Fredrick Robert Brennan (born February 21, 1994) is an American
software developer and
type designer
Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below.
A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...
who founded the
imageboard
An imageboard is a type of Internet forum that focuses on the posting of images, often alongside text and discussion. The first imageboards were created in Japan as an extension of the textboard concept. These sites later inspired the creation of ...
website
8chan
8kun, previously called 8chan, Infinitechan or Infinitychan (stylized as ∞chan), is an imageboard website composed of user-created message boards. An owner moderates each board, with minimal interaction from site administration. The site ha ...
in 2013, before going on to repudiate it in 2019. Following 8chan's surge in popularity in 2014, largely due to many
Gamergate proponents migrating to the site from
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
, Brennan moved to the Philippines to work for
Jim Watkins, who provided hosting services to 8chan and later became the site's owner.
Brennan cut ties with 8chan in 2016 and with Watkins in 2018. Brennan has since become an outspoken critic of both 8chan and Watkins, and has actively battled to try to take 8chan offline. Brennan is also an outspoken critic of the
QAnon conspiracy theory, which centers on 8chan posts by an anonymous figure named "Q", and Brennan has researched who may be behind the Q identity.
Personal life
Fredrick Brennan was born on February 21, 1994 in
Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York C ...
.
He was born with
osteogenesis imperfecta
Osteogenesis imperfecta (; OI), colloquially known as brittle bone disease, is a group of genetic disorders that all result in bones that break easily. The range of symptoms—on the skeleton as well as on the body's other organs—may b ...
, 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 by the time he was 19.
Brennan comes from a multi-generational family with osteogenesis imperfecta, and his mother has the same condition.
His parents divorced when Brennan was five 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
New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. stat ...
foster care
Foster care is a system in which a minor has been placed into a ward, group home ( residential child care community, treatment center, etc.), or private home of a state-certified caregiver, referred to as a "foster parent" or with a family ...
system, where Brennan remained until he was 16 while his mother went through the legal proceedings to regain custody. He then lived with his mother until he was 18. After graduating high school, he chose not to attend college.
In January 2014, Brennan was robbed of almost $5,000 ($ in dollars) 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 later had to be treated for
hypothermia
Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below in humans. Symptoms depend on the temperature. In mild hypothermia, there is shivering and mental confusion. In moderate hypothermia, shivering stops and confusion increases. In severe ...
.
He received a personal apology from
New York City Police Commissioner
The New York City Police Commissioner is the head of the New York City Police Department and presiding member of the Board of Commissioners. The commissioner is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the mayor. The commissioner is responsib ...
,
William J. Bratton. RazorClicks began a donation campaign to help gather the remaining funds for a new wheelchair; $15,000
USD
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
($ in dollars) was raised in two months.
Brennan wrote an article in 2014 supporting the
voluntary sterilization of people with similar severe inheritable
genetic conditions. In the article, Brennan states that only ''
The Daily Stormer
''The Daily Stormer'' is an American far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and Holocaust denial commentary and message board website that advocates for a second genocide of Jews. It is part of the al ...
'', a
white supremacist
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
and
neo-Nazi website, would agree to publish it.
Brennan developed a hatred of his parents for his life of constant pain, stating in an interview for ''Tortoise Media'' in 2019, "I don't want to speak for everybody with a disability, but I hate being disabled and I always have".
Brennan later became a
Christian and ceased to believe in encouraging sterilization. In 2019, he considered having a child with his wife but maintained that he still believes in genetic testing for prospective parents with disabilities.
Brennan in the early 2010s identified himself as a
libertarian; however, he became increasingly critical of the ideology, arguing that the libertarian approach to 8chan resulted in the creation of a system of
feudalism
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...
.
In 2016, he supported
Bernie Sanders for president.
As of August 2019, Brennan said he is studying
Tagalog.
