To many, 4chan is a dark, frightful corner of the web.
Home to countless meme-makers, meddlesome hackers and the infamous Scientology-fighting Anonymous, the eight-year old message board is internet legend. And not always for the best reasons.
But Christopher Poole, the 24-year-old creator of 4chan and keynote speaker at SXSWi 2011, is anything but sinister. His site is the place where RickRolling began, after all.
In person, he comes off as an awkward, thoughtful, young man who uses the word “ephemeral” more than is necessary.
He came to SXSWi to argue, convincingly, that 4chan is a hive of creativity in large part because it is anonymous. And anonymity online is something we should fight for.
That is moving in an opposite direction of almost every trend online right now. Poole chose to highlight that with Facebook.
Facebook is 500-million user-strong network that requires an identity. Want to share or comment? You need to be signed up. Want to sign up? You need an identity. Anyone faking it will be kicked off.
Conversely, there are 12 million users on 4chan, all of them anonymous. You couldn’t sign up if you tried.
Facebook guy Mark Zuckerberg has been promoting the idea that every bit of content online needs an identity, and that anonymous comments are a form of cowardice. Those who keep their real names to themselves lack authenticity, Zuckerberg has said.
Poole obviously takes issue with that. He flat out dismissed Zuckerberg as wrong. He said: “Zuckerberg’s totally wrong on anonymity being total cowardice. Anonymity is authenticity. It allows you to share in a completely unvarnished, raw way.”
When you fail with your real name, it’s costly. Those failures stay with you, and you lose the very essential ability to reinvent yourself.
Poole said that every human being deserves the right to reinvent themselves – to switch jobs or schools and get a fresh start. When your identity is tied to a website or social network, you never get to leave it behind and start anew.
Anonymity has also kept his outdated, Microsoft Paint-obsessed message board afloat.
With zero advertising and not the best of reputations, it has grown very organically. That’s thanks to having no barriers to posting – no registration, no sign ups – but also because anonymous collaborators post whatever they want, free from the fear of failure. That is, no one will remember when you mess up, because they can’t identify you.
Poole called this strategy “content over creators” – ideas matter more than the person offering them.
And 4chan is all about ideas. Look at, for instance, the board’s archives. There are none. If you post there, your post will be gone in minutes, off the page into a void. Unless someone notices it and keeps it alive. The survival of the fittest, he said.
Poole’s was a smart and interesting take on the what works online. That is, basically, this:
4chan is like Craigslist in a way successful despite not updating its site, ever. 4chan looks like it’s out of another decade, because it is. It survives, just like 4chan posts, by inventive, often hilarious, collaborative content.
Poole’s presence here is not without motive though. Soon he launches the spawn of 4chan, Canvas. A web-based Microsoft Paint-like image meme generator that lets you create images like the one above. Also anonymous, though he sheepishly admited to adding a Facebook login to start the service.
As big as 4chan has grown to be, it is essentially a cult. There will never be a time when the board is as popular as, say, Facebook, but that’s the business model Poole was pitching. He relishes the cult status, and aims to repeat his 4chan successes with Canvas.
But it’s not easy to simply create a website with a niche, devoted, out-of-left field following, and he knows it. His latest idea will have to tap into that same market as 4chan.
So if Canvas is going to work, it won’t be for years – an eternity in the digital age. Expect to see Poole back at SXSWi in another 12 years, perhaps with two fiercely loyal, underground and largely anonymous audiences.
