A Diaspora is a dispersal of a large cultural group via an external force. Often times a diaspora can result in the same groups of people moving from one place to multiple places outside their original home. This type of diaspora however is instead of regular people, it involved 4channers. Similar to what occurred on /b/day but different as it involved two boards. There was short term and long term consequences to the diaspora, and these consequences are still felt in the chanverse today.
A brief introduction of /r9k/ and /new/
/r9k/ - ROBOT 9000 ROBOT 9000 was a 4chan board created by moot to fulfill a need that /b/ had lost gradually over the years, creating Original Content. /r9k/ rarely created original content (and when it did it was spectacular), but what it instead did was filled a void within 4chan a general discussion board without trolls or flames. It had regular discussion threads and threads about life experiences known as greentexting threads, threads about relationships and misogyny, and social awkwardness. The board also was home to a unique type of threads about asking people stuff known as “Ask me anything” threads. It had multiple name changes since it’s lifetime due to the demographic changes from 2008-2011.
/new/ - News /new/ was a board created by moot upon popular demand for a board to talk about news, current events, and politics. However there were certain negative consequences with the creation. There were threads about actual news discussion but there were more threads of racism and xenophobia, especially racism against people of Jewish and African-American descent. Threads with actual news were garnered fewer replies unless it’s a major event or political, economic, or social issue. One major event that got /new/ in a jiffy was the 2010 health care debate.
The Death Warrant On January 17, 2011 moot decided in a /r9k/ thread to close both boards due to various reasons. The first reason specifically for /new/ is that it eventually turned racist and xenophobic and eventually practically became stormfront. For /r9k/, it’s because of the new boards such as /lit/, /sci/, /adv/, /soc/, largely rendered /r9k/ obsolete. As such, around 8:45pm eastern standard time, moot deleted r9k and new. The end result was a diaspora that occurred with the robots and the newsmen. They know that they can’t go to /b/ since they practically matured out of the board. Both of those boards were their home boards so to speak, and they just simply can’t return to /b/. Eventually they had to make the difficult decision to leave 4chan.
Filling in the void A person named savetheinternet quickly established 4chon.net on the same date of the deletion to remedy the initial loss to both robots and newsmen. At first 4chon was created for /r9k/ but due to popular demand there was a board dedicated for /new/ as well. For a small board it had a dedicated and growing userbase of channers from 4chan.
4chon.org and bawwchan had their own /new/ and /r9k/ boards but they were less popular. As of this time of writing bawwchan is dead, while 4chon.org is still active as a minor imageboard site.
Immigration. Some 4channers that made /new/ and /r9k/ their home boards did the following:
- Within 4chan.org, they simply moved to the imageboards that most Robots moved onto: /lit/, /adv/, /soc/, /sci/, and /int/.
- Some went to chans outside of 4chan such as 420chan or 99chan, or 4chon.net
- They simply moved on to where the oldfags went to when 4chan wasn’t for them anymore such as reddit (Yes, that site).
- In some cases they simply in one way of another, “quit the internet”.
Ndee “Jkid” Okeh (YSJkid@gmail.com)