Last Friday, 4chan announced on its official Twitter channel with typical humor that the billionth post had been published on the website: “4chan passed 1 billion total posts yesterday. Unfortunately we don't know what it was, but you can use your imagination…” Impressive numbers for an impressive site. But who or what exactly is 4chan?In February 2010, a skinny, lanky guy entered the stage of the international TED conference . Dressed in a gray hoodie, he stood somewhat nervously on the stage. A video clip featuring American comedian Tom Green was shown on the big screen behind the boy. In an almost manic manner, Green tells how his live radio shows were constantly interrupted by so-called 'prank calls'. These "funny" conversations were made by anonymous visitors to the infamous website 4chan. For a while, Green spoke to these pranksters, but in the end he could no longer cope with these 'trolls'. At night, he would sometimes wake up screaming: "4chan!" The end result was that Green stopped his radio broadcasts.
Christopher Poole at TED
The big man behind the website 4chan is Christopher Poole . However, most people know him as 'moot'. It is the same young man who stands on the stage. The website 4chan was founded by Poole on October 1, 2003. At that time he was 15 years old and from his bedroom, with the help of his mother's credit card, he could afford some server space.
The site was built after the example of the Japanese internet forum Futaba Channel . It is an imageboard where users can post pictures, with or without a text. Other users can respond to this. Due to the large number of users, the refresh rate is very high. Threads quickly drop to the bottom of the page and then disappear forever. The website 4chan does not store anything. It is anonymous and has no memory.
The site is best known for its random subforum, called /b/ . More than a third of iraq telegram data its daily visitors turn to this board. The visitors of this board call themselves /b/tards . Anything, absolutely anything, may be posted here, with the only exception being child pornography. /b/ has only a few rules, the first two of which are taken directly from Chuck Palahniuk's book "Fight Club":
Rule 1: You don't talk about /b/.
Rule 2: You DO NOT talk about /b/.
One more important rule can be added to this rule: “Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions.” It is no wonder that some people describe the site as “ The Asshole of the Internet”. The subforum /b/ is the heartbeat of the website. It is the place where many memes are created every day. Some of these memes have also reached the general public.
Birth of the 'lolcats'
LolcatFor example, the 'lolcats' were invented here. The very first lolcats can be traced back to 1870, but they only really gained popularity thanks to the internet. In 2005, the users of 4chan decided that from then on it would only be allowed to publish photos of cats on the forum on Saturdays. This day was christened Caturday . Eric Nakagawa then made internet history by taking a photo of a smiling British Shorthair, better known as the 'Happycat', from the website Something Awful and publishing it on 4chan on January 11, 2007 with the following text: “ I can has cheezburger ” . The success of this photo made Nakagawa decide to dedicate an entire website to these Lolcats. A new blogging empire called icanhascheezburger.com was born. Later, Nakagawa and his girlfriend sold the blog to a group of investors for 2 million US dollars.