The site was launched as 4chan.net on October 1, 2003, by Christopher Poole, a then-15-year-old student from New York City using the online handle "moot".^[25] Poole had been a regular participant on Something Awful's subforum "Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse" (ADTRW), where many users were familiar with the Japanese imageboard format and Futaba Channel ("2chan.net").^[16] When creating 4chan, Poole obtained Futaba Channel's open source code and translated the Japanese text into English using AltaVista's Babel Fish online translator.^{[note 1][26]} After the site's creation, Poole invited users from the ADTRW subforum, many of whom were dissatisfied with the site's moderation, to visit 4chan, which he advertised as an English-language counterpart to Futaba Channel and a place for Western fans to discuss anime and manga.^[7][27][28] At its founding, the site only hosted one board: /b/ (Anime/Random).^{[note 1]}

Before the end of 2003, several new anime-related boards were added, including /h/ (Hentai), /c/ (Anime/Cute), /d/ (Hentai/Alternative), /w/ (Wallpapers/Anime), /y/ (Yaoi), and /a/ (Anime). In the early days of the website, Poole hosted meetings from 2005 to 2008 in various locations to promote it, such as Otakon,^[30] that popularized some of the first 4chan-related memes.

Additionally, a lolicon board was created at /l/ (Lolikon),^[31] but was disabled following the posting of real-life child pornography and ultimately deleted in October 2004, after threats of legal action.^[32][33] In February 2004, GoDaddy suspended the 4chan.net domain, prompting Poole to move the site to its current domain at 4chan.org. On March 1, 2004, Poole announced that he lacked the funds to pay the month's server bill, but was able to continue operations after receiving a swarm of donations from users.^[34] In June 2004, 4chan experienced six weeks of downtime due to PayPal suspending 4chan's donations service after receiving complaints about the site's content.^[35]

Following 4chan's return, several non-anime related boards were introduced, including /k/ (Weapons), /o/ (Auto), and /v/ (Video Games).^[36] In 2008, nine new boards were created, including the sports board at /sp/, the fashion board at /fa/ and the "Japan/General" (the name later changed to "Otaku Culture") board at /jp/.^[37] By this point, 4chan's culture had altered, moving away from the "early, more childish," humour, as evident by the likes of Project Chanology; trolling underwent a so-called "golden age" that took aim at American corporate media.^[38][39]

In January 2011, Poole announced the deletion of the /r9k/ ("ROBOT9000") and /new/ (News) boards, saying that /new/ had become devoted to racist discussions, and /r9k/ no longer served its original purpose of being a test implementation of xkcd's ROBOT9000 script.^[40] During the same year, the /soc/ board was created in an effort to reduce the number of socialization threads on /b/. /r9k/ was restored on October 23, 2011, along with /hc/ ("Hardcore", previously deleted), /pol/ (a rebranding of /new/) and the new /diy/ board, in addition to an apology by Poole where he recalls how he criticized the deletion of Encyclopedia Dramatica and realized that he had done the same.^{[citation needed]}

In 2010, 4chan had implemented reCAPTCHA in an effort to thwart spam arising from JavaScript worms. By November 2011, 4chan made the transition to utilizing Cloudflare following a series of DDoS attacks. The 4chan imageboards were rewritten in valid HTML5/CSS3 in May 2012 in an effort to improve client-side performance.^[15] On September 28, 2012, 4chan introduced a "4chan pass"^[41] that, when purchased, "allows users to bypass typing a reCAPTCHA verification when posting and reporting posts on the 4chan image boards"; the money raised from the passes to go towards supporting the site.^[42]

On January 21, 2015, Poole stepped down as the site's administrator, citing stress from controversies such as Gamergate as the reason for his departure.^[43][44][45] On September 21, 2015, Poole announced that Hiroyuki Nishimura had purchased from him the ownership rights to 4chan, without disclosing the terms of the acquisition.^[28][46][47] Nishimura was the former administrator of 2channel between 1999 and 2014, the website forming the basis for anonymous posting culture which influenced later websites such as Futaba Channel and 4chan;^[48] Nishimura lost 2channel's domain after it was seized by his registrar, Jim Watkins^[49][50] due to the latter's alleged financial difficulties.^[51] Wired later reported that Japanese toy manufacturer Good Smile Company, Japanese telecommunication Dwango, and Nishimura's company Future Search Brazil may have helped facilitate Nishimura's purchase, with anonymous sources telling the publication that Good Smile obtained partial ownership in the website as compensation.^[52]

