As Amezou became more popular, it was increasingly targeted by trolls. When violent threats eventually forced the creator of Amezou to shut down his board, another round of splinter groups popped up to meet the demand for anonymous community. Among these was 2channel, which brought chan culture to the mainstream.
“I created a free space, and what people did with it was up to them,” Nishimura told Wired in 2008, his laissez-faire approach mirroring that of 4chan’s founder. In order to understand why 2channel was such a raging success, it’s important to know a bit about Japanese culture. We’re talking about a society wherein face-to-face confrontation and emotional expression are actively discouraged. In the United States, straight talk and audacity are prized as character traits. In Japan, they are often interpreted as rudeness or disrespect.
It’s the culture of the salaryman, the lonely wage slave who lives to work, with the few social pleasures he allows himself often related to corporate team-building. The image of a salaryman is certainly a stereotype (sleeping in a suit on a subway, late-night corporate-sponsored karaoke), but there’s no question that this socially repressed caricature represented a community that was waiting for a platform like 2channel to come along. Today, the Japanese-only site draws several million daily page views—more than four times the traffic of 4chan, which is global. 2channel gives the people of Japan a place to say what they’re really thinking, with no real-life consequences.
The 2channel welcome screen message reads, “Welcome to the large group of bulletin boards that extensively covers topics from ‘hacking’ to ‘supper.’” More than six hundred individual boards are listed in a scrolling column on the left, including “Large Special Vehicles,” “I Love Dogs and Cats,” “Romantically Challenged,” and one of the most popular, a board dedicated to the recent Japanese earthquakes.
One board, “Solitary Man,” seems to be a place for lonely males to commiserate. I’ve found a thread in this board titled “What do you prefer in the opposite sex?” The first post, penned by an alleged 16-year-old boy, details different characteristics, like height, age, education, and attractiveness. The thread continues with people contributing characteristics like “kind person,” “looks like Cameron Diaz,” “likes housework,” “loves animals,” and “beautiful Japanese.” Within ten replies, a troll offers his idea of an ideal woman, with wings growing from her head, raptor claw hands and feet, and, of course, beautiful breasts.
Because the site doesn’t allow images of any kind, the users have developed a form of visual communication based on ASCII art.
These can be simple emoticons, like this angry fella, a 2channel emoticon, or kaomoji:
Some of them contain thousands of characters in order to create almost photo-realistic visual representations.
Each discussion thread can potentially contain up to a thousand posts, which either “age” or “sage.” Saged posts (from the Japanese sageru) move down to the bottom of the thread, while aged, or bumped, posts float to the top. This dynamic method of arranging content was eventually borrowed by 4chan’s founder.
2channel is a place to argue, vent, cajole, insult, and goof around. The users are sarcastic and sophomoric, and have developed a dense internal lexicon. Those who aren’t in the know are said to be kuku yomenai, or someone who “can’t read the air.” In other words, a noob or newfag.
2channel can get pretty dark. In 2000, a 17-year-old kid posted a message claiming that he was about to hijack a bus, an act that he carried out an hour later, stabbing one passenger to death. Racism, especially toward Koreans, is rampant. Mass suicides have been organized on the site, and criminals have boasted about their plans before committing crimes hours later. Interestingly, many notable documented events resulting from or announced on 2channel has a Western analogue on 4chan. The cultures are so different, but the technology influences human behavior on a deeply similar level.
2channel also has a heartwarming side. Consider Trainman, an anonymous 2channel user who regaled the community with a story fit for a romance novel. While sitting on a train he noticed an attractive woman. A drunk man boarded the train and began to harass the other passengers, who ignored him. Then he began to sexually harass the woman. Despite being an introverted geek, Trainman took action, fighting off the man until the other passengers were able to alert the conductor.
The woman thanked him profusely and asked for his address so she could send him a token of appreciation. A few days later Trainman received a beautiful French tea set. Overwhelmed by her thoughtfulness, he returned to 2channel to update an expanding group of interested fans and ask for advice. As a self-conscious nerd, he had no idea how to respond appropriately. The folks on 2channel convinced him to contact the woman. He eventually worked up the courage to ask her out on a date, his first.
Then, per 2channel’s advice, he got a new haircut, bought a snazzy outfit, and picked up some contact lenses. His first date was a success, and he continued to keep 2channel abreast of his progress. After a few more dates he and the woman began texting regularly, and eventually Trainman confessed his love, which she returned. Trainman triumphantly announced their shared affection to 2channel, whose users banded together for an ecstatic online celebration.
Trainman’s story is now folklore in Japan, having been adapted for television, film, and manga. Though many are convinced of the story’s authenticity, it’s never been proven, and neither Trainman nor his lover have ever come forward in real life.
In a 2003 interview with Japan Media Review, Nishimura laid out the site’s appeal.
Q: Why did you decide to use perfect anonymity, not even requiring a user name?
A: Because delivering news without taking any risk is very important to us. There is a lot of information disclosure or secret news gathered on Channel 2. Few people would post that kind of information by taking a risk. Moreover, people can only truly discuss something when they don’t know each other.
