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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 from anime and manga) are posted without permission (from books, around the net, etc...) and critiqued.

History

4chan opened on October 1, 2003. So far, it has been shut down due to lack of funding or hosting multiple times:

• 1st death: Sometime between October 10 and October 29, 2003.
• 2nd death: Sometime around November 22, 2003.
• 3rd death: January 3, 2004.
• 4th death: June 20, 2004.

On August 11, 2004, 4chan returned for its fifth incarnation, under new management. The site had previously died after several crapflooding attacks, lack of funding caused by a PayPal lockout, and lack of motivation from the site founder, doug.

On December 24, 2004, the site team launched world4ch, a discussion board modeled after 2channel and powered by Shii's new board software. It has 25 different boards, on a wide range of topics.

July 1, 2005 was a scare for the site's users, as the majority of boards were closed and a message from "moot's secretary" stating that site owner "moot" had abandoned the project and that the site would close in a few days by lack of funds was posted on the news page. Dubbed "Zero Hour" by users, it turned out this announcement had been made without moot's knowledge, and within a day all boards returned to normal.

On July 28, 2005, near midnight, /b/ reached its two millionth post. (For more information, please see the Wikiworld article linked at the bottom of this page.)

On August 29, 2005, shortly after celebrating one year of up-time and a panel at Otakon, an anime convention, moot announced 4chan was "literally out of money", and called for $20,000 to buy new servers and a year of hosting. Dubbing the period "donate or die" week, he hoped if the target was reached there would be no need for any more fund drives for another twelve months. Some users were skeptical as there was no way of knowing how much money was being donated, and there were fears the funds were simply being used for personal gain. In response, the administration put a PHP-based fund-meter on the site, which updated as funds were donated. The indicator, which had an appearance similar to the meme "longcat," has, as of September 23, 2005, just reached the $14,000 mark. To spur donations, a few female users took it upon themselves to help 4chan by posting nude pictures of themselves with "donate4chan" written across their chests in the /s/ board. Moot bought three servers, but cannot afford to colocate them.

On October 16, 2005, /b/ reached its three millionth post. The 3,000,000th post has a file with a UNIX timestamp after the 3,000,001st, which has caused some users to believe it was faked.

On November 20, 2005, /b/ reached its 3.5 millionth post. It contained the word fail, along with a logic puzzle blueprint.

In December, 2005, moot implemented "janitors", who can delete posts but cannot ban users, to reduce the workload of the moderators. Janitors are only active on /a/ and /v/, which had the most problem with trolls.

On December 23, 2005, /b/ reached its four millionth post. It contained a image of girl volleyball players in a circle that was edited with photoshop.

On January 22, 2006, /b/ reached its four and a half million post.

In February, 2006, 4chan's "orz" and "cgi" servers simultaneously encountered hard drive failures. Among the boards hosted by these servers were /gif/, /h/, /s/, and the secret /5/ board. On February 9, orz was restored; however, /5/ was not placed back on the server. Cgi has yet to be restored.

Site description

The site is divided into discussion boards, image and upload boards, and oekaki boards. To date, there are 25 different image boards, with topics ranging from anime, weapons and photography to real and animated pornography. There are also 6 discussion boards, 2 oekaki boards, and one Flash upload board.

Because 4chan is a free service and uses so much bandwidth, there is often a problem with financing. moot and the mods will sometimes request donations. There has been a perpetual issue with finding an online payment service. Paypal was used, but the account was judged to be in violation of their Acceptable Use policy and was frozen. Recently, the service Yowcow also shut down 4chan's account with no reason given. Historically, a factor in this problem has been the presence of lolicon and shotacon boards, because content posted there violates many Terms and Conditions agreements of service providers. However, these boards are no longer hosted on 4chan's servers; instead, they are found on a server owned and operated solely by another individual and all links to this smaller site have been removed. This smaller site is named Not4chan.org, and the creator cites his reason as "a replacement for 4chan's late /l/ and /sm/ boards".

