4chan The Silver Age

The Silver Age (Sept 2009 – Jun 2011) 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 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 yet, because for a site with such reputation it takes a long time to clean its name. If it ever wants to.

The Anonymous Split and the Rise of Hacktivism

(Sept 2009 – Apr 2010)

With 4chan and /b/ delighting in their own decadence, there was little actual action or reaction from the community. The last important action that came from 4chan's anonymous was February 2010’s Operation Titstorm, the culmination of a series of bad vibes between the Internet and the Australian government that attempts to censor it, taking its origins from Operation Didgeridie.

From then on, almost all actions performed against any organization or government that attempted against free speech, piracy or relevant matter would suffer attacks made by hacktivist groups, all claiming to be part of Anonymous. With Operation Payback 4chan would slowly fade out from being the main cause of most Internet warfare, with various groups taking the spotlight. Since 4chan was constantly filled with spam, uninteresting threads, and trolls the media ended up separating the site from anonymous entirely. The new hacktivist anonymous would proceed to attack government sites, Visa, MasterCard and others in retaliation to the censorship attempts during Operation Payback and Wikileaks' loss of funding during Operation Avenge Assange. 4chan's anonymous weren't inactive, however, as they proved they still got it in 2009 by filling Youtube with porn and getting moot selected as TIME's person of the year and rigging the poll so it would spell “marblecake also the game”.

The Jessi Slaughter Saga

(May 2010 – Jul 2011)

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, to the point where his 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 modified to show a more safe for work front page, and everyone was excited since most raiders where /b/tards.

This year is 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, regaining some of its original quality at the same time.

4chan also begins to have its first skirmishes with the new generation of Internet sites like Tumblr, with whom originally shared some likeness before the site was taken over by SJWs, and Reddit, of which /b/ perceived something very, very wrong was growing on that site.

2011 presented 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. /b/ would enter a massive conflict with the brony fandom as trolls flocked to their side and raided the entirety of the site. 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, /pol/ is brandished as the new nazi troll capital of the Internet and becomes a potential successor for /b/, and /r/funny explodes in popularity and sparks the meme faces phenomenon. /b/ tries to trick the Internet with various schemes, poll raids and even successfully tricking Justin Bieber fans into shaving their heads.