Requiem for 4chan: The Rise and Fall of an Internet Hate Machine

From chaos you were born, chaos you caused, to chaos you return

Birth of an Anonymous Chaos

In the beginning, 4chan was an experiment in anonymity and anarchy. Launched in 2003 by a teenager in his bedroom, the site started as a simple imageboard inspired by a Japanese forum . Its earliest and most notorious board, /b/ (nominally “Random”), quickly became the internet’s id — a no-holds-barred arena where nothing was …