4chan

4chan
Type	Imageboard
Available in	English
Founded	2003
Founder	Christopher Poole/Moot
Espoused ideology	Libertarianism, hacktivism
URL	https://4chan.org

4chan is an English-language imageboard website founded in 2003 by Christopher Poole (known online as moot). The site was inspired by 2chan and Something Awful. It was created for English-language fans of Japanese media, especially anime & manga. 4chan rise in popularity due to its lack of registration that enables anonymity and the lack of moderation and rules on /b/, the random board dedicated to any topics, resulting in many shock content posted there. It's also become one of the most visited board. The site's ideas and memes have researched and studied by online writers. It was that it's memes involves lulz, a concept and ideology that involves deriving ironic humor through a joke of prank. In 2008, it's users organized Project Chanology, a series of protests against Scientology.

4chan in the early 2010s were the site's userbase were exposed to political ideologies, usually in the form of ironic humor. One user said that as "any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe they are in good company." 4chan had been a source of shock and ironic humor from raids, pornography, and gore. Sometimes, it's humor led to consequences. As such, the news board /n/ was taken down due to the increase amount of ironic bigotry. The board was eventually back as /pol/, the politically incorrect board. 4chan's userbase shifted to adapt to far-right concepts popularized by /pol/. Although some users like those from the literature board /lit/ become concerned about the increasing spread of far-right concepts.

In 2014, 4chan was experiencing tensions between it's right-wing ruthless users and it's left-wing socially conscious users were risen. It's also when GamerGate exploded on the video games board /v/. The site restricted discussions on the event which causes users users migrate to the splinter imageboard 8chan. Users on the site have referred to 4chan as Halfchan. On September 21st, 2015, Hiroyuki Nishimura, founder of Japanese textboard 2channel, acquired 4chan.

References

• MARSF 🇵🇹 (November 6, 2018). "THE TIME r/Socialism BANNED CATGIRLS- AN OVERWORKED ARTICLE THAT COVERS OVER A DECADE OF STUFF TO EXPLAIN TWO WEEKS OF DRAMA IN 2017". . Retrieved May 17, 2026.

• Steven (January 28, 2012). "All the memes of production - Deterritorial Support Group". . Retrieved May 17, 2026.