Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October , the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature , cooking , weapons , music , history , technology , anime , physical fitness , politics , and sports , among others. Registration is not available, except for staff, and users typically post anonymously. The site has been described as a hub of Internet subculture , its community being influential in the formation and popularization of prominent Internet memes , such as lolcats , Rickrolling , rage comics , wojaks , Pepe the Frog , as well as hacktivist and political movements , such as Anonymous and the alt-right.
In , The Guardian summarized the 4chan community as "lunatic, juvenile [ The majority of posting on 4chan takes place on imageboards , on which users have the ability to share images and create threaded discussions. Most boards have their own set of rules and are dedicated to a specific topic, including anime and manga, video games, music, literature, fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Poole has acknowledged that donations alone could not keep the site online, and turned to advertising to help make ends meet.
Unlike most web forums, 4chan does not have a registration system, allowing users to post anonymously. Moderators generally post without a name even when performing sysop actions. A "capcode" may be used to attribute the post to "Anonymous Mod", although moderators often post without the capcode. Revealing oneself as a janitor is grounds for immediate dismissal. Everything else remains untouched. For instance, on December 28, , 4chan and other websites went down due to such an attack, following which Poole said on his blog, "We now join the ranks of MasterCard , Visa , PayPal , etc and is an exclusive club!
The site was launched as 4chan. In the early days of the website, Poole hosted meetings from to in various locations to promote it, such as Otakon , [ 30 ] that popularized some of the first 4chan-related memes. On March 1, , Poole announced that he lacked the funds to pay the month's server bill, but was able to continue operations after receiving a swarm of donations from users. By November , 4chan made the transition to utilizing Cloudflare following a series of DDoS attacks.
On January 21, , Poole stepped down as the site's administrator, citing stress from controversies such as Gamergate as the reason for his departure.
