/newspaper/ - 8chan Newspaper Bunbunmaru

4chan
The early days:
>From world2ch:
(Various points of view from players of the time, and some of the very first screw ups and downtimes)
>Day Zero - From SA
Unfortunately, moot's original post was edited in '07 and lost forever. It really was the thing I wanted to quote here and went to a whole lot of trouble for nothing. Fuck, after dealing with the no-frills world of 2chan/4chan/4-ch all the time, it's difficult to remember how clunky and stupid [SA's shit homebrew modified] vBulletin is. For anyone that gives a fuck, the first post was 30 September 2003 21:21. If someone saved it, I'd love to have it.
Some interesting shit from the thread that day includes the following:
>thatdog wrote: p.s. world2ch sux
>Nana-C wrote: I'd figure the best people to handle an english 2channel/futaba board would be actual english webmasters, instead of an underage, clueless webmaster from Japan with almost no english comprehension (and, as a result, a lack of communication to what the english majority wants in a BBS… *ahemworld2chahem*).
>Oh, now I remember the reason we were bitter!
>Lazy Dog wrote: Ah shit, looks like I'm going to have to mosey on over from world2ch…
>Gonna miss that bastard golgolmois, though.
>EDIT: Forget it, 4ch is 2chLITE. world2ch UBER ALLES.
>moot wrote:4chan.net is up now. Thanks to [NPH]'s hard work we no longer have my four lined half ass page up!
>Note: Load times will be slow around 12AM-2AM I believe, this is when the server does tarball backups.
>mazfurr wrote: Yeah, what was the point of 4chan anyway when we've got world2ch?

(17/10/2003 15:28)
moot responded:
>The current plan is to get a new, dedicated server. I've already started talks with two people about getting a server online, one whom I know is trusted alot.
>PETER PAYNE–MY FRIEND IN JAPAN contacted me, and didn't check it out, he seems… interested though. The only backup I have is one of /c/'s pictures (old), but I may be able to grab one out of the midnight tarball.
>It'll take a few weeks, but I'll be damned if I let the dream die in fifteen fucking days. PayPal is the same as my regular mailing address, moot@raspberryheaven. Thanks to any that have the cash to donate, anything helps.
>My friend in Japan is the J-list guy. He'd do something stupid immediately. We're dead for almost two days now. Imagine that shit happening now. The Internet would burn to the goddamned ground without it

(18/10/2003 12:50)
>MY FRIEND IN JAPAN said:
>Okay. Honestly, nothing on 2chan.com looks like something we'd be interested in advertising on. So I don't think we'll be able to help you.
moot responded:
>MY FRIEND IN JAPAN is worthless :(
>This was about the 300th stupid thing that happened to 4chan in the course of little over two weeks…
moot said:
>SERVER ACQUIRED.
4 days of downtime.
13 days later on 29 October, it was back online. Follow the money trail and you should realize there was significant out-of-pocket cost, donations aside (and there was about to be trouble with that too). It had to be plainly obvious by this point though that 4chan was going to be a really big deal and perhaps worth the effort.
moot said:
>handyball was reading the wrong log, the entire site has done over 7GB in less than a day :(

12.17GB, what the fuck?
In the very earliest days, the bulk of traffic came from Japan. They posted very little but sucked up a lot of bandwidth. Oh, and then this happened on 1 November 2003:

(1/11/2003)
moot said:
Peter Payne declines, more details on your local news at 11.

The unthinkable is considered on 2 November 2003:
>Man-Eating Cow said:
>I am more than willing to go for a subscription-based access system, and I think that is what it will come to. But it might be a good idea to restrict the access to non-.jp domains to see how that affects the usage. I mean, if a subscription system is implemented after all, there will hardly be any .jp users anyway, unless Paypal works in Japan.
Of course we all know in the end how that went down. Tons of traffic and no financing would be the story for the next couple of years.

Early Content

Very early on all content was imported from Japan or copied from SA. The waha! girl (Suzuran) in particular was very briefly popular (through about early 2005?). There was a lot of hentai at first. With all the oppressed masses migrating over from SA, they were allowed to breathe free for the first time and did they ever.

