Disclaimer:

You don’t really need to read this. I’m making this .doc as a means of preserving important data about 4chan, its culture and its history in case the original sources go down (And they will). Think of this as a time vault for the long future (as long as my hard drive doesn’t die and somebody downloads this)

Most content is based on (AKA: Copy pasted, mixed and made sense of) content already written by various sources.

This particular .docx contains: A summary of 4chan’s history, adapted from an existing summary on GitHub.

A modified (AKA mixed and revamped) 4chan timeline that was hanging around different sites for years.

A smaller timeline about the known dates of all board additions.

A list of known staff members, their activities and shenanigans, you shouldn’t take this information as absolute facts, however.

A list of useful links and sources.

If you have any information that you believe is wrong or does not appear on this .doc please point it out, or if | don’t respond, put it in yourself, just make sure that it mixes with the rest of the article, has a proper source, and that it’s clear it’s a newer version of the original.

This .doc should not be attributed to anyone, it’s made by anonymous, for anonymous.

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"A comprehensive english based resource for the collection and distribution of yaoi and dickgirlz"

4chan

Table of contents:

Interactive Summary:

Genesis

The Golden Age of 4chan The Golden Age of /b/ The /b/-day

The Warring states of Random

The Newfag Summer: The Dark Age of 4chan Project Chanology - The Boxxy civil war — The anonymous split Intermission — The Silver Age of 4chan The Facebook Age and the “death” of /b/

Wiki timeline:

Pre-History - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013

April 1 — On April 1 12:00 PM moot adds s4s — Shit 4chan Says under the header of “Unlike the other new boards, this is being added on a permanent basis. If it doesn't pan out or goes unused, you should probably check your privilege.” The board get’s to stickies —a 5555 Dubs GET and another saying “Post in this thread to have your privilege checked” Later the full joke kick’s in and

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moot changes the format and CSS to make it look like Reddit. On both /s4s/ and /b/ a popup about AdultCatFinder appears. A mod checks everyone’s privilege on the second sticky and an empty thread is stickied on /b/.

April 3 - /s4s/ becomes an official 4chan board, becoming a rules-less yellow board under the title of “Shitposting 4n Steroids”. But it’s not listed on the main page and many people complain about the name change.

April 7 - /vp/ get’s renamed to /vp/ - RIGHT IN THE CHILDHOOD after a certain new pokemon get’s released. /s4s/ is renamed again, this time, to Shitp4sterS

April 10 - /s4s/ get’s renamed to Shit 4chan Says

April 15 — moot makes a public announcement telling he’ll log in AIM as moot chat and try to answer emails

April 20 - /mlp/ reached its 10 million GET, and breaks the record of the most replied post of 4chan with 2046 replies.

May 12 — moot opens the third Q/A, fucks with the CSS by forgetting a “ and jokes with /s4s/ by giving it comic sans.

May 13 — Anamanaguchi — Whose members are friends of moot — make a Q/A session on /mu/. Luke becomes a fan favorite.

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Dates of board additions:

Staffe : Actual.

Former staff :

Unknown, mentioned and associated people:

Useful links:

Sources: Archives: Other links:

Genesis (Oct 2003 —Apr 2004)

Achan is founded in 2003 as an English-language version of Futaba Channel. The site introduces a simpler and freer method of communication that Something Awful users have always dreamed of. It soon becomes wildly popular as a new home for banned ADTRW refugees and #Rapsberry_Heaven goons, who in turn spread word across the internet. 4chan links quickly replace Futaba Channel and world2ch links on ADTRW. Once Lowtax begins to create a Soviet-style police state of arbitrary rules on SA (which cost users their $10 accounts), 4chan quickly rose beyond the tired, old site.

Many users from Something Awful used 4chan to transgress the old ways. After years of being on sites like SA or Newgrounds, which had a very restrictive moderation in terms of allowed content and expression, the unexpected freedom that 4chan offered led the young 4channers to post all manners of forbidden content, the most notorious example being lolikon. By day one, /b/ was already filled to the brim with such images. moot didn’t like the idea of having forty years old pedophiles posting lolis all over the site, even though he considered /b/ to be a retard since its creation. He created boards to redirect them somewhere else. Those boards would later give him a lot of problems regarding hosting.

The cultural elements 4chan draw from SA and 2chan -— Silliness from ADTRW, aggressiveness from FYAD and Japanese jokes from 2chan would prove to be a very attractive mix to people bored with normal manners. During it first years 4chan would be defined as a place where people came to transgress society, to say things for which they would be ridiculed or shunned on if done in real life

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— Black comedy, silly attitudes and racist jokes’ solidified 4chan’s reputation a place where people would come to be both silly and hostile.

