4chan Chronicle/The Silver Age

Seen by some as the good, under-appreciated days of the Dark Age, the Silver age was a time were /b/ reclaimed some of its original quality, mainly during 2010. A new generation of /b/tards, being neither the uncaring sociopaths of 2006 nor the legion types of 2008, rekindled with one of 4chan’s original attitudes – That of the silly, uncaring prankster. /b/ would go around finding things they could exploit and make jokes of. They would find their way in and mess with a site’s layout or hijack an Internet poll and put outrageous results. They would sometimes spam forced memes that ultimately would become accepted by the community and generally became a funnier crowd to be around. This didn’t mean 4chan would stop being the shithole of the Internet, or that /b/ would stop being the shithole of 4chan, because for a site with such reputation it takes a long time to clean its name. If it ever wants to.

4chan's users weren't inactive, however, as they proved they still got it in 2009 by filling Youtube with porn, selecting Moot as TIME's Person of the Year, and rigging that poll to spell "marblecake also the game".

New Phenomena

(2010–2011)

While 4chan began to age, the proliferation of smartphones birthed a new generation of social networks. Yet 4chan would not embrace a senile, quiet existence (like its predecessor, Something Awful). The world found it's ideals to be appealing as the Anti-Social Network: the one anonymous holdout against a world of transparency, analytics, and populism. moot himself began to realize 4chan's unique status on the internet, and led a momentous TED Talk in 2010 support of the ideals of anonymity, remix culture, and a right to be forgotten. He founded Canv.as revive his dream of a community built on image remixing.

The Shape of Things to Come

Eventually politics would come to engulf the entire Internet and 4chan would be affected rather hard by it. The rise of far left feminism and Tumblr mentality in 2012-2013 would provide the opposite side of the fanatics and their arguments would come to consume the entirety of Internet culture.

The internet became increasingly popular, as smartphones were starting to glue everyone to the Internet in an almost permanent basis. All sorts of demographics began to appear. Most noticeably, extreme, fanatical opinions have begun to surface all around the net (granted, this is nothing new, but not at this scale). The strange phenomenon that was /new/, the successor of /n/, a news board that derailed into far right politics, was becoming hard to ignore. At the same time, /int/, an immigrant board that originated in the German site Krautchan, became an internet wide anomaly: a series of boards hosted on almost every non-English chan, all of them sharing the same culture. /k/, the old, wise weapons board, was struggling with its gun-ho republicans, to the point the word nigger became autoban. These 3 boards began to show the first signs of political extremes being spouted, starting from simple racism and moving on to politics in general. moot, unaware of the cause of the trend, assumed the /new/ had become a hub for organized racists, and axed the board (together with /r9k/) thinking that would solve the problem. This didn’t work however, as evidenced with /int/’s troubles. Later on 2011, moot, after a conversation with Encyclopedia Dramatica owner Girlvinyl, regretted what he did and brought back /new/ and /r9k/ in the form of /pol/ - Politically Incorrect and /r9k/ - ROBOT9001. /pol/ is quickly brandished as the new nazi troll capital of the Internet adopts a distinct culture. It immediately became the black sheep of 4chan and attained an infamous reputation on the net, become target of various attacks.

2011 can be marked as a turning point on 4chan culture. /b/’s Dark Age culture, that of hostility, pointlessness and cancer, slowly began to fade out due to tiredness. The other boards, smaller in size compared to the giant began to see a steady amount of growth in terms of userbase. This would make a trend that would continue for a few years, with the rest of the site slowly gaining importance as /b/’s presence faded from the face of the Internet. While it did not regain quality, /b/ was no longer expected by everyone on 4chan to be the meme factory they have been years ago. This return to genuinely idleness led to the formation of a new “whatever” culture, where one could tag along with whatever was funny at the moment and dissent or outrage was responded by declaring the user was an idiot for getting worked up.

This year proved to be a rather interesting year for the Internet as a whole. SOPA, PIPA, the rise of the brony fandom and all the crazy ideas /b/ made a reality. Modern 4chan takes further form when the concept of a general was born in /co/ and /v/, /vg/ is created to host /v/’s massive amount of generals, and /r/funny explodes in popularity and sparks the meme faces phenomenon, ruining memes forever. /b/ tries to trick the Internet with various schemes, poll raids and even successfully tricking Justin Bieber fans into shaving their heads.

By now, Reddit has come to be known as the Front Page of the internet, becoming essentially the biggest Internet registration-based community on the internet to the point they attained media attention, mainstream popularity and a strong cultural influence on the Internet. Several celebrities including President Barack Obama, would make participate in Reddit’s AMA board, and the site would become together with 4chan, the capitals of the Internet. Although many of 4hcan’s oldguard came to populate the Reddit, the site didn’t think much of it and the various communities that composed they interacted rarely, such as the /r/games-/v/ Tribes: Ascend tournament.

A rising player in the arena, the successor of blotspot, came to prominence around 2010. Tumblr, site who encouraged, in a blogspot-like format, art and creativity and expression. It came to possess a primarily female, art-oriented userbase and would often interact with 4chan. originally, 4chan and Tumblr would foster a pseudo-rivalry, as the community saw themselves as counterpart (/b/, home of lonely male virgins and Tumblr, home of lonely female virgins) this relationship was short-lived as Tumblr became one of the biggest casualties of the politicization of the Internet, becoming the stomping grounds of the craziest breeds of identity ideologies.

The Jessi Slaughter Saga

(May 2010 – Jul 2011)

Raid-wise, 4chan wasn’t completely inactive, and 2010 was proved an interesting when /b/ raided Jessi Slaughter, an underage camwhore with a serious case of unwarranted self-importance, until her own father discovered her and threw a shitstorm over it, sparking the infamous phrases YOU DUN GOOFED and CONSEQUENCES WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. The situation escalated to the point where Jessi and his family were interviewed at Good Morning America! Expecting a surge of NORP viewers on the site, /b/’s CSS was ironically modified to show a more safe for work front page, and everyone was exited since most raiders where /b/tards.