Fredrick Brennan


Fredrick Brennan is an American software developer with brittle bone disease who founded the imageboard website 8chan. He founded 8chan as a free speech friendly 4chan alternative in 2013, defended its use by advocates of GamerGate in 2014, and cut ties with it in 2016 after having a dispute with NT Technology's owner Jim Watkins, current proprietor of 8chan.

Early life

Brennan was born in February 1994 in Albany, New York, with osteogenesis imperfecta, commonly known as brittle bone disease, which stunted his growth and requires him to use a wheelchair. He estimates he had broken bones 120 times in his first 19 years, which has caused great pain. His short arms prevent him from reaching the floor or cupboards; Brennan uses mechanical aids to reach into cabinets or use water faucets.
Brennan comes from a multi-generational family with osteogenesis imperfecta. His mother, who has the same condition, gave birth to him via caesarian section. His parents divorced when Brennan was 5 years old. He and his siblings were in his father's custody until Brennan was 14, when they were placed into the New York State foster care system.
Because of his hardships, Brennan wrote an article supporting the voluntary sterilization of people with similar severe inheritable genetic conditions. In the article, Brennan states that only The Daily Stormer, a white nationalist and Neo-Nazi website, would agree to publish it. Brennan had developed a profound hatred of his parents for his life of constant pain. "I don't want to speak for everybody with a disability, but I hate being disabled and I always have," he told Nicky Woolf writing for the Tortoise website in 2019. He later became a Christian and ceased to believe in encouraging sterilization. In 2019, he was considering having a child with his wife, but maintained he still believes in genetic testing for prospective parents.

Early computer use and independence

His disability restricted his play activities during his childhood, so he became "hooked" on his first computer at the age of six, and wrote his first independent computer program at the age of 13. Brennan was active in Internet culture from an early age, being a regular 4chan user since 2006.
In 2012, he joined Wizardchan, an Internet community for male virgins. He states he bought Wizardchan from the original administrator in March 2013 and owned it until September 2013, when he resigned after losing his virginity.
In August 2013, Brennan moved from his mother's home in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Brooklyn, New York, where he worked writing websites as head of programming for RazorClicks, which does small business web marketing. The company paid the rent for his apartment, and he worked a second job, remotely, for a Canadian company for expenses.
In January 2014, Brennan was robbed of almost $5,000 that he was saving up for a new wheelchair. When the suspect was arrested, Brennan went to the police station for a lineup, but when a bus did not come on the way back, he was left stranded in the snow, and had to be treated for hypothermia. He received a personal apology from New York City Police Commissioner, William J. Bratton. RazorClicks began a donation campaign to help gather the remaining funds for a new wheelchair; $15,000 USD was raised in two months.

8chan

Brennan launched 8chan, also called "Infinitechan", in October 2013, after a month of raising pledges on Patreon. It was intended as a "free-speech-friendly 4chan alternative", where discussion boards would be managed by the creating users, not by site moderators. It started with a small but loyal following.
In September 2014, the website gained attention from the Gamergate controversy after 4chan banned its advocates, many of whom then organized at 8chan. 8chan quickly became the second most popular English-language imageboard on the web. Supporters gathered in person to hold an in-person birthday party for the site, starring Brennan. Brennan himself became a prominent GamerGate voice, being interviewed about 8chan users' involvement in harassment of Brianna Wu on The David Pakman Show, and asked to debate about Gamergate on HuffPost Live and Al Jazeera America.
In October 2014, Brennan formed a partnership with Japanese message board 2channel, and moved to the Philippines to work on 8chan full-time.
Brennan was criticized for 8chan's pedophilia-related boards; Brennan has said he personally finds such content reprehensible, but stood by his refusal to remove content that did not violate United States law. Due to the controversy surrounding the site, the crowd funding site Patreon removed 8chan's fundraising page in January 2015, and the site registrar put the original domain 8chan.co on hold, each citing the presence of child abuse content. The registrar later relinquished control of the domain back to its owner, since the report proved to be false, and the domain now forwards to 8ch.net.

Post 8chan

Brennan resigned from 8chan in April 2016, but remained working for Jim Watkins, the new owner, until December 2018. Following the March 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, Brennan told The Wall Street Journal that he no longer wants to be involved in the image-board world again, claiming that "a lot of these sites cause more misery than anything else". Following the 2019 El Paso shooting, in an interview with The New York Times, Brennan called for the site to be taken offline, claiming that "It’s not doing the world any good. It’s a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there. And you know what? It’s a negative to them, too. They just don’t realize it".
After Watkins refused to take down 8chan in 2019, Brennan directed a number of Twitter tweets at him and the messageboard, that called him senile and the site moderators incompetent. Watkins responded with a complaint of "cyber libel" in October 2019, in violation of the Philippine Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, which makes it a criminal offense.
In February 2020, a Pasig City Regional Trial Court judge issued an arrest warrant for Brennan on this charge, though the case was suspended due to an appeal to the Department of Justice.
Post-8chan, Brennan developed several open source computer fonts, including typewriter style TT2020 and New York Times logo style Chomsky.