The massive popularity of 4chan quickly becomes taxing, and moot just barely manages to keep it alive, through ads or donations. The controversial content becomes a major point of contention, forcing 4chan out of hosting at least 3 times. The majority of the anime boards take shape during this time, and the first tenets of 4chan culture are created under influence by ADTRW, FYAD?, world2ch and 2chan. During a particularly hard time, moot decided he had enough of 4chan and shuts it down, killing it for the fourth time.

The Golden Age of 4chan (Aug 2004 —Sept 2005)

On August 7, moot gathers a group of friends and contributors and starts 4chan again. Though not excellent, there was an increased efficiency when it came to moderation and _ scripting, commandeered by Team4chan. In a reactionary move towards the rise of 4chan, Lowtax makes mentioning 4chan a bannable offense, whilst simultaneously engaging in a crusade towards anything resembling pedophilia, such as anime girls. The increasing oppression coming from the moderators creates a constant flow of banned users fleeing to 4chan. It’s free and anonymous posting, lenient moderation, and SA-influenced culture proves to be an appealing alternative to users upset with the admin’s meltdown, like Colonial America for disinherited Englishmen.

Once Moot grows up to legally visit his own site, (he is 16 at this point), he slowly opens up to the A4chan community. There’s a noticeable rise in popularity and new users who posted without being aware of the fads and inside jokes, which thanks to SA’s inherited FYAD culture, was responded with shouts of “Lurk more” or newfag’.

Achan's culture begins to stabilize at this point, as a world of hatred, anonymity, truth in opinion, and trolling. The age median drops from colleague age, before the fourth death, to high-school freshman after the revival. It is an interesting counterexample to the rise of social media occurring at the same time. Some of the original users begin to thin out as they lose interest, but are just as quickly replaced by SA refugees. 4chan becomes a fast changing society beginning to carve out its own culture and place in the world.

This could be safely considered the best period for 4chan. /b/ was not as massive as it is today and was comparable, in terms of traffic, with the rest of the site. All boards enjoyed a degree of content and an active and present moderation’. Many users had decent photoshop abilities, inherited from the highly-skilled SA goons, and most of the classic memes and events took form during this period.

' 4chan’s has always been perceived as a racist site, especially if you came to the site after /pol/ was created. This is due to a mix of black comedy and silliness, 4chan developed a “lol, niggers” culture. This didn’t get in the way of proper discussion nor was meant as real racism. A very small amount of users were actually racist, to them it was just comedy.

* Something Awful’s Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse and Fuck You And Die forums respectively

* The term newfag is a distortion of furfag, an insult used against the overly dramatic furry community.

: However, there also was a lot of drama regarding tripcode users and mods, who, back then, were allowed to possess a tripcode. Thus the term “modfaggotry”.

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The Golden Age of /b/ (Oct 2005 — Aug 22 2006)

4chan's momentous golden age begins to end with moot's dismissal of admin and moderators W.T. Snacks and Shii, seen by many anons as a harbinger of impending doom. And doom seemed imminent for all; with exponentially increasing immigration, 4chan's /b/ had begun to experience sharp cultural changes that left long time users bewildered and newfags unassimilated. It began to take more and more spotlight from the rest of the board, surpassing them in traffic, userbase and content. The majority of the site browsed /b/. It doubled its follow up board in terms of traffic, a trend that would continue until the end of the decade.

During this era, the inexperienced 4chan community gets it first take at internet warfare in the coalition attack against EbaumsWorld for its plagiarism’. Although it was a fairly reactive community, the EbaumsWorld raid gave birth to a sort of organized raid culture, with raids soon becoming commonplace on /b/. Such attacks culminated in a massive, quasi-coordinated raid to Habbo hotel, known as The Great Habbo Hotel Invasion of July 2006, giving birth to the Nigra phenomenon. School shooting plans and stadium bombings are posted by 4channers attracted to the sense of anonymity, as in such a particular event, an user was arrested once his post was reported to the police, the ensuing drama and news reports gave birth to the “DON’T MESS WITH FOOTBALL” meme.