In October 2016, it was reported that the site was facing financial difficulties that could lead to its closure or radical changes.^[53] In a post titled "Winter is Coming", Hiroyuki Nishimura explained, "We had tried to keep 4chan as is. But I failed. I am sincerely sorry", citing server costs, infrastructure costs, and network fees.^[54]

On November 17, 2018, it was announced that the site would be split into two, with the work-safe boards moved to a new domain, 4channel.org, while the NSFW boards would remain on the 4chan.org domain. In a series of posts on the topic, Nishimura explained that the split was due to 4chan being blacklisted by most advertising companies and that the new 4channel domain would allow for the site to receive advertisements by mainstream ad providers.^{[55][better source needed]} All boards returned to the 4chan.org domain in December 2023 for unknown reasons, and 4channel.org now redirects to 4chan.org.

In a 2020 interview with Vice Media, several current or past moderators spoke about what they perceived as racist intent behind the site's management. They alleged that a managing moderator, known online as RapeApe, was attempting to use the site as a recruitment tool for the alt-right, and that Nishimura was "hands-off, leaving moderation of the site primarily to RapeApe." Neither Nishimura nor RapeApe responded to these allegations.^[56] Far-right extremism has been reported by public authorities, commentators and civil society groups as connected, in part, to 4chan, an association that had arisen by 2015.^[57][58] According to 4chan's filings to the New York Attorney General's Office, 4chan signed an agreement to pay RapeApe $3,000 a month for their services in 2015. By May 2022, that fee had risen to $4,400 a month. The submitted documents also revealed RapeApe lamenting that 4chan was "getting the shaft" over the Buffalo terrorist attack and his attempt to persuade the advertising platform Bid.Glass to reverse their exit from the website.^[59]

On April 14, 2025, 4chan was hacked by an anonymous user who later announced the hack on soyjak.party, a rival imageboard website with origins related to 4chan.^[60] Source code and user logins of those who registered with emails were apparently acquired by the user and leaked online.^[61] Additionally, the deleted /qa/ board was restored. On soyjak.party, information purporting to be from the hack was released, claiming "admin" level access, a lack of updates to the site since 2016, and identities of admins, among other claims.^[62] One of the last known posts made on 4chan before it was taken down was the "Chicken jockey!" quote, taken from A Minecraft Movie.^[63] In the days following the attacks, 4chan and Nishimura's official Twitter accounts released statements confirming that they would work to fix security vulnerabilities and return at a later date.^{[64][65][66][67]} The site returned on April 25.^[68]

Due to its temporary unavailability, some users took to the site's Downdetector page, using its comment section as a temporary replacement for the website.^[69]

On May 21, 2026, the /r/ Adult Requests board was deleted following claims of deepfaked nude photos of celebrities being requested on the /r/ board.^[70]

Poole concealed his real-life identity until it was revealed on July 9, 2008, in The Wall Street Journal. Prior to that, he had used the alias "moot".^[25]

In April 2009, an open Internet poll conducted by Time magazine voted Poole as the world's most influential person of 2008.^[71] The results were questioned even before the poll completed, as automated voting programs and manual ballot stuffing were used to influence the vote.^[72][73][74] 4chan's interference with the vote seemed increasingly likely, when it was found that reading the first letter of the first 21 candidates in the poll spelled out a phrase containing two 4chan memes: "mARBLECAKE. ALSO, THE GAME."^[75]

On September 12, 2009, Poole gave a talk regarding 4chan's reputation as a "Meme Factory" at the Paraflows Symposium in Vienna, Austria, which was part of the Paraflows 09 festival, themed Urban Hacking: Cultural Jamming Strategies in the Risky Spaces of Modernity. In this talk, Poole mainly attributed this both to the anonymous system and to the lack of data retention on the site ("The site has no memory.").^[76][77]

In April 2010, Poole testified in the trial United States of America v. David Kernell as a government witness,^[78] explaining the terminology used on 4chan to the prosecutor, ranging from "OP" to "lurker", as well as the nature of the data given to the FBI as part of the search warrant, including how users can be uniquely identified from site audit logs.^[79]

