Can someone explain to me what's so great about 4chan?

[Alpha]

I never really heard about 4chan until a few years ago. Every now and then I visit one of their categories to see what's so special about it and I close out of the window after the first few minutes. I don't know why people are so crazy about it and it seems a lot of people who visit Digg (a site I frequent everyday) are from 4chan. It just seems like a bunch of different guestbooks with random people talking.

 

Any 4chan fans here who can explain it to me?

[Devia Eleven]

I don't understand it either.

[Gryph]

It's a strange place where most of the Internet's memes and funnies (or lulz) come from.

[Agozer]

uh

 

...

 

4can just is... a collection of weirdness. An imageboard among many that's one of the Internet's mainstays nowadays. Depending on what sections you visit, 4chan will either scar you for life, or show you surprisingly intelligent debate about certain things.

 

Or then it'll shower you with Internet memes that you won't understand for a long time.

 

PEDOBEAR WELCOMES YOU

[Alpha]

uh

 

...

 

4can just is... a collection of weirdness. An imageboard among many that's one of the Internet's mainstays nowadays. Depending on what sections you visit, 4chan will either scar you for life, or show you surprisingly intelligent debate about certain things.

 

Or then it'll shower you with Internet memes that you won't understand for a long time.

 

PEDOBEAR WELCOMES YOU

Is it true that 4chan is not moderated at all? Can you potentially see something there that's either not legal or will make you vomit for the next few weeks? If that's the case, then I'm further confused as to how anyone would want to visit there or subject themselves to such surprises.

[Agozer]

4chan (like most imagebords running on the same software) is moderated. Over at 4chan, the illegal stuff is kept out, but the moderation isn't exactly strict when all the other content is concerned. Like I hinted, these imageboards categorize their stuff, so you can mostly tell which categories are "safe" and which are not.

 

Of course, picture trolling can happen.

[Wizard]

Bingo. As G-man said, 4chan is the source of practically every internet meme you've ever seen. Goatse, Tub girl, RickRolling, Chocolate Rain, BAAAAAAAAAW, D'AAAAAAWWWWWWWW. Mods are Anon users as well, only the admins know who the mods are, FBI them selves frequent the site alot as well, not for the randomness or watching the law breaking (which is very, very frequent), but they watch for potentional threats. They know that users post jailbait, illegal pron and all that other like, but take no action against it, because it isn't on their list of priorities. Mods do exist, but their job is to ban users that break the rules for repeated offenses and their threads, nothing more. Janitors exist to clean up when one board goes to another and troll it up. For example, /b/ going to let's say /g/ and posting dead people.

 

Discussions range from intellectual prespectives too down right trolling and name calling. It's unique that way because 4chan users are from every single part of life. It could be the person down your street, your co-worker, the guy at the check out counter, a police officer, a lawyer, a graphics artist etc etc. All walks of life have come and go on the site, simiarly to the Japanese 2ch, which is used for formal announcements by companies some times such as Sony, whose former president, before leaving, posted on 2chan and said he was sorry for Sony's failures and announced his resignation on the site.

 

Another thing is 2chan's servers aren't based in Japan, but in the USA. Yup, good old USA hosts the japanese 2chan.

[Alpha]

For example, /b/ going to let's say /g/ and posting dead people.

Sorry, I don't understand this example? What do you mean by "/b/" and "/g/"?

[Agozer]

These refer to the categories on 4chan. /b/ is the Ramdom section, while /g/ is for Technology. Imagboards using the same software base their categories onn these single letter definitions (although cceratin categories use more than one). What Wiz means is that, usually certain long term members stick to their own "rooms" (categories) of interest. Then they occasionally declare a troll war and flood another category with derogatory pictures and/or posts.

 

/b/ in particular is considered to be the "No Man's Land" of 4chan, where most of the rather shocking stuff gets airtime. Like the name implies, the content posted there is random, and stretches the of rules and what's considered appropriate.

 

Of course, considering that 4chan contains lots of 18+ material, your understanding of appropriate may clash with the content in those categories.

 

The japanese 2chan started all this and is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) imageboard/community on thew Internet. 4chan is basically the English version of 2chan on a much smaller scale.

[2eyez]

I don't even know what 4chan is till 10mins ago.

[ken_cinder]

Is for tentacle hentai loving pedophilia, necrophilia loving people who belong in padded rooms. Nuff said.