Not even moot knew about tripcodes so no one used them. People from ADTRW would use a name. Japanese continued to use Anonymous. Those from between the words either went tripped or not at all (hell, we saw Nameless enough to know that's how it went). In fact, there was quite a bit of confusion by the proliferation of the soon-to-be much-loved Anonymous and it confused Westerners. Again, it's just my opinion, but I think the SA crew was fed up with the nonsense over there and responded with an outburst of anonymity and assholery. According to my research and recollection, loli was posted on the first day. That shit would get you banned instantly on SA and yet on 4chan it flourished. The Japanese posters that the others seem to show so much interest on them didn't really seem to be that influential or numerous to me. I do recall a couple instances of the usual Korea hate that shows up anywhere a Japanese person is allowed to speak. Later (the 16 October fiasco), the site was pretty much inaccessible.

In these extremely early times, the board was not heavily populated. For instance, there was a time when /b/ moved so slow that we used to make threads to essentially host pictures we were talking about in IRC (does anyone use that shit anymore?). It was probably quite confusing for those viewing it without the common frame of reference and you'd even get other jerks adding in other pictures like they were trying to play along. Sometimes the thread would be there the next night. That's how slow it was, no joke.

On its precursors:


ADTRW

I don’t recall moot being a user of any particular note on ADTRW but then again, it was mostly talk about boring series that only the hardest of hardcore nerds would go out of their way to watch. ADTRW was mostly boring except for the2chan and Azumanga Daioh threads. In addition jerks from ADTRW, jerks from FYAD also contributed heavily to the early era of 4chan (whether they want to admit it or not). ADTRW ran an operation called Raspberry Heaven (which references Azumanga Daioh) which was involved in manga translation (and fansubbing? I forget). They had their own forums apart from the greater SA and if I recall correctly, there were some people involved in RH that had nothing to do with SA (for one of the many reasons stated above).

ADTRW is notable for being one of the less-lame anime forums out there. The users aren't nearly as pathetic as they tend to be elsewhere and the Japan love not nearly as strong. A lot of the fandom is tongue-in-cheek and it tends to filter out good series quite well where others tend to think anything from Japan is of equal merit. I will thank it for exposing me to Azumanga Daioh which I hate to admit I like. Or at least it was. I don't really know the current situation.

Inherited Content

A lot of content migrated over from SA in the early days. In particular, the phrase (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST) is not something you see on futaba, but was used (extensively) on SA and added into 4chan's code. The phrase kill it with fire! is also from there and was usually in regards to spiders over there, which they all had a fear of some reason. That and the ocean (yeah, it's dumb). Truncating a sentence like: Oh shi also seems to have come from there.

The whole concept of an image macro, if not born there, was at least refined at SA. A lot of macros that are reposted on 4chan to this day are older than the site itself and completely ripped off from the SA forums. The modern memegenerator content is a whole new “refinement”…

During the early days, there was a thread on SA which they made demotivational posters. The concept was obviously taken to extremes at 4chan. This may in fact have been 2004-2005, so never mind.

2chan and 2ch (world2ch):

2chan remains a mystery. What the hell they're up to over there is a confusing mess much as we must seem to them.

If there is anything to say about them, it would be that they seem far more capable of staying on topic. Threads go places. Girls in swimsuits? There will be 100 replies all on-topic. I can only chalk this up to the homogenous nature of Japanese culture which is always seeking in every way to conform as hard as possible, usually well past the breaking point and into the depths of severe mental illness.

At the time, aside from Suzuran they were also obsessed with this pencil girl thing. She was a shared artwork, basically. Anyone could add to her weird little story. It was something about her and her pet seal. I never got a straight story on what the hell this was supposed to be, but here's a sample:

In Japan there is basically one forum for all purposes and it is 2-channel. It's enormous, anonymous, and text-only (aside from the porn ads). There are hundreds of different boards on all kinds of topics. You can spend days getting lost in it…
As far as I remember, it was originally a hastily written message board for a television channel web site in the mid-1990s but quickly grew out of control. The site was then moved and disassociated with the network and became its own entity. It developed a culture all its own and now reigns supreme as the place to be online. It is largely anonymous.

