Christopher Poole

Christopher Poole Photo

Christopher Poole is an entrepreneur from the United States acclaimed for creating the websites Canv.as and 4chan. Voted as the most influential person of the world by Times Magazine in 2008, Poole is on the road to being recognized as yet another tech mogul.

Poole was born in 1988 and at the age of just 15 he had made it to the Wall Street Journal profile. He is known as ‘moot’ and even though he is no doubt one of the most famous and influential internet celebrities, it is possible you have not heard about him. The reason is that he does not live in the limelight or in multi-million dollar mansions like other tech entrepreneurs. In fact he still lives with his mother. But he is the maker of the online community website “4chan” which has nearly 5 million visitors every month. He started it in 2003 and since then it has been the image board where anyone can post almost anything. It contains a lot of obscenity, racial insults and pretty much anything disgusting. There are 43 different boards including origami, video games and random however ‘random’ is the most popular board of all.

The master of memes, Christopher Poole, likes to keep his private life to himself and keeps a firewall between him and the media. His website 4chan has been called many things. In 2008, it was termed as the ‘ground zero of Western web culture’ by Leopoldo Godoy of a Brazilian TV channel. In 2009, Poole gave it an image of being a ‘meme factory’. He reasoned it by mentioning the anonymous system of the website which has no memory or lack of data retention. In 2010 Poole reportedly raised $3.6 million to bring into life another one of his ideas which he called ‘Canv.as’. It was launched on 31st January 2011.

Poole also helped the government by being a witness in the trial of United Stated of America v. David Kernell. He assisted the FBI by explaining to them how users could be recognized from the audit logs of the website. Poole’s identity was unknown before 9th July 2008 when it was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal and Times magazine. He had spoken at various events in Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University as ‘Moot’. He was referred to as ‘the most influential web entrepreneur you have never heard of’ by The Observer. In 2009 it was reported in the newspaper ‘The Washington Post’ that he might have attended Virginia Commonwealth University for some semesters but again it might not be true.

Most people view 4chan as a place for hackers and slackers. They call whatever comes out of it as gross and offensive and yet the cesspit state of this website has become efficacious in contributing to the web culture in many dramatic ways. And the virtual celebrity responsible for all this havoc is Christopher Poole. His online eminence might be seen as somewhat staggering considering the line between his fans and haters, which is dangerously thin. The truth remains that he has started this viral website but is very different from the kind of sick humor and content found on it as discovered by the few people who have interviewed him.