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4chan
File:4chan front page.pngThe 4chan homepage on August 3, 2008
Type of siteImageboard
Available inEnglish
Owner"moot"
URLhttp://www.4chan.org/
CommercialYes
RegistrationNone available

4chan is an English-language imageboard website. Launched on October 1, 2003, its boards are primarily used for the posting of pictures and discussion of gore and loli. Users generally post anonymously and the site has been linked to a subculture of internet activism such as Anonymous culture and Project Chanology.

The site has generated broad media attention. The Guardian describes 4chan as "at once brilliant, ridiculous and alarming" and its members have been responsible for the formation and popularization of Internet memes such as lolcats, rickrolling, and the popularity of the Tay Zonday song "Chocolate Rain". It has also received media attention for its attacks against other websites and Internet users, and for the threats of violence that have been posted on it. The site's "/wg/" board is by far 4chan's most popular and notorious. It is known as the "weegee" board, and there are minimal rules on posted content.

Background

4chan was started in 2003 in the bedroom of a 15-year-old student from New York City who uses the pseudonym "moot". He intended the site to be a place to discuss Japanese comics and television shows, an American counterpart to the popular Japanese Futaba Channel ("2chan") imageboard. moot purchased the server space for 4chan using his mother's credit card, with her approval. Prior to starting 4chan, moot had been a regular participant on the Something Awful forums.

The activity of 4chan takes place on message boards and imageboards. The website is split into six categories: Japanese Culture, Interests, Creative, Adult (18+), Other, and Misc (18+). These provide for on-topic boards to discuss anime, manga, technology, sport, photography, music, hentai, torrents, travel, physical fitness, and random. 4chan originally hosted discussion boards on a separate domain called "world4ch", but these were later moved to the dis.4chan.org subdomain. The site has one employee, a programmer whom moot met via on-line Tetris. All other moderators are volunteers.

Because 4chan is provided to its users free of charge and consumes a large amount of bandwidth, its financing often becomes problematic. moot acknowledges that donations alone can not keep the site online, so he has turned to advertising to help make ends meet. However, the pornographic content hosted on 4chan has deterred businesses who do not want to be associated with the site's content from advertising. 4chan's Alexa rank is generally around 1000, though it has been as high as number 56 at times. 4chan is one of the Internet's most trafficked imageboards, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Unlike most web forums, 4chan does not have a registration system, allowing users to post anonymously. Any nickname may be used when posting, even one that has been previously adopted, such as "Anonymous" or "moot". In place of registration, 4chan has provided tripcodes as an optional form of authenticating a poster's identity. As making a post without filling in the "Name" field causes posts to be attributed to "Anonymous", general understanding on 4chan holds that Anonymous is not a single person but a collective (hive) of users. This understanding has led to a running gag referring to Anonymous as some kind of Übermensch. Moderators will generally post without a name even when performing sysops actions. A "capcode" may be used to attribute the post to "Anonymous ## Mod", although moderators often post without the capcode. 4chan also has a junior moderation team, called "janitors", who may delete posts or images and suggest that the normal moderation team ban a user, but can not post with a capcode—revealing oneself as a janitor is grounds for dismissal.

Links to Anonymous and Project Chanology

See also: Anonymous (group) and Project Chanology

4chan has been labeled as the starting point of the Anonymous meme by The Baltimore City Paper, due to the norm of posts signed with the "Anonymous" moniker. The National Post's David George-Cosh said it has been "widely reported" that Anonymous is associated with 4chan and 711chan, as well as numerous Internet Relay Chat channels.

Through its association with Anonymous, 4chan has become associated with Project Chanology, a worldwide protest against the Church of Scientology held by members of Anonymous. On January 15, 2008 a 4chan user posted to /b/, suggesting participants "do something big" against the Church of Scientology's website. This message resulted in the Church receiving, by its own reports, more than 6,000 threatening phone calls. It quickly grew into a large real-world protest. Unlike previous Anonymous attacks, this action was characterized by 4chan inside jokes, including rickrolls and Guy Fawkes masks. The raid drew criticism from some 4chan users who felt it would bring the site unnecessary attention.

Memes

Internet memes are catchphrases or images that spread quickly, peer to peer, across the Internet. Many Internet memes have originated on 4chan, usually /b/, as its fast moving, crowd psychology nature enables content to quickly be passed on to large numbers of viewers. The most notable of these memes are lolcats, rickrolling, and "Chocolate Rain". Other memes originating on the site have gained media attention of a lesser degree. These include "So I herd u liek mudkipz" [sic], which involves a phrase based on Pokémon, and which generated numerous YouTube tribute videos. 4chan, and other websites, such as the satirical Encyclopedia Dramatica, have also contributed to the development of significant amounts of leetspeak.

