8chan was a bulletin board website that had allowed people to create and manage their own boards. It was founded by former Wizardchan owner Fredrick Brennan in 2013, gifted to Jim Watkins (NTTEC) in 2016,¹⁾²⁾ then it died in 2019 and had to rebrand to 8kun.³⁾⁴⁾

During its prime years, 8chan was seen as an 'edgier' alternative to 4chan that leaned into the idealization of 'free speech' after pulling in the GamerGate crowd, which became a double-edged sword over time.⁵⁾ After their failed upgrades and the 2016 handover, 8chan slowly withered and imploded as violent radicalization kept happening. Most internet-savvy users fled, especially when 8kun hasn't been innovative in ages.

“First, I'm not a gamer, the issues never really mattered to me. I took the opportunity to host GamerGate discussion on 8chan while I owned it but never really cared about game journalism.”
– Fredrick Brennan⁶⁾

The concept of '8chan', or rather, 'infinitechan' (∞chan) had came to Brennan in a mushroom trip, then he recalled 4chon hesitating to add new boards and decided to make a 'Reddit-style' solution to the problem. Brennan would start a Vichan fork called 'Infinity', finished said goal in two days, then 8chan formally launched at “8chan.co” on October 22, 2013⁷⁾⁸⁾ which mostly attracted niche 'foreign' communities.⁹⁾

On September 16, 2014, the first GamerGate board was made,¹⁰⁾ then 4chan's staff banned GamerGate as it created 'too much work' for them,¹¹⁾ thus the floodgates opened. Then on September 22, 2014, they would partner with NTTEC¹²⁾¹³⁾ as Brennan was completely unaware that Watkins *merely stole* 2channel.¹⁴⁾ All that aside, 8chan gets “8chan.co” suspended,¹⁵⁾¹⁶⁾ so they moved to “8ch.net” on January 13, 2015.¹⁷⁾¹⁸⁾

A few months later, Kiwi Farms founder Joshua Moon began the 'Infinity Next' project on May 8, 2015¹⁹⁾ and this was meant to roll out in September, but it caused a lot of downtime²⁰⁾²¹⁾ and was eventually canned by January 26, 2016.²²⁾ Then on May 12, 2016, Watkins pressured Brennan to voluntarily relinquish his control of 8chan,²³⁾²⁴⁾ asserting that the company was unprofitable.²⁵⁾ This will be a recurring theme.

“Shut the site down. It’s not doing the world any good. It’s a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there. And you know what? It’s a negative to them, too. They just don’t realize it.”
– Fredrick Brennan²⁶⁾

In 2017, 8chan was hacked using a Tinyboard exploit on April 1, 2017, so they had an week-long shutdown²⁷⁾ where users eyed the leaked 'Sunshine' logger²⁸⁾ that they quickly dismantled.²⁹⁾ The recovery was done in batches, preserved below, then they sorta forked 'Infinity' into 'OpenIB' to make themselves look busy.³⁰⁾ Later that year, 4chan bans QAnon on November 25, 2017,³¹⁾³²⁾ so the cult followed QAnon to 8chan.³³⁾

Batches will be restored in the following order:

1. /a/, /b/, /hwndu/, /pol/, /v/
2. /co/, /tv/, /tech/, /k/
3. /tg/, /monster/, /christian/, /hgg/
4. /n/, /newsplus/, /polk/, /brit/
5. /argentina/, /egy/, /asmr/, /cuteboys/
6. /erp/, /loli/, /cow/, /kc/
7, /pone/, /fur/, /furry/, /leftypol/

On May 27, 2018, the controversial board owner “imkampfy” was removed, so it was decided that /pol/ shall become a global board.³⁴⁾³⁵⁾ The decision had unexpected consequence as 8chan would be linked to: the Christchurch mosque shootings on March 15, 2019, the Poway synagogue shooting on April 27, 2019, and the El Paso Walmart shooting on August 3, 2019, collectively killing 75 people.

With the third shooting, 8chan was becoming a liability³⁶⁾ and Cloudflare could not overlook this, so 8chan got booted on August 4, 2019³⁷⁾ and briefly used Epik,³⁸⁾ until Voxility stepped in³⁹⁾⁴⁰⁾ and forced Epik to deny them service.⁴¹⁾⁴²⁾ The website then went on a 'hiatus'⁴³⁾ as the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security issued a subpoena to Watkins,^44)45)46) promising some 'changes' on September 5, 2019.⁴⁷⁾⁴⁸⁾

During its three-month hiatus, most people had already moved out, but there was also the Bærum mosque shooting attributed to Endchan on August 10, 2019⁴⁹⁾⁵⁰⁾ and the Halle synagogue shooting attributed to Meguca on October 9, 2019.⁵¹⁾⁵²⁾ Watkins slowly teased a return,^53)54)55) now rebranding to 8kun,⁵⁶⁾⁵⁷⁾ and it would return on November 2, 2019,⁵⁸⁾ but not without issue^59)60)61) or burned domains.^62)63)64)

However, the only returning communities were the tech-illiterate QAnon cult⁶⁵⁾ and the /v/ board,^66)67)68) then Mark Mann moved /v/ to 8moe by April 25, 2020 after he realized that the Watkins were not innovators.⁶⁹⁾⁷⁰⁾ Later that year, a phone call knocks 8kun offline,⁷¹⁾ then Trump lost the 2020 election and Ron Watkins had stepped down just in case.⁷²⁾⁷³⁾ In 2021, a disgruntled global moderator would delete /qresearch/.⁷⁴⁾

• They were not the first 'create your own board' website, nor the first to use the '-kun' suffix.
• Honestly, it was always funny to see the communities have this microcosm of internet drama, and the end result would be moving to another user-created board or a new website altogether.

• AnonIB and IB4F - Earlier attempts at a 'create your own board' website.
• Leftypol - The most 'hated' board on 8chan, as they say.
• Wizardchan → 8chan → 420chan - The history of Fredrick Brennan.

• 8chan → 8kun - The front page of 8chan or 8kun, depending on where you're at.
  • @infinitechan on Twitter - Defunct since the 8kun rebrand, now hidden from most countries.
• @fr_brennan on Twitter + @copypaste.bsky.social on Bluesky - Founder. Died in 2026.⁸⁰⁾