Early computer use and independence
Brennan's disability restricted his play activities during his childhood, so he became "hooked" on his first computer at the age of six. Brennan taught himself to code, and wrote his first independent computer program at the age of 13.
[ Video online at ]YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
:
Alternate archive
/ref> Brennan was active in Internet culture
Internet culture is a culture based on the many way people have used computer networks and their use for communication, entertainment, business, and recreation. Some features of Internet culture include online communities, gaming, and social medi ...
from an early age, and was a regular 4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
user since 2006, when he was 12 years old.
Brennan began doing freelance work immediately after graduating from high school. He started by doing tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk, making $5,000 ($ in dollars) in 2012 through the platform. He later became a " requester" (employer) for the service, which earned him enough money to move from his mother's home in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, New York. There, he worked building 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 to pay for expenses.
In 2012, he joined Wizardchan, an Internet community for male virgins. According to Brennan, he bought Wizardchan from the original administrator in March 2013 and owned it until September 2013, when he resigned after losing his virginity.
Also in 2012, Brennan voted for Ron Paul in the 2012 United States presidential election
The 2012 United States presidential election was the 57th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. Incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Joe Biden, were re-e ...
.
8chan
In October 2013, Brennan launched 8chan, also called "Infinitechan" or "Infinitychan", after a month of raising pledges on Patreon
Patreon (, ) is a membership platform that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service. It helps creators and artists earn a monthly income by providing rewards and perks to their subscribers. Patreon charges a com ...
. It started with a small but loyal following. Brennan initially ran the site anonymously, known only as "copypaste", the username he used in IRC
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat an ...
chatrooms. In May 2014, he was doxxed
Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the internet. Historically, the term has been used interchangeably to refer to both the aggregation of this in ...
, and he decided to start putting his real name behind his work on 8chan.
After 4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
's founder and then-site admin, Christopher "moot" Poole, banned discussion related to Gamergate in September 2014, Brennan began advertising 8chan as a "free speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recog ...
friendly 4chan alternative" where discussion boards would be managed by the users who created them, not by site moderators. In 2021, Brennan told an interviewer for '' Jacobin'' that he initially limited 8chan's rules to a prohibition on illegal activity out of laziness rather than ideological conviction.
Brennan himself became a prominent Gamergate voice; he went on to be 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
Al Jazeera America was an American pay television news channel owned by the Al Jazeera Media Network. The channel was launched on August 20, 2013, to compete with CNN, HLN, MSNBC, Fox News, and in certain markets RT America. It was Al Jazeera' ...
. As a result of the influx of Gamergate proponents, the site took off—Brennan said in an interview with '' Ars Technica'' that the site experienced over 4,000 posts an hour that month, a major increase from around 100 posts per hour prior to the 4chan rule change. 8chan became the second most popular English-language imageboard
An imageboard is a type of Internet forum that focuses on the posting of images, often alongside text and discussion. The first imageboards were created in Japan as an extension of the textboard concept. These sites later inspired the creation of ...
on the web. When asked about his thoughts on Gamergate by the ''Jacobin'' interviewer, Brennan said that "I was totally caught off guard. I did not know that this was about to happen." and that "When it did happen, I figured out what was going on alongside the other users. But I'll be perfectly honest. I had very good reasons to look the other way — look how popular my site is now. Am I really going to kick these guys off? They're having such a good time with all these features I wrote; it's finally working."
Brennan found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the server costs of the growing site, and the site experienced frequent downtime as multiple internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...
s denied service due to the site's objectionable content. Brennan was criticized for 8chan's pedophilia
Pedophilia ( alternatively spelt paedophilia) is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of puberty ...
-related boards; Brennan said to ''The Daily Dot
''The Daily Dot'' is a digital media company covering the culture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Founded by Nicholas White in 2011, ''The Daily Dot'' is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
The site, conceived as the Internet's "hometo ...