The "random" board, /b/, follows the design of Futaba Channel's Nijiura ("Random") board. It was the first board created, and has been described as 4chan's most popular board, accounting for 30% of site traffic in 2009.^[80][81][2] Gawker's Nick Douglas summarized /b/ as a board where "people try to shock, entertain, and coax free porn from each other."^[6] /b/ has a "no rules" policy, except for bans on certain illegal content, such as child pornography, invasions of other websites (posting floods of disruptive content), and under-18 viewing, all of which are inherited from site-wide rules. The "no invasions" rule was added in late 2006, after /b/ users spent most of that summer "invading" Habbo Hotel. The "no rules" policy also applies to actions of administrators and moderators, which means that users may be banned at any time, for any reason, including for no reason at all.^[82] Due partially to its anonymous nature, board moderation is not always successful—indeed, the site's anti-child pornography rule is a subject of jokes on /b/.^[11] Christopher Poole told The New York Times, in a discussion on the moderation of /b/, that "the power lies in the community to dictate its own standards" and that site staff simply provided a framework.^[83]

The humor of /b/'s many users, who refer to themselves as "/b/tards",^[83][84] is often incomprehensible to newcomers and outsiders, and is characterized by intricate inside jokes and dark comedy.^[84] Users often refer to each other, and much of the outside world, as fags.^[11] They are often referred to by outsiders as trolls, who regularly act with the intention of "doing it for the lulz", a corruption of "LOL" used to denote amusement at another's expense.^[83][85] A significant amount of media coverage is in response to /b/'s culture, which has been characterized as adolescent, crude^[83][11] and spiteful,^[6] with one publication writing that their "bad behavior is encouraged by the site's total anonymity and the absence of an archive".^[2][86] Douglas cited Encyclopedia Dramatica's definition of /b/ as "the asshole of the Internets [sic]".^[6] Mattathias Schwartz of The New York Times likened /b/ to "a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line",^[83] while Baltimore City Paper wrote that "in the high school of the Internet, /b/ is the kid with a collection of butterfly knives and a locker full of porn."^[11] Wired describes /b/ as "notorious".^[84]

Each post is assigned a post number. Certain post numbers are sought after with a large amount of posting taking place to "GET" them. A "GET" occurs when a post's number ends in a special number, such as 12345678, 22222222, or every millionth post.^[87] A sign of 4chan's scaling, according to Poole, was when GETs lost meaning due to the high post rate resulting in a GET occurring every few weeks. He estimated /b/'s post rate in July 2008 to be 150,000–200,000 posts per day.^[88]

/lit/ was established in 2010 and is a board for discussing books and literature. The board generally focuses on classic works of the Western canon as well as modern literary fiction and postmodern literature.^[89][90]

/lgbt/ was established in 2013 as 4chan's first non-pornographic board for the LGBTQ community. The board is frequently referred to by its users as /tttt/, a reference to the majority of its users being transgender. Its culture is influenced by those of both the broader site and the online transgender community, and is characterised by self-deprecating humour and the use of unique vernacular.^[91]

The My Little Pony board, /mlp/, titled as Pony, is dedicated to discussion of the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and its associated fandom. Created on February 16, 2012, the board was established by Poole in response to the growing popularity of pony-related content flooding other boards, particularly /co/ and /b/.^[92] Along with the board's creation, Poole implemented "Global Rule 15" (GR15), which banned pony content outside of a few select boards, directing all such discussions to /mlp/.^[93] The board became home to the "brony" fandom on 4chan, though many users on /mlp/ reject this label, preferring self-deprecating terms like horsefuckers or ponyfags.^[94] Notable events include a 2013 Q&A with Friendship Is Magic creator Lauren Faust^[95] and the board's temporary merger with /pol/ on April 1, 2017, creating "/mlpol/".^[96] Despite the original series ending in 2019, /mlp/ continues to maintain an active community. The board has been the subject of academic research regarding masculinity and online identity, particularly in a 2017 ethnographic study published in the journal Sexualities that examined how users construct collective identity around their interest in the show and its characters.^[94]

