“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⁾ Years would pass as 420chan became niche, but sizable, and you'd forget it had a history with the collective.

Suddenly, 420chan went offline around July 22, 2022,¹²⁾ later revealed to be the result of an FBI–OPP joint raid on Cottle's apartment¹³⁾ where 420chan's servers were seized.¹⁴⁾¹⁵⁾ Cottle vaguely hoped that it would return,¹⁶⁾ then he ended up selling 420chan to former 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan for $4,200 USD on April 20, 2023, their would-be 18th anniversary.^17)18)19)

Their plan was to have 420chan run by a nonprofit,²⁰⁾ with Cottle supervising,²¹⁾ and Brennan intended to write an imageboard after the “jschan” plan fell through.²²⁾ However, a lack of interest and Cottle's crashout resulted in Brennan leaving 420chan as a redirect to Leftypol “for giggles” in March 2024.²³⁾ Since then, Cottle has been in legal trouble^24)25)26) and Brennan has passed.²⁷⁾ The domain is set to expire in 2032.

• A couple of minor notes about 420chan's beginnings, before the August 2006 surge:
  • The website once had dedicated boards for Bridget (Guilty Gear),²⁸⁾ Mahoro (Mahoromatic), and Sakura (Cardcaptor Sakura) until 2007. Burichan precedes /bridget/ by a few months.
  • The website also had a board for 'Cracky-chan',²⁹⁾ but this lasted about 3 months with 1609 posts before the person behind the persona had personally requested its removal.³⁰⁾³¹⁾
  • 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, 2006,³²⁾ without permission, but the artist eventually found out and seemed fine with it.³³⁾
• 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 naming 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”.
• On July 27, 2007, KTTV, the Fox affiliate in Los Angeles, ran their infamous “hackers on steroids” news report on Anonymous with glimpses of the 420chan board.³⁴⁾ The news would spread to 420chan and users suspect that the silhouetted 'hacker', not the MySpace victim,³⁵⁾ was “Alex Wuori”.³⁶⁾
• '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
• Raspberry Heaven - Cottle became a member after the Something Awful permaban.
• Wizardchan → 8chan → 420chan - The history of Fredrick Brennan.

• 420chan - The front page of 420chan.
  • 420chan [Archive] - The front page of 420chan, archived June 6, 2022.
• @Kirtaner → @RealOGAnonymous → @GBMilady on Twitter - The founder.
  • @kirtaner.bsky.social on Bluesky