“A website with a large and extremely active userbase is completely useless if everything they post is garbage.”
– Anonymous¹⁾

4chan is a large bulletin board website that was set up by Christopher Poole on October 1, 2003, drawing inspiration from Futaba Channel.²⁾³⁾ Recently, it was acquired by 2channel founder Hiroyuki Nishimura for a combined total of $8 million⁴⁾ on September 21, 2015.⁵⁾

“As with most boards on 4chan, popularity/posting speed has not been its friend.”
– Christopher Poole⁶⁾

The website was intended to be an English analogue of Futaba Channel,⁷⁾ but they ended up being a mix of 2channel's stupidity with images. It was *not* the western internet's first introduction to anonymity,⁸⁾ but it's certainly notable enough for housing it at such a large scale, using inconsistent moderators who take a relaxed approach, which has incidentally bred a hostile and contrarian community over time.

It has also taken a massive toll in quality, since newcomers often come for low-effort memes or trolling, then you get maladjusted individuals who spew ragebait and random insults. The creativity is also pretty weak, assuming it still hasn't died yet. Some people claim 'anonymity' is 4chan's strongest point, but one could argue that the 'notoriety' is how it barely stays relevant.

“its TWO TIMES THE CHAN MOTHERFUCK”
– Christopher Poole⁹⁾

In 2001, the Something Awful forums establishes the anime subforum, “ADTRW”, which later influenced the creation of the 'Raspberry Heaven' Direct Connect hub. At some point, users became interested in Futaba Channel (“2chan”) until non-Japanese IPs were barred from posting. On September 29, 2003, Poole registers “4chan.net” as an email address, but this evidently lead to bigger things ahead.¹⁰⁾¹¹⁾

“This will be largely image and comedy based, we have no intention of partaking in intelligent discussions concerning foreign affairs. By sister-site, I mean focusing primarily on certain likable aspects of 2chan.”
– Christopher Poole¹²⁾

“Within the first month the site had attracted thousands of users, the majority being from outside of SA.”
– Christopher Poole¹³⁾

4chan sets up their first imageboard on October 1, 2003 and announces it on Something Awful.¹⁴⁾ It was met with a long-winded rant about how World2ch did it first,¹⁵⁾ yet Poole took time to respond to this.¹⁶⁾¹⁷⁾ That aside, most of 4chan's early days consists of adding new boards, fixing bugs, and all of the attempts at taking it down,¹⁸⁾ then the “4chan.net” domain went down on February 11, 2004.¹⁹⁾

This would force 4chan to move to “4chan.org”, a move that would become permanent as GoDaddy gave “4chan.net” to domain squatters.²⁰⁾ At the time, 4chan also relied on PayPal donations, so it's not a surprise that it became their opponent's next target. Needless to say, their account was frozen, which caused a fourth shutdown on June 20, 2004.²¹⁾ During this two month absence,²²⁾²³⁾ there was IIchan.

Once they returned, 4chan needed financial support, but despised Wikipedia's annual fundraising strategy, so they banked on a one-time donation drive in 2005. As things stabilized, 4chan had a few real-world panels at Anime USA 2004,²⁴⁾²⁵⁾ Otakon 2006,²⁶⁾ and Otakon 2007.²⁷⁾²⁸⁾ However, as chaos and 'publicity stunts' create 'notoriety', 4chan drew in new users that clashed with the old.

The year 2006 is regarded as a turning point with the rise of Anonymous, the '/b/-day' scandal that simply reminded users that 4chan had rules, and numerous false terrorist threats. As for web development, new themes were added to end their 'Times New Roman' era²⁹⁾ and ReCAPTCHA was implemented to fend off automated spam and worms, though its implementation later turned out to be permanent.³⁰⁾

“But while the questions have remained the same, the 4chan of today is not the 4chan of yesterday.”
– Christopher Poole³¹⁾

As the internet became more accessible, the new decade marked an interesting culture shift for 4chan. The “News” (/new/) and “Robot9000” (/r9k/) were removed on January 2011,³²⁾ but following a discussion with Encyclopedia Dramatica's founder,³³⁾ Poole reverted this on November 10, 2011³⁴⁾ and white supremacist trolls seeped back into the rebranded “Politically Incorrect” (/pol/) board.³⁵⁾

From there, the '4chan Pass' is made to be a new source of revenue,³⁶⁾ the catalog and inline extension was added to Yotsuba,³⁷⁾ they held the 10th anniversary panel at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2013,³⁸⁾³⁹⁾ then 'sage' became invisble⁴⁰⁾ and WebM support was added.⁴¹⁾ The removal of 'sage' is troubling since it looks like a 'user friendly' move, but it also meant that 'user feedback' was no longer there.

