
The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan - akerl_
https://www.4chan.org/news?all#118
======
mahranch
The problem I see with his retiring is one I've experienced on reddit as a
moderator.

When someone higher than you "retires" or goes otherwise inactive, yet still
retains the power they hold, they inevitably come back. It's guaranteed. Even
if it's only for a day. That doesn't sound like a problem at first, but it's a
HUGE problem. Why?

Because new policies, rules or ways of handling things get enacted or evolve
and those new things don't make sense to them. They haven't been involved with
the day to day issues are not familiar with the new challenges the community
has been facing. They forget that in community driven sites, the problems are
dynamic and evolving. They think the community is exactly the same as when
they retired. Only, it's not.

So when they come back they do away with the rules or new policies because
"they don't make sense" or they're not needed. It sets the community back, or
even destroying the new community all together. Some of the volunteers below
them may get frustrated and/or quit because they just witnessed all their hard
work get wiped out. Getting undermined by an out-of-touch owner/mod doesn't
help the morale for the remaining volunteers.

~~~
Kapura
moot has always been pretty hands-off when it comes to managing the site; the
current list of rules has been more or less the same for the entirety of the
existence of 4chan. Some more board-specific issues arise from time to time
and they tend to be resolved as they come up. They're almost always addressed
by appealing to the existing set of rules or by making changes to the board
technology itself; e.g. changing how post numbers are calculated so people
aren't overly obsessed with "doubles"[1].

But admins and powerful mods have always been able to fuck with the boards in
ways normal users can't, such as embedding auto-playing youtube links in posts
or having fun with formatting. They've used this power sparingly in recent
years and, despite what certain posters want everybody to believe, it hasn't
caused any major controversies. I doubt very much moot is going to have a
burning desire to come back and embed a stupid video in a board.

[1] Doubles are post numbers ending in repeating digits like "593987144."
People's obsession with "dubs" on the random board /b/ have been met with
several solutions, such as hiding the last three number from posters
(593987XXX) or altering the generation code to skip doubles entirely
(593987143 is followed directly by 593987145)

~~~
ANTSANTS
If you spend any time browsing the archives/ghost boards or the public ban
list, seeing what content gets deleted and what people get banned over, I
think you'd change your tune.

------
pervycreeper
This is not a surprising development, there has been speculation that Poole
has been readying the site for sale in the past few months. He has taken
action to sanitize the site by suppressing discussion of Gamergate and 8chan
(mention of either was a bannable offense), and more recently a purge of /pol/
(that board had been a haven for conspiracy theorists and neo-nazis). The
theory had been that he was making the board more attractive to a mainstream
audience to attract potential buyers, however, this announcement, along with
the new requirements for "volunteers" suggests that something else is at play.

I would speculate that recent decisions have been driven more by IRL peer
pressure and a desire for social acceptance than any kind of business shark/
Homo Economicus reason.

~~~
krelian
8chan can't be mentioned because it's a competitor I assume? But what about
Gamergate, why is it taboo to discuss it?

~~~
wpietri
My guess is because 4chan was being used as an organizing nexus for a bunch of
people widely seen as abusive and misogynist, and he just no longer wanted the
headache.

Years ago I worked on bianca.com (early community site; founded 1994, Webby
1997, closed in the dot-com bust), which had a similar unfettered-free-speech
aspect to it. I feel a lot of sympathy here.

Committing to publishing everything is one of those positions that is very
appealing to a young idealist. But it grinds you down over time. Partly
because of the content: unless you're a reptile you are faced with a series of
decisions about whether this really awful thing is _too_ awful or just awful
enough. And partly because of the people: most of them are lovely and some
amazing things happen when people are free to be themselves. But some are
terrible and plenty are just broken, and it's those you spend 90% of your time
dealing with.

I saw one of the Bianca people recently and we talked a bit about 4chan and
8chan and how thoroughly grateful we were to have left those problems behind.
No matter how appealing radical free speech is in theory, at the end of the
day you're the person who has devoted your life to enabling awful people to
say awful things. And with GamerGate, to go and do awful things as well. I
imagine he's just tired of it.

~~~
ANTSANTS
That's fair, but then he shouldn't have been surprised when his site started
hemorrhaging users who were there entirely for the freedom of speech they
enjoyed.

8chan will probably last much longer than 4chan precisely because Fredrick
refuses to make those judgement calls about what is and isn't acceptable. He
doesn't need to bear a heavy conscience about what kind of speech he is
allowing, he just follows the law to the letter and lets people do their
thing.

I leave you all with a fantastic speech the late Christopher Hitchens made
about the freedom of speech and why _there is no freedom of speech unless you
extend that freedom towards people you disagree with, even the ones you find
completely abhorrent._

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyBZNGH0TY&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyBZNGH0TY&feature=youtu.be&t=20m41s)

~~~
nemothekid
> _he shouldn 't have been surprised when his site started hemorrhaging users
> who were there entirely for the freedom of speech they enjoyed._

Is this an accepted stat or is this a soundbite used by 8chan supporters? I've
seen this repeated often, but it doesn't seem true. According to the archive
stats
([https://archive.moe/vg/statistics/activity/](https://archive.moe/vg/statistics/activity/),
[https://archive.moe/a/statistics/activity/](https://archive.moe/a/statistics/activity/),
[https://archive.moe/v/statistics/activity/](https://archive.moe/v/statistics/activity/))
- 4chan's traffic and activity has been stable.

> _8chan will probably last much longer than 4chan precisely because Fredrick
> refuses to make those judgement calls about what is and isn 't acceptable.
> He doesn't need to bear a heavy conscience about what kind of speech he is
> allowing, he just follows the law to the letter and lets people do their
> thing._

I honestly don't see how 8chan is different from 7chan, and I'm willing to bet
that after the controversy is over 8chan's influence will die down much like
7chan's.

~~~
ANTSANTS
> Is this an accepted stat or is this a soundbite used by 8chan supporters?

The qualifier you missed is "who were there entirely for the freedom of speech
they enjoyed." There are some 60-80,000 daily users of 8chan right now, even
in spite of the constant DDoSes the site has suffered over the past few weeks,
and that number is only increasing; they had to come from _somewhere_. I've
visited 4chan a few times since the split and have noticed quite a few people
that seem out of place in imageboard culture, and in general a lot more of the
whiny and shitposty elements that I left 4chan to get away from, so my guess
is that as the older anons that craved the free atmosphere that had been
slowly eroded from 4chan over the years left, they were replaced by newbies
who were previously too scared to visit 4chan who figured things would be
"safer" now (yes, there already existed communities like /r/4chan on reddit
that consisted of people that liked "4chan humor" but were afraid of, say,
stumbling across gore, and there are also a lot of people that lurk 4chan
without posting that don't want to deal with trolls and arguments, who might
be more likely to post now that a lot of the people they disagreed with left).

> I honestly don't see how 8chan is different from 7chan, and I'm willing to
> bet that after the controversy is over 8chan's influence will die down much
> like 7chan's.

As someone who was around for both splits, they are completely different.
7chan was an _exclusive_ community for "oldfags" (non-imageboard users, please
don't shit on me for using that word, that is the actual term they called
themselves) that attempted to insulate itself from the "newfags" and
"gaiafags" they believed moot was allowing to ruin 4chan. They tried to do
this by being highly elitist, and banning anyone even _mentioning_ 4chan or
its memes or for not being able to keep up with the latest mod shenanigans
(because apparently snacks was the most important element of 4chan to them).
The site died a slow death because it didn't really have any _important_
unique communities to offer over 4chan, and because most people got tired of
the comically overbearing moderation and eventually settled for the (at the
time) much more lenient 4chan.

Now that 4chan is the site with the overbearing moderation, 8chan is an
_inclusive_ community for people displaced from 4chan (mostly gamergate and
/pol/), for fringe communities that previously lived in "general threads" that
could now create their own boards with their own moderation (much of /vg/,
parts of /a/, /lgbt/, etc), and for those that never had a home there to begin
with (/furry/ is a pretty huge one that, for better or for worse, is one of
the largest drivers of fresh blood into the site). Even if the boards like /v/
and /a/ with direct equivalents on 4chan died out (which they are not showing
any signs of doing, even though they are admittedly smaller than the 4chan
boards they split from), there is still a more than sufficient critical mass
of people in the communities that _have no other home on the internet_ that
could keep the site going.

8chan is also for those like yours truly, that remember how nice 4chan used to
be in the lenient days before you had to watch everything you said for fear of
upsetting a mod or janitor strictly following rules that the majority of the
community disagreed with, or just deleting things allowed by the rules because
they personally disliked them. The days when mods didn't up-end boards they
didn't even _use_ , like what has happened to /u/, /jp/, /pol/ and /new/, and
/r9k/ over the years, on a whim. The days when it wasn't tragically common for
downright _respectable_ users to have to frequently ban evade just to
participate. Once I'd had a whiff of the fresh air of hands-off moderation and
posters that mostly ignore things they don't like instead of whining about
them ad nauseum, I realized how much 8chan reminded me of my favorite days on
4chan, and I'll never go back.

Will 8chan "beat" 4chan? I hope not. I'm happy to let 4chan serve as the
"containment site" for the (IMO) most annoying parts of the community. But
8chan doesn't _need_ to beat 4chan. It can do its own thing. Ironically, it's
a bit like Hacker News vs. Reddit in that respect.

\---

Adding a response to malbiniak, because I've, uh, "hit the post limit"
(cough):

>Within the first minute of his talk at XOXO back in 2012, he mentioned 4chan
being about anonymity and ephemerality, not a blanket endorsement for freedom
of all type of speech.

I know, he has said that many times, but _his users_ didn't see things that
way, and that is really the crux of this debacle: the disconnect between what
moot and the rest of the 4chan staff thought 4chan was about, and what the
community thought.

