does allow) the user to supply any personal information like name or email address before being able to post messages. Unlike most web forums, 4chan does not have any kind of registration system. Any person can use any nickname to his or her liking, making it possible to post under the name of someone else by simply entering their name into the posting form. In place of registration, 4chan has provided tripcodes as an optional form of authenticating a poster's identity. As the concept of anonymous posting is a defining feature of Futaba-like imageboards, the use of tripcodes generates controversy amongst 4chan users. Many posters who use them risk being singled out and ridiculed, often with the use of insults like "tripfag". As anonymous posting causes posts to be attributed to "Anonymous", a running gag on 4chan is the idea that Anonymous is in fact a single person.

Use of the (thus far) uncrackable secure tripcode is extremely rare. The complete immunity to trolling and impersonation these tripcodes provide is viewed as a character flaw. As such, secure tripcode users receive even harsher treatment than normal tripcode users.

The /b/ board differs from the others in that it has "forced.anonymous" (a board software variable) enabled, removing the name field (as well as tripcodes) from the posting form and all posts entirely.

All moderators have names with tripcodes, but will generally post without a name even when performing bannings or posting information. In this case, the post is attributed to "Anonymous ## Mod". The primary exception is when 4chan's founder "moot" posts information relating to changes in the site, though moot also frequently posts anonymously. Attempting to post using moot's tripcode results in the user being automatically (and permanently) banned on an IP level by the board software.

Memes

4chan has given birth to a number of memes, a select few of which have become popular enough to spread outside of 4chan and become widely recognized Internet phenomena. For example, some memes have even affected the work of several webcomic artists. Notable examples of webcomic artists that have been influenced by such memes include Josh Lesnick of the webcomic Girly, Ghastly of Ghastly's Ghastly Comic, and Dave Cheung of Chugworth Academy. These cases of influence also serve to demonstrate 4chan's broader impact on the online community. A detailed list of these abundant catchphrases, memes and wordfilters can be found at the ChanChan wiki.

Many of these memes have taken the form of image macros; a user posts a picture, and others add text or edit the picture in other ways. Due to an overwhelming proliferation of image macros inside of 4chan's imageboards, they were banned from use on 4chan in early 2005. However, this did not apply to the Random board, /b/, which officially has "no rules," except for a ban on illegal content which also applies to certain grey areas (e.g. child models). The rules for 4chan's Random imageboard state that "Illegal content will not be tolerated. Borderline content will result in banishment—don't attempt to push the envelope".

Another popular form of meme is "copypasta" (a variation on copy and paste). This meme consists of the text of a previous post, usually a rant or boastful claim, continually reposted by users other than the original author. The meme's primary intent is to mock the original poster; however, there is the ancillary "benefit" of garnering reaction from users who never read the inital post. Additionally, users often alter the copypasta in a humorous way.

When a meme is believed to have been created as a result of a single person or a small group reposting it repeatedly to increase the meme's popularity, rather than letting it gain widespread acceptance and recognition in a more natural way, it is called a forced meme. Forced memes are generally disliked by the community, but the observance of some (e.g., "Milhouse is not a meme") are actually memes. Ultimately, few forced memes ever attain the levels of popularity and acceptance afforded to naturally occurring memes.

See also

• Imageboard
• 2chan
• 2channel
• Image macro
• List of Internet phenomena

External links

• 4chan.org
• CNN Report On Bomb Threat on YouTube