EPIC WIN FOR ANONYMOUS (4 page)

because hentai characters aren’t faking it.

I hit refresh. Uh oh.

You are banned! ;_;

You have been banned from all boards for the following reason:

posting irrelevant garbage - report on your ban, seymore hersh

I’m used to /b/, where you’re allowed to say whatever you want. Not so with the other boards. I should have known better than to mess with hentai fans. I won’t be able to access 4chan for another two days.

2 days later . . .

/hr/ High Resolution

High-resolution 2D/3D artwork, scans, photography, and images. Mostly safe-for-work eye candy, like close-up pictures of eyeballs, nature scenes, and cityscapes. People typically use this imagery as desktop backgrounds.

/int/ International

One can expect to find at least one thread dedicated to comparing the average penis size in different countries, and a lot of “USA rules, UK drools!,” but sometimes /int/ surprises with an informed discussion about geopolitics or world trade.

/jp/ Otaku Culture

Otaku is a catchall term used to describe people who are obsessed with Japanese pop culture. One would expect this board to veer into less commonly discussed elements of Japanese culture, but it is dominated by anime.

The word
otaku
is derived from the Japanese word for home, and loosely implies that otaku people spend all their time at home watching anime, playing video games, and otherwise obsessing over nerd culture. Calling someone “otaku” in Japan is an insult, but in the West the term has been embraced as a badge of honor among people who possess a passion for all things Japanese. They are stereotyped as basement-dwelling, unhygienic virgins who sleep with body pillows fashioned to resemble Japanese pop stars, surrounded by massive collections of action figures and DVDs. On 4chan you can find masses of people who are into Japanese pop culture, but you can also find a strong anti-otaku vibe. People who post anime on /b/ are often told to “Go back to /jp/.”

On 4chan, otaku are often called
wapanese
, or
white Japanese
, in the same way that white people who emulate African-American culture are derisively called
wiggers
. Otaku are also called
weeaboos
, which is a term created by a wordfilter—a bit of code that automatically changes one word to another, in this case instituted by 4chan founder Christopher “moot” Poole—that automatically changed
wapanese
to
weeaboo
. Weeaboo is a reference to a nonsense word from a Perry Bible Fellowship web comic strip that has nothing to do with Japan or Japanese culture. I suspect moot just thought the word sounded funny.

/k/ Weapons

If you own nine samurai swords, this is the board for you. A popular thread on the front page reads:

guys you have a grizzly charging you at 100 yards what gun do you want and you only have one round left what cal and what make is it?

There are always a few threads on /k/ that are dedicated to arguing about specific aspects of gun control.

/lit/ Literature

Despite being populated by Randroids (Ayn Rand devotees) and sci-fi geeks, 4chan’s literature board is another that continually surprises with clever content. A common game is “Honest Covers,” wherein players post Photoshopped images of novels with blunter titles. Nabokov’s
Lolita
becomes
Likeable Rapist
. Hemingway’s
The Sun Also Rises
becomes
Jews Ruin Parties
. This board probably has the highest ratio of quality content to garbage content, since it’s frequented by people who have read at least one book.

/m/ Mecha

Mecha culture is made up of dozens of different sci-fi universes all based on bipedal fighting robots, like the zords from
Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers
. Mecha vehicles are often piloted by humans, and anthropomorphized so that fans will be able to bond emotionally with hunks of metal. The genre is extremely popular in Japan, encompassing feature films, comics, toys, novels, and more.

/mu/ Music

4chan’s music board gives music geeks a platform to engage in the age-old practice of cultural snobbery. It’s dominated heavily by metalheads, the one true music of computer nerds. People post what’s currently on their turntables, take glamour shots of their hi-fi setups, and create lists upon lists that quantify specific eras and genres.

/n/ Transportation

Photos and information about planes, trains, and automobiles. Looks like most people use it as a forum to talk about bicycles. There appear to be some commercial pilots in here talking with some air traffic controllers. It’s of course impossible to verify, but the language they are using implies that the discussion is legit.

/o/ Auto

Car talk and slick photos of cars. A lot of arguing about the relative merits of NASCAR vs. Formula 1 racing. I once saw a lengthy thread where people debated which parts they’d use were they given the ability to perform maintenance and repairs on the Batmobile.

/p/ Photography

Personal photography only. Users are encouraged to include a description of when and where photos were taken along with a description of the camera used. This board has a few fun games, like “Take a photo of the view from your window.”

/po/ Papercraft & Origami

Dedicated to the ancient Japanese art of folding paper so it looks like cool stuff, usually related to video games or anime here. 4chan founder moot claims that this is one of his favorite boards.

/s/ Sexy Beautiful Women

Yet another porn board. This one’s just for soft-core nudes of actual human females, which makes it something of an anomaly on 4chan.

/sci/ Science & Math

People arguing about science. Trolls trying to rile up math nerds. Kids looking to get quick answers for their homework. Armchair physicists pondering the nature of time and space.

