Free EPIC WIN FOR ANONYMOUS by Cole Stryker

and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community.”
They collected data for two weeks, compiling 576,096 posts in 482,559 threads. Their findings confirm how different the 4chan experience can be for everyone involved. Researchers discovered that the median life of a thread is just under four minutes. The most ephemeral threads last less than thirty seconds, often due to being posted at a high-volume time of day and inciting no replies. Furthermore, the median thread spends just five seconds on the first page over its lifetime. Only posts that are able to grab the attention of the group have any chance of staying on the front page for any length of time. They also found that /b/ hosts thirty-five thousand threads and four hundred thousand posts
every day.
Most shocking, 43 percent of posts get no replies at all—nearly half of everything posted to /b/ is summarily ignored.
    The study also examined the subject matter of the threads, broken down this way.
27% Themed—“ITT, we post pictures of ex-girlfriends.”
19% Sharing—“Check out this lizard that was on my front porch this morning.”
10% Questions—“I just got a $300 Christmas bonus and I want to spend it all on Amazon. What should I buy?”
9% Personal Info Sharing—“This is my new motorcycle. Does /b/ like?”
8% Discussion—“What does /b/ think about the new
World of Warcraft
expansion?”
8% Request for Item—“Does anyone have any high-res
Green Lantern
screenshots?”
7% Request for Action—“This is the phone number of the jerk who stole my girl. Make me proud, /b/.”
5% Meta—“/b/ sucks these days. Full of newfags.”
6% Other.
    Back to /b/. I refresh the page again, and I’m presented with a dozen new threads. The one on top features a beautiful feline in repose and reads:
My cat tiga died today /b/. She was 15. A mean mother fucker but I still loved her. Can it be cat teim?
     
    The thread already has over 150 responses. People post condolences along with photos of cute cats.
    Cats, Camgirls, and Comics
     
    Speaking of cute cats, I should probably mention here that they are one of 4chan’s defining obsessions. If I come across someone who’s never heard of Internet memes, the first thing I usually say is, “Have you ever seen lolcats?” That’s because it’s not only the biggest thing to come out of 4chan, it’s the undisputed biggest Internet meme.
    Here’s the idea: A humorous photo of a cat accompanied by a caption written in a pidgin English derived from rushed IM speak. The stupidly funny broken English coupled with the inherent cuteness of the cat images made for a viral phenomenon. lolcats were dumb, catchy, and approachable enough that anyone could pick up on the humor after seeing a few.
    lolcats first showed up on 4chan in 2005 as a cute joke contrasting with the site’s usual stream of gross-out content, but they did not achieve cultural ubiquity until 2007, when Ben Huh bought http://www.icanhazcheezburger.com and formed the site around lolcats. Now there are millions of lolcat images all over the web, generating millions of dollars. And it all came from /b/’s “Caturday” tradition of posting cute captioned cats each Saturday.
    Ah, here’s a big 4chan obsession: a camgirl thread. The words
camgirl
or
camwhore
describe a girl on the Internet who attracts the attention of men by using her beauty for fun or profit.
    Girls on 4chan will post photos of themselves on /b/, usually holding up a piece of paper (or sometimes drawing directly on their bodies with a Sharpie) that reads something along the lines of “APRIL 5TH, 4:47PM Sup /b/” in order to prove the authenticity of the photo. Without this accompanying message, people will immediately claim that it’s just some guy posing as a girl with a random photo he found on the web. But with a time stamp indicating that it’s happening right now, they start bleating “TITS or GTFO [get the fuck out].” This practice is considered proof of authenticity, and girls