4chan Golden Age
(Dec 2006 - Dec 2007)
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 internet, and even popular culture in the same manner as 2channel in Japan. With ever greater growth, the era managed to produce a huge amount of high-quality content in a self-fulfilling cycle. But the same growth produced a proportional amount of reposts, "newfaggotry", and forgettable threads. This title was truly a mixed blessing with no correct generalization.
On November 7, 2006, 4chan was taken down when moot was unable to pay for 4chan's increasing traffic costs. 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, (7chan, 12chan, 420chan) themselves went down due to the sudden surge of traffic, sometimes permanently. The dream of the Civil War Era, of an independent Anonymous, slowly faded once the anons realized that there was no suitable subsitute for 4chan.
Not long before this, increased migration to and from 4chan had pushed it's culture memes into the forefront of internet fame. Something Awful users emulating 4chan's Caturday sparked an observer to create I can haz cheezburger, which began, and later monetized, the meme industry outside of 4chan. On the fledging site Youtube, 4chan users created and popularized Tay Zonday's Chocolate Rain and 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 Anonymous, 4chan's /b/ eventually regains a strong raid mentality that the mods have given up stopping.
But 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 it's greatest crescendo in the Golden Age, and it is seen by many anons as 4chan's Eternal September.
- Damaged Goods
- Blindmute Loli
- most of Wikichan copypasta
- Wikichan
- LURKMOAR Wiki
- Colonization of Encyclopedia Dramatica
8 - Only 19 days after /b/'s 16 millionth post, /b/ reached the 17 million mark late December 8th. This marks the shortest time it has ever taken to get another 1 million posts in all of /b/ and 4chan's history.
20 - Hal Turner, a white supremacist talk show host from New Jersey, plans his final radio show due to lack of funding, in which he takes calls for three hours straight. However, a combined surprise raid from 4chan, 7chan, YTMND, Something Awful, and Bantown destroyed Hal's show, with 150 prank calls being made in three hours, with almost none of his real listeners being able to call in due to clogged lines. Hal then posts the phone numbers of the callers on his website (some of which were minors), sparking a huge outrage among /b/. Bantown then uncovered his personal information, including his real phone number, after which ~160 calls were made to his house. Hal gave in and removed the phone numbers from his site, but as we all know, Anonymous does not forgive.
24 - Taking /b/ by surprise on the eve of Christmas, Anonymous posts a story no truer than that of the wildest fantasies of /b/tards and surprisingly, admits it's wrong. What's even more amazing is that Anonymous sympathizes with Anonymous. This day is the birth and story of /b/man: A Christmas in the life of Anonymous.
25 - Hal Turner spends Christmas with his family over at his father's house; news of this spread, and Bantown quickly found his father's number, leading to a massive amount of calls and Hal supposedly being kicked out of the house. After this, Hal claimed that the FBI was investigating 4chan (an Anonymous later called in to Hal's show claiming that he had contacted the FBI and that they had said that no such investigation was taking place) and redirected his website to the FBI page.
31 - A happy ending for 2006 after Hal Turner surrenders to 4chan after much raiding and lulz, and announces that he is almost off of the internet completely. He announces, "I am not certain where to go from here. My entire existence - short of my physical presence on this planet - has been utterly wrecked, by people I never met from places I've never been." Anonymous knocks back a cold one and lols heartily.
9 - moot posts on the front page, announcing that 4chan would soon have interstitial ads due to dwindling revenue. moot also allows all of the trial boards created on April 6, 2006 to become full boards, except for /sp/ (Sports), which is deleted.
10 - All text disappears on /b/, with users only being able to talk through pictures or the E-mail field. Needless to say, this was win, and caused /b/ to be fag-free for a few hours.
3 - 20milGET is achieved, 16 days after 19milGET.
15 - Two new boards are added: /tg/ (Traditional Games) and /x/ (Paranormal), the latter being created due to the popularity of 7chan's /x/ board. moot also announces the winners in a contest for new banners. The next day, janitor applications are opened and then closed four days later, with the new janitors being implemented around early March.
21 - Anonymous discovers photos of 16-year-old Kelly Isenhower of Georgia sucking off her dog, as well as her phone number and address. Needless to say, Anon went batshit, raiding her DeviantArt and MySpace, calling her parents and telling them about the incident, and even e-mailing the photographs to her school principal, although she was adamant that the photos were shopped (which they obviously weren't). She was suspended from school indefinitely, her dog was taken away, and everyone now hates her, including all her former friends and her parents. Anonymous rejoices.
26 - moot announces a re/b/oot and aims to restore /b/ to its former glory. Two stickies are created, one being a letter moot received that inspired him to start the re/b/oot, and another sticky being his formal apology for "letting /b/ turn to shit". /b/'s background changed to a seizure-inducing flashing yellow and white background with the song "Cotton-Eyed Joe" embedded in the background. The Name and Subject fields return to /b/, effectively ending forced anonymous and allowing tripcodes.
Many people were banned by moot in both stickies for comments such as "/b/ sucks", and in many other threads as well. Later, a third sticky was made which was a locked thread with only two posts, with the OP announcing that he was "afraid of being banned by the crazy bitch-ass mods" and also said, "You might as well make rules for /b/ now faggots", followed by which the poster was banned.
Later in the day, 23M GET was achieved, which was a picture of a Pokemon. Considering this to be an extreme failGET (as did all of /b/), moot banned the poster, instantly transforming it into a winGET.
