2channel
- This article is about the Japanese forum. See 2CH for the Sydney radio station.
2channel (2ちゃんねる, pronounced "ni-channeru", 2ch for short) is the largest Internet forum in the world.Template:Fn With over 10 million visitors every day (as of 2001), it is gaining significant influence in Japanese society, approaching that of traditional mass media such as television, radio, and magazines.
Overview
2ch was opened in 1999 by Hiroyuki Nishimura, known simply as "Hiroyuki" (ひろゆき). Today, most moderation on the forum is done by a voluntary group, self-elected and picked from 2ch users. 2ch itself is non-commercial and run by banner advertisement fees and support from a hosting service company that provides specially priced inexpensive UNIX hosting.
What is unique about this website is its scale and management style. It has more than 600 active boards (Japanese ita) such as "Social News", "Computers", and "Cooking", making it the most comprehensive forum in Japan. Each board usually has thousands of specific threads, such as "Coming election in Tokyo: 4th vote", "P4 vs. Athlon: overheating 51 times", and "Best wheat for making Pizza: 3rd slice".
2ch operates on innovative forum software which is a major departure from 1980s bulletin board systems or 1990s forum software such as vBulletin. Most importantly, nearly everything is done anonymously and voluntarily. A posting in a thread will either "age" (bump) or "sage" (down) its position in the thread list; "saged" posts have no effect on its position. Threads may be "saged" if the thread is disliked, or to keep it from cluttering the main thread list, or to prevent idle browsers from flooding in and trolling the thread at the top of the list.
Each thread is limited to 1000 postings at maximum, and a new thread must be opened (by some anonymous user, self-elected during discussion) to continue discussion. This prevents the rotting of old threads and keeps active topics refreshed. It also saves bandwidth, which is a major concern on a forum as large as 2ch. Old threads are moved to a paid archive, then eventually deleted. This system is not seen on most Western boards, but a few such as GameFAQs do close threads automatically when a certain number of posts is reached.
With the huge popularity of this forum, the style of web forums with anonymity, index, and sage features is now known as "2ch-style".
Anonymous posting
One of the most distinguishing features of 2ch is the complete freedom of anonymous posting. This is a great departure from American internet forums which require some form of registration, usually coupled with email verification for further identification of an individual. On 2ch, a name field is available but seldom used. Entering your name in the field either identifies you as a newbie who doesn't understand the forum, or an administrator, or someone attempting to be a Web celebrity, or you are typing in your name for no specific reason.
From an interview with the founder in the Japan Media Review:
- Q: Why did you decide to use perfect anonymity, not even requiring a user name?
- A: Because delivering news without taking any risk is very important to us. There is a lot of information disclosure or secret news gathered on Channel 2. Few people would post that kind of information by taking a risk. Moreover, people can only truly discuss something when they don't know each other.
- If there is a user ID attached to a user, a discussion tends to become a criticizing game. On the other hand, under the anonymous system, even though your opinion/information is criticized, you don't know with whom to be upset. Also with a user ID, those who participate in the site for a long time tend to have authority, and it becomes difficult for a user to disagree with them. Under a perfectly anonymous system, you can say, "it's boring," if it is actually boring. All information is treated equally; only an accurate argument will work.
Culture
Several important and/or well-known social issues (incidents, social movements, etc) are known to have relation with this forum, and due to early shocking events such as the Neomugicha incident, this forum is somewhat acknowledged as "underground-ish" despite its wide acceptance, especially in the younger generations. On the other hand, these incidents helped 2ch gain huge publicity through mass-media coverage.
2ch members participate in various distributed computing projects such as the United Devices Cancer Research Project and SETI@home. 2ch is the current leader of the UD project, with the highest results and point total, as well as having the largest number of participants.
Frequent visitors of 2ch usually call themselves "2ちゃんねらー" (meaning "2ch'er", pronounced "ni-chan-ne-raah", romaji is "ni channerā). Even though topics vary a lot between each thread or board, 2ch as a whole keeps its unity through its unique cultural backplane. "2ch slang", "2ch AA" (Shift_JIS encoded ASCII art) and "2ch Flash" are examples of such culture. Many virtual characters, such as Mona, and Onigiri have evolved out from these creations, and are now acknowledged as mascots representing the whole community. The now famous Soy Sauce Warrior Kikkoman parody character was created by members of the 2ch forums, as well as its flash movies.
Trolling and off-topic posting on 2ch is tolerated and has become a common feature of its culture. In this way it is similar to the early Slashdot, where trolls were commonplace, or the modern Something Awful Forums, where bad threads are quickly derailed or "saved" by mocking the original poster and changing the subject. However, 2channel does not tolerate spamming and flooding.
