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4chan

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.

At its peak, 4chan's reach was well within the 15,000 most popular websites on the internet according to Alexa Internet.

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:

• /a/ - Anime
• /b/ - Random
• /c/ - Cute
• /cm/ - Cute Male
• /d/ - Hentai/Alternative
• /f/ - Macromedia Flash
• /g/ - Guro
• /h/ - Hentai
• /k/ - Weapons
• /l/ - Lolicon
• /m/ - Mecha
• /n/ - Trains
• /o/ - Auto
• /p/ - Photo
• /t/ - BitTorrent Tracker
• /r/ - Requests
• /s/ - Sexy Beautiful Women
• /sm/ - Shota Male
• /u/ - Yuri
• /w/ - Wallpaper
• /y/ - Yaoi

Discussion Boards

• /anime/ - Anime
• /ascii/ - ASCII Art - Mona font or Shift_JIS character encoding may be necessary for optimal viewing of ascii art. Check your browser's view settings.
• /dis/ - Discussion
• /game/ - Games
• /sug/ - Suggestions

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/[boardcode].

With the 5th revival, "Guro" was brought back and the "Mecha" and "Trains" boards were added. The first is centered around real and drawn robots, vehicles and machines in general. The second focuses on locomotives only, possibly a nod to 1chan, the short lived site dedicated to train images. Discussion boards were also added for anime and games.

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 is also the name of a manga and its eponymous character, an energetic if dim little girl with four green pigtails, who 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. A recent spin off is a picture of a penis with blue hair, blue eyes, and a blue smile badly painted onto it using MSPaint. This monstrosity is known as "Teh Rei". Pictures of the character are much rarer on 4chan, 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..
• 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.
• Gaijin yonkoma is a 4 panel comic created by putting two images with the image of; 1. 4 gaijins sitting on chairs, bored. 2. The 4 gaijins standing up and being really happy and cheering. According to the "Gaijin yonkoma (Foreigner 4 panel comic) guideline", they are people who where in E3, and heard the announcement of a new Legend of Zelda series, and cheered like hell. They have also been used as models for anime characters drawn in the same poses, most notably the 3 main girls from Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien.
• Pedo Bear is an ASCII art creature. This one, predictably, looks like a bear and is often sighted with lolis. He is known as Kuma on Futaba. 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 Poochy 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.
• SPIKE DIES (all caps) was a trollish message refering to the death of a character from the anime series Cowboy Bebop which constituted as an unannounced spoiler, although some posters argued with the prevalance and repition of a series on television it 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).
• "lol internet" was the 100,000th post of /b/. Completely off topic and in some useless thread, it foiled the plans of bt to gain the 100,000th post. He attempted with an image of "100,000" but received post number 99,999. After calling himself a failure at the internet, he said he was going to commit suicide.
• "Happy Negro" is the nickname given to Santino Lee, a black porno actor featured in a series of photos from the adult site 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 that the nickname comes from, and which his head is edited into other images.
• "Cock Mongler" was named from a picture of a smiling redheaded man with the words "I'LL SUCK YOUR COCK!" originally posted by Soviet Russia, one of /b/'s more outspoken trolls. 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 of IdleChan lost due to PayPal locking his acount. Usually seen around discussions about 5chan.
• Teh Rei (Reidick, "Marmandy Jones-chan") - A picture of a penis with crudely drawn-in blue hair, a blue smiley face, and the words "Teh Rei" scrawled next to it (See Rei Ayanami, above).

Demise of 4chan

On June 20, 2004, 4chan was shut down. The site was drawing a massive amount of bandwidth, which the owner could not pay for himself, and the site suffered a lack of monetary contribution, partly out of moderator apathy, especially on the part of Moot, and partly because PayPal suspended the donation account. There was an apparent TOS violation, and around 2000USD was locked. According to certain parties, Everfalling, now a moderator on 5chan, was the culprit. The final nail in the coffin was a flood assault by the Gay Nigger Association of America across the entire site, though GNAA ceased their attacks once they found out that they were costing Moot a significant amount of money.

