Just think about a few of the things you love about the internet. Funny pictures? Neat stories? Rickrolling? Odds are, 4chan had something to do with it. Like the center of a galaxy, from which all stars stem, everything beautiful (and on the flip side, everything horrible) that you can find online probably owes it's existence to 4chan, which I'm not going to link to, because if I did someone might go there and find something horrible. If you really want it, you can find it yourself, and I can go to sleep tonight with a reasonably clean conscience.
So what is 4chan?
It is a place of utter freedom. You can say whatever you want there, post and find pictures of whatever you want, laugh hysterically at their shenanigans and cry at the sad stories posted there. There are categories, known as "boards", where you go to talk about specialized things: /co/ board is comics, /x/ board is paranormal, /fit/ is health and fitness... there is pretty much a place to talk about anything there. Of course, "anything" includes some of the more unsavory, less Safe for Work (SFW) territories: pornography, pictures of real human gore, illegally copied and downloaded media.
4chan is definitely Not Safe for Work (NSFW). Or, y'know, home. Or anywhere, actually. But the darkest dark side of this magical place of wonder and terror... is the /b/ board: Random.
/b/ is truly the extreme of all that is internet. You can find anything there. ANYTHING. It's like... it's like putting a toddler with a pit bull. What will happen? It can go either way, like Schroedinger's Cat: until you see what happens, both are possible. The result could be something completely adorable, with the big dog and the kid playing and being cute and people would be all like "daaaaawwwww!"
"Daaaaawwww!"
Or. The result can be horrible. With bloodshed and tears and much weeping and gnashing of baby-stained teeth. That's /b/. And it is fueled by Anonymous. Woe is you if you attract the wrath of Anonymous.
Anonymous.
"Anonymous" is what they call the users of 4chan. They are many. They are Legion. And they can really mess you up. They have crashed websites, hacked bank accounts, fixed Time magazine's Top 100 most influential people of 2009 so the winner was 4chan's creator (a guy who goes by "moot") and so the names of the first 21 people on the list spelled out "marblecake, also The Game", which actually makes total sense if you speak Internet and which I will explain in the next Internet School. They pick the odd and pathetic on the Internet and ruin their lives for fun (or, as they say, "the lulz", which is a corruption of LoL, or Laugh out Loud).
But they love animals. They created Lolcats, which you've seen and laughed at if you've ever been online, or are, y'know, reading this article. On the flip side of all the evil they do for the sheer joy of misbehaving with no repercussions, when people post pictures or videos of people torturing animals, or when (as on more than one occasion) someone claims to be preparing to shoot up a school, they will work tirelessly to gather proof of misconduct and find out the identity of the perpetrator, then provide the information to the local authorities.
Have another something cute.
/b/, and 4chan as a whole, is a two headed monster. One breathes justice and candy and happiness, and the other breathes vengeance and spite and evil. Get involved at your own peril.
Last one, I promise.
That got a little heavy there, I'll admit. Anyway.
Like I said, next Internet School I'll tell you about Marblecake, and The Game (which you just lost).
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