Things that have sprung out of it include a few whistle blower scandals and the movie Densha Otoko.

Miscellaneous:



06/2004 news post about the fourth death (AKA not paying the server) of 4chan:

>FUN STATS (about 5-6 months of logs):
>Successful server requests 631,705,147 Requests
>Successful requests in last 7 days 27,337,963 Requests
>Successful requests for pages 57,772,752 Requests for pages
>Successful requests for pages in last 7 days 2,723,440 Requests for pages
>Distinct hosts served 1,076,836 Hosts (note: only for img.4chan)
>Distinct hosts served in last 7 days 70,949 Hosts (note: only for img.4chan)
>Total data transferred 13.191 TB (note: because the cgi.4chan domain is newer, it slightly threw off this number)
>Total data transferred in last 7 days 536.813 GB (note: off due to GNAA flood, usually ~600GB+)


11/2004 news post about bandwidth usage:

>4chan pushes roughly 6.3TB of data/month. That is almost double what we we did in the previous incarnation of 4chan, and this number will double again come December.
>On an off-day the site gets over 32,000 unique hits from users all over the world (we're talking Finland, Singapore, Italy, and a host of others here people).
>Running 4chan for a full year will cost roughly $7,200.


Early Deaths:

First death – 2003, October 16 - 29– Crashed for two days due to a massive flood of Japanese users, once 2chan noticed 4chan. Apis later decided to kick him out of hosting, he spent the next two days looking for other options (Including asking Peter Payne, owner of the j-List) After talking about it on SA (And RH?) Moot moved hosting from Apis to United Colo (Apex?). He then fixed many problems on the code (Mainly a bug that caused a huge load of data to be transferred - That was the reason moot was kicked from Apis.

Second death–2003, November 20 - 21 – Moot get’s kicked off his hosting, reformats the servers to RH9. New hosting is GoDaddy.

Third death – 2004, February 11 - 16 – SA user nubdestroyer emails GoDaddy, then 4chan.net’s owner and succeeds in asking to take it down. GoDaddy suspends 4chan.net for three days without moot realizing. He then registers 4chan.org.

Fourth death – 2004, June 20 - August 07 – Among other things, several donations, fundraisers, begging the users to contribute, lack of quality staff and coders, moot finally grows pissed. Pissed and unable to pay for hosting.
Fortunately, some users and members of the staff contact him to begin again, this time with everything more or less planned. Thus, the team is born.

Suspected deaths:

2004 January 03: Either the CP flood or inability to pay.

2005 July 01: Not a real death. But some bizarre sabotage attempt to close 4chan by telling that moot left the project and 4chan would cease operations soon. Many boards were closed by a mod but ultimately the site didn’t die. Moot posted a very angry newspost the next day. I feel sorry for Majnen

Genesis
(Oct 2003 –Apr 2004)

4chan 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 – 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 4chan 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.

4chan'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.

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/.

4chan'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 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, 2ch.ru, 420chan, 888chan, AnonIB, 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 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 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 4chan'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 in a 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 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.

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 I 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 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 I 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 I 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, 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.

Dates of board additions:

2003
October 1
/b/ - random

October 2
/h/ - Hentai

October 6
/c/ - Anime/Cute
/d/ - Hentai/Alternative
/w/ - Wallpapers/Anime
/y/ - Yaoi
/i/ - oekaki BBS board

October 9
/g/ - Guro
/s/ - Sexy Beautiful Women

November 8
/a/ - Anime
/l/ - Lolikon

December 16
/t/ - Torrents

December 29
/l/ - Lolikon is taken down due to CP

2004

January 8
/l/ - Lolikon returns
/r/ - Requests formed

January 25
/t/ removed

February 14
4chan.net is suspended; 4chan.org is "temporary" home

February 19
/t/ - Torrents returns,
/f/ - Flash founded
cgi.4chan.org hosts /f/

March 1
/q/ - Questions

March 28
4chan.org is made permanent
/g/ - Guro removed

September 8
/k/ (Weapons),
/o/ (Auto)
/sm/ (Shota/Male)
"/b/ is severely lacking in quality…contribute better"

October 9
/v/ - Video Games
/n/ - Trains is deleted
/z/ created

October 31
/l/ (Lolikon) and /sm/ (Shotakon) are deleted due to threats of legal action.

