8chan history

As we watched a former porn site merchant’s video statement, him sat there in front of a Benjamin Franklin backdrop to the sound of a military bugle call, defending 8chan’s white supremacist propaganda from his pig farm in the Philippines, we couldn’t help but marvel at another darling of Donald’s Trump’s America.

Jim Watkins is the owner of nefarious message board 8chan, a website originally created for people who found 4chan a bit too tame. He’s feeling sorry for himself because his Wild West hotbed of hate speech (rebranded as free speech, butter wouldn’t melt) was driven offline due to its role in promoting mass shootings.

Watkins, unshackled by things like dignity and shame, defiantly claims 8chan is “one of the last independent companies that offers a place you may write down your thoughts, free from having to worry about whether they are offensive to one group or another”. And now it’s gone, you say? Good!

Who started letting this idea through that human adults should not have to worry about how their online behaviour affects others? Why is this absolute nut, asking where users can go now to spout their racist and homophobic bile, being so tenderly echoed by the BBC? Isn’t it more pertinent to ask why they can’t grow up and stop being such poisonous little freaks?