~~~
NovaS1X
>there is still a more than sufficient critical mass of people in the
communities that have no other home on the internet that could keep the site
going.

This comment is exactly where my head is at and has been my connection with
4chan.

I had a very rough time in my teens, and my mother and I moved to new cities
or towns every year or two. It was hard to keep friends and consider a place
home. 4chan was the constant in my life where I could always escape to be
comfortable and amongst people who shared my hobbies while experiencing free-
speech without the repercussions of identity. No other site offers this like
4chan does, and I've seen plenty of other chans over the years, so, I'm
skeptical about 8ch.

I know a lot of people who feel the same way. I'm scared for the future of
what I consider my home.

~~~
ANTSANTS
I totally understand where you're coming from. 4chan was my refuge for a very
long time through some tough times in my life, and 8chan is the _only_
alternative I've used that captures the _feeling_ of 4chan. I tried many other
english "chans" over the years (7chan, 99chan, 420chan, the wakachan/iichan
"network", the easymodo/warosu ghost boards, SAoVQ, etc), yet I didn't stick
around with any of them. They had their own unique communities, sometimes with
greater average "quality", if you can measure such a thing, but nothing could
match the excitement and energy of 4chan. I think this is because even the
notable ones tried to distance themselves from the "4chan mentality" and
community, and attracted different but much less significant audiences in the
process. And who could blame them: why would you go to a blatant and
insignificant 4chan clone that didn't have _anything_ different to offer?

8chan was once just like that, a ghost town of a somewhat more modern AnonIB
clone that wasn't really going anywhere. It owes its success entirely to the
fiasco of Gamergate discussion being banned from 4chan, which caused a
(literally) overnight exodus of a significant minority of 4chan who wanted to
discuss it, along with those who (like me, in spite of the fact that I
sometimes defend it on HN) were mostly appalled by the blatant abuse of power.
These people weren't trying to "get away from" 4chan or its culture, they were
_forced_ to leave. They weren't curmudgeony "oldfags" or the like trying to
enforce some new cultural norms in their secret club to increase the
"quality", _they were 4chan._

Perhaps not surprisingly, the site is now thriving as a community "for people
who loved 4chan, _by_ people who loved 4chan." And that's what's I love about
it. It's just like 4chan, with a lot of the same people and ideas, but now,
the _community_ is running the show, not some guy trying to distance himself
from "his creation" and a team of mods that often don't even use the boards
they're supposed to protect enforcing arbitrary rules from afar.

Give it a shot. For all the negative attention that boards like /gamergate/
and /baphomet/ receive, they're in their own worlds. The rest of the site is
very welcoming towards anyone that understands "4chan culture" and isn't
obnoxious about it. Also, webms with sound.

~~~
NovaS1X
Haha, yep, I've been around for all of those other chans too.

I'm starting to browse 8chan alongside 4chan today and we will see where it
goes.

~~~
ANTSANTS
Welcome aboard.

------
Shank
I'm excited to see what moot does next; seems like he's preparing for a big-
ish transition in his life, after Draw Quest & 4chan. Maybe I'm wrong, but it
will certainly be interesting to see what's next.

~~~
angersock
Going to mootsico, I imagine.

~~~
moot
mootxico _

~~~
NovaS1X
Thanks for 8 amazing years. 4chan represented a chapter in my life that has
changed me fundamentally. Good luck in whatever you're off to do.