November 5
moot registers not4chan.org and moves /l/ and /sm/ there instead

November 15
/g/ (Guro) is deleted

November 1
/z/ was deleted

2005

January 19
/e/ (Ecchi)
/g/ (Technology)
/n/ (Nature & Wildlife)

January 27
/ic/ (Artwork/Critique)
/p/ (Photography)
/x/ (General Photo).
Although there was already a /p/ board for photography before, it is the replacement, with new features (such as EXIF data).

February 26
/gif/ (Animated GIF)
/hr/ (High Resolution)
/wg/ (Wallpapers/General)

2006

February 6
/5/ is deleted

April 6
/co/ (Comics & Cartoons)
/po/ (Papercraft & Origami)
/sp/ (Sports)
Two days later
/cgl/ (Cosplay & EGL)
/ck/ (Food & Cooking)
/mu/ (Music)
/n/ (News)
/tv/ (Television)
(I am assuming /m/, /an/, and /cm/ are up at this time also)

August 4
/con/ - Conventions, so people could discuss the ongoing Otakon 2006. It was deleted soon after it ended.

October 1
4chan faggot hat day (3 years, baby!)

2007

January 9
moot allows all of the trial boards created on April 6, 2006 to become full boards, except for /sp/ (Sports), which is deleted.

February 15
/tg/ (Traditional Games)
/x/ (Paranormal), created due to the popularity of 7chan's /x/ board.

September
/rs/ - Rapidshares

October 1
4chan faggot hat day again. Fun times. (FOUR CHAN FOUR YEARS)

2008

February 19
/fa/ - Fashion
/fit/ - Health & Fitness
/hc/ - Hardcore
/n/ - becomes Transportation
/sp/ - Sports
/toy/ - Toys
/trv/ - Travel
/jp/ - Japan/General
/r9k/ - ROBOT9000

By July 6, /ib/ and /ip/ were merged back into /i/ - Oekaki

2010

January 25
/adv/ - Advice
/lit/ - Literature
/new/ - News is also brought back
/int/ - International
/sci/ - Science & Math
/3/ - 3DCG is brought back

2011
January 17
Moot deletes /r9k/ and /new/

November 9
/new/ is revived by accident

November 10
/r9k/ is brought back as ROBOT9001
/pol/ - Politically Incorrect, meant as a quarantine board for /new/ stormfags (Replacing /new/)
/hc/ - Hardcore Is also brought back
/diy/ - Do It Yourself.

2012

February
Somewhere around this month moot add /hm/ - Handsome Men

February 17
/mlp/ - My Little Pony is created, to contain the fandom

August 8
/q/ - 4chan Discussion

2013

March 18
/asp/ - Alternative Sports
/gd/ - Graphic Design
/lgbt/ - Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender
/out/ - Outdoors
/vr/ - Retro Games
All boards added on trial.

April 1, 2013
/s4s/ - Shit4chanSays



Boards without dates:
/dis/ - Discussion, /sug/ - Suggestion, /hm/ - Handsome Men, /fk/ - For Kidz, /ib/ - Oekaki/Random, /ip/ - Oekaki/Proffesional, /rs/ - Rapidshares, /m/ - Mecha, /an/ - Animals and Nature, /cm/ - Cute/male and /tl/ - Torrents/loli, /yg/ - ¿?.


Notes:
The following boards shared letters:
/g/ - Guro, Technology
/n/ - Trains, Nature & Wildlife, News, Transportation
/p/ - Photo, Photography
/x/ - General Photo, Paranormal
/q/ - Questions, 4chan Discussion

Secret and legendary boards:
/z/ - ¿¿??
/5/ - 5
/fk/ - For Kidz
/n/ - TRAIN
/yg/ - Yogurt?