The massive increase of threads proportionally increased the rate of thread deletion. Although the ratio of good to bad content changed little, the sheer magnitude of forgettable, rehashed content (What we now know as templates and macros) created class conflict between ex-SA oldfags and newfags, who were unskilled when it came to editing. There was a hankering for a romanticized depiction of /b/ as an idyllic place where all content was original, funny, and fresh. While this belief could not be farther from the truth, the cynical ideal quickly became a major tenet of 4chan culture’. It was during this period that 4chan and /b/ became known as the assholes of the internet. /b/ went through major cultural changes. Though at its core it was still about silliness and black comedy, its aggressiveness began to show out above all else. /b/ attained an attack dog mentality, seeking prey to destroy to attain whatever they thought was lulzly at the time. Persecution of amusement at detriment of everybody else became a mayor tenet of /b/.

Achan's nominal anonymity begins to attract a bunch of colorful groups to 4chan’, such as Touhou fans, guro lovers, pedophiles, and worst of all, Furries®. Most of these groups are given their own

> Back during the early days of web 2.0, content aggregators were mostly unheard of, since the internet just came out from the period were it was all small clusters of isolated communities. During those days it was common to see various communities bickering because another one stole their content. Ebaums World was the first site to do it en masse and without regard of consequences, which prompted unprecedented retaliation from most of the big players of the era (and a young 4chan tagging along). A Newgrounds user even made a flash song about it.

° Note: Though truth in part, the “low” quality image and content during 2004 to 2006 were welcomed and cherished by the members of the community, therefore becoming quality (Or should I say QUALITY) 4chan content. The reaction against newfags was brought when people did not get the way the memes were done and essentially screwed up.

7 Colourful groups were always around, (evidenced by the early /c/ - Cute/Male (back then being not safe for work), /l/ - Lolicon, /g/ - Guro and /d/ - Hentai/alternative boards) They just began diversifying towards

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boards to keep them out of the other ones, but curiously, Furries have not. A persecution complex causes them to react badly to criticism, and minor distaste evolves into total hatred that threatens to destroy the boards. . Being so sensible, 4chan also decided to do the sane thing and banned furries since day one. Quoting moot, “furries create drama”.

/b/’s raid culture began to shine around mid 2006. The board began a series of organized raids against many sites, included but not limited to: Fandom sites (most notoriously ZeldaUniverse), Christian sites, Pro-Ana, and sites for people with disabilities. June saw the total destruction of the Zelda Guide Forums and Naruto-kun.com. On July /b/ staged the great Habbo raid of July 2006, saturating Habbo Hotel with nigras, black avatars with a two piece black suit, black shoes and an Afro, because of perceived racism on part of the mods. On august 16 Canadian Tom Green gets raided at his own talk show, which would become a sort of tradition over the years.

On August 22, a splinter group of /b/tards went completely nuts and completely obliterated three sites from the face of earth, prompting anons to make threads urging /b/ to start a crusade against faggotry, and /b/ planned its Magnum Opus: A series of detailed, coordinated raids against the entirety of the furry fandom, including sites like WikiFur, Furaffinity, fchan and various forums. However, the next day proved to be somewhat different.

The /b/-day (Aug 23 2006 - Aug 2006)

The golden age of /b/ concluded with the notorious /b/-day: When the 4chan mods begin to impose much tighter rules, including the banning of jailbait and raids, much cherished traditions of /b/. A number of /b/tards leave 4chan for dead and abandon en masse. A declaration of independence, written by exemplar /b/tard Captain_Cornflake, is made that establishes Anonymous as a separate group with its home anywhere but 4chan. Ultimately, the /b/-day failed its purpose. At this stage the users of /b/ were too numerous and aggressive to be moderated properly. When the stickies appeared they retaliated even more aggressively, until 4chan was down due to DDOS. Banned users and /b/-tards began an exodus, looking for other board such as 2ch.ru’s /b/ or WTFux, ultimately landing on a recently revived 7chan or a revitalized 420chan. This event foreshadowed what would become of 4chan during the following years. Ironically, during the following Dark Age, their diffusion of 4chan memes around the internet will only solidify its position as the ultimate center of internet culture.

Two days later /b/ was back again, but the board summered on a state of civil war, banned anonymous from 7chan script-flooded the board for days, 4chan’s /b/-tard retaliating in a similar manner. The aftermath of the /b/-day was the diversification of *chan culture, with a rise on the number of alternate image boards, or better said, alternate /b/s, such as a rebuilt 7chan, 12chan,

topics other than anime. If I’m not mistaken, Touhou fans were already present, but /a/ users became fed off with them and called moot to take them out, hence the birth of /jp/ - Japanese Culture.