Lolcats

Main article: lolcat

In 2005, the lolcat meme began on 4chan as "Caturday". Every Saturday, users posted pictures of cats with image macros relating to that day's theme.

Rickrolling

Main article: Rickrolling

In 2005, the meme of the "duckroll" began when moot used a word filter to change "egg" to "duck" across 4chan. Thus, words such as "eggroll" were changed to "duckroll". This led to a bait and switch in which external links disguised as relevant to a discussion instead lead to a picture of a duck on wheels.

In March 2007, the trailer for the video game Grand Theft Auto IV was released. Its immense popularity caused publisher Rockstar Games' website to crash. An unidentified 4chan user applied the duckroll on a link to the site to link to a YouTube video for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" instead of a picture of a duck. Thus, the "rickroll" was born. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Astley said he found the meme "bizarre and funny".

"Chocolate Rain"

Main article: Chocolate Rain

A link to the YouTube video of Tay Zonday's song "Chocolate Rain" was posted on /b/ on July 11, 2007. The Age reported that 4chan posters urged each other to "swarm" the video on YouTube and thus increase its ranking. The video became an immensely popular internet meme, resulting in cover versions by John Mayer and Green Day drummer Tre Cool. The portion of the song in which Zonday turns away from the microphone, with a caption stating "I move away from the mic to breathe in", became a an oft-repeated meme on 4chan and inspired remixes.

Media attention

Internet attacks

See also: eBaum's World controversy, KTTV Fox 11 news report, and Sarah Palin email hack

On January 9, 2006, eBaum's World violated copyright laws in hosting an image of Lindsay Lohan originally posted on YTMND. As a result, users of 4chan, YTMND, Something Awful, and Newgrounds participated in a "raid" against the site including a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, and flooding of the website's chat room, forums and technical support. The attack caused the forums to go offline for an unknown period of time.

In December 2006 and January 2007, users of 4chan and other websites "raided" Hal Turner by launching DDoS attacks and prank calling his phone-in radio show. 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 26, 2007, KTTV Fox 11 aired a report on "Anonymous", calling them a group of "hackers on steroids", "domestic terrorists", and collectively an "Internet hate machine". Slashdot founder Rob Malda posted a comment made by another Slashdot user, Miang, stating that the story focused mainly on users of "4chan, 7chan and 420chan". Miang claimed that the report "seems to confuse /b/ raids and motivational poster templates with a genuine threat to the American public", arguing that the "unrelated" footage of a van exploding shown in the report was to "equate anonymous posting with domestic terror".

On July 10, 2008, the swastika symbol (卐) 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.

On September 17, 2008, the private Yahoo! Mail account of Sarah Palin, Republican vice presidential candidate in the 2008 United States presidential election, was hacked by a 4chan user. This had followed criticism of Palin and other politicians supposedly using private email accounts for parliamentary work. The hacker posted the account's password on /b/, and screenshots from within the account to Wikileaks. A /b/ user then logged in and changed the password, posting a screenshot of his sending an email to a friend of Palin's informing her of the new password on the /b/ thread. However, he forgot to blank out the password in the screenshot. A multitude of /b/ users attempted to log in with the new password, and the account was automatically locked out by Yahoo!. The incident was criticized by some /b/ users, one of whom complained that "seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically." The FBI and Secret Service began investigating the incident shortly after its occurrence. On September 20 it was revealed they were questioning David Kernell, the son of Democratic Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell.

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.

Threats of violence

See also: Jake Brahm

On October 18, 2006 the Department of Homeland Security warned National Football League officials in Miami, New York City, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Oakland, and Cleveland about a possible threat involving the simultaneous use of dirty bombs at stadiums. The threat claimed that the attack would be carried out on October 22, 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, but warned the relevant organizations as a precaution. The games proceeded as planned but under a higher level of security awareness. The threats came to light in the national media after blogger Jake Brahm admitted to have posted the threats on 4chan and forty other websites. FOX News reported that the posts should not have been taken seriously as " would never take anything posted on 4chan as fact", while an FBI official was quoted as saying the "credibility of was beyond ridiculous". As a parody of the incident, 4chan temporarily added "Don't mess with football" as an additional rule for /b/.

Hello, /b/.

On September 11, 2007, at 9:11 A.M. Central time, two pipe bombs will be remote-detonated at Pflugerville High School.

Promptly after the blast, I, along with two ther Anonymous, will charge the building, armed with a Bushmaster AR-15, IMI Galil AR, a vintage, government-issue M1 .30 Carbine, and a Benelli M4 semi auto shotgun.

—The Pflugerville threat.

On October 20, 2006, Brahm turned himself in to federal authorities, and was charged with fabricating a fake terrorist threat and taken into custody. On February 28, 2008, he pled guilty to the federal charges. On June 5, 2008 he was sentenced to six months in prison, six months' house arrest, and ordered to pay $26,750 in restitution.