If there is a user ID attached to a user, a discussion tends to become a criticizing game. On the other hand, under the anonymous system, even though your opinion/information is criticized, you don’t know with whom to be upset. Also with a user ID, those who participate in the site for a long time tend to have authority, and it becomes difficult for a user to disagree with them. Under a perfectly anonymous system, you can say, “it’s boring,” if it is actually boring. All information is treated equally; only an accurate argument will work.
2channel is now considered a media powerhouse on par with the country’s biggest magazines and TV channels. And it’s completely open and free for everyone, not just for viewing but for contributing and collaborating. 2channel behaves not only as an alternative media source, but as an ombudsman that is continuously keeping the Japanese mainstream media in check.
4chan Godfather: Futaba Channel
Futaba Channel, or 2ch, is an image board that was launched in 2001. The community is more focused on otaku culture than 2channel is. Futaba Channel contains around one hundred boards, some of which are devoted to images, some of which are text only.
I wander onto Futaba Channel and sure enough, it looks almost exactly like 4chan. I pick a board at random: “Two-dimensional Gro.” I’m met with a warning page:
You are about to enter the grotesque image board.
Images on the grotesque image board may cause serious consequences.
I enter the board, consequences be damned. It’s full of images of anime girls being suspended by hooks, or stretched out on examination tables while being disemboweled, or smiling sweetly while bleeding, apparently from having been recently quadruply amputated. Yuck.
I try the newest board, called “Nuclear.” It’s a forum for people to discuss the potential for nuclear fallout, primarily related to the Fukushima power plant. There seems to be a lot of anger being expressed toward the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the fourth-largest in the world, regarding its handling of the Fukushima nuclear accident in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
“No nuclear power plants should be up and running properly in a country that cannot handle a nuclear accident,” writes one understandably resentful poster. Everyone seems to be arguing about who is to blame for the perceived lack of preparedness in the aftermath of the disaster.
This kind of venting is something that Japanese people probably wouldn’t feel comfortable with in real life. Futaba Channel and 2channel, with all their oddities, seem to offer a release valve for the Japanese.
The forums also provide an opportunity to achieve social good. In October of 2004, thousands of 2channel users rallied to help in the aftermath of the Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu earthquake. Right now, I’m seeing hundreds of threads buzzing with people sharing information and offering to help one another in the wake of the recent tsunami and earthquakes.
Collecting Bite-Sized Memes:
You’re The Man Now Dog
In 2001, back in the United States, Max Goldberg launched the online community You’re the Man Now Dog.
The site began as nothing but the words “You’re the man now dog” written in ASCII text on a black background, at http://www.yourethemannowdog.com. The line is prominently spoken by Sean Connery in the trailer for the 2000 film Finding Forrester. By the end of the year, Goldberg had changed the site to include a tiled image of Connery, an audio clip of him saying the quote, and accompanying text reading the same. It was absurd and useless, and people appreciated it for exactly those reasons.
I remember someone sent me a link to it back in 2002. By the time the audio clip had repeated a third time I’d thrown my head back in laughter. Who made this? What does this mean? Why that specific line? The ludicrousness of it all. YTMND is an early example of the single-serving site, a URL reserved for an exceedingly singular, and usually trivial, purpose.
Over the next few years, creative goofs would apply the YTMND model (a pic, a sound clip, and text) to different weird pop-culture icons. So many people created derivatives that Max eventually decided to set up a site to host all of them, and //www.ytmnd.com was born.
The top-viewed YTMND is a clip of a prank call that was originally recorded by comedian Tom Mabe. The second is a massive animated GIF image created collectively by some clever Something Awful goons. The YTMND wiki explains:
The Blue Ball Machine is one of the most frequently-viewed pages on all of YTMND. The site is a patchwork of animated GIFs linked together accompanied by a looping hook of the song Breakfast Machine from the film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The concept was conceived by Andorion, who created a template and some sample tiles and a thread for others to contribute, and the individual images were created by hundreds of Something Awful forums goons. Each image has three balls enter and leave at particular spots at any frame which is a multiple of 30, but otherwise the content is up to the creator. It has earned this title by accruing a staggering four million pageviews since its inception in October of 2005.
The third is called “Breakup Letter: Dramatic Reading,” which features a narrator reading an inarticulate breakup letter as though it were a dramatic Shakespearean monologue, while trying not to giggle:
Dear Loser,[Chris]~~~~!!!!!
I thought you liked me you said it yourself I hate you. People only say you asked me out because you needed a date for the dance and that after the dance you would dump me well guess what bastert i dumped you cause you were thinking that i cheated on you i didnt so like idiots that you guys are and so smart that you are you called me a slut. I hung up on you cause you tol me it on the phone
That’s a small taste, but you get the idea. Moving down the list I see an animated GIF of Paris Hilton that shows her using the same facial expression in every photo. Another has the opening sequence of “Cowboy Bebop,” only with audio of a Bill Cosby soundalike scatting over the original music (Cosby Bebop).
