Enter 4chan, one of the Internet's most trafficked "image boards" -- places where members congregate to chat and swap photos and images, many of them related to Japanese anime cartoons. One particularly well-known section of 4chan is called "b" -- a rowdy back channel filled with obscene images and profanity-riddled discussion.
Google, it turned out, was right -- probably. There is no way to verify the chain of events because 4chan posts are not archived and generally cycle out of view within minutes. A moderator for 4chan said, "I've seen nothing to denote 4chan was involved at all."
But Christophe Maximin, a 20-year-old French Web developer and frequent 4chan user, said by phone from his home in London that he was monitoring 4chan and watched the following scenario unfold:
At some point Thursday, a member of 4chan's b channel posted a simple two-part instruction. First, Google 卐. Second, enjoy.
According to Maximin, hundreds or even thousands of 4chan members gave it a try. "They just wanted to know what it was," Maximin said. "And what Googling it would do."
Obviously, there is no character for the swastika on the standard keyboard. But Internet browsers can display many, many characters. The trick is knowing the short code (called html) that represents each. In this case, the code a 4chan member posted was the shorthand for the swastika. After the code is processed by a browser, it shows up as the symbol. (Curious readers are invited to try it.)
The flurry of searches for the swastika code -- most of which, it seems, were by people who did not know what the code represented -- shot the swastika itself to the top of the trends list.
It's a plausible answer, and if it's true it means the motivations involved were more rascal than racial.
Google eventually sent The Times a second statement addressing the disappearance of the swastika.
"We have an automated system to identify and remove inappropriate or offensive material in Hot Trends," it read. "In rare cases, when such material is missed, we manually remove these results.
"We apologize to any users who were offended by this situation."
--
david.sarno@latimes.com