Stats of 4chan's final six months

Successful server requests: 631,705,147 Requests

Successful requests in last 7 days: 27,337,963 Requests

Successful requests for pages: 57,772,752 Requests for pages

Successful requests for pages in last 7 days: 2,723,440 Requests for pages

Distinct hosts served: 1,076,836 Hosts (note: only for img.4chan)

Distinct hosts served in last 7 days: 70,949 Hosts (note: only for img.4chan)

Total data transferred: 13.191 TB (note: because the cgi.4chan domain is newer, it slightly threw off this number)

Total data transferred in last 7 days 536.813 GB: (note: off due to GNAA flood, usually ~600GB+)

Aftermath

Although the main site was shut down, an IRC channel, #4chan on irc.pyoko.org, remained in operation. Many former users of 4chan fled to 5chan, a site set up after a disagreement with the operator of 4chan. The migration caused a great deal of friction, as the two communites were actually quite different. Many 4chan members have immigrated to Idlechan, at http://www.iichan.net, a 4chan clone that was designed to emulate the atmosphere of 4chan. It shares its moderation style and ethos.

On 7/14/04, moot posted the following in the forums of Something Awful:

"Two funny things. When I originally ran ads for a short while, one of the prospective buyers was none other than TheRowan, owner and webmaster of HentaiKey. What is HentaiKey you say? HentaiKey is a company that sells crappy anime porno at equally crappy prices. Oh, also they host anime/hentai sites and sell the emails used on signup for profit. One of example of such a site is the aforementioned, 5chan.

Now here is the interesting thing. Disappointed that 5chan was getting virtually no traffic and signups compared to 4chan, TheRowan decided to take action. What would any simple minded person do to shut down an opposing website? Cut the funds of course! On June 15th, 2004, TheRowan successfully contacted, and convinced PayPal to shut down 4chan's donation account (which was in no way physically tied to the domain originally), for violation of their AUP/TOS. By locking me out of EVERY SINGLE DONATION I had recieved, he effectively killed the site, as I could not pay the now $500+ bandwidth bills."

Now that 4chan is back, many iichan users have migrated yet again, but both sites retain an active userbase, with a large part making use of both boards.

Resurrection

On August 7, 2004 a new message was posted on 4chan's front page:

"RESURRECTION? by "The Team" - 8/07/04 @ 1:30AM EST

"Everyone thought it wouldn't happen, but hey look who's back. 4chan has gathered up enough money, support, and a new team to make its fifth and hopefully last reincarnation possible.

"By choosing the a team of superlative coders, knowledgeable system administrators (NOT MOOT), and webmasters, we are now working on making 4chan bigger and better than it ever was before. We have learned from our mistakes made in the last few months, and are committed to reviving what 4chan once was--in the days before trouble and dissent arose.

"What we are going to try and do this time, is create a more open website for our visitors, where people like you can actually decide on a number of things that will shape the way the new 4chan website will work. 5chan refugees will be happy to hear that 4chan will try to keep a cleaner environment, but still allow a free form of discussion about virtually anything. It'll be like the old 4chan, just without all the crap that made you hate it.

"The new 4chan will be bigger and better; and we're going to take 2chan this time for sure. If you're wondering just how we're going to do it: Simple: by combining the efforts of the *chan sites, and taking the best of them all, we will basically create the number one site for image sharing and discussion.

"Please bear with us while the site comes back online. The ETA to having the site back to the way it was over a month ago is about one week. Image boards should be up within the next 48 hours, as well as e-mail and an interim discussion board. As always feel free to get on IRC at the old hangout: #4chan @ irc.pyoko.org.

"tl;dr: The original is back, get the word out!"

On August 10, 2004, posted on 4chan's front page:

"WE'RE BACK! by "The Team" - 8/11/04 @ 12:00AM EST

"Subject says it all, 4chan is back and here to stay (we hope at least). Spread the word--the original and largest English imageboard is back!"

"We have made numerous improvements to every piece of code contained on the site, and as such things should be running faster and more smoothly than before. One interesting new feature added is the 4chan Portal. Check it out, it should make browsing much easier and more enjoyable."

"Note: If you or anyone you know is having problems accessing the subdomains, locate the file "hosts" on your computer and clear any lines pertaining to 4chan in it. If this still does not work, please allow up to 24 hours for DNS changes to propagate."