4chan was where I learned that the internet could be bad. I first encountered the site during high school, not long after its founding, in 2003, by an American teen-ager named Christopher Poole (better known by his username, moot). Poole copied the format of a Japanese message board nicknamed 2channel; users on 4chan could anonymously post an unfiltered mix of text, images, and animated GIFs. Illicit material was never hard to find on the internet, but 4chan served as an early hub—or “dumping ground” might be more apt. The site was inundated with pornography, pirated files, and uncensored screeds about dating or politics. Its background, a pale yellow gradient, still gives me a slight frisson, like a Playboy issue hidden under the bed. I would often test the censorship settings on a library or school computer’s LAN internet connection by trying to load 4chan. Usually, it wouldn’t work, which hinted at the site’s infamy: even the grown-ups knew at least its name, and that it warranted a place on ban lists.