Staff:
Actual:
moot - Christopher Poole - Admin, owner of 4chan LLC, humble and stubborn to the point of being annoying.
Mr. VacBob (aka MVB, Alexander Strange) - Coder, writer of 4chan extensions, maintains the 4chan servers and world4ch. Been around since 2006.
KING JAFFE JOFFER - Coder, translated the 4chan Firefox extension to Google Chrome, and refracted the entirety of 4chan’s HTML5 code.
Desuwa - Maxime Youdine - Coder, “JavaScript Wizard”, creator of Yotsuba Catalog, and a helping hand in the HTML5 reworks. He also added most features of the extensions into the main page and coded the 4chan API, and recently created an inline 4chan catalog.
ALTERNATIVE (AKA DAVE and buttly) – Moderator, he was the one who suggested the creation of /tg/., #4chan OP
Man of Wax - Coder? He was around since 4chan’s fifth revival, In charge of donations during that period.
Kate - Maintains the 4chan servers.
Pixel Hotness (AKA pixel)
Zanok
kami`
Dongfix (AKA Enumeric) - Imgbear.com – Coder, he has written many scripts for the mods and janitors. #4chan OP
Zephro
Invisibro – Moderator. Has a tendency to ban for “inane” comments (Usually disliked by the people). W.T. Snacks 2.0?
I_AM_ABIB - Previously a Janitor, promoted to mod during ’09. Posts on /a/ from time to time.
elShoggotho
l3reak

