It seems as though the more attention 4chan attracts -- and it's been attracting plenty of late -- the more trouble the notorious den of mischief makers has staying online. Coincidence? Probably not.

The main 4chan site is inaccessible at the moment and apparently has been kaput for going on 24 hours.

"Still being DDoSed and spammed to hell and back. What else is new?" lamented 4chan impresario "moot" on his status update page just after noon Tuesday. That's the last word from him.

The site also suffered a serious DDoS attack in May, although it was somewhat self-inflicted.

Over the holiday weekend, 4chan users were being cited as the source of a prank that flooded Twitter with fake accounts and interjected into that site's "trending topics" section a rather crude subject having to do with primate anatomy. Six weeks ago it was a porn attack against YouTube. Earlier this year the target was a TIME magazine online poll that was manipulated to anoint "moot" the planet's most influential person.

This morning the 4chan community is not laughing. From Twitter:

"4chan withdrawal sucks."

"4chan is DDOS'd to hell; it's cyber terrorism I tells ya."

"I need mah 4chan."

"Why the *&^%#*% stink isn't 4chan working? IT'S ONLY MY LIFE YOU KNOW. Kidding."

"Looks like 4chan is down tonight. What am I supposed to do now, go to sleep?"

You might say they made their bed.

(Update, 11 a.m.: Still down; nothing new on status page. ... And, ditto at 1:45 p.m.)

(Update, Thursday, 7:45 a.m.: 4chan still down. Wednesday afternoon message from "moot': "Site continues to be offline due to a DDoS attack. I'm still working on getting it back online. Might take another 24-48 hours....")

(Update, Friday, 6 a.m.: 4chan returned to life overnight.)