8chan

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File:InfiniteChanLogo.png

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.

Tropes used in 8chan include:

• Arch Enemy: 4chan hates them, to the point mentioning 8chan there is a ban on sight offense.
  • 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.
• 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.
• Genius Cripple: Site founder "Hotwheels". In recent days however, since his selling of the board 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.
• 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 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.
  • 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.