Former staff:
(Also an incomplete list)
Allyson
Lec
Brian “Okk” Raddatz - #rasberryheaven goon - http://darksquid.org/
JDigital - JohnnyDigital - http://www.jonnydigital.com/
FrankStallone (AKA dr.wiii) – Mod that retired during early 2010
DocEvil !dREVLWr6V. – A mod.
Mr.Spooky - Ex-mod who spawned the catchphrases "I've never seen so many ingrates" and "You'll receive nothing from me." after a rant regarding donations.
Anonymous-san – Josh (Popularly known as modcat) - #rasberryheaven, goon – Mod since pretty much the beginnings on 4chan, supposedly quitted around April 25, 2012 because he was trying to contact a girl his circle of friends (Which happens to include moot) (Or a girl from /soc/, sources vary a lot) and asked for advice. He then used the warn function to give his contact info to female posters who were helping, but one flipped her shit out fear of being banned, and another ratted him out with moot. Some say that he had his mod status actually taken by moot right after he asked for the removal, but moot was already planning to anyways. Other’s say he later asked mod to have his mod status back, but moot is the hero 4chan deserves but not the one it needs and denied it.
Saber
rabidkimba
magz
5 - Had his own secret board dedicated to pictures of him…or so the legend tells. According to a Github meme glossary, a Midnight Snacks podcast thread stickied was by Snacks featuring him in the talk, the thread was unstickied, supposedly by him or moot, and then re-stickied. Because of this people believed a mod war was raging and shouted the meme BRING BACK SNACKS. Jokingly, both users called the show “Radio free 4chan” for the night. Rumors are this cost 5 his mod status.
coda – Coder during 2006, still around by 2008
Xennon - Admin for one day because of a GET. Supposedly leaked the logs where Snacks was fired by moot. Woman?
Soviet Russia - Famous tripfag, made mod in the legendary board /z/ and attention-whored it to death alongside his brother.
Shut - #rasberryheaven goon - Coded around by the time W.T. Snacks was fired (2005) active as far back as 06/2004 and as late as 2007. He maintained the devblog.
DamageInc – Coded the original 4chan Firefox extension around 08/2004
Jibaku – Member of the staff during 4chan’s fifth revival.
Ezzi – Active around 08/2004. Sysadmin?
Majnen – Part of “the team”, made an unauthorized news post about donations on July first, 2005 telling that moot left the project and 4chan would cease operations, followed the closure of a number of boards. He was probably sodomized by moot after that.
W.T. Snacks - http://cookiethievery.com/ - http://www.8chan.net/ - http://snidnightmacks.tumblr.com/ - Admin. Coder. Internet Meme. Greatest attention-whore to ever grace 4chan. Began during 4chan’s fifth revival and made a lot of vital changes to the futallaby code (Reply with an image, quoting, information about posts, being able to see the amount of hidden post in a thread, also hiding the post from a thread in the first place) Got fired on 2005 due lo laziness and moot’s lovely bad temper. Used to browse #4chan 24/7 and advertise his own radio show, Midnight Snacks, which is hosted on 88chan. It’s about mini-mixes, remixes and general electronic music. The dude seems to have a knack for it since the Soulseek days. Also a hipster.
Shii - #rasberryheaven, goon - http://www.shii.org/ - http://aya.shii.org/ ? - Almost succeeded in making the original host close 4chan due to loli. (Quite hypocritical of him). Member of world2ch (posted as Menchi), later helped moot to code the site on its beginnings by translating 0ch’s PHP (Though not flawlessly). He also got banned from Something Awful because someone faked logs and accused him of being a pedophile. He was active from 2003 to circa 2005.
Censored Vagina (AKA C_V) - #rasberryheaven, goon – Admin and a sort of bridge between the community and moot. Convinced moot to restore /I/ - Lolikon when it got taken down due to CP. Active from 2003 to 2004. He was permabanned from SA due to pedophilia.
Souldark – Active around 2004. Scottish.
LordVorbis – Active around 2004
Otaku – Active around 2004. Sysadmin? In charge of donations?
Spork – Dan Levin – Made the first 4chan IRC (irc://irc.pyoko.org/4chan – dead)
[NPH] – Helped coding around 2003, mainly the main page.
niralisse - Helped with the webmail and the fourth server around 2003.
hannibal (AKA handyball) – Admin of the second server circa 2003. Helped moot with Linux.
Mangoat – Admin of the third server. Around 2003
ichibanMuffin – Paired with moot to revive 4chan, but didn’t work (What) circa 2003.
hova – Helped traduce Futaba code with moot.
DJ Lucid (aka Lucid) - Coder, 4chan’s old sysadmin during 2003 to 2006 (And beyond?). Admin during 08/2004. Left (temporarily?) during 03/2005.
Shingo - Helped traduce the rules into Japanese Katakana around 2003.
thatdog - SA/ADTRW goon - http://www.1chan.net/ - Goon that helped coding that PHP around 2003, created the test board /r/ - TRAINZ, funded the site 1chan to satisfy his need for TRAINZ. His website also contains the original overchan, and old, outdated list of *chans. Look there for a piece of the past. Made Futaba-SQL and the beta archive, futallaby around 2003, But got in an argument with moot and dropped support during early 2004 (moot apparently has great skill when it comes to angering people who helps him)
Scuzzy – Wrote the first anti-leech code during 2003.
Unknown, mentioned and associated people:
Plesk
NICH
“Bill”
“Simon”
Peter Payne (AKA moot’s friend from Japan) - Owner of the J-list, had been in an advertising relationship with 4chan since it’s beginnings, both in the good and the bad.
Mayhem – Coded the 4chan X extension.
Notes: 2003, 2004 and 08/2004 are used less as dates and more as indicatives of the period of activity (2003: Early days, 2004: Not-so-early days, 08/2004: 4chan’s fifth revival (Also referred as “The Team”). Other dates are to be taken on face value.

Useful links:

