4chan Mootxico Era
(Apr 2004 - Sept 2005)
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.
August 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.
August 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.