Due to its chaotic nature and large size, it is difficult to describe or define this emerging community. Several movements to self-describe it have been running, and so the reader is recommended to visit these materials. For that matter, similarities with Usenet are many.
Between March and May of 2004, an anonymous user posted in a thread for single men to decry their woes. His post detailed an event that had happened that day as he was riding the train. According to his account, he was sitting on the train when he noticed an attractive woman. Suddenly, a drunken man entered the car and bothered many passengers, who did not offer any resistance to his disturbance. This man then began to badger the woman, and seeing no one else coming to her aid, the poster took the risk of telling the man to stop bothering the passengers. The two struggled for a short time while the other passengers used this distraction to summon the conductor, who took control of the situation.
This poster was an extremely introverted, socially inept otaku. Never having done such a thing before in his life, he was amazed to find that the woman was thanking him deeply for saving her from harassment. They exchanged addresses and parted ways. The poster, upon returning home, began talking with other posters in the thread and was nicknamed "Densha Otoko" (Train Man) for his bravery.
A bit later, Densha received a package from the woman he had saved. This package, originally thought to be a generic thank-you gift such as one would buy in a drugstore, turned out to be an expensive tea set. Flabbergasted, he turned to the 2channelers for advice; he was soon convinced that such a gift was too expensive to be a mere thank-you gift. Densha contacted the woman and began meeting her regularly, all the while posting updates and conversing with other posters. Following their collective advice, he got a haircut, purchased new clothes, and began to come out of his shell. After a while of seeing her, his personality had changed for the better and this culminated a few months later in his confessing his love for her. She accepted and when the 2channelers were informed of this there was a mass celebration; posts began flowing in congratulating the new couple, extravagant ASCII art pictures were posted.
Because 2ch has an enormous impact on net culture in Japan, this story quickly spread throughout the media and became an instant hit. Its almost fairy-tale-like simplicity and emotional power drew people in, and a copy of the original threads was successfully published in a printed book. Since then, there have been four manga adaptations of the story, as well as a feature film which reached #1 in the box office upon its release, and there was a hugely popular TV live-action drama aired during the year 2005. According to Densha Otoko and Hermes (the nickname of the woman, so named for the brand name of the tea set she sent him), they are still together.
Terminology
These terms are used both on 2channel and on its Japanese and American spinoffs.
- AA - Abbreviation of "ASCII art", usually referring to common Shift JIS art characters.
- Aborn (Jp. あぼーん (abōn) ) - "To delete a post". Posts are deleted in two ways: Normal Aborn and invisible Aborn (Japanese 透明あぼーん). Any posts deleted as normal Abon are replaced by a special post, whose subject, date, and body are all "あぼーん".
- Age (pronounced "ah-geh") - From Japanese ageru (上げる "to raise"), refers to replying to an especially noteworthy or neglected post in order to move it to the top of the topic list (equivalent to the English bump)
- Capcode - A special, custom tripcode used by website administrators and especially famous people chosen by the webmasters; in Japanese, simply "cap".
- Fixed Handle - An online nickname (as opposed to anonymity); in Japanese, Kotehan, from Kotei Handle Name
- Mona - An ASCII art character
- Giko Cat (Giko neko) - Another ASCII art character
- Off Kai - An offline meeting by anonymous posters
- Sage (pronounced "sah-geh") - from Japanese sageru (下げる "to lower"), refers to replying to a post using the word "sage" in the email field in order to increase the number of replies without age-ing the post. This can be used as a courtesy, allowing one to quietly add comments that may not be interesting enough to warrant pushing the thread to the top. It can also be used as a way to show displeasure with the post being replied to.
- Tripcode - A cryptographic hash created from a password, used to allow a user to "sign" their posts while remaining anonymous; in Japanese, simply "trip"
- ">>" - Often followed with the numeral of the intended post to mean reply or follow up. 2ch automatically makes a link.
- >>1-san (>>1さん) - An ASCII art character, representing the poster who started the thread it appears in.
Common abbreviations and phrases
- Burakura (ブラクラ) - "Browser crusher", one who posts links to sites designed to crash users' web browsers.
- Chu or Chubou (厨 or 厨房) - An intentional misuse of kanji for "中坊" (a middle school kid), it refers to those posters who post without reading any rules, also to those who engage in flaming and spamming.
- Natsuchu (夏厨) - Someone who appears in the summer break and makes ridiculous posts, acting like Chu
- Fuun (（ ´_ゝ`）ﾌｰﾝ ) - a kaomoji for indifference; the word 「フーン」 is the Japanese equivalent of the English "hunh." The fuun face is the basis of the Sasuga Brothers AA.
