For better or worse, Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is an indie-rock classic. 

Not in the Slanted & Enchanted or Bee Thousand sense: Those are both records made by human beings who exist in an actual, human world. Aeroplane’s reputation left the mortal plane a long time ago. Jeff Mangum’s legacy is tied up in a ton of latter-day mythmaking far removed from his concrete artistic pleasures. Meanwhile, the album's blindly accepted greatness has become an inside joke.

And sales accordingly skyrocketed in the years following Aeroplane’s 1998 release. A hilariously timid Merge Records master release estimated the record might sell around 8,000 copies, but today it’s one of the most consistently profitable albums on vinyl, an essential part of the starter set for any kid digging into underground music. It’s one of the weirdest success stories in the history of the record industry, and in our hopelessly connected world, I’m not sure if we’ll ever see anything like it again.

It’s pretty weird, but it’s also the basis of a totally unique hipster language.

And so on.

It’s weird to think that Aeroplane is the only album that gets this sort of treatment. There have been hundreds of Internet-legendary albums in the history of rock music—Loveless, SMiLE, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the entirety of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s oeuvre—but there’s something about Neutral Milk Hotel that engenders this brand of giddiness. 

Actually, I have a theory.

If you are among the generation that grew up posting on 4chan, you undoubtedly found out about Neutral Milk Hotel online. You were not one of the sedentary scenesters or college radio DJs who championed the band when they were still, you know, a band. You read the review on Pitchfork, and in a moment of youthful vulnerability, you were swept up genuinely powerful music. Music that happened to be digitally commodified. 

4chan’s greentext stories are a vital subgenre of Internet folklore. Somehow, over years and years of collective, unconscious evolution, the boys and girls of 4chan established a formula for reciting tall tales: You speak in fragments, highlight specific details in predictably stringent language, and write everything in an ugly, lime-green text color. 

These stories give 4chan its rare moments of homemade, human charm. They can still be gross and reductive, but they also provide a level of vulnerability that you can’t find in all the porn and whimpering hatred.

Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about. That’s good! I’m here to enlighten you. Below are 12 of my favorite greentext stories; they range from stupid surprise puns to legitimately affecting stories of life and love. At the very least, I hope they shine a slightly different light on the world’s most infamous imageboard.

This is the perfect greentext story. Just a weird little blog-poem, articulating a very 21st-century pain with a couple sentence fragments. Hats off to you, Anon.

This is one of the most famous greentexts of all time. In fact, I once saw it regurgitated as supposedly original material. Seriously, I was at some jank-ass open mic, and this guy comes up and bombs through all of his own material, and then pretty much recites the “ARE YOU FUCKING SORRY” story word for word. To be fair, it killed, but there was at least person in the room aware of his treachery. It may have been the first-ever IRL copypasta, and I’m happy (but also furious) to have witnessed it.

I have been punked by the backdoor Fresh Prince more times than I’d like to admit. However, this is at least a unique take on an old classic.

This is pretty good, but the last-minute Gabe Newell curveball is what cinches pantheon status. If Donald Trump promised to finally bring us Half-Life 3 I’d actually think about voting for him.

An overwhelming majority of greentext stories are Internet youths doing their best to make each other laugh with silly, clearly fabricated yarns, but a few of them are actually kind of sweet. It’s 4chan, so you need to take everything with a grain of salt, but this one is melancholy and grounded in a way that seems real.

Yes, this is builds up to an eagle pun, but also it’s worth it. Trust me.

Not going to embed the entirety of this one, because it’s really, really long, but this saga might be the best thing to come out of 4chan. Apparently, this kid got a job working IT for his dad’s company, despite knowing absolutely nothing about IT. What follows is a hilarious, exasperating, and just-believable-enough story of juvenile hijinks and delinquency. The idea of feigning computer knowledge all day is amazing, maybe because the guy reminds me (and probably you) of our younger, net-addled stupidity. You should probably read the whole thing here, 

Greentexts like this are important to me, because at the very least, they prove that I’m not the only person in the world completely paralyzed by his own thoughts and apprehensions at any given moment.

Another long one, also focusing on an IT guy, but this comes with a genuinely happy ending that may very well be untrue. I think that’s an upside to 4chan—the content is so wrapped up in its own mythology, but it also provides true, legitimate anonymity and a receptive community. So, who knows, maybe this weird, slightly creepy love story is true. I kinda hope it is. Read the full version here.

Really wish we could’ve gotten this on Cops.

There are a number of ways to arrive at a Sir Mix-a-Lot joke, but I have no doubt in my mind that this is the absolute best path to take.

Finally, this deserves to be shortlisted for, like, the America Award or something. What a beautiful little fable (and incredible gut-punch ending).

A new effort from the famously pro-Trump community is aimed at provoking deeper divides among fans of Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The ultimate goal is to stoke flames that keep Democrats home on Election Day, paving the way for a Trump win.

"If we're serious about a Trump presidency we need to start infiltrating their conversations in order to sow more division," an anonymous 4chan poster said. "I'm talking systematic and long-term /mischief/, not just a hew minutes trolling dumbass [social justice warriors]."

The 2016 presidential campaign has produced contentious primary contests in both the Republican and Democratic races, leading many to wonder about whether either Trump or Clinton will falter on their way toward party unity.

History shows that the Democrats may yet pull together.

In June 2008, polls said 40 percent of Clinton supporters would not vote for Barack Obama in the general election after a contentious primary contest. That number shrunk dramatically in the following few months. Ultimately, Obama won nearly 80 percent of Clinton's supporters over. 

That shift came only after Clinton campaigned vigorously in support of Obama. Whether or not Sanders will do the same remains an open question.

You can view the original 4chan thread here. For posterity, we've archived the entire thread below.

First of all, have a look at the SFW trailer for Meme Lover 2: Dawn of Just, apparently the second “meme-themed” porn film ever developed.

1. Are people who love memes a real, lucrative market now? Like, within the first 15 seconds of this trailer I’m watching a fake Emperor Palpatine brandish a small drawing of Pepe. That’s… real marketing. The Pepe cross-section is the new 18-49 demographic.