/soc/

moot posted the following message to 4chan in January 2011:

1. Created to get “rate me,” meetup, report in, cam, etc. threads out of /b/.

2. No whining (aka “BAWWW”) threads.

3. Post only pictures of yourself-not others. This isn’t a camwhore dump board.

4. Per the above rule, nudity is allowed so long as it is of yourself. AGAIN-THIS IS NOT A PORN DUMP BOARD.

So this board is meant for “Rate Me” threads (“Am I hot or not?”) and “Report In” threads (“All NYCfags report in!”). More importantly, it was created to remove such social-related clutter from the rest of 4chan. This board is active, but it hasn’t stopped /b/tards from posting stuff on /b/ that moot would prefer be relegated to /soc/.

Hookup threads are rampant in /soc/. These threads are kicked off when someone writes, “412 report in!” Everyone who lives within or near that area code will chime in, and more granular, regional discussion ensues. In some cases, threads are more specific. People looking for drugs or prostitutes or just buddies to catch a movie with can find folks within their area codes here.

/sp/ Sports

A place for sports fans to talk sports. Like this:

Hey /sp/, I’d like to have a discussion on stadiums. Specifically, what do you think is the best stadium in each sport. Seriously give it some thought. The things to take in account can be things like History, Atmosphere, Design, Location, Amenities, etc.

This is NOT a comparison of teams. This NOT about how one fanbase is worse than another. Its figuring out whats the best stadium in each sport.

/t/ Torrents

Here people share links to torrents of usually pirated content.

/tg/ Traditional Games

Board games, paper games, war games, card games, etc., go here—another of moot’s favorites. Right now, there appears to be an interactive narrative/role-playing game happening within the board itself.

You are Osyki, newly promoted Totemist and first line of defense for your village against the rabid Behemoths wandering the land. Your master, the previous Totemist, fell in a battle against a terrible Basilisk Wyrm, leaving the duty of defending your settlement to you.

The post goes on to explain the different weapons and skills at your character’s disposal. The thread has over a hundred responses, and the original poster, or OP, acts as a dungeon master, accepting responses as turns and responding accordingly. It’s unclear if the OP picks a response at random or if there’s a system in place to decide which of the chiming voices gets to choose the hero’s next course of action.

You glance around at the assembled items, deciding on one more experiment before you return to the forest to speak with Boand, the Spring Spirit. You pick the Skull Focus from the pile, holding the long scrap of Drake Wing in the other hand. Speaking the Ritual of Binding, you close your eyes.

The game boils down to a choose-your-own-adventure with some puzzle-oriented combat mechanics, but the narrative is as strong as any proprietary role-playing system I’ve encountered. Epic geekery.

/toy/ Toys

A place to talk about, buy, sell, and trade toys. Mostly action figures and the sort of collectibles so expensive no actual kid would own them. Remember the Comic Book Guy from
The
Simpsons
? He’d hang out here. One guy is using it at the moment to find an obscure, beloved toy truck from his childhood.

Having yearned for what was (and still is) one of the most poseable Star Wars figures in the entire line, I was elated to have acquired a Vintage Collection Commander Gree a few days ago. Much to my disappointment, his legs were floppy and his movement was severely restricted, so I decided to take him to the work desk for some modification.

/trv/ Travel

The travel board is mostly made of people asking for travel recommendations. There are a few creeps a-creepin’. Here’s the current top post:

Looking for a country with you-know-what kind of tourism in place. Is Cambodia any good? Or maybe Thailand? Any advices? No specifics, of course. We don’t want a ban, do we?

This post is accompanied by a photo of a little girl tiptoeing on her father’s shoes. We are to assume the poster, possibly a troll, is looking for a country where he can find child prostitutes.

Thankfully, only smartasses reply, although it’s possible that this guy is playing along, using
ruins
as code:

I will assume that you are talking about old ruins and yes, Thailand and Cambodia has plenty. Ankor Wat is in Cambodia and is a beautiful sight, but it is best to visit there from a tour in Bangkok because it is just across the border and cambodia as a country sucks ass. While in Bangkok, you could also check out Ayutthaya, it is a beautiful place with lots of old wat ruins.

Another simply replies, “Reported.” 4chan is usually pretty self-policing when it comes to this sort of thing.

/tv/ Television & Film

A place to talk about TV and film. As of this writing, actress Elisabeth Sladen, who once played a character on British TV’s
Dr. Who
, has just died. A thread commemorating the death beat reports from most media outlets. A lot of the discussion is dedicated to TV shows that are airing currently. People also use the board more like a real-time chat room, sharing spoilers, projections, and interpretations about shows as they unfold.

/u/ Yuri

Somehow, even more cartoon porn. This one’s specifically for soft-core animated images depicting two or more women.

/v/ Video Games

Well duh. There ain’t much more central to the nerd aesthetic than video games. /v/ is known for being populated by rabid fanboys who angrily flame and troll each other all day. Because a lot of kids are into video games, /v/ is often plagued by the most banal discourse. This board is also incidentally famous for launching the Rickrolling meme. After lolcats, the most recognizable 4chan meme is undoubtedly Rickrolling.

It was a happy accident. moot instituted a wordfilter which changed the word
egg
to
duck
, so when someone typed the word
eggroll
in a post, the word
duckroll
would show up instead. Duckroll became a silly prank meme when 4chan users started linking their friends to an ostensibly cool site, only to be met with a picture of a duck on wheels with the word
duckroll
written on it.