4 ms·
People who've commented so far all don't understand 4chan. 4channers are not moot's followers any more than Boston residents are John Cotton's followers. Moot w
by asdflkj 16y ago
People who've commented so far all don't understand 4chan. 4channers are not moot's followers any more than Boston residents are John Cotton's followers. Moot was simply the first who took the trouble to translate the software that runs 2chan (the most popular site in Japan) into English and put it up on a server. He inevitably became part of 4chan's vast culture, but so did the gentleman known as "cockmongler". You don't see him getting funding.
Maybe there is room for business in imageboard culture, but moot really is a sysadmin, whose previous attempts at being anything more (e.g. intrusive advertising) have all failed. There are many other nearly identical imageboards, with sizeable communities around them, and all it takes to switch is remembering a new URL.
I haven't been to 4chan in a long time, but I think most 4channers help moot's exposure in order to get lulz out of the investors and the public, just as the investors and the public are using moot to tame and monetize 4chan. Trolls trolling each other.
- mukyu 16y agoYou confused Futaba Channel with 2ch which is orders of magnitude more popular and not an imageboard. 2ch is very popular in Japan, but it is only in the top 10-20 now behind mixi and ameblo (social networking) and youtube and nicovideo (video sites).
- asdflkj 16y agoThanks--it's been a while. IIRC, Futaba and 2ch are run by the same people, and moot copied both, though only the imageboard took off. Is that correct?
- mukyu 16y agoNo one knows who runs Futaba. 2ch was owned by hiroyuki until he sold it a few years ago to some Singaporean company that no one knows about (probably because of all of the lawsuits that he faced and lost). 4chan does have text boards (like 2channel). dis.4chan.org runs on shiichan and is supposed to greatly resemble 2channel style, but it came later and as you say it is not that popular. There is also the tinychan imported text boards that are fairly recent and somewhat different.
- asdflkj 16y agoThanks!