Moving on, the 4chan Blog moves to Tumblr and the Blotter makes a comeback, but “Rapidshares” (/rs/) and World4ch are sacrificed.⁴²⁾ In 2014, the GamerGate movement came and went,⁴³⁾ then there was the Anon-IB celebrity nudes story. As for the 'culture', the power was split between “Politically Incorrect” (/pol/), “Sports” (/sp/), and “Shit 4chan Says” (/s4s/) boards.

“I think people again, as I pointed out in that sticky, have kinda chosen to kinda conflate or willingly misinterpret being an advocate for anonymity as being an advocate for free speech.”
– Christopher Poole⁴⁴⁾

On January 15, 2015, Poole had announced his intent to step down.⁴⁵⁾ Then on September 21, 2015, it was revealed that 2channel founder Hiroyuki Nishimura, whom Poole had met at 2011 SXSW,⁴⁶⁾ would take over⁴⁷⁾ in what turned out to be an $8 million sale to Hiroyuki Nishimura, Kadokawa Dwango, and Good Smile Company.⁴⁸⁾ This was a surprise as he just had 2channel stolen⁴⁹⁾ and allegedly sold user data.⁵⁰⁾

“Thanks. We have to get more free speech on 4chan than TV.”
– Hiroyuki Nishimura⁵¹⁾

Unlike his predecessor, Hiroyuki explicitly praised free speech,^52)53)54) but messed with advertisements⁵⁵⁾ in this odd donation scheme.^56)57)58)59) After that, Hiroyuki would largely be hands-off with 4chan, allowing an administrator named “RapeApe” take over and enforce these new politically charged ideals, crucially enabling the “Politically Incorrect” (/pol/) board into becoming a stain on the website.⁶⁰⁾

The longtime sponsor J-List would cut ties in 2017,⁶¹⁾ forcing 4chan to utilize 'shady ads' for revenue until all work-safe boards were moved to the “4channel.org” domain on November 17, 2018.⁶²⁾ As the fifth year under Hiroyuki passes, we would see additions and removals to their board lineup, as well as their brand new slider CAPTCHA on July 5, 2021 that ended free labor to Google's reCAPTCHA service.⁶³⁾

Around December 16, 2023, every board on “4channel.org” was moved back to “4chan.org” after five years, leaving only the work-safe variant of the front page. On April 13, 2024, an email verification system was introduced to the “Business & Finance” (/biz/) board, allegedly to curb the huge onslaught of pump-and-dump schemes,⁶⁴⁾ then the system spread to all boards by October 2024.⁶⁵⁾

