About

"Who is this 4 Chan?" also known as "The hacker known as 4 Chan", in which people personify the website 4chan as a hacker, is a meme satirizing the mainstream media's lack of understanding on the events they report, specifically with regards to 4chan and the Fappening.

Origin

After the events of the Fappening, in which a hacker posted nude photographs of various celebrities onto 4chan, many news outlets rushed to report about the event, often without proper prior fact checking. ^[1]One such report (Taken down since) from the Australian branch of MTV, identified the hacker as "a hacker known as 4 Chan. While the text in the article was changed to read "A hacker, known only as a user of website '4 Chan,'" later on, the original text reads "A hacker known as '4 Chan' claims to not only have nude, risqué images but explicit videos…" Due to the obvious error of identifying the hacker by the name of the site, many users on 4chan mocked the error by asking who 4chan was on the site itself.

A similar event later occurred on CNN in a news report about the fappening, in which there was an interview with a Bret Larson about the event and how to protect yourself from being hacked. The infamous news report included the line "Who is this 4chan?". The report was heavily mocked for little actual knowledge on technology and 4chan.

Spread

The image has been posted to both the subreddits, /r/funny
and /r/4chan where it recieved 3873 and 1707 upvotes respectively. There have been many posts on both Reddit and 4chan portraying "4 Chan" as a hacker rather than a website. Often these posts will take a position either for or against him, e.g. "I hope they catch that 4 Chan guy". Sometimes people will even claim to be 4 Chan e.g. "I'm 4 Chan and I have more nudes, ask me anything."

While the news story was being heavily reported many /b/ users posted any news articles that mentioned 4chan to the board. ^[2]One article in particular, posted by The Mirror, came under heavy fire for its heavily biased wording and inclusion of a poll asking if 4chan should be shut down. It was also heavily mocked for its inclusion of a picture of a hacker wearing a balaclava (ski mask).

Due to the absurdity of wearing a ski mask while hacking an account and the portrayal of 4chan members reminiscent of a cartoon villain, users rapidly spread the image and it became associated with the fictional hacker.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References