

Christopher "moot" Poole, Founder of 4chan doing an AMA on Reddit - pathik
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/gdzfi/iam_christopher_poole_aka_moot_founder_of_4chan/

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cryptoz
Wow, he's had a reddit account for 5 years. That's pretty insane, especially
since reddit wasn't big at all in those days. It's funny that people keep
commenting that reddit's becoming 4chan, when in fact moot was probably one of
the first redditors.

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citricsquid
He doesn't confirm it anywhere, it's possible (and likely maybe?) that the
admins noticed the account "moot" was inactive and gave it to him, they were
the ones who co-ordinated this, so it makes sense they would give it to him.

~~~
saurik
If you were really going to do that, you almost certainly would clear the
metadata for the username first (or like, attach the username to a different
underlying "account").

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citricsquid
Probably best to wait a few hours, right now he has answered only a few
questions.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Unless you have a question of your own.

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Osiris
Interesting. His responses are far more down-to-earth than I would have
expected them to be. One funny comment:

    
    
       > I'm not sure where else people meet women
       Spoken like a true /b/tard.

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trotsky
_Q: How many people does 4chan employ?

A: None. It's just me, a volunteer part-time developer, and a handful of
volunteer moderators and janitors. The volunteers all do an incredible job,
and don't get nearly enough credit for their hard work. Hats off to them!_

That reminded me of several extended IM logs between moot and a server
admin/scripter. Suffice it to say that they both come out sounding like total
douchebags and it's difficult to tell who you'd dread working with more. The
moral of the story is that he'd be way better off paying his volunteers and
acting like a boss.

It's quite long and gets somewhat tedious, once you get the jist it's not
really worth stick with. But it is interesting to get a peek inside the mind
of a new founder:

[http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Talk:Moot#thoughts_on_image...](http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Talk:Moot#thoughts_on_images)

(note that page is SFW, but I wouldn't go to the main moot page unless
'shopped gay porn is cool with you)

~~~
cryptoz
> The moral of the story is that he'd be way better off paying his volunteers
> and acting like a boss.

How do you define "better off"? Do you run a site as popular as 4chan? moot
isn't trying to make money or be a kickass, cool, boss. He's just having fun.
I think it's a bit presumptuous of you to say you know what's best for moot.
4chan has been running smoothly for years and is extremely popular.

~~~
trotsky
I guess I should have said my takeaway is, instead of the moral of the story.
I struggled for what I wanted to write there. If bickering for hours with your
dev staff is doing what he wants and having fun then more power to him, but
something tells me he'll be managing things differently at canv.as.

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trotsky
canv.as --> facebook connect --> skip

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britta
Some of his answers cover this concern (<http://www.reddit.com/user/moot>):

"We're using it during the beta period to handle invites and authenticate
users (make sure they're real people)."

"As we've said before, Facebook Connect on Canvas is temporary. We're only
planning to use it for the private beta period, and hope to see you on the
site once we're out of beta. Thanks for bearing with us!"

~~~
moot
+1. Thanks Britta!

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jsavimbi
I didn't want to be one to pester in his AMA but I still have no clue about
what he's up to with canv.as. Aside from providing a meeting place to internet
vigilantes and meme spammers, his track record isn't that stellar in either
technology or monetizations. I'm also unable to overlook the recent
developments in the image-sharing space with Path and Color valued into the
tens of millions with anywhere from $11M to $41M cash on hand, making his
$625K investment seem more like a pittance than a serious attempt at making a
run at the current front-runner.

The pussy-footing surrounding his handling of this canv.as thing is
unbecoming.

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astrange
As far as I'm aware 4chan has not needed $40M to provide a more useful and
socially relevant service than Color or whatever Path is. Don't people just
use Twitpic anyway? Or Instagram if their photos are too boring without being
colored brown.

~~~
jsavimbi
My pictures aren't boring. I use the Gotham filter. Also, nobody needs $41M to
provide anything more useful or socially relevant if one is to believe that
investors were taking a stake in the future potential of the Color team vs.
its current offering.

The fact remains that Mr. Poole has been unable to monetize his current user
base on the seven-year old 4chan, build a medium-term scalable solution,
attract talent or serious investment nor can he be arsed to explain just what
exactly canv.as is and why we should take him seriously. Moot aside, I think
I'll adopt the position stated in his AMA/recruitment pitch:

"Yes, instead of treating him like the creator of 4chan, let's treat him like
the developer of a new website in closed beta that none of us have used. That
will be fascinating."

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viralinfection
SACRILEGE

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shii
I can't believe people still think his name is Christopher Poole. This has got
to be the longest-running joke turned gospel on the Internet. Either that, or
that thing about Glen Beck killing and raping a young girl in 1990, except
people actually _know_/tounge-in-cheek that one.

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JeremyBanks
Is he trolling the courts as well?
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/08/11/prose...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/08/11/prosecutor-
to-4chan-founder-please-explain-the-meaning-of-rickroll/)