* Actually, there were way far worse things on 4chan already, but the furry fandom was special. During the early days of the internet, the two cores of the internet, SA and a website I can’t remember, began a crusade against the furry fandom in all its forms. During one memorable moment, Lowtax crated a furry board, waited for it to be filled with furry goons, and permabanned them all. This aggressively eventually shaped internet culture, where it became the norm to hate on furries, and the furry fandom itself, building a constant feeling of paranoia and “fursecution”. Moot also created a /fur/ board once and banned all the users who posted there for a month.

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2ch.ru, 420chan, 888chan, AnonlB, WTFux, among others. The idea of independent, low population /b/s became a cultural trend on the imageboard communities that lasted for many years, having its peak during late 2006 and early 2007. The prohibition on raids also strengthened the raid mentality for those who were banned. This marked the birth of the /i/nsurgency as an official group, steering from 7chan’s /i/ board. With time every major alternative site would house an /i/nvasion board for a while.

The Warring states of Random (Sept 2006 — Jun 2007, continued until circa late 2009)

The aftermath of the /b/-day ended with many banned or exiled anonymous looking for a place where they could retain their old culture. From this point on Imageboard culture would change from being almost entirely homogeneous to divide into a series of small, very hostile sites. One of the main attributes what the existence of the /i/ - Invasion board. It was housed by many sites during the years, and had many splinter groups such as Partyvan, ultimately becoming Raidchan.

This period was characterized by a lot of interboard conflict and hacker activity, with many groups cheerfully DDOSing each other. Mayor players of the day where 7chan, known for being particularly active and hateful towards 4chan, 420, though not as active as, hosted the /i/nvasion board for a while, Raidchan, IRC/Radio group of trolls, AnonTalk, run by Kimmo Alm, spammed the hell out of everyone. Boards were born due to the /b/-day, such as 2-ch.ru, 888chan and 99chan, etc. or revived, as was WTFux. The only trait in common that most of these boards had, was a rotund hate for 4chan’s /b/, which they considered a dead board filled with idiots.

On January 27, 2007, the great chan death of 2007 happened. Already demoralized by the similar events of November 7, 4chan has a power failure and goes offline. Anons scoured the internet, looking for a worthy candidate to inherit the crown of the hubsite of Anonymous, but to no avail. Each of the other major chans were not available. 7chan went offline due to high traffic, 12chan was Closed by the FBI, 420chan was kicked out of hosting, 2-ch.ru died by reasons unknown. Many minor ones went down due to the sudden surge of traffic, sometimes permanently. Though not very consequential, since most of the important sites went online later, it shined off a single fact: Nothing could replace 4chan’s /b/. The dream of the /b/-day, of an independent Anonymous, slowly faded once the anons realized that there was no suitable substitute for 4chan.

The /i/ board would be a major player on the scene, starting out in 7chan, they would plan various raids to sites like Stickam and Tom Green’s show. During the Hal Turner raids, where 7chan got a lot of fame, it was found out that /i/ violated the TOS of the host, so it had to go. 420chan created their own /i/ board and housed the /i/nsurgency for a while. The sites died, and there was no invasion board for a while, until they returned. However this new iteration did not last long, due to protests from a new wave of users, borne out of Project Chanology achieving mainstream, recognition. Denominated protestfags or moralfags, they hate the idea of Internet raids because it would demonize Anonymous’s standing in the media. This culminated with /i/ DDOSing themselves and flooding 420 with cute things like rabbit and otters in what was denominated the rabbit raid.

Later the /i/nsurgency would take place in minor chans like Freechan, 69chan, 711chan and 888chan, and IRC networks, such as Lulznet, Raidchan and Partyvan.org. During the Caturday Nap 711chan would enjoy a period of high traffic, and during the Subeta raids 420chan and 711

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merged their /i/s. Months later they would split, with a very weakened 711chan retaining the board. Freechan would slowly replace the site as HQ of the insurgency, but the site died during October 2008. There won’t be any major boards hosting any /i/ from then on. Ultimately, these sites would die off due to various problems, with the last remaining /i/ on the net, as of February 2013, being 888chan’s.

Many raids and chan wars happened, 2007 saw the BRB, compromised incident, where moot had his domain account stolen and the Caturday Nap, where Lulznet DDOS’d 4chan, unleashing a chain reaction that would end with all the mayor sites dead or offline. In 2008 the Chanopocalypse happened, where Raidchan DDOS’d everyone out of existence, the Subeta raids, where 420 leads the charge to take back a stolen meme, and many other attacks and problems, such as AT&T blocking 4chan’s img server due to AnonTalk DDOS.

The period did not truly end up until late 2009, by that time most of the *chans died or diminished, becoming barely active, with 4chan returning as the sole place for anonymous imageboard culture, which was, however, changing drastically.

The Newfag Summer: (Jul 2007)

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With an ever increasing growth, and raids made by the different /b/s and /i/s during the years, like the Hal Turner and Tom Green raids, ended up with a Fox News coverage (and a minor G4 one) of Anonymous and 4chan. With Fox News being Fox News, it was terribly inaccurate and sensationalistic. It coined the famous terms Hackers on Steroids and Internet Hate Machine, gleefully adopted by /b/, among many other memes that sprang from it. This culminated in a massive surge of newcomers during the American summer. This time, quality of content dropped massively, many users came from notoriously annoying sites such as AnimeZuki and Gaia Online. Even more came in expecting to find a hacker paradise. The median age lowered, going underage. Many aspects of 4chan culture, like GETs, completely disintegrated. The Raid culture was severely distorted from coordinated raids to simple zerg rushes of spam and memes, losing an important part of their effectiveness. Though there was a considerable amount of high-quality content in a self-fulfilling cycle, the sheer number of pointless threads, repost and spam made /b/ the literal definition of having to swim though an ocean of shit, just to find the diamonds that glitter.

This upheaval of new users led many other *chans to despise /b/ even further, and began to take precautions to keep them out of their forums, like entering partyhard mode every time /b/ or 4chan was down, commonly used by 7chan with the infamous partyhard.css and 420 with the rave mode.

Not long before this, increased migration to and from 4chan had pushed its culture memes into the forefront of internet fame. Something Awful users emulating 4chan's Caturday sparked an observer to create / can haz cheezburger, which began, and later monetized, the meme industry outside of 4chan. On the fledging site Youtube, 4chan users popularized Tay Zonday's Chocolate Rain and created an adaptation of the Duckroll for video, known as the Rickroll. The Rickroll would later become the most definitive meme of the era. 4chan trolls spread across the internet to cause more rage. Newfags come in expecting a hacker playground, and after the Fox News report on

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Anonymous, 4chan's /b/ eventually regains a strong raid mentality that the mods have given up stopping.

The rise of the meme industry produced unwanted interest in the site that created it all. The social problems of population growth, mainstream appeal, and problematic subcultures reached its greatest crescendo during the newfag summer, and it is seen by many users as 4chan's Eternal September.

The Dark Age of 4chan (Aug 2007- Dec 2010)

Known by some as the true Golden Age of 4chan, but this time, the term "Golden Age" does not refer to a lost time of actually funny and original content, or any sense of Victorian elegance, but to a time where 4chan became the center of the Internet, and even popular culture in the same manner as 2channel in Japan.

Project Chanology

On January 2008, a well-known video of Tom Cruise going crazy on a Scientology training video was censored on Youtube by the Church of Scientology. A raid thread was immediately posted on Achan's /b/, detailing the other illegal and immoral acts that the group has pulled off. With near- unanimous support, this thread began a massive operation by Anonymous to rid the world of the scourge of Scientology once and for all, through DDoS and protest. The coming events came to be known as Project Chanology, resulting in major victories over Scientologists. On January 28, Mark Bunker made a video congratulating anonymous on its fight against scientology but suggested them it would be more efficient to stage actual, IRL protests. Later known as the Wise Beard Man, he would come to be the only man on the history of the Internet who actually managed to control the chaotic monster that was /b/. The use of large IRL protests, and mass media coverage due to these protests brought forth another massive wave of new users to 4chan, perhaps even dwarfing the original newfag summer. A direct consequence of it, it could be even considered a second newfag summer in and on itself. It was regarded by many to be the time 4chan hit rock bottom. They were proven wrong.

As time went on, the initial enthusiasm for the raid wore off, and participants of Project Chanology realized that 4chan was not the best place for organized assault. There was a moral conflict between the “new anonymous” — Whose introduction to imageboards began with Chanology, they used a different dressing method to raid, with IRL protest and donning Guy Fawkes masks — and the old anonymous, more specifically, the /i/nsurgents. The former put his cause of action at the possibility of using the Internet for doing good, protesting other’s intention to raid lolcows and people who didn’t entirely deserve it, whilst the latter still held the old values of doing it for the lulz and dubbed anyone who would try to get in their way a moralfag. These people temporarily left 4chan for separate sites, like 711chan, various IRC channels, and Why We Protest. The split established Anonymous as a powerful force for "hacktivism", independent of 4chan. Though still regarded as the Internet Hate Machine, anonymous is seen showing better lights for the first time.