Sources:
http://www.4chan.org/news?all Of course, the main source.
https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki - The Bibliteca Anonoma, or Bibanon is an inactive wiki project about saving information on internet culture that might otherwise disappear with time, they made a neat summary for the history of 4chan, which I took and revamped.
http://www.yswiki.org/wiki/The_Complete_History_of_4chan - Most complete wiki timeline to date I found (Which isn’t much, really). – I used others; the timeline presented here is mostly a mix and compilation of all timelines I could find
http://www.jonnydigital.com/4chan-history - Another wiki timeline. jDigital was a staff member for a while, not a lot of information.
http://s3.invisionfree.com/Project_4chan/ar/t7.htm - Board addition/removal history.
Wikis:
http://www.lurkmore.com/wiki/Main_Page - An old wiki that was once used as a general alternative to ED. Nowadays it’s mainly used as a wiki for it’s own boards dedicated to camwhores. Still gets updated with 4chan-related information from time to time. To see: GET list, tripfag list, camwhores list and some classic memes.
http://www.music.us/education/4/4chan.htm - Not a source I used in this .doc, though related. It essentially explains all the memes that were present during 2003 and 2004, both from 4chan and those imported from its parent sites. Further research shows that it was an early (Probably the earliest) article on wikipedia about 4chan.
http://shii.org/knows/4chan - Shii’s article about 4chan (WARNING: Very subjective.). (Now dead T:T)
http://world2ch.org/wiki/doku.php?id=start – A wiki/database/story told by 0037, a user of world2ch. It contains information on its precursors: 2chan/2channel (The second original textboard, first being Ayashii Warudo, and it’s emergency imageboard 2chan), world2ch (first American textboard), internet summaries, 4-ch, SA and 4chan/world4ch itself. WARNING: Very subjective.)
http://world2ch.org/dramabomb.html - Archived thread from October, 2 on world2ch. It was 4chan’s second day of life and the first Western Chan “war”.
http://www.yotsubasociety.org/node/2 - Explaining the basic of the precursors of imageboard culture, run by Jkid, known tripfag from /cgl/.
http://576chan.org/4chan/ - An awesome repository of links and info of 4chan. Very recommended.

Archives:
http://allchans.org/ - Overchan 3.0 – The most complete overchan (of the two left standing) They also include a separate menu for furry-themed boards (lol, fursecution) and textboards.
http://1ch.us/ - The other Overchan 3.0 – Dedicated to compiling almost all *chans on the net. It’s maintained by Izzy.
http://shii.org/2ch/ - Overchan 2.0 – Maintained by Shii. It died recently.
http://dramatica.org.ua/Список_іміджбордів - An Ukrainian overchan, probably the most complete ever.
http://www.1chan.net/overchan/ - The original overchan. Most sites there are dead or in the process of dying, though some names do carry some nostalgia value. It was originally maintained by thatdog.
http://meltingwax.net/text-overchan/ - Textboard overchan
http://yotsuba.penetrat.eu/ - List of all archives dedicated to 4chan.
http://swfchan.com/ - 4chan .sfw’s archive. You can find some classics here.
http://4chanarchive.org/ - Original 4chan archive: If you are interested in a blast from the past, come here for threads as early as 2006. It was discontinued some months ago.
http://chanarchive.org/ - Current version of 4chan archive.
http://macrochan.org/tagTree.php - An astonishing amount of old memes separated by tags, some of which are pretty much forgotten. We could actually bring some of these back and start a retro trend in 4chan.
http://shimmie.4chanhouse.org/index.php?q=/post/list - Same as above, but dedicated to board-tans
http://www.yotsubasociety.org/ - An attempt to do the same I’m doing here. Run by Jkid, notorious and somewhat infamuous tripfag/IRCfag from /cgl/.
The First Channel, The Second Channel and The Third Channel – Essays about Ayashii Warudo, 2channel and 2chan respectively from Yotsuba Society, although nothing new, they provide an excellent (Albeit high typo’d)
They also have an exhaustive archive of many threads of 4chan, and a wiki bent on recovering the lost articles of the legendary wikichan.

Other links:
http://www.4chan.org/comics - This one is quite obvious, but doesn’t appear on the front page. Check if you want some nostalgia.
http://web.archive.org/web/20031202172011/world2ch.net/world2ch.html - Wayback Machine’s archived site of world2ch.
http://web.archive.org/web/20031008225412/http://img.4chan.net/b/imgboard.htm - Wayback Machine’s archived site of 4chan during 2003.
http://4index.gropes.us/ - 4chan Catalog – And index showing all threads currently on the database of 4chan. Useful alternate way of browsing.
http://catalog.neet.tv/ - The same catalog, but SFW only.
http://www.chemistrydaily.com/chemistry/Imageboard#4chan – An archive 4chan’s old wikipedia page, comes along with http://www.chemistrydaily.com/chemistry/Talk:4chan and http://www.chemistrydaily.com/chemistry/Talk:4chan/delete.
http://shii.org/ - There’s a surprising amount on information on the old internet days here – Now Dead because of DMCA.
http://dejavu.org/forsta.htm - Old page about internet history from 1992 to 1999.