2. I have to give them credit. The producers know their stuff on a deeper level than you’d expect—at least, from an artifact that’s desperately vamping its “meme awareness.” At one point, a guy points a finger at a pair of tits and says “check out these dubs,” which requires a pretty intermediate 4chan lexicon. Yeah, there are also image macro gags, but I’d like to believe the people making this thing went far beyond the front page of Reddit.

3. One girl shoots a gun and says, “You’re the man now dog,” which is played out, but then the two guys say, “That’s on older meme, sir, but it checks out,” which totally redeems it. This thing is OK, I guess.

So, yeah, here we have a pornographic film that touches every corner of the meme multiverse, from obnoxious teenage Twitter trends (Damn Daniel) to ancient stuff nobody remembers (I Can Haz/LOLcat jokes) and some real OG shit that will make a few thousand 4chan chuckleheads laugh and scream. I have to say, I’m kinda into this? I don’t think I’ll ever pay for porn in my life, but something this silly and this specific at least gets a curiosity boner. It’s out June 4 via Brazzers, so get your fapping hand ready.

"I can't tell if it's real or not," she concluded.

Notopolous put the question—is this a joke or nah?—to a public vote, but my curiosity remains unsatisfied. The subject is just too juicy (sorry!) to let go of. So here's my own investigation into the brief history and strange, rich culture of wine dipping. 

Initially, I suspected dipping was a joke inspired by a 2013 Australian sexting scandal. Peter Dowling, then a member of the Queensland parliament and chair of its ethics committee, was busted for texting a photo of his Li'l Dowling bobbing in a glass of red wine to a woman who was not his wife. 

But I was wrong. The practice (or prank) predates the Dowling fiasco by several years.

Whispers of wine dipping have floated around the internet since at least 2009, when an Urban Dictionary entry appeared (authored by user "WineDipper," of course.) The act is described not in terms of a sexual fetish, but as a pretentious way to fully enjoy the sensory experience the wine provides: "The art of dipping your genitals into wine, as to savor and enjoy the aroma, taste, and unique qualities of a wine."

Circa 2010, a question about wine dipping popped up on highly reliable and definitive Q&A site Yahoo! Answers: "I am holding a wine dipping party (where you dip your penis into various fine wines) and I was wondering what a good snack would be. I was thinking a few good cheeses, but I don't know anything about cheese. Thanks!" 

The original poster's identity is lost to time, but at least one responder seemed to take him seriously: "Do the men get to drink too or just dip?" asked "Freesumpin."

"Ever play ring around the rosé? As far as cheeses go, perhaps an Italian Smegonzola would do in a pinch!"

The OP responded with some illuminating updates:

Update: Only red wine will be used to dip.
Update 2: To freesumpin: 
No, we pour, examine, smell, and dip. Some people like to dip into olive oil first, but, in my humble opinion, that's like making love to a girl with a condom on.

As we'll see, some of the recurring tropes of the dipping community seem to have originated here, including the controversial application of olive oil to the member before dipping and jokes about how the only cheese that pairs with a wine dip is smegma.

The heart of the wine dipping internet is, as Notopoulos reported, a forum called the Vineyard, hosted on 7chan, an anonymous imageboard site created by disgruntled 4chan users in 2005. 

Initially, this board was a protest against 4chan's decision to ban "raids" of other websites, but it turned into a strange and thriving site with many more boards than 4chan itself. One of those boards is /v/, or the Vineyard, established in 2011.

"Wine connoisseurs" there affect all the snobbery of traditional wine dudes, but they insist they don't drink the wine like commoners. They only put their dicks in it. (Women are encouraged to soak up the wine with a cloth and "experience" it vaginally, but female posters are somewhere between rare and nonexistent on the Vineyard.)

Recurring themes include a distaste for champagne, the mere mention of which will result in a ban for "lack of sophistication," as well as a fondness for wines from New Zealand's Central Otago region.

"Got my viticulture exam tomorrow and freaking out a little. Please send encouragement and comradere upon the finish, whence i shall dip in a delicious 2007 Central Otago Pinot Noir," wrote one poster in 2011.

"Don't fuck the police. Seduce them. Pour them a bottle of 2009 Otago Pinot Noir and make love to them. Gently," another suggested in 2012.

"So I'm a finally a real Winemaker in Central Otago. When telling the winery staff to do 'dips' (where you measure the headspace between the wine and top of the tank) or 'taste dips' (where you drop a suspiciously phallic rod through the red fermenting cap to get some juice, usually for testing purposes) I giggle like a bitch. People are getting suspicious. I always giggle," read one post, nearly a year later.

Naturally, there's also a photo of someone's dick plunging right into a rich, red Central Otago pinot:

And here we return to the questions of cheese and of olive oil, which are both debated vigorously by the gentlemen of the Vineyard. 

"A nice havarti is superior to all other cheeses. The aroma and soft texture contribute to the most exquisite of bodily pleasures," insisted one. 

"At risk of sounding gauche, many men, especially those of us who reside in these United States of America, lack a foreskin. I, myself, have experimented with various soft cheese—mostly derived from fine goat milks—as well as double-cream bries, and yet I feel like I am missing out on a certain I-don't-know-what," added another.

"The only cheese a dapper dipper like myself requires is a fine smegma," a third retorted. 

Well, that debate appears to be settled. As for the oil, some favor it and others abhor it.

"One should only penis dip after the aforesaid penis is dipped in olive oil," remarked one anonymous poster. 

"No, that's strange man.. What's the matter with you? Olive oil?" another wrote. 

"I concur, the feeling is less the satisfactory and you ruin your newest bottle," a third added.

Seems the oil is a matter of personal preference. 

When not discussing the minutiae of the hobby, the 'gentlemen' occasionally confronted the central question here: is this all a fucking joke? After all, 7chan also has a board devoted to the known hoax drug jenkem, a substance laymen might refer to as "poop."