This period was probably the closest 4chan has ever been to being shut down permanently. The economic crisis made sure that moot couldn’t pay the server bills, and put him in debt. There were running rumors claiming that 4chan had a total of 20000 dollars in debt, it was later confirmed ina newspost in 2012. He also put forth actual pornographic ads, something he absolutely hates, in a desperate move to alleviate the costs of maintaining 4chan. He grew increasingly disconnected

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with the site, and sometimes spouted some lines that implied that he hated 4chan, or at least /b/, during those times.

By the end of 2008, Project Chanology has long faded with only a few stalwart holdouts, and the majority of Anonymous re-assimilates into 4chan within a few months.

The Boxxy civil war

On January 7, 2009, a year-old video from a strangely tantalizing teenager named Boxxy came to the full attention of /b/, which in turn incited a major civil war between Boxxy lovers and Boxxy haters. Normal users, tired of both sides, took down the entire site in a major DDoS, and mods to ban all Boxxy-related posts. Not long after, a group of namefags calling themselves the "Center for Boxxy Control and Restriction" (CBCR) hacked into Boxxy's account and held her IRL information hostage. Their work was undermined by their radical tendencies, and support eventually broke down.

The year is characterized by the rise of Reddit, a major content aggregator that rose to power after the Digg Revolt, when a revamped hub led to an exodus from the site. Reddit's mainstream popularity and strong cultural influence from 4chan created a unique relationship between the two.

The anonymous split and the rise of hacktivism

With 4chan and /b/ delighting in their own decadence, there was little actual action or reaction from the community. The last important action that came from 4chan’s anonymous was February 2010’s Operation Titstorm, the culmination of a series of bad vibes between the Internet and the Australian government that attempts to censor it, taking its origins from Operation Didgeridie.

From then on, almost all actions performed against any organization or government that attempted against free speech, piracy or relevant matter would suffer attacks made by hacktivist groups, all claiming to be part of anonymous. With Operation Payback, 4chan would slowly fade out from being the main cause of most internet warfare, with various groups taking the spotlight. Since 4chan was constantly filled with spam, uninteresting threads and trolls the media ended up separating the site from anonymous entirely. The new hacktivist anonymous would proceed to attack government sites, Visa, MasterCard in retaliation to the attempts of censorship during Operation Payback and Wikileaks’s loss of funding during Operation Avenge Assange.

Achan wasn’t completely inactive, /b/ raided Jessi Slaughter, an underage camwhore with a serious case of unwarranted self-importance, to the point where his own father discovered her and threw a shitstorm over it, sparking the YOU DUN GOOFED meme. The situation escalated to the point where Jessi and his family were interviewed at Good Morning America! /b/’s CSS was hacked to show a more safe for work front page, and everyone was exited, since most raiders where /b/tards.

This year is marked as a turning point on 4chan culture. /b/’s dark age culture, that of hostility, pointlessness and cancer, slowly began to fade out due to tiredness. The other boards, smaller in size compared to the giant, began to see a steady amount of grow in terms of userbase. This would make a trend that would continue for a few years, with the rest of the site slowly gaining importance as /b/ faded from the face of the Internet.

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Intermission — The Death of Internet culture and the rise of social media (Jan 2011 —Jan 2012)

The turn of the decade marked a vast change on the Internet. More and more memes and events were broadcasted by the old media. The Internet began to reach new corners, especially with new and more efficient Smarthphones and Apple products. Now that everyone is connected, the Internet became truly mainstream, with (Relatively) new faces such as Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and Facebook becoming massively popular, attracting most of the youth. The old sites like Newgrounds, YTMND, Something Awful and Fark now pale in comparison to them. 4chan, however, didn’t. This is due the fact that 4chan’s system never had any basis for a truly solid culture, making the site flow along the direction the Internet as a whole goes. Every three years or so, the userbase of 4chan would be completely unrecognizable from what it was before.