The random board (/b/) is infamous 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, traditionally held by a few dedicated users. Memes and catchphrases are also a large part of the 4chan environment, as in any community; however the apparent popularity of this board moves some people to attempt to "start" a new catchphrase by mere repetition. These almost never catch on, except in the notable case of the copipe (Japanese for copy-paste, a block of text that is saved and copied into relevant-- or irrelevant-- discussions).

The Random board /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 and the sheer postcount (as of this writing /b/'s postcount has surpassed 4,000,000 posts, with most of the other boards still struggling to break 200,000). However, the humor and creativity 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 and memes of 4chan can be found here.

not4chan

Due to issues with 4chan's host company, the lolicon and shotacon boards were moved offsite to . Due to the difficulty of policing the site for child pornography, it has been shut down.

world4ch

On December 25, 2004, a separate site was created by the administrators of 4chan utilising the same codebase used by 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.

Notable Memes

4chan has given birth to a number of memes (or clichés, as some users disdainfully refer to them). 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 /b/, which officially has "no rules", and thus image macros remain a staple there.

As of early 2006, denizens of /b/ have begun replying to memes or forced memes with posting "sup 4chan".

Cock Mongler

The Cock Mongler originates from a photo of a redheaded man modeling his dinosaur T-shirt; hosted on the website for The World's Largest Dinosaur in Drumheller, Alberta. Due to its humorous appearance (stemming from the model's wide, toothy grin and bulging eyes) it was photoshopped into an image macro accordingly; the caption used was "I'll suck your cock!", implying that the model was willing to perform fellatio (cock mongling). Ironically his large teeth assured unpleasant results. Despite being one of the older memes (originating from one of 4chan's earlier incarnations, at around June 2004) it is still occasionally seen edited on to all manner of images. Along with "Happy Negro" (see below), Cock Mongler is seen by some, especially on /b/, as one of 4chan's mascots, and image macros involving both of their faces are somewhat common. Cockmongler is one of the oldest and popular memes on 4chan.

fgsfds

Another famous meme is fgsfds. It would originally caption a picture of the German talk-show host Harald Schmidt with his finger up in the air. It is used when someone says something incomprehensible.

Happy Negro

"Happy Negro" is the nickname given to Santino Lee, a black adult film actor featured in a series of photos from the adult website BangBus.tv. In one picture, he is shown fondling the breasts of a woman with an exaggerated expression of excitement on his face. It is this picture from which the nickname, and Lee's most common image, originates. This meme was established as early as March 2004.

Pedobear

Pedobear is the name given by 4chan users to a bear originally called "Kuma" (which is just "bear" in Japanese) who is a meme on the Japanese BBS 2channel. The name "Pedobear" is misleading, for the original character on 2channel has none of the passion for young girls, a trait that his Western counterpart is known for. The name came to usage near the middle to end of April 2004, when on /b/ there was a large flood of Ascii Art posts. A few users started an in-joke whereby one would post Osakaphone saying something, and the other would post Kuma with a response. Invariably, the content of these posts began getting more and more sexually oriented as the length of the conversations increased-- this, paired with the innocence and widely-held immaturity of Osaka, led some to dub Kuma as being "pedo" for her. Thus, Kuma became known as Pedobear; but it is important to understand that Pedobear is not all that Kuma is. Now Pedobear is placed after pictures of underage girls.

Raptor Jesus

Raptor Jesus is a picture of Jesus with the head of a velocoraptor photoshopped on. It was originally the 900,000th post on /b/, before moderators changed it to a picture of a man with a donut on his penis. Despite this, the truth was quickly discovered, and Raptor Jesus became a popular meme.