"I won't knock a fetish, I've got too many myself that are not considered the norm, but I do not understand this," wrote one visitor to the Vineyard. 

"Why does it feel good? Is it possible to absorb the alcohol through your penis? (or more likely, your urethra?) I simply want to understand this fetish, preferably without all the big words... Why does /v/ get off on inserting your member into a glass of fine wine?"

Some of the dippers took offense to the suggestion that there was anything sexual about their "refined" activity, and one responded with a blatantly made-up aristocratic origin story for his own dipping habit:

My father taught me how to dip. It was a right of passage of sorts. Marking my first tentative steps into manhood. Having grown up in an upper class household it was expected of a man to dip as one would offer cigars or a handkerchief. In my early twenties I concluded that it was time for me to travel and see how the other half lived. I went to a quaint cottage B&B in Devon. The only shop for 20 miles stocked nought but "Buckfast Tonic Wine". A sort of peasant drink. One for the have-nots certainly. Regardless it would have to do. I entered the living area of the cottage and poured myself a glass of this syrup. Stoked the fire while the sample took breath and stripped down to my under garments. Gently stroking The Captain in anticipation of the dip. I approached the glass and time itself slowed as I slowly dipped. It was wonderful, superb even.

In other words: Yes, it's a joke. But it's a joke that goes really far sometimes. In this thread, a man narrates a satisfying dip, complete with photographic proof: 

I don't believe they're serious, but I applaud their commitment to the bit. They've truly put the "weenie" in "oenophile."

The Vineyard only comprises 8 pages of posts—a few thousand in all—and appears to have gone dormant in 2014. The only action it had seen in years—before this week's BuzzFeed post, anyway—was a reply this April from someone using the name of 4chan's founder, moot.

It read, "Ayyyyyyy, lmao."

H/T BuzzFeed

At this point, it's difficult to tell what Gamergate is parodying: progressive ethics in the gaming community, or just themselves.

First, Gamergate proponents decided to move their campaign over to Tumblr, having been more or less thoroughly trounced on Twitter by worldwide outrage and prominent mockery over the hashtag's association with virulent misogyny in the gaming community.

Now, they're trying to turn their rhetoric into a musical extravaganza, complete with terrible parodies of Broadway musicals, famous rock songs, and, above all, ongoing ridicule of the struggle for diversity and equal representation in games.

Journey with me now, if you will, into a bizarro land where diversity is the enemy and women who criticize games that sexually objectify them are evil cartoon villains.

No way RT @ashfein: "it was inevitable" "it was inevitable" "it was inevitable" "it was inevitable" pic.twitter.com/InWDM3KKPl

— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) November 9, 2014

Here is a #GamerGate song parody made by #GamerGate supporters which contains only two immediate uses of the N word https://t.co/5WdcQNJDNO

— The Telltale Blart (@Bro_Pair) November 9, 2014

GAMERGATE OFFICIALLY INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM PARODIES OF GAMERGATE pic.twitter.com/RqH9QsRYf1

— Casey Malone (@CaseyMalone) November 9, 2014

Over on the 8chan.co message board—where, you may recall, Gamergate proponents were exiled after perennial free-speech haven 4chan banned them for repeatedly doxing women in the community—gamers have been plotting to advance their argument through song. 

Dozens of gamers have written, sung, edited, and vidded new lyrics to several albums' worth of songs promoting the Gamergate agenda. The goal, as reported on the 8chan thread for the project, is "#GamerGate supporters banding together to mock the corruption in the Gaming Journalism Industry with song." The project comes complete with helpful tips for first-time singers or recorders, like "sing in your range," "warm up first," and, since hardcore gamers tend to keep fans running to cool their systems, a reminder to "TURN YOUR GODDAMN FANS OFF BEFORE YOU RECORD, JESUS CHRIST." It even comes with its own Twitter account, GamergateSings, to keep track of its progress.

The project includes a complete rewrite of the lyrics of songs from Les Miserables, the Beatles, Rent, and more.

Though the full catalogue hasn't been completely created yet, most of the songs are on Soundcloud, and all of the lyrics can be read on Pastebin, linked in the Google doc above. And they're... interesting, to say the least. Take the lyrics of "They Are Dead," a satirical filk, or rewritten lyric, of the Lion King song "Be Prepared." In the original, this song is sung by the villain, complete with a horde of hyenas who resemble Nazi soldiers.

In the Gamergate version, the head "villains" are, you guessed it, feminist gaming critic Anita Sarkeesian, and a number of faceless gaming journalists. According to the lyrics, these conspirators want to take over gaming by declaring real gamers "dead" and, shudder the thought, by ridding gaming of sexism, racism, and homophobia.

The lyrics are, well, not the greatest.

I know that your talent at writing
Is as small as a cuucko's backside [sic]
But hacks as you are, pay attention
And we'll take this matter in stride

And later:

[Scar:] Our friends will make games! ...With no fun, and
Catering to our ideology!
[Shenzi and Banzai:] Yaay! All right! No homosexuals is homophobic!
[All Hyenas:] No violence! No more princesses!
[Full song again]
[Hyenas: {In tight, crisp phrasing and diction}]
We won't get to the top by merit.
We'll whine to get all that we want.
[Scar:] Of course, to do so, we're expected
To kill that old identity
Man who oppose us are rapists
Women sockpuppets shall be
And any foolish minorities
Filthy race traitors, baby!

It... doesn't get any better from there.

If you weren't convinced that Gamergate is not actually about ethics in journalism, read the lyrics of these songs. They make the discrepancy even more explicit. The songs all seem devoted to mocking social justice ideals—ideals like making sure the gaming community is a safe space for women and minorities, and that games themselves portray women and minorities fairly, and not just as sex objects or other props for white male gamers.

The end result is something that makes Gamergate look, to say the least, rather ridiculous.

We're looking for the guy who did "They Are Dead"; new Hyena voices are available for editing.

