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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 2,006th most visited site on the internet.
Site description
The site is divided into discussion boards, image and upload boards, and oekaki boards. Currently, there are 34 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. There are also 19 text based discussion boards (the now integrated world4ch), one oekaki board (the two original boards were merged on April 2006), and one Flash upload board.
Because 4chan is provided to the user free of charge and uses so much bandwidth, financing often becomes an issue. 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 has been the presence of a lolicon imageboard, since the content violates many service provider's Terms and Conditions agreements. Recently however, both lolicon and shotacon image and request boards have been moved offsite to not4chan.org.
The random board (/b/) is known for the holding of theme days by small subsections of its userbase, when pictures following a certain theme are posted in large floods, i.e. Furry Friday or Caturday and even on occasion, Soviet Sunday traditionally held by a few dedicated users. For April 1 2005 (a Friday), the moderators created a fake furry board as an April Fools joke and left it up until April 3rd. Then every person posting to this board was banned from the site for an extended period of time. The incident is called April Furs Day.
/b/, so coded as a tip-of-the-hat to the Nijiura board of Futaba Channel, is considered to be the most sporadic and sometimes the most disturbing of 4chan's numerous imageboards. It is also the most popular board by far according to statistics released by staff, as well as the sheer postcount: As of July 7, 2006, /b/'s postcount has surpassed 10,000,000 posts with most of the other boards still struggling to break 250,000. At one time, it took only 27 days to accumulate another 1,000,000 posts, meaning /b/'s posting rate has now surpassed an average of 37,000 posts per day. However, the humor of /b/'s residents (also known as "/b/tards", a derisive term which /b/ users have appropriated for themselves) have spawned enough of these intricate and hard-to-follow inside jokes that most newcomers find many posts incomprehensible. A detailed guide to the abundant catchphrases, memes and wordfilters of 4chan can be found at WikiWorld.
Access to /b/ was blocked to customers of NTL, BT Broadband and UKOnline using the Cleanfeed system in early June, 2006. For some users, access to /r/, /s/ and /t/ is also affected. The Internet Watch Foundation added the board to their list of URLs; Cleanfeed is meant to be used to block access to child pornography. Such content occasionally appears on the board, forcing moderators to make an effort to remove it promptly, as well as ban the poster of the illegal material. The 4chan TOSFAQ[http://www.4chan.org/faq.php" target="_blank" >* 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.
On July 12th 2006, a reporting system was implemented on 4chan, allowing any user to 'report' a post that contains illegal material, or material that violates 4chan's terms of use.
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 a registration system, even optional. 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. 4chan provides "tripcodes" to help those who wish to secure their identity between posts. These codes are generated by typing "#tripcode" after your name, with "tripcode" being an 8-character password. The password is converted by an encryption scheme and comes out as a random set of numbers and letters. While another user can copy your username, the tripcode will be ultimately different from your own due to your password. Secure tripcodes are thus far uncrackable. While it seems logical nobody would choose a tripcode over a secure tripcode, very few people make use of them, as complete immunity to trolling/impersonation is viewed on 4chan as weak-spined, so secure tripcode users are prejudiced against and flamed at an extreme level, much more than those who use tripcodes (who just get the occasional "tripfag" remark most of the time).
The /b/ board differs from the others in that it has "forced.anonymous" (a board software variable) enabled, removing the name field 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.
Related projects
not4chan
Due to problems stemming from the disruption of 4chan's use of online payment services, the lolicon and shotacon boards were moved offsite to not4chan, which incorporates its own niche request and BitTorrent boards. Not4chan is run on separate servers, has a separate administrative team, and is owned by a different individual.world4ch
On December 25, 2004, a separate site was created by the administrators of 4chan using the same codebase as the discussion boards. World4ch (pronounced world four channel) is an homage to the defunct world2ch, which itself was an earlier attempt to make an English version of 2channel, the BBS which started the entire phenomenon. It has a much broader range of discussion and no images may be posted; it is purely a text-based site, like 2channel. Recently, due to moot's intention to "unite the site", world4ch has been integrated into 4chan.org using the dis.4chan.org subdomain. World4ch's homepage now redirects to 4chan's homepage.Memes
4chan has given birth to a number of memes. Many of these take 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, they were banned from 4chan in early 2005. However, this did not apply to the Random board, /b/, which officially has "no rules" (save for a ban on illegal content in addition to certain grey areas, children in swimsuits for example. The rules 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 "copy pasta" (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 saw the inital post. Additionally, users generally alter the copy pasta in a humorous way.
When a meme is believed to have been created by a single person or a small group reposting it repeatedly rather than naturally catching on with 4chan users as a whole, it is called a forced meme. Forced memes are generally disliked by the community, but some (e.g., "Milhouse is/is not a meme") see occasional resurgences. Ultimately, few forced memes ever attain the levels of popularity and acceptance afforded to naturally occurring memes.
See also
References
External links
- 4chan.org
- 4chan news archive
- A list of 4chan memes and milestones
- The Overchan List of non-Japanese imageboards
4chan | Internet forums | 2003 establishments | Virtual communities
"4chan"