4chan Chronicle/The /i/nsurgency

(Sept 2006 – circa late 2009)

The /i/nsurgency

The aftermath of /b/-day ended with many banned or exiled 4chan users looking for a place where they could retain their old culture. From this point on Imageboard culture would change from being relatively homogeneous, in the sense that no other alternative chan tried to compete with /b/, 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, 420chan; a drug chan, though not as active as 7chan, hosted /i/ for a while, Raidchan; IRC/Radio group of trolls, AnonTalk; run by Kimmo Alm, spammed the hell out of everyone. ImageBoards were born due to the /b/-day, such as 2-ch.ru, 888chan and 99chan, etc. or revived, as was WTFux and 7chan. 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 (Allegedly closed by the Russian equivalent of the FBI). Many minor sites went down due to the sudden surge of traffic, sometimes permanently. Though not very consequential, since most of the important sites came back 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. Both 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. The new users, denominated protestfags or moralfags 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 June 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 original splinter *chans died or diminished, becoming barely active, with 4chan returning as the sole place for anonymous imageboard culture, which was, however, changing drastically.