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4chan (YO-tsu-ba) is an English language version of the infamous Japanese Futaba Channel. On 4chan, many pictures from around the world, mostly from anime and manga are posted and critiqued. There are also discussion forums in the style of 2ch. Most notably, due to bandwidth concern and growing international leeching, Japanese computer users cannot access the site without permission. So far, it has been shut down due to lack of funding or hosting 4 times. The end of the 4th iteration and the beginning of the 5th are documented below.

On August 11, 2004, 4chan returned for the fifth time, under new management. The site had previously died on June 20, 2004, after several attacks, lack of funding caused by a PayPal lockout, and lack of motivation from the site founder, moot.

Image boards

The 4chan website consists of several image boards which each carry a short code consisting of one or more letters as well as a descriptive name. Image boards currently present on 4chan include:

Oekaki Boards

  • /ib/ - Oekaki Random
  • /ip/ - Oekaki Pro

Discussion Boards

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  • /dis/ - Discussion
  • /game/ - Games
  • /sug/ - Suggestions
  • /tech/ - Technology

The "Random", "Photo" and "Sexy Beautiful Women" boards are broader in scope then the more restrictively themed boards such as "Lolicon", "Yaoi" and "Yuri". "Photo" is reserved for photographs rather than CG imagery or edited photographs. "Sexy Beautiful Women" contains both nudity and nonnude photographs, often from photo books and thus typically of Asian women, although all ethnicities are allowed as long as the rules are taken into account.

In particular "Random", which allows some degree of commentary akin to light trolling, is treated with some derision as its chatter is often inane, and unlike other boards less tightly moderated. The category is also uncomfortably vague for some as it may contain internet shock site imagery quite randomly amongst otherwise tame and funny images, especially since the siphon board for the arguely most extreme art (/g/ for "Guro-" or "Grotesque") was trimmed off.

The "Cute Male" board was spawned as a preemptive solution to both content too softcore for the Yaoi board and the (arguably sexist) outcry against male characters in the Cute forum.

Many fans are vocal in keeping posted pictures apporpriate to boards, especially to even traffic content and avoid incuring anger among forums (Lolicon vs Cute, whose content spills over occasionally, debates are the most common.) A now tongue-in-cheek commentary to misposting a picture inapropriately is gb2/.

Famous memes/characters

Like most message boards, it has its own range of in-jokes, although many image-based gags are permutations from 2chan such as WAHA Suzuran and the OS girls. Most others are based on existing characters from anime and manga. One common image meme is to post a picture with a character holding up a sign, a television screen, or some other blanked out area. It is then photoshopped accordingly.

