Fredrick Robert Brennan (born February 21, 1994) is an American software developer and type designer who founded the imageboard website 8chan in 2013, before going on to repudiate it in 2019.

[3][4] He was born with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), commonly known as brittle bone disease, which stunted his growth and requires him to use a 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.

[7] RazorClicks began a donation campaign to help gather the remaining funds for a new wheelchair; $15,000 USD ($19,306 in 2023 dollars[8]) was raised in two months.

[9] 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, a white supremacist and neo-Nazi website, would agree to publish it.

[2] 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, New York.

[14] 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.

[3][17][18] 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.

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.

Wired 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.

[22][30][33] Following the March 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, in which the shooter posted his manifesto and links to a livestream of the attack to 8chan, Brennan told The Wall Street Journal 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".

[34] 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, saying: "It's not doing the world any good.

"[35] 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.

[39] In March 2020, the court suspended the case pending the outcome of an appeal by Brennan to the Philippines Department of Justice.

[33][40] Brennan initially took up residence in Van Nuys, California, in exile from the Philippines,[27] before moving back with family on the East Coast, in late November, 2020.

Brennan is a central figure in researching the identity of "Q",[44] the anonymous figure behind imageboard posts that originated the conspiracy theory, who claims to be a high level government official with Q clearance and who purports to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the United States.

[27][44] 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.

[51] In early 2022, analyses conducted by two independent forensic linguistics teams supported Brennan's theory by identifying Paul Furber and Ron Watkins as the authors of the Q posts.

[52] In October 2020, Brennan's research revealed that QMap, a popular website disseminating Q posts, was owned by Jim Watkins.

[56] Brennan was a co-maintainer of the free and open-source software FontForge for a year and a half, starting shortly after he stopped working with Watkins.