8chan



8kun, previously called 8chan, Infinitechan or Infinitychan (stylized as ∞chan), is an imageboard website composed of user-created message boards. An owner moderates each board, with minimal interaction from site administration. After going offline in August 2019, the site rebranded itself as 8kun and was relaunched in November 2019.

The site has been linked by some to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, racism and anti-Semitism, hate crimes, and multiple mass shootings. The site is also known for its alleged role as a forum for child pornography, and as a result, it was filtered out from Google Search. Several of the site's boards played an active role in the Gamergate controversy, encouraging Gamergate affiliates to frequent 8chan after 4chan banned the topic.

The userbase has suffered something of an exodus since 2020 from both the website's mechanical failures and an internal schism, leading to a large splintering to various individual imageboards on the "webring" such as zzzchan.xyz, returning to 4chan, and even a new site bearing the 8chan name founded by former Gamergate personality Acid Man.


 * Arch Enemy: 4chan hates them, to the point mentioning 8chan there is a ban on sight offense. This has lessened over time however--while the phrase "8chan" is still banned (likely from the period when linking to it was wordfiltered), permutations therein such as "8ch" are not. Moreover, since the site's shutdown and dramatic decline, there are occasionally threads (that may or may not be made by former users) mourning 8chan as it once was. This doesn't stop Janitors and Mods from deleting them often.
 * In turn, 8chan anons can be very much scornful of 4chan, regarding them as low IQ for their constant usage of "low effort" snowclone threads and running memes into the ground much in the same way both sites regard Reddit, who the 8chan users believe has intermingled with 4chan for long enough thanks to being attracted by 4chan's reputation that the two are similar levels of "normalfag cancer".
 * Vitriolic Best Buds: At other times, 8chan tends to view at least some portions of 4chan as wayward brethren. This is also how the boards tend to regard one-another. They'll banter and call each-other every slur under the sun, but aren't strangers to collaborative efforts like their "8chanmania" games and respect each-others' rules and right to exist -- likely due to the knowledge that anonymous websites like theirs are some of the few places they can speak candidly about things they'd otherwise have to tread carefully or outright not speak about in polite company.
 * The best example of this would be the site's 2019 shutdown after having their DDOS protection removed and administration taken in for questioning regarding a mass shooting, where a collaborative "webring" of bunker sites was established to house a hoshpod of different and conflicting communities until such a time that 8chan returned.
 * This may be subverted with the webring made of 8chan splinters. 8chan.moe is not fondly regarded by its contemporaries--as admin Acid Man and Mark (while officially just the BO its largest board, he had funded the site and undeniably proven to have sway as Acid's close friend) have a checkered history and less-than-exceptional people skills. In turn, the duo and anons loyal to them spite the webring for turning their back on them for what they view as "disingenuous" reasons, often preaching community unity in the troubling times they all share.


 * Defector From Decadence: Their major raison d'etre since many fled there after what was perceived as 4chan being sold out to the social justice warrior crowd, the main evidence being the unprecedented censorship of the Gamergate scandal from being discussed during its height on a otherwise near-complete free speech imageboard.
 * Come 2020, there was another defection after Mark, board owner of /v/ and then-employed by 8chan administration for duties such as the migration of boards or, whistle-blew about various dealings behind the scenes (among them being the refusal to re-allow of the politically-incorrect board /pol/ and a ban on lolicon content) for reasons popularly assumed to be to better appeal to the "Qanon" audience ("Qboomers" as they're derisively known by users) that the site had garnered. Confirmation on the matter from site maintainer Ron Watkins/Codemonkey resulted in a swift and virulent exit from the site by anons offended by the administration no longer holding true to the site's former free-speech ideals, deeming it no better than 4chan.


 * Genius Cripple: Site founder "Hotwheels". In recent days however, since his selling of the imageboard to Jim Watkins, Hotwheels has become very hateful of the site he once founded, recanting the views and outright admitting that he wishes to see the site go down and stay down due to a personal vendetta. Anons have taken his turn poorly, referring to him as a spiteful traitor.
 * Gone Horribly Wrong: The perpetrator of the 2019 El Paso shooting is believed to have posted a white supremacist manifesto on the site shortly before the attack. The shooting led to the site being taken off the clearnet for months.
 * The board /a/, often stringent on things such grammer or mainstream shorthand (tbh, smh, so forth), relied on a form of automoderation known as HoiHoi to enforce such widespread rules. However, the coding of the bot was poor and its every action was a "request" of the site, effectively resulting in an accidental DDoS (which itself resulting in the "Infinity Next" debacle of a failed attempt to upgrade the site's infrastructure). Even departing to Smuglo.li (their own imageboard), anons from neighboring boards still often hold it against them.
 * Persona Non Grata: The site's extremist nature and hosting of paedophilia-related content led it to be banned from being indexed by major search engines. The split-off sites (with the exception of 8chan.moe) seem to invoke this and deliberately leave themselves out of mainstream search to avoid public scrutiny.
 * 8chan.moe is blacklisted from the majority of webring sites despite technically still being a member and linking to them. There are various factors involved, but the last straw was when /v/ BO Mark had admitted to conducting an interview with HBO for their documentary Q: Into the Storm for "$100 and a free lunch". The hatred many anons have for the press and the risk of it attracting malicious attention to the Webring through 8chan.moe (despite Mark's repeated statements that he did not mention any site) led to a severing of ties.
 * Start My Own: The site is built on the model anyone can start their own board.
 * Wisdom from the Gutter: Gained a bit of infamy when THQ Nordic (now known as Embracer Group) decided to visit them of all sites for an AMA session rather than use established channels such as Reddit, at the request of the site's /v/ board owner Mark. More than a few astonished/outraged articles and comments have been made about it, with even 4chan expressing confusion (or perhaps jealousy?) of why they were overlooked despite being the bigger anonymous imageboard.
 * Wretched Hive: A description of the site's reputation, but it has gone through multiple meanings.
 * It has been sarcastically adopted by its supporters, especially during its early phases, where they basically reveled in the notoriety, considering it a badge of honor.
 * Since the rebranding to 8kun and the exit from therein, there has been an air of bitterness to the sentiment. They still derisively laugh at the idea of being anything more "shitposters" and sneer whenever outlets or random twitter users invoke the name of Gamergate, but they've come to scorn the hassle that having the spotlight has given them (up to and including the shutdown) and largely wish to be left alone in recent days...yet, they cannot help but look back on the time they were at the forefront of a culture war and bustling with new users to stimulate discussion, and miss those more active days.
 * In its latter phases, given some criminal material that has been posted there, some of which was linked to incidents of mass murder and resulted in law enforcement attention, this trope took on a much darker cast, with the entirety of the site given this reputation, even if not 100% of it was filled with people posting criminal speech, the ones that did were successful in getting it so branded in the eyes of a considerable amount of people, to the point even the original owner disowned it.