Around midnight on September 11, 2007, a student posted photographs of mock pipe bombs and another photograph of him holding them while saying he would blow up his high school—Pflugerville High School in Pflugerville, Texas—at 9:11 a.m. on September 11. Users of 4chan helped to track him down by finding the perpetrator's father's name in the Exif data of a photograph he took, and contacted the police. He was arrested before school began that day.

Jarrad Willis, a 20-year-old from Melbourne, Australia was arrested on December 8, 2007, for posting on 4chan that "I am going to shoot and kill as many people as I can until which time I am incapacitated or killed by the police". The post was accompanied by an image, uploaded by Willis, of a man who threatened a shopping mall near Beverly Hills holding a shotgun. The post and image were later deleted from the site. Willis was charged with criminal defamation, but died before the case was heard.

moot's identity

moot at the 2008 ROFLCon

moot's alleged real-world identity—"Christopher Poole"—was revealed on July 9, 2008 in The Wall Street Journal. That day, Lev Grossman of TIME published an interview describing his influence as a non-visible administrator as "one of the most " on the evolution of content collaboration. Although Grossman's article began with the confession that "I don't even know his real name", he claimed to identify moot as Christopher Poole. Later, on July 10, Grossman admitted that there was an outside chance that Christopher Poole was not moot's real name, but instead an obscure reference to a 4chan inside joke. Prior to the Wall Street Journal and TIME interviews, moot deliberately kept his real identity separate from 4chan. He told Grossman "my personal private life is very separate from my Internet life ... There's a firewall in between." As moot, he has spoken at conferences at Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Observer describes moot as "the most influential web entrepreneur you've never heard of".

References

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  4. ^ Lev Grossman (2008-07-09). "The Master of Memes". TIME. Retrieved 2008-07-24. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  5. ^ Jerry Langton (2007-09-22). "Funny how `stupid' site is addictive". The Toronto Star. Retrieved 2008-07-16. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  6. "FAQ - What is 4chan?". 4chan. Retrieved 2008-07-15.
  7. Cite error: The named reference Gawker was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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  29. Garth Montgomery (2007-08-01). "Chocolate Rain goes huge". The Daily Telegraph. news.com.au. Retrieved 2008-07-14.
  30. Christopher Boyd (2006-01-09). "Lindsay Lohan causes massive DoS war". Vitalsecurity.org. Retrieved 2008-01-20.
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  37. David Sarno (2008-09-17). "4Chan's half-hack of Palin's email goes awry". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2008-09-17. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  38. Steve Bosak (2008-09-20). "Suspect Nabbed in Palin E-mail Hack". NewsFactor. Retrieved 2008-09-21.
  39. Sandoval, Greg (October 4, 2008). "Who's to blame for spreading phony Jobs story?". CNet News. Retrieved January 11, 2009.
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  44. Associated Press (2008-06-05). "Ex-Grocery Clerk Gets 6 Months for NFL Stadium Attack Hoax". FOX News. Retrieved 2008-07-21.
  45. ^ "4chanarchive - Thread 39101047". 4chanarchive.com. 2007-09-11. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  46. Ronald Smothers (2006-10-20). "Man, 20, Arrested in Stadium Threat Hoax". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-07-27. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  47. Sharon Gaudin (2008-06-16). "Man gets six months for posting terror threat online". PC World. Retrieved 2008-07-21. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  48. "4chanarchive - Thread 39168208". 4chanarchive.com. 2007-09-11. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  49. "Pflugerville Student Arrested After Posting Bomb Threats". KXAN. 2007-09-12. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  50. "Police Investigate Bomb Threat at Pflugerville High School". Fox Television Stations, Inc. 2007-09-11. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  51. "Teen arrested for threatening to blow up school". TWEAN News Channel of Austin, L.P. d.b.a. News 8 Austin. 2007-09-11. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  52. "Juvenile arrested in Pflugerville H.S. bomb threat". KVUE. 2007-09-11. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  53. Associated Press (2007-12-08). "Australian Police Arrest Man Who Threatened to Attack Los Angeles Mall". Fox News. Retrieved 2008-07-14.
  54. Fiona Hudson, Liam Houlihan (2007-12-09). "Student faces jail over online joke". The Herald Sun. news.com.au. Retrieved 2008-07-14.
  55. Associated Press (2007-12-09). "US student arrested in connection with Internet threat of campus shooting in Los Angeles". IHT. Retrieved 2009-01-12.
  56. Shaun Davies (2008-07-31). "Mall massacre hoax accused dies". ninemsn. Retrieved 2008-07-31.
  57. Lev Grossman (2008-07-10). "Now in Paper-Vision: The 4chan Guy". TIME. Retrieved 2008-07-24. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  58. David Smith (2008-07-20). "The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site". The Observer. Retrieved 2008-07-20. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

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