A Virtual Unknown: Meet 'Moot,' the Secretive Internet Celeb Who Still Lives With Mom.
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The second irony in Poole's life is that he can't get a job.
This would astound his fans, especially considering the success stories of 4chan's memes. The people of ICanHazCheezburger.com got a book deal for Lolcats. Even washed-up Rick Astley has seen career resurrection because of Poole's site. In April he released "Rick Astley: Ultimate Collection," and in September he won an award from MTV Europe, and then he popped out of a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. (Yes. Rick Astley.)
But Poole has been looking and networking and making connections since leaving VCU last spring, and so far nothing has panned out -- no matter how many interested parties think something should.
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Right now he's not making money on 4chan -- in fact, he's losing money by charging the site's server costs on his credit cards. The crass content of the site makes it difficult to find advertisers. He was working with a company that sells Web ads, until about six months ago, when he called off the deal. He says that the ads blasted users with unwanted sounds or too easily diverted them to junky ad sites. Poole felt the ads ruined the user experience, which gets at a final irony in his strange life as the almighty moot, which is that he has standards. If he didn't care so much about what kind of advertising 4chan users have to look at, he probably wouldn't be worried about money right now.
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"I feel like I keep making it to the cusp of something," Poole says. "Everybody gets really excited about the wealth that could" be generated, but then . . .
He's currently $20,000 in debt, living with his mom and pouring money and hours into the dark heart of the Internet.
"Theoretically," says Poole. "I should be able to get some sort of job."
Theoretically.
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How to explain what Christopher Poole actually does? He's not a programmer. He doesn't know code. His site doesn't offer a specific service, like Google. What he does is foster community. He makes millions of people feel that they have a safe space for creative -- sometimes vitriolic -- discussion, deciding how far things should be pushed, tamping down upsurges when they get too unruly. Or something like that.
But, he says, "I have no idea how to translate my 4chan skills on paper."
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Scott, a somewhat well-known Internet historian, explains the difficulty of the endeavor this way: "It's like going to someone and saying, I need you to write a résumé to be hired to be you," says Scott. "Like, 'In one page, what do you do that makes you yourself?' Chris has been running this site almost all of his functioning life. . . . Sitting down and producing the words for what that means is just too hard. Him on résumé is a failure."