Longcat

Longcat is the name given by 4chan users to a cat originally called "Nobiiru" (のび〜る, meaning "streeetch") who is a meme on the Japanese image board Futaba Channel. The cat was featured in a comical picture of an owner holding his cat aloft by the torso, just beneath its forelegs. The cat thus appeared stretched out, and this was further made more exaggerated by image manipulation. At first, it was known as Patriot Cat or "Pat Cat" and simply used for getting photoshopped in front of the World Trade Center Towers, protecting them from attacking airplanes. It was somehow forgotten and then dug up again with the now common name: Longcat. People amused by the idea of Longcat have created various memes associated with, and assuming familiarity with, the original picture. Textual examples include "Longcat is looooooong." and "Longcat is infinite." A pictoral example depicts Longcat forming a lemniscate. Recently longcat was used by the administration to show how much money was donated to 4chan's "Donate or Die" drive. On the /b/ forum, longcat was coded to appear in random amounts, in clothing, upside down, black, or even with the text "the world" and stretched out past the page. Longcat is also known as "tallcat" or "stretchcat", the latter more closely following the Japanese.

See also: Nobiru Archive

Speedycat

Speedycat originated from the #4chan chatroom from "Speedchat" or "Speedychat", a term used to describe excess spamming in the chatroom, or people generally typing too fast at the same time, and the badly sung song "Speedycat" from the beatmaniaIIDX series which happens to be entirely in Engrish. From this, an idea to draw a new cat meme for 4chan was put forwards. However, one member decided to take this idea further and created a short looping flash animation involving a bright yellow cat flying across the night sky with the song "Speedycat" playing in the background. Upon clicking the moon the cat would hit "Warp Speed" in which the cat would be seen flying through bright flashing lights to a sped up version of "Speedycat". Thus the new cat meme Speedycat was born in the late months of the year 2005 and is known to be "Splendid Like a Fire". As to the phrase "longcat is looooooong" Speedycat himself has the phrase "speedycat sure is speeeeeeeedy". On 4chan the two memes Longcat and Speedycat are known to be dating each other.

See also: Speedycat Looping Animation

WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

First seen in the flash "mudah.swf" where it showcases many characters and abilities from the manga, anime, and videogame series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, with the final one being a stick figure version of Dio Brando stopping time, stabbing his opponent with knives, and thowing a steamroller upon him with a triumphant cry of WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY (one w, one r, 20 y's). This movie originated on 2chan's Flash board, and was posted on idlechan, 4chan, and the other #chan clones at the time, gaining in popularity as it went. It became especially popular on 4chan's /f/ board, and has even spawned a series of "WRYYYOWNED!" movies on /f/ where popular (often too popular and overly reposted) Flash movies are edited to include stick-figure Dio smashing their main character.

NO U

"NO U" (meaning "No, you") is a meme used to tell the original poster to apply what he/she has just said to him/herself instead of others reading the discussion. It is often used as a caption to a picture, sometimes photoshopped, of someone that looks like they could be saying "No, you". The most frequently used picture is that of an asian man with his mouth open and his index finger extended and the words NO U! beneath; photoshops of this picture are almost a meme in and of themselves.

"NO U" echoes a similar meme from the 2ch boards; Mona's catch phrase "Omae mo nā!" is used there in almost exactly the same way.

O RLY Owl

The O RLY? Owl, an image macro first originated on 4chan when the word "repost" was filtered to "owl". The O RLY? owl is an image which is usually modified and posted for comedic value on various subjects and can even be considered insulting at times.

Some common variations include EmO RLY?, an owl with long hair and piercings, made to poke fun at followers of the Emo genre of music and YA RLY which is an owl with a facial expression which appears similar to human anger.