The music board, /mu/, is dedicated to the discussion of music artists, albums, genres, and instruments.^[97] Described as "4chan's best kept secret" and a "surprisingly artistic side of 4chan", /mu/ is used by users to share their music interests with similar minds and discover "great music they would never have found otherwise" with many moments of insightful candor that can affirm or challenge their own musical tastes.^[98][99] The board has gained notoriety for earnestly focusing upon and promoting challenging and otherwise obscure music.^[100][101] Some common genres discussed on /mu/ include shoegaze,^[102] experimental hip hop,^[99] witch house,^[98][103] IDM,^[104] midwest emo,^[105] vaporwave,^[106] and K-pop.^[98] There is a significant overlap between user bases of /mu/ and music site Rate Your Music.^[107] The board's culture has inspired many online music communities and meme pages on social media that emulate /mu/'s posting style.^[108]

Publications such as Pitchfork and Entertainment Weekly noted the board played a significant role in popularizing various music artists, such as Death Grips,^[109][110] Neutral Milk Hotel,^[111] Car Seat Headrest,^[112] and Have a Nice Life.^{[113][114][115]} Prominent music critic Anthony Fantano began his career on /mu/ and developed a significant following there.^[116] Some artists, like Zeal & Ardor and Conrad Tao, admitted to posting their music anonymously on /mu/ to get honest feedback, as well as find inspiration from the board.^[117][103] In particular, Zeal & Ardor said their sound, which mixes black metal with spirituals, came from suggestions by two users.^[117] Andrew W.K. did a Q&A with the board's users in 2011, causing the servers to crash from the increased traffic.^[118] Death Grips seeded various clues on /mu/ in 2012 about their then-upcoming albums The Money Store and No Love Deep Web.^[119] A rendition of "Royals" by Lorde appeared on /mu/ in 2012 before its official release, although she denied ever writing on the board in 2014.^[120] Singer Lauren Mayberry shared on Twitter in 2015 a link to a thread on /mu/ about her band's song "Leave a Trace" to showcase what online misogyny looks like.^[121] An alleged unreleased Radiohead song, titled "Putting Ketchup in the Fridge" and "How Do You Sit Still", was initially reported as genuine by NME and Spin until CNN revealed it was a hoax promoted by the board's users.^[122][123]

The board has been acknowledged for sharing rare music recordings and unreleased materials, as well as finding albums thought to be lost. Notable examples include the works of Duster,^[124] D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L by Panchiko,^[125] and All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling by Godspeed You! Black Emperor.^[126] This was described by NPR as resembling "a secret club of preservationists obsessed with the articulation of a near-dead language".^[124] The board has attracted further attention for various projects done by its users. A group called The Pablo Collective posted a 4-track remix album of Kanye West's The Life of Pablo titled The Death of Pablo to /mu/, claiming it was based on a recurring dream from one of the board's users.^[127] A role-playing game based on Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, designed with help from the board's users, received coverage from Polygon^[128] and Pitchfork.^[129]

/pol/ ("Politically Incorrect") is 4chan's political discussion board. A stickied thread on its front page states that the board's intended purpose is "discussion of news, world events, political issues, and other related topics."^[130] /pol/ was created in October 2011 as a rebranding of 4chan's news board, /new/,^[131][132] which was deleted that January for a high volume of racist discussion.^[40][131]

Although there had previously been a strong left-libertarian contingent to 4chan activists, there was a gradual rightward turn on 4chan's politics board in the early-mid 2010s, with the fundamentalist approach to free speech contributing.^[57][133] The board quickly attracted posters with a political persuasion that later would be described with a new term, the alt-right.^[134] Media sources have characterized /pol/ as predominantly racist and sexist, with many of its posts taking an explicitly neo-Nazi bent.^{[135][136][137][138]} The site's far-reaching culture of vitriolic and discriminatory content is "most closely associated" with /pol/, although only it features predominant Alt-Right beliefs; /pol/, like other boards, has been prominent in the dissemination of memes, in cases, featuring coordination to disperse Alt-Right sentiments.^[4][57] /pol/ "increasingly became synonymous with 4chan as a whole".^[139] The Southern Poverty Law Center regards /pol/'s rhetorical style as widely emulated by white supremacist websites such as The Daily Stormer; the Stormer's editor, Andrew Anglin, concurred.^[136] /pol/ was where screenshots of Trayvon Martin's hacked social media accounts were initially posted.^[140][141] The board's users have started antifeminist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-Arab Twitter campaigns.^{[137][142][143][144]}

Many /pol/ users favored Donald Trump during his 2016 United States presidential campaign. Both Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr., appeared to acknowledge the support by tweeting /pol/-associated memes. Upon his successful election, a /pol/ moderator embedded a pro-Trump video at the top of all of the board's pages.^{[145][146][147][148]}