— #GamerGate Sings (@GamerGateSings) November 6, 2014

After all, it's hard to see how exactly making snarky songs about how stupid it is to fight racism and sexism in gaming will actually lead to any kind of change in gaming media. If anything, the widespread attention to Gamergate has done more to shine a light on the need for more diversity and less extremism in the community.

It's true that the new musical side of Gamergate is at least a break from the death and rape threats that have characterized the hashtag thus far.

We just hope in the end they'll find something better to sing about.

Screengrab via Vid.me

4chan’s merry schemers are cooking up a Thanksgiving appetizer sure to make Time magazine sick once again. 

A group of anonymous users from 4chan’s imageboard /b/—the searchable Web’s premier pit of filth, pornography, and pranks—are trying to rig Time’s annual Person of the Year poll for the third year in a row.

/b/ is throwing its voting power behind Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS).

ISIS is a terrorist organization responsible for killing more than 100 members of the Sunni Arab tribe known as Albu Nimr in November alone. The Islamic State has also become infamous for their video-recorded beheadings, including U.S. hostage Peter Kassig on Nov. 16.

/b/ has begun developing a Java script to automate votes in favor of al-Baghdadi and bypass the Facebook/Twitter authorization Time requires. The script is publicly available on Pastebin. It looks like this:

“If we can bypass the authorisation screens,” this user wrote, “surely we could get a script that allows one to vote 5000 times.”

Within one of the /b/ threads discussing the operation, users lamented the fact that Time prohibited the public from submitting their own Person of the Year contenders. Because if that was the case, /b/ intended to rig the poll in favor of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Mo., police officer who shot and killed teenager Michael Brown on Aug. 9. 

“Fuck ISIS and fuck you turds,” this user wrote. “Darren Wilson is Time man of the year and you newfags are retarded.”

Rigging the poll in favor of Wilson was intended to capitalize on the public vitriol sweeping the country following the grand jury decision Monday not to indict him. That decision has resulted in massive protests in Ferguson and around the country.

The Ferguson protesters are currently sitting in second place in Time’s poll with 8.1 percent of the vote, right behind Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, with 11.8 percent.

In 2012, /b/ used similar Java scripts to rocket North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to the top of Time’s list while spelling “KJU GAS CHAMBERS” with the first letter of the first name of each participant.

But like Cyrus and Snowden, Jong-un would end up losing the poll. The last time /b/ was successful in fooling the magazine was in April 2009, when they voted 4chan founder Christopher “moot” Poole to the top of its Time 100 poll. The pranksters also spelled out “Marblecake, also the game.” The term marblecake is slang for a sexual act. 

Photo via Peter Kaminski/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

This article contains sexually explicit material.

People occasionally ask me why I still go to 4chan. It’s a fair question, because there are plenty of icky, uncouth, depressing corners of the site that should never see the light of day. It’s the sort of thing you experiment with in your teenage years before developing better taste as an adult. At least that’s what’s supposed to happen. I didn’t get the memo.

But here’s the thing. I still go to 4chan because it’s the only place on Earth where I can watch a man give live updates on a roll of masking tape that he managed to get stuck around his penis. (Yeah, the rest of this post might be NSFW.)

/b/ replied with the usual blend of constructive advice (“Run some water over it!” and “Call an ambulance!”) and the requisite anarchy (“I legit hope your dick falls off”) for the rest of the thread.

Our hero provided incremental updates. Apparently the cold-water thing just made the squeeze tighter, and the chaos eventually spilled over into a new thread. Here’s another censored image. 

Eventually Mr. Tapedick took the advice and called an ambulance, but not before drawing a little smiley face on the shaft. You’re not going to be able to see that in the censored version, but if you’re up for it, well, here it is (NSFW).

That image seriously broke 4chan for a little while. It garnered 46 responses all on its own. My favorite? The guy who wrote “dick looks fine now.”

We don’t know what happened to the original poster. He stopped providing updates after the smiley face. I dearly hope his penis is OK and that he never stops posting on 4chan.

You can see the threads in full here and here. They are about as NSFW as you expect.

Photo via 4chan

Adult male fans of My Little Pony, commonly known as bronies, have found a home on 4chan, the 11-year-old forum that remains among the most bizarre and influential places on the Internet. One brave brony flocked to the video game Sims 4 to live out his fetish in a virtual world—and documented every step for 4chan’s /mlp/ community.

“This is Anon. Anon is living the dream,” the text reads. “On his way to his new home, he stumbled across a magical portal. What came through to visit him... will shock him for the rest of his life.”

At this point, we have no idea where this story is going, or what this little green man-child is going to do. It’s just The Sims, right? It can’t get that weird. Or that sexual.

Creating one horse in The Sims is a little odd. But our hero is doing even more than that.

He’s created a whole world of dead-eyed, multicolored stock horses to frolic with amid the lime-green pastures of Simtopia. Here’s the happy family all together.

This is actually a family portrait of that lonely 4chan anon and all his pony friends in The Sims. It’s so incredible that the cutups of /mlp/, one of the weirdest communities on 4chan, can’t help but laugh.

Then OP begins his journey. He starts in his very own ranch-style house, somewhere beyond time and space.

I mean, really, what can you say?

Can you look at the following image without falling out of your chair? I sure can’t.

Eventually the original poster disappeared. Maybe he couldn’t keep up with the 4chan demands, or maybe he was just too enamored of his magical realm to ever care about earthly duties. But we’ll leave the final word to the always prescient 4chan community, which captures our exact feeling.

Trolls are hijacking a funeral home page to leave comments, memes, and other nonsense for the recently departed.

Where did this raid start from? 4chan, of course, the forum best known for launching some of the Web’s most notorious pranks of the last 11 years.

Last week, the boys and girls of 4chan’s “random” imageboard /b/ discovered a website belonging to an establishment known as Crotty Funeral Homes. The site let anyone—seriously, anyone—upload any comment or image to the profiles of the recently deceased. No identity verification necessary. You could just type in the box and have things appear among the rest of the mourners. 

Of course, that’s just asking for trouble. 4chan was all over it. 