George Zimmer

George Zimmer, who is the founder and CEO of a successful chain of retailers in the USA known as Men's Wearhouse, has become well-known meme on the /b/ imageboard. He is often depicted as being an extremely virile satyriasis, and emphasis is usually given to the unnatural fictional size of his penis through the excessive use of alliteration and metaphoric phrases such as "PENILE PELVIC PULVERISER" and "COLOSSAL CROTCH CANNON". The posts usually start out with George Zimmer introducing himself as the founder and CEO of the Mens Wearhouse, then followed by an extremely sexual innuendo and finished off by the phrase "I GUARANTEE IT" which the real George Zimmer uses in his companies advertisements "You're going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.". Anger is usually stirred up amongst the /b/ imageboard when someone tries to construct a humorous Zimmer post, but fails miserably.

Are they still on Namek?

A semi-recent addition to 4chan's meme repertoire, "Are they still on Namek?" has become something of a catchphrase for disgruntled Bleach fans who feel the Soul Society arc has gone on for way too long and is becoming a second Namek Saga (a story arc from Dragon Ball Z which also had a large number of episodes). Several 4chan users have expanded this meme to encompass any and all anime that could be perceived as "dragging on". In this context, the phrase is interchangeable with "Are they still in Soul Society?"

Unlike most 4chan memes (which are established in /b/ and then "migrate" to other boards), "Are they still on Namek" was born from and is rarely if ever seen outside of /a/, the anime board.

It is also worth noting that the moderators have begun banning users from /a/ for using this meme, presumably because its overuse has dragged it down from a tongue-in-cheek joke to an outright attack against anyone who enjoys the anime in question.

After the last episode of the Soul Society arc aired on the 5th of January 2006, many people posted threads stating that the Namek meme had outstayed its welcome, however, many other Users saw fit to draw comparisons between the latest (filler) arc and the Garlic Jr Arc of Dragonball Z. However, this didn't last and the meme slowly disappeared from /a/.

Gendo

Gendo is a character from the popular anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, which recieves both praise and criticism on /b/. As the head of NERV he is normally found with a uncaring expression on his face, amplified with his reflective glasses and steepled hands over his mouth. Whenever the topic of Evangelion comes up a flood of images follows, consisting of any photograph or drawing of a person with Gendo's glasses and hands poorly photoshopped over their face. Recently on the imageboard /b/, Gendo has had the nickname 'Evil Ambassador' placed unto him. This spawned from an Anonymous poster asking for the arm and glasses from the Gendo meme, but not knowing what the meme was called and so he named it Evil Ambassador. Although there are people who do not like this new name, there are those in favour and flame wars usually break out in /b/ about its humour factor.

THAT FUCKING CAT

This meme began with the posting of a picture of a dog looking through a half-opened door with the caption 'a master is out'. Any picture featuring someone or something peering out from behind anything was captioned with 'a master is out'. Sometime in early 2005, a user posted a picture of Tom from the children's cartoon Tom and Jerry looking out from behind a girder. It was loved so much that it became a meme and the 'master is out' trend died. Tom was reposted so much that finally, out of exasperation, an anonymous cried out 'IF I SEE THAT FUCKING CAT ONE MORE TIME.' The rest of /b/ thought this was funny, so the phrase became a meme as well. Someone also posted the image with Tom edited out, which served as a template for parodies of the meme.

Later on, an anonymous posted a close-up picture of Congressman Tom Delay titled "delayclose.jpg". Delay's expression in this image bore a striking resemblance to Tom's. This image also became a meme, often being posted immediately after an image of Tom. Once "delayclose.jpg" is posted in a thread, it is likely that many more copies will follow.

A similar meme appeared in the /o/ boards, where pictures of the Bugatti Veyron was often posted many times. It inspired the phrase "IF I SEE THAT FUCKING VEYRON ONE MORE TIME."

XBOX IS HUEG

This meme was formed on /b/ and has remained as a strong meme on 4chan for quite some time. The misspelling of "huge" is intentional. Microsoft's Xbox video game console is larger than its immediate competitors, the Sony PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube, and this size difference was often exaggerated by 4chan users with image macros involving gigantic Xboxes. One of most common Xbox images depicts an Xbox crashing into the Earth like a meteor, leaving a large impact crater (sometimes accompanied by text claiming that this was the event that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs). Another common Xbox image is a size comparison chart of the planets in the solar system, with an Xbox which is even larger than the sun. Word-of-mouth descriptions warned that the Xbox was capable of "crushing small children." Predictably, an image was created that depicted a large Xbox was on top and indeed crushing a little girl.

