What Is 4chan? Why Is It Called The "Darkest Corner Of The Web"?

Its outdated design, however, belies its influence. Called one the “darkest corners of the Web” by a New York Times writer and the “ninth circle of Hell,” 4chan twins the irreverent with the abhorrent, birthing wildly popular memes such as Lolzcats while simultaneously hosting some of the most prurient content on the Internet.

Its army of anonymous users anointed founder Christopher Poole Times Magazine’s Most Influential Person of 2009 by manipulating the poll. It gamed Google Trends, forcing a racial slur to its No. 1 spot. And one of its users, which number more than 7 million, was once investigated for spilling the contents of Sarah Palin’s e-mail.

4chan users operate with complete anonymity, which Poole said contributes to creativity. It also means, however, that users are free to post the profane, the hurtful, the evil. “They get rowdy — it’s like a bar without alcohol,” Willard Ling, one longtime user told the Wall Street Journal in 2008. “It’s like that psychological concept of deindividualization — when groups of people become less aware of their own responsibility.”

Nowhere among 4chan’s vast collection of message boards is this more apparent than in a section known as “/b/,” called the “darkest corner of the searchable Web.” It’s where the Jennifer Lawrence photographs first materialized, which were apparently hawked for bitcoin. And it’s also where more users are reportedly trying to ignite a viral hashtag #leakforJLaw, which encourages people to post nude selfies of themselves to support the celebrity. Unless it’s a prank.

It's a realm where “completely anonymous — no login, no username — people try to shock, entertain and coax free porn from one another,” wrote Gawker’s Nick Douglas. He said it’s otherwise known as the “a–hole of the internet.”

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According to an MIT paper published by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, /b/ operates under a very different set of mores than most of society. Its “lack of identity makes traditional reputation systems unworkable,” the paper stated. “Second, instead of archiving conversations, /b/ deletes them when newer content arrives — often within minutes — which leads to a chaotic, fast-paced experience.” It makes “complete anonymity and content deletion the norm.”

According to Wired, the few include: “Do not talk about /b/,” Do NOT talk about /b/,” and “there is always more f—– up s— than what you just saw.”

wired.co.uk

The message board was the first created under the banner of 4chan, and Poole says it’s self-perpetuating and self-governing. “Ultimately, the power lies in the community to dictate its own standards,” he told the New York Times in 2008. “All we do is provide a general framework.”

But what if those standards plumb the depths of human depravity? Although there does appear to be some self-monitoring when it comes to child pornography, the group traffics in outright homophobic and sexist slurs. “/b/ is a man’s world, and women are routinely ignored or abused,” according to Wired. “The downward evolutionary pressure — everyone has to be more extreme than the last guy — has lead /b/ to repeatedly phoning the parents of deceased, shouting Internet memes down the line at them.”

wired.co.uk

Even now, amid widespread condemnation of the leaked photographs and the threat of prosecution, some /b/ users remain gleeful. “This might be the best but also the saddest day in /b/’s history,” the Daily Dot quoted one saying. “We’ve been teased with all these glorious pics. BUT there’s lots of videos out there, and I have a feeling that we will never get our hands on them. … it’s going to haunt you forever.”

4chan.com is an online image-focused bulletin board website where users can anonymously share photos, GIFs and videos, as well as comment on each others' posts. To launch a discussion, a user has to post an image. Then others can comment or reply with more images. Discussions are broken up into main topic boards, ranging from Japanese anime and video games to travel and literature to the paranormal. The "/b/" board, dubbed the "random" imageboard, is 4chan's largest and historically most controversial board.

In 2003, Christopher Poole created 4chan as a site devoted to Japanese anime and manga pictures. He was in his early teens. In 2009, the New York entrepreneur was voted the world's most influential person in an online poll by Time magazine, a ballot which many speculate was rigged by 4chan users.

smh.com.au

Anyone can use the site as it requires no registration. Most eschew a user name, preferring to post as "anonymous". "The whole principle of 4chan and its anonymity goes back to a perceived golden age of the internet, prior to Facebook, prior to social media," says Steve Collins, a Macquarie University media lecturer.

Leaver says the site is mainly used by a "young, male, affluent, western, demographic". Alex believes many young male teenagers are drawn to an anarchic, "anything goes" spirit of 4chan. Women are not welcome on the /b/ board. Those who identify as girls or women are told "tits or gtfo" - "post an image showing your breasts or get the f--- out".

smh.com.au

Over the years, 4chan has grown into a massive user-generated content sharing forum, spawning Internet campaigns and becoming an online community for Internet subcultures. But 4chan has also been surrounded by controversy. While some content is harmless, several posts include vulgar language, obscene jokes, pornography, violence and gore.

Discussions about Slender Man, the fictional horror character popularized by internet memes that have led to violent attacks, have been linked to 4chan and other message board sites. The infamous activist hacker group Anonymous "first emerged on imageboards like 4chan," according to author Parmy Olson's book, "We Are Anonymous."

This latest celebrity photo scandal is not the first time a 4chan user has boasted about an apparent hacking. In 2008, a user posted an alleged detailed account of how he hacked into then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's private Yahoo! email account during the 2008 presidential campaign. 4chan users have also been linked to numerous online pranks. Last year, one of 4chan's users started a group effort to create a fake Apple ad that claimed a new update in the iOS 7 operating system would make iPhones waterproof. Within a few hours, a sleek fake ad using Apple's font style, colors and graphics was created and spread through social media.

Officially, there are 17 "global rules" that apply across the site. They include observance all United States laws and a requirement that users are over 18 years old, as well as housekeeping dictums about posting in the right boards. But /b/ is almost entirely lawless. A prohibition of child pornography is perhaps the sole rule which is generally observed.

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Leaver says 4Chan generally complies with requests from law enforcement bodies, and has a team of volunteer moderators enforcing rules, where they exist. But the nature of the site means offending content often disappears off the main site long before it can be formally tackled.

independent.co.uk

Student user Alex finds many of the boards useful. "Fashion has really great lists of websites and discounts that are going on," he says. But on /b/, it is a very different story. Collins says there are "a lot of posts around girls and sex, like 'Facebook friends I would like to f---'." "There's also quite a lot of explicit racism and a lot of nationalism in there."

smh.com.au

Then again, Collins says he finds humorous and sometimes insightful messages amidst the degrading material. Leaver refers to the site's political activity, including the targeting of corrupt Chinese politicians. "It's a bit like the court jester's role in that you can say things that other people can't say," he says.

smh.com.au

4chan is said to have spawned the online hacker group Anonymous, which has targeted major companies such as PayPal, churches such as Scientology, and even the US government. But 4chan and Anonymous are now independent, even if there is some cross-over in membership, according to Collins.

Well, the site has a massive audience, and the photos clearly appeal to its teenage fanboy demographic. It was founded in 2003 by Christopher Poole, who was 15 at the time. Over the years, it’s grown to become one of the top 1,000 sites in the world. According to Alexa, it’s the 483rd most popular website in the United States and generates some 20,000,000 viewers per month. So if the hacker was looking for clicks, he clearly went to the right place.

Second, unlike Facebook, Twitter or even Reddit, which has some strict posting guidelines, 4chan allows salacious content to live on and be shared forever. It’s like the wild west of social media. The site has few moderators, and most of the content is generally NSFW.

In 2011, a Florida man broke into the accounts of Hollywood starlets such as Scarlett Johansson. Eventually, the FBI caught up with him, and took him to court. “It started as curiosity and it turned into just being addicted to seeing behind the scenes of the lives of the people you see on the big screen every day,” he told journalists at the time. A year after his arrest, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

vocativ.com