Chans

An abbreviation of channel, a chan is a both a word and a category, used to describe a type of web-based BBS that allows and/or encourages anonymous posting for discussion and filesharing. The “chan” category, as such, covers both textboards and imageboards (though some “chan” site can host both) that are descendants, derivatives, or otherwise share the same net-social sphere surrounding anonymous culture spawned by its Eastern (2channel¹⁾, Futaba Channel²⁾ and Western (4chan, mainly) forerunner sites.

Back then they used to refer chans to “Futaba-style imageboards”, i.e. those that mimicked the style of Futaba Channel (such as 4chan), however it remains as an incomplete definition, as not only Futaba Channel is imageboard-only and therefore the definition would exclude textboards. A source of debate (argued by pretty much literally nobody but me) is that whether or not the “chan” category should indeed include textboards. Some years ago people would tell you that no, “chans” are merely imageboards and they usually have “-chan” in their name; in fact, the term “*chans” with an asterisk became more common in speech, as it would encompass all imageboards that followed the “number+chan” naming tendency: 4chan, 7chan, 420chan, 8chan, etc. But not only these “chans” also more often than not have or had (granted, less popular) textboards in their site catalog (4chan very famously used to have world4ch, the spearhead in Western “textboard culture”), but the exclusion of textboards would imply erasing their undeniable impact in the formation of current so-called “chan culture”. Textboards and imageboards are way too intertwined to be under separate categories; besides, textboards are comparatively too small to steal much of the imageboards' respective spotlight.

Chans and by extension chan culture are a series of web “social spheres” that, while overlapping with each other, have enough autonomy of their own at times to roughly categorize them between Eastern and Western chans, the former being those of Japanese origin (and almost always Japanese-only) and the latter encompassing the traditional “West” with English-speaking imageboards and therefore more inclusive of other countries due to the curbing of the language barrier, English being the Internet's lingua franca.

Back during the early period of western imageboards (2005-2009), several camwhores used to appear on places such as /b/ to post pictures of themselves and engage in various types of conversations. Either by these camwhores themselves or by the userbase at the time, they were often baptized with their name and the Japanese -chan affectionate suffix, an act that quickly became custom. Camwhores are a whole different phenomenon and a proper description of this tendency escapes the limits of this page, however. Examples include cracky-chan, and… well, I don't remember much more, really.

It's worth noting that the whole -chan thing kinda died off around the same time Boxxy showed up. 4chan's last, ultimate camwhore (albeit involuntarily so - chans used to do that a lot, I think, the whole cataloguing a camwhore as such even if they weren't actively posting on 4chan or anywhere else with actual “camwhoring” purposes) did not have a -chan suffix “officially” affixed to her name.

In this namespace you will find pages for both textboards and imageboards, both Eastern and Western. More often than not these sites have (or had) a role in the formation and prevalence of “chan culture”, a kind of cringy term that also deserves its own article. I originally wanted to do separate categories for textboards and imageboards, but it's kind of pointless as some/most chan websites have both. Therefore, “chans”.