8chan

RIP SWEET PRINCE

the 8chan logo.

Like 4chan is a ripoff of 2chan, 8chan (also known as 8ch, Infinitechan, fullchan, Cripplechan and Redchanit) was arguably the coat-tail rider of 4chan (which is ironic because 2channel, which 2chan is a spinoff of, hosts 8chan's servers owns 8chan lock-stock-and-barrel as the "international 2channel"). It was the brainchild of a shameless faggot named Fredrick Brennan (also known as "Hotwheels," because he's a midget with brittle-bone disease permanently confined to his wheelchair) who conceptualized it during one of his shroom sessions. Hotwheels didn't like how imageboards like Wizardchan (which he was an admin for) and 4chon were run by admins who banned people left and right. His response to this was creating an imageboard where anyone could make and moderate their own board. Originally a deadchan like 7chan before it, it has been heavily populated by pissed off ex-4channers, the biggest spike (or "exodus") being caused by the deletion of GamerGate threads on 4chan and the subsequent shitstorm of AIDS created sitewide by janitors who felt that this was a good opportunity to show their true colors. After the traffic from this shitstorm (combined with DDoS attacks and CP spam from SJWs butthurt about getting called out and the usual suspects from the AnonTalk days) kept knocking the site over Fredrick "partnered" with Jim Watkins, U.S. Army intelligence operative, professional crazy motherfucker and owner of 2channel. 8chan is now wholly owned and operated by NT Technologies, Jim's holding company; Brennan became "technical consultant" for the company and has no control over its operation. Brennan eventually left and quietly distanced himself from the site.

/tg/

8chan /tg/ was much to its counterpart on 4chan, with some marked differences. By user consensus, it banned quest threads, putting them in their own containment board, /quests/ - this would later happen on 4chan's /tg/ as well under Hiroshima Nagasaki's reign. Aside from the removal of spam threads, moderation on 8/tg/ ws minimal- and yes, this does include (spoilered) porn threads, a resurrection of the long-lost 'bitches for Thulsa Doom' threads. The "owner" of /tg/ on 8chan is called Chrow, and he is This Guy par excellence who is mostly hands-off in his work, but will drop the hammer when he needs to. Users appease him with pictures of crows whenever he shows up to mimic his use of pictures of crows whenever he posts. As of this post, Chrow maintains a /tg/ on the webring.

But why leave?

There are many reasons, but most of them boil down to "get quests and generals out of my fucking /tg/", "mods are fags", and "newfags ruined everything." You can read a thread about it here.

Notable Homebrews and Threads of Legend

• Ætern Sector - A new sector for 40kRP, principally created by the tripfag known as Carstein Anon. Intended to be more serious and less full of wacky memes than the Tiji Sector before it. An ancient warp anomaly has attracted every good idea Games Workshop has ever had and abandoned to one sector of space, a great cosmic clock slowly counting down to midnight. When the bell tolls for the last time, what is released from the Forever Pit may threaten the entire galaxy.
• 8chan Wacky Races - a sitewide project spearheaded by /tg/; one anon observed that the 8chan topbar (which displayed the 25 most popular boards at any given time) looked kind of like a race, and hit upon the idea of drawing up all the major boards as if they were Wacky Races characters. Multiple boards jumped on the idea and submitted character concepts, and talks of a homebrew board game were in progress before the whole idea was shitcanned due to Jim Watkins removing the list of boards from the topbar.
• Transformative Thought Initiative - An attempt to reimagine the causes, processes and methods of the Taint as a concrete antagonist that can be dropped into any sufficiently modern campaign setting. Suffered death by skub, but not before coming up with some interesting ideas.
• Yu-Gi-Oh: The RPG - One day a faggot came to /tg/ asking to be spoonfed ideas for his YGO/D&D crossover. /tg/ said fuck that and wrote a Call of Cthulhu campaign setting based on the best parts of the manga and anime. Playing children's card games turns you into a duel-obsessed madman, every canon character becomes some flavor of horrible monster from seeking out the truth behind the game, and Thousand-Eyes Restrict is totally Yog-Sothoth. Way better than it has any right to be.
• The Nigguard - OP refluffs the Paladin by way of Moon Man. OP somehow manages to not be a faggot and create a mechanically interesting class ideal for calling That Guy's bluff when he suggests playing Racial Holy War.
• The rise, fall, and rise of the clover trees - Probably the most successful attempt to make a campaign setting based on imageboard culture so far, buoyed by post-exodus optimism. Full of awesome writefaggotry

/tg/ and other boards

As with many of 8chan's boards, /tg/ has a semi-official/constantly-debated list of sister boards, in other words ones whose subject matter overlaps enough that many posters use both boards frequently. This includes /his/, the slow but well-regarded History board, and /monster/, the much loved/hated font of Monstergirl waifus/autism, depending on who you ask. Another oft-debated sister board is /quest/, which has had wildly varying user numbers over the years and frequently searches to redefine itself. This is probably because most of the questfags stayed on 4chan.