------
Sealy
4chan is blocked at my work, can someone copy and paste the content or post a
TLDR.

Thanks in advance!

~~~
mlacitation
I founded 4chan eleven and a half years ago at the age of 15, and after more
than a decade of service, I've decided it's time for me to move on.

4chan has faced numerous challenges over the years, including how to
continuously satisfy a community of millions, and ensure the site has the
human, technical, and financial resources to continue operating. But the
biggest hurdle it's had to overcome is myself. As 4chan's sole administrator,
decision maker, and keeper of most of its institutional knowledge, I've come
to represent an uncomfortably large single point of failure.

I've spent the past two years working behind the scenes to address these
challenges, and to provide 4chan with the foundation it needs to survive me by
bolstering its finances, strengthening its infrastructure, and expanding and
empowering its team of volunteers. And for the most part, I've succeeded. The
site isn't in danger of going under financially any time soon, and it's as
fast and stable as ever thanks to continued development and recent server
upgrades. Team 4chan is also at its largest, and while I've still been calling
the shots, I've delegated many of my responsibilities to a handful of trusted
volunteers, most of whom have served the site for years.

That foundation will now be put to the ultimate test, as today I'm retiring as
4chan's administrator. From a user's perspective, nothing should change. A few
senior volunteers—including 4chan's lead developer, managing moderator, and
server administrator—have stepped up to ensure a smooth transition over the
coming weeks.

I'll need time away to decompress and reflect, but I look forward to one day
returning to 4chan as its Admin Emeritus or just another Anonymous, and also
writing more about my experience running 4chan on my personal blog. The
journey has been marked by highs and lows, surprises and disappointments, but
ultimately immense satisfaction. I'm humbled to have had the privilege of both
founding and presiding over what is easily one of the greatest communities to
ever grace the Web. It was truly an honor to serve as 4chan's founding
administrator, and I look forward to seeing what the next decade holds for the
site.

On to the next chapter,

–moot

mootnote: I plan to dedicate this Friday afternoon (ET) to host a livestreamed
Q&A session, where I'll hold court with the community one last time. Be sure
to subscribe to our YouTube page, and keep an eye out for a global message the
day of. As always, I welcome and read all of my e-mails, and you may contact
me personally at moot@4chan.org.

Eleven and a half years, in numbers:

42,176,061,890 Total pageviews 1,771,091,423 Total posts 1,071,189,182 Total
visitors 620,125,147 Monthly pageviews 21,128,887 Daily pageviews 20,360,487
Monthly visitors 1,223,807 Daily visitors 2,838 Terabytes per month 105
Volunteers 63 Boards 1 Administrator

~~~
cmdrfred
See also (just don't do any banking/disable javascript):

bestproxyunblock.com proxify.com unblockingproxy.net freeopenproxy.com
freeproxywebsite.net proxyserver.com proxysite.com newipnow.com
browserproxy.net proxfree.com

------
espadrine
> _2,838 Terabytes per month_

I didn't realize it was so big.

Does anyone have comparison points with other services such as Facebook or
Reddit?

~~~
jedberg
reddit is significantly smaller bandwidth-wise than 4chan. reddit doesn't host
images. I don't remember exactly but when I left 4 years ago it was only
single digit terabytes of outbound bandwidth.

~~~
nols
Here is a slightly newer (although still quite old) answer from rram, peak of
924.21 Mbit/sec.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/r6zfv/we_are_sysa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/r6zfv/we_are_sysadmins_reddit_ask_us_anything/c43g1t2)

------
Sealy
"I founded 4chan eleven and a half years ago at the age of 15, and after more
than a decade of service, I've decided it's time for me to move on."

That makes him 25 now.... and just to think, he's in a position to move on
from founding, creating and running one of the web's most successful messaging
boards.

Dang....

~~~
earless1
11.5 + 15 != 25

~~~
anonbanker
Did this reply contribute anything to the conversation, other than display
your strong grasp of both addition and "well actually..."?

~~~
thieving_magpie
Yes. It corrected something that was going to bother me aesthetically.

------
__Joker
While 4chan continues to flirt the border line between nsfw reddit and
deepweb, what is its moderation policy ?

~~~
Karunamon
Nobody actually knows. People have been banned for violations of the stated
rules on each board despite not actually violating them, people have been left
alone for flagrant violations of said rules. Board features like names,
macros, and so on are toggled on and off more or less on a whim.

To say that 4chan's enforcement is inconsistent would be an understatement.
But, the chaos is a feature, not a bug. Something to keep in mind.

But for everyone else, this is one of the reasons I think seriously that 8chan
is the next big thing, it's basically Reddit, but for image boards. Mod abuse
(real or perceived) will result in community fragmentation but on the same
site, rather than exodus to other sites.

~~~
knd775
Eh, I can't really support 8chan. The admin/owner/dev/whatever is an
absolutely horrible person.

~~~
Karunamon
Not that I've seen. As far as the site goes, the rule appears to be "unless
it's literally illegal or breaking the site, I'm leaving it alone", and
everything else is in the hands of the subredd- sorry, sub-board mods.

I think this is the only legitimate stance to take when it comes to a UGC site
that allows people to set up their own communities. The staff of each board
should be responsible for their own moral compasses, with a minimum of
interference by the folks upstairs unless it becomes absolutely necessary.

The existence of a doxxing board is distressing, but it's not against any law
in the USA. I don't want it there, but I want hotwheels making decisions like
that even less. I feel the same way about things like /r/beatingwomen (exactly
what it says in the title) or /r/picsofdeadkids on Reddit.

~~~
BryantD
Er, /baphomet is not "a doxxing board." Or, rather, it's not just a doxxing
board. It's also a swatting board, and swatting is illegal in the US.

[https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/baphomet](https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/baphomet)

You are also 100% incorrect about "only legitimate stance." Hotwheels needs to
be clear about what his guidelines are; as long as it's clear what rules the
communities operate under, and as long as people are free to decide whether or
not they wish to create a community, it's certainly legitimate to have more
restrictive rules.

"UGC site" is a red herring. I am creating UGC right now in the form of this
post.

~~~
Karunamon
I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that actual calls to swat people have
been deleted on that board. But, I can't say for sure because I don't hang out
there, and the events of GamerGate have me applying a shakerfull of salt to
any negative press surrounding 8chan.

And as far as "incorrect", that is your opinion and it is your own, I have a
differing one. I like the idea of a site where the admin has assured that they
will not interfere with you unless they have to.

Really, did you miss the qualifier "that allows people to set up their own
communities"?

And since I've hit the posting limit:

That is your opinion @zorpner, and nothing I can say will change it. We
disagree, _vehemently_ , on the whole "silence is complicity" thing.

@bryantd: Because freedom of speech is a guiding principle, a human right, not
just a law, and that guiding principle is a higher priority than people
talking about societally-disapproved-of-things. The price of following that
principle is that people can and will talk about things that some or even most
people don't like.

The idea of cracking down on people discussing things because you personally
find it distasteful is, to me, _incredibly offensive_. I don't like the idea
of neo nazis or places where people post pictures of dead children, but I also
don't think someone should have the ability to come in and say "No, you can't
talk about that."

@bryantd again: Ah, gotcha. In that case, no, I don't think there is a
strictly different moral obligation in play.

I get that curated spaces are a thing, and I don't have an issue with those,
but the problem I see a lot is that there are N stated rules in a space, but
N+X unwritten rules and breaking them gets you in trouble, and oftentimes you
don't know what you did wrong. This leads to the superficial projection of
freedom of speech and an open community, but in reality, that is not what's
happening. I.e. deception. And in an atmosphere of deception, censorship
follows. Censorship, to me, being a greater evil than whatever someone could
possibly be talking about.

That's the "why", because the moral obligation of free expression, IMO, is a
few levels higher than most others.

Heck, even here on HN, this is a problem (though not NEAR as much as some
other sites, thanks to Dang and PG and the rest). But still, we have
shadowbans and post timeouts and opaque algorithms that kill posts before
anyone has had a chance to read them.

~~~
BryantD
I'm not asking why you think freedom of speech is a guiding principle and a
human right. I get that and I agree that freedom of speech is incredibly
important. I have spent a lot of mental time over the last few years thinking
about that belief in relationship to my feeling that it's bad to cause pain.

This is not a simple problem.

However, it's also irrelevant to my question: why do you think that the admin
of 8chan has a different moral obligation vis a vis free speech than the admin
of Hacker News? You said that allowing people to set up their own communities
was important, and I sincerely don't know why that makes a difference here.

It's OK with me if you misspoke, and you think that Hacker News should operate
under the same principles as 8chan.

~~~
Kalium
> I have spent a lot of mental time over the last few years thinking about
> that belief in relationship to my feeling that it's bad to cause pain.

I submit that the two are not in conflict. The first is a principle that all
people should have this right. The second is moral guidance on the subjective
application of that right.

People can use their rights for good or for ill. The key thing is that people
have that right. It's not a right if someone else's subjective moral judgments
can take it away.

> This is not a simple problem.

That depends. Why do you think there is complexity? At a guess, you think
others should live by your principles, and so you are conflicted when they do
not.

~~~
BryantD
That is a poor guess. I think it's complex precisely because I don't think
everyone should be forced to live by the same principles, and because I
recognize that some principles conflict. People have been arguing about value
pluralism for a while now, so I feel like I'm in pretty good company here.

If free speech wasn't fundamentally important to me, I wouldn't think it was a
complex problem, I'd be happy to limit speech.

------
Koahku
I guess I kind of expected it since the past 6 months were probably very
though for him with all the negative attention the site received.

I wish him a happy retirement and all the best for what he's going to do next.

------
maresca
I went to Startup School in New York last year and saw moot there. While
outside between presentations, someone in the crowd called out "Chris, Chris
Poole!" and some other memes at him. He seemed really put off by it and
hightailed it out of there. I'd imagine he gets that often and could
understand how that could be draining.

~~~
MrDom
That's something that I haven't seen mentioned yet: The last few years, Moot
has appeared to have nothing but contempt for the people who post on his site.
I imagine a decade of being marinated in the worst the internet has to offer
would do that to anybody.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
He did create that cesspit and allowed it to thrive and attract the dredges of
society. Not until 6 or 7 years into the site did he decide to crack down on
the cp posted there. He definitely deserves ridicule.

~~~
Maken
Does he deserve ridicule for creating one of the few big internet communities
where free speech means something? I think he deserves some credit for
enduring all these years of enduring the hate of anybody offended by something
posted on 4chan.

~~~
lmm
He would, if he'd stood by it. But honestly, after everything that's gone down
on 4chan over the years, he decides that gamergate is the line in the sand
where he starts banning? That not only undermines any commitment to free
speech, it puts the things he previously permitted in a different light - he
believes in actively censoring certain legal discussion topics, but he allowed
xyz?

------
billmalarky
I realize Chris is tired of dealing with the headaches of managing 4chan. But
if he has effectively outsourced management of the site, why not continue to
hold the title of president or whatever?

I wonder how much of his cachet he gives up by doing this (even though he
still owns the property). Given his influence on the internet due to 4chan,
moot can probably raise money for his next project with relative ease. Can
Christopher Poole?

Edit: Fixed moot capitalization.

~~~
gmu3
moot is never capitalized. I guess we'll see but I mainly read it as he was
stepping down as an administrator.

~~~
jedberg
> moot is never capitalized

Neither is reddit, but the press doesn't seem to care and a lot of users don't
realize it either.

Protip: Never make your brand "always lowercase" because it just won't work.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
iPhone

~~~
jedberg
Hah, good point. That might be the only one that actually works.

However, it has an advantage in that it's rarely the start of a sentence
(usually it will be The iPhone), and anyone using a Mac will have it
autocorrect.

~~~
tricolon
> usually it will be The iPhone

So the brand still doesn't work, since Apple never uses an article.

~~~
kuschku
“The best iPhone […]”

They do use articles in their presentations sometimes, though

------
tacojuan
so long and thanks for all the fish, mootles :3

------
Mckey
Just a little backstory for ya'll.

Somewhere in late 2014 there was a thread on the /int/ board joking about how
moot was apparently having a relationship with a known "SJW" as they call it.
Coincidentally, /pol/, the most ass annihilating board for politically correct
types was ruined after the relationship leak, chaptas were removed and
keywords were replaced with the political opposites.

After this, the /v/ board started calling moot a "cuckold", to elaborate, cuck
has been a meme for the last few months on /v/ due to the huge rise of affairs
and relationship problems in SGDQ 2014. Moot was ridiculed based on
speculation from /int/, but most of all for ruining a controversial board
dedicated to news and politics.

GG was never banned on 4chan, GG threads were deleted on /v/ since it was
considered spam, the GG threads continued to strive on /vg/, the "video game
general" board.

In the end Moot restored /pol/ after harassment from 4channers, which may be
the reason moot is retiring.