  • Yotsuba, (literally, "Four Leaves") besides being the name of the site, is also the name of a manga character and its eponymous manga; Yotsuba, an energetic if dim little girl with four green pigtails, is sometimes joked to be the site's spokeswoman.
  • Bridget, from the fighting game Guilty Gear, is famous among the boards for purportedly unintentional gender confusion, causing debates as to what forums he should be allowed into (he was one joked to be /d/'s spokesman, despite being an otherwise normal male and not a futa). Although officially explained as a boy raised in disguise as a female nun and with a recent desire to become more masculine, he is heavily featured in shoutacon and futanari doujinshi, usually in a bottom role, even with girls. As of late, he is the most prominent crossdressing male character featured on the site, although several others often end up surprising less informed posters.
  • Ayanami Rei, a charcter from Neon Genesis Evangelion is sometimes treated with derision when appearing, especially in floods, which were banned for a whole month in reponse at one point. Reasons include the precieved over-exposure and pompusness of the series she appears in (along with its fans) and the fan intepretation of her character as a tactiurn, submissive, mastubatory otaku fantasy girl. Pictures of the character are much rarer on 4chan in recent months, and typically appear on another image board spawned in reponse to this. She inspired the mocking cry of ZOMG ITS REI! to pictures of any bluehaired characters who sometimes appear on the site.
  • "Teh Rei" refers to a series of images created by an unknown user of iichan during the summer of 2004. As a reference to the fad of calling all anime girls with blue hair "Rei", this user took a picture of his erect penis, opened the image in Microsoft Paint, and drew crude blue hair and a smiley face upon it, with the text "Teh Rei". This image was then posted with the subject line "She is cute, that is why she is called Rei Chan", under the name "Rei Chan". A series of spinoffs appeared almost immediately that have now lost all novelty in the eyes of many users. Lately, any user that is caught posting that image, either the original version, a variant or a parody, gets banned.
  • Word filters are a common occurence on /b/. The moderator W. T. Snacks, responsible for almost all PHP coding for the site, instituted the code which replaces all occurrences of certain words with seemingly random other words. This is done often in a playful manner; for example, for a time the words "wood" and "Poland" (referring to popular memes arising after the 2004 Presidential Debates) were replaced with "SOVIET RUSSIA'S PEENER:o:o". However, the most seen is the replacement of "rei" with "transcendentalism", in an effort to discourage or confuse posting of "Teh Rei".
  • Anonymous is the default tag for posts without name fields. An anonymous user is one who prefers to opt out of the race for forums recognition, preferring instead to go only by their words. Many of the 4chan moderators are known to post as Anonymous rather than letting their status get in the way of their post. Occasionally it is also used for trolling statements in non-/b/ posts.
  • A /b/-tard is the derogatory nickname for a poster from /b/, a potentially interesting board usually considered by the rest of 4chan to have little significant value or merit, and functioning to siphon trollish behavior from the rest of the site. Despite the state of the /z/ board and its similarity to /b/, the term "/z/-tard" is not widespread. However, use of the term "/z/idiot" has been seen.
  • A gaijin yonkoma is a 4-panel comic with many variations. The two pictures used in every incarnation of the Gaijin Yonkoma series are pictures of attendees at E³. One picture shows 4 attendees sitting in chairs, with little emotion; the other shows (a different) 4 attendees cheering wildly. As explanation has it, the subject of their cheering is a new Legend of Zelda video game. The attendees have also been used as models for anime characters drawn in the same poses, most notably the characters Akane, Mitsuki and Haruka from Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien. An interesting thing to note is that the people in the first and second picture are not all the same.
  • Pedo Bear is an ASCII art creature. This one, predictably, looks like a bear and is often depicted with young girls. He is known as Kuma on Futaba, however, on 2chan he does not like loli, but is merely a character similar to Mona or Giko, who is posted when users make ridiculous posts. The actual loli-loving character on 2chan is Youkan-man, who is a box of sweet bean paste. Regardless of this, the Kuma character is still associated with loli on 4chan. His popularity allowed him to transition into a full drawn character, complete with a set of other Pedo animals who are in comparison as popular as Poochie of Itchy and Scratchy fame (ie, not at all). Kuma-san: likes all pretty girls, easily falls for sexy traps. PedoBear: brother of Kuma-san, likes loli, mostly speaks English. They may be related, but then they may not be. Recent additions to this family, who have become much more popular, include Shotacat and Futafrog. These are drawn in the same style as Pedobear.
  • "SPIKE DIES" (all caps) was a trollish message refering to the death of a character from the anime series Cowboy Bebop which was considered an unannounced spoiler; some posters argued that, with the prevalance and repition of a series on television, what actually counts as a spoiler is subjective. Variations include replacing the name with a more current one (rude) or a very old or well known one (tongue-in-cheek).
  • "Happy Negro" is the nickname given to Santino Lee, a black porn actor featured in a series of photos from the adult website BangBus.Com. In one picture, he is shown fondling the breasts of another 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.
  • "Cock Mongler" was named from a picture of a smiling redheaded man from the website for "The World's Largest Dinosaur" in Drumheller, Alberta. The words "I'LL SUCK YOUR COCK!" was added to an edited version of the photo. At first, people viewed this picture as just another flood, but in time, it grew to be one of the bigger memes on 4chan, with his face edited on to all manner of images.
  • "$540" is a demand of $540, which is the amount Thock, from iichan, lost due to PayPal locking his acount. Usually seen around discussions about 5chan.
  • WTF Kaorin was a caption added to images where Kaorin from Azumanga Daioh has been inserted at random, usually featuring a humorous expression.
  • Maes Hughes is a character from the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist. Often posted in the Cute Male board, he has become somewhat of an unofficial mascot for the board. One poster, who goes by the alias of Treesock, is probably one of the only people that posts this character, however.
  • "Eyebrows," or "Amarao-Brows," is a reference to the anime series FLCL. The character Amarao's most notable feature are his enormous, rectangular eyebrows that appear to be made out of dried seaweed (nori). This meme came about during the initial Happy Negro wave, when HN was edited into an FLCL screencapture and given his own set of Amarao-Brows.
  • "Osakaphone" was a short-lived fad before the fourth death of 4chan where it was common to post an ASCII image of Osaka from Azumanga Daioh holding a phone to her ear and saying various things. It was often accompanied with the ASCII Pedo Bear. Related is a flash video, somewhat commonly uploaded to /f/, where a sped-up verson of the song "Bananaphone" by Raffi accompanies the same ASCII rendition of Osaka, with a Gundam in a banana costume in the place of the original phone.
  • Waha was one of the first 4chan memes, actually taken from the 2chan image board, which featured a miniature version of lolicon-age character Suzuran from the hentai game "Suigetsu" photoshopped into various random pictures, accompanied by her catchphrase, わはー.
  • Nevada-Tan is the nickname of a 11-year-old Japanese schoolgirl who murdered another student in the classroom with a box cutter because she constantly mocked and taunted her. Her real name was never discovered, but in photos of her she is nearly always wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the words "Nevada". Pictures of Nevada commiting the murder and other various guro-related activities appear often on 4chan.
  • "Moot", the owner of 4chan, was turned into a meme after he posted a picture from someone's vacation in Mexico of a man playfully sticking his head into a ruin. The man's comical face is photoshopped often onto other pictures in the same manner as Happy Negro and Cock Mongler.
  • "Thrust vectoring owns the sky! This thing can turn on a dime, Macross Zero-style!" is a phrase in reference to the OVA series Macross Zero, which features aircraft able to change direction in an incredibly small amount of space. It was first posted along with a picture of the F/A-22 Raptor, and then later placed next to pictures of other aircraft or vehicles, but was also seen on marques.

External links

See also

Category: