4chan History Timeline
This entire page was saved from the fall of the second Wikichan. It was written by a random redditor, and in a comment he elaborates on how 4chan developed during a thread where moot announces his new creation, Canv.as.
It needs lots of work, especially for the Chanology, Boxxy, and Payback eras.
The background of the world that 4chan was started in.
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1996 - A man 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 website hackings and invasions are discussed. 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.
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1998 - Ayashii World doesn't have good servers, and it keeps crashing. After the owner receives personal threats over the server issues, he shuts the site down. They need a replacement. They get their replacement with Amezou, the First Channel. It starts off as a bunch of links to alternative BBSes for wayward Ayashii Worlders, but soon becomes its own forum and introduces a new style of threaded message board, dependent on bumping and saging. Its popularity increases exponentially.
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1999 - The first channel dies due to server issues. A man named Hiroyuki Nishimura sees all this and creates Ni Channeru, the Second Channel, using code based on the first, with enough servers this time to handle the exponential growth. Meanwhile, Lowtax creates Something Awful.
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April/May 2001 - Lowtax creates the ADTRW (Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse) board on Something Awful.
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30 August 2001 - 2channel is in danger of dying, so a backup forum is created, called Futaba or 2chan (two-leaves). Futaba invents a board called /b/ for random content. The site supports images and develops a unique culture all its own, growing out of the seed culture brought by the 2channelers.
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3 March 2003 - The first English language channel is created: World2ch. Like 2channel, it supports only text. Its userbase consists of a mix of Japanese and English users, the only time that this happens for any considerable amount of time. The English speakers there are members of ADTRW, and they are also familiar with Futaba and visit it for its quirks.
And Legion said, Let the newfags lurk and learn the way. They shall be Anonymous, and forgive not, and never forget, and raep the weak: and catch the Phish of the sea, and throw shit at the fowl of the air, and lord over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. - The Book of Genesis, The Book of Anon
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, who in turn spread word across the internet. 4chan links quickly replace Futaba Channel links on ADTRW.
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, closing 4chan at least 3 times. The majority of the boards take shape during this time, and the first tenets of 4chan culture are created under influence by ADTRW and 2chan.
29 - moot registers 4chan.net, just because it looks like 2chan.net (Futaba Channel), which was an ADTRW pastime. Originally, his only intention was to own an e-mail address @4chan.net, but he quickly gets to thinking. regging 4CHAN.net FOUR CHAN brace for faggotry
1 - 4chan is officially founded by moot, a member of the Something Awful forums, intended to be used as an English version of 2chan, a Japanese imageboard created in 2001 out of an extremely popular Japanese BBS called 2channel. moot creates /b/ (Random) and makes a topic at Something Awful about the website, which is received extremely well. moot also announces the site on world2ch.
moot holds a contest to decide what 4chan's logo should be. In three hours of creating the contest, around 50 banners are submitted, after which moot decides to simply make it so that it would cycle through the best banners randomly every time a page was loaded. Members from both the ADTRW board and also the FYAD (Fuck You and Die) board begin filling up 4chan.
2 - 4chan's hosting company receives an e-mail from moot's friend (or right now, enemy) Shii complaining about lolikon and guro posted in /b/, to which moot writes back that neither of the two are illegal. Later in the day, moot creates a second board, /h/ (Hentai).
6 - moot creates four new imageboards: /c/ (Anime/Cute), /d/ (Hentai/Alternative), /w/ (Wallpapers/Anime), and /y/ (Yaoi), along with an oekaki BBS board. The /y/ board is unique in that (at the time) it was user-moderated. moot also fixes a retention bug that cause posts to be deleted too quickly and raised the maximum number of log entries for each board from 500 to 5000 (2000 for /b/).
9 - Two new imageboards are created: /g/ (Guro), and /s/ (Sexy Beautiful Women), both of which are user-moderated. moot announces that 4chan received over one million hits in the past six days and may be looking for sponsors to help pay the bills.
16 - 4chan is announced to 2chan, resulting in a massive amount of Japanese users coming to the site, at least doubling the traffic of all boards and decoupling the traffic of /c/. The onslaught of unexpected traffic causes /b/ to crash for two days. 4chan dies for the first time.
21 - 4chan.net is moved to United Colo, a collocation and webhosting company, following a discussion on the Something Awful forums.
29 - moot makes various changes to the imageboards, including Japanese character display and adding the day of the week to posts. moot also announces that the boards will now use a MySQL database (a modified form of 2chan's futabaSQL called yotsubaSQL) and added a robots.txt file to the site to keep out some auto-downloaders, along with an .htaccess file to prevent hotlinking. /g/ temporarily suffered a problem with Tripcode, and all boards had a problem where users said their posts were not appearing and they were getting a Japanese error message. Both of these were fixed within the day by modifying the anti-spam script and fixing the imageboards' .php files, respectively.
1 - moot begs for donations in the first of a long history of times, complaining that the site is running extremely slowly and that he would have to block Japanese domains unless something was done, and that the cost of moot's server bill was now $400/month. moot warns that 4chan will die slowly unless enough donations are received.
2 - moot resets img.4chan.net and deletes all posts, drops all mySQL tables, and reduces the maximum post limit for each board from 3000 to 750. MySQLd and PHP were optimized, and moot laments that he cannot implement auto-pruning after ten pages like 2chan.
8 - Two more imageboards are added: /a/ (Anime) and /l/ (Lolikon). moot announces the future release of a database of archived 4chan threads that requires a paid subscription, which had been suggested by Spork, a mod, a week before.
10 - moot and his friend thatdog begin testing on the beta-archive and set up a new board, /r/ (Trains) to test it with. The same day, thatdog registers 1chan.net and sets up a similar train board on his site. /r/ quickly fills with /b/tards in order to help moot out.
20 - Apex tells moot that 4chan has to go. The following days ushered a lot of down time due to site changes/problems. 4chan dies for the second time.
22 - The site returns following two days of downtime after the server is reformatted to RH9, making the site considerably faster. moot deletes /r/ (Trains) and announces that the thread archive will be up shortly. The next day, the RH9 apt-get repository was cleared out, causing GIFs not to be thumbnailed correctly for a few hours.
16 - A new board is created, /t/ (Torrents), along with a torrent tracker. moot tightens the rules regarding /h/ and /l/ and cracks down on rule breakers. moot also considers blocking Japanese domains due to the fact that they make up half of 4chan's traffic and post only extremely rarely.
17 - moot blocks all Japanese domains from accessing the site, significantly reducing 4chan's server bill while maintaining the same level of contribution. Apparently, moot says that in the two weeks before the announcement, Japanese domains had accounted for 650 GB but only made about fifty posts or so.
20 - 4chan changes its board software from modified GazouBBS (modified 2chan code) to Futallaby, created by 1chan's thatdog.
29 - Following a massive flood of real-life child pornography, /l/ (Lolikon) is temporarily deleted. moot announces that although he has blocked Japanese domains, his traffic from the rest of the world has now passed the rate from before December 17, meaning that moot's server bill is still $400/month.
8 - /l/ (Lolikon) returns along with a new imageboard, /r/ (Request), which was created after many posts on /t/ were requests instead of links to torrents, so a new board was created for torrent requests, although it quickly morphed into the /r/ we know and love today.
25 - Censored Vagina announces that the torrent tracker has been taken down due to it being a major strain on the server, along with the /t/ board. Censored Vagina announces that the torrent tracker will return shortly, albeit it in a considerably smaller form, with a maximum of 40 torrents.
11 - Something Awful user "nubdestroyer" attempts to get 4chan shut down by e-mailing GoDaddy, the owner of 4chan.net. He succeeds. 4chan dies for the third time.
14 - After GoDaddy suspends the 4chan.net domain three days before without moot realizing it, moot registers 4chan.org as a temporary domain. At the time it was expected that they would eventually return to their .net domain.
19 - /t/ (Torrents) returns, albeit without the tracker, along with a new board, /f/ (Flash). moot adds a new server, cgi.4chan.org, on which /f/ is hosted.
21 - Two discussion boards are added, hosted on 0ch: /amh/ (Anime-Manga-Hentai) and /bbs/ (4chan Discussion). The next day, Censored Vagina makes a newspost announcing that the cost of running 4chan for the rest of 2004 added up to $2,200 and that the money would be needed in donations. The links on 4chan are reflected to link to 4chan.org instead of 4chan.net so that users will not need to write 4chan.org's IP into their hosts file.
1 - moot announces that the site will not be able to continue because the March server bill is too large to pay and that more donations will be required to pay it or 4chan will die. He makes one final request for donations and hopes for the best.
8 - After a week-long swarm of donations, moot announces that not only does he have enough money to pay the March bill, but that enough money was donated to keep the site running into 2005. moot thanks all donators and posters and announces that he is currently in "Cancun, Mexico".
28 - The 4chan.org domain becomes permanent, with 4chan.net now occupied by domain squatters (people who buy domains that will get a lot of traffic, such as porn.com, and put ads on the page). moot tells users to inform all people linking to 4chan about this change so that the domain squatters receive as little traffic as possible and therefore not profit from the incident. moot also deletes /g/ (Guro) around this time, possibly due to issues with PayPal.
In a reactionary move towards the rise of 4chan, Lowtax begins to create a Soviet-style police state of arbitrary rules on SA (which cost users their $15 accounts). 4chan's free and anonymous posting, lenient moderation, and SA-influenced culture proves to be an appealing alternative, like Colonial America for disinherited Englishmen.
Once Moot grows up to legally visit his own site, (he is 16-18 at this point), he slowly opens up to the 4chan community, earning the term "the Mootxico" era.
4chan's culture begins to stabilize at this point, as a world of hatred, anonymity, truth in opinion, and trolling. It is an interesting counterexample to the rise of social media occuring 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 it's own culture and place in the world.
1 - As an April Fools' Day prank, moot posts pictures of a man in a graduation uniform shortly after getting his diploma from Stanford University, and posts another picture of the man on April 4, this time showing him next to a statue in Mexico. moot claimed that the man in the photographs was him, and that his name was Robert Bopkins, and this was believed by most of 4chan for a long while until moot appeared in the flesh at the 2005 Otakon Panel, revealing himself to have a teenage-like un-nerdy appearance which surprised many /b/tard.
4 - Spork (4chan mod) creates an official IRC channel for 4chan, hosted on irc.pyoko.org. The channel was later moved, hosted on irc.rizon.net, where it remains today.
19 - 100K GET on /b/ is reached. Many were creating new topics rapidly in hopes of getting the GET for themselves, but 100K GET turned out to be an unrelated text reply in a thread that attempted to be 100K GET. The reply was completely unrelated to the thread that it was in, only saying "lol internet" with no image. To this day, it is considered to be the most win that a GET has ever been.
30 - moot announces that the text boards are back up, running on board software created by Shii (4chan mod and friend of moot from SA). Two of these text boards were added that day as well: /dis/ (Discussion) and /sug/ (Suggestion) (now both deleted).
15 - TheRowan, owner of HentaiKey, attempts to get 4chan shut down by e-mailing PayPal, who controlled 4chan's donations at the time. He succeeds.
20 - June 20th, 2004: A day that will live forever in short-term memory. - 4chan dies for the fourth and longest time, for nearly six weeks. moot blames lack of contribution and donations, asshole posters, and GNAA flooding, among other things, as the reasons for 4chan's death.
On the other hand, the long period of downtime served to flesh out many of the other imageboards such as iichan and 5chan; as well as create new ones. While the new company was not always welcome (especially on 5chan), this played a large role in diversifying imageboard culture.
7 - 4chan returns in its fifth incarnation following six weeks of downtime after gathering up enough money and support. Moot also restructured the management, adding new moderators and changing others.
15 - 4chan changes its board software to a "super-hacked" version of Futallaby coded mostly by W.T. Snacks (or Shii?). It contains many new features such as replying with an image, hiding posts, the Name and E-mail fields, displaying image names and sizes, and linking to other posts by adding a >> next to the post number. Tripcodes were also added to /f/.
8 - Three new boards are added: /k/ (Weapons), /o/ (Auto), and /sm/ (Shota/Male). Jibaku (4chan mod) announces that /b/ is severely lacking in quality and asks users to contribute better.
9 - Four boards are added: /ib/ (Oekaki Random), /ip/ (Oekaki Pro), /v/ (Video Games), and /tech/ (Technology, discussion board); one board, /n/ (Trains) is deleted. Around this time, /z/ (ZOMG NONE!!1), a user-moderated board with flashing backgrounds, annoying embedded music, and legendary poasts (moderated by Soviet Russia !lM51PoudCg) is created.
30 - 4chan hosts a panel at the AnimeUSA 2004 Con in Vienna, Virginia. The same day, 4chan experiences DNS problems, and asks that people edit their host files once again.
31 - /l/ (Lolikon) and /sm/ (Shotakon) are deleted due to threats of legal action.
1 - squeeks registers 4-ch, a site not related to 4chan's text boards. moot complains that squeeks is stealing his thunder. The site is based on 2channel rather than Futaba, and consists of text boards rather than imageboards, and is run on a heavily modified version of Kareha coded by !WAHa.06x36. Man of Wax (4chan mod) begs for donations and advertising on the front page of 4chan. /z/ was deleted shortly after this time.
5 - moot registers not4chan.org and moves /l/ and /sm/ there instead. 15 - /g/ (Guro) is deleted as well due to threats from YowCow to seize 4chan's donations account due to guro being against YowCow's ToS.
13 - 4chan's IRC channel moves from irc.pyoko.org to irc.rizon.net. This is announced on the front page, along with one of the first lines ever spoken in 4chan's Rizon channel: i wish to be the little girl.
19 - Four new boards are added: /e/ (Ecchi), /3/ (3DCG, stands for 3-D Computer Graphics), /g/ (Technology), and /n/ (Nature & Wildlife). /g/ and /n/ are worksafe.
27 - Three more boards are added: /ic/ (Artwork/Critique), /p/ (Photography), and /x/ (General Photo). Although there was already a /p/ board for photography before, it is the replacement, with new features (such as EXIF data).
3 - moot and shut register ikuzo.org, a side project they had formulated during 4chan's downtime in summer 2004. The site was basically meant to be a weeaboo site with news and reviews of things like anime, hentai, and general Japanese imports. However, the project is quickly abandoned and the site now redirects to img.4chan.org.
13 - 700K GET is fixed by the mods, with the word "ZERO HOUR" written in extremely large letters and the post count reset to 1, and the message, "ONLY 699999 TO GO GUYS!!". However, the post count is restored within the day.
26 - Following a meeting with other users on IRC, moot creates three more boards: /gif/ (Animated GIF), /hr/ (High Resolution), and /wg/ (Wallpapers/General).
31 - moot purchases a new server (tmp.4chan.org, backup of orz.4chan.org) and announces that it will be up in April. He also announces that 4chan will have a panel at Otakon 2005 and announces that he would soon recruit a new administrator following DJ Lucid's (4chan admin) departure.
1 - For April Fools' Day, moot makes a front-page newspost containing a picture of Robert Bopkins (thought to be moot at the time) in graduation gear shortly after graduating from Stanford University, along with the message "GREETINGS FROM MIDDLE SCHOOL!". moot also creates a new board, /fur/ (Furry), despite his promise never to do so. Although many think it the board is simply an April Fools' Day joke, the board remained the next day, and the board was started to be taken seriously. However, on the morning of April 3rd, everyone who had posted in /fur/ was banned for three months (including /b/tards who posted on /fur/ to denounce furries), following which 4chan was almost rid of furfags. This event is now referred to as April Furs' Day.
7 - 1M GET is reached on /b/. It was considered an "alright" GET, neither fail nor win. 1M GET was posted by a namefag under the handle Senator Rodden Clitoris , who posted picture of Sae Sawanoguchi from Magic Users Club having an orgasm, with the text "Female Orgasm", which was deleted within a few seconds. The mods instead chose another thread with a picture of a budgie in a jar and changed its posted number to 1000000 and stickied it, fooling many into believing that it was the true 1M GET.
1 - Many of 4chan's boards were closed unexpectedly and announcement was supposedly made by "moot's secretary" was posted on the front page, announcing that moot had abandoned 4chan and that 4chan would cease operations in a few days due to lack of funding. The next day, moot made a newspost announcing that that this had all happened behind his back, and that the post was neither true nor official.
"tl;dr:, 4chan lives. Majnen gets lynched. moot knocks back a Corona while dining out in Mexico. Typical 4chan..."
29 - /b/ reaches 2M GET, a picture of someone holding up a notepad with "2000000 GET?" written on it, and the text "HAY GUYS! 2MIL GET! -Delcious Ironing" [sic]. This was (badly) photoshopped with a smiling ugly man and the text, "HAY GUYEZ WOULD YOU BE UP FOR SOME ADULT FUN AT MY COUNTRY CLUB SOMETIME -Delcious ron", which spawned a whole series of other shooped GETs.
13 - Shortly after celebrating one year of uptime, 4chan starts its panel at Otakon 2005, the first time ever that /b/tards actually met the real moot, after which moot revealed that "Robert Bopkins" was not only not him, but that Bopkins' name was actually Eric J. Ross and that moot picked the photos at random. Everyone has a really good time and moot hangs out with the other /b/tards who flip out over the fact that they are experiencing mootfaggotry IRL.
28 - Donate or Die 2005 starts, with moot announcing that he requires $20,000 in donations to purchase three new servers (bin.4chan.org, nov.4chan.org, and a second img.4chan.org). A plethora of camwhores emerged to persuade users to donate, whoring for a just cause. Although they fell short of their goal, $14,000 was raised, which was actually enough to purchase the three servers. Later, on September 15th, moot announces that donations will cease September 30th, and can only be delivered by snail mail.
4chan's momentous Civil War Era begins with moot's dismissal of moderators W.T. Snacks and Shii, seen by many anons as a harbringer 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.
During this era, the (initially) inexperienced 4chan community gets it's first experience with internet warfare in the coalition attack against Ebaums World for it's plagarism, and later Haboo Hotel. Raids soon become commonplace on /b/ for the first time. School shooting plans and stadium bombings are posted by 4channers attracted to the sense of anonymity.
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 created class conflict with "oldfags" and "newfags". 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.
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.
When the 4chan mods begin to impose much tighter rules, a number of /b/tards leave 4chan for dead and abandon en masse. A declaration of independence is made that establishes Anonymous as a seperate group with it's home anywhere but 4chan. Ironically, during the following Golden Age, their diffusion of 4chan memes around the internet will only solidify it's position as the ultimate center of internet culture.
16 - 3M GET on /b/, with a picture of Waha and Pedobear and how they would be seen in America. The post linked to itself, prefixed by ">>3000000" and "TIME PARADOX/what a lame GET/Surely you jest!". It was, unfortunately, a tripfag get, posted by Pixel Hotness !Ol2RiO/0Ro. The GET was considered "meh" and was suspected to have been a modGET.
25 - moot announces that "things are looking up" and announces that many new features will be added to 4chan, including the DevBlog. He also begs for people to advertise because he needs money to construct additional pylons.
30 - moot and Snacks have a long fight over IRC as moot takes the site down for a few hours to fix some problems. moot rages against Snacks for being a lazy coder and threatens to take away his server access, and generally being very arrogant towards Snacks. They both go to sleep, and continue in the afternoon the next day for about three hours, until moot tells Snacks that he will remove his server access (along with his moderator powers), which he does shortly afterwards, making him unable to moderate or code. W.T. Snacks then "leaves" 4chan for good.
2 - moot challenges Xenon, a popular camwhore whose artwork is often spammed on /f/, to a camwhore battle, which moot loses. moot then tells Xenon that since he beat him, Xenon received temporary admin status and moot declared November 2 to be "the Day of Xenon". Xenon used his new privileges to change /b/'s CSS layout, resulting in /b/'s background becoming pink and the Powerpuff Girls theme song being embedded into every page. /b/'s title was also changed to "All Hail Xenon".
3 - moot, liking the idea of fucking around with /b/'s layout, changes /b/'s background to a seizure-inducing GIF flashing yellow and white, with the techno-country song "Cotton-Eye Joe" by Rednex embedded into the pages. /b/'s title was then changed to "ON A STEEL HORSE I RIDE", and a sticky was created in which the new layout could be discussed.
4 - Shortly after midnight, /b/'s layout was changed again to a pink McDonald's-themed background, with "moving Javascript Golden Arches" as Lurkmore put it, along with a 1980s McDonald's jingle added as background music. This hack lasted for three days and was hated by almost everybody. During this time, Xenon released the chatlogs from moot and Snacks' fight, causing massive outrage on /b/.
19 - moot posts a thread in /v/ asking for applications to be a janitor (person who can delete posts but not ban), which was up to that point unheard of. News of this spread to /b/, and many applications were received, and the janitors were implemented within the month.
30 - moot implements forced anonymous on /b/, with users unable to post with a name, tripcode, or subject, remaining until March 26, 2007, which, by then, it had definitely worn out its welcome.
6 - orz.4chan.org and cgi.4chan.org crash and are not fixed until three days later. Among the boards hosted by these servers were /gif/, /h/, /s/, and the secret /5/ board. orz was restored; however, /5/ was not.
17 - The three new servers purchased during the Donate or Die 2005 campaign are successfully brought online. Each served as a backup for three of 4chan's content servers, with nov.4chan.org backing up cgi, bin.4chan.org backing up zip, and tmp.4chan.org backing up orz (img was already backed up by dat.4chan.org). In addition, the new servers took care of all post submissions, speeding up the boards significantly.
18 - The day after the new servers are installed, 5M GET is achieved, during which the posting rate increased twenty fold. The servers were put to the test, with jumbo.4chan.org maxing out its line at 99.31 Mbit/s (~12.41 megabytes per second). The 5M GET was a picture of cat taken at an angle that made the cat look large, with the text "Needs more towercat". Users were divided between whether it was win or fail, although moot himself called it "more garbage" in the DevBlog.
23 - 6M GET was achieved on /b/, with a picture of Senator Bill Frist holding up a card and the text "In after 6M GET". Mostly considered a winGET due to the potential for epic shoops.
1 - /b/'s CSS is fucked with yet again, with the page layout being changed to tanasinn.org's layout, with a looping voice saying "Don't think. Feel and you'll be Tanasinn." Letters were randomly changed to the three-dot triangle symbol.
4 - BAD END. Moot was eaten by a shark. fin
6 - Three new trial boards are added: /co/ (Comics & Cartoons), /po/ (Papercraft & Origami), and /sp/ (Sports). Two days later, five more boards are added: /cgl/ (Cosplay & EGL), /ck/ (Food & Cooking), /mu/ (Music), /n/ (News), and /tv/ (Television).
14 - moot announces that the three servers purchased during Donate or Die 2005 have been allocated and are up and running and also announces that he will rarely use the front page for small updates from now on, instead choosing to announce them on the DevBlog and blotter. moot also announces that 4chan will have a panel at which he will appear at AnimeCentral 2006, which took place on May 4. The next day, moot removes most of the Wordfilter on /b/ and implements new ones.
15 - Almost all of the old wordfilters are gone, and some new ones were implemented.
20 - 7M GET is reached, but due to the high strain on the server, the file was deleted, and the post had no text. However, mods retrieved the MD5 data from the picture from their database and found that it was the popular image macro of Chopper Dave from Sealab 2021 shouting "UH OHHHHHHH". Also, 13-year-old Mitchell Henderson kills himself, after which /b/ raids his memorial MySpace. The "an hero" meme is born after a classmate of his posted a poem she written on his memorial account in which she constantly referred to him as "an hero".
11 - Eight threads are stickied, all consisting of modified versions of a picture from some Japanese show with a puppet riding on a motorcycle and the text "DSFARGEG". All posts were followed by (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST) and DSFARGEG almost always resulted in a ban or a sticky.
18 - /b/ reaches 8M GET, one of the first GETs to be autostickied. It was considered a WinGET, due to the fact that it was a picture of George Zimmer and the text "HI, I'M GEORGE ZIMMER, FOUNDER AND CEO OF MEN'S WAREHOUSE. THIS IS 8000000 GET. I GUARANTEE IT".
15 - Comedian Tom Green starts his own late-night call-in talk show hosted from his own living room, hosted every night at 11 PM EST. Over the next three months, /b/ trolls his show, with around 10% of all calls on the show being prank calls from 4chan. /b/ also focused on a section of his show, "Girl Talk", which featured five stereotypical "dumb chicks" giving advice on relationships. The trolling of Girl Talk was so intense that it was canceled on August 19th because of it, combined with bad response from viewers.
17 - A group of anons crapflood the Zelda Guide Forums for fun, after which a member threatens to "hack" 4chan. This prompts their leader, known as "Captain Cornflake" (the name of his raid account on Zelda Guide Forums, he was anonymous on /b/) to post this information to /b/. Many Anonymous joined the raid following this post and crapflooded the forums nearly into oblivion during the night while the moderating team was asleep. As the moderators were surveying the carnage the next morning, one mod actually pleaded for /b/ to stop and said he would give them their own board to spam, which just increased the raid. The forums now require manual admin verification, which keeps out many legit users, resulting in an anon victory.
19 - Yet another epic raid occurs, with /b/ destroying naruto-kun.com after a user there posted about their dislike of 4chan. Following a major pornflood after which the site admin threatened to sic the FCC on 4chan, one anon discovered a source code document hidden on the site containing the site's SQL database password (which Anon posted on /b/) as well as loads of unchecked MySQL injection vulnerabilities. Anonymous also discovered that the fucking dumbass's FTP had the same password as his MySQL database, following which tons of anons logged in to the FTP account and deleted everything, destroying the entire site, including premium accounts and the database, and bringing the site down for two days.
4 - The first of many in a series of /b/ CSS hacks in July as the background was turned red and the text yellow. July 10th saw the theme song from "Bill Nye the Science Guy" embedded into the background (no layout changes however), while July 15th harbored a sticky in which "Also Sprach Zarathrustra" by composer Richard Strauss (2001: A Space Odyssey theme song) was embedded. Toward the end of July, ten threads were stickied, taking up the entire first page of /b/, and the theme song from Inspector Gadget was embedded into /b/.
7 - 10M GET is reached, considered the most failed GET of all time, simply a picture of Hazuki from the anime Tsukuyomi -Moon Phase- on a merry-go-round, with the text "hazukiget". Ironically, it was much later revealed to be a modGET, but with no trickery involved; Shii (4chan admin; coder of discussion boards) got the GET out of pure luck, proving that all modGETs, staged or not, will always be fail.
8 - 4chan returns after nearly a day of downtime. There has not been any honest answer in regards to the cause, some claim it was due to 4chan's bandwidth provider, Cogent, and the image flood to reach the 10000000 GET; to reports of the FBI seizing the hardware in search of CP.
12 - 4chan (along with Encyclopedia Dramatica, YTMND, GNAA, Bantown, and others) storm Habbo Hotel, a virtual online role playing game where, among other things, people pay real-life money for online money (which is pretty stupid when you think about it). Thousands of "Nigra" (black characters with afros wearing business suits, the official raid costume) filled nearly every room on the site, especially the Pool Deck, during which the pool was blocked for hours because the pool had AIDS. The sheer number of Anonymous was so great that the Habbo mods could not ban the nigras faster than the accounts were being created, resulting in the mods having no choice but to reset their server, after which the raid continued for a few more hours on Habbo servers in other countries, particularly the German Habbo Hotel (where the nigras would form in swastika patterns). The Habbo raid is often considered /b/'s best and spawned the "Nigra" meme and the " Pool's closed" meme. The word "AIDS" was later wordfiltered on Habbo as a result of the raid.
16 - Moderators make a sticky of a girl known as Ban-Chan, knowing full well that it is [[CP]].' Later that day, in a hypocritical statement, moderators inform 4chan that there will be less tolerance for posting illegal things.
20 - moot announces that 4chan will have a panel at Otakon 2006 from August 4-6 in Baltimore, Maryland, with enough seating capacity to allow 680 people compared to the 230 from Otakon 2005.
22 - /v/ reaches 1M GET, considered to be one of the greatest non-/b/ gets of all time. The GET was a picture of PONG, the first-ever video game, thus a very fitting get for /v/ (at the time, at least...). A small group of users believe that the GET was staged, citing an overload of Final Fantasy VII pics as the reason.
4 - Otakon 2006 starts and so does 4chan's panel. Many important 4channers are there, including moot, shut, Shii, and the apparent return of W.T. Snacks. An epic sermon was delivered by "Reverend" Lemmy Caution to spread the gospel of Raptor Jesus, and moot even created a new board, /con/ (Conventions), for people at the con to use, which was deleted a few hours after the con ended.
12 - The 4chan :codes: (words put between colons that are turned into smilies, like how posting :happy: would display a happy emoticon, for example) are released to the site. They are soon spammed all over the place, and threads are pruned extremely quickly. Images and .gifs of "eng101", "w00t", "SAGE" (the classic blue Sega image edited to spell sage), "owned", "iceburn", the classic flashing "5", the green 4chan "cone", "sweatdrop", and "Hard Gay" were posted in large amount, often causing threads to be derailed in seconds.
22 - A group of Anonymous go on a midnight raiding spree, eventually attracting tons (~100) of Anonymous to their posse in raid threads. They charged, destroying Proana.us (a pro-anorexia community), deleting all accounts on the site. After this (by now around 1:00 AM of August 23), they attempted to raid the myg0t forum, but the raid failed to due myg0t's massive size. Instead, they raided teenbabynet.org (not only furries, but teenage furries with diaper fetishes), locking the forum and rendering it totally unviewable by 10:00 AM. At around this time, they turned their attention to WikiFur, leaving it in complete disarray. With mods extremely worried, moot does something drastic around noon of August 23...
23 - /b/-day - moot (in a somewhat justifiable fit of anger) posts a sticky announcing that anyone who posts illegal content will get you permabanned and possibly arrested, and that even people who REPLY to illegal threads will receive a two-week global ban, with the definition of "illegal threads" referring to CP, jailbait, personal info, and raids (some of /b/'s most cherished traditions). He warns of a new "report thread" option. The sticky was deleted and replaced with a new sticky restating the policy, which was then destickied and restickied over and over by moot and some other mod.
Due to the fact that this policy was introducing rules to /b/ for the first time, rage ensues and the Civil War Era begins. CP/JB is posted in defiance, multiple "WTF IS THIS SHIT," Hitler references, then there was a sudden universal reset. /b/ had no posts, and the sticky was gone.
A new and softer sticky was posted, only to be destickified and a repetition of the previous sticky with new information re-stickied in a moderator battle. This pattern continued until 4chan crashed, leaving 14 boards, including /b/, /an/, /b/, /c/, /cm/, /g/, /k/, /m/, /o/, /p/, /r/, /s/, /t/, /v/, and /w/ inaccessible. A civil war broke out, with many /b/tards permanently leaving 4chan and taking up new homes at 7chan, iiChan, [2ch.ru], and 420chan.
25 - /b/ is restored with img.4chan.org, inciting floods by opposers of the mod's new policies. Later this day www.anonib.com/invasions/ is flooded (presumably) by 4channers with desu and images of Suiseiseki, leading to the board crashing and all of the content being deleted. Debates and flamewars are sparked across /b/ between both opposing sides. In addition, /b/ in general had been divided into two factions of /b/tards with the original /b/ claiming the majority. Many /b/tards trolled both sides and managed to spark a few debates over which board was better. One side saying the other had gotten boring while the other side claiming the others weren't real /b/tards. Eventually the threads burned themselves out and the people went to bed.
26 - Despite all the internet drama; 4chan /b/ is online and back to running as normal. Floods by those angry with the more vigilant enforcement of long-standing rules against illegal content have mostly subsided. The only remaining conflicts have led to meme wars and a competitive "Who's better than who?" flood war. However, the rage slowly calmed and the major populace of both 7chan and 4chan grew tired of it. What was left were threads developed with the hopes of cultivating peace, harmony, and friendship, but ultimately things ended in bitter separation.
On the other hand, the mass migration of the era caused many anons to reenter popular sites, in turn exposing 4chan memes and culture to the rest of the internet. For better or worse, this began the so-called "Golden Age" of 4chan, as the America of internet popular culture.
4 - World-famous Australian "croc hunter" Steve Irwin is killed by a stingray barb to the heart while filming a documentary. /b/ is immediately flooded with this information and one of the first threads to announce it was stickied for a week, becoming the most replied-to thread in /b/ history with slightly over 5,200 replies (later beaten by the "#fortune" sticky on April 27, 2007). Many Rule 34s and general parodies are posted in /b/ during that time.
11 - In response to Steve Irwin's death, the fifth anniversary of 9/11, and hatred for Habbo Hotel, /b/ starts another massive raid on Habbo, with around 5,000 Anonymous partaking in the raid (~600 nigras on the Pool Deck alone). They blocked every single room, announcing that not only did the pool have AIDS, but also had stingrays as well.
1 - /b/ celebrates its third anniversary, and places blue-and-pink striped party hats on the top of each thread. /b/tards made pictures interacting with the hats, causing many threads that are epic win (a good chunk of epic thread screencaps are from this day).
20 - Jake Brahm turns himself in to authorities following a now-infamous copypasta that he had written, reposting it around 40 times within the previous 30 days, in which he warned of simultaneous terrorist attacks against seven football stadiums across the United States on October 22nd. Two days before this, on October 18, the Department of Homeland Security was notified about the copypasta and attempted to track down and arrest the creator of it; when the Wauwatosa, Wisconsin police department (Brahm's town of residence) received a tip on October 20, he turned himself in and faces up to 20 years imprisonment, thus making him the only person to have been party v& for his actions as of 2007. The phrase "DON'T MESS WITH FOOTBALL", uttered by FBI agent Les Wiser during a news report on Brahm's arrest, has since become a meme.
7 - After moot doesn't pay the bills, the site goes down for two days, during which a page was put up explaining that the servers were gone because moot didn't pay and that the problem would be fixed within "24-48 hours" (crossed out with "FIFTY-BILLION YEARS" written next to it). Many /b/tards, looking for a temporary imageboard to go to until 4chan returned, caused a major spike in traffic for other *chans. 7chan and 12chan were destroyed by the flood of traffic and suffered severe downtime. The Civil War Era ends at this point after /b/tards realize there is no suitable subsitute for 4chan.
30 - moot announces that more banner ads from AdBrite will be added to 4chan in December due to the fact that donations are no longer possible. As a result of the extra money, 4chan becomes faster after moot uses the money for extra bandwidth capacity.
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 began to become 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.
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.
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, the use of large IRL protests, and mass media coverage due to these protests.
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. These people temporarily left 4chan for seperate sites, like 711chan, various IRC channels, and Why We Protest. The split established Anonymous as a powerful force for "hacktivism", independent of 4chan.
Strong social changes within Chanology after an influx of non-4chan immigrants causes Anonymous to take an unfamiliar face, as a force for good rather than the embodiment of evil.
?? - A thread is posted to 4chan's /b/ about Scientology and it's censorship of a major Tom Cruise recruitment video posted on Youtube. Project Chanology begins.
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,
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.
After most anons forgot or gave up on Chanology, they returned to normal business on 4chan, which was still slowly growing in popularity. However, with the chilling news that Aiplex Software was DDoSing torrent sites for the MPAA, Anonymous came right out of dormancy to start a new age of hacktivism that grew to include Wikileaks and the Arab Spring. 4chan finally disowns Anonymous and it's related entities for good, and it is commonly accepted that Anonymous no longer lurks on 4chan.
? - A sticky was created, where moot asked what he should mention for his presentation for TED Talks. The thread received over 12K posts. moot described anonymous to a bunch of confiscates in 70 different countries (wait until all those people go on 4chan, realizing that 4chan is dead and full of porn)on TED Talks. moot claimed 4chan was dying due to the movement towards internet privacy. moot also reviled that he moved out of his mom's house and back to college.
? - Law & Order SUV aired an episode where a guy with the internet nickname "moot" tried to beat cho's high score. This created much outrage. Due to the episode, the Law & Order commercial transition (full black screen with the sound effect DUN DUN) appeared after every time someone posts on 4chan. The only text being the date of the post submission.
16 - moot re-enables forced_anon and sticky number IDs that follow a poster for 24 hours - a forced tripcode, in other words - enabling them to be tracked across threads. The header is changed to "Old /b/", old-timey instrumental music is played and the mods drop the banhammer like all hell. The name and subject fields are disabled.
17 - moot announces the creation of /mlp/, a blue board dedicated to My Little Pony. Some speculate that moot is going to use it as a trap in the same way he did the furry board and group ban all who posted in it, but as of 3/8/12 this has not occured. moot has stated that it is NOT a trap, and MLP threads on /b/ have slowed down massively. /mlp/ has a single stickied thread, posted by moot, that reads as follows:
Ponies,
We fucked up and turned our back to one of the largest subcultures in 4chan's history. This was not out of malice, but ignorance, and responding to general upset from the rest of the community when pony threads began to overwhelm their respective homes. Ponies haven't had a real home outside of /b/ and /co/ until today.
So we're trying to make this right, and give the ponies the home they've deserved from day one. I honestly have no idea what to do with this board and will be relying on you all to set the culture and help come up with its rules and provide suggestions for janitors. I think a lot of you are tripfriends, so hopefully one stands out that would make a good one.
I would ask that you try to centralize all pony related threads here in /mlp/, and direct fellow ponies from /b/, /co/ and others to this board.
Friendship sure is magic,
mootykins
7 - 4chan's header is changed to the words "NO SCRUBS ALLOWED" and below that "SEE ABOVE". The song No Scrubs by TLC is played in the backgroud. Much :stopmusic: faggotry ensues. The layout is returned to normal on [ongoing]
- [Original Author's post](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/8fq46/the_worlds_most_influential_person_is/c0951bi)
- [http://www.4chan.org/news.php?all](News Archive)
- [http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/22962179/moot+fanmail/](First Sticky)
- [http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/22972938/moot+message/](Second Sticky)
- [http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/23050445/b+is+b+again/ March 27, sticky]
- [http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/23114402/DSFARGEG/ March 28, sticky]