The posted images range from the silly (Dragon Ball Z memes galore) to graphic necrophilia porn and racist cartoons.

Oh, Christ.

4chan’s army of trolls are veterans of this whole “raiding” thing. Web-culture aficionados will remember when 4chan hijacked the Time Person of the Year poll to put Christopher “moot” Poole, 4chan’s founder, at the top of the list. They’ve annihilated Twitch channels, named Mountain Dew flavors after Hitler, and fooled people into bricking their Xbox Ones. If you thought a funeral home might be off-limits, well, then you don’t know /b/.

Out of respect for the dead, we edited out the actual faces that belong to each defiled grave. But if you’re morbidly curious, check out an archive of the full thread here. 

Photos via 4chan

There’s a veritable meme meltdown going on at the infamous imageboard 4chan, and it involves an odd-looking anthropomorphic frog named Pepe.

The chaotic site has been ground zero for countless Internet in-jokes, from Rage Comics to LOLcats and even Dickbutt. This time, however, members have returned to an old chestnut they’d long ago abandoned, acting out something like a mid-life crisis.

First appearing in Boy’s Club, a comic series by Matt Furie, Pepe the frog became an overnight sensation in early 2008. An image of Pepe saying “feels good man” epitomized various posts on board /r9k/, dedicated to low-key hangouts and original content.

4chan took this wide-eyed frog and remixed him ad infinitum. 

Pepe evolved, with various iterations used to indicate anger, melancholy, or surprise. He accumulated a vast set of looks and has been altered to resemble characters from TV shows or reference other bits of pop culture.

With Pepe’s eventual mass prominence, though, he lost his underground cred. He’s been used by major pop stars, from Nicki Minaj to Katy Perry. There’s a Reddit board dedicated to Pepe as well. This didn’t sit well with 4channers, who typically dispense with concepts once they’re embraced by the mainstream. Pepe was no exception.

What was your inspiration?

My Pepe philosophy is simple: “Feels good man.” It is based on the meaning of the word Pepe: “To go Pepe.” I find complete joy in physically, emotionally, and spiritually serving Pepe and his friends through comics. Each comic is sacred, and the compassion of my readers transcends any differences, the pain, and fear of "feeling good."

Was the comic commissioned?

Seeing a frog always takes my breath away and brings a genuine smile to my face. That is what I want every reader to experience each time they think about the Boy's Club comic—a thrill of overwhelming beauty and joy!

Thoughts on Pepe becoming the mascot for 4chan?

Pepe offers you complete support, attention, and embraces how capable you are of birthing your own Pepe. As your God, my hope is to enhance your Pepe birthing experience by empowering you through it. Obey Pepe. Obey Me. Bow down to your leader. Worship me. Give me genital love or non-genital love. Both are wonderful.

But 4chan went crazy for Pepe, yes?

I believe that the most important thing I can do as an artist is to protect the voices of anonymous people on the Internet and help ensure that that those voices are honored. It is my job to help 4chan have the experience that they want without judgment or criticism. In the end, I want 4chan to feel they were supported by being heard, respected, and part of the decision-making process. Instead of promoting my own agenda, it is my goal to promote 4chan. Different things work for different people. Let me support you in the way you choose to draw Pepe.

What about people profiting off of Pepe?

I believe in supporting people's decisions to profit off of Pepe in order to provide them with the most positive business experience possible. I strive to be an advocate for Pepe in both love and enterprise and hope to help business people to have an empowering and joyful experience while making an ocean of profits as limitless as the universe.

Pepe is now immortal on the internet.

Having Pepe is one of the most life-changing experiences I will ever have. While many may fear the frog, there is no need for anxiety, especially when you feel confident and supported by the 4chan community—this is something my body was created to do, and I did it!

So, seven years after he first won their hearts, how have 4channers tried to resurrect and reclaim Pepe? By acknowledging him as a precious, antique meme—and growing a fictional economy around his widespread allure.

The Pepe “speculation boom” started when a user started complaining about “rare Pepes” on /r9k/. The absurdity of modified frog images shared online falling under a rarity index was hilarious. And, as usual, 4chan just rolled with it.

The result: images of Pepe with watermarks reading “RARE PEPE DO NOT SAVE”—because doing so would diminish their value.

How long will Pepe’s Renaissance last, and will his latest disgusting incarnations—collected under the banner “poo poo pee pee”—finally turn his casual fans away from the meme? Perhaps. More likely, though, 4chan’s meta spin on what ranks among their most popular exports will just attract more disciples. In the end, Pepe is bigger than any of us.  

Photo via Matt Furie/Know Your Meme | Remix by Jason Reed

Members of 4chan, a no-holds-barred online message board, are on a constant, unwavering quest to destroy everything. This includes Mountain Dew promotional campaigns and the sanctity of the human body (NSFW, as if you couldn’t guess). 

But one of the subforum /b/’s more recent targets has been the wonderfully innocent world of Sesame Street.

The game is simple: Isolate an out-of-context photo from the beloved educational show, then add some disturbing narrative text at the bottom. The results are like pages from a children’s book, if children’s books were Satanic and intended to traumatize. Here are some examples:

Illustration by Tiffany Pai

Rule number one: Never, ever ask the Internet to Photoshop you. Remember that kid who wanted Reddit to place the sun between his fingers? It didn’t end well. When you summon the dregs of the Web to complete a simple task, expect the most frustrating night of your life.

The noble tradition of Photoshop trolling was renewed with a vengeance recently, when a hapless soul wondered if 4chan might put the Eiffel Tower under his finger. Here’s the original photo:

If nothing else, it’s a worthy new chapter in the history of the Internet’s unhelpfulness.

Photo via Jiuguang Wang/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

An army of 4chan trolls have fooled the mass media in reporting on a bogus petition to have Caitlyn Jenner stripped of her Olympic medal.