Any other large object might also be described as "hueg liek Xbox" or just "Xbox hueg" (misspelling optional).

LOLI HAET PIZZA

This meme originated from a thread which contained a discussion of pizza. Later on in the thread, a user, intending to type "Lol I hate pizza" accidentally entered "loli haet pizza" instead. Another 4chan user quickly created an image macro containing this text, along with a picture of a young anime girl with a pizza behind her. 4chan users would then post image macros like this whenever somebody mentions pizza.

PARTY HARD

This meme consists of a 2-frame animated .gif with the words PARTY HARD edited into it. The .gif is edited to flash these frames very quickly, as if they are trying to induce a seizure in the viewer. This meme originated from the video to Andrew W. K.'s song 'Party Hard', where Mr. W. K. is headbanging to the music in front of the words PARTY HARD, while strobe lights flash making his movements look jerky. The earliest known .gif to use this meme consisted of a 2-frame scene from the anime Azumanga Daioh, where Chiyo Mihama, dressed in a penguin costume, is doing her stretches. This meme was most likely inspired by an anime music video of the same title. Even though it is a multi-creator video, the one "responsible" for this particular part is Jesmaster of Something Awful forums.

TCC-chan

A drawing of a pothead girl with a giant bong on her back and a utilitybelt of drugs. TCC-chan was posted on the Something Awful forum in 2004 and was slighly altered and was posted repeatedly on 4chan in late 2005 advertising a 4chan like imageboard 420chan. Whenever TCC-chan was posted on 4chan it would go with "Dearest /b/ please visit 420chan.org." and CP FLOOD ON 420CHAN would soon follow afterwards because of the floods of child porn that happened when 420chan was starting out.

Force Push

An animated gif that begins with a scene from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, where Obi-Wan Kenobi is fighting battledroids, then turns and performs a force push towards the screen. The picture then cuts to another scene where a person or object suddenly falls or is sent flying. A newer meme usually found on /g/.

Anonymity

Since 4chan is an anonymous BBS, there is no need to post using a name, as posts made without the name field filled in are attributed to Anonymous. Content on the boards is volatile and many threads are pruned in a matter of hours, especially on /b/ with its high postcount. Many new users do not realize that the name field is completely optional, and thus post with names. However, the overwhelming majority of posters do not use any name at all, holding to the belief that names on an anonymous BBS have no meaning, and that people who attempt to "stand out from the crowd" and differentiate themselves from others are attempting to become Internet celebrities. Of course, there is an established viewpoint that the use of a name is not in itself wrong; however, people who constantly post with a name are ridiculed and derided for their perceived egotism. Many users in fact have names and tripcodes; however, some choose to not post with them unless their identity is completely relevant to the conversation at hand. Some anonymous users derisively refer to tripocode users as "tripcode faggots" or "tripfags", a homophobic implication about the sexuality of those who use tripcodes.

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 Moderator". The primary exception is when 4chan founder moot posts information relating to changes in the the site, though moot also frequently posts anonymously. Attempting to post using moot's tripcode ("faggot") results in the user being automatically (and permanently) banned on an IP level.

/b/ has, in the past, operated with forced anonymous posting and is currently doing so, again, at this time.

As a general rule which has added to vitriolic nature on 4chan, Anonymous does not forgive. This folkway reveals itself in every 4chan user daily.

See also

• Imageboard
• Image macro

External links

• 4chan.org (Due to bandwidth concerns and growing international leeching, Japanese users cannot access the site without permission.)
• 4chan news archive
• List of 4chan memes
• The Overchan List of imageboards

• 4chan
• Internet forums