- Fuyuchu (冬厨) - Same as natsuchu, but for posters appearing in winter.
- Haahaa ((*´Д`)ﾊｧﾊｧ) - a kaomoji indicating that one is breathing heavily. Generally due to being excited, in most cases connected to lust or sexuality, However, someone "Haahaa" does not imply masturbation or negative connotation by default. It may also indicate nervousness (for an example of the latter usage, see Densha Otoko).
- Kami (神 or ネ申) - A person who is considered a "forum god" for especially useful posts or an interesting ID hash; see Kami
- Kita!! (ｷﾀ━━━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━━━ !!!!!) - Literally, "I/It came!", it is generally used as a big exclamation mark. The face in the center is named jisakujien.
- Kopipe (コピペ) - Copy/paste. A text passage or piece of AA that is frequently recycled and reposted.
- Nullpo (ヌルポ) - A parody of the Java output "NullPointerException". Usually followed up with "GA(ガッ)!", the sound of a hammer hitting the "nullpo" poster, because of a meme started in this thread.
- Tsuri (釣り) - Trolling; a literal translation of "trolling" as a method of fishing.
- Uho! (ウホッ) - Originally from a gay manga, used somewhat like Haahaa and Kita!! but when the post is macho
- ｗ - A single letter substituting for "warai" or "laughing", added to mean that the poster is joking or thinks he made a funny remark, basically the equivalent to "LOL"; putting "ｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ" at the end of something is the same thing as saying "LOLOLOLOLOLOL". Also warota (ワロタ) from the Kansai-ben past tense of warau. Warosu (ワロス) is one of the recent derivatives of warota, from the threads (ワロス のガイドライン, Guidelines for warosu), where endless word-chanting of warosues is going on.
English Offsprings
There have been some attempts by various internet communities to form their own, more English or internationally-oriented message boards in the style and tradition of 2ch. The first and most notable has been the now defunct world2ch, administered by Taichirou Kosugi ("RIR7") and abandoned in late 2003. Two boards have been put up to replace world2ch, but neither has become anywhere as popular.
- 4-ch, historically following world2ch, is an English website with discussion boards for English speakers and also contains a board where Japanese 2ch users can talk in Japanese.
- 4chan, an English website based largely around Japanese content, now also has anonymous message boards similar to 2ch: world4ch.
Masashi Tashiro
In 2001, many 2ch users voted for Japanese TV performer Masashi Tashiro as Time Magazine's Person of the Year. An act which chooses Tashiro as Person of the Year by 2ch users is called "Tashiro Festival" (Tashiro Matsuri, 田代祭). Tashiro was infamous in the Japanese media for committing several crimes, including peeping up a woman's skirt using a camcorder, using stimulants twice, peeping in a male bath and causing a car accident. 2ch programmers developed many scripts such as "Tashiro Cannon" (Tashiro-hō, 田代砲), "Mega particle Tashiro Cannon" (Mega-ryūshi Tashiro-hō, メガ粒子田代砲), "25 repeated blows Tashiro Cannon" (Nijyū-go renda Tashiro-hō, 25連打田代砲) "Super Tashiro Cannon" (Chō Tashiro-hō, 超田代砲) to be able to vote efficiently. (Since "Super Tashiro cannon" was especially powerful, it shut down Time's server. Afterwards, "Satellite Cannon -Tashiro-" was developed, but it was restrained) Due to the votes of 2ch users, he got to the No. 1 position temporarily in on December 21, 2001. However, Time's staff realized that something was unusual, and Tashiro was removed from contention.
IRC@2ch
There's also an IRC network called 'IRC@2ch', whose main IRC and web server are both hosted on irc.2ch.net. The network is rather small with two servers, no services, and relatively few users. The chat in most channels is in Japanese, using the ISO-2022-JP encoding. The network maintains a list over what channels are currently the most active on its web page.
See also
External links
- 2ch.net - The 2ch site (in Japanese)
- 2-Ten ("ni-ten") - 2ch reference (also available as a book from Amazon.jp)
- English list and navigation of 2ch boards at 4-ch.net
- The Dynamism of 2channel - a sociological study by Naohiro Matsumura et al. presented at the "Social Intelligence Design International Conference 2003"
- IRC@2ch
Special characters
Footnotes
Template:Fnb At stats.2ch.net one can view the number of posts made every day. Currently there are 2.3 million posts made every day. This is two to three times larger than the biggest Internet forum on big-boards.com. (Note: on its front page Big-Boards lists the total posts of all time, not the daily number of posts.)