moot's court testimony released

Love it or hate it, you can thank 4chan for countless online phenomena like lolcats, the ubiquitous photos of cats combined with humorous text, often in "kitty speak."

The image-based Internet forum has been the breeding ground for some of the Web's most well-known inside jokes, but it's still unknown or mysterious to many. But thanks to the Smoking Gun, a site dedicated to unearthing court and government documents, we now know a little more about how the site works directly from the mouth of its founder, Christoper Poole. Poole delivered testimony, just posted by The Smoking Gun, in the criminal trial of the Tennessee man who hacked into Sarah Palin's e-mail account. The on-the-record question-and-answer session doesn't reveal anything major, but it serves as a very simple introduction to what the site is and how it works.

Many of 4chan's users, especially those in its random section known as "/b/," are pranksters whose actions range from playful to obscene to downright hateful. They have rigged a Time magazine online poll, securing 4chan's founder the spot as the most influential person of 2009 and popularized the practice of Rickrolling -- a bait-and-swtich in which a person is tricked into watching the music video to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Most recently, 4chan's users helped to launch a campaign to harass an eleven-year-old girl and then another against Gawker for writing about it.

At roughly 5,000 words, the transcript is rather long, but it's a useful 4chan primer. Here's an exchange in which Poole (the "A" in the Q and A) defines some key terms used by members:


Q. Like "OP," what is "OP"?
A. OP means original poster.
Q. Are you familiar these terms, having been the founder and administrator of the 4chan site?
A. Yes.
Q. What would "lurker" mean?
A. Somebody who browses but does not post, does not contribute.
Q. What do the words "caps" mean?
A. Screenshots.
Q. And is there any significance to "new fags"?
A. That is the term used to describe new users to the site.
Q. What about "b tard"?
A. It's a term that users of the /b/- Random board use for themselves.
Q. What about "troll"?
A. Troublemaker.
Q. "404"?
A. 404 is the status code for not found. It means essentially gone or not found.
Q. Not found on where, the 4chan site?
A. 404 is the http status code for not found, a page not found by the Web server.
Q. In what about "peeps"?
A. People.
Q. "Rickroll"?
A. Rickroll is a mean or Internet kind of trend that started on 4chan where users -- it basically a bait and switch. Users link you to a video of Rick Astley performing Never Gonna Give You Up.
Q. What about "white night"? Does that have a unique meaning on 4chan?
A. On 4chan I am not sure. White night in general, I guess, would mean a do gooder.
Q. Have you seen that word used on the 4chan boards?
A. Yes.

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/08/the-rules-of-4chan-the-machine-that-feeds-the-web/61183/
http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/assets/poole-testimony.pdf

efore CAD, B^Uckley's life was at a low point. He was unable to hold a job, he'd had a few encounters with the police and he recently had a messy breakup with his girlfriend. He was seeing a counselor at the time and it was suggested to him that he try doing something he liked. Unfortunately, that piece of advice led to a lovely, unremarkable Penny Arcade ripoff. It was mostly lackluster gaming jokes with 90% of strips ending in a violence or boob related punchline. It was bad, but for a new webcomic, it wasn't bad enough to be truly special. However, even at this point it did have a few notable problems. The comic was extremely heavy on  to the point where even when a strip had an okay joke, it would simply drown in a sea of lovely writing. This was epitomized in the infamous “B^Uckley box”, a yellow box that would literally explain the joke, as seen in this strip:



Not to mention the art, which was as terrible as the writing. Over the years, small artistic improvements were visible but they were minor at best. The expressions on the characters were static, and the poses could be charitably described as bland. The backgrounds were more often than not the result of a quick Google image search and the comic was just an ugly product all around.

Despite all this the strip became very popular (for a web-comic). Unfortunately, Tim let this minor success go to his head. While he started out in good graces in the web-comic community (Tycho from Penny Arcade even wrote the introduction to the first CAD book), his massive ego ended up alienating him from many.

This overinflated ego is what probably led B^Uckley to believe he was good writer, and soon we saw the introduction of “plot” to his lovely gaming strip. Soon a strip about a one-dimensional “wacky” character (Ethan), his one-dimensional sarcastic friend (Lucas) and his one-dimensional GRRL GAMER girlfriend (Lilah) turned into an internet soap opera thanks to artificially introduced drama. Houses were set on fire, people were stung by scorpions and robots went on rampages - all told slowly and ham-handedly, and with punchlines few and far between. While most of these situations were directly Ethan's fault due to him just being so gosh darned “wacky”, he amazingly escaped the blame 100% of the time. The CAD of this era was painful to read and dull as dirt, but it was still unremarkable. As bad as it was, it still fell within the realm what could be expected from a comedy strip.

Then on June 2nd, 2008, something magical happened: