>>16816822to me, an anon since 2004, this is the closest to accurate post, but it’s missing some things. it was understood half-jokingly at the time, but back in the day 4chan had the same first two rules as Fight Club
>do not talk about 4chan>do NOT talk about 4chanbut since the beginning, different groups of people have broken this rule and talked about 4chan outside of 4chan and brought misery to the website by raising the profile of the site
the first groups that leaked were users from Gaia Online and Ebaum’s World.
the next era were people from 9gag, Newgrounds, and early YouTube.
the era after that was iFunny and Facebook.
around this time, we start to get a glut of phone posters, and then Chanology happens. something moot really tried to tamp down was the way new users would try to utilize 4chan as a raid organizing platform. this is where NYPA (not your personal army) failed for the last time, and raiding effectively became a permanent part of 4chan culture. Chanology was basically a raid irl. because Chanology was such a fun idea to “based reddit atheists”, this is when Reddit and 4chan basically became two webpages with the same userbase, each one obsessed to the point of insanity with each other.
what happens after Chanology is now boards/sub communities on 4chan start raiding each other. this is where you get MLP raids, /v/ raids, this is when /news/ raids were actually kind of hilarious, etc. overall the immediate aftermath of Chanology was probably the most chaotic fun the site has ever been.
then GamerGate happened. this kills the 4chan. moot quits, no more fun allowed, everything anons do here is waging some holy culture crusade on the rest of the internet, etc. basically everything from Trump to Jan 6 to whatever else is just a shitty reboot sequel prequel seaboot of the GamerGate saga. still posting twitter screenshots, still /r9k/fagging, still crying about muh degeneracy 5 min after fapping to shitting dicknipples