The trolls—from 4chan’s politically incorrect community, /pol/, and the site’s most popular and controversial imageboard, /b/—duped CBS Detroit, the Washington Post, Perez Hilton, the Daily Caller, Yahoo, and Us Magazine into reporting on its Change.org prank at the expense of Jenner, who revealed the results of a gender transition on Vogue’s July cover.

Two news organizations rightly skeptical of the petition were the Daily Beast and Independent.

“We urge Ms. Jenner to support the transgender community by giving up the medals earned by competing against the wrong gender,” the petition concludes. As of the morning of June 4, it has more than 9,000 digital signatures of the 10,000 it calls for. (Update: After the petition reached 10,000 signatures, the goal posts were moved once again, to 15,000.) 

Such boorish behavior is commonplace on /b/ and /pol/, whose users have made it their goal to taint the feminist movement and holidays such as Father’s Day with its perversions.

If the overarching goal of these 4chan pranks is to spark social media outrage—as was the case with the “#cutforbieber” saga—then these two 4chan communities take immense pride in fooling the media. This was also the case in January 2014, when /b/ fooled the media into reporting on a disturbing new fashion trend involving a woman’s weight and her bikini bottoms. The prank was called Operation Bikini Bridge.

Anyway, the next time you see the Worst Thing Ever™ on the Internet, take a deep breath and repeat this mantra: “It’s probably just 4chan.” 

Illustration by Max Fleishman

The beauty of 4chan is its deregulated mystery. It’s a place where anything, no matter how silly or dumb, canpotentially happen. Moderators only swoop in when real, constitutional laws are being broken. Consider it a preservation of the Internet we once knew.

For instance, last month some guy on 4chan posted this message:

That’s right. He’s claiming that the PayPal account in the photo belongs to him, which means he has $3 million dollars in digital funds locked up in the ether. Let’s take a closer look:

Obviously you should take everything with a grain of salt, but this looks surprisingly legit. There’s even a timestamp.

Anyway in the post he says that the first person to “roll dubs” will get paypalled $10,000. “Rolling dubs” is a 4chan allusion to the number that’s attached to the end of every post on the image board. To roll dubs, you want the last two digits of your post number to be the same, which is something you don’t have any control over.

Sounds like traditional 4chan silver tongue false promises, right? I thought so too, except a couple threads later we saw this:

Oh my God, did it really happen?

Now, there’s a chance that this was just engineered by the original poster to get /b/ worked up. In fact I’m leaning toward that reality. But man. Maybe there is some altruistic soul lurking on the Internet, bestowing his dubiously acquired cash to the good people of the Web. Can the dream come true? Just this once?

Photo via Chris Potter/Stockmonkeys.com (CC BY 2.0)

It's the end of an era for the Internet.

In a brief post on 4chan.org, founder Christopher "Moot" Poole explained how the site had been sold to Hiroyuki Nishimura, who he considers "the great-grandfather" of the site. 

"His creation of 2channel in 1999 sparked an era of anonymous-centric [W]eb culture in Japan that led to the creation of Futaba Channel, the site that inspired 4chan," Pooled added in his post. "None of us would be using 4chan today—or potentially any anonymous image board—if it weren't for him."

Poole did not disclose how much the site was sold for, setting off a stream of questions around 4chan's business and future.

With a ragtag group of anonymous volunteers, Poole helped guide 4chan from a small anime-obsessed imageboard started in his mom's New York apartment in 2003 to a cultural phenomenon and pariah. 4chan is responsible for creating and popularizing memes like Rickrolling, Pepe the Frog, and Dickbutt. The site, particularly its random imageboard /b/, has been ground zero for pranks such as the "bikini bridge" and and "free bleeding." 

In 2013, 4chan celebrated its 10 year anniversary, making the site one the oldest and most visited websites in Internet history and Poole as one of the few founders to stick it out as long.

"People asked, 'What happens to 4chan if you die?' For a long time the answer was pretty grim: 'I guess 4chan dies too,' because I was the holder of all the keys, the sole administrator. 4chan has a handful of volunteers, but all of that responsibility bubbled up to me," Poole told the Daily Dot in January, echoing feelings he expressed in 2013. "And I realized that’s not healthy and good for the future. If something were to happen to me, a site that 20 million people use shouldn’t have to pay that price."

The Daily Dot has reached out to Poole for a comment on the sale of 4chan to Nishimura.

Nishimura's 2channel (aka 2chan) is one of Japan's most visited websites. The site was started in 1999 and has been just as controversial as 4chan, according to a Wired feature published in 2008. 

"Nishimura has lost about 50 lawsuits and owes millions of dollars in penalties, which he has no intention of paying," stated Wired.

Illustration by Jason Reed 

The 4chan imageboard at the center of at least one FBI investigation relating to the Oregon college massacre has come completely unhinged under a spate of media scrutiny.

The head-first descent into madness began Monday afternoon, after the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned Philadelphia-area universities of a threat made on /r9k/, a unique 4chan imageboard formally called ROBOT9001, which uses a script to block text and image reposts. These schools included Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Drexel University.

Beta uprising posts generally involve threats of violence, the targets of which often include females and “alpha” males. James Holmes, the 27-year-old who murdered 24 people at a Colorado movie theater in 2012, said the massacre was part of a beta uprising. The latest strain on /r9k/ often includes threats of more school shootings.

On Thursday, /r9k/ captured the world’s attention after it tried to pin the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, to one of its users called Eggman

As is often the case with pranks that start on 4chan (here, here, and here are some of its notable attempts), this latest “beta uprising” has been half baked and juvenile.

The following images are from /r9k/ threads made Monday evening. They show anonymous users continuing to make threats against schools.

The “beta uprising” spilled over onto Twitter where some students expressed fear for their lives.

Photo via Christopher Sessums/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Users of 4chan and other sundry men's rights activists claim to have duped feminists into making the hashtag #PissForEquality trend on Twitter.

There’s only one problem: No feminists actually participated.

The alleged 'success' for #PissForEquality appears to be a hoax orchestrated by MRAs themselves. The earliest trace of this effort can be seen in a screengrab from a 4chan thread, plotting to see just how low they could get feminists to go to prove a commitment to gender equality. The peeing oneself aspect is apparently a nod to stories rape victims often tell about waking up to soiled clothing.

"What if we somehow get Tumbler tards to publicly piss/shit their pants in the name of 'Equality'?" the top of the thread reads. From there, other users enthusiastically chimed in. "Potential is radiating from this post," one wrote.

The photo below, being circulated in a number of related tweets, is actually from a January post on a woman's personal blog called Jellyfish Station. The picture is included with the caption "The unfortunate wash on my jeans makes it look like I’ve wet my pants."

This tweet in particular has been widely shared on Twitter (and Instagram) as the example of these men really pulling one over on the feminists: 

The "GG" referenced in the tweet above stands for "Gamergate," the anti-feminist movement that caused an Internet holy war in the fall of 2014.

But despite the evidence that #PissForEquality was a hoax, that didn't stop anti-feminist sites like Infowars from writing about it in earnest. They claimed "Feminists on Twitter have fallen for a troll campaign created by 4chan which encouraged women to post photos of themselves peeing their pants in the name of 'equality' under the hashtag #PissForEquality," adding: 

"The sheer hilarity of social justice warriors being so gullible as to fall for such an obvious troll again illustrates how leftists are so desperate to engage in 'virtue signaling' that they will literally piss themselves and put photos of it on Twitter to try and earn ‘progressive’ social brownie points."

Right Wing News also proclaimed "Feminists fall for hoax campaign, PEE on themselves."

And Twitter users shared the hashtag with glee:

Image via Twitter.com/Kathy_Viveros

A group of 4chan pranksters have taken up the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) with their favorite weapon—Photoshop.

In what has casually been declared operation “ALLAHU QUACKBAR,” 4chan users are altering photos of ISIS by replacing the terrorists’ faces with yellow rubber ducks and their guns with toilet bowl brushes.

The idea gained traction on the 4chan board Shit4chanSays (/s4s/), a forum that ironically hosts “the best” of all the horribly racist and violent content posted around the site’s dozens of different image boards.

“ALLAHU QUACKBAR” has no explicit purpose, but from the tone of relevant messages on Shit4chanSays, the overarching goal is to simply disrespect and annoy jihadist groups. Considering the Islamic State’s social media prowess, Shit4chanSays may just get its wish.

ISIS has used social media platforms like Twitter to spread its propaganda and recruit new members. The hacktivist collective known as Anonymous, which coincidentally gained traction on 4chan early in its history, is trying to get thousands of ISIS Twitter accounts taken down. Other hackers recently defaced one of the group’s websites with a Viagra ad.  

Since 4chan was founded, its users have had a penchant for pranks and vigilante justice. The site has inadvertently helped police in a murder investigation, helped a dad keep his kid from skipping school, and gotten countless teens arrested for animal abuse (here and here, most notably).

ISIS has yet to formally respond to this affront, but we’re betting it’s ruffled some feathers.

All photos via 4chan

My brother is on 4chan. Or rather, for the past two years, he has produced, directed, and edited the annual 4chan /v/ (i.e., video game) board’s “Vidya Gaem Awards.” 

“It’s weird to talk about,” he told me. “I’m involved in this big project that isn’t like really actually associated with the website. I wouldn’t necessarily ever consider myself a part of the community because it makes me mad.” 

He condemns the websites of his teenage years, and 4chan by extension, as “a corner of the internet that uses ‘irony’ and ‘free speech’ to hide behind actual racism/sexism/homophobia/etc.” It’s possible that he says this to me because he knows it’s what I need to hear, but I believe him. He is in it for the weird shit, not the oppressive shit, and he knows the difference between the two.

I’ve benefited, at least somewhat, from the connection. I know about memes maybe a little bit earlier than the rest of the world—maybe a lot. I see lots of weird funny stuff that never makes it big, which is to say to your grandmother’s Facebook feed. (While all memes eventually burn out, their conflagrations vary in size.) He is also a great source of skeleton GIFs. 

I talked to him and two of his internet friends—recent college graduate James Wilson and graphic designer Ryan Dell—about how they experience the Internet today, and about the weird stuff they read online.

It sounds like you are embarrassed of some of the places online where you used to spend time.

Eamon McArdle: We all have things we feel embarrassed about liking. For some people it’s a movie, band, or TV show. For me it’s a website that makes jokes about 9/11.

Ryan Dell: I’m not really embarrassed of the boards, I’m just embarrassed I lacked the self-control to stop myself from browsing them for as much as I did. It’s a lot of time I can’t get back.

How would you describe your current corner of the Internet?

Eamon McArdle: Ironic hell.

James Wilson: It’s for people who spent most of their childhoods online, and it shows. You can easily set up a persona to hide behind on Twitter, and it’s the easiest to communicate with people outside of Facebook (look at all the Sonic the Hedgehog roleplaying accounts, for example).

Ryan Dell: I don’t feel like that’s really my experience. James and Eamon probably have very different feeds because they’re both actively seeking out meta-meta nightmare content like the Sonic RPs.

Tell me a little bit about the Sonic the Hedgehog roleplaying accounts.

James Wilson: Christ.

Eamon McArdle:There are a bunch of people who use Twitter to role-play with each other as Sonic characters, mostly OCs [original characters]. It’s popular with anime/Sonic/My Little Pony fans.

Eamon McArdle: Jesus Christ. God now I'm too invested. 

So do you think these things are jokes? Or sincere? Or a mixture of the two? 

Eamon McArdle: Absolutely sincere.

James Wilson: It depends on the group, really. These people are totally sincere, but there are also many people who play along just for shits and giggles, or try to disrupt them.

Eamon McArdle: I mean there are many hints you can find, the biggest hint to show it’s sincere is when they break character to talk about things like how they are depressed or how school is going.

Ryan Dell: I don’t think there’s any difference between someone spending 12 hours pretending to be Sonic as a joke and someone doing the same thing sincerely. You still spent 12 hours pretending to be Sonic.