/r9k/ is a board that implements Randall Munroe's "ROBOT9000" algorithm, where no exact reposts are permitted.^[149] It is credited as the origin of the "greentext" rhetorical style which often center around stories of social interactions and resulting ineptness.^[38][150] By 2012, personal confession stories of self-loathing, depression, and attempted suicide began to supersede /b/-style roleplaying, otaku, and video game discussion.^[151][152]

It became a popular gathering place for the controversial online incel community.^[153][154] The "beta uprising" or "beta rebellion" meme, the idea of taking revenge against women, jocks and others perceived as the cause of incels' problems, was popularized on the subsection.^[155][156] The perpetrator of the Toronto van attack referenced 4chan and an incel rebellion in a Facebook post he made prior to the attack, while praising self-identified incel Elliot Rodger, the killer behind the 2014 Isla Vista killings.^[157][158] He claims to have talked with both Christopher Harper-Mercer and Rodger on Reddit and 4chan and believes that he was part of a "beta uprising", also posting a message on 4chan about his intention the day before his attack.^[159][160]

/sci/ is 4chan's science and mathematics board. On September 26, 2011, an anonymous user on /sci/ posted a question regarding the shortest possible way to watch all possible orders of episodes of the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in nonchronological order. Shortly after, an anonymous user responded with a mathematical proof that argued viewers would have to watch at least 93,884,313,611 episodes to see all possible orderings. Seven years later, professional mathematicians recognized the mathematical proof as a partial solution to a superpermutations problem that was unsolved for 25 years. Australian mathematician Greg Egan later published a proof inspired by the proof from the anonymous 4chan user, both of which are recognized as significant advances to the problem.^[161]

/soc/ is 4chan's not-safe-for-work social board. It was launched in January 2011 after site founder Christopher Poole approved requests to move "rate my looks", webcam and other social threads off the high-traffic /b/ board into a dedicated space.^[162] Threads on /soc/ commonly feature "rate me" selfie evaluations and location-based posts intended to organize meet-ups. Posters frequently swap social media handles or Discord servers despite 4chan's usual emphasis on anonymity.

On July 21, 2023, an anonymous user posted a link to a self-made free and open source dating app, Duolicious, in a /soc/ thread.^[163] In May 2024, the app went viral, briefly outranking mainstream apps including eHarmony on Google Play's "Top for $0" dating category despite the app's creator stating "it was only meant to be a meme app". Mashable dubbed it "the 4chan dating app", describing it as "an amalgamation of other, better dating apps like Grindr and OkCupid."^[164]

/v/ is 4chan's video games board. The board has spawned multiple Internet memes, most notably the NPC Wojak in 2016 (derived from the gaming term non-player character to describe those who do not think for themselves or make their own conscious decisions).^[165]

The "paranormal" board, /x/, is dedicated to discussing topics regarding unexplained phenomena, the supernatural, and non-political conspiracy theories. /x/ was initially launched in January 2005 as 4chan's general photography board; in February 2007, it was repurposed as a paranormal-themed board.^[166]

Many of the earliest creepypastas (Internet horror-related legends) were created on /x/.^[167] The idea of the Backrooms gained popularity thanks to a thread on /x/ created on 12 May 2019, where the users were asked to "post disquieting images that just feel 'off'." There, the first photo depicting the Backrooms was uploaded and another user commented on it with the first story about the Backrooms, claiming that one enters the Backrooms when they "noclip out of reality in the wrong areas". After the 4chan post gained fame, several Internet users wrote horror stories relating to the Backrooms. Many memes were created and shared across social media, further popularizing the creepypasta.^[168]

American model Allison Harvard first gained notoriety in 2005 as an Internet meme on the /x/ board where she became known as Creepy Chan.^[169] Known for her large eyes and peculiar interests like fascination with blood, photos she posted on her blog were widely circulated on the board. She gained mainstream notoriety in 2009 and again in 2011 by appearing on America's Next Top Model. She would visit /x/ after new episodes of America's Next Top Model would air to see what was being written about her and participate in the discussions.^[170]

The SCP Foundation, a fictional secret organization documented by the collaborative writing wiki project of the same name, originated on /x/ in 2007, when the first SCP file, SCP-173, was posted by an anonymous user.^[171] Initially a stand-alone short story, many additional SCP files were created shortly after; these new SCPs copied SCP-173's style and were set within the same fictional universe. A stand-alone wiki was created in January 2008 on the EditThis wiki hosting service to display the SCP articles. The EditThis website did not have moderators, or the ability to delete articles. Members communicated through individual article talk pages and the /x/ board.^[172]

