4chan

Milo Yiannopoulos Proudly Declares Victory After Losing Everything

It’s been a bad week to be Milo Yiannopoulos, whose Wikipedia page is about to include the word “former” in front of just about every personal achievement. https://jezebel.com/milo-yiannopoulos-disinvited-from-speaking-at-cpac-over-1792558811 Yiannopoulos—wrongly and repeatedly cited as some sort of “provocateur” by publications unwilling to call him what he is: a disingenuous parasite who promotes hate for his own…

YouTube Stars’ Defense of PewDiePie Is Bullshit

It’s been a rough week for YouTube’s biggest star. Felix Kjellberg—better known to his 53 million subscribers as PewDiePie—was dropped by Disney earlier this week after a Wall Street Journal inquiry regarding Kjellberg’s use of racial humor and Nazi imagery; yesterday YouTube itself cut his channel out of “Google Preferred” advertising. Big names on the…

YouTube ‘Bug’ Has Been Screwing Users’ Subscriber Counts

The trolls over on 4Chan’s politics board noticed a curious YouTube glitch this week that allowed them to drive down subscriber numbers on any channel their tiny hearts desired. Today, the Team YouTube Twitter account announced that uh, yeah, there’s a bad bug rapidly dropping subscriber counts. 4Channers on /pol/ realized that they could target…

How a Video Game Chat Client Became the Web’s New Cesspool of Abuse

Over 25 million users have flocked to Discord, a text and voice platform for gamers, since its launch in May of 2015. Despite the company raising at least 30 million in venture capital funding, the company has only five “customer experience” personnel and no moderators on its staff. From what I’ve seen, users who wish…

The FBI’s Colossal Failure Investigating GamerGate

A member of Reddit GamerGate hub KotakuinAction filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents pertaining to the FBI’s investigation of the online movement which they received last month. Now those documents have been made public, and amid its 173 heavily-redacted pages is one email chain encapsulating how a year of the Bureau’s efforts…

Here’s What It Takes to Get Banned From the Freest Free Speech Site

Last year represented a breaking point of sorts for major online platforms. The swelling tide of abuse, hate-speech, and politicized misinformation finally grew too big to be ignored. But the ensuing crackdown—as painfully slow and largely ineffective as is—has led to a concurrent rise in largely-unknown sites and services clamoring to be the Most Free…

4chan Declares ‘War’ on ISIS

With the US election cycle over, the anonymous user of 4chan’s /pol/ (politically incorrect) board are antsy for something new to occupy their time. Last night that new target was confirmed as ISIS. It began as the tweet above by bunk economist and men’s rights activist Stefan Molyneux, whose website was described in the The…

4Chan Claim About Inventing Trump Pissgate Report Is Complete Bullshit [Update]

Yesterday evening Buzzfeed published an incendiary document alluded to in an earlier CNN scoop. The 35-page report, supposedly written by an ex-intelligence agent, alleged among other things, that President-elect Trump had hired “a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him” and that Trump had engaged in “sex parties”…

That Story About Taylor Swift Voting for Trump Is So Very False

If like a huge number of Americans you get your news from social media, you’re likely to have seen a story this week claiming that pop star Taylor Swift is a proud Trump supporter. The report is completely fabricated—as is the image of Swift wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. This type of misinformation—quickly…

Trump’s Troll Army Sets Its Sights on Europe

At approximately 2:30am EST, Donald J. Trump—a man who shares in common all the traits of burgeoning fascists through history—was declared the 45th president of the United States of America. He will take the office with a Republican majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. And the internet army that believes it…

Trump’s Troll Army Is Having a Hard Time Voting

Today, America will decide whether it wants to preserve the semblance of a democracy we live in or burn the whole thing to the ground. And Trump’s loudest supporters have been making some rookie mistakes. Trump’s internet army has spent this election gleefully propping up a woefully unprepared demagogue—some earnestly, most as a long-running joke.…

4Chan Is Going Broke Because of Ad Blockers [Update]

4Chan, the imageboard whose name has since become synonymous with internet villainy, celebrated its 13th year online this past Saturday. A day later, the site’s owner, Hiroyuki Nishimura, posted a thread titled, “Winter is coming.” The message was simple: we’re broke. The options as he sees them are to inundate users with aggressive ads, sell…

Conspiracy Theorists Are Very Concerned About Hillary’s Mic Pack

Many of Trump’s supporters live in a colorful and exciting universe not burdened by the confines of reality. Among their favorite hobbies is inventing conspiracies about their chosen candidate’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and until last night we had every reason to think Trump supporters would believe just about anything. To wit: Earlier this month, rumors…

4Chan Creator Says He Works at Google Now and We Can’t Figure Out If He’s Trolling

Is Christopher Poole, the creator of 4Chan who’s also known as “moot,” going to work for Google? If we’re to believe the latest blog post (and tweet) from the notorious community leader, that’s exactly what’s happening. In a blog titled “My next chapter,” Poole is announcing that he’s joining Google—without much else detail. “When meeting…

Whatever You Do, Don’t Set Your iPhone To 1970 [Updated]

The tech world loves their Easter eggs, from Adventure’s original hidden feature to Tesla’s various car tricks. But don’t fall for the recent claims for one hidden in your iPhone: if you attempt it, you’ll brick your device. A prank originating from 4chan claims that if you set your iPhone’s (5s models and up) date…

8chan, the online message board that brought you some of the nastiest shit on the internet (and Gamergate!) has had its domain seized by its Bahamas-based registrar. According to the takedown notice, “child abuse” content on the site is to blame. Guess the internet’s trolls will have to find a different bridge to hide under.…

The Birth of the Internet Troll

Trolls are shitting all over our internet. You can hardly search for something as innocuous as “dog” on Google without coming across inflammatory attacks on every possible dog-related opinion under the sun. All horrible things have to crawl before they can walk/crush spirits, though. Even trolls. And while the term “troll” has become wildly muddied,…

A 4Chan Post Just Sold for $90,900 on eBay

What is art? For this eBay seller it’s something as simple as a 4Chan post. Originally caught by Artnet, a vendor known only as “Artwork by Anonymous” turned the above piece of what would usually be everyday internet ephemera into a $90,900 masterpiece. The lucky buyer also gets free expedited shipping. The seller obviously had…

The Best and Worst Things 4Chan Gave the World

Incredible as it may seem, today 4chan turns a full 10 years old—hello tween years! But 4chan is, let’s say, advanced for its age. And the precursor to pretty much the entire internet as you know it has given us a whole lot to think about over the years. Some of it was fun! Some…

Who is “Jeff the Killer”? And is his picture haunted by a real death?

You’re looking into the face of one of the internet’s most disturbing legends: Jeff the Killer, whose face was burned off with acid and who hides in your closet, telling you to GO TO SLEEP. But where did this 2008 image come from? The story is as horrific as the meme itself. Over at The…