4chan Creator Tried To Give Site Away, But Couldn't
This afternoon Chris "moot" Poole, creator, owner, and sole administrator of the imageboard 4chan spoke about why he was preparing to retire from his role entirely. One of the odd bits about his transfer of leadership and the story therein was that he'd actually tried to give 4chan away at some point inside the last couple of years. While it's not clear to whom he'd have been giving this mega-popular website to, the outcome of this transaction was: the answer was "no, no thank you."
The ownership of 4chan – cash money, legal ramifications, and stress therein, must have been easy to see for the proposed recipient of this image-based board site. Poole himself let it be known that this person clearly understood what it means to be moot, effectively, and that it wasn't all peaches and cream.
"The one person in 11+ years, and I guess I've never, you know, released this before, but I did try to give it to somebody about a year, year or two ago, who I felt was one of the only individuals who I've met in... in ever – that I really, truly felt was a good person and – it's not just – I mean I've met a lot of good people, but he had this assortment of really desirable traits, just a really good person."
"Somebody who's used the community a long time, really understood it, has technical skills, has a real intuition about what people want, and whatnot."
"And I essentially offered him the opportunity to just take it off my hands. It was just like, 'if you want to be me, you can be me.'"
"And he declined!"
"Which all the more reinforces the fact that this was one of the few right people that I found over the years to, kind of, yield that role, because people who want power don't deserve it, or can't handle it. And people who don't want it are usually best suited for it."
"In this case I was basically turned down because I think he realized that 'being moot' is actually not so desirable. And being able to kind of pitch in part-time, on the side, and just use the site, is a lot more fun than having thousands of angry detractors screaming at you. Screaming bloody murder over every change you make."
Poole continued, speaking on reasons why owning 4chan – or even just acting as administrator – isn't a dream job.
"I hear the same thing a lot," said Poole, "we have a lot of janitors actually resign, saying the same thing. Not because they get tripped out, but because they – because your relationship with the site changes dramatically once you start volunteering for it, because you go from being just a user to a certain type of responsibility or obligation."
"For the most part, it makes it not very fun."
"I think normal users have the luxury of being able to enjoy the site without any sort of baggage, whereas somebody who volunteers, or is the administrator of the site, all of a sudden has all of this baggage."
"If you truly enjoy using the site, it really changes your relationship with the site, and it makes it start to look more like work than a leisure thing or a passion thing."
"So that's just a long-winded way of saying that I don't really think that there are people who are equipped to... I think it'd be really challenging to find a single individual who's equipped to take on all of the responsibility. And again, it's not to say that I'm some shiny Pokemon, and there's only one of me in the sense that there is nobody who is qualified forever and ever. It's just that it's a lot to take on for any individual, and I'm shocked that I was able to make it this far."
"I don't think that there will be one administrator, going forward. I think it'll be an assortment of people."
Stick around for more revelations as they appear here on SlashGear on the ever-changing role of the internets in our daily lives. Be it on 4chan, SlashGear, or otherwise.