4chan Is Almost Broke And Supervillain Shkreli Wants To Help

Online image board and forum 4chan has announced that it’s in financial trouble. And out of everyone, who do you think offered to help? The guy who bumped up the price of life-saving AIDS pills by several thousand percent. Martin Shkreli.

In a 4chan post over the weekend, the site’s owner, Hiroyuki Nishimura, announced that he “failed” and that 4chan’s financials weren’t looking good. “Some notice there are no more middle ads and bottom ads on 4chan,” Nishimura wrote.

“Ads don’t work well. So we reduced advertisement servers cost. 4chan can’t afford infrastructure costs, network fee, servers cost, CDN and etc, now.”

It’s not hard to imagine why ads might not work out too well for 4chan. The site has given plenty to the internet over the years — lolcats, Cards Against Humanity, Rickrolling and Chocolate Rain — but it’s also regularly come afoul for frequent doxxings, questionable material, and other dodgy behaviour including gun threats.

Needless to say, it’s a real mixed bag. So it’s not really hugely surprising that Nonetheless, it was enough to catch supervillian Shrekli’s attention. So when Nishimura reached out, Shkreli responded.

I have replied your DM. Thank you for supporting 4chan @MartinShkreli https://t.co/keA7a632Dh — Hiroyuki Nisimura (@hiroyuki_ni) October 2, 2016

Shrekli even conducted an impromptu Periscope outlining some of his plans, saying that “there’s free speech and there’s hate speech” but it “wasn’t [his] job to regulate speech on the internet”.

“It’s very edgy, very deviant, it’s what people enjoy about the website. Why would you eliminate it’s biggest strength,” Shrekli responded to viewers, adding that he would “post dick pics on 4chan” if he was able to buy the website.