After 42 billion pageviews, moot retires from 4chan

Today, 4chan’s founder Christopher Poole, better known as moot, announced he is retiring from the infamous Web community.

Today I announced my retirement from @4chan, a community I founded at the age of 15 and have served for 11.5 years: https://t.co/jEMsDf5nfz

— Chris Poole (@moot) January 21, 2015

In a blog post, Poole states he’s decided to move on after serving as 4chan’s administrator for 11.5 years, having founded the community when he was 15.  He has since remained the site’s sole administrator and decision maker, while keeping most of its institutional knowledge to himself.

Since its inception, 4chan has seen over 42 billion page views, nearly 1.8 billion posts and has maintained 620 million monthly page views. As moot notes, the site isn’t in danger of going under financially anytime soon, and he has been working with senior volunteers to ensure a smooth transition for 4chan’s future (and unspecified) leadership.

Eleven and a half years of @4chan, in numbers: pic.twitter.com/YhzUy0XbvQ

— 4chan (@4chan) January 21, 2015

However, nothing should change on the user’s end, according to Poole.

Poole recently ventured into a couple of startups, neither of which emerged successful. Canvas, a community based on editing images was founded in 2011 and shuttered last year. DrawQuest, a drawing app and game for iOS launched February 2013 and shut down last January.

After DrawQuest’s failure, Poole was able to convince investors to donate the remaining $40,000 in capital to the Free Arts NYC charity, and open sourced the site’s technology.

There’s no word on what Poole intends to do next, but he says hopes to return to 4chan as either an administrator or just an anonymous member once he’s taken the time off he needs.

Poole will livestream a Q&A session on YouTube on Friday to interact with the community one final time before he retires.

➤ 4chan