'' in 2014 that he personally finds such content reprehensible, but he stood by his refusal to remove content that did not violate United States law. Due to the controversy surrounding the site, the crowdfunding site Patreon removed 8chan's fundraising page in January 2015, and the site registrar
A registrar is an official keeper of records made in a register. The term may refer to:
Education
* Registrar (education), an official in an academic institution who handles student records
* Registrar of the University of Oxford, one of the se ...
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 8chan.
Jim Watkins, the owner of a web hosting company called N.T. Technology, contacted Brennan shortly after the site's surge in popularity to offer a partnership, under the condition that Brennan come to the Philippines to work for him. Brennan states he trusted Watkins because he knew Watkins operated the 2channel
, also known as 2ch, Channel 2, and sometimes retrospectively as 2ch.net, was an anonymous Japanese textboard founded in 1999 by Hiroyuki Nishimura. Described in 2007 as "Japan's most popular online community", the site had a level of influ ...
imageboard, though at the time he was unaware of the claim that Watkins had stolen the site from its founder. Brennan agreed to work for Watkins, and in late 2014 he moved to Manila
Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populate ...
to join him. Watkins, via N.T. Technology, began offering domain name services and hardware to host 8chan in 2014 into 2015, and Brennan continued to be responsible for the site's software development and community management.
In 2014, Watkins became the official owner and operator of 8chan. Brennan remained the site administrator until 2016, at which time he relinquished the role.
Post-8chan
In 2016, Brennan resigned his role as 8chan's site administrator. ''Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...
'' magazine reported he left the position due to stress; others have attributed his departure to Brennan's growing disgust with the site and its contents. Brennan continued to work for Watkins but stopped working on and posting at 8chan, continuing instead to work on the 2channel project. Jim Watkins' son, Ron Watkins
Ronald Watkins, also known by his online pseudonym CodeMonkeyZ, (born April 18, 1987) is an American Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorist and site administrator of the imageboard website 8kun (formerly known as 8chan). He has played a major r ...
, took up the site administrator role following Brennan's resignation. In December 2018, Brennan stopped working for Watkins and cut ties with the Watkins family, alleging that Jim Watkins had shown up at his home and berated him for asking to take time off.
Brennan has since become an outspoken critic of 8chan and of Watkins, and has actively battled to try to take the site offline. Following the March 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings
On 15 March 2019, two consecutive mass shootings occurred in a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The attacks, carried out by a lone gunman who entered both mosques during Friday prayer, began at the Al Noor Mosque ...
, in which the shooter posted his manifesto and links to a livestream of the attack to 8chan, Brennan told ''The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' that he no longer wants to be involved in the imageboard world again, saying that "a lot of these sites cause more misery than anything else". Following the August 2019 El Paso shooting, in which the suspect allegedly posted a manifesto to 8chan before carrying out the attack, Brennan called for the site to be taken offline in an interview with ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', saying: "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." In an August 2019 appearance on the '' QAnon Anonymous'' podcast, Brennan said, "If they wanna bring 8chan back online, just be aware, I will do everything I can to keep it down because the world is better off without it."
After Watkins refused to take down 8chan in 2019, Brennan directed a number of tweets at him and the message board, calling Watkins "senile" and the site moderators "incompetent". Watkins responded by filing a lawsuit against Brennan, alleging Brennan had violated the Philippine Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, which makes "cyberlibel" a criminal offense that can be punished with prison time. Brennan has said that Watkins filed the suit to try to intimidate and punish him.
On February 26, 2020, a Philippines court issued an arrest warrant for Brennan based on the complaint. Brennan has said that because of his medical condition and the notoriously poor conditions in the Bureau of Immigration Bicutan Detention Center
The Bureau of Immigration Bicutan Detention Center (BI–Bicutan) is the principal immigration detention center administered by the Bureau of Immigration of the Philippines. Located inside Camp Bagong Diwa, in Lower Bicutan, Taguig, the facili ...