The appeal of YTMND is that it allowed users to crystallize a single, self-contained bit of absurdity into a unique URL that they could easily share with their friends. There was also a feature that allowed people to rate the clips, so the best ones rose to the top. For a time in the mid-2000s, YTMND was one of the most powerful Internet meme aggregators.
The Memesphere Expands
From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, the Internet birthed hundreds of smaller sites that have come to be known as early Internet memes themselves, or that hosted viral content before viral content was recognized as something new. I’ve already told you about “Gonads and Strife,” a cartoon from Threebrain, a flash animator who also released such viral sensations as “Sorry Your Mom Died” and “Monkey Salad.”
realultimatepower.com is a good example, and it somehow remains intact after all these years. The homepage begins:
Hi, this site is all about ninjas, REAL NINJAS. This site is awesome. My name is Robert and I can’t stop thinking about ninjas. These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.
Facts:
1. Ninjas are mammals.
2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.
It goes on like this. I distinctly remember the pure delight the childlike wording of this home page brought to my college dorm. This stuff was our generation’s Monty Python. It was fresh and funny and it felt like nobody seemed to quite get it but us.
In 2004, Quiznos ran a campaign featuring the Spongmonkeys, who had achieved viral fame with an animation called “We Like the Moon.” Joel Vietch had originally created the video for his goofy animation site http://www.rathergood.com in 2003. The ads featured the bizarre creatures singing “We Love the Subs.” The monkeys were among the first, if not the first, Internet memes to be used in advertising. The bizarre nature of the Spongmonkeys ads confused many TV viewers, and the requisite explanation was, “Oh, it’s just this weird thing from the Internet.”
This phenomenon would reoccur a few years later, when one of the first YouTube sensations capitalized on the strength of 4chan’s meme-spreading capabilities. In the spring of 2007, a guy called Tay Zonday recorded himself singing an original song called “Chocolate Rain.” The video features an almost childlike Zonday crooning a surprising baritone into a microphone over a cheesy drum loop. Zonday’s face contorts with effort as he sings the utterly ungroovy tune. That November, Zonday licensed the song to Comedy Central and released a spoof called “Cherry Chocolate Rain” as part of an ad campaign for Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper.
Newgrounds, eBaums World, and Albino Blacksheep, three successful web communities, hosted videos, flash games, and animations from thousands of independent content creators. Sites like these enabled people to create one-off pieces of content that had the potential to go superviral. At the time, there was a lot of arguing about content attribution. eBaums World especially came under fire for hosting video content it didn’t own. Today, these arguments seem almost quaint. There are so many places to host content these days that it’s virtually impossible to prevent people from sharing copyrighted content.
During this time the memesphere expanded rapidly throughout the web, and people began to see pieces of entertaining content from the Internet as a fresh new medium—but most people didn’t have a word for it yet. If asked “What the hell is this?” we’d say, “Oh it’s just something I found online.” Today we use the word meme.
Each of the communities I’ve just described is part of the gradual progression in the evolution of the online community that created the mother of all Internet in-groups, 4chan. Of course, online community branched forward in different directions, mutating into mainstream social networks like Facebook and Twitter too—but if you look closely, you can spot the countercultural strains of the freaky, outsider’s web community coming to a head when, in 2003, a 15-year-old kid decided he was going to create the best site on the Internet.
Chapter 5
* * *
The Rise of 4chan
BY 2003 THERE were plenty of English-speaking communities in place where one could share cool st
uff from the Internet, but for some they just didn’t move fast enough.
Christopher Poole was a teenage anime geek who would frequent Something Awful’s anime forum under the name “moot,” and occasionally lurk Japanese forums like 2channel and Futaba. He appreciated the quick pace of these sites. As soon as you get to the bottom of a page, you can hit refresh and be hit with a page of completely new content. But because Poole didn’t speak Japanese, he could only check out the images.
So he lifted Futaba Channel’s code wholesale and created 4chan.net, an English-speaking forum that would bring the dynamic culture of 2channel and Futaba Channel to the West. The site launched on October 1, 2003.
Poole posted a message to the Something Awful forums announcing the creation of the image board. It was met with immediate positive reception. No logins, no profiles, no hierarchy of users. Just a frenzy of streamlined fun. With 4chan it wasn’t about who you were, it was about what you knew, a pure meritocracy. People loved it. 4chan.org received millions of hits in the first few weeks of its existence. Eventually Futaba and 2channel users became aware of 4chan, which brought in a flood of traffic, taking down the site’s servers.
I tracked down a guy who calls himself “Shii,” who is credited with writing the software for 4chan’s text boards. On his personal site, he claims, “I wrote the suck-ass anonymous message board software that they still use today, despite never having taken a programming class ever.” In 2003 Shii learned of the existence of the Japanese chan boards and was excited to bring that style of forum to the West. That October, Shii met moot online, who had announced the development of 4chan on the Something Awful anime forum they both frequented called Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse (ADTRW), a jokingly offensive name poking fun at the medium’s extreme fringes.
EPIC WIN FOR ANONYMOUS Page 11