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3665/3055 -
Investigation done wrong. Proof that normal people don’t understand shit about internet culture

8——————-The End——————–8

That was quite a long read. It really does feel like we're living in the end times, doesn't it anon? It's like we're at the very end of the Third Age of the internet in Tolkien terms.

t. Editor in Chief

>>55
"Gentrification of the internet" is a chilling term, but it's so true.

>>65
Its frightening to thing something so tinfoil would become so relevant.

Question, are you the owner of this board and if so would you like me to make a few banners for it? Its 300x150 right?

>>69
Yes.

The proper dimensions are 300 x 100

fuck me thats a long ass, detaild post.i arrived in 09, and things certainly seem to have slowly worsened over the years, but browsing 8chan feels like a fucking breath of fresh air.

whats your opinion on 8chan, and how things have changed over time?

>/co/ - tumblr

Cancer wouldn't be so bad on that board if those sensitive pussies weren't easier to bait than fucking /k/. Fuck those roastedbread threads were nuts and the mods were slow as fuck to take them down but god forbid you have a cheesecake thread.


Interesting read.

>>179
I think moot leaving does feel like a sense of closure. I know he was always a faggot, and I still think he's a SJW hipster, but now one of the last things that's stayed with 4chan since the beginning is gone. The posters from back then have moved on, none of the culture remains and finally, even the administration is mostly newfags, so I can leave for good without feeling regret.

Nice work OP. It's extremely rare to get good sources on 4chan's history, especally the first few years.

Thanks dude, excellent stuff.
You opened my eyes on Shii, by reading his blog/site I always thought he was a cool guy that could very well be a better replacement for moot, I now know he's a humongous faggot.
Sadly, I was not around at the time he did his number, I was still a newgrounds boy.

>>219
I wouldn't be so harsh on Shii judging him by his behavior when he was still underage.

He isn't involved in chans or most internet things at all, but he's still one of the "good" editors on wikipedia that protected a lot of controversial pages from being deleted by SJWs.

Shii also had a personal wiki (which he deleted), which directly inspired the Bibliotheca Anonoma.

http://bibanon.org/everything-shii-knows/shii.org/knows/Everything_Shii_Knows.html

So we're back, and we continue his work with the help of many other anons here:

http://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki

http://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/4chan-Chronicle

>>265
Emergency edit: https://mega.co.nz/#!y4I12ZSI!n2mqaAXzrYKNYFxPbrQGMLliMoZNrkwCgx51HFXdhWw

Good history. One of the better ones I have read.

I'd add that Why We Protest was on of the first parts of anonymous to get involved in the middle east. Iran had that Green uprising and Why We Protest got very involved along with Telecomix. WWP was a haven for anons who were just tired of the moralfags debate, it hit eternal steptember pretty quickly after that though.

>>16
>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.
>newfag

Circa 2004-05, the -fag suffix was not yet in use yet. I'm citing my own memory of the boards at that time, but you can also see a hint of this with Google Trends:
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=newfag%2C%20oldfag&cmpt=q&tz=

"Lurk more" was absolutely the standard reply to any question or comment that showcased one's lack of familiarity with the SA-cum-4chan culture. Calling others "faggot" was common of course, and that's what eventually caused "fag" to become the de facto word standing in for "person".

Although the term "furfag" was used well before, its transition to a suffix was really cemented with the "newfag"/"oldfag" dichotomy because the words divided and classified users into opposing groups. The other variants emerged for describing an aspect of oneself relevant to the conversation and thus worth exposing from behind the anonymous veil. Examples include sexuality ("gayfag" or "fagfag"), location ("canadafag" or "eurofag"), waifuism ("asukafag"), board origin ("/fit/fag" - there's the preferred alternative "/fit/izen", but -fag tends to be used as well - especially by outsiders with different "home boards"), occupation or skill ("collegefag", "lawfag", "writefag"), and so on.

>>219
Shii was quite the defender of textboards and the reason forced anon happened in the first place. He just was always mad. Oh and trips were quite popular before, just check the old textboards.
And as >>225
said, he is one of the reasonable wikipedia admins.