27 - The next day, /b/'s background turned /b/lack, and techno music was played. /b/'s title was changed to "Transmission" with "Trans" italicized. A sticky was posted containing a picture of Diglet and said, "/b/ is /b/ again". Many users were banned in the thread for suggesting otherwise.
28 - /b/'s background was changed yet again to gray with red tripcodes (allowing users to impersonate moot every easily), techno music was added with the prominent line, "I am the creator". /b/'s title was changed to "Revolution" and a sticky was posted in which a user was banned for posting DSFARGEG.
29 - The day after that, the background was changed to a rapidly flashing rainbow background, as well as the posts. A techno version of the song "Eye of the Tiger" was added as background music. Four stickies were created, each with a GIF of a rainbow-flashing number 5 and the four stickies contained one line each of the song's opening verse (This is a showdown/A throwdown/Hell no, I can't slow down/It's gonna go), and /b/'s title was changed to "Showdown". The next day, /b/ returned to normal, with a normal layout and no background music, during which /b/'s title was changed to "Intermission".
1 - Following two days of normal /b/, techno music was again added as background music, but the CSS remained unchanged, signalling the end of the re/b/oot.
20 - 4chan administrators are forced to temporarily shut down img.4chan.org after a thread containing four uncensored images of child pornography became stuck on the front page for over an hour (during which nobody could post) and could not be deleted due to MySQL problems. Rather than getting v&, the plug was pulled on img.4chan.org and was restored around 12-15 hours later. During the downtime, since 7chan was down as well, a massive amount of /b/tards flocked to 420chan, thus ruining 420chan's most special day, 4/20.
27 - "Fortunes" are introduced to /b/, a feature that moot had implemented from the very beginning but had never told anyone about. Basically, if you put your name as "#fortune", you will get a random fortune at the top of your post, chosen at random. moot announced it to the public after another mod told him to reveal it, causing mass spamming of fortunes. A thread in which someone guessed their own fortune was stickied and became the most replied-to thread in /b/ history, beating the Steve Irwin thread in just 19 hours with 5,336 posts.
28 - 4chan, 7chan, and especially 420chan combine forces to attack Subeta, a faggot roleplaying website similar to Gaia who stole Longcat and turned him into an item for their faggoty site. When 4chan complained, Subeta DDoS 420chan, leaving it in ruins and sticking Kirtaner (420chan's owner) with a $6,000 server bill. The *chan then DDoS Subeta, which they find hard to do due to lack of effort, as well as Subeta's 2000 GB monthly bandwidth and lack of large images. Nevertheless, two major Subeta fansites were shut down permanently and Subeta was down for two days. Keith (Subeta's owner) eventually apologized and removed Longcat from his site after a long and bloody battle, at which many Anonymous rejoiced. On this same day, Encyclopedia Dramatica, one of /b/'s most famous recruiting posts, encountered a severe hard disk failure and does not return until June 8.
13 - moot changes /b/'s layout so that everything is the same color (excluding checkboxes and fortunes), meaning that users will have to press Ctrl+A (Select All) or disable CSS in order to view text. A sticky is posted in which moot explains that the color change is to keep stupid people out, which moot closed a few hours later at around 1,900 posts. moot also announced that threads would go back to the limit of 250 posts and 100 images instead of 1000 posts and 500 images, so that topics can be pruned easier and that the directory dumper would be harder to abuse. The color change lasted a week (during which posting rates decreased by 10%) after which it was disabled, triggering some anger from some /b/tards who wished that the cancer could have been kept out longer.
5 - /co/ reaches 1M GET; the thread disappears within five seconds or so, and due to the strain on the server, the file was deleted as soon as it was uploaded. The post also had the text, "reducto get", referring to Reducto from Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, meaning that the picture was most likely one of him. The next day, /b/ reaches 29M GET, which the original poster deletes after three hours after being persuaded to do so in another thread.
16 - 30M GET is achieved one hour after midnight, when many /b/tards are asleep. It was an extreme failGET, as was 10M GET and 20M GET. Consisting of the text "Shit. Getting closer" and a picture from some anime, it received around 2400 replies before being deleted 15 hours later. 18 - moot brings back forced Anonymous on /b/ after someone insults him. Many think it is merely a temporary change; however, the forced Anonymous remains in place for just over a month.
20 - Sometime around 5:40 P.M. EDT, forced anonymous is turned off again. No reason is given at the time, nor is a sticky posted. It is later revealed that moot turned it off at the urging of the other 4chan staffers, all of whom were going to Otakon.
23? - /b/'s background music is changed to a remix of "Chocolate Rain" by Tay Zonday.
31? - Forced Anon returns on /b/.
32 - G4's Attack of the Show's plan to talk about Anon at 4chan created forced names/tripcodes of ATOS's guests and anchors for the day on /b/.
21 - Forced Anon is removed from /b/ for some reason, resulting in moot and W.T. Snacks impersonations (among other things).
1 - 4chan celebrates its 4th birthday with the return of the purple and blue party hats to /b/. A good time is had by all.
19 - Some users of the Partyvan Network IRC begin a DDoS attack against 4chan. The attack is relatively successful, with all of the 4chan servers timing out relatively quickly. Originally the attack was just a pointless show of force, but it was quickly decided that it should be used as a leverage point to get #4chan to move from Rizon to Partyvan. A representative of Partyvan joined #4chan and began his long-winded and borg-like demands for a "single anonymous hub", moot responded that "irc is stupid" and he was going to go make soup. This was known (at least to the bantown/Encyclopedia Dramatica crew) as The Caturday Nap.