Is this the strangest thing you've seen on the Internet recently?

James Wilson: Not really. It’s just emblematic.

Ryan Dell: [One person I follow] is a nonstop train-wreck mess. The nightmare of a life she’s dragging herself through is a surreal, never-ending hellscape, and she’s posting about pretty much every second of it online. I absolutely cannot believe it.

Eamon McArdle: I mean like I follow people who are very into the armpits and sweat of anime characters. I think the strangest thing I've seen are people who are sexually attracted to like skeletons or suits of armor but not like people. I believe it’s because the characters they are attracted to have personality, but that’s my theory.

James Wilson: Not necessarily true, I’ve seen people be attracted to Hatsune Miku [an anthropomorphized voice from a singing synthesizer program], which inherently does not have a personality.

James Wilson: I don’t know about recently, but this is the most incomprehensible thing I have ever seen online. It’s not even funny. The creators would upload videos about changing April to “Trepril” or “Treypril” for Trey Parker & Tre Cool. They’re badly made on purpose, and the origins and creator(s) are very murky. [James later emailed me this video as a better example of a strange YouTube video. “It’s perfect,” he said.]

Would you say that this guy is pretty notorious, or do only a few people know about him?

Eamon McArdle: Not notorious at all. I mean, the most notorious person is probably Chris Chan, who has a whole Wiki that people have made that chronicles her life just because of how insane she is.

James Wilson: The Chris Chan thing is one of the most interesting things to ever happen on the Internet, I’d say. I’m honestly surprised more hasn’t been written about her, but it’s understandable considering the whole thing is kind of disturbing.

Eamon McArdle: On face value you look at Chris Chan and you “Oh I feel bad for this autistic kid,” but you really have to dig up stuff on how truly awful of a person she is.

James Wilson: She has autism. That’s why people messed with her at first. It’s despicable, but Chris Chan quickly proved herself to somehow be even more vile of a person than the people trolling her. Like it’s a moral morass in which no one emerges unscathed.

What is the latest story involving Chris Chan?

Eamon McArdle: Last year, she [allegedly] maced a GameStop employee after they called security because she was messing with the displays for the latest Sonic game, Sonic Boom, which Chris Chan is very upset about because they changed the color of Sonic's arms.

James Wilson: I’m going to reiterate, Chris Chan maced a guy because she didn’t like Sonic’s new arm color.

Eamon McArdle: That isn't the first time she has harmed somebody; she once [allegedly] hit someone with her car.

Ryan Dell: A lot of the Chris Chan stuff specifically grosses me out and disturbs me. For example, people have been for years calling her under aliases or hacking into her email for new info. That’s not only insanely cruel, it’s also psychological abuse. But even then… 90 percent of the stuff we know about Chris Chan is because she eagerly and willingly posted about it online for a worldwide audience. It’s a weird codependency.

James Wilson: The Chris Chan saga is bizarre because literally every detail of this person’s life for years has been chronicled. This isn’t even an important person. There are just a bunch of internet people who find this person interesting and who cobbled together her whole life story through pretty much everything she’s ever put online.

Ryan Dell: It’s simultaneously fascination and a cautionary tale. Going through someone’s Tumblr history or keeping up with their weird Twitter feed is an alluring siren’s call, because you’re engaging with someone in a way that’s simultaneously incredibly intimate and personal while being completely removed from the situation.

But why is this interesting to you? Or what about it is interesting?

Eamon McArdle: For me it’s because it’s such a weird and specific story that has tons of twists. It’s also interesting because of how invested people are in it.

James Wilson: I’ve always found the funniest jokes for me were the ones I could pick the most out from. There are a lot of details with this story, weird little details that work as great stories in their own right. Many of the people who messed with Chris were revealed to be just as pathetic. Chris had a whole comic book series she wrote that counts as funny in its own right. It’s just a perfect storm of multi-layered, fundamentally disturbing material. It gets under your skin, and it’s funny, but it’s also sickening.

James Wilson: People bullied this poor schlub horribly, but she just kept egging them on to do worse. It’s a train wreck.

Do you feel like stories like Chris Chan's are more or less common than they were when he was first mentioned on the internet?

Ryan Dell: More and more, sadly.

Eamon McArdle: I would say that we will never see somebody take a person like Chris Chan out on a date only to be stolen away from a man in a pickle suit at a mall.

James Wilson: I don’t think something as extensive as Chris Chan will happen again for a long time. The Internet to me feels like a different place now. I don’t know if there are more unspoken “rules” these days or if it’s just me realizing I wasn’t aware of them as a younger lad. I think it generally is for the better that these rules exist. I would not want to come across someone like who I was as a teen. I’d probably block my younger self to be honest, lol.

How do you feel meme culture has changed since you were younger?

Eamon McArdle: Meme culture is constantly changing. Remember Pepe? Remember how everybody joked about Rare Pepes? Now look, nobody is talking about that anymore.

Ryan Dell: The cycle is way quicker. I see them go from being used mostly sincerely to mostly ironically in a matter of hours.

James Wilson: Not to mention that companies have gotten really good at creating memes on purpose these days. I still to this day am convinced that Left Shark was told to dance badly on purpose. It took mere hours for Left Shark merch to show up. Walter Benjamin's lesser known essay, “Memes in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

How do you integrate this part of your life (weird stuff on the Internet) with the rest of your life?

Eamon McArdle: I don’t. I keep it separate for the most part, because I know people won't care, or at the very least I know if I talk about some of these things I’ll sound like an absolute madman.

Ryan Dell: I talk to people in real life or at work all the time about a funny Vine I saw or something that was trending on Facebook. Balance is everything.

James Wilson: I’ve learned that trying to explain Internet shit to people who aren’t as deep in as me usually doesn’t go down that well. But I’ve also learned you can integrate the Internet sensibilities into your real life and people think you’re hilarious and great. Someone once told me “your existence requires context,” and I’m so down with that. Even when I’m offline I’m not fully logged off.

Photo via THERKD/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)