The site / can haz cheezburger, which managed to successfully monetize meme culture, spawned a series of content aggregators with a simple model, which became notoriously popular with the rise and consolidation of the social site Reddit, a site that could be considered a “moderate” 4chan. These sites became known mostly for utilizing and popularizing the rage comic format, along with many of the rage faces and trollface variants that existed. The popularity of said comics became massive, spreading to Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and even real life, with many pieces of merchandise based off them. This prompted a third wave of new users curious about the source of all those memes, probably reading about them on Reddit or Cheezburger’s Knowyourmeme. Unlike what /b/ was used to, these user were more moderated, a part of the “Mainstream”, with little semblance or knowledge of Internet culture. They arrived at the same time the popularity of the worst aspects of 4chan’s Dark Age began to die. On the bad side, the site became flooded with NORP teens, prompting a considerable increase of moralfags in /b/. Meme culture kept evolving on content aggregators like 9Gag and Reddit, distortions which 4chan has grown to hate, especially anything coming from Reddit, essentially making it the new Gaia Online.

This year also saw a growing concern with social justice in sites like Tumblr, Reddit and Something Awful, but apparently it’s most vocal defenders don’t what how what social justice even means. According to sources from /q/, the movement had its origins on Something Awful and it extended to Reddit and Tumblr, focusing primarily on /r/ShitRedditSays. This is quite sad, given that SA is the literal father of western internet culture. Given that Tumblr became the capital of all kinds of fandoms, 4chan’s fandom-dedicated board’s /co/ and /tv/ suffered a great increase of Tumblr users, with all that it implicates. By 2012 /co/ was overpopulated by Tumblr users, forgetting many aspects of common 4chan culture. ? This saw a massive rise in the numbers of race or feminism related threads, and many series-specific generals acting and looking like Tumblr.

The Silver Age of 4chan (Feb 2012 -Sep 2012)

The advent of SOPA and PIPA”’ led most important sites of the Internet to react in some way to it. Anonymous was not excluded, and it culminated with massive protests, a black-out were even

” An example: 4chan has always had an example of black comedy towards black people, a “lol, niggers” attitude which, on its core, wasn’t really racist*. Many /co/ users completely forget about it and some even lash out against it. *This doesn’t mean there’s no racism on 4chan, but almost all of it is properly contained and trolled on /pol/

'° The US Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate’s Protect Intellectual Property act.

Edition 1.0.0 — 13 of May, 2013

sites like wikipedia participated in for a day, and DDOS attacks to most US government sites. The law was eventually rejected, but another, weaker version was proposed, and a similar one was also projected in the European Union. To this day most governments and organizations continue to attempt to censor and control the Internet, but the hacktivist anonymous still puts up some fight.

In February, Valentine’s day, moot announces plans to add up to 15 boards and manage the rising brony problem that was created from the new My Little Pony series. Three days later he adds /mlp/ - My little Pony. This would be the first move a series of actions that would, after six years of spam, chaos and reposts, ameliorate the situation of /b/ and 4chan as a whole. moot would later reinstitute forced anon on /b/, open /q/ - 4chan Discussion, make several enhancements to the source code, implement inline plug-ins, open a sticky to discourage porn, rate me, and whatever spam threads were left, reopened the janitor applications and reactivated the mod machine. After many years without gaining any money other than ads revenue, because moot hates the idea of receiving without giving (If you know what | mean), he add adds the 4chan pass under suggestion from /q/, allowing people to bypass reCAPTCHA by paying 20 dollars. Though not without its problems, many semi-popular boards suffer from spam due to various events that destabilized them (Andrew W.K. and Deadmau5 posting on /mu/, the Olympics on /sp/, etc) Yet, for the first time in years, the quality of /b/ has returned to pre-newfag summer levels, with new OC slowly making its way through the sea of threads. CP threads are no more, spam is almost inexistent, and the oldest users seem to be returning. However this small period of peace soon proved to be little more than an ephemeral illusion.

The Facebook Age and the “death” of /b/ (Sep 2012 — Present)

With the issue of bronies quelled, and new coder desuwa working constantly on the inline extension, among other ideas such as an inline catalog, the last part of 2012 proved to be one of improvements. The end of the year saw an even higher rise of NORP users on the site, to the point that posting old memes and catchphrases would shock /b/ as if it was the first time they were ever posted. Since one of the tenets of /b/ was that their aggressiveness would often create content or at least humorous threads, the rising amount of NORPs reduced /b/ to become more or less an anonymous Facebook, divided between porn threads and “X decides what | write”. Before, all users have to do was to be patient and eventually good threads would arise. Nowadays that idea seems to be a distant possibility.

