2channel and 4chan - The influence of forums and imageboards

In the West, we know reddit as the father of all forums. There we find various communities on different topics, where news and information we need about a specific subject originate. In Japan, other forums are responsible for spreading news, virals, memes, and various other famous things that spread around the world. In this article, we will look at the most famous forums and imageboards (2chan, 4chan) among the Japanese and how they influenced the world.

The online community in Japan is quite active in forums, especially the otakus. Besides forums, other communities are widely used such as nico nico, Twitter, and other popular social networks in Japan. Additionally, we can see various sites and communities with a large flow of Japanese users.

But what the hell is an imageboard? You may have never heard of this term; it refers to forums, communities, or channels that are based on posting images and text anonymously. The first imageboard that emerged in the world was 2chan, derived from the text forum 2channel. These two creations were responsible for influencing the internet in a gigantic way that we will see in this article.

2channel – The largest forum in Japan

2channel is the most popular forum in Japan. It was founded on May 30, 1999, by Hiroyuki Nishimura (西村 博 之), with the aim of creating a place where people could publish their opinions anonymously. The site is so popular that it has received around 10 million visits per day for years, with over 2 million daily posts. Currently, it still receives about 5 million visits per day.

The site has gained significant influence in Japanese society, comparable to radios, magazines, TV, and newspapers. The site is quite simple; its focus is only on texts, messages, and images, so don’t expect any design evolution. It was here that various text emojis and other concepts we know originated.

Each topic created on 2channel has a limit of 1000 posts. This prevents old topics from being revived and keeps current subjects active. Old topics are moved to an archive and are eventually deleted.

2chan and the emergence of the imageboard

In 2001, a derivative of 2channel called 2chan or futaba channel emerged. This imageboard or forum for sharing images and text is mainly used by otakus and meme creators. These sites usually do not require registrations and promote anonymity. They are divided into several sub-forums, each having its own specific content and guidelines. It was on 2chan that memes and concepts like Yaranaika and OS-TAN emerged.

The futaba channel and some other imageboards do not archive their posts. Therefore, only active users can follow and enjoy the meme creations. Fortunately, when a meme or viral is posted on these forums, they are quickly spread to external sites. There is a philosophy among 2chan users that prevents many posts from leaving there. To break this exclusivity of the Japanese, Westerners created a similar site.

Inspired by 2chan, Westerners created 4chan. Although the site is in English, it has a large community of Japanese members. 4chan was responsible for the emergence of thousands of memes and virals on the internet. It is believed that it was on 4chan that the birth of the hacker group anonymous occurred. Both 4chan and 2chan have sub-forums related to Japanese otaku culture. 4chan was sold to the founder of 2channel, Hiroyuki Nishimura.

Brazil did not stay out and created its own imageboard called 55chan. Here, all kinds of cancer and memes created by Brazilians are born. Besides these mentioned sites, 8chan emerged, a more liberal version of 4chan, and a rival, 7chan.

List of boards – 4chan themes

4chan and similar sites are divided into thematic channels. 4chan has about 63 thematic channels, each named with letters between slashes. For example: /tv/ is dedicated to television and movies. Below we will leave a list of boards (as they are called), the subcategories for you to find what you want. It is worth mentioning that /b/ is the most popular, a random category that has everything; be careful as you may find adult and extreme content in this random category. Below is a list of some categories:

• /a/ Anime and Manga
• /c/ Anime/Cute
• /w/ Anime/Wallpapers
• /m/ Mecha
• /cgl/ Cosplay and EGL
• /cm/ Cute/Male
• /f/ Flash
• /jp/ Otaku Culture
• /vp/ Pokemon
• /v/ Video Games
• /vg/ Video Game
• /vr/ Retro Games
• /co/ Comics & Cartoons
• /g/ Technology
• /tv/ Television & Film
• /k/ Weapons
• /o/ Auto
• /an/ Animals & Nature
• /tg/ Traditional Games
• /sp/ Sports
• /asp/ Alternative Sports
• /sci/ Science & Math
• /int/ International
• /out/ Outdoors
• /toy/ Toys
• /biz/ Business & Finance
• /i/ Oekaki
• /po/ Papercraft & Origami
• /p/ Photography
• /ck/ Food & Cooking
• /ic/ Artwork/Critique
• /wg/ Wallpapers/General
• /mu/ Music
• /lgbt/ LGBT
• /b/Random
• /r/ Request
• /r9k/ ROBOT9001
• /pol/ Politically Incorrect
• /soc/ Cams & Encounters
• /s4s/ Shit 4chan Says

Influence of forums and imageboards

These unscrupulous discussion sites present dozens of message forums and “image forums” in various different general categories, ranging from Japanese animation to travel. These sites face various problems due to their popularity, such as hacker invasions, post abuse, hate speech, extremely wrong content, user competitions, and others.

Channels like 4chan have ceased to be a secret club and are now a large factory of memes and meaningless discussions. Its community is very random, full of posts related to anime and manga. There are over 15 million active users, so it is impossible to maintain organization on the site; fortunately, categories and tags help in this regard.

We have already written articles about some memes that emerged on these sites. You can see a list below:

• Horse Head Mask – How did it go viral?
• Waifu – Do you know what it is? How did it come about?
• What does Nico Nico ni mean? Why did it go viral?
• Do you know the famous Doge of memes?
• Nyan Cat – How did this viral come about?

In summary, the forum 2channel gave rise to the imageboard futaba, which gave rise to 4chan. These are the two most popular communities in the world along with reddit. It is thanks to these three sites that various information, virals, and memes reach us. Have you heard of or accessed these sites? What do you think of them? We would love to hear your opinion in the comments.