Boards that aren't /tg/

On 8chan, anyone could create any board, with the (ostensibly; Jim and his cabal of global volunteers had been known to ban your entire ISP if you call them out) only restrictions being those of US law. Most of them are made for a one-off joke or just die from inactivity, but others (like the ones named after 4chan boards) endure. Some of the more notable boards include:

• /bane/ - A meme board dedicated to analyzing the Plane Scene, aka the opening scene from The Dark Knight Rises. It is where roleplaying met autism to the point where an entire mythology had been written about the scene. Moved VERY slowly, even by 8chan's /tg/ standards. Only jumps into the top 25 boards when something sufficiently meme-worthy pops up, like the Germanwings crash back in 2015 where just about everything seemed to be linked to the Plane Scene, or Donald Trump all but quoting Bane's speech on giving power back to the people.
• /baphomet/ - An attempt to return imageboards to the "hackers on steroids" era when /b/ could actually get shit done. Naturally it died when the board's owner got shot to death by the FBI after one of the moderators sold him out.
• /builders/ - A board similar to /qst/ except that it’s was actually good and focused more on making individual characters or nations.
• /christian/ - Religion? In my imageboard? Far more overlap with /tg/ than you would expect, since Christianity related threads were always a thing on /tg/ and due to fact that large chunk of users are actual fa/tg/uys. This leads to interesting discussion when topics like historical roleplaying and world-building come up and occasional resurgence of clearly /tg/ threads. Asides all of this, its a no-brainer that 40k and its memes are quite popular there to say the least. Creator of Christ-chan, who is not rule 63 Jesus but instead a modest, pious young woman who lives according to Christian ideals and also your new waifu.
• /co/ - Made the leap to 8chan, partially because they were tired of ridiculous mods like Inspector Redwood, partially because they were tired of Tumblr shitting on everything and getting butthurt when their hugboxes are disrupted. Really hate modern art schools and animation networks for killing anything even remotely resembling talent in the animation industry and helping give SJWs a platform for infecting children with their foul heresy. Also really hate the Big Two comic publishers, for the same reasons in addition to /co/'s usual pack of grievances. When they're not being MEGA FUCKING PISSED AT EVERYTHING they also like photoshopping shitty webcomics like Questionable Content for the lulz, practicing their drawfag skills and trolling for porn of whatever loli they want to spam this week. Much more tolerant of anime than 4/co/; anything that aired on Toonami in the 90s was usually considered fair game, as is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure after a thread about the slow derailing of Adventure Time ended in "let's make Finn a Joestar."
• /d/ - Yup, it was there. Yup, it was dead. Still great for PROMOTIONS though.
• /leftpol/ - A board that split off of /leftypol/ when the mods started banning people for liking Rojava. Tended to lean more towards Anarchism than its sister board. Also surprisingly level-headed compared to /pol/, not that that's exactly hard.
• /leftypol/ - Thanks to the magic of user-created boards the radical-left contingent of /pol/ can get out from under the relentless sliding and show itself. Loves communism. Infamous for employing bots and scripts to stay in the top 25 despite the fact that they are a minority of a minority and everyone thinks they're little shits (exactly like /pol). Has gone through several ideological shifts but is now predominantly Marxist-Leninist.
• /m/ - Mecha AND TOKU! Suck it not-/m/ naysayers! It existed but, even with the presence of some of /m/'s actually-good tripfags, it's almost as dead as the original yellow ranger.
• /pone/ - It's /mlp/.
• /monster/ - Monstergirls. Called itself "The last bastion of romance." /monster/ is very strict in what it considers to be kosher to post and mods will act quickly against that which is deemed treif - which generally means any monstergirl not adhering to the basic rules of Kenkou Cross' Monster Girl Encyclopedia, particularly the "all monstergirls will hook up with any man, and the first guy they bang is the one they marry" law. They considered /tg/'s love for kobolds and other distinctly non-human looking monstergirls degenerate, while /tg/ considered /monster/ to be full of autists. The fact that they independently discovered the quest thread from first principles, had /tg/ warn them that they would push out all the actual discussion, and then let it happen anyway certainly doesn't endear them to the average 8chan fa/tg/uy. An easy way to troll /monster/ was to say that they're just furries in denial: they will immediately sperg out and spend no less than 300 replies claiming that it's totally different with them, thereby proving you right. The heirs to /sp/'s GETball dynasty after the latter flew the coop.
• /sp/ - When 4chan started overmoderating to make the site more saleable in the wake of GamerGate, /sp/ practically sprinted to 8chan flipping Moot the double birds the entire time. They then proceeded to do what they always do: meme on everyone else and treat national sports as the farce they are. 8/sp/ is also credited with the invention of GETball, the official sport of the imageboard community. At one point, the original /sp/ board owner got kicked out under false pretences by Frederick Brennan and replaced by one of his IRC buddies; the /sp/artans proceeded to run out of 8chan flipping the double birds at Brennan the entire time and roved from deadchan to deadchan for a while before founding a site of their own.
• /sw/ A board about Star Wars. Hates Disney, loves the old Expanded Universe. Given the number of Star Wars /tg/ products released and the fact that the Expanded Universe outright began with fluff for Star Wars RPG the overlap is obvious.
• /v/ - The reason we're in this mess. Started out as a paradise for people to talk about video games instead of dragon dildos, but then the Fire Nation Reddit showed up in force when GamerGate became popular and turned it into a slower version of 4/v/, i.e. shit. The fact that the board's owner, Mark Mann, is every Jewish stereotype in the book minus the part where his schemes actually make him money doesn't help either. One good thing that came of Mark being a asshole is that he'd constantly spams the board on Twitter, which means developers like Yoko Taro and Running With Scissors will occasionally pop by to say hello.
• /vore/ - Unlike 4chan's /d/, 8chan's /d/ decided that vore was too sick and twisted a fetish to tolerate on-board, and told all the vorefags to fuck off. Given that 8chan's whole thing was that users can create their own boards, the result was that all the vorefags got together and made their own /d/-offshoot board just for their fetish.
• /wx/ - The official board for PROMOTIONS.
• /vp/ - The PROMOTIONS board for /v/irgins.

