For the longest time, the way that I had understood 4chan was this idea that the lack of an archive made the content really ephemeral, and it took me a while, but I finally realized that that's just totally wrong.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I didn't want my parents to know about 4chan at first because of the adult content. By the time I was 18 and could talk about it, the site had become notorious for its exploits and the adult content on there.
4chan's culture is unique and spreads and draws people in like no other. It's also important to realize that 4chan wasn't some overnight success, and there was never 'hockey stick' - like growth.
4chan gets almost one million posts per day, hundreds of thousands of which are images.
For a lot of people, 4chan is their tree house - they go there to hang out. You can actually see the culture shift with time zone. Seeing how threads unwind and unravel is just a thrill, and you can't really share that magic.
Anyone who posts illegal content on 4chan is an idiot.
I think 4chan is going to stay the same.
There aren't many sites like 4chan where you can pop in every hour and see all new stuff.
With 4chan, the cost of hosting it added up very quickly and at that time when I was 18, I didn't have the income of my own so it was a challenge to make money and break even on it.
Because there's no structural barrier to joining 4chan, the community is really dynamic; for every five people that leave, five new people join, bringing their perspective and culture. A lot of other communities get set in their ways.
4chan is a framework of pictures and text. I've always been extremely hands-off with dictating what gets posted, past general categories and rules. I support providing a place to discuss anything, although I don't agree with everything that's posted.