/x/ was the first place where the 2015 viral video 11B-X-1371 was posted.^[173] The board also contributed to investigating and popularizing the controversial Sad Satan video game.^[174]

"[A] significant and influential element of contemporary internet culture", 4chan is responsible for many early memes and the site has received positive attention for its association with memes.^[2][4] This included "So I herd u liek mudkipz" [sic], which involved a phrase based on Mudkip, a creature from the Pokémon franchise, and which generated numerous YouTube tribute videos,^[16] and the term "an hero" [sic] as a synonym for suicide, after a misspelling in the Myspace online memorial of seventh grader Mitchell Henderson.^[175][176] 4chan and other websites, such as the satirical Encyclopedia Dramatica, have also contributed to the development of significant amounts of leetspeak.^[177]

A lolcat is an image combining a photograph of a cat with solecistic text intended to contribute humour, widely popularized by 4chan in the form of a weekly post dedicated to them and a corresponding theme.^[178][179]

In 2005, the installment of a word filter which changed "egg" to "duck", and thus "eggroll" to "duckroll", across 4chan led to a bait-and-switch meme in which users deceitfully linked to a picture of a duck on wheels.^[180] This was then modified into users linking to the music video for Rick Astley's 1987 song "Never Gonna Give You Up". Thus, the "rickroll" was born.^[39]

A link to the YouTube video of Tay Zonday's song "Chocolate Rain" was posted on /b/ on July 11, 2007, and then subsequently circulated by users, becoming a very popular internet meme.^{[181][182][183]} The portion of the song in which Zonday turns away from the microphone, with a caption stating "I move away from the mic to breathe in", became an oft-repeated meme on 4chan and inspired remixes.^[181][184] Fellow YouTuber Boxxy's popularity was also due in part to 4chan.^[185]

In July 2012, a minor fast food scandal took place in the United States, in which an anonymous Burger King employee posted a photo of himself standing in plastic bins filled with lettuce onto 4chan. Users on 4chan soon determined via the photo's Exif data that the image was taken at a Burger King location in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. This resulted in marked damage to Burger King's brand image online as well as the firing of three employees. The incident has repeatedly gone viral.^[186][187]

In his American incarnation, Pedobear is an anthropomorphic bear child predator that is often used within the community to mock contributors showing a sexual interest in children.^[188] Pedobear is one of the most popular memes on non-English imageboards, and has gained recognition across Europe, appearing in offline publications.^[189][190] It has been used as a symbol of pedophilia by Maltese graffiti vandals prior to a papal visit.^[191]

4chan has been labeled as the starting point of the Anonymous meme by The Baltimore City Paper,^[11] due to the norm of posts signed with the "Anonymous" moniker. The National Post's David George-Cosh said it has been "widely reported" that Anonymous is associated with 4chan and 711chan, as well as numerous Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels.^[192]

Through its association with Anonymous, 4chan has become associated with Project Chanology, a worldwide protest against the Church of Scientology held by members of Anonymous. On January 15, 2008, a 4chan user posted to /b/, suggesting participants "do something big" against the Church of Scientology's website. This message resulted in the Church receiving threatening phone calls. It quickly grew into a large real-world protest. Unlike previous Anonymous attacks, this action was characterized by 4chan memes, including rickrolls and Guy Fawkes masks. The raid drew criticism from some 4chan users who felt it would bring the site undesirable attention.^[11]

The adult fandom and subculture dedicated to the children's animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic began on the "Comics & Cartoons" (/co/) board of 4chan. The show was first discussed with some interest around its debut in October 2010.^{[193][194][195][196][197]} The users of /co/ took a heightened interest in the show after a critical Cartoon Brew article was shared, resulting in praise for its plot, characters, and animation style.^[193] Discussion of the show extended to /b/, eventually to a point of contention. Discussion then spread forth to communities external to 4chan, including the establishment of the fan websites, causing the show to reach a wider audience across the internet.^[193]

On July 30, 2014, an anonymous user made a reply in a thread on the board /pol/ "Politically Incorrect" of 4chan, criticizing modern art in an ironic fashion, saying: