
Christopher Poole Reveals Why He Walked Away - nols
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/4chans-overlord-christopher-poole-reveals-why-he-walked-away-20150313
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ChainsawSurgery
Man. If there was ever a guy I feel awful for, it's moot.

Maybe awful isn't the right word, but sympathetic for.

Short of doing something incredibly brilliant in the future (which I wouldn't
put beyond him), his life will be summed up as "the creator of 4chan" for
quite some time to come.

He's a fairly well-known guy with a decent amount of celebrity to him, but it
sounds like 4chan was overall a net negative for him monetarily. Further,
4chan is summed up as an incredibly hateful place to many people, basically
"the worst part of the internet." His name is synonymous with that for likely
the rest of his days.

Sure, it's earned him some credibility in the tech community and he can likely
leverage that into something great if he really wants to - though it sounds
like he wants to take a break from that for awhile.

I live in NYC and I've seen moot a couple of times in the past couple years.
Both times he was doing something mundane like waiting for the train, and
every time he was surrounded by what were clearly a group of anons asking him
questions. Every time he seemed a little uncomfortable, like he was too polite
to admit that he had grown out of 4chan and its community.

I imagine his personal life is a semi-constant reminder that he'll never be
able to escape from 4chan, even by resigning. Lots of people will continue to
associate him with the severe outbursts of hatred that stemmed from 4chan
occasionally. Lots of anons will continue to encircle him while he's waiting
for the 1 train.

I don't know, maybe I read too much into it. Or maybe I didn't and that's why
he wants to go do something far removed from the internet.

~~~
angersock
Personally, I think that moot has done more to further the internet and modern
culture than almost anybody out there--and that includes Reddit (and arguably
Something Awful, but nobody wants to waste tenbux anyways).

4chan has provided and continues to provide a raw visage of how people behave
given total anonymity. It has a wide ecosystem of boards and interests, and in
the last six years has certainly left everyone who's lurked there a changed
person.

Remember: near all of the bullshit memery, the image macros, the open
discussion, the invasions, all started with 4chan.

If anybody else is successful, it's probably because they can point to the
awesome parts of 4chan and say "We want to build that, but friendlier, better
moderated, and less anonymous". It was a proof-of-concept, and a brilliant
one.

It'll probably die off in the next five years, but it's done some amazing
things and brought a lot of people together.

~~~
scintill76
> in the last six years

It's older than that, right? What is the significance of this time frame?

~~~
angersock
It's one that I feel comfortable commenting on, nothing more.

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itl12
I can see why the site may struggle to attract ad companies. What would the
valuation of 4chan likely be? Could anyone monetize it?