• 2004 - Poole starts uploading images of a random man, claiming to be “Robert Bopkins”, and this just becomes a running gag (e.g. “Mootxico”) until the face reveal at Otakon 2005 in August 2005.
• 2005 - Despite the stigma against 'furry' culture, a “Furry” (/fur/) board was set up. It roughly ran for two days, before it was deleted and everybody who posted in it was banned for three months.
• 2006 - The “Random” (/b/) board was given the Tanasinn theme. You'd hear the “Don't think. Feel and you'll be Tanasinn.” loop, and random letters were turned into therefore and because signs.
• 2007 - At the time, “The Great re/b/oot” that began on March 26, 2007 was wrapping up, so their theme wasn't changed and techno music was playing in the background.
• 2008 - Sticky, the 4chan-themed parody of Clippit (Clippy), would appear in the bottom right corner.
• 2009 - The “Random” (/b/) board was entirely rendered in the Comic Sans font.
• 2010 - 4chan pretends to have Facebook integration, dubbed “4chan 2.0”, while they had .hta spam.
• 2011 - Nothing.
• 2012 - The “Politically Incorrect” (/pol/) board, despite its political leanings, gets a Communist-themed layout featuring Joseph Stalin while the State Anthem of the Soviet Union plays. Band Kid humor.
• 2013 - 4chan adds the Reddit-themed “Shit 4chan Says” (/s4s/), mocking /r/shitredditsays, and tacks on the AdultCatFinder pop-up. The board stayed because it was too silly.
• 2014 - 4chan adds in a fake CAPTCHA that would show Japanese, Korean, or manga references until you hovered over, showing the real CAPTCHA. Most people with 4chan X won't remember this.
• 2015 - Sticky, the 4chan-themed parody of Clippit (Clippy), returns. Recycling the past 2008 prank. It was during the whole “moot steps down” thing, so there wasn't many complaints.
• 2016 - 4chan imitates Google's Material Design, poking fun at Poole finding work at Google. Every name and tripcode would be overridden by a randomly generated name that doesn't stick.
• 2017 - Several boards were temporarily merged for humorous effect. The list of affected boards include:
  • “Anime/Cute” (/c/) + “Animals & Nature” (/an/) → “Cute Animals” (/can/).
  • “Comics & Cartoons” (/co/) + “Food & Cooking” (/ck/) → “Comics & Cartoons & Cooking” (/cock/).
  • “Fashion” (/fa/) + “Photography” (/p/) → “Fashion & Photography” (/fap/).
  • “Fitness” (/fit/) + “Literature” (/lit/) → “Well-Rounded Citizens” (/fitlit/).
  • “Mecha” (/m/) + “Auto” (/o/) → “Mecha & Auto” (/mo/).
  • “Music” (/mu/) + “Television & Film” (/tv/) → “Video Killed The Radio Star” (/mtv/).
  • “My Little Pony” (/mlp/) + “Politically Incorrect” (/pol/) → “My Little Politics” (/mlpol/).
  • “Outdoors” (/out/) + “Cams & Meetups” (/soc/) → “Outdoor Socialization” (/outsoc/).
  • “Sports” (/sp/) + “Anime & Manga” (/a/) → “Tanoshii Sports” (/spa/).
  • “Video Games” (/v/) + “International” (/int/) → “International Vidya” (/vint/).
• 2018 - Based on the sum of your IP address' last two octets, you were assigned to one of five teams: Team Peep (0), Team Chocolate (1), Team Creme (2), Team Peanut Butter (3), and Team Mini (4).
• 2019 - 4chan temporarily adds a 'Like' system, noticeably similar to Futaba Channel's 'そうだね' system.
• 2020 - In light of the pandemic, posts were given a glow to symbolize infection.
• 2021 - Canadian-themed Among Us event. Flags were hidden, Canadian wordfilters were added, and the “rake” system would send Canadians (and false reporters) to the “Quebec” (/qb/) board.
• 2022 - 166 emotes were added to quick reply. 58 emojis, 108 emotes. The emotes could only be used if you 'discover' them, then get enough points to roll and/or unlock them, like a gacha game.
• 2023 - Random posts recieved a randomly generated name and a “Powered by GPT-4chan” tag.⁶⁶⁾
• 2024 - A stock exchange parody, the “Yotsuba Stock Exchange”, which offered 18 stocks whose ticker updates every 5 minutes. Users could enter the ticker into the “Options” field, if they held at least 10 shares of said stock, and get a portfolio rank up to $5M ($5,000,000). The entire stock exchange would then crash. It's presumed that the game pokes fun at the news of Reddit going public.