, arrest by the Philippine authorities would likely result in his death. Brennan fled the Philippines hours before the warrant was issued, taking a different flight to avoid authorities who were looking for him at the airport. He has been fighting the warrant from the United States.
In March 2020, the court suspended the case pending the outcome of an appeal by Brennan to the Philippines Department of Justice. Brennan initially took up residence in Van Nuys, California
Van Nuys () is a neighborhood in the central San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. Home to Van Nuys Airport and the Valley Municipal Building, it is the most populous neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.
History
In 1909, ...
, in exile from the Philippines, before moving back with family on the East Coast, in late November, 2020.
Opposition to QAnon
Brennan has also become a prominent opponent of QAnon
QAnon ( , ) is an American political conspiracy theory and political movement. It originated in the American far-right political sphere in 2017. QAnon centers on fabricated claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals known as "Q". ...
, a conspiracy theory by the far-right. Brennan is a central figure in researching the identity of "Q", the anonymous figure behind imageboard posts that originated the conspiracy theory, who claims to be a high level government official with Q clearance
Q clearance or Q access authorization is the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) security clearance required to access Top Secret Restricted Data, Formerly Restricted Data, and National Security Information, as well as Secret Restricted Data. Restri ...
and who purports to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration
Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory ...
and its opponents in the United States. Q began posting on the 4chan imageboard in October 2017 but later moved to 8chan. Brennan believes that Jim and Ron Watkins have controlled the Q account since late 2017 or early 2018, which is when Brennan believes Ron Watkins used his access as the owner and operator of 8chan to seize the account from its original operator. Numerous journalists and conspiracy theory researchers have agreed with Brennan's assertion that the Watkinses are working with Q, know Q's identity, or control the Q account. In September 2020, Brennan refined his theory by positing that the original "Q" was a South African conspiracy theorist named Paul Furber and that Ron Watkins used his login
In computer security, logging in (or logging on, signing in, or signing on) is the process by which an individual gains access to a computer system by identifying and authenticating themselves. The user credentials are typically some fo ...
privileges as 8chan's administrator to seize the Q account away from Furber. In early 2022, analyses conducted by two independent forensic linguistics
Forensic linguistics, legal linguistics, or language and the law, is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods, and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of ap ...
teams supported Brennan's theory by identifying Paul Furber and Ron Watkins as the authors of the Q posts.
In October 2020, Brennan's research revealed that QMap, a popular website disseminating Q posts, was owned by Jim Watkins. The website was shut down shortly after.
Font design
Post-8chan, Brennan has developed several open-source computer fonts
A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for print ...
. Brennan's TT2020 font is a typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
-style font with many variations on individual glyphs, which attempts to more realistically emulate the inconsistencies in characters that would be produced by a typewriter. Brennan's Chomsky font is a blackletter
Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
typeface based on the ''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' logo (which is handmade, not set from a typeface), with adjustments to make it more suitable for running text rather than mastheads alone. Brennan was also commissioned by Google to create a Baybayin font.
Brennan was a co-maintainer of the free and open-source software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
FontForge for a year and a half, starting shortly after he stopped working with Watkins. During that time he decided to create his own open-source font editing software, which he calls MFEK, an acronym for "Modular Font Editor K" (originally 'MFEQ', after Q being his favorite letter). In an October 2020 interview for ''Know Your Meme
''Know Your Meme'' (''KYM'') is a website and video series which uses wiki software to document various Internet memes and other online phenomena, such as viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, Internet celebrities and more. It also invest ...
'', Brennan said he was motivated to create a new, user-friendly open-source font editor to "break font editing out of the hands of proprietary software", saying that Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
has outsized control of the font editing software market.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brennan, Fredrick
1994 births
Living people
American Christians
American computer programmers
American people with disabilities
American typographers and type designers
Free software people
Furry fandom people
Internet activists
Internet culture
People from Albany, New York
People from Los Angeles
People with osteogenesis imperfecta
Atlantic City High School alumni