Current Events and Controversy

For an overview of why 8chan is under fierce media scrutiny right now, see /pol/.

8chan has been blocked in Italy due to pedopornography.

The shooting in El Paso, Texas on the 3rd of August was meant to mirror the Christchurch attacks and it was widely reported that the manifesto of the shooter, who claimed to be acting to protect the environment from the American lifestyle, was posted on 8chan's /pol/ a little under 30 minutes before the shooting. This comes after both the Christchurch shooter and the Poway shooter manifestos were widely reposted on 8chan. Former admin Hotwheels, who had by now distanced himself from the site and most of his older views, said to "shut it down," saying that the site isn't good for anybody. This controversy caused DDOS protection Cloudflare to drop the site, despite their earlier claims such actions would be a terrible attack on free speech. 8ch briefly went live with an alternative DDOS protection, but that service rented hardware from Vultr and Voxility who breached contract with the provider by withdrawing service in a way not allowed by their contract. This left 8ch dead again. For multiple days 8ch was viewable read only, without images, with direct IP connection, but this too had gone offline. According to the official Twitter account 8ch was still preparing a comeback. It has been further announced that service will resume on or after September 5th, when Jim Watkins testifies before Congress.

The site would be remain offline for several months, sending its userbase into a series bunkers connected as a webring. During these months, Brennan admitted in IRC to paying for at least some of the DDOS attacks that took 8ch offline because he disliked being associated with the site. This would eventually cumulative in criminal charges against Brennan and a warrant being issued for his arrest.

After obtaining an alternative DDOS protection, 8ch relaunched as "8kun". This launch was never really complete and only a handful of boards were migrated, with random others being restored at a glacial pace, and an obnoxious disclaimed attached to every post. The restored boards appeared to be quite random, as even popular, non-controversial, SFW boards like /sw/ were never migrated to the new site. This new site would limp along for months, with substantial activity remaining within the old webring rather than migrating to the "restored" site, especially when their boards weren't restored. This would change when /v/'s board owner (who was also had the unusual position of a minor, paid, 8kun employee at this point) would leak messages between him and Ron (8kun's CTO and Jim's son) revealing the admins made a policy of not migrating loli boards. This would result in drama where the board owner was fired and Ron assuring users /delicious/ (one of the main loli boards before shutdown) would be migrated in a week. This migration never came, and instead 8kun decided to go full retard and ban loli entirely after consulting with an attorney who deemed it illegal. This would result in a mass Exodus back to the webring, causing 8kun to lose nearly all of its remaining userbase.

The invigorated webring would proceed to have a week of incredibly active posting, more than the webring and 8kun had combined when that site was still up. This would not last, as someone using the name "Esther Aronowitz" would start contacting hosts and registrars to shut down the webring. "Esther"'s emails often didn't even bother to find anything controversial and including totally random posts, correctly assuming the hosts wouldn't even bother checking and just shut the sites down at first controversy. In the midst of this attack, the now-former owner of /v/ teamed up with the owner of the old GamerGate board to launch a new site at 8chan.me. This was quickly taken offline by "Esther"'s efforts and just as quickly came back as 8chan.moe. Styled by anons as "8moe", the site offered user-created boards and a free speech administration, and quickly drew in familiar boards like /co/. The site has pledged itself as a sort of bastion against deplatforming and eventually became the most active of the 8chan splinter sites, outgrowing most of the webring sites within a few months. Whether it will continue to prosper at its present rate remains to be seen.

See Also

https://www.8ch.net/tg/ - /tg/ on 8chan. Dead, for obvious reasons.

https://8chan.moe - The current 8chan community