• Early users joked that 4chan could be read as 'Yotsuba Channel' (よつばちゃんねる).
  • For this reason, 'Yotsuba Koiwai' (小岩井よつば) from Yotsuba&! became the unofficial mascot, though she kinda evolved into a separate entity called the '404 Girl' instead.
• The former 4chan moderator “Foone”, who began as a “Requests” (/r/) and “Yaoi” (/y/) janitor,⁶⁷⁾ and contributed the code for “Rapidshares” (/rs/) and “ROBOT9000” (/r9k/)⁶⁸⁾⁶⁹⁾ before leaving, reveals a lot of details about the company that was behind 4chan, then called “4chan, LLC”.
  • Despite the “>he does it for free” jokes, 4chan does hire full-time employees and programmers.⁷⁰⁾
    • Since the 2015 acquisition, we've learned that the administrator “RapeApe” had been receiving a salary of >$3,000/mo in 2015, which has since risen to >$4,400/mo in 2022.⁷¹⁾
  • At one point, a dating service called “4meet” was planned,⁷²⁾ but it isn't known when these plans had came up, in relation to the addition of the “Social” (/soc/) board on January 9, 2011.
• 4chan has consistently supported net neutrality.⁷³⁾⁷⁴⁾ Its users, however, have changed.
• From 2012 to 2013, Poole held four Q&A (PMQ) threads on the “4chan Feedback” (/q/) board. These got buried under the final Q&A, despite being in the Archive era, so here's a list:
  1. >>>/q/176519 - 2012-09-12 22:03 to 2012-09-13 02:39.
  2. >>>/q/287492 - 2012-11-18 20:07 to 2012-11-19 03:39.
  3. >>>/q/590845 - 2013-05-12 19:31 to 2013-05-13 18:04.
  4. >>>/q/762240 - 2013-09-04 23:42 to 2013-09-05 04:34. Livestream, Archive (1, 2).
• The “4chan” trademark was filed by “4chan, LLC” on March 5, 2013, and it went into effect on October 8, 2013, shortly after the 2013 panel. It is now owned by “4chan Community Support, LLC”.⁷⁵⁾
• After 4chan, Poole worked at Google from March 7, 2016⁷⁶⁾ to April 22, 2021.⁷⁷⁾⁷⁸⁾
  • During his tenure, he was a co-founder and leader at Area 120, and he worked on Google Maps from Tokyo, Japan in January 2018.⁷⁹⁾ Did he know about the Chiba Kenma?
• In the past, the janitor application form used to mention 'IRC' and 'Skype',⁸⁰⁾ but these recently changed to 'Discord' around late 2018.⁸¹⁾ Also, the “do it for free” part was added in 2019.⁸²⁾
  • If you do apply, be warned that the hiring process reportedly involves revealing your home address, signing an NDA contract, and being interviewed by a manager using your real-life identity.
  • The first Discord leak occurred on August 29, 2019, but the vengeful user who posted it attempted to connect then-recent U.S. shootings (i.e. Gilroy, Dayton, El Paso*) to 4chan.⁸³⁾
• Purchasing a 4chan Pass will occasionally be difficult as payment processors might not want to be associated with 4chan, leaving cryptocurrency as the only option. At the time of this writing, the option to purchase a 4chan Pass using a credit card (via Stripe) is currently active.
• 4chan started conducting self-serve advertising campaigns with “bid.glass” from 2021⁸⁴⁾ to 2022, was dropped, and currently conducts the campaigns through “danbo.org” in 2023.⁸⁵⁾
• Why the fuck does 4chan make you solve Cloudflare's CAPTCHA, wait 60 seconds, and then solve the actual CAPTCHA to post? It's like revisiting a gacha game and waiting 10 minutes for it to update.

• Culture / ~2011
  • /b/-day - The weird 2006 alternative-promoting outcry about furries and /b/ having rules.
  • No Nut November - Once a sexual abstinence week, now it's an annual month-long challenge.
  • Pedobear - A bear that marked troll posts, somehow became a pedophilia caricature.
  • SCP Foundation - The collaborative writing project on supernatural, paranormal anomalies.
• Culture / >2011⁸⁶⁾
  • Pepe the Frog - A now-overused frog reaction image with diverging histories.
  • QAnon - The far-right conspiracy theory, though it's mostly associated with 8chan nowadays.
  • Wojak - Once an inversion of Trollface, now a highly exploited reaction image.
• Raspberry Heaven - P2P-related IRC community often associated with early 4chan. Not important.⁸⁷⁾
  • Not4chan (2004–2006) - A third-party website with boards that 4chan didn't want to carry.
  • World4ch (2004–2014) - The former textboard section that was roughly inspired by World2ch.

• 4chan (p4chan) - The front page of 4chan.
  • @4chan on Twitter - You might find server stuff, but it's mostly Nishimura being confusing.
  • @hiroyuki_ni on Twitter - The current administrator. He posts often, but it's mostly Japanese.⁸⁸⁾
  • @moot on Twitter - The founder. He doesn't post much, so you have to dig deep.
  • 4chan Blog on Tumblr - The 4chan blog and status checker hasn't been updated in years.
• 4stats - This website gathers statistics on 4chan using its API. See also: Flag Analysis.
• 4chan on Archive Team - They usually have the most comprehensive list of 4chan archive sites.
• 4bans (⚠️ NSFL) - A log of banned posts on 4chan. You may find gore and graphic content, so I'd reconsider clicking unless you're a broken person or prepared to encounter said content.