4chan Boxxy Era
(Jan 2009 - )
By this point in time, Project Chanology has long faded with only a few stalwart holdouts, and the majority of Anonymous reassimilates into 4chan within a few months.
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 on /b/ between boxxy lovers and boxxy haters. Normal users, tired of both sides, took down the entire site in a major DDoS, forcing 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 scars of the civil war would not be forgotten for years, and Boxxy has, to this day retained her rightful place as the queen of /b/.
The Boxxy Era is characterized by the rise of Reddit, a major content aggregator that rose to power after the Digg Revolt. Reddit's mainstream popularity and strong cultural influence from 4chan created a unique relationship between the two.
(more about 4chan itself?)
- Katawa Shoujo - Spurred on by the popularity of Damaged Goods during the Golden Age, a few /a/nons set out to build a vision out of a sketch by a famous Japanese character designer. Work was ramped up during the Boxxy Era, and released during the Payback Era.
Gamespot.com hosted a tournament, where its users voted to decided who is the greatest video game character of all time. 4chan decided to trash this party. Anonymous decided to have Duke Nukem, Little mac and /b/ubble & /b/bobble come out at the top. Especially /b/u/b/ & /b/o/b/. At the first round of the tournament, bub & bob were against the mighty master chief. Master chief was no match for bub & bob, since the gamespot community wasn't prepared for a raid such as this. Much lulz was had, as bub & bob, a game that most people haven't heard of defeated master chief. bub & bob defeated sonic easily in the next round, and faced Samus in round 3. It was an incredibly tight match. Hackers from both sides pulled all nighters. As a result, bub & bob won with 53% of the votes. Sadly, the gamespot admins disqualified bub & bob because they caught 5 specific people who submitted 16K votes to bub & bob. bub & bob won the battle, but Samus had won the war. Due to the raid, the word 4chan was banned from the gamespot forums. The gamespot community now refers to 4chan as mordor.
7th: Party hats returned, for 4chan's 6th birthday.