In Meet Hiroyuki Nishimura, the Bad Boy of the Japanese Internet, Lisa Katayama of Wired describes the successful slacker-hacker and his notorious, retro BBS, 2channel:
Nishimura downplays the importance of 2channel. He created the simple bulletin board system nine years ago as an exchange student at the University of Central Arkansas. “I was bored,” he says. “I made it to kill time.” There’s nothing remarkable about the technology — the site is similar to BBS setups that were common in the US at the time. And indeed, navigating it is like time-traveling back to the Mosaic era: It’s just pages of blue hypertext links and text punctuated by banner ads and a brick background pattern.What was innovative about 2channel was its openness. Nishimura read the air and realized that what Japan needed was an outlet for unfettered expression. On 2channel, anyone can start a thread and anyone can post — there’s no need to register or log in and no Web handles. There are no censors, no filters, no age verification, no voting systems that boost one thread or comment over another. “I created a free space, and what people did with it was up to them,” he says. “No major corporations were offering anything like that, so I had to.”
The people of Japan who pass each other wordlessly on the way to work each day suddenly realized they had a lot to talk about. They could argue, berate, complain, insult, opine, free-associate, joke around, and revel in their ability to entertain one other as a completely anonymous collective.
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But 2channel isn’t just for geeks. Yes, there are threads where programmers discuss PHP and Ruby on Rails, and threads where otaku debate the latest manga and anime. But there are also threads on sex, politics, sports, and motorcycles. Bored housewives gossip about celebrities. Students and teachers discuss their peers in school-specific threads.The commenters have developed their own jargon and shorthand. There’s that put-down kuki yomenai, a dismissal of the clueless who can’t read the air. And there’s the catchphrase omae mona, a comeback that translates roughly as “I know you are, but what am I?” Omae Mona is also the name given to a catlike character that commenters frequently append to posts:
Though 2channel is text-only, users have circumvented that restriction by raising ASCII imagery to an art form, typing out elaborate illustrations that are often closer to editorial cartoons than emoticons.
So omae mona are Japanese lolcats? You learn something every day…