4chan
This spread through many posts rather than one canonical upload.
2003·Early web, before YouTube
An anonymous image board, started by a fifteen-year-old using the code of a Japanese site.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- yotsuba
- Spread in
- 2003
- Format
- Phenomenon
- Made by
- Christopher Poole, known as moot, who was fifteen
- Taken from
- The open-source code of the Japanese board Futaba Channel, with the text machine-translated
- Where it started
- Its first users were invited from a subforum of Something Awful
- Origin
- No single original
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
A site with no accounts and no archive, where threads die and are gone. Rickrolling, lolcats, rage comics, Pepe and a great deal of what the rest of the web later called memes started or passed through it.
Why it matteredWhat changed
Lolcats, rickrolling, rage comics, Wojak and the name Anonymous all came from or through it.
TimelineIn order
- Made
The site is launched. Its first board is /b/.1
- Later
Poole’s sale of the site to Hiroyuki Nishimura is announced.1
- Later
It has more than 22 million unique visitors a month, about half of them in the United States.1
- Taken down
The site is hacked.1
RelatedMore like this
Records this one is explicitly related to — a copy, a remake, a parody, the same meme or the same maker.
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
Where it came fromWhat we know
This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. No copy is held here — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this. It spread through many posts rather than from one identifiable original.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
What this was built on, each one a record of its own.
- Taken from Something AwfulPhenomenon · 2001
Its founder invited the first users from a subforum of Something Awful.
ConnectedFollow it further
- It helped spread It's Over 9000!Phrase · 2006
4chan made image macros of the line and, in 2007, a word filter that produced it.
- It helped spread CaramelldansenGIF · 2007
Both the sped-up song and its pairing with the animation loop were first posted to 4chan, in 2005.
- It helped spread LolcatMeme · 2007
The word lolcat was first recorded on 4chan, where cat pictures were posted on Saturdays as Caturday.
- It helped spread RickrollingPhenomenon · 2007
The prank began on 4chan as a variation on the duckroll, an earlier bait-and-switch from the same boards.
- It helped spread Project ChanologyEvent · 2008
Formulated on 16 January 2008 by users of 4chan and related boards.
- It helped spread Rage comicMeme · 2008
The first rage comic was posted to 4chan’s /b/ board in 2008, where others reposted and altered it.
- It helped spread TrollfaceMeme · 2008
Its author posted the comic to 4chan, where the face was lifted out and reused.
- It helped spread WojakMeme · 2010
The drawing reached 4chan from the German imageboard Krautchan, and by 2011 its best-known caption was in use there.
- It helped spread Cicada 3301Phenomenon · 2012
The first puzzle was posted on 4chan on 4 January 2012.
- It helped spread DogeMeme · 2013
In August 2013 users of 4chan’s /b/ board flooded a subreddit with Doge images, weeks before the meme’s peak.
- It helped spread ChadMeme · 2016
The Chad Thundercock character and the Virgin vs. Chad format both appeared on 4chan.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things