Shii
It becomes difficult to talk about Shii, so many years after his Internet presence has strategically faded to sporadic activity under his real name in select places. In fact, trying to talk about Shii at the time of this writing almost inevitably tempts me to perform a kneejerk reaction consisting of what would some consider libel and what most would consider inelegant (but effective) roasting, as most reminiscences of the Shii of yesteryear inevitably lead to his rather unsavory posts he did in SomethingAwful at the tender age of 16 or so1).
Nevertheless, the person under the moniker of Shii 2) is arguably the first Western ideologue on Online Anonymity and its importance in online discourse which has, inevitably, shaped the role of the Web as we see it today, with all its repercussions in the “real world”. Spearheading the attempts to underline the importance of anonymity in 4chan, Shii had managed to successfully translate from its Japanese counterparts (2ch, Futaba, etc) not only the concept of a fully anonymous exchange of dialogue and ideas, but also the idea of a truly faceless community as Anonymous so offered. His subtle involvement in this and many other things (such as his creation of the first “widely-available” textboard software Shiichan, or his refinement of the concept of a personal wiki which this very site continues to uphold, or even the quaint lore around his person and western imageboards' formative years) make him, most likely against his will, one of the intellectual engineers of many of the foundational elements of the Internet as we know it today.
