“MY BROTHER IN CHRIST I WAS A CHAN ADMIN FOR 17 YEARS”
– Aubrey “Kirtaner” Cottle¹⁾

420chan was a niche English bulletin board, founded by Aubrey “Kirtaner” Cottle on April 20, 2005,²⁾ then went offline around July 2022³⁾ since the servers were seized in a raid.⁴⁾ After Fredrick Brennan purchased 420chan on April 20, 2023,⁵⁾⁶⁾ it was left as a redirect to Leftypol.⁷⁾

According to Cottle, he registered the “420chan.org” domain on April 20, 2005 as a joke, but did not plan on doing anything with it.⁸⁾ Then on December 1, 2005, he would finally set up a bulletin board website using Wakaba⁹⁾ and assumed the identity of “Kirtaner !Ub4TCdRjOM”. It isn't known how 420chan exactly grew, but after the /b/-day incident of August 2006, it'd later inherit the Anonymous collective from 7chan.

In contrast to the previous “Invasion” (/i/) iteration, 420chan actively moved the board as a way to dodge the consequences of housing them. The board originally sat at “dis.420chan.org” for the first half of 2007, with “not420chan.com” as the backup, then fully moved to “not420chan.org” domain by July 2007. This lasted quite a while, with 711chan as one refuge,¹⁰⁾ but details of how it 'ended' is unclear.

After the collective left, 420chan had remained a distinct place to discuss recreational drugs, net characters, wrestling, etc. The footer was jokingly changed to “Wakaba 4.2.0” at some point, but 420chan eventually started working on a Wakaba fork called “Taimaba” that they unveiled on December 18, 2008.¹¹⁾ The years had pass as 420chan became niche but sizable, and you'd forget it even had a history with the collective.

Suddenly, 420chan went offline around July 22, 2022,¹²⁾ later revealed to be the result of Cottle's apartment having an FBI–OPP joint raid around August 2022¹³⁾ where the 420chan servers were seized.¹⁴⁾¹⁵⁾ Cottle vaguely hoped 420chan would return,¹⁶⁾ then sold 420chan to former 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan for $4,200 USD on April 20, 2023, their 18th anniversary.^17)18)19)

Their initial plan was to have 420chan owned by a non-profit organization,²⁰⁾ with Cottle supervising,²¹⁾ and Brennan later planned to write a new imageboard after the “jschan” plan fell through.²²⁾ Unfortunately, the community's interest in reviving 420chan would gradually fell apart, especially after Cottle had crashed out, so Brennan just left 420chan as a Leftypol redirect “for giggles” around March 2024.²³⁾

• A couple of minor notes about 420chan's beginnings, before the August 2006 surge:
  • The website once had dedicated boards for Bridget (Guilty Gear),²⁴⁾ Mahoro (Mahoromatic), and Sakura (Cardcaptor Sakura) until 2007. Burichan precedes /bridget/ by a few months.
  • The website also had a board for 'Cracky-chan',²⁵⁾ but this lasted about 3 months with 1609 posts before the person behind the persona had personally requested its removal.²⁶⁾²⁷⁾
  • 420chan's mascot is 'TCC-tan', which was originally drawn by “Vanessie” for the Something Awful subforum, The Crackhead Clubhouse, in 2004. It was selected as 420chan's mascot on January 24, 2006,²⁸⁾ without permission, but the artist eventually found out and seemed fine with it.²⁹⁾
• Most instances of Wakaba usually forgo the option to set a 'default comment' if the user didn't input a comment, but 420chan stood out as they actually set this string to “DICKS EVERYWHERE”.
  • This would end up inspiring that image macro meme of Toy Story 2, where Buzz puts a hand on Woody's shoulder, points, and was captioned saying “DICKS, DICKS EVERYWHERE”.
• In KTTV's infamous 'hackers on steroids' news report on Anonymous,³⁰⁾ the segment notably used footage of 420chan's /i/ board with posts that were dated June 29, 2007 and July 24, 2007.
• 'Taimaba' is a portmanteau of 'taima' (大麻) and 'wakaba' (若葉), so it'd be 'Taimaba' (大麻葉), but it uses a blend of on-reading and kun-reading, so 'Taimayō' (Dàmáyè) or 'Ōasaba' are also valid.

• 7chan → 420chan → 711chan - The /i/ line of succession.
• Lulz.net

• 420chan - The front page of 420chan.
  • 420chan [Archive] - The front page of 420chan, archived June 6, 2022.
• @Kirtaner on Twitter - The founder's Twitter account, re-suspended.