4chan Prehistory
Most of this comes from a tertiary source, a Redditor who restored the 4chan History Timeline to the second Wikichan. Please correct any problems you see.
4chan may have been the most successful English anonymous discussion board, but it was neither the first nor the most popular.
Strong parallels to 4chan, 7chan, and Anonymous can be identified in Ayashii World, 2channel, and Nanashi World.
-
1996 - A man named Masayuki Shiba creates a BBS called Ayashii Warudo (Strange/Suspicious World). Users are anonymous. Warez and cp are posted, and there is a gesu (scum) board where website hackings and invasions are discussed. Many similar BBSes are formed, collectively called Nanashi Warudo (Nameless World), and they develop a culture based on memes. Ayashii World functions as the hubsite of Nanashi World in a similar way to how 4chan would later function as the hubsite of Anonymous. AW's popularity increases exponentially.
-
1998 - Ayashii World doesn't have good servers, and it keeps crashing. After the owner receives personal threats over the server issues, he shuts the site down. They need a replacement. They get their replacement with Amezou, the First Channel. It starts off as a bunch of links to alternative BBSes for wayward Ayashii Worlders, but soon becomes its own forum and introduces a new style of threaded message board, dependent on bumping and saging. Its popularity increases exponentially.
-
1999 - The first channel dies due to server issues. A man named Hiroyuki Nishimura sees all this and creates Ni Channeru, the Second Channel, using code based on the first, with enough servers this time to handle the exponential growth. Meanwhile, Lowtax creates Something Awful.
-
April/May 2001 - Lowtax creates the ADTRW (Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse) board on Something Awful.
-
30 August 2001 - 2channel is in danger of dying, so a backup forum is created, called Futaba or 2chan (two-leaves). Futaba invents a board called /b/ for random content. The site supports images and develops a unique culture all its own, growing out of the seed culture brought by the 2channelers.
-
3 March 2003 - The first English language channel is created: World2ch. Like 2channel, it supports only text. Its userbase consists of a mix of Japanese and English users, the only time that this happens for any considerable amount of time. The English speakers there are members of ADTRW, and they are also familiar with Futaba and visit it for its quirks.
Full Article: Ayashii World
In 1996, a man named Masayuki Shiba creates an anonymous BBS called Ayashii World (Strange/Suspicious World). Here, Warez and cp are commonly posted, and there is a gesu (scum) board where website hackings and invasions are discussed.
Inspired by it's revolutionary approach, many similar BBSes are formed, collectively called Nanashi Warudo (Nameless World). Like 4chan, these sites develop a culture based on memes, which became popular a while later. Ayashii World functioned as the hubsite of Nanashi World in a similar way to 4chan and Anonymous.
Ayashii World never had good servers, and shutdowns were commonplace for various reasons. After Masayuki Shiba received personal threats over the server issues, in 1998 he shut the site down for the last time.
Full Article: 2channel
Nanashi World moved off to Amezou, the First Channel. At the time, it was merely a bunch of links to alternative BBSes, but soon becomes its own forum and introduces a new style of threaded message board, dependent on bumping and saging.
With a userbase larger than that of most cities, the First Channel was dead by 1999. An American college student named Hiroyuki Nishimura took up the challenge and created 2channel, the Second Channel. Using code based on the first, the site employed Californian high-traffic servers to handle the exponential growth.
2channel ended up becoming the longest running This was the text-based BBS featured in the film and TV series Densha Otoko.
Full Article: Futaba Channel
By April 2001, 2channel began to fall apart as data transformation bugs threatened to render the entire website unusable. Users began to warn of the coming apocalypse while volunteers from across Japan worked to find a solution.
Just like before, multiple backup forums were created to house the refugees. Most were blatant copies of the textboard format, but one website called Futaba Channel (2chan.net) took it as a chance to experiment with a revolutionary idea: the Imageboard.
With the textboards of the past, only experienced artists were able to make complicated Shift-JIS art, with images only linked. Now, any random lurker could simply download an image and post it as the topic of discussion. Anonymity combined with imageboards always leads to The site developed a unique culture all its own, growing out of the seeds brought by the 2channelers.
Full Article: world2ch
One of the backup forums made during the 2001 2channel crisis was called world2ch. This time, it's webmaster Taichirou Kosugi had a more ambitious goal: to create an English-language textboard where Japanese and American otakus could come together to speak in horribly broken English.
While the project became well-known on 2channel itself, the anonymous textboard format never really appealed to Westerners, due to the general preference of vanity over content on conventional forums. Additionally westerners were used to the accounts and one-click smileys of conventional forums. Few saw the point of making time-consuming Shift-JIS art that was unable to viewed with the common ASCII encoding.
Still, the board was a groundbreaking first in the export of the 2channel-style anonymous BBS. Many later influential names started out or at least passed by this site, such as Shii and Moot. World2ch also took initiative to create the first English-language Imageboard.
But by 2006, World2ch ended merely as another failed copy of 2channel, with it's owner leaving the community for dead.
I make a hobby and occasionally a living by being a digital archaeologist. [...] This whole 2ch business is more of digital anthropology. It's like I was wandering in some jungle of network cabling and there in the middle of it found a strange and totally alien tribe whose culture I can't begin to comprehend. That's why I'm here. Well, actually, here is more like the tourist version of 2ch. It's like a tacky roadside attraction complete with aluminum teepees where those passing through can just sort of fake living in the culture they've only seen at a distance…
Full Article: Something Awful
On the other side of the world, a conventional English forum called Something Awful (SA) was at it's greatest height. SA was the 4chan of it's day, presiding over a massive community who were mostly free to discuss the stranger stuff on the internet. It was also a major source of Internet culture in the early '00s, popularizing such lasting influences like the image macro, Numa Numa, and All Your Base (are belong to us).
We can sum it all up with their slogan; "The internet makes you stupid."
Some time between 18th April 2001 and 15th May 2001, SA added an anime board called ADTRW to separate the anime chat from the other boards. This forum quickly become connected to 2channel and Futaba Channel, and absorbed some parts of their culture.
Lowtax's later attempts to clean up the board, enforce heavy handed laws, and monetize the site causes a mass migration from the site. A few members of ADTRW started Raspberry Heaven, an IRC channel that serves as the community maintained home of the ADTRW diaspora.
Raspberry Heaven, a DC++ filesharing hub for anime, named for the ending theme to a 2002 series called Azumanga Daioh. Raspberry Heaven was itself a spinoff of SADCHUB, the Something Awful Direct Connect Hub, created to separate the anime from the serious business.
The Raspberry Heaven anime hub had a linked IRC channel, originally at the MircX network but later Pyoko IRC. Here, moot and several ADTRW members were regulars. RH discovered Futaba Channel (2chan.net), a Japanese image board, and for a while the channel was full of 2chan image links. 2chan itself was conceived as a replacement for 2channel (2ch.net). This was the now unrelated text-based BBS featured in the film and TV series Densha Otoko.
Sooner or later, Raspberry Heaven discovered Futaba Channel (2chan.net), a Japanese image board, and for a while the channel was full of 2chan image links.