By the end of 2012, it became an apparent fact that /b/ would not get better, the influx of what could be deemed as “Facebook users”, with an age median of 16 to 22, and a very simple-minded way of posting, forced the board into meaningless activities. Even during the days of the dark age, with /b/ at its worst, there was at least some degree of activity in any form — Be it raids, OC, discussion or even cancer — Nowadays the most important thing /b/ does are “prove you are an oldfags” threads”’. Agonizing since 2010, it was time to finally regard /b/ as a dead board.

The advent of 2013 also saw a sharp rise with issues regarding the board /pol/. /pol/ was created to re-contain a small band of white supremacists taking residence on boards like /int/ and /k/. They were originally from /new/ - News, a board that housed a majority of white supremacists,

'' However /b/ still gets thing done from time to time. #baldforbieber was their idea, and so was their sequel, #cutforbieber. However cutforbieber had it’s reins took over by the GNAA because of /b/’s lack of activity.

Edition 1.0.0 — 13 of May, 2013

allegedly because 4chan once raided Stormfront, making a few of its users aware of the site’s anonymous appeal. They concluded they could recruit new members for their cause by taking residence there and spreading their message. Nobody expected what would happen next.

The general perception of /pol/ was as a quarantine board disguised as a politics board. In due aspect, most users of the site regarded /pol/ as a shithole. This board came to be notorious in the Internet communities, prompting various sites’? with a tendency to Social Justice to go on a crusade against the board’s perceived white supremacist. Since /pol/ is constantly being showered with spam, the residents didn’t even notice nor care, after all to them it was just more entertainment. All this just increased the popularity of the JIDF*? meme. However the repercussions of having both groups chimping out on each other like Hatfields and McCoys would be felt site-wide, with various boards having a team of stormfags appearing whenever race or politics were mentioned, and other boards being constantly derailed by complaining feminists and liberals. /co/ would be the place the issue was felt the most, with both groups clashing and completely derailing threads.

moot and the moderation team, and most of 4chan’s userbase originally though the JIDF raids were nothing but the stormfags being idiots and reacting to everyone hating them™. Eventually, after a series of threads on /q/” people began to suspect that there were actual people behind the raids. Investigation followed, more info came out, with users from /pol/ compiling and links and evidence towards the possibility of organized raids against the thread. Finally, a mod took note of all the information and vowed to direct it to moot.

Ironically, the JIDF/SRS (Or whoever it was) also contributed to solving the issue: Using a tactic to make the users of /q/ believe that /pol/ was a shithole (With his threads being derailed by stormfags all the time) He eventually compiled a multiple-posts-long essay”° detailing all the links and information regarding the possibility of a Stormfront awareness group, who dedicated themselves to spread their agenda via victimization of the white people, visiting 4chan to spam their ideals there. Their relation to 4chan is somewhat vague, arising from the fact that Stormfront’s pseudo-ideology is one of the most closed-minded and still believes 4chan is out to get them like years ago, but there’s still the fact that whenever you mention race on the site a small band of people will start to drop pseudo studies about why black people is inferior.

In the end, all this did nothing but raise awareness that /pol/ was being on a constant onslaught by not one but two different groups. In the end, after all intents and purposes, /pol/ was the real victim of conflict.

'? Something Awful, that over time became the (Supposed) bastion of Social Justice, a couple from Reddit’s /r/ShitRedditSays, Tumblr’s Feminists and Social Justice Activists, and various independent people, ranging from white supremacist haters to offended transsexuals.

'S The Jewish Internet Defense Force. It was already notorious before this happened for being the Jewish equivalent of Stormfront.

'* Given its status as a quarantine board, most users believe /pol/ to be completely inhabited by white supremacists. In fact, /pol/ actually tends to discuss politics, but with a tongue-in-cheek or dark humour manner. In many ways this reminds of the /b/ of old, with trolls trolling trolls, catchphrases and meme flying around constantly and people acting silly for the sake of it.

'S http://archive.foolz.us/q/thread/348577/

'’The notorious SRS Stormfront copypasta: http://archive.foolz.us/q/thread/431787/

Edition 1.0.0 — 13 of May, 2013

Timelines:

Wiki timeline.

Pre-History

1996 - Aman named Masayuki Shiba creates a BBS called Ayashii Warudo (Strange/Suspicious World). Users are anonymous. Warez and cp are posted, and there is a “gesu” (scum) board where a group of the same name discussed and conducted website hackings and invasions. Many similar BBSes are formed, collectively called Nanashi Warudo (Nameless World), and they develop a culture based on memes. Ayashii World functions as the hubsite of Nanashi World in a similar way to how 4chan would later function as the hubsite of Anonymous. AW's popularity increases exponentially.