To veterans of 4chan who visit the /bant/ - international/random board for the first time, things probably seem very ordinary. If you're familiar with /s4s/ you understand how these low traffic, off the map topicless boards work - they're usually populated by a few dozen close knit posters with their own memes and discussion ecosystem. As you observe /bant/, it looks this way too - the catalog is mostly full of threads with anime OP pics, threads dart past page 1 with what you can only assume are inscrutable in jokes and memes being posted. One has to spend more time here before signs of /bant/'s darker secrets become apparent.

Started in 2017, /bant/ was initially conceived as a spinoff of 4chan's exploding /pol/ - politically incorrect board. Fueled by a massive influx of new posters in the wake of the 2016 election, /pol/ had so much traffic that it was almost unusable. 4chan's admins developed /bant/ as a trial board where non-political topics could be discussed with the same rules and format as /pol/, and where off-topic non-political threads with some conversational merit posted on /pol/ could be moved to allow the discussion to continue without deleting them. Very quickly, a small community coalesced on /bant/ to make the board their home, with their own memes and in-jokes and prominent personalities. It became apparent quickly that /bant/ no longer fulfilled its original purpose, as the posting base of /bant/ differed enough from that of /pol/ that threads moved there always died almost instantly, but the admins of 4chan decided to allow it persist regardless.